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From Samhain to Halloween—The Evolution of Our Second Most Popular Celebration

31 October 2021 at 10:24
All of the familiar icons of American Halloween were present in this early 20th Century card. Note — After trick or treating, adult reveling, and movie slasher/horror showings were are all curtailed by the Coronavirus pandemic last year,  Halloween has come roaring back with pent up enthusiasm. Halloween traces its origin to the Celtic harvest festival Samhain.  It was one of the four festivals that fell between the Solstices and Equinoxes and which celebrated the natural turning of the seasons.  Samhain was particularly important because it was the gate in time to the death and starvation season of winter, as well a time to celebrate the recent harvest.  This association with the death of winter also extended to the spirit world, ...

Fifty-five Years Ago The Time Was Right for NOW

30 October 2021 at 12:07
The National Organization for Women's familiar logo had its origins when Betty Freidan doodled the initials NOW on a napkin in a meeting in her hotel room. On October 29, 1966 thirty charter members gathered in Washington , D.C. to formally launch a new Civil Rights organization dedicated to improving the status of women in all areas of society.   In no time at all National Organization for Women (NOW) was shaking things up and spearheading a new waveof feminist activism. The steam seemed to have gone out of the women’s movement after decades of struggle finally was rewarded with the adoption of The Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1920.   Without a clear, unifying focusorganizations withered or went off in different direc...

The Things That Bill Mauldin and Willie and Joe Taught Me

29 October 2021 at 12:16
Sgt. Bill Mauldin on the job in Italy covering the war from the front lines for Stars and Stripes .  He looked younger than his 22 years. When I was a boy I was obsessed with the great event of my parents’ lifetime—World War II.  It was hard not to be.  Almost every house I ever visited had at least one framed photo of a handsome young man in uniform proudly displayed.  Sometimes more.  Husbands, brothers, fathers.  Most came home.  Some didn’t The survivors of those photos were still mostly youngish men in the prime of their lives—my father and the fathers of almost all my friends.  They were serious, hard working men.  They were very busy doing things, sometimes big things.  To a man those I knew best, my father and u...

Murfin Verse for the Tree of Life Mass Murder—Sanctuary in a Very Bad Week

28 October 2021 at 09:09

A memorial to the victims of the Tree of Life Synagogue mass murder three years ago this week in Pittsburgh.

This week marked the third anniversary of the mass murder at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh on October 27, 2018.  I was asked to do the Chalice Lighting at the Tree of Life Unitarian Universalist Congregation in McHenrythe next day.    The topic for the morning was sanctuary.  I threw away what I had carefully prepared.  I was planning on reading this new poem instead which was totally inadequate to the situation but due to a scheduling mix up, I didn’t read it that day.  Instead, I read it for the first time a year later at the Tree of Life Coffee Houseat the church.  The poem also referenced other ugly, hateful episodes the same week.


Sanctuary in a Very Bad Week

Headlines: 

Trump Attempts to Erase Transgender Identity

Two Blacks Killed at Walmart by Angry Racist

14 Bombs Sent to Targets Denounced by Trump

11 Dead at Tree of Life Synagogue Mass Murder

 

Sacred shelter—A haven offered or sought, 

   a holy obligation and a desperate resort.

The Church once offered it to those fleeing

   the wrath of a king or war lord.

Today we are called to offer it to

   immigrants and refugees,

      the homeless and unwanted,

            the despised of color, gender, faith,

               abused women and families,

                  all the wretched.

 

Know this—Sanctuary can fail.

   Ask Thomas Becket, Ann Frank,

      the four little Girls of Birmingham,

            the frozen bum,

               the murdered wife,

                  the deported asylum seeker,

         the immigrant children in cages,

            the dead Jews of Tree of Life.

 

But failure does not cancel hope or duty.

   time to step up,

      to take our chances,

            to become a People of Sanctuary.

 

—Patrick Murfin

  


Old Obscure Poet Contemplates Two Great Young Dead Ones

27 October 2021 at 10:40

Dylan Thomas in a characteristic pose before a bookstore reading.

A few years ago, I noticed that Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath shared a birthday, October 27—1914 in Wales for him, 1932 in Boston for her.  They had little in common except that they wrote poetry—although poetry very different in form, theme, style, and substance—and died young each in a kind of pitiful squalor.  Each had crossed the ocean and died in the other’s country, a nice cosmic balance.

That year—2012—their common birthday also coincided with a new moon and where I was, at least, a howling storm of darkness. 

 

Sylvia Plath in a similar venue battling her invisible demons. 

You know me.  I am a sucker for cosmic coincidence.  So, I scribbled a poem for the occasion.

Writing poetry about poets, both infinitely more gifted than I, is an act of terminal hubris for which I shall be justly punished.  But here it is anyway.

 


 

How Black the Night

October 26, 2011—New Moon, Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath

 

Even the New Moon hides behind the howling clouds.

 

Happy Birthday Dylan—

Why did you not

            rage, rage against the dying of the light

            in that pool of your own black vomit

            at the Chelsea?

 

Happy Birthday Sylvia—

The same year, you dewy goddess,

            you emptied the medicine vials

            and crawled under your mother’s porch.

 

Not ships passing in the night,

                    but traversing the same black ocean

                    away from home

                    to something else.

 

Did you find what you were looking for

                    in worship and whiskey,

                    in broken love and madness?

 

As Dylan moldered under Laugharne,

                    Lady Lazarus, you wrote.

                   Dying

   Is an art, like everything else.

   I do it exceptionally well.

 

But laying your head in an oven

             is no art

             and posthumous poems

             no resurrection.

 

How black the night, dead poets,

                    how black the night?

 

—Patrick Murfin

 


The Erie Canal Opened an Inland Empire

26 October 2021 at 11:52

 

Mule tow grain barges in the 1880s.

 

I’ve got an old mule and her name is Sal

Fifteen years on the Erie Canal

She’s a good old worker and a good old pal

Fifteen years on the Erie Canal

We’ve hauled some barges in our day

Filled with lumber, coal, and hay

And every inch of the way we know

From Albany to Buffalo

 

Chorus:

Low bridge, everybody down

Low bridge for we’re coming to a town

And you’ll always know your neighbor

And you’ll always know your pal

If you’ve ever navigated on the Erie Canal. 

—Thomas S. Allen, 1905.  Original lyrics written to commemorate the 15 years of construction on the Erie Canal.


The original sheet music for Thomas Allen's song.  It is often mistaken for a 19th Century folk song.

The Erie Canal opened October 26, 1825.  Few innovations in American history had such immediate and far reaching consequences as the public works projectonce derided as Clinton’s Folly.

A canal linking Lake Eriewith the Hudson River at the New York capital of Albany was first proposed by Thomas Eddy, a businessman with interests in a failing canal digging companyand sponsored in the New York State Assembly by Jonas Platt, leader of the Federalists in the Senate.  To gain bi-partisan support for the ambitious project, Platt proposed a commission carefully balanced between leading figures in both his party and the Democratic-Republicans. 

On March 13, 1810 the Erie Canal Commission was created with the assignment to do preliminary feasibility studies, explore possible routes, and come up with plans to finance what would be by far the biggest engineering project yet undertaken in North America.  Gouverneur Morris, a distinguished former Federalist Senator and one of the principal authors of the Constitution, was named as President.   The other commissioners were Federalists Eddy, Stephen Van Rensselaer, and William North plus Democratic Republicans DeWitt Clinton, Simeon DeWitt, and Peter Buell Porter.

DeWitt Clinton. the man most responsible for guiding the Erie Canal to reality, in a portrait by George Catlin.

The driving force on the Commission quickly became Clinton with strong support, despite their different political connections of Van Rensselaer, the heir of the greatestof the Patroon dynasties of semi-feudal landownersin Up State.  The Commissioners quickly went to work and several of them explored the route as far as possible by water and on an arduous cross-country trek via unimproved roads and trails.  Clinton kept a detailed diaryof his adventures on this trip. 

The following March the Commission issued a report that dismissed competing plans for a possible canal to Lake Ontario and proposed that a totally manmade channel be dug straight west from Albany to Lake Erie at Buffalo.  Morris dissented proposing instead a physically impossible schemeto deepen existing rivers and have Lake Erie “empty into them to fill them.”  Little wonder that his leadership on the Commission was by-passed.  Perhaps most importantly, the commission acknowledged that the project was too big to be financed by private capitaland recommended public financing by the State.

In April 1811 the Legislature responded by authorizing the Commission to take all necessary steps to finance the entire project and granted $15,000 to begin its work.  It also added Robert Fulton and Robert Livingston to the body.  Fulton had launched a commercially viable steamboat service between New York City and Albany with Livingston, a member of a powerful political family, as his partner in 1807 which had spurred interest in a western canal.  Both men were Democratic-Republicans, giving Clinton extra clout in addition to lending their enormous prestige to the project.  Fulton would actively work with Clinton on engineering aspectsof the project until his death in 1815.

The War of 1812 ground progress to a halt.  Van Rensselaer was appointed General incommand of the New York Militia.  The frontier with Canada around Buffalobecame a major theater of operations in the war and was a jumping-off point for attempted invasions by both sides.  The lack of reliable transportation to bring artillery, arms, powder, and supplies to the front crippled American efforts and provided a national defense justification for a canal. 

Meanwhile Clinton, then serving as Mayor of New York City and Lt. Governor, was reluctantly draftedby a dissident Democratic-Republican rump and backed by the Federalists to run for President against James Madison in 1812.  It was a close-fought election and Clinton took 47% of the popular vote while losing by a wide margin in the Electoral College.  The run strained his relations with loyal Democratic-Republicans, notably the powerful Livngstons.

At the conclusion of the war, Clinton revived interest in the project by holding a large public meeting in the New York City.  He promised residents that the project would bring about a boom:

The city will, in the course of time, become the granary of the world, the emporium of commerce, the seat of manufactures, the focus of great moneyed operations.  And before the revolution of a century, the whole island of Manhattan, covered with inhabitants and replenished with a dense population, will constitute one vast city.

In 1816 the Legislature reformed the Commission with explicit authorization to supervise acquisition ofland and the actual constructionof the project. Clinton was named the new President and Van Rensselaer, who now abandoned the dying Federalists to become a Clintonian Republican, were held over.  Joseph Ellicott, an agent for the powerful Holland Land Company which donated 10,000 acres of land to the project; Myron Holley, a state Assemblyman and political ally; and Samuel Young, who had written the influential book A Treatise on Internal Navigation: A Comprehensive Study of Canals in Great Britain and Holland. 

In 1816 outgoing President James Madison vetoed a bill that would have contributed Federal funds to the construction.  Madison supported using Federal funds for internal improvements but doubted that barring an authorizing amendment to the Constitution that the government had the authority.  But there must also have been satisfaction to slapping back at Clinton.

1817 proved to be a big, break-out year for the canal. Clinton became the beneficiary when Daniel D. Tompkins was elected as James Monroe’s Vice President.  Despite the bitter opposition of the growing Tammany organization in New York City, Clinton was easily elected to serve out Tompkins’s term as Governor.  With his support in April Legislature created a Canal Fund which was authorized to spend $7 million for construction of a canal 363 miles long, 40 feet wide, and four feet deep. Commissioners of the Canal Fund was made up of the state Constitutional officers.

The route of the Canal across Upstate New York from the Hudson River to Lake Erie.

Construction began on July 4 at Rome.  The first 15 miles to Utica took two years to build due to the difficulty in felling trees through the virgin forest, excavating and removing earth by hand.  An innovativestump puller was used, but at best three man crews with mules could only build a mile of canal and adjacent tow path in a year of arduous labor. 

Also holding up construction was the fact that in the entire United States there was not one trained civil engineer.  The surveyorswho had laid out the route, James Geddes and Benjamin Wright were in over-all charge of construction and learned by doing.  They were aided by Canvass White, a 27-year-old amateur engineer who traveled to England at his own expense to study canal construction there and Nathan Roberts, a mathematics teacher.  Despite the inexperience they laid out an impressive record of achievement, carrying the “Canal up the Niagara escarpment at Lockport, maneuvered it onto a towering embankment to cross over Irondequoit Creek, spanned the Genesee River on an awesome aqueduct, and carved a route for it out of the solid rock between Little Falls and Schenectady...” according to Canal historian Peter L. Bernstein.

The eventual arrival of thousands of Scotch-Irish laborersgreatly speeded construction.  These navies, although Ulster Presbyterians, were the first of a wave of hundreds of thousand Irish laborers who dug the canals and built the turnpikes and railroads of their new country.  Conditions were brutal.  Over a thousand men died of swamp fever at Montezuma Marsh, the outlet of Cayuga Lake west of Syracuse.  Work there ground to a halt until winter when the marsh froze over.  But work in the frigid weather by men without adequate coats was almost as lethal.  Soon Catholic Irishmen were replacing the Ulstermen.  In 1825 Father John Raho wrote to his bishop that “so many die that there is hardly any time to give Extreme Unction to everybody. We run night and day to assist the sick.”

Despite the hardships, year after year the work pressed on.  The middle section from Utica to Salina(now Syracuse) was completed in 1820 and traffic on that section started up immediately. The eastern section, 250 miles from Brockport to Albany, opened in 1823 to great fanfare as did another 64 mile section from Watervliet on the Hudsonto Lake Champlain. 

Construction a Lockport where the canal needed to raise boats up the Niagara Escarpment was the most significant engineering feat.  Powder was used to blast through the rock and cranes used to hoist blocks but most of the labor was still dangerous pick and shovel work.  The mostly Irish canal diggers suffered and died on the job.

Next, climbing the Niagara Escarpment up though an 80 foot wall of hard limestone was the great challenge.  Generally following the course of a “wildstream pouring over the cliff, a series of five locks were carved out so that bargescould be lifted to the level of Lake Erie.  This is the only section where wide-spread use of blasting powder occurred, predictably with fatal consequences for many workers. 

The step locks at Lockport pictured in the early 20th Century post card have been preserved and still are operated for tourist exhibitions.  

On the west end the village of Buffalo they dredged a channel of Buffalo Creek to make it navigable and built a port facility on Lake Erie.  That secured the village as the terminus of the canal over neighboring, and much less enterprising, Black Rock on the Niagara River.  In doing so Buffalo secured a futureas an industrial powerhouse and the economic center of the region.

Despite the apparent success of his great project, Clinton was in political trouble.  Tammany politicians in New York City allied themselves with the Albany Regency, a masterfully assembled Up State political machine created by Martin Van Buren.  Together they became known as the Bucktails faction of the Democratic Republican Party and declared war on Clinton and his supporters.  Gaining control of a state Constitutional Convention in 1821, the Bucktails shortened the term of governor to two years and moved the term from a July 1 start to a January 1, thus shaving a year off Clinton’s term.  They also passed a 2 million dollarappropriation for the canal attached to a measure that stacked the Canal Board with Clinton’s political opponents.  The governor was forced tosign the measure or jeopardize funding of his pet project. In 1822 Clinton, despite huge personal popularity, was denied re-nomination by the Democratic-Republicans and he was out of office at the end of the year.  In 1824 the Legislature ousted him as President and a member of the Canal Commission.

The last act proved a step too far for his opponents.  With the Canal nearing completion, voter indignation over Clinton’s shabby treatment propelled him back into the Governor’s chair that fall.

Gov. Clinton Mingling the Waters of Lake Erie with New York Harbor.

It was with understandable glee that Governor Clinton got to preside over the ceremonies opening the canal in October 1825.  He sailed on the packet barge Seneca Chief along the Canal from Buffalo to Albany then transferredto a steam packet for the trip down the Hudson to New York City.  He poured two casks of Lake Erie waterinto the harbor in the City making a symbolic Marriage of the Waters to officially open the whole waterway system.

The economic and social effects of the Canal quickly surpassed the most optimistic predictions.  The vast resources of the Great Lakes basin were immediately accessible in the east as they had never been before when the Allegany and Appalachian Mountains presented a substantial barrier to commerce.  Freight rates from Buffalo to New York went from $100 per ton by roadto $10 per ton by Canal. In 1829 3,640 bushels of wheat were transported down the Canal.  By 1837 this had increased to 500,000 bushels and four years later it reached one million. In nine years short years Canal tolls more than recouped the entire cost of construction.  

Equally, if not more important, the Erie Canal became the great highway to the West for hundreds of thousands of settlers who were eager to claim land and begin to ship their crops east for good hard cash money.  Previously growth of the trans-Appalachian West was limited to the heartiest pioneers who had to stay close to the great river systems to ship their produce to market via the long tripdown to New Orleans.  The younger sons of New England and New York farmers, craving land and with the resources to buy it flooded the Old Northwest transforming Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and even distant Minnesota from frontier wilderness to prosperous, populous states by 1850.

A Canal passenger packet circa 1850.

Not only did the mostly farming settlers find easy access to market, others began to ship the endless lumber of the Great North Woods, iron ore to feed the smeltersand furnaces of an industrializing nation, and other resources.  Within 15 years New York City had fulfilled Clinton’s dazzling prediction.  It had leapfrogged its competitors, Boston, Baltimore, and New Orleans and was handling more freight than all those cities combined.  The Canal also spurred development in towns and cities along the route from Buffalo on down the Hudson.  Many cities developed industries that fed manufactured goods into the interior.  New York State communities along the path of the canal, the lateral canals built to feed it from the more remote interior of the state, and the Hudson River became boom towns.

The Canal was deepened and widened twice in the 19th Century to accommodate larger bargesand greater traffic.  Between 1905 and 1918, engineers decided to abandon much of the original man-made channel and use new techniques to “canalize” the rivers that the canal had been constructed to avoid—the Mohawk, Oswego, Seneca, and Clyde plus Oneida Lake.  A uniform channel was dredged; dams were built to create long, navigable pools, and locks were built adjacent to the dams to allow the barges to pass from one pool to the next.  When it opened in 1918, the whole system was renamed the New York State Barge Canal.

Today most of the traffic on the New York State Barge Canal is private pleasure boats, canoes and kayaks, tour boats, and on some sections reproductions of mule drawn canal boats..  Here boat await entrance to the Canal at Buffalo during an annual Canal Fest.

The system remained an economic engine for New York State until the St. Lawrence Seaway was completed in 1959.  Traffic then dropped to a trickle.  In recent years the system has experienced arenaissance as recreational corridor.  Abandon stretches of the original canal have been preserved in many places, including a 36 mile stretch in the Old Erie Canal State Historic Park from the town of DeWitt near Syracuse to Rome.

The Man Who Invented English Literature— Geoffrey Chaucer

25 October 2021 at 12:10

Geoffrey Chaucer, a 17th century portrait based on an illustration in an illuminated manuscript.

Way back when dirt was new and I was an exceptionally earnest high school student, we learned that before there was William Shakespearethere was Geoffrey Chaucer, period.  In those distant days students were generally assigned at least a chunk of The Canterbury Tales to read and try and decipher.  We were told it was English, but it was Greek to most of us.  I remember that after some hours of labor, I got a hazy idea of what he was writing about.

English literature prior to the 20th Century apart from a medicinal dose of the Bard, a dollop of Dickens, and a few lines from a dreamy Romantic poethas long been banished from most high school curricula.  You might not even encounter Chaucer today in many introductory survey level English Lit. courses in College.  Certainly, you would have to be an English major and toiling in the 200-300 level courses before you really encounter him.

Perhaps things are better for Geoffrey in England. One hopes so.

 

An English inn similar to the one Chaucer wrote about in The Canterbury Tales and the Inne of the Shrews in Greenwich where he died.

I bring this up because October 25 mark the anniversary of Chaucer’s passing in 1400He was then the resident of the Inne of the Shrews in Greenwich.  After a lifetime as a mostly successful courtier, he had been out of favor and broke, but was recently restored to Royal favor.  But he may have been murdered by those who did not take kindly to his portrayal of the clergy, or so some stories have it.  None-the-less, he was respectable enough to be buried in an unimportant corner of Westminster Abby.  In later years other literary men asked to be interred near him in what eventually became the revered Poet’s Corner.

Chaucer's crypt in Westminster Abby was located in a dim, obscure corner of the church but became the nucleolus of the celebrated Poets' Corner, the final resting place of the British literary elite.

Today his fans celebrate his life on his death day because no one knows exactly when he was born.  It was about 1342 or ’43 in London.  He came from a Normanfamily whose name originally meant shoemaker.  But the family fortunes had risen.  His father was a successful wine merchant and minor courtierdeputy to the King’s Butler.  Nothing is known of his education except that it was quite good.  By the time young Geoffrey was ready to enter the service of the noble and highborn himself at about age 13 he could already read and write Latin, French, and Italian.

That career started with an appointment to the household of Elizabeth, Countess of Ulster and Prince Lionelin 1357.  Two years later he was a soldierin France fighting for King Edward IIIin the 100 Years War.  He was evidently a good and valuable soldier because after being capturedby the French he was paroled under the terms of the Treaty of Brétignyin 1360.  The King himself and other courtiers contributed to raising the substantial ransom of £16.  It was during his presumably not too-uncomfortable imprisonment that Chaucer completed, according to some sources his first literary work, Romaunt of the Rose, a translation from the French into the Anglo-Norman language of the court.

Around 1337 Chaucer apparently married very well indeed.  His wife, or at least the mother of his two sons, was Philippa Roe, the sister of the future wife of John of Gaunt, third surviving son of Edward III.  Due to this happy circumstance, he enjoyed the support and patronage of the Prince as long as he lived.

In 1369 he would re-work that earlier Romaunt of the Rose into vernacular English, what we now know as Middle English in The Book of the Duchess, dedicated to his sister-in-law after her death.

Such connection earned him more important and lucrative appointments.  From 1338-78 he traveled extensively in Europe on several diplomatic and commercial assignments.  He was said to have met the Italian Poet Petrarch on one such trip.  He was also exposed to Dante’s Divine Comedy, which was written in vernacular Italianrather than Latin.  This was supposedly an inspiration for Chaucer to work in vernacular English but as we have seen, he was already working in that language.

Back in England he was awarded the very lucrative post of Comptroller of the Customs and Subside of Wools, Skins, and Tanned Hides for the Port of London, just the kind of position where money could not help but fill the purse of a poor, but honest public servant.  He survived a charge of rape by Cecile Champaigne and was able to get her to withdraw her suit after a hefty private settlement

 

                        Chaucer's fortunes waxed and waned with those of his patron, John of Gaunt the Earl of Lancaster. 

He could survive scandal, but not the shifting sands of politics.  With John of Gaunt out of favor, so was he.  He lost his post and free housing.  But he moved to Kent, got a minor sinecure as Postmaster, and eventually was elected to Parliament.  Away from London and the demands of court Chaucer devoted himself more and more to literature.  He composed Troilus and Criseyde, a long poem based on a Trojan romance by the Italian poet Boccaccio. 

When his wife died and with John out of favor, Chaucer was sued for debt.  Several friends and acquaintances were executed.  But in 1389 John returned to power and influence over his nephew Richard II, who in turn favored the poet with a new appointment as Clerk of the King’s Works responsible for the upkeepand repair governmental buildings in and around London.  He was the beneficiary of Royal gifts and pensions in the 1390’s.

It was during this period that he did most of his work on his magnum opus, The Canterbury Tales.  The loose collection was said to have been inspired in some ways by Dante’s journeys through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise.  But Chaucer’s tales were grounded in the real, even mundane world

 

From an illuminated manuscript of the tales.  The figure on horse back is thought to be Chaucer himself.

A group of 30 pilgrims gather for a journey to the grave and shrine of Thomas à Becket in an Inn much like the one in which Chaucer himself resided.  It was a remarkably diverse group cutting across the rigid class lines of England at the time.  Included in the group and telling their stories at the behest of the inn keeperwere a knight, a monk, a prioress, a plowman, a miller, a merchant, a clerk, and an oft-widowed wife from Bath.  The stories, some of them borrowed from earlier tales and sources, were often humorous and sometimes bawdy.

Chaucer never lived to complete the work.  Perhaps because he was interrupted by another episode of political intrigue

After Chaucer’s patron John died, Richard II disinherited his son, Henry ofBolingbrook.  Henry returned from exile in France in 1399 to supposedly re-claim his lands and titles.  He quickly gathered a large army against the king.  He deposedRichard and seized the crown.  Chaucer was reportedly in Henry’s service at the time, ever loyal to the line of John of Gaunt.  As Henry IV the new king rewarded such loyal service with a generous increase in his annuity

But he never received either lands or title and remained until he died the next year, as he had lived, a commoner with uncommon connections to Royalty.

For those who may have forgotten—and for those who have never seen it, here is a sample of Chaucer’s most famous work:

The Pilgrims.


Here begins the Book of the Tales of Canterbury

 

Whan that aprill with his shoures soote

The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licour

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne

Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne,

And smale foweles maken melodye,

That slepen al the nyght with open ye

(so priketh hem nature in hir corages);

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,

And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,

To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;

And specially from every shires ende

Of engelond to caunterbury they wende,

The hooly blisful martir for to seke,

That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

           

Bifil that in that seson on a day,

In southwerk at the tabard as I lay

Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage

To caunterbury with ful devout corage,

At nyght was come into that hostelrye

Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye,

Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle

In felaweshipe, and pilgrimes were they alle,

That toward caunterbury wolden ryde.

The chambres and the stables weren wyde,

And wel we weren esed atte beste.

 And shortly, whan the sonne was to reste,

So hadde I spoken with hem everichon

 That I was of hir felaweshipe anon,

And made forward erly for to ryse,

To take oure wey ther as I yow devyse.

           

But nathelees, whil I have tyme and space,

 Er that I ferther in this tale pace,

Me thynketh it acordaunt to resoun

To telle yow al the condicioun

Of ech of hem, so as it semed me,

And whiche they weren, and of what degree,

And eek in what array that they were inne;

And at a knyght than wol I first bigynne.

 

—Geoffrey Chaucer 

The Lady Went Over the Falls in a Barrel

24 October 2021 at 07:00
Annie Edson Taylor, her barrel, and Niagara Falls. America fell in love with stunts and daredevils almost from the beginning.  The first American celebrity, after all was not an actor or musician, but Sam Patch, a young Yankee who leaped—twice—into roaring base of Niagara Falls from a high platform in 1829, only to die trying a similar stunt at the Falls of the Genesee River a few weeks later.  In 1859 the French acrobat Jean Francois Gravelet, better known as the Great Blondin crossed the gorge above the Falls on a tightrope in a series of increasingly spectacular performances incorporating numerous tricks.  Over the next three decades several others would duplicate the feat—or die trying. Sam Patch became America's first celeb...

Tree of Life UU Welcomes Dr. Jie Yi as Interim Music Director

23 October 2021 at 07:00

Dr. Jie Yi, Interim Music Director for the Tree of Life Unitarian Universalist Congregation in McHenry.

The Tree of Life Unitarian Universalist Congregation, 5603 Bull Valley Road in McHenry, Illinois has appointed a new interim Music Director to aid the congregation in providing quality musical programing while it continues to conduct Sunday morning services via Zoom due to the continued of the Coronavirus pandemic.  Although the congregation hopes to return to in-person services as soon as it is safe and possible, that is weeks or months away.

Dr. Jie Yi is currently the Music Directorof the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Huntington, New Yorkand will continue in that position as well. 

Jie holds a Doctor of Music Arts degreein conducting from Manhattan School of Music. He is the authorof Chinese for Singers, the first comprehensive guide for Western singers to use in singing Chinese texts. Jie conducted Messe de Minuit by Charpentier, Musikalische Exequien by Schütz, and Missa O quam gloriosum by Victoria at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in 2018 and 2019. He also conducted Handel’s coronation anthem Let Thy Hand Be Strengthened at Riverside Church in 2018. In 2015, he made his Carnegie Hall debut, conducting Xian Xinghai’s Yellow River Cantata. He was Chorus Masterand Assistant Conductor at the Shanghai Opera from 2008 to 2013.

Jie is a recipient of the Asian Culture Council Fellowship (2011) and the U.S. China Cultural Institute Fellowship for Young Conductors (2006). As pianist and vocal coach, he performed at La Lingua della Lirica Festival in Italy(2015–16) and performed Bellini’s opera I Capuletti e i Montecchiat Manhattan School of Music (2013).

Jie will be able to work remotely from Huntington because he is especially adept at the technical aspectsof creating videos blending the voices of many individual singers recording their parts from their homes. He has already begun work with members of the Tree of Life Choir and together they expect to create music for services two times a month and prepare a Christmas/Yule/Solstice/Winter holiday music service in December.  He will work closely in planning services with Tree of Life’s Interim Minister, the Rev. Jenn Gracen.

The congregation’s choir is one of the most highly regarded in McHenry County and is known for its wide repertoireincluding not only hymns and other traditional worship music but also jazz, pop, folk, Broadway, international music, and classical. They toured internationally to Romania (Transylvania) in 2016 and have performed in both McHenry County choral music programs and with regional Unitarian Universalist choirs.  The ensemble includes several outstanding soloists as well.

Former Tree of Life Music Director Tom Steffens led the Choir in the annual Christmas/Winter Holiday concert in 2015.  This year Dr. Jie Li and the Choir will prepare Zoom program.

Tree of Life is also still conducting a searchfor a permanent Music Director who will be able to lead the choir and coordinate other music as the congregation returns to live, in-person worship.

Tree of Life Sunday services are currently held via Zoom at 10:45 am.  Visit the congregation at https://treeoflifeuu.org/ for links to the services. 

An Encounter—Murfin Verse

22 October 2021 at 07:00

A street encounter between acquaintances.  What will they discover?

Yesterday Facebook's memory dredge hauled up a status report from way back in 2010.  I had completely forgottenabout it but after years of ever increasing American polarization and its attendant personal trauma I found it more relevant than ever.  It was also found versemaking a poem simply by breaking up the lines exactly as originally written.  I have discovered of few of the over they years.  At least they are shortand sweet and don’t drone on forever.

William Carey's sketch of the Old Poet reading.

An Encounter

Discovered in a Facebook status from

October 21, 2010

 

Pleasantries with a wave and nod acquaintance of some years. 

Don’t know each other’s last names.

You know—weather, sports, a bit of family trivia.

A passing word betrays an affiliation. 

The eyes narrow, the jaw sets just so. 

In an instant the other, the enemy, the sub-human. 

Whose eyes, whose jaw?

 

Patrick Murfin

  

International Day of the Nacho Honors the Treat’s Inventor

21 October 2021 at 07:00
Today is International Day of the Nacho, so declared under somewhat murky circumstances and murkier authority for this date in 1975 after the tragic death of the delicacy’s inventor, Ignacio “Nacho” Anaya at the age of 81.  This celebration is not to be confusedwith a strictly U.S. National Nacho Day observed annually on November 6 promoted by the cheese industry. I know.  It comes as a stunning surprise to gourmetsand foodies that nachos are not steeped in traditional Mexican cuisine. A menu from El Moderno in the 1950's. The story goes that Anaya was laboring as the maître d’hôtel —although I am relatively certain that no one ever called the front house managerby that title—at El Moderno Café in Piedras Negras, Coahuil...

The Johnny Bright Incident Was An Indelible Stain on College Football

20 October 2021 at 10:34

An isolation and blow-up from a series of photographs in the Des Moines Register clearly show Johnny Bright  being smashed in the face after handing off the ball.  The brutal late his was the third time Bright was knocked unconscious in the first quarter of a 1951 Drake vs. Oklahoma A&M football game.

It was the most brutal and flagrant on-field racist attack in NCAA college football history.  The irrefutable evidence was splashed on front pages across the country.  The leading contender for the 1951 Heisman Trophy was severely injured and knocked out of a game causing his undefeated team to lose its only game of the season.  Yet no action was taken against the player who assaulted Johnny Bright, the coach who ordered the hit and drilled the assault in practice, or the administrationwhich apparently approved, defended, and covered up the attack.  In fact, for decade after decade the University denied any wrongdoing and refused to apologize to the wounded player or the team they cheated.  It was not until September 28, 2005 that an Oklahoma State University President acknowledged wrongdoing in a letter to the President Drake University.  The apology came almost 54 years after the assault and 22 years after the victim’s death.

Johnny Bright was born to a working class African American family on June 11, 1930 in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  He was raised with three brothers and a sister by a single mother.  At the city’s Central High School, he was an excellent student and lettered in football, basketball, and track and field, leading his football team to a city title in 1945, and helped the basketball team to two state tournament Final Four appearances.  He also played local league softball and was a successful amateur boxer.

Bright was one of the most heavily recruited high school athletesin the nation when he graduated in 1947.  He accepted a scholarship at Big Ten powerhouse Michigan State University (MSU.)  It was not a good fit.  As a freshman he was unhappy with the direction of the football program and disappointed that coaches seemed to actively discouragewasting time” on academics instead of concentrating on football. 

Bright dropped out of MSU and accepted a track and field scholarship at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa a smaller but prestigiousuniversity.  Bright’s scholarship allowed him to try out for the football and basketball squads, but because he was a transfer he was redshirted for football in his freshman year.  During his college career he letteredin all three sports.

Drake competed in the Missouri Valley Conference (MVC), then considered a second tier college conference.  Within the conference Drake was a traditional powerhouse.  Once he became eligible for varsity play in his sophomore year, Bright quickly helped the program step up to a whole new level.  In 1949, his sophomore year he rushedfor 975 yards and threw for another 975 to lead the nation in total offense.   The Drake Bulldogs finished their season at 6–2–1.  In Bright’s junior year as a halfback/quarterback he rushed for 1,232 yards and passed for 1,168 yards, setting an NCAA record of 2,400 yards total offense and again led the team to a 6–2–1 record.

Early in his freshman year Bright became the first Black player to compete against MVC rival Oklahoma A&M at Lewis Field in Stillwater.  A&M, which would later become Oklahoma State University, had just, extremely reluctantly, become officially integrated that year.   Bright, then unknown, had competed without incident or controversy and led his team to a victory over the Aggies.  In his sophomore year Drake hosted the contest between the two teams and once again Bright had romped over the Oklahoma team.

In his senior year Johnny Bright was leading all college players in total yardage and both passing and rushing as a half back/quarter back for Drake University and was the odds on favorite to win the Heisman Trophy.

Before the beginning of the 1951 season and Bright’s senior year, he had become a genuine national star.  He was rated by sports writers as the hands down favorite to win the Heisman Trophy.  As his team began to roll up victory after victory, Bright became an open target at A&M.  The student newspaper, The Daily O’Collegian, and the Stillwater News Press, reported that Bright was a marked man, and several A&M students were openly bragging that Bright “would not be around at the end of the game.”  A&M Coach Jennings B. Whitworth, an Arkansas native, exhorted his team repeatedly during practices to “get that Nigger!”  He ran special drills featuring his toughest defenseman, tackle Wilbanks Smith practicing how to do just that.

On the day of the game, Bright led a 5-0 team and was the nation’s leading collegiate scorer.  But in the first ten minutes of the A&M game bright was knocked unconscious three times by Smith.  The third time, after Bright had handed the ball off to Drake fullback Gene Macomber, and well behind the play, Smith smashed into his face with his elbow, breaking Bright’s jawDespite the pain, Bright was able to stay in the game long enough to complete a 61-yard touchdown pass to Drake halfback Jim Pilkington a few plays laterBut he was unable to play after the first quarter.  For the first time in his college career Bright had less than 100 yards total offense.  Without their star player, the Bulldogs fell to the Aggies 27-10.

No penalty was called on Smith for the flagrantly late hit.  After the brouhaha over the attack reached national proportions the MVC refused to take any action.  A&M President Oliver Willham denied anything happened even after evidence of the incident was published nationwide.  Drake withdrew from the Conference in protest.

The evidence that caught the nation’s attention was a series of photographs taken byDes Moines Register cameramen John Robinson and Don Ultang.  They had picked up on rumors sweeping the stadium that day that Bright would be targeted.  They set up their cameras specifically to follow him in play.  In six shots they captured the whole sequence of the play from Bright’s hand-off to Smith’s elbow smashing into his face which ran on the front page of the next day’s paper.  The photos were so dramatic that they also ended up on the cover of Life magazine.  Robinson and Ultang won the Pulitzer Prize for their effort.

The Register followed up with an in-depth investigation by reporter Bob Spiegel who interviewed many spectators at the game who confirmed the threats circulating and quoting comments from a A&M player on the bench which confirmed that the attack had been planned and drilled.

The NCAA investigated the incident but took no action against Smith or A&M, much to Drake’s outrage.  They did tweak rules about late hits and illegal blocking and established a new rule requiring ball handling players wear helmets with face guards.

                                                    In a press photo Bright showed his jaw wired shut.

After the game Bright’s jaw was wired shut.  He most likely also suffered a concussion, although those kinds of head injuries were not well understood at the time.  He was only able to see limited action in the team’s remaining three games, but he earned 70 percent of the yards Drake gained and scored 70 percent of the Bulldogs’ points over the whole season anyway.  The limited action in the last games probably costBright the Heisman.  He finished fifth in voting anyway.

Bright was taken fifth in the NFL Draft, picked by the Philadelphia Eagles.  Bright would have been the first Black on the team.  He was concernedthat he would not be well receivedby the many Southerners on the team.  He was not eager, he told people later, to be “football’s Jackie Robinson.” 

Instead after playing in the post-season East-West Shrine Game and the Hula Bowl, Bright unexpectedly accepted an offer from the Calgary Stampeders of the Western Interprovincial Football Union, the precursor to the West Division of the Canadian Football League, leading the Stampeders and the WIFU in rushing with 815 yards his rookie season.  In his third season in Canada, Bright was traded to the Edmonton Eskimos.  He would go on to win three Gray’s Cup Championships with the team, be elected CFL’s Most Outstanding Player in 1959, and establish numerous offensive records in a 13 year long pro career.  When he retired in 1964 he was the League’s all-time leading rusher with, had five consecutive 1,000 yard seasons, and led the CFL in rushing four times.  He is a member of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame, the College Football Hall of Fame, the Missouri Valley Conference Hall of Fame, the Edmonton Eskimos Wall of Honour, the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame, and the Des Moines Register Iowa Sports Hall of Fame.

After college Bright declined to be the "football Jackie Robinson" in the NFL and instead  played in Canada where he became the Canadian Football League's record setting Most Outstanding Player and a Canadian Football Hall of Fame honoree.

But the football honors were only part of the remarkable legacy of Johnny Bright.

Like most Canadian football players of the era, Bright held down a full time off-season job.  Using his Drake Bachelor of Science degree, Bright became an Edmonton school teacher.  Over the years he turned down several offers from the NFL because it would have meant giving up teaching.  Bright eventually became principal of D.S. Mackenzie and Hillcrest Junior High Schools in Edmonton.  In profound gratitude for the opportunities Canada provided him, Bright became a citizen in 1962.

Bright was frequently asked about what had become known as the Johnny Bright Incident.  He expressed surprisingly little bitterness toward Wilbanks Smith.  While acknowledging that there was “no way it couldn’t have been racially motivated…What I like about the whole deal now, and what I’m smug enough to say, is that getting a broken jaw has somehow made college athletics better. It made the NCAA take a hard look and clean up some things that were bad.”

Bright died of a massive heart attackon December 14, 1983 at the age of only 53, at the University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton, while undergoing surgery to correct a knee injury suffered during his football career. He was survived by his wife and four children.

Bright's other legacy as an outstanding and beloved teacher and principal was honored by this Edmonton school.

In 2006, the football field at Drake Stadium, in Des Moines was named in Bright’s honor.  Four years later his second career was recognized with the opening of Johnny Bright School, a kindergarten through grade 9 facility in Edmonton.

And what of the villains?  There seems to be some kind of karma and rough justice in the case of Coach Whitworth.  He left Oklahoma A&M after four years as head coach in 1954 with a losing 22–27–1 record. Then he went on to coach his alma mater, the University of Alabama from 1955 to 1957 where he posted miserable a 4–24–2 record that included a 14-game losing streak from 1955 to 1956.  He was firedand replaced by the legendary Bear Bryant.  Whitworth could only get an assistant job at Georgia, where he worked for one year.  He died in 1960 at the age of 52.

Wilbanks Smith was said to have had a successful career in engineering and to have been devoted tocommunity service.  He was said to have taken “personal responsibility for the incident” mainly to deflect criticism of his coach, team, and the University but he never expressed any regretat injuring Bright or made any attempt to contact him or make amends

With typical grace, Bright shrugged it off, saying he felt “null and void” about Smith, but adding “The thing has been a great influence on my life. My total philosophy of life now is that, whatever a person’s bias and limitation, they deserve respect. Everyone’s entitled to their own beliefs.”

  

Peter Max—The Psychedelic Poster Boy and Art Mogul

19 October 2021 at 12:18
                                        Peter Max became famous for his bright colorful psychedelic posters in the 1960s. If you are a certain age and you put on some vintage vinyl and close your eyes to visualize the Sixtiesit is highly likely that an image that will pop into your head like an acid flashback is a Peter Max poster with all of its vivid colors, bold lines, celestial imagery, and general wistfulness.  Even if you know better, you can’t help yourself.  No artist of the era—not even the relentlessly self-promoting Andy Warhol—was more ubiquitous and iconic. Yet despite enormous technical mastery and inventiveness, Max is an artist many love to hate—even when they can’t get his images out o...

Shoemakers and Coopers Lead the Way—First Colonial Workers to Organize

18 October 2021 at 11:19
A typical Colonial shoe shop--a Master, journeymen, or possibly an apprentice.  Every shoe or boot made by hand with minimal tools and a small investment in leather.  Cobblers required much less capital and equipment than many other trades making it easier for craftsmen to set up shop.  According to some sources the first labor unions in the English Colonies of North America were organized in Boston on this date in 1648.  Close but no cigar.  In fact, it is wrong on at least a couple of different counts.   First, it was not the date that shoemakers and coopers first organized.  That had happened earlier.  It was the first time any organizations of craftsmenwere legally recognized with an official Charter to allow them to operate...

The 23rd Street Fire—FDNY’s Worst Day Until 9/11

17 October 2021 at 12:10
The body of one of 12 FDNY firefighters killed is removed through the 23rd street drugstore entrance of the deadly fire.  Fifty-five years ago, on October 17, 1966 members of New York Fire Department (FDNY) responded to a roaring blaze in the Flatiron District.   Twelve of them didn’t get out alive.   In the annals of the Department the 23rd Street Fire was the deadliest day until the World Trade Center Towers collapsed on September 11, 2001. The   fire was first reportedat 9:36 pm at the American Art Galleries in a four-story brownstoneat 7 East 22nd Street.   When the firefighters first pulled up the intensity of the smoke and heat made it impossible to enter through the 22nd Street side of the building.   Instead, they attacke...

Epic Migration Threatened—Beloved Monarchs Face Extinction With Murfin Verse

16 October 2021 at 12:56

For those of us who grew up in North America, the Monarch was the most recognizable of all butterflies.  Large and brilliantly marked with a rich orange/gold and black pattern they could be seen by the millions twice a year in their migrations between Canada and a single Mexican forest region.  Their metamorphosis from a milkweed munching caterpillarspinning their cocoons to emergenceas a regal flyer was a staple of grade school science curricula.  But all of that is under a dire threat as populations collapse with the rapid alterations in their critical Mexican nesting grounds due to global climate change and threat to their essential milkweed due to dramatic climate change all along their long migration routes. 

 

All monarch butterflies east of the Rocky Mountains migrate in various corridors from Canada and the norther U.S.  to a single wintering site and breeding ground in Mexico.  Those in the West regurn to a strip of costal California which is threatened by long-term severe drought, soaring temperatures, and habitat destroying development and wild fires.

Nearly ten years ago a report on the Canadian Broadcasting System (CBC) explained:

 

Monarch butterflies appear headed for a perhaps unprecedented population crash, according to scientists and monarch watchers who have been keeping tabs on the species in their main summer home in Eastern and Central North America.

There had been hope that on their journey north from their overwintering zone in Mexico, the insect’s numbers would build through the generations, but there’s no indication that happened. Only a small number of monarchs did make it to Canada this summer to propagate the generation that has now begun its southern migration to Mexico, and early indications are that the past year's record lows will be followed by even lower numbers this fall. Elizabeth Howard, the director and founder of Journey North, a citizen-scientist effort that tracks the migrations of monarchs and other species, says one indicator for the robustness of the monarchs is the number of roosts they form in late August and September, something Journey North monitors throughout the migration periods. “During migration, monarchs form overnight roosts in places like Point Pelee or Long Point [in southern Ontario], where the monarchs are congregating before crossing the Great Lakes, places where people generally see huge overnight clusters of monarchs gathering.” Howard told CBC News that at this time in 2011, Journey North had already received 55 reports of roosts, followed by just 25 in 2012. This year, only 17 reports of roosts came in. “This is really a proxy for peak migration because this is where people see really large numbers of monarchs and we’re just not getting the reports, it’s looking pretty bad,” she says.

The monarch butterflies that are now flying south are the fourth generation of those that left the few hectares in central Mexico where millions of monarchs spend the winter.

Several years ago, while I was working as a school custodian in Cary, Illinois, the visit of a lone Monarch on its southward migration, a pioneer, inspired a poemthat was included in my 2004 Skinner House Books collection We Build Temples in the Heart and was also anthologized by Edward Searl in his compilation In Praise of Animals A Treasury of Poems, Quotations, and Readings.

Some of the science is fuzzy—a single insect does not make the whole epic journey, it takes four generations—but the sense of awe and wonder remains. 

And to think we may be the last generation to experience it…


Migrations

 

Later they will come,

            the legions of Canada

            on the edge of cutting cold,

            backs scraping stratus slate,

            arrayed in military majesty,

            dressed in ranks and counting cadence,

            squadron after squadron, an air armada,

            single minded in their migratory mission.

 

But now,

            when September sun lingers and

            lengthened shadows hint ferocity to come,

            the first glints of gold and black flit

            with seaming aimlessness,

            pushed here and there by the faintest zephyr,

            the pioneers of a nation,

            descended from Alberta prairies

            and Minnesota Lakes.

 

One will linger

            briefly on my shoulder

            if I am blessed, then be off again.

 

Then, if she is lucky

            she will pause to rest with

            the millions along the bend of the Rio Grande

            before finding a winter’s respite of death

            amid deep Mexican forests.

 

And it will turn again next spring—

egg to larva,

            larva to silken slumber

                        pupa to Monarch

                                    Monarch to migration.

 

            Oh ye proud Canada,

                        mute your boastful blare—

the mighty bow before true courage.

 

—Patrick Murfin

 

The Girl Who Became the First Political Image Consultant

15 October 2021 at 07:00

The evolution of Lincoln's beard.  The clean shaven Lincoln of the campaign was, as Grace Bedell observed, gaunt and homely.  His first photo with whiskers taken weeks after the election, and the full Lincoln we have come to know as he neared inauguration.

All right everybody let’s all gather ‘roundand sing a rousing happy birthdayto Abe Lincoln’s Beard.  On October 15, 1860 an 11 year old girl wrote the famous letter that got Lincoln to put away his razor making this the anniversary of the most famous whiskers since Jesus.

Grace Bedell as an attractive young woman in the early 1870's.  The story of her letter to a homely candidate had already entered Lincoln lore and made her famous.

Grace Bedell was the daughter of a supporter from Westfield, a western New York village on the shores of Lake Erie now best known as the home of the Welch’s Grape empire.  Grace wasn’t too impressed by a picture of the candidate that her father brought home.  She wrote:

Dear Sir

My father has just home from the fair and brought home your picture and Mr. Hamlin’s. I am a little girl only 11 years old, but want you should be President of the United States very much so I hope you won’t think me very bold to write to such a great man as you are. Have you any little girls about as large as I am if so give them my love and tell her to write to me if you cannot answer this letter. I have got 4 brother's and part of them will vote for you any way and if you let your whiskers grow I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husband’s to vote for you and then you would be President. My father is going to vote for you and if I was a man I would vote for you too but I will try to get every one to vote for you that I can I think that rail fence around your picture makes it look very pretty I have got a little baby sister she is nine weeks old and is just as cunning as can be. When you direct your letter direct to Grace Bedell Westfield Chatauque County New York

I must not write any more answer this letter right off Good bye

Grace Bedell

When the presidential candidate received the letter he was in a quandary.  In the whole history of the Republic there had never been a President with a beard.  Martin Van Buren and his impressive muttonchops had come close, but then he had been run out of Washington after one term for being a dandy and a fop.  And if there is one thing a self-proclaimed Man of the Peoplecannot afford to be it is a fop.  And he had to remember that it was the very first log cabin candidate, William Henry Harrison—who had not really been born in a log cabin at all—that sent the Red Fox of Kinderhook packing back to Albany.

On the other hand, facial hair was becoming all the rage back East, and not just the sign of an ignorant backwoodsmanwho couldn’t afford arazor

But if he grew one, what sort should it be?  A stylish Imperial like Louis Napoleon and his old client the President of the Illinois Central Railroad George McClellan? Neck whiskers like Horace Greeley?  The full patriarchal bush a la John Brown? No, none of those would do.  And Lincoln wasn’t even sure he could raise a decent beard at all.  Still, the girl had a point.  He wrote her back:

My dear little Miss

Your very agreeable letter of the 15th is received—I regret the necessity of saying I have no daughters—I have three sons—one seventeen, one nine, and one seven years of age—They, with their mother, constitute my whole family—As to the whiskers, having never worn any, do you not think people would call it a piece of silly affection if I were to begin it now?

Your very sincere well wisher

A. Lincoln

Despite the non-committal nature of the letter, Lincoln decided to give growing whiskers a try.  By the time he left Springfield for his train trip to Washington, he was sprouting a semi-respectable stubble.

Mr. Lincoln meets Miss Bedell in these statues erected in 1999 in Westfield, New York.

The train made a whistle stop in Westfield.  As was his custom the President-elect stepped to the rear platform to address the crowd.  He asked if Grace Bedell was present and called her forward.  He gave her a chaste kiss on the cheek and told the crowd that she was the inspiration for his new look.

Lincoln and his beard were photographed many times over the next few years.  He settled on a middle-ground kind of beard—a strip of hair that hugged his jaw and chin but still required the attention of a razor to his upper lip, cheeks, and neck.  It aged with him.  Sometimes it was a little longer, sometimes he let the fuzz on his cheeks fill in.  At least once he shaved a little between his sideburns and chin. 

Grace was right, by the way.  He did look better with it. 

Empower Shower and Compassion for Campers Meet Needs of the McHenry County Unhoused

14 October 2021 at 10:45


 

Fall nights are getting cooler and rain is on the way.  Compassion for Campers, the programthat provides camping gear and equipment to the homeless, will have what is needed by those who are sleeping outdoors including warm clothing at the Community Empower Shower event this Friday, October 15 at Willow Crystal Lake, 100 S. Main Street from 10 amto 2 pm.  The following distribution will be held there on Friday, November 5 during the same hours.

Compassion for Campers also has gear available at Warp Corps, Benton Streetin Woodstock, for daily walk-up availability. 

Community Empower Shower provides wide-ranging services for the homeless and those who are facing housing crisis and are held on the first and third Fridays of each month.  

This week and on every third Friday Algonquin Township if providing shuttle bus service to the event from the Fox River Grove Metra Station at 9:30 am and the Crystal Lake Jewel/Osco at 9:45. The shuttle will leave Willow Crystal Lake for the pick-up spots a 1:30 pm.

This week showers will be offered inside the building.

Organizers have included even more groups, agencies, and services for the homeless population.  The Empowerment Shower is a collaborative effort of many organizations and agencies including the Crystal Lake Food Bank, Consumer Credit Counseling, Family Health Partnership Clinic, Home of the Sparrow, Live 4 LALI, McHenry County Housing Authority, Pioneer Center, Prairie State Legal Services, Salvation Army, St. Vincent DePaul Society, Veterans Path to Hope, Willow Crystal Lake, and Warp Corps.

Services offered at no cost include:

 

Showers

Laundry Facilities

Camping Supplies including Tent, Stove, Sleeping Bags

    Toiletries/Personal Care items

Clothing

Onsite Meal

Food

Haircuts

Transportation

Assistance obtaining IDs, birth certificates, Social Security cards

Assistance with SSI/SSDI (Disability)

Assistance with Medical coverage, SNAP, TANF

Medical Access—Doctor care, Covid-19 vaccine

Debt Management Services/Advocacy

Shelter and Housing Referrals and Linkages

Domestic Violence support

Veteran’s Services

Substance Use/Harm Reduction Tools and Support

Mental Health, Spiritual, and Social Support Referrals

 

Compassion for Campers founder and super volunteer Sue Rekenthaler with some of the camping gear offered--sleeping pads, stoves and fuel, rain ponchos, and tents.  Much more is available for free.

Contributions to support Compassion for Campers are urgently needed to continue to purchase supplies for both of the locations sending a check made out to the Tree of Life UU Congregation, 5603 Bull Valley Road, McHenry, IL 60050 with Compassion for Campers on the memo line. The donations are placed in a dedicated fundand not used for any other purpose.  Tree of Life also donates all the administrative expenses of the program so 100% of all donations go directlyto client assistance.

For more information contact Compassion for Campers coordinator Patrick Murfin at 815 814-5645 or email pmurfin@sbcglobal.net.

 

From the President’s Palace to the White House

13 October 2021 at 11:13

Architect James Hoban's elevation sketch of the President's Palace after revisions to the original plan were ordered by George Washington.

On October 13, 1792 the cornerstone of the President’s Palace was laid in the virtual wilderness of the Federal District designated as the future Capitol of the infant United States.  President George Washington was in the temporarycapitol of Philadelphia and did not dignify the occasion, as he had when the cornerstone of the Capitol Building was laid by presidingin his Apron for a full Masonic ceremony.  Indeed there was no ceremony at all.

With the cornerstone in place the workforce of mostly slaves hired from their Virginia masters, Black freemen from the Georgetown area, and a handful of immigrant artisans began digging the foundations.  FewAmerican citizens with full rights were ever employed on the project which took eight years to complete at a cost of $232,372—$ 2.8 million in 2007 dollars.  To save money, common brick was used to line the exterior walls which were then faced by sandstone blocks.  The stone masonry was largely the work of Scottish craftsmen employed by the architect, Irishman James Hoban.

                Irishman James Hoban, architect.

Although some interior workand details remained unfinished, the house was deemed habitable when the Capitol was transferred to Washington City.  President John Adams and his dismayed wife Abigail officially moved in on November 1, 1800, just days before the election that would send him packing the next year and leave the building to his archrival, Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson, an amateur architect of some accomplishment, may have had mixed feeling about the building himself.  He had anonymously submitted one of nine designs competing for final selection for the building.  He was disappointed when Washington selected Hoban’s design.

Of course, that competition would not have been possible without the delicate political maneuvering that located the future capitol city on the banks of the Potomac instead of the bustling commercial centers of New Yorkor Philadelphia.

 It was also a tribute to the enormous prestige and influence of the first President.  The authority to establish a federal capital was provided in Article I,Section Eight of the Constitution, which designated a “District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States.”

In what later became known as the Compromise of1790, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Jefferson with the benign approval of Washington, came to an agreement that the federal government would assume war debtcarried by the states, on the condition that the new national capital would be in the South.  The precise location, personally selectedby Washington, was designated in the Residence Act on July 19, 1790.

Pierre Charles L’Enfant, the French engineer who laid out the city plan for Washington, envisioned a grand European style palace on the opposite end of a grand boulevard from the Capitol.  Republican virtue demanded a much simpler residence.

Washington commissioned French military engineer Pierre Charles L’Enfant to lay out the future city.  He envisioned the spokes-of-a-wheel plan with broad ceremonial avenues and the Capitol Building and President’s house on opposite ends of one such grand boulevard

At the site selected by the President, L’Enfant sketched in the footprint of a truly grand palace on the European scale for the President.  His building would have been five times larger than the one that was eventually built.  Those plans quickly proved to be impractical—both too expensiveand too difficult to acquire the necessary amount of building stone.  It was also politically unacceptable to those who demanded that the new government be housed in edifices of sensible republican simplicity.

As Secretary of State, Jefferson advertised the architectural competition which he entered anonymously.  The final selection was to be made by the official commission overseeing construction of public buildings in the new capital, but in fact it was Washington who personally selected the design submitted by Hoban.

Hoban was one of the few—some say the only—trained architects in the county.  He had emigrated from Ireland after the Revolution and first established a practice in Philadelphia.  But after moving to North Carolina, he began to get commissions for important public buildings, like the Charleston County Courthouse which Washington saw and admired on his presidential tourof the Southern states.  He personally invited Hoban to submit a design to the contest.

Leinster House, now seat of the government of the Republic of Ireland in Dublin was an inspiration for Hoban's design.

For inspiration, Hoban drew on the Georgian country houses of the Anglo-Irish aristocracyand particularly on Leinster House, the Dublin seat of the Duke of Leinster and destined to become the home of the Irish Parliament in the 20th Century.  Despite winning the competition, Washington demanded substantial changes from his architect.  He ordered the elevation changed from three to two floors, but that the dimensions of the building be expanded by 30% and include a large ceremonial space for balls and public receptions—the commodious East Room. Hoban’s surviving drawings reflect these changes—the originals submitted for the competition having been lost.

Upon completion the porous sandstone was sealed with a whitewash consisting of a mixture of lime, rice glue, casein, and lead.  This belies the popular story that the building was only painted white to cover the scorch and smoke damage from the burning of Washington by the British during the War of 1812.  Informal references to the building as the White House have been found as early as 1811.  It is possible that the original whitewash was fading or dirtiedby the time the British put a torch to the building.  At any rate, the fresh white paintapplied during the restoration undoubtedly contributed to the informal use of the name.

A painting of the President's House in 1814 before it was burned by the British in the War of 1812.  Note its already white color and its relative isolation in the still rustic village of Washington.

Jefferson rejected the name Presidential Palace preferred by Adams as too aristocratic.  Under his administration it was commonly simply called the President’s House and for the next century the house was officially named the Executive Mansion.  Theodore Roosevelt changed the official designation to the White House in 1901.

The building has undergone many modifications over the years, starting with the colonnades that Jefferson had constructed out from each side of the house to screen the stables, greenhouses, and domestic outbuildings—including slave quarters—from view from Pennsylvania Avenue.  The southportico was constructed in 1824 during the James Monroeadministration and the north porticowas built six years later.  Both followed plans originally drawn by Hoban. 

The earliest known photo of the Executive Mansion, a daguerreotype taken in 1847. 

In 1881 Chester Arthur ordered a significant remodel of the building’s interior.  Theodore Roosevelt added the West Wing, which his successor William Howard Taft expanded, and the Oval Office was added.  Herbert Hoover added a second floor to the West Wing following a fire there and added extensive basement office space for an expanding staff. Franklin Roosevelt moved the Oval Office to its present location by the Rose Garden.  Harry Truman added the still controversial balcony to the South Portico.

                           Work during the almost total reconstruction of the White House during the Truman administration.

During Truman’s administration the building was found in danger of collapse from neglect.  The President moved to near-by Blair House for two years as the interior was gutted and reconstructed.  In 1961 First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy began her interior restoration of the building to its French Empireinspired appearance during the later Madison and Monroe years.

The White House now routinely undergoes modifications with the coming of each administration.  President Barack Obama ordered the instillation of solar panelsto replace those put up by Jimmy Carterand taken down by Ronald Regan.  His wife Michelle built extensive vegetable gardenson the grounds which had not been used for agricultural purposes since sheep were kept browsing the lawn.  Of course, among the former Resident first fits of spite and revenge was to remove the solar panels and obliterate the gardens.  He also trashed up the interior with his beloved gaudy gold bling wherever he could, and Melania famously maimed the Rose Garden.

Joe Biden has so far been too busy undoing the Cheeto’s disastrous policies and trying to get his ambitious agenda through Congress to spend much time re-doing the official offices and dwellings beyond hangingand displaying art and making the private residence rooms more modestand comfortable.

The official logo of the White House features the North Portico which faces Lafayette  Square. 

There is continual work expanding or improving the vast underground complex that now extends below much of the White House lawn and houses offices, communications centers,and, reportedly, a hardened bunkercapable of withstanding a nuclear attack

But the core of the building remains as Hoban and Washington imagined it more than two hundred years ago. 

A Red, White and Blue Propaganda Coup—The Scary Ogre With the Shoe

12 October 2021 at 11:21

Photoshop was far in the future in 1960 when a loafer was maladroitly manipulated into a photo of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's pounding fist at the podium of the United Nations General Assembly.

For those of us of a certain vintage, the image of the evil dictator of Communist Russia, an ugly little man who resembled a pig, pounding his shoe on a table at the United Nations confirmed our worst fearsthat the possibility of a nuclear World War III was in the hands of a crude mad man.  And that’s exactly what we were supposed to think.

According to most of the almanacs I consult regularly in preparation of these blog posts, it was October 12 1960 when Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party and Premier of the Soviet Unionthrew that famous temper tantrum.

But it turns out that it may have been September 23 or 29, or October 13 during the Plenary Meeting of the UN General Assembly in New York.  It may have come in protest to a speech by British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan or remarks by Philippine delegate Lorenzo Sumulong.  He was visibly upset by statements of both men.

He may have banged his shoe at the podium…or at his seat in the Soviet delegation…or perhaps not at all.

And the old man was not really a dictator, as in the single,unquestioned authority of the nation in the way of Hitler, Stalin, or Third World generalissimos.

How could we have gotten it so wrong?

The trouble is, there is no documentation of the event in the official records of the United Nations.  In the daily press it was not mentioned in reports on any of the possible dates.  No footage could be found in the archives of NBC and CBC, both of which covered the General Assembly regularly and often broadcast important speeches live.  Nor has any authentic photograph of the episode been found—more on that later. 

Fuzzy accounts of the event have been pieced together from memories and memoirs, many of which don’t agree.

The meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in the fall of 1960 gripped world attention, dominated U.S. news, and attracted top international leaders.  In addition to Khrushchev's temper tantrums the session is remembered for the appearance of Cuba's Fidel Castro and a retinue in fatigue uniforms.

In retrospect, it is astonishingthat the leader of one of the most powerful nations on Earth came to the major city of his chief rival to sit for hours daily over a span of weeks for the meeting of the Security Council.  And he wasn’t the only one—Macmillan was only one of the topWestern leaders who did the same, as did a parade of presidents, prime ministers, kings, and despots from lesser nations.  If Dwight Eisenhower elected only to attend briefly to make his annual speechand to consult with world leaders in private meetings, the United States was represented at the top level by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles as well as the Cabinet level Ambassador to the world body.  It shows how important the UN was viewed in those distant days.

Most historians now discount the possibility that the shoe came off in September.  He did take to the podium, pounding his fists, in angry denunciation of Macmillan’s speech that day.  Later an AP photo of that diatribe would be altered by someone, and a shoe inserted into Khrushchev’s fist.  It was released and widely circulated by the mediawithin weeks of the alleged event and not questioned at the time.  Who made the alteration and how did get to the media?  No one seems to know, but it has all the earmarks of a classic intelligence service disinformation operation.

The consensusnow is that it was Sumulong’s speech on October 12 that was the trigger—if the event happened at all.  The Philippine delegate rose in support of an anti-colonial resolution that had the supportof the Soviets and their allies.  The delegate spoke as a representative of a nation with a colonial past which had achieved its independence.  Of course, the Philippines, while independent, were known as a staunch ally of their former colonial master, the United States.  Although the resolution was tailored to the remaining colonial holdings of the Westernpowers, Sumulong strayed from the topic at hand to offer a slap at the Soviet Union:

 …It is our view that the declaration proposed by the Soviet Union should cover the inalienable right to independence not only of the peoples and territories which yet remain under the rule of Western colonial Powers, but also of the peoples of Eastern Europe and elsewhere which have been deprived of the free exercise of their civil and political rights and which have been swallowed up, so to speak, by the Soviet Union.

An enraged Khrushchev was recognizedon a point of order and rushed the podium. He shoved the Philippine diplomat aside and launched an extended diatribe calling Sumulong a “jerk, a stooge, and a lackey…a toady of American imperialism” and demanding that he be ruled out of order.  Assembly President Frederick Boland of Ireland did caution the Sumulong to “avoid wandering out into an argument which is certain to provoke further interventions.”  But Sumulong was permitted to continue his speechand Khrushchev returned to his seat in the Soviet delegation.

At least one person remembersthe Soviet premier as using his shoe at the rostrum in this confrontation.

Khrushchev, Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, and others in the Soviet delegation pound their fists at their desks in protest.

But most agree that it happened after he sat back down.  As the Filipino continued to speak, Khrushchev pounded both fists angrily on his desk, joined obediently by other members of the Soviet delegation and Eastern Bloc nations.  In fact, he pounded so hard that his watchstopped or flew off his wrist—not speaking well of qualityof Soviet consumer goods.  According to a memoir by Khrushchev’s daughter Nina, confirmedby interpreter Viktor Sukhodrev who sat next to him, he looked down and saw his shoe, which he had removed for some reason earlier and spontaneously picked it up and began pounding the table.  He never, as some reports had it, removed the shoe from his foot, a virtual impossibility in the cramped spaceof the desk and given his girth.

The only evidence of a shoe--it rests on the desk in front of Khrushchev as the delegation listens quietly and evidently with some amusement.

Decorum at the session soon broke down and it was gaveled to adjournment by President Boland, who was being abused and booed from the Soviet bloc seats.

However, other accounts do not remember or mention the shoe at all.

To make matters even more confusing in his own memoirs Khrushchev remembered a shoe pounding incident but placed it in an entirely different context—a protest to remarks by a diplomat from Franco’s Spain.  A later published edition, however, contained a footnote saying that the incident was misremembered.

An English translation of Khrushchev's memoirs in which he gave a garbled and erroneous account of the shoe banning.

That United Nations trip is also remembered for Khrushchev’s own addressto the world body in which he famously said of the United States, “We will bury you.”  That was played in the U.S. press as a threatof nuclear annihilation.  In fact, translators and linguists are unanimous that he had a different, less threatening meaning.  He was quoting a well-known Russian proverb that means “we will survive you and see you in your grave.”  It was a prediction of the triumph of Communism over capitalism as inevitable, but not a threat of war.

No matter what happened, Americans were soon convinced that Khrushchev was an arch-villain and dictator.  In fact, although he had consolidated considerable power in the Party, Khrushchev was never able to rule alone.  He was answerable to the Presidium of the Party and to the larger Polit Bureau, each of which included powerful rivals who limited his freedom ofaction.

Moreover, in the Soviet sense, Khrushchev was a liberal and reformer.  He had presided over de-Stalinization of the Party.  He had also loosened economic regulations, liberalized the still restricted freedom of writers and intellectualsto express themselves, and broke with the most aggressive military ambitions of hard liners.  Western intelligence agencies undoubtedly knew all of this.

In fact, four years later Khrushchev was deposed by the hardliners led by Leonid Brezhnev.

But to keep up public supportfor continued high defense spending and the proclaimed policy of aggressive containment of Communism, it was necessary to paint the Soviet leaders in the same stark terms as the U.S.’s late enemies in World War II.

All of this should be kept well in mind as one after another leaders of smalland weak nations are portrayed to the American people as, inevitably, Hitlers.


Nixing a Plundering Invader and Celebrating the Peoples Nearly Eradicated by his Ilk with Murfin Verse

11 October 2021 at 11:12

Today is celebrated as Indigenous People’s Day in most of the Americas and in other parts of the world.  I first blogged the still spreading and growing recognition that has its official origins in the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007.  But in the United States Native Americans have been staging actions, protests, and alternative events to a Federal Holiday on the Second Monday in October for decades.

That’s right, your calendar probably marked today as Columbus Dayin recognition of Cristoforo Colombo/Cristóbal Colón/Christopher Columbus.  I’ve blogged about him, too, and his alleged discovery—alleged because he didn’t know where he was going, found” what was never lost, claimed what wasn’t his to take, and didn’t even know where the hell he was.  When just about everyone else in Europe had figured out that he never reached the East Indies or Asia he continued to lie about it.


None-the-less the mercenary mariner was rewarded with fancy titlesAdmiral of the Ocean Sea for one—and made Viceroyover half the damned world.  And he screwed that up by being so brutal that he virtually wiped out the once numerous Carib peoples who inhabited the islands under his immediate effective sway.  He also bullied and oppressed potential rivals—would be Conquistadors of even richer realms on the mainland, many of whom had better connections at Court than a Genoan hireling.  He was stripped of his titles,wealth confiscated, and shipped to Spain in disgrace and chains.

Not much to celebrate there.

Yet despite the fact that Columbus never set foot in North America—the closest he got was wandering around portions of Central America after being abandoned by mutineers and quite typically lost—he somehow became an iconic folk figure and symbol of the New World to the English and overwhelming Protestant colonists hugging to the Atlantic shore far to the north of any of his voyages. 

Amerigo Vespucci, another Italian sailor with even less to justify it, swooped in and got his name attached to two continents just because he knew the right cartographer.  But Columbia was a popular alternative name for Western Hemisphere lands and some Patriots wanted to officially adopt it for their new country.  Think of the song, once almost an unofficial national anthem, Columbia the Gem of the Oceanand other evidence.  When Thomas Jefferson’s pal Joel Barlow, a diplomat and literary dabbler, wanted to create a national epic poem he churned out The Columbiad, a turgid contemplation of Columbus and the new world.

Around the 400th anniversary of the alleged discovery in 1892 interest in him was elevated by events around the world, but particularly at Chicagos World Columbian Exposition.  American Catholics—a struggling and despised minority—looked to the notoriously pious Columbus who had slaughtered all of those natives in the guise of converting them to the One True Church to establish their bona fides as worthy AmericansThus, the Knights of Columbus became the Catholic answer to the WASP Masonic Lodges.

But it was urban Italians, among the last European immigrants to become White, in the big cities of the East Coast and Midwest who made Columbus Day and lavish annual parades and answer to the earlier immigrants—especially the Irish—in their struggle for a fat slice of the patronage and privilege pie of the Democratic Party machines.

In the early 1970's even before the United Nations declaration Native Americans from the American Indian Center in Uptown marched through the Chicago Loop to protest when their request to participate in the annual Columbus Day Parade was curtly turned down.  Protests, counter demonstrations, and marches grew year by year.

As protests against honoring a figure who represented centuries of land theft,colonial subjugation, genocide, and cultural annihilation has grown, support for the holiday has waned.  City after City and several States have officially dumped Columbus Day, and most have adopted some form on Indigenous Peoples Day in its stead.  Support had dwindled to indignant Italian civic organizations and the kind of cultural fuddy-duddies who cannot stomach change of any kind.

More recently, however, a sub-set of the Alt-Right and neo-fascist movements who claim to honor and preserve European culture and secure its dominance in American society, have begun to make war on the anti-Columbus Day warriors, especially attacking Native Americans and a “cultural elite of race traitors.”

This year President Joe Biden proclaimed the second Monday in October as Federal Indigenous Peoples Day.  That did not, however, erase Columbus Day which was created and recognized by Congress.  The two celebrations are like bitterly divorced spouses forced to continue to live together in the same house.

Anyway, all of that is more than I intended to write about Columbus.  By now you know the story.  So I celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day.  I hope you do too.

In honor of the occasion, I am revisiting a verse I wrote in 2016 just during the most important Native American resistance in decades—the campsto block the Dakota Access Pipeline which threatened to pollute the Missouri River and defile traditional Sioux lands.  May their long and valiant prayerful witness be inscribed in the sacred winter count and sung of around the campfires for all of the generationsthey were trying to protect.

Photo of a mural taken by my old college pal Bill Delaney at Art Alley Gallery in Rapid City, South Dakota.

Tonto Will Not Ride into Town for You

For The Camp of the Sacred Stone 9/30/2016

 

Tonto will not ride into town for you, Kemosabe,

            and be beat to pulp by the bad guys

            on your fool’s errand.

 

Pocahontas will not throw her nubile, naked body

            over your blonde locks

            to save you from her Daddy’s war club.

 

Squanto will not show you that neat trick

            with the fish heads and maize

            and will watch you starve on rocky shores.

 

Chingachgook will save his son and lineage

            and let you and your White women

            fall at Huron hands and be damned.

 

Sacajawea and her babe will not show you the way

            or introduce you to her people,

            and leave you lost and doomed in the Shining Mountains.

 

Sitting Bull will not wave and parade with your Wild West Show

            nor Geronimo pose for pictures for a dollar

            in fetid Florida far from home.

 

They are on strike form your folklore and fantasy,

            have gathered with the spirits of all the ancestors

            to dance on the holy ground, the rolling prairie

            where the buffalo were as plentiful

            as the worn smooth stones of the Mnišoše,

            the mighty river that flows forever.

 

They are called by all the nations from the four corners

            of the turtle back earth who have gathered here,

            friends and cousins, sworn enemies alike,

            united now like all of the ancestors

            to kill the Black Snake, save the sacred water,

            the soil where the bones of ancestors rest,

            and the endless sky where eagle, Thunderbird, and Raven turn.

 

Tonto has better things to do, Kemosabe…

 

—Patrick Murfin

 

The Lasting Legacy of Joseph Labadie Anarchist Labor Leader and Hoarder

10 October 2021 at 07:00

                                    Joseph Labadie circa 1880.

Joseph Labadie with his flowing moustache and imperial goatee cut quite a dashing figure as a young man and after his adoption of big wide-brimmed hats in his later years looked like he might have toured with Buffalo Bill Cody and Ned Buntline.  But he was one of the late 19th and early 20th Century’s leading anarchists and the only one to have a long careerat the very center of the labor movement.

His background was strikingly different from most of the better known figures of the movement—the German Johann Most who introduced the European model featuring the idealizationof the propaganda of the deed or immigrants like most of the Haymarket Martyrs,Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and Carlo Tresca.  He was also unique among home grown anarchist figures like Bostonian Benjamin Tucker and former Confederate trooper, Texas Radical Republican, and Chicago labor leader Albert Parsons and his bi-racial wife Lucy Parsons.

He was born as Charles Joseph Antoine Labadie on April 18, 1850 in Paw Paw, Michigan into a Frenchfamily who settled on both sides of the Detroit River when the land was claimed as New France.  Even at this late date the area was still frontier-like and as a boy spent much time fishing and hunting with the Potawatomi tribes in southern Michigan, where his father served as interpreter between Jesuit missionaries and the native tribes.  He deeply admired their culture, especially a sense of communalism. 

His only formal schooling was a few months in a parochial school.  But he was bright, inquisitive, and read everything he could lay his hands on.  He must have had some informal apprentice training because by his late teens he had become a tramp printer, literally packing a small press and type font cases on his back or in a pushcart as he made a circuitof small towns and farming villages.  The life on the road was an eye-opening experience in and of itself. 

After five years on the road, Labadie settled in Detroit where he became a typesetter at the Detroit Post and Tribune.  He joined Typographical Union Local No. 18, rapidly rose in its leadership and was one of its two delegates to the International Typographical Union convention in Detroit in 1878.

Labadie's dues card for the Detroit Typographical Union No. 18.  His vast collection of included every dues card he ever had.

He married a first cousin, Sophie Elizabeth Archambeau, in 1877. Together they had a happy marriage and raised three children Laura, Charlotte, and Laurance, who also became a prominent anarchist essayist.

Labor conditionsof the post—Civil War era of rapid industrialization were brutal and labor unrest was sweeping the country culminating in the Great Railway Strike of 1877.  Although Detroit was only on the fringes of that epic battle it inspired Labadie as it did his fellow typographer in Chicago, Albert Parsons.  Like Parsons he joined the early Socialist Labor Party, which included all sorts of radical tendencies and was soon a familiar sight handing out its tracts and pamphlets on the streets of Detroit.  He was gaining a reputation.

Like others of the era, he dabbled in several radical ventures while slowly evolving his unique political philosophy.  In 1878 he organized Detroit’s first assemblyof the Knights of Labor and ran unsuccessfully for mayor on the Greenback-Labor ticket.  In 1880 he served as the first President of the Detroit Trades Councilwhich united both Knights lodges and craft unions. He also founded the Michigan Federation of Labor.

His positions with the Detroit Trades Council and the Michigan Federation of Labor eventually made him a de facto ally of Samuel Gompers and the emerging American Federation of Labor (AFL) although the relationship was often strainedand tenuous.

Labadie also edited a succession of local labor papers and began contributing articles and columns to several other publications including the Detroit Times, Advance and Labor Leaf, Labor Review, The Socialist, and the Lansing Sentinel.  His long running opinion column Cranky Notions was carried widely and admired for its forthright style and humor.

                            Labadie became a supporter of individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker.

In 1883 Labadie announced that he was embracing the individual anarchism of Benjamin Tucker.  It was a somewhat odd and contradictory association that he never renounced even though his commitment to an organized labor movement was at oddswith Tucker.   But both renounced violence and owed much to the philosophy of the American Universalist anarcho-pacifist Aden Ballou, Russian Mikhail Bakunin, and presaged the work of Leo Tolstoy.

Nominally accepting identity as a socialist in the days before Marxism solidified as the dominant trend in the international labor movement, Tucker rejected any permanent or transitionalstate involvement and advocated for a free market solution.   Tucker wrote

The fact that one class of men are dependent for their living upon the sale of their labour, while another class of men are relieved of the necessity of labour by being legally privileged to sell something that is not labour...And to such a state of things I am as much opposed as any one. But the minute you remove privilege...every man will be a labourer exchanging with fellow-labourers...What Anarchistic-Socialism aims to abolish is usury... It wants to deprive capital of its reward.

Tucker also rejected organized labor unions and their intermediate reform demands like eight hour day and minimum wage laws.  He believed instead that strikes should be organized by free workers rather than by bureaucratic union officials and organizationsand that such spontaneous uprisings would lead to the collapse of the state.  Labadie was sympathetic in the abstract but as a practical leader he never abandoned the labor movement which he continued to serve the rest of his life.  In fact, no other anarchist ever had a longer or more fruitful association with organized labor that Labadie.

Both Tucker and Labadie were initially critical of the violence advocated by the German anarchists and the Haymarket defendants.  But both became active in international defense efforts because they did not believe they were the sole perpetrators of violence. Labadie broke with the Knights of Labor when Grandmaster Workman Terrance V. Powderlytheir national leader, repudiated the defendants completely.

Without the oppression of the state, Labadie believed, humans would choose to harmonize with “the great natural laws...without robbing [their] fellows through interest, profit, rent and taxes.” But sometimes at odds with Tucker, he supported localized public cooperation, and was an advocate for community control of water utilities, streets, and railroads.

By the turn of the 20th Century the great majority of the labor left of the anarchist movement rejected Tuckerism and became centered on anarcho-syndicalism which viewed labor unions as the natural building blocks of a society without state oppression.  Today Tucker is considered the inspiration for modern libertarianism.  Labadie’s association with him has taintedhis reputation on the left.

Some of the pamphlets and books that Labadie issued on his own press.

After the turn of the Century Labadie also began writing poetry and issuing both prose and verse publications that he handcrafted using his skills as a typographer.  In 1908 a zealous postal inspector refused to handle his mail because it bore stickers with anarchist quotations. After the ensuing uproar the Detroit Water Board where Labadie then worked as a clerk, fired him for expressing anarchist sentiments.  But by then he was a beloved figure in the city not only with the labor movement but with much of the public which admired him as the “Gentle Anarchist.” In both cases the officials were forced to back down in the face of mass public protests in support.

Labadie and Judson Grennell, labor editor of the Detroit News at a union convention in 1918.  The two had been friends and comrades since they both worked together in the same print shop in 1877.

Despite his considerable achievements is best remembered because he was something of a hoarder—he never threw any scrap of paper the passed through his hands or over his desk away.  That included all his personal manuscripts and coorespondence with figures like Tucker, Powderly, Albert and Lucy Parsons, Voltairine de Cleyre, Emma Goldman, Gompers, and Eugene V. Debs; clippings of articles; copies of pamphlets, leaflets, and handbills; posters; and photographs.  Significantly it also included recordsof all the organizations he was part of or related to including membership rolls, meeting minutes, by-laws and constitutions, ledgers and invoices,coorespondence, invitations to programs and social occations, and the badges and ribbons of membership and for attendance at meetings, conventions, and even funerals.  Taken together the collection that filled the attic of his home constituted the most complete and detailed archive of labor, socialist, anarchist activity of almost forty years, including the ephemora that rarely survives.

Labadie knew his collection would be a gold mine for historians.  Arround 1910 he began to look for a repository that would value, cataloge, and maintain it.  The libraries of Johns Hopkins Univeristy and Michigan State in East Lancing expressed interest.  The University of Wisconsin in Madison vigorously pursued it and made an attractive offer to purchase the collection which would have been a great boon to Labadie who was still a poor man and near the end of his working life.

But he was determined to place his collection at the University of Michigan in near-by Ann Arbor, close enough for him to make regular visits.  The U of M was more than coy.  It sent an inspector to Labadie’s home to determine the value of the collection.  He returned a negative reportthat scorned it as a useless “mass of stuff.”  The school demurred to several offers.  Finnally nine Detroit residents, including several businessmen donated $100 each to purchase of the collection, which was then donated to the university with requisite pomp.  The university did not have to directly pay the notorious anarchist. 

In 1912 twenty crates of material were moved from Labadie’s attic to Ann Arbor.  Labadie spent the remaining years of his life soliciting contributionsof additional material from his wide circle of friends and aquaintences across the labor and radical movements.  But the University did not seem to know what to do with the ever-increasing mass.  The material remained un-sorted and uncatalogued and was kept in  receiving boxesin a locked room of the library.  Any interested researcher was given a key to the room and left to his or her own devices to sort through the mass.  Undoubtably some material was removed by some of the researchers and lost.

Shortly before his death, Labadie sent another large consignment of material to the University.

He died on October 7, 1933, in Detroit at the age of 83.

Iris Inglis working in the Labadie Collection in 1929.

Wealthy Detroit activist Agnes Inglis began doing research in the Labadie Collection in the early 1920s.  Her inherent organizing instincts took over, and she stayed to sort out the materials and bring some order to the chaos. She stayed at the Labadie Collection for over 20 years as its unofficial curator. Inglis donated her time to the effort, working without a salary of any kind except for one brief period when she received a small stipend.

After Inglis died at age 81 on January 29, 1952 the administration did nothing to replace her and did not keep a promise to her to continue to collect contemporary radical and labor material.  The neglected collection was pillagedby researchers and collectors and Inglis’ careful catalogue system was disrupted and eventually lost.  Only her note cards on most items remained in disturbed card files.

In 1960 reference librarian Edward Weber was finally appointed as formal curator.  Weber also brought his own social/political interests to the job, which included the radical elements of sexual freedom, gay liberation, Freethought, and civil liberties. Because there was still no acquisitions budget, Weber relied on donations and sympathetic library workers, who adjusted accounts somehow and funneled subversive literature into the Collection. Weber was an outspoken criticof censorship and ignorance, as well as a prolific letter writer, and the extensive correspondence he generated throughout his 40-year tenure kept the Collection growing.

It was not until the mid-1970s that the Labadie Collection was finally given a book budget. Weber was, for the first time in the history of the Collection, able to make legitimate purchases.

In 1994 Julie Herrada was hired as the first Assistant Curator, and as the first trained archivist in the Labadie Collection. When Weber retired in 2000, Herrada took over as curator.

Viewing an exhibit of radical posters from 1968 at the Labadie Collection.

The Collection currently contains over 50,000 books, 8,000 serials titles (including nearly 800 current periodical subscriptions) records and tape recordingsof speeches, debates, songs, and oral histories, sheet music, buttons, posters, photographs, and comics. On the Labadie Collection’s websiteover 900 photographs can be viewed as well as the descriptions of over 100 archival collections, listings of some non-print materials, online exhibitions, and browse a directory of nearly 9,000 subject files.  

In short the Labadie Collection is the most comprehensive and still growing repository for radical American history.

That old hoarder would be proud.

The Banishment of the Contrarian —Roger Williams

9 October 2021 at 13:39

No authenticated portrait of the quintessential religious dissenter and maverick  Roger Williams but an oil painting that was used for this engraved illustration that was supposedly made in 1644 during a trip back to England was circulated from the min 19th Century and other images derived from it.  Art historians have determinized that it was painted more than a century later and may actually have been adapted from a poor likeness of Benjamin Franklin.  Some of the derivatives took the faint darkening on the subject's upper lip and just below his lower lip and showed a moustache and   "soul patch." 

On October 9, 1635 the General Court of Massachusetts ordered Roger Williams, who they considered an obnoxious religious and political crank, into exile from the colony.  Specifically, the 32 year old was convicted of both heresy and sedition for spreading, “diverse, new, and dangerous opinions.”

Williams was born in 1603 to a conventional Anglican family.  His father was a prosperous master tailor and merchant in Smithfield, London.  A bright, inquisitive, and pious boy, Williams had a personal religious conversion experience which began his long journey as a dissenter.  His father disapproved but allowed his wayward son to continue his education, including an apprenticeship with the great legal scholar and jurist Sir Edward Coke.  He attended Charterhouse, a prestigious public school before enrolling at Pembroke College, Cambridge from which he graduated in 1627.  He excelled at classicalHebrew, Greek, and Latin—and modernDutch and Frenchlanguages.

While at Cambridge Williams became a Puritan—an advocate of purifying the Church of England by stripping away the remaining trappings of Catholicism including the Mass, use of Latin in liturgy, and idolatry in the form of statues of saints and icons.  He took Holy Orders as an Anglican priest, but his chances at advancement were blocked by the firmly High Church hierarchy.  He took a position as a private chaplain to Sir William Macham, a leading Puritan lord.  As such he was privy to plans to seed a Puritan colony in the New World.  Newly married, he passed on his opportunity to go in the first ships sent to found what would become Massachusettsin 1630.  But he was soon so disgusted with church leadership that he determined to join the migration.  He also privately abandoned any hope of reforming the corrupt church and became a Separatist.

Williams and his wife Mary set sail for New England in December on the Lydenand arrived in Boston in February 1731.  He found himself not only welcome but honored.  He was offered as a position as Teacher—sort of an associate pastor—of the Boston congregation.  He declined the position and openly declared himself as a Separatist.  He also insisted that civil magistratesshould have no authority over religious maters and that individuals were free to develop and express their own religious convictions.  These positions shocked and appalled the Puritan worthies who demanded complete conformity to their beliefs in matters both civil and religious.

The church in Salem was then tending toward Separatism and invited Williams to become Teacher there.  Outraged leaders in Boston threatened the Salem church, which rescinded the invitation.  By August 1631 he had left Massachusetts for a friendly welcome among the Separatists of Plymouth.  Although not given an official position, he assisted the local minister and occasionally preachedGovernor William Bradshaw found his preaching, “entirely amicable” to the local church.

But Williams was never one to go long without examining his conscience and in holding the church to the exceedingly high standards he demanded.  He began to doubt that the Plymouth church was sufficiently separated from Anglicanism.  And his growing and admiring contact with native inhabitants led him to question the legitimacy of Royal Charters that granted land that the King did not own.  Instead, he maintained that land need be purchased from its rightful owners, the native tribes.  In December 1632 Williams wrote a lengthy tract on these subjects which he circulated to churches in both Plymouth and Massachusetts colonies.

By this time Bradford noted that Williams had fallen “into some strange opinions which caused some controversy between the church and him.”  In 1633 he had worn out his welcome and was back in Salem, which now seemed more inclined to support him.  Upon learning of his return, the Massachusetts General Court summoned him to Boston.  Williams apparently agreed to make some concessions and all known copies of his critical tract were burned.  Allowed to return to Salem, he became acting pastor when his sponsor, Rev. Samuel Skelton died.

Soon Williams had returned to his criticisms of both civil authority over religious matters and of the legitimacy of colonial charters.  He was called before the General Court again in March of 1635 and in April he so vigorously opposed a new oath of allegiance to the colonial government that it became impossible for the magistrates to enforce it.

Unable to rein in Williams, the General Court turned on the Town of Salem.  It refused a routine petition to annex adjacent land on the Marblehead Neck and took other actions against Salem’s interest.  In July the Court formally demanded that Williams be removed from the pulpit of the Salem Church.  The Salem Church asserted that the order was a violationof congregational polity and independence and circulated a protest letter to other churches.  The General Court ordered that the letter not be read in the other churches and refused to seat delegates from the town of Salem until the Church was in compliance.

As pressure grew on the Church, Williams demanded that it formally separate itself from the Standing Order.  His support within the Church then collapsed. Williams withdrew as minister and began meeting privately with a few followersin his home.

Without the protection of the Salem church or Town, the General Court went ahead with its seditionand heresy trial in October.  When the conviction was handed down, Williams was confined to his bed by illness.  He was given a reprieve from banishmentuntil spring on condition that he remain quiet.  Typically, Williams would not shut up.  The Sheriffwas sent to seize him in January 1636 but found Williams gone. 

Williams rest on his winter flight from Massachusetts in 1636 in a 19th Century illustration. 

Rather than be taken into custody and dumped, most likely, in hostile Indian country, Williams fled on foot through the deep mid-winter snows.  He marched 105 miles from Salem to find refuge at the head of Narragansett Bay, where he was welcomed by his friend Massasoit, sachem of the Wampanoags.  That spring he was joined by his most loyal followers from Salem and began to settle on land he purchased from the Wampangoags.  Learning that his claim was within the boundaries of the Plymouth Colony, however, Williams and his people crossed Seekonk River to territory beyond any charter and purchased land from Canonicus and Miantonomi, chief sachems of the Narragansetts.  Williams named his new settlement Providence.

Williams declared his settlement a haven for those of distressed ofconscience.  It was soon attracting dissidents and exiles from both Massachusetts and Plymouth colonies. The settlement was governed by a majority vote of the heads of households, and newcomers could be admitted to full citizenship by a majority vote.

The Landing of Roger Williams in 1636 painted in1857 by Alonzo Chappel depicts Williams crossing the Seekonk River to meet with Native peoples to purchase their land.

In August of 1637 electors drew up a town agreement, which limited the government to civil matters.  In 1640 another agreement declared their determination “still to hold forth liberty of conscience.” Williams had founded the first place in modern history where citizenship and religion were separated, and where there was religious liberty and separation of church and state.  In fact, Williams advocated what he called a “wall of separation” between church and state—a term Thomas Jefferson would borrow over a 140 years latter in his famous Letter to the Danville Baptists.

Meanwhile, a second wave of exiles arrived on the Narragansett Bay.  In 1837 the Massachusetts Court moved against the followers of Anne Hutchins.  Williams invited them to settle near him and arranged for them to purchase land on Aquidneck Island.  They named their settlement Portsmouth and the island Rhode Island.  Their elected leader, William Coddington quickly turned out to be a civil and religious tyrant and was ousted.  He formed a second town, Newport.  Eventually these two settlements reunited with separate local administrations.

Meanwhile the Pequot War had broken outand much of Massachusetts was in flames.  Leaders there were forced to do what they loathed most—turn to Roger Williams for help.  And help he did.  Not only did his extensive contacts among all of the tribes—he was making his living by this time trading with the natives for furs—provide vital intelligence, but he also persuaded his friends the Narragansetts not to join the uprising and to become alliesof the settlers.  The assistance of the Narragansetts became critical to the final victoryin that ugly war.

Williams, his colony and his native allies became regional powers. In the next three decades Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Plymouth exerted pressure to destroy both Rhode Island and the Narragansetts.  In 1643 those colonies joined in an alliance excluding the towns around Narragansett Bay and hostile to them—the United Colonies.  To prevent the alliance from overwhelming them, Williams went to England to secure a Charter of his own.  He arrived just as his breakthrough dictionary of Native American words was published and creating a sensation among the English intellectual elite.  Through their influence he was able to get his charter for Providence Plantations over the vehement objection of Massachusetts agents.

                       Roger Williams's banned book.

While in England, however, Williams could not refrain from stirring the pot.  In July of 1643 he published his most famous book, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience, a scathing indictment of religious intolerance and plea for separation of church and state.  The book caused an uproar and cost him the support of many former friends.  The Public Hangman was ordered to confiscate and burn copies.  Luckily Williams was on board ship home with his charter in his pocket or he might have been arrested and even executed.

Back home it took Williams until 1643 to bring the two towns of Rhode Island—by then prosperous seaportswith larger populations than Providence—into a single government under his Charter.  Coddington, in fact, plotted to usurp Williams.  He sailed to England and in an astonishing bit of power politics returned in 1751with a document naming him governor for life over Rhode Island.  Providence and its allied town of Warwick sent Williams back to England to reverse the decision joined John Clarke representing Coddington’s numerous critics from Portsmouth and Newport.  Williams had to sell his trading post, the only source of income for his family, which now included six children, to pay for his crossing.  The two somehow succeeded in overturning Coddington’s patent.

Williams returned to America in 1654 and was immediately elected the President of the colony. He subsequently served in many offices in the town and colonial governments, and in his 70s he was elected captain of the militia in Providenceduring King Philip’s War in 1676.

Clark stayed in England and in 1664 obtained a new charter under the name Rhode Island that covered all of the towns on the mainland and on the island.  The colony remained a haven for all sorts of religious minorities—Baptists, Quakers, even Jews and Catholics.

Williams is usually described as a Baptist.  And indeed by 1638 had come to adopt the key Baptist tenant of believer’s baptismor credobaptism as opposed to the Puritan and Separatist practice of infant baptism.  He had been exposed to the writing of English General Baptistsbut arrived at the conclusion on his own.  He was baptized by Ezekiel Holliman in late 1638 and founded the First Baptist Church in America in Providence.  A few years later John Clarke formed a second church in Newport.  Following the traditions of their founders, Baptists in America became the leading advocates of church and state separation.

Yet the restless Williams did not himself remain a Baptist long, although he remained sympatheticto them.  He concluded that the corruption of the early church when it was co-opted by the Roman Empire under the Empower Constantine had broken the sacred covenant between God and the Church.  A new church, he now believed, could not be established without a special new divine commission.  He declared, “There is no regularly constituted church of Christ on earth, nor any person qualified to administer any church ordinances; nor can there be until new apostles are sent by the Great Head of the Church for whose coming I am seeking.”

Williams spent the rest of his days praying privately with friends awaiting that great day.  Despite his honors in the colony, he founded and his many achievements, Williams died in relative poverty and obscurity some time in early 1683.  He was buried in an unmarked grave on his property. 

Williams's WPA built grave site and monument.  You can be sure that this hater of idols and icons and the man who first advocated for "separation of Church and State" would not have approved.

Within 50 years his house had collapsed, and his grave was lost.  In 1860, Zachariah Allen sought to locate his remains but found only an apple tree root in the grave he believed to be that of Williams.  The root has been preserved as a relic by the Rhode Island Historical Society.  Dirt from the supposed grave was named “the Dust of Roger Williams” and preserved in an urn that was finally interred in a monument erected by the Works Project Administration (WPA) in Providence’s Prospect Terrace Park in 1937.  You can be sure that he would have protested. 

The Great Chicago Fire and Others That Could Not be Pinned on a Cow

8 October 2021 at 11:43
The Chicago and Peshtigo, Wisconsin fires of October 8, 1872 were just two of the deadly blazes that swept the upper Midwest that day.  Libraries in Illinois and Wisconsin hosted a virtual on-line discussion. Note — Back by popular demand, especially that of Ron Relic, and updated. You may have noticed that this is National Fire Protection Week.  The annual event is marked by news stories extolling the virtues of smoke alarms and family fire evacuation drills.  Your local fire station may host school field trips or an open house—maybe they will let you climb on an engine or even slide down apole.  Ask and you will be told that this week was selected because the Great Chicago Fire broke out on October 8, 1871. This is the  sesqui...

Matthew Shepard—An Involuntary Martyr

7 October 2021 at 10:48
Note:  The exceptionally brutal murder of young Matthew Shepard 23 years ago triggered a national debate and a movement that led to the adoption of hate crime laws across the country.  Many considered it a game changer.  In subsequent years public acceptance of homosexuality and homosexuals steadily grew as did legal protections against discrimination and stunning victories including the legal recognition of same gender marriage rights.  Many thought that the bad old days of queer bashing for sport and the like were gone for good.  But as in so many other areas the Trump era was a Band-Aid that rips off a scab on a bleeding wound when removed.  Nationally as well as they can be tracked violent assaults and murders of Gay men, women...

Writers Create the First International Organization for Human Rights

6 October 2021 at 13:18
PEN International is celebrating its centennial this year. On October 6, 1921 C. A. Dawson Scott, a now largely forgotten novelist asked some of her friends to join with her in launching a new organization.   Poets, Essayists and Novelists (PEN) was meant to promote international friendship and co-operationbetween writers.   In the wake of the horrors of the First World War, Scott and her friends hoped that writers could help tie the world together.   Her friends were a who’s who of British letters.   John Galsworthy was elected as PEN’s first president and the enthusiastic founders included George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and Joseph Conrad. PEN International was the brain child of largely forgotten English novelist C. A. (Amy)...

Those Warbling Wobblies—A Singing Union and Its Little Red Songbook

5 October 2021 at 11:45

A vintage edition of the IWW Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent a/k/a The Little Red Songbook.  This version featured a cover illustration by Ralph Chaplin based on the poster for the Patterson Pageant in 1913.

There have been at least 38 editions of the working people’s hymnal popularly known as the Little Red Songbook since it appeared in 1909.  Here is the story of those remarkable little books.

The Wobblies, members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) were always a singing union and from the earliest strikesand job actions after the union’s founding in 1905 music was a part of meeting, rallies, marches, and picket lines.  Nowhere was this truer than in the Pacific Northwest where early organizing drives among lumber workers who were often called timber beasts because of their ragged appearance and often near starving conditions

Unable to effectively get to remote logging camps, IWW organizers relied on street meetings in cities like Spokane,Washington to protest the job shark hiring agencies that dispatched men to the camps collecting fees from the ax men and employers alike.  They found that songs helped attract crowds for the union’s soapbox orators. When Salvation Army Bands were often sent to drown out the meetings workers would sing the old hymns with new words.

The Spokane local issued a song card featuring four selections in 1906.  The sold for a penny, but most were probably handed out for free at the street meeting.  The card featured already familiar labor songs and one original— Harry “Haywire Mac” McClintock’s Hallelujah, I’m a Bum.  McClintock was a former Texas cowboy, harvest worker, and hobo who had become a lumber worker while also working as a musician in saloons.  The song was originally written in the 1890’s but was popular with all sorts of migratory workers.  McClintock also penned another popular Hobo song, The Big Rock Candy Mountain

A rare and battered copy of the Songbook's first edition published by the Spokane, Washington IWW local.

The song cards were so successful that the localdecided to assemble and sell a small songbook designed to easily fit into a shirt pocket.  It sold for 10¢, not an insignificant sum in those days when a dime could generally buy a meal at Skid Road diners, but not a prohibitive one.  The first edition did not have the now familiar red cover but did have red lettering.  The songbook hit the streets in January of 1909 and was an immediate success. The book’s official title was a mouthfulSongs of the Workers, on the Road, in the Jungles, and in the Shops – Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent.  Subsequent editions shortened that to Songs of the Workers and/or Songs of the IWW to Fan the Flames of Discontent.  Three editions were printed in Spokane over the next three years and were bound in heavy red stock, giving it the enduring nickname, The Little Red Song Book.  But that title appeared on only two of the subsequent 38 official editions.

Each new songbook added new songs like the labor standards The Red Flag sung to the tune of O Tannenbaum, the global Socialist anthem The Internationale, and the easily adapted Civil War song Hold the Fort.

When the Spokane local was under siege during aftermath the 1909 Free Speech Fight, issuing and printing new editions shifted to Seattle.  It was in an early Seattle edition that Joe Hill’s song The Preacher and the Slave was published in 1911.  Mac McClintock claimed to be the first to sing it at a street meeting because Hill was too shy to perform publicly.  

Carlos Cortez's linocut poster tribute Wobbly bard and martyr Joe Hill.

Joel Hägglund a/k/a Joseph Hillstrom and Joe Hill was a young Swedish born itinerate worker who had been involved with the IWW for a few years.  Several of his songs were added to editions of the Songbook including The Tramp,Stung Right, Where the River Frazier Flows, There is Power in a Union, Mr. Block, and Casey Jones Union Scab all of which have become labor standards.  Hill was famously framed on a murder charge in Salt Lake City, Utah.  While being held he was inspired by young IWW orator Elizabeth Gurly Flynn who worked tirelessly on his defense committee and who had visited him in jail to write The Rebel Girl.

After Hill’s execution by firing squad on November 19, 1915 his poem Final Will was included in all subsequent editions of the Songbook.  At least two later versions of the book were officially named Joe Hill Memorial Edition, including one issued by the Cleveland Metal and Machinery Workers Industrial Union 440 in the early 1950’s.  By popular demand later editions have also included I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night by Alfred Hayes and Earl Robinson which was popularized by Paul Robeson and Joan Baez, and Phil Ochs’ long ballad Joe Hill.

Industrial Worker editor Ralph Chaplin wrote the enduring labor anthem Solidarity Forever.

Other notable early additions to the Songbook included Dump the Bosses off Your Back by John BrillIndustrial Worker editor and commercial artist Ralph Chaplin’s rousing Solidarity Forever was included in a 1916 edition and has become the leading labor anthem of all time.  Chaplin’s illustrationswere also used on the covers of several editions.  The powerful We Have Fed You All for a Thousand Years with words by an “Unknown Proletarian” and music by Rudolph Von Liebich appeared in 1919.

Somewhat surprisingly a song closely associated with the IWW’s 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike did not make it into the Songbook until 1984 although it appeared in the union magazine Industrial Pioneer in 1946.  James Oppenheimer’s Bread and Roses was first published as a poem in the American Magazine in December of 1911 shortly before the strike.  The mostly women mill workers adopted Bread and Roses as their strike slogan.  It wasn’t until the 1940’s that Carolyn Kohlsatt adapted the song to the melody most Wobblies still sing, although an alternative tune by Mimi Fariña in 1976 is gaining popularity.  In the 1970’s the song became a Women’s Liberation anthem as much as a labor one and it has even been included in the Unitarian Universalist hymnal Singing the Living Tradition.

Production of the Songbooks moved to IWW General Headquarters in Chicago and resumed after the great post-World War I Red Scare sent most Wobbly leaders, including Ralph Chaplin, to prison.  The ‘20’s saw the appearance of another notable contributor, Matt Valentine Huhta, who signed is contributions T-Bone Slim including The Popular Wobbly, Mysteries Of A Hobo’s Life, and The Lumberjack’s Prayer.

Editions of the Songbook have also included labor songs from other sources notably Woody Guthrie’s Union Maid with an updated final verse by Nancy Katz, The Banks are Made of Marble by Lee Rice and popularized by the Almanac Singers with more contemporary lyrics added, Which Side are You On by Florence Resse, and the old British rouser The Black Leg Miner as sung by Billy Brag.

The "double tall" 1995 36th edition featured music from around the world as well as old favorites an music for each song.

In 1995 the union issued an unusual “double tallInternational Edition, one of only two editions to use the words Little Red Songbook on the cover.  In addition to most of the standard songs included more modern music and songs from around the world including songs in Spanish. It also included for the first and only time the full musical notationof each song.

Wobblies have continued to add new songs and adapted old ones, especially with more gender inclusive language.  Bruce “Utah” Phillips was the union’s popular balladeer, philosopher, storyteller, and inveterate agitator who died much loved and mourned in 2008.  His contributions to the book included Larimer Street, Starlight on the Rails, and All Used Up.  He also introduced the music from the Songbook to whole new generations. 

Bruce "Utah" Phillips introduced the IWW and its songs to  new generations.

Other newer contributors include Anne Feeney,Scabs and Whatever Happened to the Eight Hour Day; Kathleen Taylor, The LIP Song and Soul Stealers; Goddard Graves, Go I Will Send Thee; Leslie Fish, Babylon Updated and Freedom Road; Carlos Cortez, Outa Work Blues; Darryl Cheney, Where Are We Gonna Work When the Trees Are Gone and Who Bombed Judi Bari; and Tom Morello,Union Song.

Hell, even I made an appearance under the monikerThe Irish Cowboy with a rock & roll picket line song Roll the Hours Back and The Dark and Dreary Slum Where I Was Born, a take-off on Woody Guthrie’s Oklahoma Hills.

Rebel Voices was the realization of a long cherished dream to produce a "Little Red Record."

Utah Phillips gathered both touring and Chicago-based member of the IWW’s Entertainment Workers Industrial Union #630 for a concert performance at Holstein’s on Lincoln Avenue to record a long dreamed of “Little Red Record.”  Released under the title Rebel Voices in 1988 the record included performances by Phillips, Faith Petric, Fred Holstein, Bruce Brackney, Marion Wade, Bob Bovee, Jeff Cahill, Kathleen Taylor, J. B. Freeman, Robin Oye, Eric Glatz, and Mark Ross.  It is still available on CD or by Download.

Almost all of the songs included in the first 36 editions of the Songbook are included in The Big Red Songbook published by Charles H. Kerr & Company.

In 2007 noted folklorist Archie Green published The Big Red Songbook which included 250 songs culled from the various editions of the IWW songbook.  In 2016 a new edition was co-edited by Green, labor historian David Roediger, Franklin Rosemount, and Salvatore Solerno with an introduction by Tom Morello, the Wobbly rocker of Rage Against the Machine andAudioslave, and a posthumous afterward by Utah Phillips.

 

Ruskie Beeping Space Ball Struck Terror in America

4 October 2021 at 12:10

About the size of a beach ball and carrying nothing but a rudimentary radio transmitter, the Soviet Union's Sputnik satellite threw Americans into a panic.

The morning of October 5, 1957 Americans woke up to news that shocked and frightenedthem. Late the previous evening—about 11:30 October 4 Eastern Standard Time—the Soviet Union successfully placed a man-made object into earth orbit.  Two objects, actually—a shiny metal ball about 23 inches in diameter with four whip antennae weighing just over 180 pounds, and the protective rocket nose cone from which it had separated when it reach orbital Space.

The ball, Sputnik 1 was essentially a simple radio transmitter encased in a polished aluminum-magnesium-titanium alloy heat shield made in two hemispheresbolted together and sealed with an O-ring.  Its four antennae broadcast simple repeated beeps alternatingly on two broadcast bandsthat could easily be monitored across the globe by HAM radio operators.  An hour after launch, after determining that it had completed one low earth elliptical orbit Soviet authorities had announced their achievement and released information on how radio transmissions could be monitoredand how the artificial moon might be observed from Earth.  Actually only the nose cone was large enough to reflect enough light to be seen from earth by the unaided eye.  The transmitting satellite, however, could be observed by telescope.

The New York Times headlines were more restrained than some American newspapers but noted ominously that the USSR got into orbit first with an object heavier than the planned US satellite and that its orbit took it over the States.

Sputnik was launched from a remote base near Tyuratam in the Kazakh SSR, the site for testing of R-7 two stage rockets.  In a final race against time, the launch facility had been completed only weeks before the successful launch.

The Soviets determined to proceedwith a project to launch an artificial satellite in January of 1956 after President Eisenhower announced plans to launch an American one during the much ballyhooed International Geophysical Year (IGY) scheduled to last 18 months from July 1, 1957, to December 31, 1958.  What they didn’t realize was that the American effort was lagging due to the unreliability of the primary launch vehicle, the Navy’s Vanguard rocket.

President Dwight Eisenhower boasted that the United States would put a satellite in orbit during the much ballyhooed International Geophysical Year sending the Soviets into a scramble to get into space first.

The project was divided into two parts—the development and construction of the satellite, and the development of a reliable and powerful two stage rocket which would, not coincidentally, be suitably adaptable for use in the creation of an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) capable of carrying and delivering a heavy nuclear war head

Work on the creation of an ambitious satellite was divided between five industrial/scientific ministries under the loose coordination of the USSR Academy of Sciences.  Original specifications for an object that would weigh between 2,000 and 3,000 pounds including a 700 lb. payload of scientific instruments and experiments.  It was to be able to transmit data to ground stations.  But when the various ministries delivered their parts, they did not fit together due to variationsin specifications.  Worse, the heavy package proved to be more than the troubled R-7 rockets could handle

From May 15 to July 12 three attempts to launch an R-7 failed.  A fourth attempt on August 21 was partially successful—the head successful separated achieved orbital space but had to be destroyed upon re-entering the atmosphere.  A fifth test had similar results.    While this meant that the R-7 was not yet ready for use as an ICBM, it was determined that it was capable of deploying a lightweight satellite.

A life size model of Object D--Sputnik--in the Moscow Space Museum shows its simple construction.

Given the problems with the two components, the launch date for Object Dwas pushed back to April 1958 by which time glitches in the satellite itself and the launch vehicle could be ironed out.

But Soviet officials worried that the delay would allow the U.S. to reach space first.  They ordered the hasty construction of a stripped bare satellite with greatly decreased weight.  The only real pay load was the radio transmitter, critical in proving to the world that the Soviet Union got there first.

The Council of Ministers approved a plan to develop the basic devise in February.  Two were ordered.  The first was delivered to the launch site in late September, just as the R-7 rocket was deemed reliable for launch.  Within days it was in orbit.  The second Sputnik was successfully launched in December after the spectacular explosion of America’s Vanguard 1 on the launch pad.

In Washington President Eisenhower took the news with his usual calm equabilityIntelligenceover-flights in high flying U-2 spy aircraft had provided photosof the launch complex and the Soviet defense establishment had even quietly announced the development—prematurely as it turned out—of an operational ICBM after the first semi-successful test of the R-7. 

In one critical way, he was relieved that the Soviets had got their satellite up first—it was a potential slice through a Gordian Knot of international law.  The Soviets were voraciously complaining that over-flight of American high altitude balloonsexploring the edge of space violated their air rights.  He wasn’t sure if the Russians had yet detected the U-2 flights at near the same altitude.  The U.S. wanted to argue that space was beyond air rights, that it was international and free to any nation.  Since Sputnik would fly over the US, Eisenhower was confident he could use that a president for the American position.

The President was also confident that the impending launch of Vanguard I would surpass the Soviet achievement.

Ike was shocked by the hysterical, almost panicky response from the press and public alike who were soon joined by swarms of Congressmen and Senators demanding to know how America had lost a Space Race it didn’t even realize we were in.

America of the 1950’s was awash in two things—paranoia about the Soviet Union and Godless Communism and a fascination with space travel that seemed nearly at hand.  America’s good Germans led by former Nazi V-2 developer Werner Von Braun were assumed to be better than the bad German scientists that the Soviets had dragged into Russia.  Von Braun was a ubiquitous television personality, collaborating with Walt Disney on elaborate animations of a future space station and trips to the Moon and beyond.

Science fiction filmsand the lurid covers of paperback novels and pulp magazines were filled with sleek space ships, all somehow resembling huge versions of Von Braun’s V-2.  The dawn of an American space age seemed inevitable and at hand.  If they thought at all about a Soviet space program it was with the assurance that their science and technology were primitive, years behind the US.

Now here were the Ruskies were, flying high over our very heads with who knows what intentions.  If they could put up a satellite, could they bombard the States with nukes from space, or zap us with death rays.

After the spectacular explosion of a Vanguard launch vehicle on it pad, President Eisenhower went on TV on December 10, 1957 to calm the American people and assure them that the US would rapidly catch up in the newly christened Space Race.

In response to the uproar Eisenhower went on TV to reassure the public that the US would soon be back in the game.  He ordered the launch of the Vanguard I moved up.  That launch failed on national television on December 6.

Meanwhile the Army Ballistic Missile Agency was ordered to hastily revive scrapped plans for a launch vehicle and stripped down satellite similar to Sputnik.  Explorer I a 38 lb. satellite was successfully launched on top of a Jupiter-C January 31, 1958—at least within the promised IGY window.

Bill Pickering (left), James Van Allen (center), and Wernher von Braun (right) triumphantly held a model of Explorer 1 above their heads the day after it became the first U.S. satellite to orbit the Earth on January 31, 1958.  Von Braun was America's "good German"  and  was the chief designer of the Jupiter-C rocket.  Van Allen put radiation detecting Geiger tubes into the payload that discovered the Radiation Belt named for him.  The scientific discovery not only one-upped the Russian's essential dumb satellite but briefly threw the Soviets into a panic of their own--they suspected that America may have exploded a nuclear device on the mission, essentially created the radiation belt.

Sputnik 1 burned up upon re-entering the atmosphere on January 4 after completing 1400 orbits.  Its radio transmitter emitted those beeps for 22 days, long after the expected failure of the battery

 

The Watch Maker Who Invented a New Way to Manufacture Stuff

3 October 2021 at 12:17

Industrial pioneer Aaron Lufkin Dennison.

Ordinarily the relocation of a factory from one town to another would hardly be the fodder for all but the most arcaneand specialized of almanac-like features.  But on this date in 1854 Aaron Lufkin Dennisonmoved his four year old watch making business to new facilities in Waltham, Massachusetts, setting the stage for a revolution in industrial production first known as the American System of Watch of Watch Manufacturing.  The principles of precision made interchangeable parts, use of specialty machine tools, and consistent calibration measured by highly accurate instruments were soon applied to other industries ushering in a new phase of the industrial revolution that created the machines that increasingly shaped daily life.

It was not an easy or smooth road.  Dennison would be beset by set backafter set back—failed early designsand processes, bankruptcies, board intrigues, faithless partners, and financial panics.  The new plant in Waltham would slip from his hands in bankruptcy in just three years, and he would be unceremoniously fired as machine shop superintendent in 1861.  He would go on to found a number of new businesses to see his dreams crushed time and time again.

Dennison's first factory building

Meanwhile the factory, known as the Boston Watch Company in 1855 would go through ownership changes and name changes, finally becoming known as the Waltham Watch Company in 1907 and famous for its railroad chronometers and quality pocket Watches.  The company’s direct descendent, the Waltham Aircraft Clock Corporation manufactures that specialty product in Alabama.  Firms that purchased marketing rights to the Waltham name along with some inventory and goodwill and since merged are now known as the Waltham Watch Co. (Delaware) and markets imported watches.  A former Swiss subsidiary is now known as Waltham International SA, and markets luxury Swiss made watches to Japan and other international markets.

Dennison was born on March 6, 1812 in Freeport, Maine.  His father was a shoemaker, the lowliest of the skilled trades who taught music on the side.  The family moved to Brunswick when he was a boy.  He got the minimal schooling of a boy of his classreading, writing, and simple ciphering.  He may have supplemented this with reading from books borrowed from neighbors. 

He spent much of his childhood and youth at various jobs to help the family.  He carried hod for a bricklayer,cut wood, and was a herdsman.  By his teenage years he was accomplished enough at his lettersand arithmetic to clerk at a local store before joining his father in his cobbler’s shop.  Dennison displayed his first interest in improving production techniques by suggesting his father pre-cut pieces to make shoes by the batch rather than start-to-finish one at a time.

At age 18, rather than formally apprentice to his father, Dennison bound himself to James Cary, a local clock maker.  During his apprenticeship he apparently devised some sort of machine for cutting gear wheels.  The exact nature of the machine is unknown but was probably a modification of an existing wheel cutter that allowed him to press a few layers of metal at the same time, creating identical gears with each impression.  Again, the idea was to provide parts in batches for future assembly.  Cary so admired his apprentice’s skill and ingenuity that he offered Dennison a partnership at age 21.

But Dennison knew he had to learn more or be stuck in a provincial shop.  He headed to Boston to work for and study with the best American watch repairers.  He volunteered to work for three months at jeweler Currier & Trott without pay and then was hired by them.  By 1834 at age 22, he felt confident enough to open his own repair shop.  But he gave that up only two years later when he was offered the chance to work under Boston’s most sophisticated master watch maker, Tubal Howe of Jones, Low & Ball where he could learn the techniques of the best Swiss and British craftsmen. 

He stayed with Howe until 1839 when he left for New York City where he spent several months with a colony of Swiss watchmakers.  Returning to Boston he once again set up his own shop offering not only repair services but also selling watches, tools, and repair equipment.  During this period he perfected the Denton Combine Gage “upon which all the different parts of a watch could be accurately measured.”  This later became the Standard Gage of the industry and was just the first in the specialty instruments he devised.

Meanwhile Aaron established a second business with his younger brother Eliphalet Whorf Dennison, his former partner in his old Boston repair shop.  Together they went into a specialty business manufacturing paper boxes for jewelry stores.  The enterprise, filling an unmet niche, was a success.  But after a few years Aaron withdrew from the company to pursue his dream of manufacturing his own watches, leaving the firm in Eliphalet’s hands.  It continued to prosper as the Dennison Manufacturing Company and still exists today as Avery Dennison Corporation a manufacturer of pressure sensitive adhesive products which recently sold its well-known envelope, business stationary, and school supply lines which continue to be marketed under the name Avery.

Thing must have been looking pretty good for the 28 year old Aaron in 1840.  After years of dedicating himself single-mindedly to business he married Charlotte Ware Foster who was connected to the Ware family of distinguished Unitarian clergy.  Together they would have five children.

While continuing to operate his businesses, Dennison dreamed of going into watch manufacture.  He developed a plan over the 1840’s based on his old notion of producing parts in batches. 

He was specifically inspired by the success of the Federal Armory at Springfield, Massachusetts in manufacturing muskets for the Army using interchangeable parts.  This made rapid productionpossible in times of need, greatly reduced the cost of each firearm, and facilitated repair in the field using standardized parts.  Dennison was not the only entrepreneur impressed with the system.  Samuel Colt applied it to his pistols in the mid 1830’s and contributed the innovation of assembly line production—assembly of parts in succession with semi-skilled workmen each performing a specific task and sending the work to the next worker on the production bench for the next step.  Others were adapting Springfield and Colt innovations in other fields including Cyrus McCormack for his reapers.

But the manufacture of watches, some of the most complex machines of their time requiring scores of small parts that had to be produced with precision, required whole new demands compared to the few and large parts with relatively high tolerances of muskets, pistols, and farm equipment.  Dennison planned it out in his head.  By 1845 he had worked out a detailed planand constructed a scale model of a production facility.  All he need now was a backer.

Edward Howard turned out to be a faithless partner.

It took until 1849 to secure the support and partnership of Edward Howard of the manufacturing firm of Howard & Davis and Howard’s father in law Samuel Curtis.  While the partners erected a new factory next to the existing Howard & Davis building in Roxbury for the new firm of Dennison, Howard & Davis, Aaron went to London to buy what parts could not yet be manufactured in the States.  He also hired English journeyman watchmakers, and studied the critical process of gilding brass parts.  When he returned he completed the design and construction of specialized machines for his production process.

But there were major problems.  The new machines were not yet perfected, he had trouble duplicating the gilding process, and the first watches produced, an eight day watch with a single mainspring barrel, did not keep time accurately enough to be successfully marketed.  Dennison needed a more skillful machinist to perfect his ideas and in 1852 he found one in Charles Moseley.  He also brought on master watchmaker N. P. Stratton who designed a new 30-hour watch and perfected the gilding process while Mosely rebuilt the machines.  The resulting watch was marketed successfully.

The movement of an early Howard, Davis & Dennison Boston Watch Company pocket watch.

In fact sales were so strong that in 1855 the company moved to its expanded facilities in Waltham and adopted the new name of the Boston Watch Company.  Dennison oversaw production as the plant superintendent while Howard and a Board of Directors managed the business affairs.

Prospects looked as a good as the brisk sales of the new watch, which was superior to anything but jeweler crafted one-of-a-kind watches then available from an American manufacturer.  Then the devastating Panic of 1857—regarded as the first world-wide depression devastated sales and dried up the capital needed to ride out the storm.  The Boston Watch Company was forced into bankruptcy.

Most of the machinery and watch inventory, and some of the skilled workers, were taken back to Roxbury by Edward Howard, who established the Howard Watch Company. The buildings and large machinery were sold at auction to Royal E. Robbinswho restarted watch manufacture under the name of Tracy Baker & Company.  Dennison was retained in the reduced capacity of superintendent of the machine division.  His relationship to Robbins, however, was tense.  Robbins felt Dennison “meddled” in other divisions of the factory.  Dennison felt Robbins was losing track of his vision. 

In 1861, just as the Civil War was about to greatly increase the market for watches among officers who needed to be able to coordinate battlefield movements and the exploding demands of war timeindustrial production,  Robbins unceremoniously fired Dennison.

 

The American Watch Company works at Waltham in the 1870's.

In the post-war period, Tracy Baker & Co. would change hands again and become the American Waltham Watch Company and finally simply the Waltham Watch Company, for many years the largest American producer of time pieces. 

It took until 1864 for Dennison to find a backer for a new firm, A. O. Bigelow.  Together they formed the Tremont Watch Company.  This time the plan was a little different.  The Civil War had dramatically driven up wages for skilled workmen in the North.  Dennison figured out that the most famous and skilled watch makers in the world in Switzerland made significantly less than their American counterparts.  In an early example of offshore outsourcing, Swiss journeymen would manufacture to specification fine parts like escapementsand wheel trains while larger parts including barrel plates, cases, faces, etc. would be made in the States where the watches would be assembled. 

Dennison and his family went to Zurich to make the arrangements.  While he was gone, the Tremont board, without consulting him, decided to move the factory to Melrose to produce a cheaper model watch entirely in their factory.  The company was reorganized as the Melrose Watch Company. Dennison resigned in protest.  He was essentially stranded in Europe. He remained in Switzerland trying to set up a new arrangement with an American manufacturer without success.  As Dennison expected Melrose failed by 1870.

In 1871 relocated to England where he tried to manufacture watches from parts made in Zurich and plates from Tremont.  Using capital raised by this venture he helped organize the Anglo-American Watch Company in Birmingham in 1874.  He and his English partners bought up the parts stock and some of the machinery of Melrose, shipped it to England and began producing watches there for the first time on the American System of Watchmaking.   In 1874 the company changed its name to the English Watch Manufacturing Company.  It turned out the reputation of American production in England at this time was similar to the post-World War II reputation of goods Made in Japan harming sales.  Dennison left the company about the same time.

At long last Dennison found success manufacturing an innovative watch case in Birmingham, England.

Dennison had a second business in Birmingham manufacturing watch cases, for which the main clients was, ironically, the Waltham Watch Company, the descendent of the firm he had created.  With the addition of a partner the firm became Dennison, Wiggly & Company in 1874.  Dennison remained in England managing this, at last, successful, firm until he died on January 8, 1895 at age 83.  His son Franklin became managing partner.  The name was changed to the Dennison Watch Case Company in 1905 and continued to provide its products to the industry until 1965.

Dennison died with neither the fame nor the enormous wealth of other significant American industrial innovators and businessmen.  The creator of the American System, which transformed manufacture and production in profound ways far beyond the watch industry, spent almost 40 years in a kind of exile. 


Those Damn Women Are Marching Again for Reproductive Justice…And Murfin Verse

2 October 2021 at 13:47

They're back and they are pissed offWho?  The women by the millions who launched the resistance the day after pitiful inauguration of the former Resident of the White House and his minions in Congress, state capitols, and local government in January 2017.  That led directly to women seeking election at every level, the Blue Wave election of 2020 that re-took the House of Representatives and launchedthe powerful new voice of the Squad, and in no small measure mobilizedthe voters who ousted the scum-bag-in-chief.  They also amplified the Me Too movement and inspired other resistance movements to take to the streetsin unprecedented numbers.

The day after the Cheeto's inauguration in 2017 the first Women's March jump started the Resistance that ultimately ousted the corrupt traitor from office.

Despite these successes, Federal courts were stacked against themand the Supreme Court now has a majority hostile to women, their bodily autonomy, and rightsEnabled by gerrymandering, voter suppression schemes, deep pockets funding Astro turf organizations and candidates, and MAGA delusional madness, Red State governors and legislatures have launched relentless attacks on abortion rights and women’s rights to control their own bodies and lives.  The recent Texas law which the Supremes allowed to go into effect circumventedthe established right to abortions under the Roe v Wade decisionby placing a civil bounty of $1000 on anyone who aids an abortion in any way to be paid by the state for each successful civil suit brought against them.  More than a dozen states are ginning up copycat laws.

Since this graphic was created the number signed up for marches today has swelled to well over a million.

So this fall’s iteration of the Women’s March which will be held today in Washington, D.C. with more than 650 sister marches around the county will Rally for Abortion Justice.  It should be the largest single-day mobilization dedicated to abortion justice and reproductive freedom in history.

A call to march posted by one of the March’s chief sponsoring organizations Planned Parenthood stated:

On October 2, we’re marching in every single state ahead of the Supreme Court reconvening on October 4. Women’s March and more than 90 other organizations, including National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, Planned Parenthood, SHERO Mississippi, Mississippi in Action, Access Reproductive Care-Southeast, The Frontline, Working Families Party, SisterSong, [and the Unitarian Universalist Association]  are organizing a national call to mobilize and defend our reproductive rights.

Abortion has never been fully accessible, but we are at the risk of losing our reproductive freedom completely. The call to action is clear, and urgent. The relentless attacks from Texas to Mississippi are ramping up quickly. Anti-choice extremists have a deep desire to return to a time when there was more clear and effective domination and control over queer and trans folks, women, and people of color; they want to revive those old values and societal norms to the point of re-acceptance. The authoritarian agenda of reproductive control is fueled by misogyny and racism - and we must challenge it, together.

On October 2, we’re going to send the Supreme Court and lawmakers across the country a clear, unified message. The attack on our reproductive rights will not be tolerated.

We have this opportunity to invite all the people that know us and love us into this important movement and work united as we build something better for our families and communities. As a small powerful group tries to come for our human rights over and over again, we’ll never let go of our vision of reproductive justice; for unfettered abortion access and everything we need to support and grow our families to thrive and live healthy lives.

The Washington March will begin at noon at Freedom Plaza, 1455 Pennsylvania Ave NW and march to the steps of the United States Supreme Court.  In Chicago the March to Defend Abortion Access will begin at 11:30 at the Daley Center, 50 West Washington Street.

Closer to home for those of us in McHenry County the Rally for Rights will be held on Woodstock Square at 2:30 pm, rain or shine.  Participants are asked to mask up and come with suitable rain gear.  Members and friend of the Tree of Life Unitarian Universalist Congregation in McHenry will be there.  Look for the TOL banner if you want to march with us.  The local March is organized by the Women’s March Woodstock,  McHenry County NOW, Democratic Women and other progressive organizations.

Don’t be surprised if today’s uprising is as effective at the first one, pink pussy hats or no.

Part of the Tree of Life UU contingent at the Chicago Women’s March in 2018, Carol Alfus (back to camera), Terry Kappel, Karen Dees Meyer, Marcia Johnson, Laura Zalnis, Judy Stettner, the Old Man,and  Katie Mikkelson. Photo by Linda Di.

It has been one of the honors of my life to be able to attendand support in Chicago and Woodstock as a male ally since the beginning.  After the second Women’s March in Chicago in January 2018 I dared write:

Today, I Am a Woman

After the Chicago Women’s March

January 20, 2018

 

Today, I am a woman—

            a put-a-bag-on-her-head-woman,

            a never hit on by Cosby, Weinstein, or Trump woman,

            a lumbering lummox of a lady,

            a barren womb non-breeder,

            a hairy-legged horror,

            a gawky, graceless girl,

            a disappointment all around.

 

But Sisters, today, I am a woman—

            if you will have me.

 

Tomorrow I will be just another prick.

 

—Patrick Murfin

 

Government Shutdown Déjà vu—Little New in Game of Economic Chicken With Murfin Verse

1 October 2021 at 10:26
Playing chicken with of government shutdown and economic catastrophe.  The United States narrowly averted a government shut down at the last minute yesterday.   If it seems like we have been there before you are not mistaken.   Going back to President Bill Clinton’s fights with Congressional Republicans in 1995 there have been 5 total or partial shutdowns laying off hundreds of thousands of Federal employees, closingvital services,   disruptingthe lives of millions, and costing billions of dollars.   In 2013 a total shutdown to spite President Barack Obama lasted 15 days.   In 2018-19 the former Resident of the United States helped engineerthe partial shut down of his own government lasting 35 days believing that voters would hol...

The Screaming Horror of the 20th Century’s Most Famous Painting Echoes Today

30 September 2021 at 07:00

Guernica, 1937 by Pablo Picasso. 

Note—On August 29 as the U.S. was scrambling to meet an August 31 deadline to have its troops finally out of Afghanistan and after an ISIS bomb exploded outside Kabul Airport killing 13 American soldiers and scores of would-be Afghani refugees, an airstrike killed Zamairi Ahmadi, an aid worker with international aid organizations and nine other members of his family including seven children.  It was, the Pentagon would confess, a hasty case of mistaken identity in the rush to avenge the earlier American deaths as promised by President Joe Biden.  A tragic mistake, they said.  But it was the latest, if not the last, of thousands of such civilian deaths in Afghanistan by drones and manned aircraft over almost two decades of undeclared war in that country.  Similar atrocities were and are routine in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and other “War on Terror” hot spots.  Americans hardly seem to notice or care that we have routinely become clones of the Nazis who once shocked the world by their air attack on a sleepy Basque town.   

The smoldering remains of incent civilian Zamairi Ahmadi's car where he died with nine members of his family in a US air attack in Kabul, Afghanistan.

A very large painting arrived in London on September 30, 1938, the very day British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich Agreement with the Axis Powers.  It had previously been exhibited at the 1937 Paris International Exhibition (World’s Fair) in the exhibit of the Spanish Republic.  It had created a sensation and was soon sent on a world tour to raise support for the Republican cause in the devastating Civil War wracking that country.  This is the story of that painting which became perhaps the artistic symbol of an entire bloody century.

On April 26, 1937 aircraft of the German Condor Legion and supporting Italian forces unleashed a two hour aerial bombardment of the Spanish Basque market town of Guernica.  The Naziand Fascistvolunteers” were supporting the so-called Loyalist forces of General Fredrico Franco against the Republicans, a loose alliance ofanarcho-syndicalist unionists, Social Democrats,Communists, democrats, and Basque Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War. 

In addition to supporting a fellow Fascist, the Germans and Italians viewed the war as a laboratoryto test new weapons and tactics.  Guernica, a civilian population centerwithout direct military value, was targeted because it was a cultural center of the Basque region, which was firmly on the Republican side of the war.  The aim was to terrorize and demoralize the population that supported troops in the field. 

Guernica after the bombing.

The bombing commenced about 4:30 PM on a Monday.  The first wave of planes hit bridges and roads leading in and out of the city.  General Wolfram von Richthofen, commander of the Condors, reported heavy smoke shrouded the city when flights of heavy Junker bombers came over obscuring targets, so the planes simply dumped their bombs on the center of the city, destroying most of the homes and buildings there.  Subsequent waves dropped incendiaries creating an inferno, which he officially reported “resulted in complete annihilation,” of anyone below. 

He claimed, however that most residents were out of town because of a holidayor had time to flee.  Reports on the ground contradict that claim.  Many residents were in the center of town for a market day when the attack began and were unable to flee because the bridges were destroyed and the roads blocked with rubble. 

The dead in the Market after the Nazi air raid.

The attack was the first systematic aerial attack in force on a civilian population center.  Similar attacks behind the lines of opposing armies would become a standard tactic of the Nazi blitzkrieg of World War II. 

The fate of the town became an international cause célèbre.  Spanish-born painterPablo Picasso was working in Paris on a commission from the Republican government for the 1937 Paris International Exhibition. He scrapped original plans and began sketchinga mammoth mural commemorating the raid on Guernica.  The 11 foot by 25½ foot painting in stark black, white, and, gray captured the horror of the raid in a Cubist style—a screaming womanleans from a window with an oil lamp, an injured horse whinnies in pain, a mother clasps her dead infant. 

After the victory of Franco’s forces, the painting was sent to the United States at Picasso’s request.  It formed the centerpiece of a Picasso exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA.)  During and after the war it was shown across the U.S., in Latin America, Europe before returning to the MoMA for another Picasso retrospective, where it stayed until 1981. 

Picasso’s willhad stipulated that the painting could not be displayed in Spain until it was ridof the fascist dictatorship and restored to a Republic.  He also stipulated that once returned it must be exhibited in the national art gallery, the Museo del Prado in Madrid.  After Franco died in 1978, ten years after Picasso, the reluctant MoMA finally allowed the painting to be sent to the Prado in 1981. 

In 1992 it was moved to Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía along with most of the rest of the Prado’s Twentieth Century collection.  It can be seen there yet today. 

Guernica, the town and the painting, remain potent symbols of modern war’s brutality.  The painting was often used by Vietnam protestors.  A tapestry reproduction hung for years at the United Nations in New York at the entrance of the Security Council Room. 

Photos of Secretary of State Colin Powel speaking in front of the covered Guernica tapestry in the United Nations Security Council are perhaps not so mysteriously hard to find.  This painting literally pulls back the curtain on the hypocrisy. 

In February 2003, as the United States was about to launch its Shock and Awe air bombardment of Bagdad, the tapestry was covered by a curtain to prevent embarrassment to Secretary of State Colin Powell as he laid out the case for war against Iraq.  In 2009 the tapestry was permanently removed from display at the United Nations and sent to London’s Whitechapel Galley occupying the same space where the painting was displayed in 1939.


By Some Reckonings Today is the U.S. Army’s Birthday

29 September 2021 at 07:00

General George Washington demobilized the Revolutionary War Continental Army in May 1783 and bid a formal farewell to his officers at Fraunces Tavern in New York City in December.  His hope that Congress would authorize a small regular army under General Henry Knox was dashed.

If asked about the origin of the United States Army, most folks, if they have a clue, would point to the American Revolution.  On June 14, 1775, the Second Continental Congress created the Continental Army and the next day unanimously elected George Washington commanding generalVolunteer units from several colonies already besieging Boston alongside militia units were mustered as the First Regiment of the Line.  Washington soon joined the troops, and the war was on as a seriously united effort.

All of that, of course, is true.  But almost as soon as the war ended the Continental Army was demobilized and essentially disbanded by order of General Washington on May 12, 1783 after Congress, now under the Articles of Confederation, rejected his appeal for a small standing army to be placed under the command of General Henry Knox.  Congress was deeply fearful that a standing army would lead inevitably to monarchy or dictatorship—and more than a few feared that the popular Washington might use it to have himself made king.

One hundred artillerymen and 500 infantry were kept on the payroll.  The artillery company was stationed at West Point, essentially security guards for the large arsenal there.  The infantrymen were scattered in small numbers at forts and outposts across the long western frontier and the border with British Canada.

Those infantrymen were totally unable to face the challenge of continuing warfare on the frontier by native tribes still allied with the British.  The plight of settlers west of the Alleghenies and south of the Ohio was soon desperate.

And this tiny Federal force was not even regularized, it operated out of necessitybut with no legal foundation.

In June of 1784 Congress formally rejected Washington’s scaled back plans for a 700 man army.  On May 12 they dischargedall the troops except for 25 caretakers at Fort Pitt and 55 at West Point.  On June 14 of that year Congress reluctantly agreed to raise a force of 700 men for one year’s duty on the frontier under the command of a Lt. Colonel.

Members of the Army's First Regiment on frontier post duty.

On September 29, 1784 the War Departmentformally issued the order creating what many considered just a temporary resurrection of the Continental Army.  Four companiesof infantry and two of artillery dubbed the First American Regiment came under the command of Colonel Josiah Harmar of Pennsylvania

The creation of the First Regiment is considered the true birthday of the Regular U.S. Army.

The idea that a tiny regular army supplemented with local militia and, if need be short term musters of volunteer regiments would be enough to keep a lid on the powder keg on the frontier was ludicrous.

Some of the bloodiest, most intense, and widest ranging Indian warfare inAmerican history continued for years on the frontier.  On November 4, 1791 a large force of volunteers, militia, and some regular companies under General Arthur St. Clare was routed and nearly massacred by native forces of the Western Confederation near Fort Recovery in Ohio.

The Legion of the United States during the campaign against the native Western Confederacy leading to the decisive Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794.

This disaster finally encouraged Congress to expand and reorganize the Army.  With the approval of new President Washington and his Secretary of War Knox, the Legion of the United States was created with General “Mad” Anthony Wayne in command.  It was organized into four sub legions, two of which were converted from the First and Second Regiments, and two more to be recruited and trained. 

After extensive training in 1792 and ’93 the Legion took to the field for operations against the Western Confederacy south of the Ohio.  The large, disciplined force, with the assistance of by now veteran militia, was successful in a campaign in Kentucky that drove most of the hostiles north of the river. 

Wayne and the Legion pursued the tribes into their home territory north of the river, burning several principal towns and finally decisively defeating them at the Battle of Fallen Timbers on August 4, 1794.

With the frontier seemingly secured, the Legion was disbanded in 1796 and the reduced Army was reorganized into regiments the following year.  Some historians take this as the real origin of the Regular Army, but since the First and Second regiments were reconstituted, most take the 1784 date.


Major General James Wilkinson, first Commanding General of the U.S. Army,  was a brave soldier in combat, but an inveterate schemer, Spanish secret agent, and plotter of various treasons.

The new Army was placed under the command of General James Wilkerson, an officer with a checkered reputation for rascality, but a splendid battle record in the Revolution and under Wayne at Fallen Timbers—despite the fact that as a double agent for the Spanish in New Orleans he may have leaked some of the Legions operational plans to British agents active with the Indians.

Later that year the Whiskey Rebellion broke out in Western Pennsylvania.  To suppress it Washington, at the urging of his closest advisorAlexander Hamilton raised the largest army the new nation had ever put into the field, over 12,000 troops, mostly federalized militia including for the first time, draftees, and a handful of Legion troops.  He personally took to the field to command the force, which made quick, and largely bloodless, work of suppressing the rebellion.  But that confirmed the worst fears of old anti-federalists and Thomas Jefferson’s nascent Republican faction that a large army would be used to suppress the people in defense of a powerful elite.

President George Washington took command of the large army raised to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania is seen here reviewing the troops.  Alexander Hamilton to command in the field for the brief, largely bloodless campaign. 

After retirement Washington was recalled to command the Army in 1798 by President John Adams as a possible war with France loomed.  A large force was raised, mostly Volunteers with regular Army regiments.  Washington helped plan the formation and logistics but left operational command to his favorite Hamilton who expected to take the field in operational command.  Hamilton had grandiose dreams of martial glory, including the conquestof Louisiana. 

Washington died at home in Mt. Vernon still nominally in command on March 1, 1799.  The crisiswith France passed, much to Adams’s relief and to the disappointment of Hamilton.  The Volunteer Army was disbanded, and the Regular Army shrunken. 

Wilkerson was restored to command and embarked on more plots with the Spanish and later with disgraced Vice President Aaron Burr who planned a filibustering campaign to either capture Texas from the Spanish or perhaps create abreak away nation west of the Appalachians. At the last moment the Commanding general betrayed Burr, but that is another story.

The Regular Army remained undermannedand scattered in coastal defense fortifications and along the frontier.  It was totally unprepared for the War of 1812...yet another story.

The Old Guard of the 3rd Infantry Regiment still marches in the post-Revolutionary War of first U.S. Regular Army troops for special ceremonial occasions like this Presidential Inaugural parade.

The First Regiment was consolidated with four other regiments in the post War Of 1812 reorganization in 1815 as the 3rd Infantry Regiment, which is the oldest active Regiment in the Army.  Now known as the Old Guard it has mostly ceremonial duties around Washingtonincluding soldier funerals at Arlington National Cemetery, standing guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Presidential escort, and providing troops for review for visiting foreign dignitaries.  It is the only unit in the army to always march in parades with fixed bayonets in honor of its chargeat the Battle of Cerro Gordo in the Mexican War. Units from it fought in Vietnam and companies have been dispatched to support deployments in the Horn of Africa, Djibouti, and at Camp Taji, Iraq in recent years.


Ian Tyson—The Damned Ol’ Cowboy Who Keeps Rolling On

28 September 2021 at 11:15

Ian Tyson--the old cowboy still sings and looks good doing it.

It is possible you may never have heard of Ian Tyson who turned 87 earlier this week.  But then you wouldn’t be a fan of classic ‘60’s folk music, gritty contemporary Cowboy tunes—note I didn’t say Country music—or most of all Canadian.  After all Tyson’s wistful ballad Four Strong Windswas voted the Greatest Canadian song and he comes from roughly the same cohort as such astonishingly gifted songwriters Oscar Brand, Leonard Cohn, Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Neil Young. That’s some tough competition!

Tyson was born to British immigrant parents on September 25, 1933 in Victoria,British Columbia and raised in the idyllic small city of Duncan, BC on the southern end of Vancouver Island.  As a boy he was fascinated by the cowboyshe saw in the movies and idled his time drawing.  He was a fan of Wilf Carter a/k/a Montana Slim, the cowboy singer and yodeler who became Canada’s first country music star.  Never a ranch kid, he none-the-less became a rodeo rider and contestant in his teens and steadily climbed to bigger events.  He also pursued art in school.

Injuries—including serious ones—are part and parcel with the rough and tumble life of a rodeo rider.  While he was laid up with broken bones and studyingat the Vancouver School of Art, Tyson first picked up a guitar.  By his own admission he wasn’t very good.  He claimed to know just two chords—surely an exaggeration since most songs have at least 3—when he started playing occasionally at the Heidelberg Café, a rathskellercatering to students. 

Taken by the American rock-a-billy soundand particularly Buddy Holly and the Crickets he joined a band called the Sensational Stripes.  Within a few months thanks to Musician’s Union rule that concerts include Canadian acts, the band shared stagewith the Crickets, Gene Vincent, and Paul Anka in one of those packaged tours when it came to Vancouver.

When Tyson graduated from Art School in 1958 his heart told him to stay on the rodeo circuit, but his battered body was saying something else.  Never seriously considering a musical career, he ended up in Toronto after bumming down to California and across Canada hitch-hiking.  He took a straight gig as a commercial artist but within a few months was drawn to the dawning folk music scenein local clubs. That’s where he met Sylvia Fricker, a 19 year old escapee from a middle class home in Chatham, Ontario who dreamed of a singing career.

Sylvia was lovely, talented, and more serious about a career than the restless Tyson.  But her voice blended perfectly with his rich baritone.  By 1959 they were playing together at the Village Corner and other clubs as Ian & Sylvia.  The duo quickly matured as musicians, Tyson’s guitar playing got much better, they explored harmonies, and developed a wide repertoire.  First Tyson and then Fricker began writing original material.

In the early ‘60’s not only were they good—and popular—enough to give up their day jobs and become full time musicians.  They migratedto the epicenter of the exploding folk scene—New York’s Greenwich Village.

Ian & Sylvia--the Greenwich Village years.

The duo adapted quickly and well.  They were soon in the orbit of Dave Van Ronk, the Mayor of McDougal Street and a friend and mentor to many young musicians.  It was not long before they caught they ear and eye of Albert Grossman, the young agent who already managed Peter Paul & Mary.  Grossman quickly got them a record deal with Vanguard, the leading folk music label.  Their first album Ian & Sylvia contained mostly traditional British and Canadian folk songs, spirituals, and a taste of blues.  It was critically well received and a modest commercial success.  It was good enough to get them invited to participate in the legendary and seminal 1963 Newport Folk Festival.

It was their next album that was a creative breakthrough and a career maker.  In addition to their staple traditional ballads, the album included a version of Bob Dylan’s early song Tomorrow is Such a Long Time.  Grossman was then also managing Dylan and their paths frequently crossed in the Village.  Tyson, like everyone else was struck by Dylan’s genius.  But he was also put off by his arrogance and tendency to use and discard people in his meteoric rise.  Also on the album was a Tyson original.  The lonesome and yearning Four Strong Winds as written in a cramped apartment just off McDougal and captured Tyson’s own restlessness and affection for Canada and its vast spaces.  The song became a major Canadian hit and popular in the U.S. as well where it was covered by numerous artists. 

Ian & Sylvia became a major touring act in both countries as well as in the British Isles and Europe.  They also sealed their professional partnership by getting married in 1964.  For Tyson’s sake they established a home in rural southern Albertawhich became the base from which they launched frequent tours and worked on a succession of Albums on Vanguard and later on American commercial labels including MGM and Columbia.

                   Ian and Sylvia get married--1964.

Their marriage coincided with their third album, Northern Journey which featured Sylvia’s original tune You Were on My Mind which became a #3 Billboardhit in the U.S. when it was covered by the California power folk combo We Five.  Tyson also had a memorable original, a second signature song in fact.  Some Day Soon harkened back to his rodeo days but was unusualin being from the viewpoint of the girl who falls for the itinerant wild man.  It also had a swinging country music feel different than the duo’s ballads.

Judy Collins, who had already recorded other Tyson songs, added the song to her classic 1969 album Who Knows Where the Time Goes and released it as a hit single.  Collins, a girl from Denver, became so associated with the song that many thought it was autobiographical.  But the song had legs for other artists as well including Cheyenne’s singing rodeo cowboy Chris LeDoux in 1973 on an album that would recharge the cowboy genre, country music crooner Moe Brady in 1982, and country thrush Suzzy Boggus in 1991.

Ian & Sylvia’s follow up album recorded in ’64 and released early the next year was Early Morning Rain which boosted the career of fellow Canadian singer/song writer Gordon Lightfoot on its title track and with That’s What You Get for Loving Me.  The album also included songs from rising Canadian stars Steve Gillette and Tom Campbell.  It cemented their reputation as the anchors of Canadian folk music.

In 1965 they helped shake up the folk music scene at the Newport Festival when they showed up with an electric band in support of their newest album Play One More.  They joined The Byrds and the Lovin’ Spoonful as early creatorsof the folk/rock sound.  Bob Dylan’s former girlfriend Suze Rotolo in her memoirs credited Tyson with inspiring Dylan to go electric himself despite their prickly relationship.

By now Ian & Sylvia were popular worldwide, but certifiable super stars in Canada. By 1967 they had a weekly TV program on the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) where they showcased the deep pool of Canadian talent, including Neil Young.  They also signed a second record deal with MGM Records.  For the next few years, they would alternate releases on their two labels with MGM steering them in a direction of a more mainstream country music sound.

In the late ‘60’s the couple relocated to Nashville where they recorded two albums, one for Vanguard and one for MGM.  The Vanguard effort Nashvillewas cut in February 1968, one month before The Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeoand is widely considered the first collaboration of rock and Nashville session players and the first country/rock album.  Both albums included cuts taken from Dylan’s then unreleased Basement Tapes with The Band.

Ian and Sylvia, left, with members of The Great Speckled Bird.

In 1969 the duo assembled a band of all-starCanadian and Nashville side men and session musicians including Buddy Cageon pedal steel guitar, Amos Garrett, on guitar and backup vocals, Ken Kalmusky on bass, N.D. Smart on drums, David Briggs on piano for a big cross-Canada rock-and-roll rail tour, Festival Express.  Dubbed The Great Speckled Bird after the song that became the first vocal ever performed on the Grand Ol’ Opry when Roy Acuff stepped to the microphone, the band was a tight, swinging, dynamic combo.

Tyson’s good friend Todd Rundgren was also on the rail tour and was so impressed by the band that he helped it get a record deal with newly established Ampex label, a division of the company that dominated reel-to-reel tape recording.  Rundgren himself produced the recording sessions in Nashville.  Norbert Putnam sat in for Kalmusky for most sessions.  Ian or Sylvia wrote all but one of the of the album’s tracks and sang lead but were not identified separately from the band on the original label to emphasize it as a separate project from their duo.

Despite being widely anticipated in the industryand the music press the label was unable to get a distribution deal and collapsed before much more than a handful of copies shipped.   Thousands of records were locked in a warehouse and unavailable as they were caught up in litigation over the assets of the failed venture.  The few copies that did surface were well ecstatically reviewed.  The LP became a sought-after cult collection piece and bootlegged tape versions circulated.  Years later some of the albums were released with stickers added to identify Ian & Sylvia as the front artists.

Promoting the Ian Tyson Show on Canadian TV as Ian & Sylvia redefined themselves as country artists.

It was not the end of the band, however.  In 1970 they became the house band on Nashville North, a country music variety show on the CTV Network, the main corporately owned competitor to the CBC.  The next year the program was re-named The Ian Tyson Show and ran on the network until 1975. 

The omission of Sylvia’s name was significant.  By then the couple’s marriage was beginning to fray.  Although she appeared on the show as part of the band and had occasional solo numbers, her husband was out front as the star.  As the program ran she appeared less frequently.

Meanwhile, their recording careers had hit the commercial doldrums with changing popular tastes.  Although established as Canadian country music superstars, American audiences still thought of them, mostly as a folk act and U.S. country music radio thought of them as interloping folk-rockers.  With both their Vanguard and MGM contracts at an end they were picked up by industry giant Columbia Records whose Nashville operation was overseen by Chet Atkins.  Despite those advantages the label didn’t know what to do with them or how to market them.

Their first Columbia LP was called Ian & Sylvia, the same name as their original Vanguard album leading to confusion on whether it was a re-issue and at the same time failing to plant a flag as a country act.  Some of the songs were strong but bland mainstream country arrangements meant to be radio friendly.  In 1972 a follow up You Were On My Mind featured a later incarnation of the Great Speckled Bird and included electric updates of some of their early folk hits.  Neither record sold well and You Were on My Mind was their last original album together. 

The next year Tyson backed by members of the Great Speckled Bird released his first solo album, Ol’ Eon which was a mid-level Canadian hit.  Shortly after Ian & Sylvia broke up as an act and the couple amicably divorced in 1975, the same year as Tyson’s TV show ended.

Sylvia went on to a successful and varied career on her own.  Her 1975 debut solo album on Capital Records, Woman’s Worldout-performed Tyson’s debut in Canada.  She later established her own independent label Salt Records in the 80’s and became part of the all-female country folk group Quartette in the early ’90’s with other solo artists Cindy Church, Caitlin Hanford, and Colleen Peterson.  After Peterson’s death Gwen Swick replaced her in the group.  Sylvia also became an influential country music journalist, a founding board member of the Foundation Assisting Canadian Talent on Recordings (FACTOR) which helps finance recordings of emerging Canadian artists, and a board member for the Juno Awards, the Canadian equivalent of the Grammies.  Along the way Sylvia was herself a 7 time Juno Award nominee, inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame as part of Ian & Sylvia in 1992, and added to the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame on her own in 2003 She was made a member of the prestigious Order of Canada in 1994.

After the break-up Ian Tyson first seemed to have a harder time adjusting.  His follow-up album to Ol’ Eon failed to chart.  He slowed down his touring and mostly retreated to his horse ranch near the tiny village of Longview, in southern Alberta, about 40 miles south of Calgaryin the Canadian Rockies foothills.  He was a cowboy for real once again.

In 1980 Tyson hooked up with Calgary based music promoter and manager Neil MacGonigill.  It was a turning point to a phenomenal second act to his musical career.  He decided to dedicate himself to resurrecting all but moribund tradition of cowboy music including the old herding ballads and yodeling songs of the 1930’s and ‘40’s but updated with original music on cowboy, Western, and rodeo themes beginning with his 1983 release, Old Corals and Sagebrush.

Tyson receiving his Platinum Record for his classic LP Cowboyography

Between 1987’s Cowboyography and 1996’s he had a string of 5 Canadian hit albums and dozens of charting singles.  Along with the Chris LeDoux and a handful of other musicians Western or Cowboy music was successfully resurrected as genre distinct from Country music.  Radio station formatting the style full or part time sprang up across Western Canada and the U.S.  Although it has strong regional appeal, there are now fans across both countries and in the British Isles.

Among the singles hits off these and subsequent albums are Cowboy Pride, Fifty Years Ago, Since the Rain, Springtime in Alberta, Nights in Laramie, and Alcohol in the Bloodstream.  Navajo Rugand Summer Wages were named two of the Top 100 Western Songs of All Time by the Western Writers of America.

In 2006 and ’07 it looked like Tyson’s career might be over due to extreme vocal cord damage.  result of a concert at the Havelock Country Jamboree followed a year later by a virus contracted during a flight to Denver.  A Calgary doctor who also saved Adele’s voice, operated on his vocal cords.  After months of rehabilitation, Tyson got his voice back—but not the rich, smooth baritone for which he was noted.

His new singing voice lost some of the lower register but added range ontop.  It also gave it a gravely quality.  Tyson says he prefers the new voice as a better rugged match for his Western themes.  In 2008 just a year after he thought it was gone, Tyson recorded his best reviewed album in years, Yellowhead to Yellowstone and Other Love Stories which garnered a 2009 Canadian Folk Music Awards nomination for Solo Artist of the Year.

Other honors he has picked up along the way are his membership in the Order of Canada in 1984, a 1989 induction to the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame, a 2003 Governor General’s Award for the Performing Arts, inclusion in the Alberta Order of Excellence in 2006, and the 2011 Charles M. Russell Heritage Award presented by the C.M. Russell Museum in Great Falls, Montana for his tribute song to the artist, The Gift.

Ian Tyson--still a cowboy

In 2010, Tyson issued his memoir The Long Trail: My Life in the Westco-written with Calgary journalist Jeremy Klaszus.  According to one review the book “alternates between autobiography and a broader study of [Tyson’s] relationship to the ‘West’—both as a fading reality and a cultural ideal.”

At 87 Tyson is still active, recording, and touring.  He is proud to describe himself as a cantankerous old man who won’t give up.  And he still looks great in a Stetson.

 


The Train Wreck That Inspired Country Music’s First Hit

27 September 2021 at 07:00
The wreck of the Fast Mail not only inspired the song, but this dramatic painting by regionalist master Thomas Hart Benton. There seems to be something about a train wreck that inspires a song.  Just about everybody knows Casey Jones .  Just two years after the disaster that inspired that tune, the Southern Railroad express known as the Fast Mail came barreling down a steep grade at a high rate of speed and overshot a tight radius turn right before a trestle sending the engineand train to a spectacular fiery crash at the bottom of a steep ravine. Within 24 hours a witness/rescuer at the scene had penned a ballad set to the melody of a popular fiddle tune, The Ship That Never Returned , the same tune used latter for Charley on the MTA.

Intrigue and Betrayal in Saigon—The Surprising First American Death in Vietnam

26 September 2021 at 13:21
OSS Lt. Col Peter Dewey as a captain.  The dashing and well connected young officer accidently became the first American casualty in Vietnam.   Lt. Col. Albert Dewey cut a dashing figure and had distinguished himself as Office of Strategic Services (OSS) operative behind the lines inFrance when he was assigned a sensitive assignment to help repatriate Allied prisoners of war (POW) in Indochina in September of 1945.   He was considered perfectfor the job because he spoke flawless, perfect French and had the kind of idealistic democratic zeal common to the OSS—the predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during World War II.   Within weeks, on September 26 he became the first American fatal casualty in Vietnam killed in a...

A Prophet Gets the Word on Polygamy—Latter Day Saints Conform to Protestant Morality

25 September 2021 at 07:00

Church of the Latter Day Saints President and Prophet Wilford Woodruff said God told him to do it.

On September 25, 1890 Wilford Woodruff, President and Prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints came down to his office looking haggard.  He had not slept much the night before, he told his secretary.  He had been in consultation with Godand in the night God had given him a vision of the fate of the church and its people if the practice of polygamy did not end—the Temples would be sized and violated, the President and the Apostleswould be imprisoned, and the possessions of all the people confiscated.  With this revelation in hand, Woodruff went to the Apostles—a council of Twelve senior members—who approved a Manifesto renouncing plural marriage.  On October 1 the Manifesto was made known to the national press.  It was confirmed, at the insistence of the Federal Government at a Church General Conference on October 4.

Although Woodruff insisted he was acting only in accordance with instructions from God and not out of any worldly political considerations, it looked to much of the nation like the Mormonswere caving to decades of escalating pressure against them by the Federal government.

Plural marriage, the preferred Mormon term for polygamy, was not part original Mormon practice as reveled to the Prophet Joseph Smith.  It seems to have been introduced through proselytizing and the absorptionof a small polygamous sect in rural Maine.  In 1843 Smith received a private revelationapproving of plural marriage, at least for himself and the Apostles.  The justification was the need to “rise up the seed of a new priesthood”—rapidly grow the society.

Smith and the Church continued to publicly condemn polygamy and deny participation in it, but it became an open secret in the Illinois settlement of Nauvoo, where the first Temple was built.  Much of the public antipathy to the Mormons grew out of the suspicion that polygamy was sanctioned or practiced and it helped lead to Smith’s assassinationand the Mormon exodus from Nauvoo.

Polygamy was not publicly proclaimed until 1852, five years after the Mormons arrived in Utah, and eight years after Smith’s death. Smith’s successor Brigham Young, who had led his people halfway across the continent to their promised land, was an open polygamist.

John D. Lee, former right hand man to Brigham Young, sits next to his coffin at Mountain Meadow, the site of a massacre of an emigrant wagon train he was accused of leading, just prior to his execution by firing squad.  Lee's sacrifice was  the cost of ending the Federal Government's Mormon War in 1857, saved the church, and preserved polygamy.

The practice scandalized those back East and political pressure began to build to suppress the practice.  President James Buchannan dispatched the Army to Utah Territory in 1857, beginning the so-called Mormonor Utah War.  The church had over-played its hand in persecuting non-Mormons in the territory when a Mormon militia attacked and massacred an immigrant wagon trainfrom Missouri at remote Mountain Meadows because some of its leaders were thought to have participated in past persecution of them.  The Army eventually occupied Salt Lake City.  Brigham Young was stripped of his post as Territorial Governorand was replaced by an eastern Gentile. Young delivered up elder John D. Lee as the responsible person for the massacre and continued to run a parallel, shadow government.

The infant Republican Party made the suppression of polygamy an important part of its platform.  When Abraham Lincoln came to the Presidency, however, he needed the support of Young and Mormon power in Utah to keep open the overland route to California and as a bulwark against Confederate ambitions in New Mexico.   When the Republican Congress passed the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act which outlawed polygamy in States and Territories in 1862, Lincoln privately assured Young that he would not attempt to enforce it if the Mormon’s continued support of the Union cause.  A temporary truce of sorts over the issue was in force.

Then in 1874 Congress passed the Poland Act which facilitated charging individuals with violations of the polygamy ban.  As a show of forceprominent Mormon leaders, including Brigham Young’s personal secretary, were arrested and prosecuted for plural marriage.  The Mormons reacted with defiance.  In the 1876 the doctrine authorizing plural marriage was officially publishedin a revised version of the Church’s Doctrine and Covenantsfor the first time. 

The Edmunds Act of 1882 made “cohabitating with more than one woman” a crime. Those who believed in polygamy could not try polygamists either as a judge or juror and polygamists and their spouses were banned from holding any office and territorial voting.   With most Utah’s residents thus excluded from voting anti-Mormonsfilled the Territorial legislature and took control of the educational system.


Mormon leaders in Federal Prison for polygamy during the period of the Great Raid.

By the mid-80’s authorities, led by Federal Marshalls, began what the Mormons call The Great Raid.  Communities across Utah and adjacent southern Idaho were visited, homes raidedat night, and children separated from their parents and questioned about their parents.  Hundreds, probably thousands of men and their families fled to Mexico or Canada.

The aim to actually destroy the church was made clearer in yet another piece of legislation, Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887.  The Territorial Militia, composed mostly of Mormons was abolished and ordered to disarm.  Fornication and adultery became Federal crimes meaning that polygamists could be charged with multiple offences.  Children born to polygamist fathers could not inherit from them.

Most ominously, the legislation disincorporated the Church, confiscated its properties, and even threatened seizure of its Temples without which believing Mormons could not uphold the requirements of the faith.  The Mormons were in disarray and despair.  In Utah alone there had been more than 2000 prosecutions for polygamy, adultery, and fornication.  Many men were convicted on multiple countsfor each year married to each wife and were essentially held in prison indefinitely.  Courts held the ban against cohabitation even extended to women in separate households if they were financially supported in any way, instantly impoverishing thousands of women.  Much of the church leadership was in hiding and many had active warrants out against them.  President and Prophet John Taylor died while in hiding.

Taylor’s successor Woodruff was desperately seeking a solution.  In 1887 and 1888 he had asked the Quorum of Apostles if the Church should abandon polygamy.  In both cases Woodruff was told that they could not bend to temporal law in violation of revealed truth. Only the revealed word of the Lord could end the practice.

A polygamous Mormon family circa 1890.

In 1890 the Supreme Court upheld the Edmunds-Tucker Act and legal action to seize church properties, including the Temples, was begun.  Additional legislation was introduced in Congress that would bar all Mormons from holding office or voting whether they practiced plural marriage or not.

It was in this context that God apparently finally spoke to the President.

Even though the Manifesto as approved by the General Convention allowed previously married men to keep their wives and families and skirted the issue of sanctions for violating the ban, it was enough to relieve pressure on the Mormons.  Raids and prosecutions fell off sharply and movement on the suit to seize church property was halted. 

In 1893 Church property was returned and in 1894, exactly four years after Woodruff’s chat with the All Mighty, Democratic President Grover Cleveland issued a general amnesty and the Church replied by the dissolving the Mormon dominated People’s Party.  Although Mormons generally tended to support Democrats because their persecution was spearheaded by the GOP, Church leaders split affiliation with the two parties to assure support for both for the final push to the long cherished dream of statehood.

In 1896 Utah was finally admitted to the Union and the Church issued another Manifesto, this one supporting the separation of Church and State.

But the controversy was not entirely over.  Senate Republicans blocked seating Senator elect Reed Smoot because polygamy had not been eradicated in Utah.  Indeed, some plural marriages continued to be sanctioned in Utah by some members of the Apostles.  New President Joseph F. Smith, a great-nephew of founder, issued a Second Manifesto on Polygamy which explicitly excommunicating those practicing polygamy.

To this day Church leaders flatly declare that no recognized members of the church, practice plural marriage.  Yet it persists, largely in remote and rural areas.  A tiny Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and other break-away groups have been organized and continue to endorse the practice.  Prosecutions are once again on the rise in Utah in the early 21st Century.

 

Women in polygamous marriages and their children after raids on a break-away Mormon sect in Texas generated considerable sympathy for the families.

Meanwhile some sympathy and tolerance for the practice has grown with reports of suffering caused families in remote areas by occasional continuing raids and arrests.  The best public relations coup of all, however, was the long run of Sister Wives on the cable channel TLC, a reality show that has painted one polygamous family in a mostly positive light. 


The long running TLC reality series portrays a polygamous family in a mostly favorable and wholesome light.

A general live-and-let-live attitude on sexual and family matters has largely culturally usurped traditional American Puritanism.  In a way, just as the most vocal opponents of marriage equality had warned, tolerance of same gender matrimony, has left the door ajar for other traditionally so-called deviant arrangements, including plural marriage.

Meanwhile the Mormons have carefully burnished apublic image of fostering an idealized, if paternalistic, nuclear family life featuring clean living, close relationships, and fervent support for traditional values.  On social issues, particularly abortion and marriage equality, they have sought to make common groundwith the Evangelical Religious Right, and conservative Catholics.

Can the Saints ever shake the stained heritage of polygamy?  Can they find safety and security from persecution as part of a broader Conservative movement?  Will the Evangelicals who, in their hearts-of-hearts regard Mormonism as a satanic cult long allow political expediency to override their urge to smash heretics and perceived others? Stand by for the results.

Devils Tower—Native Holy Site Becomes First National Monument

24 September 2021 at 11:23

   A 1950's era National Park Service poster promoted visits to Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming.

My old home state of Wyoming has a lot of memorable, iconic sights—the Yellowstone geyser Old Faithful, the front range of the Grand Tetons, Independence Rock on the old Oregon Trail.  But nothing is more unusual or more recognized than the formation that looks like a giant tree stump rising high above the winding Belle Fouche River in a remote corner of the state—Devils Tower.

After 10 years of futile efforts by the Wyoming Congressional delegation to have a much larger area including the formation declared a National Park on September 24, 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt, proclaimed Devils Tower a National Monument. It was the first ever use of that designation.  Only 1,152.91 acres of the originally proposed park were protected.  

Two years later the rest of the abortive park in the drainage, including the nearby Little Missouri Buttes, were opened for public use—a victory for both timber interests and cattlemen seeking yet more open range grazing.

No one is exactly sure when the imposing feature was first seen by Whites.  Likely early trappers caught a glimpse, but accounts have not been found.  In 1857 Lt. G. K. Warren’s expeditionto reach the Black Hills from Ft. Laramie was turned away from the area by a large party of hostile Lakota.  Warren’s log mentions seeing the Bear Lodge—one of several indigenous names for the rock—and the Little Missouri Buttes in the distance through a powerful telescope.  But some scholars believe, because he did not remark on its unusual configuration, that he was probably referring the Bear Lodge Mountainsalso nearby.

On July 20, 1859 topographer J. T. Hutton and Sioux scout Zephyr Recontre reached the formation.  They were a small party from the larger Capt. W. F. Raynolds Yellowstone Expedition.  But once again neither Hutton nor Raynolds left a detailed account.  

A 1900 photograph of Devil's Tower.  Few visitors came to the remote location far from rail lines and improved roads of any kind.  Most visitors packed in by horse and mule for days to see the marvel.

It wasn’t until 1875 that a U.S. Geological Survey expedition and its military escort under Col. Richard I. Dodge the formation was studied and described in detail.  Expedition member Henry Newt wrote:


Its remarkable structure, its symmetry, and its prominence made it an unfailing object of wonder. . . It is a great remarkable obelisk of trachyte, with a columnar structure, giving it a vertically striated appearance, and it rises 625 feet almost perpendicular, from its base. Its summit is so entirely inaccessible that the energetic explorer, to whom the ascent of an ordinarily difficult crag is but a pleasant pastime, standing at its base could only look upward in despair of ever planting his feet on the top.

Dodge was credited with giving the formation its now familiar English name.  As was so often the case, it came from a misunderstanding about a native name.  An interpreter mistranslated one of the native names—most of which were some variation of Bear’s Lodge in several different Plains tribe tongues—to Bad God’s Tower.  Expedition members converted this to “Devil’s Tower.”  Following standard topographical practice, the apostrophe was dropped from the official name given the formation.  We can be fairly certain that the translation somehow went awrybecause none of the many native legends associated with the rock have anything remotely to do with a “bad god.”

Of course, Native tribes had been aware of the Tower.  It was considered magical or sacred by many tribes—in addition to the Lakota and other Sioux the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Crow, and Kiowa.  The Lakota, the dominant tribe in the area since their arrivalfrom the area around the headwaters of the Mississippi in the late 18th Century and spectacularly successful adoption of the horse centered Plains Indian culture, regarded the Bear Lodge—Matho Thípila—as a sacred location second only to the Black Hills.

The various tribes have different origin stories for the great rock and many associations with mythic figuresor great heroes.  Many used the Tower as the site of individual cleansing rituals, group spiritual practice such as the Sun Dance and Sweat Lodge purifications, and as a sacred burial ground for heroes and great shamans.  The Lakota associated it with one of their most sacred objects, the White Buffalo Pipe, a gift of White Buffalo Woman, a great spiritual mythic or semi-mythic presence

Of several origin stories from various tribes, the Park Service has heavily promoted the somewhat dubious Bear Legend connecting the tower to the Pleiades star formation--a Lakota tale grafted to stories of European origin.  This painting is on display at the visitor's center and is regularly used in Park Service literature.  

Among the many legends associated with the tower, the National Park Service, custodians of the Monument, heavily promoted one story in their literature.  In this tale, shared in slightly different forms by the Kiowa and Lakota, seven Indian girls were playing or gathering foodnear the river when a giant bear attacked them.  The girls fled and ran to a large stump.  They jumped on it and began to pray to the Great Spirit (this language is a tip-off that the story has been launderedthrough Whites and not collected directly from the people) for help.  Hearing their prayers, he began to raise the stump to the heavens.  As it grew and grew, the enormous Bear tried to climb the stump leaving his claw marks on the side and littering the base with the shredded bark.  The Bear could not reach the girls and went away.  But by then the stump had grown so high that the girls could not climb down.  Taking pity on their plight, the Great Spirit transformedthe girls into seven stars directly above the tower, stars known to Europeansas the Pleiades.  It is difficult to tell know exactly how much of this popular story—I was entranced with it as boy—came from authentic tradition, and how much grafted from similar tales in Western mythology.

Standing in a spring snow, this Park Service Sign warns visitors to leave Native sacred objects alone.  Despite the admonition tourists steal or attempt to steal objects as souvenirs.

Today members of several tribes continue to hold ritual observances at the Tower, although burials are now forbidden by the Park Service.

It is also a popular tourist attraction, although it takes a fairly determined tourist to get there.  Located hours away from the nearest attractions in the Black Hills, far from any town of even modest size, well away from major highways, most visitors have to dedicate an entire dayto seeing just this one sight.  There is only one café at road junction miles away and a Park Service concession stand on site for food.  There are a couple of 1950’s style motels nearby, a couple of dude ranches in the area, and camping at Monument.

 

Devils Tower became an alien landing place in Stephen Spielberg's Close Encounters of a Third Kind sparking new waves of visitors to the remote location.

Yet people come.  Visits took a dramatic jump when Steven Spielberg featured the Tower as the alien landing spot in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  And it has become a Mecca for the growing sport of rock climbing.  Hundreds make the climb every season, as many as a dozen a day, using several well established routesto the top on every side. 

Native tribes, for home the site is sacred, objected to any climbing.  White climbers and the tribes were at odds for years until the Park Service brokered a “voluntarycompromise.  Since most tribes hold their holiest ceremonies at the Tower in June, the Park Service asked climbers to voluntarily refrainfrom ascending the rock in that month.  They estimate that 85% of climbers honor that agreement.  But authorities are powerless to stopthose who do not.  And a climbing group and local tourist interestshave sued the Park Service for even suggesting self-restraint.

On a nice summer day dozens of parties can be seen ascending the tower.  Here two groups are rappelling down from the top.

I visited Devils Tower several times as a boy.  A years ago, when my two oldest daughters were still childrenmy wife and I made the long trip from the Black Hills to show it to them.  It was one of the few natural wonders that they saw on that Western trip that actually impressed them.  They even managed to hike the trail that encircles the rock, quite an achievement for kids allergic to walking.  

   

Speaking Up for Themselves at the First National Negro Convention in 1830

23 September 2021 at 07:00

An early Negro National Convention.

As ever, it was harddangerous and hard—to be Black in early 19th Century America for Freemen as well as for slaves.  Take the Northern state of Ohio, for instance.  It had entered the Union in 1803 under an 1802 constitution that abolished slavery.  Although technically a Free State, Ohio was culturally Southern having been settled predominantly by frontiersmen moving west from Virginia and the Carolina through Tennessee and Kentucky before, during, and after the American Revolution and the widespread Indian wars that followed.  This was especially true of Cincinnati, which rapidly became the busiest port on the Ohio River.

Farming in Ohio was not naturally suited to the plantation system which relied on large numbers of slave laborers, so the ban on slavery mostly affected those in domestic service or hired out by their masters as laborers, craftsmen,and river men.  It was not a huge economic loss to forgo them and in actuality most masters effectively kept their personal servants in virtual bondage for their lifetimes.  But the white citizens were fearful that as a free state Ohio would become a magnet for free Blacks and for escaped slaves who would compete for wages and land.  Thus in 1807 the state enacted strict Black laws.

Similar to laws passed in border and other Northern States like Illinois, the 1807 act was meant to discourage migration to the state by requiring Blacks to prove that they were not slaves and to find at least two people who would guarantee a surety of $500—a prohibitive fortune worth years of income to small farmers, craftsmen, or merchants who might employ them—for their good behavior. The laws also banned marriage to Whites and forbad gun-ownership in a region where hunting was an important source of food, regulated occupations, and imposed numerous petty restrictions.  Needless to say, the rights and privileges of citizenship were deniedto any Blacks who could jump through all of the hoops.  

In the early years of the century, the Black laws did discourage migration.  But it never eliminated it.  As circumstancesand economic realities changed enforcement became lax, then spotty, and finally rare.  Part of that was due to a major shift in the population.  The threat of Indian warfare finally ended after the War of 1812 and the British evacuation of Ft. Detroit and the end of sponsorship of hostile tribes and helped open up the mostly unsettled northern half of the State.  That accelerated greatly after the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 made Lake Erie a major route to the West.  Most of the new settlers were decedentsof the New England diaspora by way of New Hampshire, Vermont, and Up State New York.  These Yankees were in general anti-slavery and their influx was changing the political balance in the state.

But more importantly, the introductionof practical steamboats on the Ohio River created a boom in the trade on the river.  The larger steamboats required larger crews, especially deck hands and boiler stokers, as well as armies of dock laborers, warehousemen, and teamsters. 

A sketch of early steamboats and warehouses in bustling Cincinnati circa 1830 when Free Blacks were competing for jobs with White laborers.

Cincinnati and other river ports had no choice but to use Free Black labor or be undercut by the slave labor used at Virginia and Kentucky river towns like Wheeling or Louisville.  By the late 1820 the Queen City had a large Free Black population.   White laborers became increasingly resentful of competition from Blacks which undercut wages.  Under pressure, Cincinnati began to try to apply the long dormant Black Laws on local Freemen.  When that was not effective in driving out the population major rioting against Blacks broke out in July and August of 1829.  After bloody rampages and the burning of Black neighborhoods, churches, schools, and businesses 1200 Blacks were driven from the city and many resettled in Canada.  Not only were casual laborers affected, but a small but growing elite of Black businessmen and skilled craftsmenwas devastated.  Many appealedto other Black communities, especially well established centerslike Philadelphia and Baltimore, for financial assistance for re-location schemes to Canada. 

Eventually a Baltimore Free Black leader and activist, Hezekiah Grice issued an appeal to major communities to a national meeting to plan assistance for a major Canadian resettlement.  He argued that the U.S. would never be safe for Blacks and noted that there were already communities of former slaveswho were freed during the American Revolution by the British and evacuated to the North along with Tories after the war.  A small number of escaped slaves were trickling into British North America as well, a number that would grow exponentially with the regular establishment of the Underground Railroad.

Grice found an ally, host,and a venue Philadelphia, home to the largest and most sophisticated population of Free Blacks in the U.S. thanks to the Quaker tradition of tolerance and relative proximityto slave states. 

                    Bishop Richard Allen, pastor of Mother Bethel and founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Bishop Richard Allen was the most importantFree Black leader of the first half of the 19th Century.  Born in 1760 as a slave to Benjamin Chew in Philadelphia, Allen and his family were sold to a Delaware Plantation owner.  While in bondage he began to attend Methodist camp revivals and eventually became a lay preacher to his fellow slaves.  As a skilled carpenter Allen was able to purchase the freedom of himself and his family and rode circuit as a saddle bag preacher before relocating to his hometown.  There he was invited to preach for the Black community at St. George’s Methodist Church.  Eventually restrictions on his community, especially segregated seating in the balcony and numerous snubs from White congregants caused him and his people to leave the church and establish their own Methodist community.  After meeting in homes and rental properties, Allen purchased, moved, and physically rebuilt an old blacksmith shop as his first church—the first African-American congregation worshiping in its own building in the country.  Eventually he was regularly ordained as a Methodist minister and his Bethel Church—now revered as Mother Bethel—became the nucleolus of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first Black Protestant denomination.  Allen became its presiding Bishop.

But his influence went far beyond his fervent religious activity.  He realized early on that he was de facto the leader of his community.  His first step was to form the Free African Society in 1787 to support community and aid recently manumitted slaves. It offered financial assistance to families and educational services for children or adultsseeking employment.   As part of the effort Allen began the first school for Black children and adult literacy and Bible classes at his church.  He also published a Freemen’s newspaper, and numerous pamphlets and tracts on religion, temperance, and Black issues.

The Bethel AME Church--Mother Bethel--in its second building in which the National Negro Convention met.

Forty delegates, all Blacks from nine statesattended the National Negro Convention at Mother Bethel from September 20-24, 1830.  Not surprisingly, Allen was elected to preside.  Debate focused on Grice’s Canadian resettlement proposal.

A minority were interested in the schemes of the American Colonization Society (ACS) to re-settle Blacks in Africa.  Supported by some well meaning religious folks, mostly Quakers and philanthropists it also drew support from enlightened Southern planters in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson who found slavery philosophically irreconcilable with liberty but were terrified by the prospect of freeing “savage and ignorant” slaves who would become violentand prey on White womanhood.  Convinced that Blacks and Whites could never live peacefully forever, shipping them back to their supposed homeland seemed the easiest solution.  Members of the convention recognized that for the virulent racism it represented.  Most of the established Freemen considered themselves culturally American and after generations had no connection at all to Africa.  Moreover the Colonization Society plan disregarded Africa’s ethnic and tribal divisions and the rights of native Africans to their own land.  By the end of the convention the Colonization Society plan would be flatly rejected.

But there was not total unanimity around the Canadian plan, although it was generally popular.  Canada offered a similar culture and climate and a common language—English—they already knew.  And with vast lands available for possible settlement, it seemed amenable and hospitable.  But many delegates were firm for striving for citizenship rights in American, which they considered home.

In the end, the delegates endorsed the Canadian plan and pledged to work towards it, but also decided to advocate more broadly for Freemen in the United States and offer sympathetic support to those still in slavery.  In the U.S. Free Blacks would demonstrate their worthiness for citizenship by undertaking a program of moral up-lift, temperance, strong families, chastity, education, hard work, and building black businesses and institutions.  Although sympathetic to those still in slavery, they took pains toseparate and elevate themselves as Freemen.  Their political program was not radical, their method gradual.  It spoke only in general terms of a possible total end to slavery and held out the hope of winning over more sympathetic Whites.

                                    James Forten, leader of the American Moral Reform Society.
 

Allen was elected President of a new organization, American Society for Free Persons of Color to follow up on Canadian colonization and other parts of the program.  A second, parallel organization was established to promote dignity,morality, and respectability in the Black community.  American Moral Reform Society, led by Philadelphia businessmen James Fortenand William Whipper emphasized temperance and virtue.

Bishop Allen did not long survive the Convention.  He died on March 26, 1831 at the age of 71.  But his work was carried on by others.

The scheme for Canadian resettlement eventually fizzled for lack of resources to promote large scale emigration and the establishment of Black communities.  Many Blacks, who did re-locate, found their welcome far less hospitable than expected and concluded that there was not much difference between White men on either side of the border.  Work turned more to American reform and rights and with the rise of a vigorous, mostly White-led abolitionist movement and the establishment of the Underground Railroad.  By the 1850’s a much more radical generation represented by Fredrick Douglass transformed the movement.

The 1830 Convention was the first of many Black Convention held in the years before the Civil War.  Philadelphia was the most common site, but gatherings were also held in New York City, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati.  National and state conventions were held almost yearly through 1864 and their proceeding reflected the growing changes and militancy in the Free Black movement.  New organizations were spawned and publications launched.

In 1859 a White newspaper observed, “Colored conventions are almost as frequent as church meeting.”

And it all began in Philadelphia.


Equinox Dawn—New Murfin Verse

22 September 2021 at 07:00


 The doomed boxelder tree and it hale neighbor, the five-trunk silver maple.

It’s the Autumnal Equinox.  In the grey dawn yesterday morning as I went out to retrieve the newspaper from the driveway I was inspired.

Equinox Eve Morn

September 21, 2021

Murfin Estate

Crystal Lake

 

The first few leaves flutter down

            from the old, slowly dying Boxelder

            in the breaking grey light of dawn,

            most of the thinning leaves not yet turned.

 

The vigorous five-trunk silver maple

            whose crown enlaces it

            has not even begun to turn

            nor have any of the other trees

            on our small lot.

 

A wind from the far-off Lake

            breaks yesterday’s heat and humidity,

            on cue the seasons are shifting.

 

Like that old junk tree

            I can feel myself dropping my own leaves

            tentatively but surely.

 

My time, too, is slipping away.

 

—Patrick Murfin


The Founder of the Dynasty—Maurice Barrymore

21 September 2021 at 12:50
                                             Maurice Barrymore--matinee idol of the American Gilded Age stage. The man who founded a theatrical dynasty that is still going strong in its fourth generation with actress/producer Drew Barrymore was born in far off and exotic Fort Agra, India practically within shade of the Taj Mahal on September 21, 1849.  Herbert Arthur Chamberlayne Blythe was the son of a surveyor for the British East India Company and his wife Charlotte Matilda Chamberlayne de Tankerville.  The youngest of seven children, his mother died of complications from his birth.  He was largely raised by his double aunt Amelia Blythe, his mother’s sister who had married his father’s brother.  Whe...

Jim Croce—The Sudden Death of an Accidental Superstar

20 September 2021 at 12:16
  Classic Jim Croce--a working class Joe. Jim Croce looked like a truck driver who had lost one too many bar fights.  And indeed, he had been a truck driver, a welder, and construction worker in his life.  Yet in his brief careerhe became an acclaimed singer/song writer whose songs went head to head in the charts with the likes of James Taylor.  Crocedied in a plane crash on September 20, 1973 in Natchitoches, Louisiana.  He was just 30 years old and had released only two albumsas a single act—records that produced two #1 hits and numerous memorable tracks. Croce was born in South Philadelphia on January 10, 1943.  He was an indifferent studentwith a mild interest in music.  He played the accordion.  Mostly he goofed off.  Aft...

Jim Bowie—Rapscallion to Folk Hero With a Big Knife

19 September 2021 at 18:19
Already shot and wounded Jim Bowie, stabbed  Norris Wright who was trying to extract his sword cane from Bowie's torso with his big knife inflicting fatal damage. It was on this date in 1827 that Jim Bowie  killed a man in a Louisiana duel that disintegrated into a free-for-all melee.  He had been a witness to the duel when bystanders and partisans of the principals began brawling.  Bowie had already been shotand stabbed when he used his unique, large knife to kill banker Major Norris Wright.  Bowie was shot again and carried away with what was assumed to be fatal wounds.  Ironically, the two principals in the duel each fired two shots without hitting the other and shook hands with their honor vindicated.  Neither was injured in t...

Occupy Wall Street Hits 10 Year Anniversary

18 September 2021 at 12:23

 

The Occupy Wall Street General Assembly in session.

Note—Ten years ago yesterday, September 17, 2011 the most significant social movement of the early 21st Century got underway with the occupation of Zuccotti Park, located in New York City’s Wall Street financial district.  They intended to stay—and they did.  Occupy Wall Street began with a call in the counter-cultural magazine Adbusters drafted by ideological but undogmatic ancho-pacifists.  They got the ball rolling but stepped aside and never tried to exert leadership or control the movement that ballooned from their suggestion.

Adbuster's iconic Occupy Wall street poster attracted many to encamp in the Financial District.

It came as America was still in the grips of a depression caused by the collapse of the corrupt mortgage banking industry that had caused untold numbers to lose their homes, plunged many into unemployment, and robbed an emerging generation of hope.  Income inequality was growing and the movement adopted a slogan “We are the 99%” in opposition to the tiny mega rich elite which repressed them.

Zuccotti Park was renamed Liberty Square and growing daily marches was launched from the encampment there.  Soon similar encampments and marches sprang up in central cities across the country.  A movement grew that gripped the country for months and gained wide-spread public sympathy.  It was a movement that remained firmly rooted in non-violence despite occasional attempts by Black Block activists to steer it in a more violent direction and the increasing police violence that was being used to attempt to destroy encampments and quash street protest.  Eventually the Obama administration’s Justice Department encouraged and supported local authorities in aggressive police attacks.  One by one the encampments flickered out, but the spirit in which they grew remained and a generation of activists turned to other causes.

A succinct identification drew clear lines.

The Occupy Movement greatly influenced subsequent popular movements built from the ground up including student protests against gun violence, the Women’s March movement, Greta Thunberg’s climate change protests, Black Lives Matter, and immigration justice movements.

It is instructive to compare this truly organic movement to the carefully orchestrated insurrectionist mob that laid siege to the Capitol on January 6 backed by oligarchs, clear fascists, and White supremacists.  Both movements claimed to be revolutionary.

I wrote extensively about the Occupy Movement over the next few years.  He is a blog post from October 3, 2011 that caught the spirit of the early movement in New York.

On Friday, the day before New York City Police busted more than 700 marchers on the Brooklyn Bridge apparently just to show that they remembered how, the General Assembly of the Occupy Wall Street protesters issued their Declaration of the Occupation of New York City to explain themselves.

 

New York City kettled and arrested over 700 Occupy Wall Street demonstrators on the Brooklyn Bridge.  It did not end the protests.  Charges were eventually dismissed against almost all who were arrested that day.

For three weeks the media, when it was not totally ignoringa growing social revolution under their noses, mocked those twice a day Assemblies where the rag tag protestors without visible leaders, command structure, or ideology gathered to hash out plans for immediate action, logistic concerns, police relations, and, oh yeah, the purpose of the whole damn thing. 

High profile members of the professional left, accustomed to demonstrations of vast coalitions, huge steering committees, leaders certified by the press as being important, bullet point demands, and pre-printed signage tut-tutted and wrung their hands.

The encampment at Liberty Square.

Admittedly, the process as observed through shaky hand-held video cam clips posted on YouTube and protest sites, made them look a tad ridiculous.  Denied the use of a public address system or even bull horns by police the participants quickly improvised a system whereby commentsof speakers were relayed to the whole crowd by repeating short phrases in chorus.  At first it looks like a crowd of zombiesblindly parroting anything said to them. 

And because the discussions were open to participation by everyone, not every speaker was succinct or even rational.  Wackos and old lefties with ideological axes to grind got their say.  But so did hundreds, in the end maybe thousands, of ordinary and here-to-fore voiceless citizens.

 

The media could not grasp an apparently leaderless, democratic movement.

Formal motions and votes were noticeable by their absence.  As the conversations continued the crowds driftedtoward consensus.  It was clear to participants when that consensus was achieved

Yet despite everything the Assemblies and their odd processes worked.  Day by day, week by week the protests in New York grew until they could no longer be ignored.  The young people, tech savvyand knowledgeable in the new ways of social media, found ways to spread the wordand build support.  The protest spreadto dozens of cities around the country and even attracted international support.

Still, they kept being asked—Where are your demands? What are you doing here? Show us your manifesto so we can shoveyou into a box and pin a label on you.  So the Assembly went at the work of explaining themselves.

Anyone who has ever tried to draft a document in a committee knows what an irksome, almost impossible task it is.  People argue endlessly not just about the Big Picture but about wording nuance and the placement of semi-colons.  The results usually come out looking like they were constructed by a committee—filled with a mix of buzz words, in-group jargon, whereasesand wherefores and stilted legalese.  The alternative is to swallow some ringing manifesto composed by a charismatic leader, an act which instantly converts a popular movement to a quickly ossifying ism.

The folks at the Occupy Wall Street Assemblies worked some magic.  I’m not sure just how they did it.  I would have liked to watch the presses in action.  In the end they came out with a clear and concise documentthat would not paint them into an expected corner.  And they did so with rhetorical grace.

This is what they want to sayto the world right now.  Pass it on.

 

Artist Rachel Schrgais charted the interconnectedness of the Declaration of the Occupation of New York City.


Declaration of the Occupation of New York City


As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.

They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.

They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.

They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.

They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts. *

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

*These grievances are not all-inclusive.

Rebel Worker and Icon Carlos Cortez Inducted into Chicago Hall of Literary Fame

17 September 2021 at 13:08

 

I am more than thrilled to learn that my old friend, Fellow Worker, and mentor Carlos Cortez will be honored Sunday, September 19 as one of four inductees into the Chicago Hall of Literary Fame in a ceremonyat the Cit Lit Theater, 1020 West Bryn Mawr Avenue from 7to 8:30 pm.

Carlos might not we well known to the general public, but he is a revered figure in the labor movement, especially with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and in the Latinx and Native American arts communities.  He was perhaps best known for his lino and woodcut posters and illustrations. For him art of all types was inseparable from social activism and was meant to be easily accessible to ordinary people.  He could have made a fortune and been far more widely recognized as a fine artist if he sold his posters in signed and numbered editions.  Instead, he printed them himself in unlimited numbers by silk screening on what ever paper stock he could scrounge and were sold for a few dollars or more likely given away.  In fact, if he discovered there was a commercial market for his prints that were being re-sold by dealers and galleries, he would print more just to keep the price down.  Much of his work has been archived, preserved, and displayed and displayed at Chicago’s National Museum of Mexican Art, which he helped nurture.

Carlos Cortez was honored at a retrospective exhibit at Chicago's National Museum of Mexican Art.

But he is being recognized now as a writer.  He was also a roll-up-his-sleeves, plain spoken poet who publishedthree collections in his lifetime who shared his work at poetry readings and slams around the city avoiding the establishmentto find venues where the excluded and outcast could be included.  He performed his pieces at union meetings and on picket lines, at rallies and benefits, and for those who gathered in the informal salon he kept open in the former Northwest Side neighborhood storefront where he made a home with his beloved wife Marianna. 

Most of his work first saw print in the Industrial Worker with which he was associated for more than 40 years. 

Born in Milwaukee on August 13, 1923 to a German Socialist mother and a Mexican indio/mestizo IWW member Father.  He was steeped from the beginning in working class culture and revolutionary values.  He took seriously the old Socialist admonitions not to allow governments to divide workers and turn them against each other in imperialist wars.  During World War II he refused induction into the Army and spent nearly three years in the Federal Prison at Sandstone, Minnesota—ironically the same prison where I was held for the same offense for draft resistance during the Vietnam War.  After the war he worked in various factories.

In the late 1950’s he decided to come down to Chicago to become more involved with the IWW where there was both an active general membership branch and the union’s General Headquarters.  He volunteered his time helping out at GHQ where Fred W. Thompsonthen the Editor of the Industrial Worker began to use his contributions of both illustrations and writings.

Carlos did many versions of this poster  of IWW songwriter and martyr Joe Hill including editions in Spanish and Swedish.

Soon he was contributing several pieces each issue—articles, essays, folksy polemics, and occasional verse.   Short musings, observations, and yarns were printed as a regular feature column The Left Side.  Other pieces appeared signed as CAC, C.C. Redcloud, Koyokuikatl, and his IWW membership card number X321826.

When he first came down he was still known as Karl Cortez as his mother called him, but has he immersed himself in the city and connected to the Mexican and Chicago communities, he became Carlos and adopted the big hats, and flowing moustache and sometimes goatee which became his trademark.

By the late 60’s Carlos took over as editor of the paper and in 1970 I began my regular contributions to its pages.  Later we reorganized the staff as collective and eventually I assumed the editorship while Carlos continued his contributions.  When we lost office space to do the layout and production, we did it at a table in Carlos and Marianna’s apartment.  When that place was remodeled by their landlord they stayed with me and then Secretary Treasurer Kathleen Taylor in our near-by fourth floor walk-up apartment in the building dubbed Wobbly Towers for a few months.

At an IWW party in the mid-70's Carlos, center, chatted with New York anarchist writer Sam Dolgoff while I listened to Kay Brundage, former wife of College of Complexes Janitor Slim Brundage.

Meanwhile Carlos and I both worked as custodians at Coyne American Institute, a trade school on Fullerton Avenue.  A few years later when I was homeless Carlos returned the favor and I stayed with them for some time enjoying Marianna’s strong espresso in the morning and hanging with Carlos over Wild Turkey in the evenings in the large gallery-like front room that served as his workshopand gathering spot.   Almost any evening was an education.

It is really a tribute to the Industrial Worker as a working class institution that Carlos is being honored for the work that largely first appeared there.

During those years Carlos became a founding member of the Movemento Aristico Chicano (MARCH)—the first organization of Latino artists in the city.  With his close friend Carlos Cumpián and others meeting in the comfortable front room, he built an organization which mentored many young artists, spread “the culture”, and helped foster the re-birth of the muralist movement in the city.  He also became an early supporter of the Mexican Fine Arts Center now known as the National Museum of Mexican Arts which became the repository of many of his works and has the largest collection of his extensive production in the world.  He was also active with the Chicago Mural Group, Mexican Taller del Grabado (Mexican Graphic Workshop), Casa de la Cultura Mestizarte, and the Native Men’s Song Circle, a Native American group out of the American Indian Center.  Through that association, he came to mentor and encourage young Indian artists with the same passion he dedicated to the Chicanos.  In fact, there was no artist or poet of any race who was not welcome in that home, as long as they were ready and eager to serve the people’s needs and not “art for art’s sake,” a notion he found repugnant and elitist.

Carlos used Marianna as a model often as a personification of the spirit of revolution in Industrial Worker illustrations like this May Day linocut.  He reveled in her voluptuous body, which sometimes got him in trouble.  

A lifelong bachelor, in the early 60’s a Greek friend told him that he should meet his sister.  The trouble was that she was still in Greece.  The two corresponded through her brother for a while.  Carlos saved his money, quit his job, and crossedthe ocean as a passenger on a freighter.  He met Marianna Drogitis, a lovely young woman who was, however, by the standards of her culture, a spinster having rejected several suitors.  The two fell in love despite not speaking a word of each other’s language.  They communicatedby gesture and the few words of German they had in common—she had learned the language in occupied Greece where members of her family were active in the Resistance.  They returned to the U.S. on another freighter, married, and settled into the happiest marriage I have ever seen in a Chicago apartment in 1965. 

When I proposed to Kathy Brady-Larsen in the early 80’s, Carlos was pleased to make a drawing of the two of us with her daughters Carolynne and Heather for the invitations I designed.  He and Marianna danced happily at our wedding party at Lilly’s on Lincoln Avenue.

By 1981 Carlos’s heart forced him to retire from wage slavery.  It gave him more time to dedicate to his artwork, poetry and causes.  Unfortunately, it also put a strain on Marianna who took extra work to make up for the lost income.  Despite sometimes working twelve hours at two jobs, she always had a smile for any of Carlos’s many guests, and a pat on the cheek for the old man.

Carlos's best known collection of poetry was issued by Charles H. Kerr, the revered Socialist publishing house.

Carlos, although best known as a graphic artist and for his work on the Industrial Worker, was also a poet.  He would do occasional readings at an old haunt, the College of Complexes, in coffee houses, at radical bookstores, and wherever his friends gathered.  He wrote three books of poetry, including De Kansas a Califas & Back to Chicago, published by March/Abrazo Press, and Crystal-Gazing the Amer Fluid & Other Wobbly Poems, published by the old Socialist publisher Charles H. Kerr & Company.  Carlos was Presidentof the Kerr Board for 20 years, a title he detested.  He also edited, wrote the introductionto, or contributed to several other books.

Carlos was devastated when his beloved Marianna died in 2001.  I last saw him at her memorial.

His health deteriorated rapidly after that, and he was often confined to a wheelchair.  He continued to greet a steady parade of visitors and admirers to his studio home and participated in the planning of new exhibitions of his work, including one in Madrid sponsored by the anarcho-syndicalists of the Confederacion National de Trabajo (CNT.)   He suffered a massive heart attack and was confined to his bed for the last 18 months of his life.

On January 17, 2005 Carlos died, surrounded by friends and “listening to the music of the Texas Tornados.”

His long-time friend Carlos Cumpián will speak about him at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony.


The Chicago Hall of Literary Fame describes its mission thusly:

Chicago is not a city that can be crisply explained, neatly categorized, or easily understood.

Yet through our literature we strive to define our place in the world. Our literature speaks to our city’s diversity, character and heart. In our literature can be found all we love and hate, frozen snapshots of our vast terrain over the years, commentary on our ever-changing culture. In our literature can be found who we are and what we do and where we do it. The value and character of our city is not only reflected in but shaped by our great books.

Our mission is to honor and preserve Chicago’s great literary heritage.

Unlike other cultural institutions the Hall of Fame does not just honor world famous authors but takes pains to highlight authentic and diverse voices.

Other honorees this year include Black novelist Frank London Brown whose work describing life in the Projects in the late 1950’s included novel Trumbull Park and the short story McDougal.  He was also a machinist, union organizer, and was director of the Union Leadership Program at the University of Chicago.  He enjoyed some fameas a jazz singer as appearing with Thelonius Monk. Brown died young in 1962.  Jeannette Howard Foster was an educator, librarian, translator, poet, scholar, and author of the first critical study of lesbian literature, Sex Variant Women in Literature in 1956. She was also the first librarian of Dr. Alfred Kinsey’s Institute for Sex Research, and she influenced generations of librarians and gay lesbian literary figures. She died in 1981.  Gene Wolf was a science fictionand fantasy writer noted for his dense, allusive prose as well as the strong influence of his Catholic faith. He has been called the Melville of science fiction. Wolfe is best known for his Book of the New Sun series—four volumes, 1980–1983—the first part of his Solar Cycle He died in 2019.

Carlos will be in good company.


Don’t be Fooled—Only Diez y Seis de Septiembre is Mexican Independence Day

16 September 2021 at 07:00

Revolution and religion mix in this homage to Padre Miguel Hidalgo with the banner of the Virgen de Guadalupe and an angel bending to kiss his brow.

Note:  Versions of this have run previously in this blog, I’m posting it again as a public service.  Mexico has a real history and tradition that is deeper than a taco and tequila festival favored by Gringos. 

Quick, what’s Mexican Independence Day?  If you answered Cinco de Mayo, you’d be wrong.  That is a minor provincial holiday in Mexico that has become a celebration of Mexican pride in the United States.  It celebrates the victory of the Mexican Army over the French Empire at the Battle of Pueblain 1862, during the French invasion of Mexico.  The correct answer is Diez y Seis de Septiembre—September 16—which commemorates El Grito de Delores, the rallying cry which set off a Mexican revolution against Spanish colonial rule and the caste of native born Spaniards who ran roughshod over the people in 1810. 

Early in the morning of that fateful day Padre Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a respected priest and champion of the Mestizosmixed Spanish and Indian blood—and the Indios.  Both classes were held in virtual serfdom by a system in which native born Spaniards—Gachupines—held ruthless sway.  Hidalgo had for sometime been part of a plot by Criollos to stage a coup d’état by Mexican born Spaniards who were the middling level officers and administers of the system. 

The Criollo plot was to take advantage of resentment of the impositionof Joseph Bonaparte on the Spanish throneby Napoleon to declare Mexican independence within a Spanish Empire under Ferdinand VII, considered by the Spanish people as the legitimate heir to the throne. But Ferdinand was held in France by the Emperor, so if it had succeeded the plot would have created a de-facto republic.  The Gachupines, who had accepted Bonaparte, would be driven out of Mexico. 

Plotters decided on a date in December to stage their coup.  In the meantime they were quietly trying to line up the support of Criollo officers and by extension the Army.  But the plot was betrayed and orders were sent out to arrest theleaders, including Hidalgo.

The wife of Miguel Domínguez, Corregidor of Queretaro (chief administrative official of the city of Queretaro) and a leader of the plot, learned of the pending arrests and sent a warningto Hidalgo in the village of Delores near the city of Guanajuato, about 230 miles northwest of the capital of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, Mexico City. The late in the evening of September 15, Hidalgo asked Ignacio Allende, the Criollo officer who had brought the warning, to arrest all of the Gachupines in the city.

It was apparent to Hidalgo and Allende that the Criollos had not had time to solidify their support in the army, and indeed that many Criollo officers refused to join.  The revolution would inevitably be crushed.  Sometime in the early morning hours of September 16, Hidalgo made a fateful decision—he would call on the mestizo and Indio masses to rise up

At about 6 A.M.  Hidalgo assembled the people of the pueblo by tolling the church bell.  When they were together he made this appeal, which he had hastily drafted:

My children: a new dispensation comes to us today. Will you receive it? Will you free yourselves? Will you recover the lands stolen by three hundred years ago from your forefathers by the hated Spaniards? We must act at once… Will you defend your religion and your rights as true patriots? Long live our Lady of Guadalupe! Death to bad government! Death to the Gachupines!

This is the famous Grito de Delores which sparked the revolt.  Runnerswent out to nearby towns carrying the message.  The long oppressed people flocked to the cause armed with knives, machetes, homemade spears, farm implements, and what few fire arms that they could take from the Gachupines. 

Indios, Meztizos, and Criollos on the march in this mural by Juan O'Gorman.

With Hidalgo and Allende at their head, the peasants began the march to Mexico City.  Along the way they acquired an icon of the Virgin of GuadalupeMary depicted as a dark skinned Indian—which became the banner of the revolt.

Along the way a regular Army regiment under the command of Criollos joined the march, but the swelling ranks of peasants—soon to number up to 50,000, was out of control by any authority. 

The first major battle of the war began at Guanajuato, a substantial provincial town, on September 28.  Local officialsrounded up the Gachupines and loyal Criollos and their families and made a stand in the town’s fortified granary.  Hundreds of peasants were killed in wild frontal assaults on the position until rocks thrown from above caused the collapse of the granary roof, injuring many.  When a civil official ran up a white flag of surrender, the garrison commander countermanded the order and opened fire on the native forces coming forward to accept it.  Scores were killed.  After that there was no quarter.  With the exception of a few women and children, the 400 occupants of the granary were massacred.  Then the town was pillaged and looted, with Criollo homes faring no better than the native Spaniards.

The siege of the fortified granary during the Battle of Guanajuato. 

Of course Hidalgo had unleashed an unmanageableand ferocious anger among the people.  Along the march any Gachupines unfortunate enough to fall into the hands of the rebels were brutally killed, as were any Criollos who sided with them—or were simply assumed to be European born.  The revolt was not just a national one—it was a virtualslave revolt with all of the attendant horror that implied.

Word of the fate of Guanajuato mobilized forces in Mexico City and caused most wealthy Criollos to side with the government or try to remain neutral.

Hidalgo and his closest supporters later abandoned the army and returned to Delores.  He was frightenedand disillusioned by what he had brought about.  A year later he was captured by Gachupine forces and hanged.

Hidalgo, Allende, and almost the entire revolutionary officer corps were trapped and arrested in March 1811.

It took 11 years of war to finally oust the Spaniards. A triumphant revolutionary army finally entered Mexico City on September 28, 1821, issued an official Declaration of the Independence of Mexican Empire, and established a government of imperial regency under Agustín de Iturbide.

But Mexicans mark the beginning of the struggle—the Grito de Delores—as the true anniversary of independence.

Huge crowds throng Mexico City each year for the pageantry and celebration of Independence Day including spectacular fireworks.

Eventually the church bell from Delores was brought to the capital.  Each year on the night of September 15, the President of Mexico rings the bell at the National Palace and repeats a Grito Mexicano based upon the Grito de Dolores from the balcony of the palace to the hundreds of thousands assembled in the Plaza de la Constitución.  At dawn on September 16 a military parade starts in the Plaza passes the Hidalgo Memorial and proceeds down the Paseo de la Reforma, the city’s main boulevard.  Similar celebrations are held in cities and towns across Mexico.


Murfin Verse for Yom Kippur—A Goyish Take

15 September 2021 at 10:38


This poem has appeared on this blogat least nine times for Yom Kippur.  I guess that this makes it an official tradition. It was inspired not only by my genuine admiration for the Holy Day, but by an ongoing controversy in my own Unitarian Universalist faith.  For many years UUs have gone blithely on incorporating snatches of prayers, ritual, and traditionfrom other religions into our own worship.  We do it mostly in good faith claiming “The Living Tradition which we share draws from many sources…”

But lately we have taken grieffrom Native Americans for adopting willy-nilly rituals and prayers which we don’t fully understand and take out of context, many of which, frankly, turned out to be New Age touchy-feely faux traditions.  And from African-Americans for Kwanza being widely celebrated is in almost all-white UU Sunday Schools.

The Jewish window from the nine faith traditions that inspire Unitarian Universalist series designed by Pam Lopatin and now on display in the Tree of Life UU Congregation in McHenry, Illinois.

Being UU’s, many of us were stung that our well-meaning gestures were not gratefully accepted as a sort of homage.  Others busily set themselves up to the task of wiping the scourge of cultural appropriation from our midst, preferably with a judicious dollop of self-flagellation with knotted whips—oops! Stole that one from 4th Century monks…No, what they did was form committees and commissions to issue long, high minded reports to be translated into deepretreats.  Seminary training was amended for proper sensitivity, and scolding monitors were appointed to detect insufficient rigor in rooting out the offense at General Assemblies and meetings.

Last year the UU Church of Worcester in Massachusetts, the cradle church of Universalism in the U.S., celebrated Yom Kippur.  Many cultural, ethnic, and secularized Jews belong to UU congregations which also welcome many interfaith families.  Some Jews belong to both local synagogues and UU congregations.  Ministers frequently include elements of Jewish worship even in congregations with few Jewish members.

In that spirit I offer you my poem.  Angry denunciations and heresy trial to follow…

And, yea, I may also have been reading a lot of Carl Sandburg when I wrote this.  Think it shows?

Cultural Appropriation

 

See, the Jews have this thing.

 

Yahweh, or whatever they call their Sky God,

            keeps a list like Santa Claus.

 

You know, who’s been naughty and nice.

 

But before He puts it in your Permanent Record

            and doles out the lumps of coal

            He gives you one more chance

            to set things straight.

 

So to get ready for this one day of the year—

            they call it Yom Kippur

            but it’s hard to pin down because

            it wanders around the fall calendar

            like an orphan pup looking for its ma—

the Jews run around saying they are sorry 

            to everyone they screwed over last year

            and even to those whose toes

            they stepped on by accident.

 

The trick is, they gotta really mean it.

           

None of this “I’m sorry if my words offended” crap,

            that won’t cut no ice with the Great Jehovah.

            And they gotta, you know, make amends,

            do something, anything, to make things right

            even if it’s kind of a pain in the ass.

 

Then the Jews all go to Temple—

             even the ones who never set foot in it

             the whole rest of the year

             and those who think that,

             when you get right down to it,

             that this Yahweh business is pretty iffy—

             and they tell Him all about it.

 

First a guy with a big voice sings something.

                       

And then they pray—man do they ever pray,

              for hours in a language that sounds

              like gargling nails

              that most of ‘em don’t even savvy.

 

A guy blows an old ram’s horn,         

            maybe to celebrate, I don’t know

 

When it’s all over, they get up and go home

             feeling kind of fresh and new. 

 

If they did it right that old list

was run through the celestial shredder.

 

Then next week, they can go out

            and start screwing up again.

 

It sounds like a sweet deal to me.

 

Look, I’m not much of one for hours in the Temple—

            an hour on Sunday morning

when the choir sings sweet

is more than enough for me, thank you.

 

And I have my serious doubts about this

            Old Man in the Sky crap.

 

But this idea of being sorry and meaning it

of fixing things up that I broke

            and starting fresh

            has legs.

 

I think I’ll swipe it.

 

I’ll start right now.

 

To my wife Kathy—

            I’m sorry for being such

            a crabby dickhead most of the time…

 

Anybody got a horn?

 

—Patrick Murfin

  

Ten Blue Jay Round Trippers Blast the Team into the Record Books

14 September 2021 at 10:25

Ernie Whitt launches one of his homers in the slug fest against the Orioles in 1987.

Except for the general excitement of a Division race, the game at Toronto’s old Exhibition Stadium on warm afternoon of September 14, 1987 started out as nothing special.  The Canadian team was tied with Detroit in the American League East and naturally hoped to pull ahead with a victory against the Baltimore Orioles.  The first inning passed with neither starter, Jim Clancy of the Jays and Ken Dixon of the O’s, allowing a run.

Toronto's old Exhibition Stadium was a dual use facility which also hosted the Argonauts of the Canadian Football League and the Blizzard of the North American Soccer League.  Only about 3/4s of the grandstand could be used for baseball and most fans sat in uncomfortable, shadeless bleacher seats.  A Blue Jay owner once complained "wasn't just the worst stadium in baseball, it was the worst stadium in sports."

Then in the bottom of the second inning all hell broke loose.

Ernie Whitt led off the second with a solo home run.  One batter later, Rance Mulliniks hit a two-run shotExit hurler Dixon, enter Eric Bell who promptly let another runner get on base and then served up a fat one to Lloyd Moseby who smacked it out of the house.

Just like that it was a three homer, 5-0 game.  And Baltimore’s miserywas just beginning.

In the third George Bell launched one followed by Moseby’s second of the day.  Five round trippers, 7-0,

Leading off the fifth Whitt collected his second homer of the afternoon.  The battered and bewildered Orioles pitching staff had now coughed up six four baggers.

Next inning Bell added his second boomer of the day. With seven homers and a 10-2 lead Jay’s manager Jimy Williams felt comfortable resting Bell, Moseby, and Tony Fernandez.

If Baltimore expected mercy from the bench, they were mistaken.  Rob Ducey, in for Moseby, hit a 3-run homer.  Witt immediately followed with his third shot of the day.  Nine homers, 14-2 after seven.

Ordinarily designated hitter Fred McGriff would be expected to provide power to the home team, but he had been left out of the party.  Until he stepped to the plate to open the ninth inning and delivered his contribution. 

Mulliniks, Bell, Moseby, Ducey, McGriff, Whitt combined to hit 10 home runs in one game.

In total, the Blue Jays hit a grand total of 10 home runs, collected 21 hits and scored 18 runs and won the game handily 18-3 and had three hitters with multiple homers.  The game set a record for most home runs by one team in a single game, a Major League record which still stands to this day.  This is even more impressive in light of the fact the MLB record for total homers by both teams in a game, stands at only 12.

As a sidelight to the game when Oriole’s skipper Cal Ripken, Sr. realized the game was hopeless, he gave his son, Cal Ripken, Jr. some well-deserved rest.  But in doing so he ended Junior’s unbroken streak of 8,243 innings played.

The Blue Jay's logo from 1977 to 1996.  Since the Montreal Expos went to Washington in 2004 the Jays have been the only Canadian team in Major League Baseball.

The Jays went on to sweep the series and opened a 3½ game lead on Tigers with two weeks left in the season.  But Detroit came roaring back, closing the gap and beating the Blue Jays head-to-head 1-0 on October 4 to claim the Division crown.  The Michiganders lost the American League Championship to the Minnesota Twins who beat the Cardinals in the seventh game of an epic World Series battle to claim the World Championship.


 

Bill Monroe and Bluegrass—Old Roots New Sound

13 September 2021 at 10:04
  Many of Bill Monroe's early recordings with and without the Blue Grass Boys continue to be reissued in modern formats.   A handful of musicians and performerscan be said to have laid the groundwork for and popularized whole genres of American music—Scott Joplin with ragtime, Louis Armstrongwith jazz, Robert Johnson with Delta blues, Jimmie Rodgers with modern country music, and perhaps Elvis Presley for rock and roll.  Only one, in the words of an admiring Ricky Skaggs “…was so influential…he’s probably the only musician that had a whole style of music named after his band.”  That was Bill Monroe.  His band was called the Blue Grass Boys. Monroe was born a hundred and ten years ago on September 13, 1911 on a hard scra...

September Song—An Enduring Wistful Anthem

12 September 2021 at 07:00
Walter Huston and Jeanne Madden as Peter Stuyvesant and Tina Tienhoven in Knickerbocker Holiday. There must be something about September that inspires songwriters.   Other months, of course, get a lot of musical traffic but the transition month between summer and autumn has produced some stunningly memorable tunes often laden with wistfulness and tinged with melancholy.   Several have become standards.   Think of Try to Remember from The Fantasticks, Frank Sinatra’s rendition of September of My Years by Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn, or Neal Diamond’s schmaltzy power ballad September Morn .   Lately Green Day’s When September Ends shows signs of similar legs.   You can probably think of others.   But all must bow before the...

Twenty Years—A Dreaded Anniversary With Murfin Rant and Verse

11 September 2021 at 10:52
Note —Twenty years after America’s most traumatic experience the memory of the 8/11 attacks is everywhere—news specials and documentaries all over broadcast and cable, newspaper front pages, special commemorative magazines at the grocery check-out, made-for-TV movies, new books both serious and refloating conspiracy theories.  Today there will be live coverage of memorial services at the site of the Twin Towers in New York, at the Pentagon, in a Pennsylvania field, and in cities and towns across the country.  Witnesses, survivors, and family members will be interviewed.  Pundits will try and find meaning and too often echo old, discredited conclusions.  Not just a calendar milestone, the event is made more poignant by the chaot...

Pedaling to Help in Woodstock—Ride To Leave a Light On

10 September 2021 at 12:19

A rider and light festooned bike at a previous Ride to Leave a Light On event.

It looks to be a warm, pleasant evening this Saturday, September 11 at 6:30 pm in Woodstock, Illinois for a special bicycle ride through the streets and neighborhoodsof charming city.  It will be neighbors helping neighbors at the Ride To Leave a Light On As a Beacon for Others.  Sponsored by Ken West’s Material Things shop the bike ride will raise funds for local organizationsthat support community members who are struggling in one manner or another. 


This year those organizations will include New Directions Addiction Recovery Services;  Live4Laliwhich “works to reduce stigma and prevent substance use disorder among individuals, families, and communities, and minimize the overall health, legal and social harms associated with substance use”; CLBreak, a Crystal Lake teen center; Illinois Migrant Council; the Community Foundation for McHenry County; CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates for children) of McHenry County; and Compassion for Campers which provides gear and supplies to the unhoused.

Folks can support any or all of these great causes by purchasing strings of lights for $10 each to decorate bicycles and riders and, of course, by riding.  Strings can be purchased from participating organizations, from Material Things using this link, or the evening of the event.  You can designate your purchase to support any of the organizations or to be split evenlyby all.


Strings and information on the organizations will be available on Woodstock Square beginning at 6:30 as riders gather.  There will be opening remarks and instructionsbeginning at 7, and the ride will set off at 7:20.  Ride is approximately  4.5 miles on level terrain and take 45 to 50 minutes.  When riders return to the Square there will be live music by Big Fish.

It promises to be a family friendly, joyous eveningfor riders, supporters, and folks out and about around the Square.

Material Things, a fine crafts artisan market at 103 East Van Buren Street on the Square is donating the lights for sale.

The Lincoln Highway Was the Main Street of America

9 September 2021 at 11:20
The Hearst papers were early band beaters for the Lincoln Highway as this 1913 cartoon in the San Francisco Examiner attests. On September 10, 1913 Henry Joy,President of the Lincoln Highway Association, announced the selection of a routefor a proposed coast-to-coast improvedand paved highway that would stretch from New York City’s Times Square to Lincoln Park in San Francisco.  Just over a month later the route would be dedicated as a memorial to Abraham Lincoln on his birthdayeven though not an inch of new pavement had been laid down. The highway was the brainchild of Carl Fisher, an innovative automotive pioneer who made his fortune manufacturing the compressed gas headlamps then used on most American cars.  He also owned and mana...

The Original Pledge of Allegiance and How it Was Stood on Its Head

8 September 2021 at 11:28
                         Rev. Francis Bellamy, a Christian socialist and author of the original version of the Pledge of Allegiance.   On September 8, 1893 a Pledge of Allegiance crafted by Francis Bellamy for the popular children’s magazine Youth’s Companion , where the Baptist minister was on staff , made its first appearance.  He was not only a Christian, but also a socialist and first cousin of the utopian socialist Edward Bellamy, whose novel Looking Backwards was one of the most influential books of the late 19th Century . Pledges of allegiance were still controversial in those days.  After the Civil War former Confederates who wanted their civil rights restoredhad to swear allegiance to the Union.  Even as l...

Rosh Hashanah—Sounding the Shofar for a New Year

7 September 2021 at 12:24

 

Today is the first full day of Rosh Hashanah which began at sundown last night.  In the United States that was also the evening of Labor Day which for many Americans is itself a kind of new year—the traditional end of summer and the beginning of a new work/school year when we are supposed to get back down to business.

For Jews it is Yom Teruah, the Day of Shouting (or Blasting) which marks the first of the High Holy Days as well as the start of the New Year.  It falls on first day of Tishrei, the seventh month of the ecclesiastical year that began with Passover in the spring and represents the first of the civic year.  This year it ushers in 5782 on the Hebrew calendar.

This 1904 Austrian greeting card depicts the traditional blowing of the shofar during a Rosh Hashanah service.

It is a joyous celebration filled with the hope of a brand new year and is celebrated at synagogue services highlighted by the blowingof the shofar, a hollowed-out ram’s horn, as proscribed in Leviticus to “raise a noise” on Yom Teruah.   It is also it is also a symbolic wake-up call, stirring Jews to mend their ways and repent and begins a period of preparing for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.  Poems called piyyutimare added to the regular services and a special prayer book, the mahzor, is used on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  A number of additions are made to the regular service, most notably an extended repetition of the Amidah, the central prayer of the Jewish liturgy. The Shofar is blown during Mussaf at several intervals a total of 100 times. 

Items that might be found on a Rosh Hashanah plate.

A Rosh Hashanah seder is offered by many communities but reflecting the years of exile and repression when many Jews could not openly worship at the Temple in Jerusalem or in Rabbinic synagogues, there are also rituals for the home and family including ritual foods especially apples dipped in honey to symbolize a sweet new year.  Depending on customs and traditions, other foods are also included.  Among the Ashkenazi Jews who make up most of American Judaism the ritual plate may also include dates, pomegranates, black-eyed peas, pumpkin-filled pastries called rodanchas, leek fritters called keftedes de prasa; beets. and a whole fish with the head intact. It is also common to eat stuffed vegetables called legumbres yaprakes.  Wine accompanies the blessing.

Details and customs vary depending on the origins of communities in Europe, the Mediterranean, or the Mid-East.  And also between Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform congregations.  Many entirely secular Jews still observe some of the traditions culturally.

To my many Jewish friends L’shanah Tovah no matter how you keep the day.


It Can’t be Repeated Enough—The Working Class Virtue of Solidarity

6 September 2021 at 10:01

Note:  It was my privilege to be asked to speak—and to host one year—from 2015 to 2019 at the annual Labor Day Event on Woodstock Square sponsored by McHenry County Progressives.  Today we will look back at the meat of my talk in 2016—a Presidential election year that turned out to have disastrous results.  Specifics about that race are now dated, but the themes they represent are all back this year, as you can read.  My remarks on the working class virtue of solidarity were adapted from earlier material, including one of my Labor Day sermons at the old Congregational Unitarian Church in Woodstock.

We gathered here last year [2015] for the first time, a small band of folks called together by some local fans of Bernie Sanders who wanted to celebrate his hero Eugene V. Debs and his connection to Woodstock.  As a fan of both, an old Wobbly, and a soapboxer, I was thrilled to be asked to participate.

A lot has happened in the last year and here we are again.  Bernie Sanders, thanks to folks like those who organized the Labor Day event, went from being an obscure longshot, to the leader of a wide and deep political revolution, and came tantalizingly close to winning the Democratic Party nomination.  When he didn’t some folks were heartbroken, other mad.  Some picked up their toys and went home in a sulk and huff.  Some picked up Bernie’s challenge to keep the Revolution going by going deep and wide—running for local office and trying to recapture Congress from troglodyte Republicans.  That’s what the folks here in McHenry County have done.

Some folks swore that no matter what they would never vote for Hillary Clinton, who apparently has horns and is the spawn of Satan, no matter what, no way, no how.  Others have either swallowed hard and followed Bernie’s appeal and decided to vote for Hillary, or with more enthusiasm vowed to actively work for her election along with the rest of the Democratic ticket.

The Old Man explaining the Working Class Virtue of Solidarity at the 2016 Labor Day event in Woodstock Square.

People who were comrades in the campaign struggle a couple of months ago but are on opposite sides of the Hillary divide, are hurling invectives at one another, denouncing each other as traitors or saboteurs.  Relationships have been shattered.  That longed for political revolution is crippled by dissention.

Meanwhile genuine naked fascism has arisen as a mass movement and swallowed the traditional conservative party.  Ordinary Americans who have seen their lives and futures sacrificed time and again to corporate greed have been taught to blame their woes on a rotating cast of others—Mexicans and emigrants this week, Muslims and refugees next, women, gays, Black lives Matter protesters, scientists, the sick and the elderly.  Violence is in the air like the whiff of gunpowder.

Considering all this, on this Labor Day I want to commend to you the working class virtue of solidarity even if you have never considered yourself a worker. 

Solidarity by Käthe Kollwitz.

First we need to consider what solidarity is not….

Solidarity is not sympathy.  Sympathy is a passive emotion.  It also implies a separation from the object of sympathy and can teeter on pity, which is just sympathy tinged with revulsion. Empathy might be closer to the meaning in that it implies a common understanding of the distress.  But empathy is also passive.  Solidarity demands action.

Solidarity is not charity.  Charity implies a power and privilege differential.  The more powerful and more privileged deign to give to the less fortunate who are expected to respond with appropriate gratitude and humility.  Solidarity is mutual aid among equals.

Solidarity is not altruism.  Altruism is supposedly selfless giving requiring sacrifice but expecting no reward—except perhaps praise for being saint-like.  Solidarity recognizes the commonality of our conditions and expects to receive support by right as well as give it.

Solidarity is not family.  Families—and by extension surrogate families like clans, nations, religions, races and others—are expected to support their members out of blood obligation.  Solidarity demands respect for commonality with the other.  Solidarity with the stranger dismantles walls and promotes peace instead of a mad scramble over scarce resources.

Solidarity is not utopian.  Utopians conjure up sweet dreams of the perfect.  Utopians may simply drift on in the opium cloud of that dream. More dangerously, some utopians construct rigid ideologies around their vision which eventually require the ruthless suppression of anything and anyone not in conformity to that ideology.  Solidarity is rooted in the common realities we face together and is interested in addressing the roots of the problems as well as ameliorating the immediate effects.

Solidarity is not all warm and fuzzy.  Warm and fuzzy denies oppression.  Solidarity recognizes that there are those whose own narrow self-interest causes them to exploit, subjugate, and abuse others.  And solidarity demands common action to defend against such depredations and—yes—boldly to ultimately defeat the oppressors.

Solidarity is a recognition of our place in humanity, an ethic, and an active response to our common interests.

Solidarity recognizes that justice requires cooperation and effort across all boundaries of separation.

Solidarity enlarges our communities, builds bridges of respect that can span differences.  It does not demand lock-step conformity to some ideological purity to act together in mutual support.  It requires listening, really listening and not just waiting our turn to deliver a lecture.  When generations of feminists support Hillary Clinton passionately it means not sneering that they are voting their vaginas, but understanding why and ultimately standing with them just as we hope that they will stand with us for the dismantlement of corporate power. 

Solidarity requires humility and taking the risk of having our fragile identities challenged.  We cannot give more than lip service to Black Lives Matter unless we understand and take ownership of the White privilege understanding it is not a moral flaw but a condition we are born to.  By breaking down our defenses we can collaborate in our mutual liberation with respect and understanding.

Most of all, solidarity requires commitment and action.  There are no sidelines, no room for mere cheerleaders.  Each and every one of us are called to put our bodies and our lives on the line again and again in some meaningful ways.  And we are buoyed by the knowledge that others are prepared to do the same for us.

Can we make a promise this Labor Day to commit to the working class virtue of solidarity?  Can we face the challenges not just of the coming elections, but in defending women’s bodies and choice, dismantlement the new slavery of mass incarceration, and standing in the Spirit Camp of the Standing Rock Sioux as they defend all of our water.  There is a lot to do.  No individual can do it all. But we can all do something.

In the words of Ralph Chaplin in the great anthem of the Working Class:

In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold;

Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand-fold.

We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old,

For the Union makes us strong!

 

 

U.S. Labor Day—A Working Class Holiday on the Rebound

5 September 2021 at 11:24

The official U.S. labor movement points to this massive 1882 New York City parade as the origin for celebrating Labor Day in September.

Tomorrow is officially Labor Day in the United States, a Federal Holidaycelebrated on the first Monday of September since 1894.  For most people it is just the last hurrah of summer, an occasion for one last cookout and the gateway to fall and football season.  In most cities and towns, the labor movement is not even perfunctorily acknowledged.  The press uses the occasion to annually either write the obituary of unions or to denounce them as powerful and greedy bullies, depending on the political inclination of the outlet.

While most of us working schlumps are grateful for the day off (if we get one), I for one, wish I could officially celebrate Labor Day with virtually the whole rest of the world on May 1.  International Labor Day was proclaimed by the Second International in honor of the memory of Chicago’s Haymarket Martyrs at the suggestion of none other than American Federation of Labor (AFL) chief Samuel Gompers himself and which quickly spread around the world.  American unions celebrated it too.

But within just a few years Gompers was at the heart of a deal that substituted the September observance for May Day, a few crumbs from the Boss’s table, and a pat on the head by the Civic Federation in exchange for a promise to oppose labor radicalism and the growth of industrial style unionism in rapidly expanding basic heavy and the extractive industriesmining, forestry, agriculture, etc.

The Eight Hour Day was the main demand of both the New York 1882 parade and the mass strikes of 1886 that led to the establishment of May First as International Labor Day.  But the demand was much older as shown in this photo of what is believed to have been the first Eight Hour banner by working men in 1856.

It is true that a September Labor Day observance pre-dated the 1886 Haymarket Affair.  In 1882 the New York Central Labor Union, made up of skilled craft unions belonging to a prototype of the AFL and lodgesof the rival Knights of Laborcooperated in a call for a giant parade followed by picnics, games and amusements, and educational talks.  It was designed to showcase the prideand power of the labor movement and also to press for the chief demand of labor reformers—the Eight Hour Day—the same causethat would be marked by an attempted nationwide General Strike on May 1, 1886, an event that led up the attackby police on a worker’s rally in Chicago’s Haymarket on May 4 and the bomb blast blamed on the mostly German and anarchist leaders of the local labor movement.

New York City officials, eager to appeaseworkers after a number of local strikes were suppressed with violence, gave their official approval to the parade.  On September 5, 1882 an estimated 30,000 workers marched in military order behind elaborate banners representing local unions of all of the trades, job shops, and Knights of Labor lodges.  It was an impressive display, but despite later claims by the AFL that observance of Labor Day spread quickly, only a few other cities, mostly in New York, began holding September celebrations. 

In the meantime, huge May Day parades and rallies spread across the country.  But the late 1880s and early 1890s were the beginning of a nearly 40 year period of virtual open class warfare with worker’s strikes being violently suppressed by local, state, and federal authoritiesand armies of private goonsand strikebreakers.  And workers often fought back with equal violence.  Episodes like the Homestead Steel Strike with its running gun battles between Pinkertons and workers, the nationwide Pullman Strike of 1882, and virtually continuous battles in the coal fields and hard rock mines nationwide, made many fear for revolution or civil war.

Democratic President Grover Cleveland, who ordered out the Army to crush the Pullman Strike, wanted a symbolic peace offering to Labor without actually granting the movement any of its demands. 

                                            Early Labor Day was wrapped in patriotic symbolism.

Republican king pin Ohio Senator Marc Hanna, soon to anoint William McKinley as the next President, was even more ambitious—he proposed a pact of cooperation between capital and “responsible labor.”  He offered Gompers, the Cigar Roller’s Union chief who headed the AFL, a seat in his new Civic Federationalongside the robber barons and captains of industry.  Hanna did not make the same offer to Grand Master Workman Terrance V. Powderlyof the Knights of Labor, who personally opposed strikes and advocated arbitration of disputes, because the members of Knights lodges included unskilled workers clamoring for recognition in heavy industry.  Gompers AFL would be allowed to pursue organizing skilled workers strictly by trade but not organize the great mass of unskilled, largely immigrantworkers.  Gompers would also be called on to use his unions to oppose labor radicalism, and even to break strikes led by unions outside the grand agreement.

With Gompers in his pocket, Hanna engineered enough Republican support in Congress to get Cleveland’s official Labor Day proposal passed.  Cleveland signed it in to law just six days after Eugene V. Debs’s industrial union of railroad workers was smashed in the end of the Pullman Strike. 

Within a few years all states either aligned their existing Labor celebrations with the Federal holiday or enacted state proclamations echoing the U.S. call. 

Butchers march in a 1914 Labor Day Parade in Valparaiso,  Indiana.

Meanwhile authorities everywhere tried to suppress May Day observances, which continued to be supported by militant unionists and radicals of every sort—social democrats, anarchists, and Marxists.  The Knights of Labor withered away, but aggressive industrial unions, especially in the mining industry, continued to fight both the bosses and the AFL’s attempt to divide the aristocracy oflabor from the mass rank and file.  In little more than a decade the radical Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) would be formed to intensify that battle.

During the Depression and the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Democrats became the party of labor.   Labor Day became the official kick-offof Democratic election campaigns. Labor Day parades and rallies often seemed more of a platform to launch candidacies than a labor union celebration.

A 2014 cartoon summed up the plight of American workers on Labor Day.  It has gotten worse.

Even that has faded as the percentage of Americans in unions continued to shrink year after year after a high tide in the early ‘60’s.  By the Clinton era, Democrats continued to get support from labor, but seemed to try to disassociatethemselves from it, shunning identification as the party for of labor in favor of being seen as the champion of the Middle Class.

As half-assed a holiday as Labor Day is, I hope we all will take a moment to thank the American Labor movement for largely creating that Middle Class.

The Old Man addressing a Labor Day rally on Woodstock Square in 2016 giving essentially the text of this blog entry.

Going Toe to Toe With Ike and Orville in Little Rock

4 September 2021 at 12:34

Things were not as cordial as they looked in this posed photo of President Dwight Eisenhower and Arkansas Governor Orville Faubus taken at the White House before Little Rock school desegregation blew up into a full blown Constitutional crisis.

In 1957 President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Arkansas Governor Orville Faubus went toe to toe in what Eisenhower feared could be the nation’s second Fort Sumner moment—a spark that could ignite a second Civil War.  All the ingredients were there including long building and bitter Southern resentment of Federal meddling in the cherished traditions of segregationand White supremacy,a defiant governor and inflamed White population, equally intransigent neighboring states that might leap at the opportunity to join a rebellion, and both executives had armed military forces under their command.

Under the circumstances it was understandable that the Republican President had significant qualms about taking confrontational action.  But the old general was deeply steeped in ideas of Constitutional responsibility, a chain of command, and adherence to the rule of law.  He might not have been wildly supportive of the Brown v. Board of Education decision that mandated and end to “separate but equalpublic schools.  He might even have had qualms about its sweeping reach and effect on civil tranquility—Ike was never entirely clear on the depth of his personal commitment to Civil Rights.  But he was absolutely clear on the rule of law and considered it his sworn duty at President to uphold established law no matter the hazard. 

Faubus bet everything on the chance that a man born in Texas to a Virginia bred mother would not act against White people.  He would regret that gamble.

The true heroes of Little Rock these nine students endured violence, harassment, constant threats, and soul crushing hatred.

On September 4, 1957 Faubus mobilized the state National Guard to block 9Black students from beginning classes at Little Rock Central High School.  The nine students, Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Jefferson Thomas, Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Walls LaNier, Minnijean Brown, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Thelma Mothershed, and Melba Pattillo, were all legally registered at the school after the local Board of Education had voted unanimously to follow the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision and desegregate the school.

The local chapter of the National Association of Colored People (NAACP) had carefully recruited the students, picking only outstanding students with excellent attendance records and “respectablefamilies. The Mothers’ League of Central High, a thinly disguised front for the White Capital Citizen’s Council, had appealed to Faubus in August to block the Board’s decision to integrate the school.  The Governor supported the group’s appeal for an emergency injunction to block integration to “prevent violence.”  Federal Judge Ronald Davies denied the request and ordered that school open with the students.

The innocent sounding Mothers' League, essentially a White Citizen Council Front, led the way in opposing desegregation every step of the way.  In fact the national press was shocked when white women appeared to be among the most vicious members of the mobs surrounding the school and harassing black students.

Faubus went on television on September 2, the eve of the scheduled opening of classes, to announce his call upof the Guard, again supposedly to prevent violence.  The School Board asked the nine students not to attend the first day of school, but Judge Davis ordered the Board to proceed on September 4.

The gauntlet run by 15 year old Elizabeth Eckford after she was turned away from Little Rock Central on the first day of school was terrifying.  

Guardsmen circled the building, and a mob of hundreds of white protestors clogged the surrounding area.  Guardsmen turned back one group of students.  Fifteen year old Elizabeth Eckford, approaching alone toward a different entrance was also turned away.  As she turned to walk to a bus stop, she was surrounded by the mob.  They moved closer and closer,” she later recalled, “...Somebody started yelling ... I tried to see a friendly face somewhere in the crowd—someone who maybe could help. I looked into the face of an old woman and it seemed a kind face, but when I looked at her again, she spat on me.”  She finally made her way to the bus stop and escaped, but her ordeal was captured by national television cameras and still photographers.

The Board again appealed to Judge Davies for a relief injunction.  He again refused and directed U.S. Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr. to file a petition for an injunction against Faubus and officers of the Arkansas National Guard to prevent them from obstructing his court order to desegregate the school.

 As legal maneuvering continued, tension in the city mounted. On September 9 the Black students did get some supportfrom the Council of Church Women who asked the Governor to remove the troops and allow desegregation to proceed.  They announced a city-wide prayer service for September 12.  Members of the council were threatened with violence. 

Meanwhile Democratic Congressman Brook Hays arranged a meeting between the Governor and President Dwight D. Eisenhowerat his vacation home in Newport, Rhode Island.  Faubus refused to back down.

On September 20 Judge Davies issued a direct order to cease interfering with the enrolment of the Black students.  Faubus recalled the Guard and left the state for a Southern Governor’s Conferencewhere he hoped to rally support.

On Monday, September 23 Little Rock Police were left to contend with a snarling mob of over 1000 people. The Black students slipped into the building by a side entrance while the crowd was distracted bybeating four black reporters covering developments.  When the mob discovered that they were inside they threatened to storm the school.  Once again the nine students were sent home for “their own safety” with police protection.

Eisenhower had enough.  When Little Rock Mayor Woodrow Mann appealed for Federal support for his overwhelmed police, the President was ready to act.  He nationalized the Arkansas National Guard to take it out from under the command of the Governor although he was not entirely sure that senior Guard officers would obey the order or that the Guard troops might not mutiny and declare allegiance to their state. 

In a move unprecedented since Reconstruction, Eisenhower ordered the elite 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock. 

Paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division  escort the Little Rock 9 after they arrived at school in a military convoy.

His decision to use those troops was highly significant.  The 101st was based in Fort Campbell, Kentucky but several other units were nearer.  The bloated Army was near it peak of peace time manpower with the height of the Cold War and near universal service via the draft.  But only a handful of elite divisions were fully combat ready and more important highly disciplined under the most trusted officers.  And most of those were deployed with NATO in Germany or in Korea.  Other units were what might be called the Beetle Bailey Army, barely trained beyond basic and mired in the boredom of camp life.  They were viewed as an on-duty reserve that could be mobilized and trained in the event of a war crisis.  Some of those units might have been regarded as lax if deployed.  No one would think that of the Screaming Eagles.

The next day, September 27, troops took up positions and escorted the students into the building.

Federal troops continued to escort the students daily for a week.  The majority of the troops were withdrawn and duty transferred to the Guard under close supervision of Regular Army officers on October 1.  Students first attended school incivilian rather than military vehicles on October 25 and all Federal troops were finally withdrawn in November.

The students were enrolled, but their ordeal was far from over.  All were harassedand threatened by white students in the school.  Melba Petillo had acid thrown in her eyes. Minnijean Brown was assaulted several timesand eventually suspended and expelled for dropping a bowl of chili on an assailant in the lunchroom.  All students were completely ostracized by their white classmates.  School authorities eventually also suspended more than 100 white students and expelled four.

Despite the distraction, at the end of the school year Ernest Green became the first Black student tograduate from Central High.

Then as now the Stars and Bars Confederate battle flag was not a symbol of history or heritage, but a banner of white supremacy and hatred.  Here it is shown off to a reporter by a gaggle of smiling white students outside during the siege of the building with black students inside.

But it was not over.  Faubus closed not only Central High but all four Little Rock high schools for the 1958-’59 term.  When courts ordered them re-opened in September of 1959 only two of the original Little Rock 9, Carlotta Walls and Jefferson Thomas, came back.  They both graduated in 1961.

Other Southern Governors, notably Alabama’s George Wallace would continue defy Federal school desegregation orders, but the knowledge that the government was willing to call out the Army to enforce the desegregation undoubtedly prevented much future violence.

Robin Williams as Ike in The Butler.

The confrontation between Eisenhower and Faubus was portrayed in the 2012 film Lee Daniels’ The Butlerwith Robin Williams as Ike.  Faubus was never seen.


The Oldest Nation and Republic—San Marino a Place of Refuge

3 September 2021 at 11:16
  Perched on the top Monte Titano stand the three fortification towers of Guaita linked by walls and communication trenches, which offer spectacular panoramic views of San Marino. The story goes like this.   Stone mason and sometimes preacher Marinus of Arba and his life-long pal Leo were forced by some political upheaval to leave their home of Rab, a Roman colony on the island of Arba in the Adriatic Sea off the coast of what is now Croatia.   The two young men settled in the northern Italian city of Rimini to find work reconstructing the city’s ruined walls.   But there they ran afoulof the infamous persecution of Christians ordered by the Emperor Diocletian and had to flee the city.   At the same time some of Marinus’s sermon...

The Finale—The Formal Surrender of Japan

2 September 2021 at 11:44
General Douglas MacArthur orchestrated the most humiliating surrender possible for the Japanese Empire and it's officer class.   One day after six years of war in Europe began the even longer war in Asia and the Pacific officially ended on September 2, 1945, seventy.   On that day General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of the Allied Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA) ordered members of the Japanese Government and High Command to assemble to signthe formal documents of unconditional surrender. The Japanese had been at war even longer than their Axis allies, since the 1937 invasion of China or, if you count low grade guerilla resistance, since the 1931 annexation of Manchuria .   For them, particularly the Imperial officer class who ha...

Community Power Shower Sets Fall Schedule for Homeless

2 September 2021 at 07:00
The Community Empower Shower event which provides wide ranging services for the homeless and those who are facing housing crisis has set a Fall schedule for the firstand third Fridays of every month from 10 am to 2 pmat Willow Crystal Lake, 100 S. Main Street.  This month that will be this Friday, September 11 and Friday, September 17. A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling has abruptly ended the moratoriums on evictions and foreclosuresunder a Center for Disease Control (CDC) emergency orderfor many moderate and low income people.  An Illinois suspension order extended by Governor J.B. Pritzker to mid-September may or may not be extended or modified.  Many are facing imminent homelessness.  The agencies participating in the Empower Show...

September 1, 1939 A Grim Anniversary—Poets Took Note

1 September 2021 at 11:01
Hitler reviewing his Nazi troops on the way to Poland. The exact beginning of the greatest cataclysm in history—so far—is harder to pinpoint than you might imagine.   In the early 1930’s Japan and Italy were honing their war skills and adding to their empires with attacks on, respectively, Manchuria and Abyssinia (Ethiopia.)   The Germans and Italians on one side and to a lesser extent the Russians on the other used the Spanish Civil War as a kind of laboratory for modern war.   In 1937 Japan opened up war with China, Throughout the late 1930’s Adolph Hitler continued to blatantly re-arm in pretty much open violation of the Versailles Treaty that ended World War I and used that gathering might to cower Britain and France into ...

News Over the Air—A Detroit Station Did it First

31 August 2021 at 12:40

An August 1920 publicity photograph. Left to right: Howard J. Trumbo, manager of the local Thomas A. Edison Record Shop, operating a phonograph player; Elton M. Plant, Detroit News employee and announcer, behind 8MK's De Forest OT-10 radio transmitter; and engineer Frank Edwards.  Note the use of a horn to pick up music from a phonograph--the microphone as we know it had yet to be invented when station 8MK went on the air in 1920.

On August 31, 1920 Station 8MK in Detroit, Michigan broadcastthe first news report Americans ever heard on that newfangled doohickey, radio.  The station had just gone on the air for the first time less than two weeks earlier, on August 20.  The Detroit News owned the infant operation but seemed either a little ashamed of it or unsure if they had just thrown good money into a mere fad.

In fact, the station was issued an amateur license by the United States Department of Commerce Bureau of Navigation, the agency then responsible for radio regulation, instead of the experimental license issued to other early commercial broadcasters.

The Scripps family owned newspaper hired Michael DeLisle Lyons, a teenage whiz kid and tinkerer to build a transmitter in the Detroit News building and had him apply for the amateur license in his own name. He built a transmitter licensed from a design by radio pioneer Lee de Forest.   Lyons was an employee Clarence “C. S”. Thompson, a New York City associate of de Forest and the owner of Radio News & Music, Inc.  which was attempting to market broadcast services to newspapers.  The Detroit station turned out to be their first and only customer.  As an amateur station it broadcast on the fringe of the available spectrum designated then as 200 meters, the equivalent of 1500 AM.  

Later that year young Lyons and his brother Frank built that nation’s first radios for police prowl cars for the city of Toledo, Ohio.  When in their first use of operation radio communications led to the quick arrest of a prowler and the story went national it, spurred other departments to adoptthe bulky, balky new technology.

An early Detroit News announcement aimed a radio hobbyists with instructions on how and when to tune in.  Note the promise to broadcast elections results--another radio first.

The infant station’s news broadcasts were read by newspaper staffersand adapted from the content of the paper.  At first the company would not allow broadcast of any news that had not already hit the streets in print for fear of “giving away the product.”

Few homescould hear them anyway.  The audienceconsisted mostly of radio hobbyists including other amateur broadcasts who were becoming known as HAMs and those who built their own crystal sets.  Home receivers with amplificationand which did not require headphones were about five years in the futurewith the introduction of the vacuum tube.

W. E. Scripps, an early aviator, heir to the publishing empire, and publisher of the Detroit News with his family in 1927.

Despite its limitations, the Scripps family was encouraged by a small but enthusiastic response.  They applied for a commercial license and on October 13, 1921, the station was assigned the call letters WBL broadcasting at 833 AM, with weather reports and other government reports broadcast at 619 AM.

On March 3, 1922 the stations call letters were changed to WWJ.  In the following year the Department of Commerce re-organized its assignments of frequencies and dropped the requirement for a separate frequency for weather and government reports.  WWJ’s was changed three times during the late 20’s before settling at 920 AM in 1929.  A war time shuffling of frequencies in 1941 moved the station to 950 AM at which it continues to broadcast to this day.


The station has maintained a regular schedule of news broadcast through all its incarnations of call letters, frequency or ownership to this day.  Since the mid-70’s the station, now a CBS Radio network affiliate, has broadcast as a 24 hour a day newsand talk station.  It remains a Detroit institution and is frequently the highest rated radio station in its market.


Texas Could Really Use Molly Ivins Now—So Could We All

30 August 2021 at 11:48

Molly Ivins, the extraordinary newspaper columnist, wit, and the enemy of foolishness, vanity, and avarice at every level of government, was born on August 30, 1944 in Monterey, California.  But she was raised in and around Houston, Texas and was a passionate Texan all her life from the tip of her head to the paint on her toenails.  

Her father was an autocratic oil company executive and she grew up in privileged circumstances.  At her tony private prep school she wrote for the school paper and enjoyed performing in stage productions.  Whatever she tried her hand at was pursued with the ardor of her admittedly big personality

Molly Ivans as a young reporter, left, and a student editor, right.

After an unhappy freshman year at Scripts College, she transferred to Smith, a Seven Sisters college that brought her close to the love of her life, Yale student Henry Hank Holland, Jr.  When he was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1964, Ivins was crushed.  She never found anyone who would measure up to his memory and stayed single the rest of her life, dedicating herself to her studies and career.  After a year of study in Paris, she graduated in 1966 and went on to earn a master’s degree at Columbia Journalism School the next year. 

Her first job was with Minneapolis Tribune.  After a stint as the first female police reporter in the city, she covered a beat called Movements for Social Change, where she notes that she wrote about “militant blacks, angry Indians, radical students, uppity women and a motley assortment of other misfits and troublemakers.”  She had met her people.  

Ivans often tag teamed in Austin with another brassy Texas woman powerhouse, Democratic governor Ann Richards.  A later governor, George W. Bush, the Shrub, did not measure up.

In 1970 she left a perfectly good job to return to Texas to write for The Texas Observer, a progressive bi-weekly and burr under the saddle to the Austin establishment.  She became co-editor of the paper and the chief political writer, specializing in the doings of the legislature.  Before long her pithy accounts of that colorful body were being re-printed nationally and Ivins was soon contributing op-ed pieces to the New York Times and Washington Post and becoming a popular speaker on college campuses.

In 1976 the Times hired her, supposedly to loosen up their staid writing style.  She certainly did that, often clashing with editorsover her colorful, salty language.  She was made Rocky Mountain Bureau Chief, which would have been quite an honor if she was not also the entire bureau covering 9 states—states that the editors hardly seemed to know existed or cared to know much about.  Her clashes with editor Abe Rosenthal were legendary. 

Ivan was no dour, solemn, commentator, which made her a tough fit at the staid New York Times.  

She was delighted when the Dallas Times Herald offered her a position as a columnist.  She became such an irritation to Dallas city authorities and others with lots of wealth and influencethat the paper sent her to Austin.  After the Herald folded, Ivins moved to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram where she continued her Austin-based column and her relentless attacks on cupidity.  From her seat in Austin, she chronicled the rise of George W. Bush, who she referred to as the Shrub.  When he was elected President, Ivins ended her 19 year run at the Star-Telegram and wrote a nationally syndicated column carried in more the 400 papers. 

                        Ivans soldiered on with cheerful gusto to the end.

In 1999 she was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer.  She battled the disease with typical ferocity and good humor, twice being declared cancer free only to have the tumorsreturn.  In December 2006 she took leave from her column to again undergo treatment. She wrote two columns in January 2007, but returned to the hospital for further treatment then died at her Austin home on January 31, 2007, at age 62.


Here is what I wrote in a blog entry the next day:

Flags at half mast, folks. Molly Ivins, a true American hero has died.  When we can least afford to lose her.  She was just about the only major liberal voice in the press who did not sound like, at least occasionally, a prig, twit, or snob.  She never forgot ordinary working people and their lives and they knew it

With keen insight, shrewd wit, and unparalleled Texas charm she belled the fat cats of politics.  From ordinary petty grafters in the state legislature all the way up to George W. “Shrub” Bush himself, no miscreant escaped her attention.

She fought up to the end.  Knowing she was dying she filed her last column in mid-January.  It ended:

We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to stop this war. Raise hell! Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we’re for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush’s proposed surge [to the Iraq War]...We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, ‘STOP IT NOW!’

Amen, sister!

 

New Orleans Déjà vu—An Anniversary Replay

29 August 2021 at 12:46

 

Hurricane Idais gathering strength as it barrels north in the Gulf of Mexico and will slam into the Louisiana coast as a strong category 4 stormabout 1 pm this afternoon.  Passing west of New Orleans the worst of winds of more than 150 mile per hour and an expected storm surge of up to 17 feet at the mouth of the Mississippi and 8 feet upriver at Lake Pontchartrain are expected to be catastrophic.  It is exactly 16 years since Hurricane Katrina wrecked its devastation.

Hopefully the Big Easy and other vulnerable Gulf communities will be better prepared this time around.  Lessonsof that big storm, reinforced by three storms that slammed the same area last year.  Sea walls and levees have been reinforced and raised.  Residents are more apt to positivelyrespond to calls for early evacuations and plans for those evacuations are said to be better.  New Orleans and other areas have lost as much as a quarter of their pre-Katrina populations somewhat easing the pressure.  City and State resources have been pumped up.  And perhaps most critically the Federal response by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will be in the hands of competent and experience professionals fully backed by President Joe Biden who unlike George W. Bushactually believes that government can function.

Even before Hurricane Ida makes landfall in Louisiana power crews are at work trying to restore service in some areas.

On the other hand, Louisiana is already in the grips of one of the worst Coronavirus Delta variant outbreaks in the country.  Its hospitals are already overwhelmed.  Masking, social distancing, and sanitation protocols, only tepidly supported by the Republican governor and legislature will be impossible to maintain especially in crowded shelters and on evacuation busses.   Vaccination rates are low.  A sharp spike in new infections is likely just as hospitals are least able to deal with critical cases.

There is still political and social tension between the Democratic city government and the Republican controlled state that can easily scuttle cooperation and lead to new rounds of blame shifting and finger pointing when things go wrong.

Systematic racism is the political and cultural order of the day along the Gulf Coast.  Poor Black residents may still be denied equal access to emergency aid and be blocked from evacuation through or to wealthy white enclaves.

We can hope for the best but must be ready for the worst.

A look back at Katrina reminds us of an enduring rage and sorrow.

A Black mother and her children desperately sought refuge from flooding after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

On August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast with the eyejust east of New Orleans.  Winds had diminished and the storm had been downgraded from a Category 4 to a Category 3 and there was some hope that the city and surrounding Parishesmight be spared the destruction predicted earlier in the week.  Although wind damage was severe, a lot of folks breathed deeply after the brunt of the storm moved past.

But the storm surge sent as much as 15 feet of water inland floodingthe low lying coast from the Texas border to nearly Pensacola.  It pushed up the Mississippi and into Lake Pontchartrain.  Within a few hours the levy system protecting the city broke in several places and water inundated most of the city.  Especially hard hit were the low lying neighborhoods along the canals and directly under the levies, including the largely Black and impoverished 8thand 9th Wards.  By 11 p.m. Mayor Ray Nagin described the loss of life as significant with reports of bodies floating on the water throughout the city.

An enduring symbol of the criminal negligence in rescuing poor Black residents after Katrina--the body of a drowning victim rotting in the sun days later.

As horrible as the situation was, it was only the beginning.  Evacuation orders had encouraged many of those with vehicles to flee north.  But the highways were soon clogged and those lateto leave were trapped.  No plans had been made for the hundreds of thousands of city residents without transportation, or the aged and ill.  The poor were essentially trapped in the city.  And as they drowned talking heads on television scolded them for not heeding the evacuation orders.

The story of the immediate misery of the next few days has been toldand retold and is far too vast to be recounted here.  Suffice it to say the disaster unmasked incompetence at every level of government compounded by a blasé racismeager to blame the victims.  The response by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), headed by political toadies and lickspittles, became a national scandal.  But it was the inevitable result of George W. Bush’s administration which had as its highest goal to provethat government is inherently incapable of managing things efficiently.

The disaster created a diaspora.  Eighty percent of the New Orleans population fled.  Five years later less than half had returned.  And much of the city, particularly the Black Wards away from the restored tourist areas, remained a waste land.

The Black and poor Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans months after the storm.  Amazingly little has been restored to this day.

The youth group of my church, then known as the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Woodstock, spent a week there in July 2010, nearly five years after the storm, doing service projects.  They brought back video and photographic evidence of the distressing situation.  There will be work rebuilding and restoring homes in those districts for hundreds of youth groups for years to come.

When historians look back on the disaster and its long aftermath years from now, they may well conclude that this was the moment when the traditional cocky confidence of American exceptionalism bit the dust and the Empirebegan it precipitous decline.


Decades Later Emmett Till is Still a Victim and a Symbol

28 August 2021 at 13:42

University of Mississippi students hold a bullet ridden Emmett Till historical marker before carrying it to a Confederate monument on campus. 

 The horrific and unthinkably brutal lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year old Chicago boy visiting rural Mississippi on August 28, 1955 for allegedly whistling at a White woman still challenges America’s racist character.   This year on the anniversary the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture announced that it was putting on display a bullet riddled historical marker from the site where Till’s mutilated body was thrown into a river weighted down with a 70 pound cotton gin fan blade.  It was the third of four markers vandalized, shot up by self-proclaimed Ku Klux Klansmen who posed for social media photos with their handiwork.  It was replaced a fourth time by a bullet proof marker which was also vandalized but not destroyed.

Before arriving at the Museum, the marker played a key roll in the bitter and divisive movement to remove Confederate monuments from public places.  In 1919 students at the University of Mississippi carried Till’s marker through campus after a panel discussion hosted by the Emmett Till Memorial Commission to Memorial for the Confederate War Deadwhich had been the target of on-going protests demanding its removal—part of a wave of such protests sparked by Black Lives Matter Movement.  That movement owed its inspiration in no small part to Emmett’s mother Mamie who insisted that his horribly disfigured body be displayed in an open casket at his funeralto show “what they did to my boy.”

Mamie Till's decision to display her mutilated son's body in an open casket funeral helped rally the Civil Rights Movement in the South.

In 1955 Till’s martyrdom helped galvanize the Civil Rights Movement.  Although I don’t recall his name being mentioned at Dr. Martin Luther King’s milestone March on Washington for Jobs and Justice exactly eight years later in 1963 that event, broadcast liveon national television was a testament on how far the movement had come in just a few years.

But it also inspired the Klan, White Citizen’s Councils, and other night-riding terrorists.  The failure of local courts to convict the known perpetrators of the outrage convinced white supremacists that they were untouchable and had the full support of the wider community.  That led to years of lynchings, assassinations, assaults, bombings, and mob intimidation executed with impunity 

Eventually Federal intervention and enforcement, no matter how reluctant, shifting public opinion, and the simple weariness of many white Southerners with the cycle of protests and violent reprisal that was hurting the businesses.  Slowly a much ballyhooed New South” emerged that grudgingly accepted integrationand Black voters with significant political power.  Old Firebrands and Alabama Governor George Wallace changed their tunes.  The Klan went back underground seldom to be mentionedor acknowledged.

Emmett Till, left, was linked to Trayvon Martin, and Mike Brown whose deaths helped spark the Black Lives Matter Movement.

The overflowing outrage at police executions of Black citizens and the street confrontations of the Black Lives Matter Movement ripped theband-aid off an old scab.  The Klan and other white nationalist who had never really gone away but who operated on the fringes of society were empowered again by the Trump Era and the dog-whistle of “Make America Great Again.”  Attacks on Confederate monuments brought them to center stage as defenders of tradition and heritage.  Since Charlottesville violent confrontations with anti-racists and anti-fascists have become common.  Scores of groups swelledin membership.  Demanding their “First Amendment right to bear arms” often with the support and complicity of right wing state and local governments, has turned them out in great numbers in combat gear and armed with automatic weapons.  They even became emboldened to attempt coup d’état last January at the Capitol.  That comic opera putsch may have been premature, but they are laying the groundwork for a second insurrection.

Emmett Till is once again a convenient symbol and rallying cry for both sides of the great divide.  Not only was the river site marker defaced, but another historical marker at the site of the general store where Till allegedly insulted pure white Southern womanhood.  Has also been shot up on multiple occasions.  One of the markers is now on exhibit at The National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis.

No one is yet raising monuments to Till’s murderers or to the current crop of terrorists, but it may only be a matter of time. 

Note—For a full review of Emmett Till’s life and death, his mother’s crusade, and the search for justice visit my 2015 blog post The Legacy of Emmett Till 60 Years Later.

 

Not Quite Indestructible—Margaret Bourke-White

27 August 2021 at 12:02

                       Margaret Bourke-White in her element as an industrial photographer in 1935.

Sean Callahan, an awe struck admirer and authorof the book Margaret Bourke-White: Photographer noted, “The woman who had been torpedoed in the Mediterranean, strafed by the Luftwaffe, stranded on an Arctic island, bombarded in Moscow, and pulled out of the Chesapeake when her chopper crashed, was known to the Lifestaff as ‘Maggie the Indestructible.”  But the pioneering photographer and war correspondent turned out to be not quite so indestructible.  In 1953 at the height of her creative powers and fame she began to notice alarming symptoms which turned out to be Parkinson’s Disease, then untreatable.  She endured a slow deterioration which forced her into semi-retirement by 1957 and ended all of her work by 1968.  She endured with the disease for 18 years before dying of it in near poverty on August 27, 1971 in Stamford,Connecticut.

Margaret White was born in New York City on June 14, 1904.  Her father, Joseph White, an immigrant secularized Polish Jew who was a naturalist, engineer,and inventor.  Her mother was Minnie Bourke, an American born Irish Catholic.  Both parents, however, eschewed their birth faiths and were ardent free thinkers.  The family, including young Maggie and sister and brother, were comfortably middle class, and soon left the city for the leafy small town of Bound Brook, New Jersey, a historic burb on the Raritan River in the north central part of the state.

Maggie, like her brother and older sister, worshiped her brilliant father, a perfectionist with high expectations of his offspring.  Her artistic mother was also a feminist who imbued her with the notion not to allow herself to be limited by customary gender roles.  All the children were imbued with a mission to serve humanity, even save, the world through relentless self-improvement and achievement.

While a student at Plainfield High School, Margaret picked up a passion for photography from her father who was fascinated by cameras and interested in nature photography.  After graduation from high school, she was interested in becoming a professional photographer—a business with few successful women practitioners—but followed her father’s advice to pursue science.

In 1922 White enrolled at Columbia University in New York to study herpetology—the study of snakes and reptiles.  But while at Columbia she took photography classes with Clarence Hudson White, founder of the Photo-Secession movement with Alfred Stieglitz which re-invigorated her interest in the medium.  Her time at Columbia, however, was cut short by the sudden and devastating death of her father after one semester.

White never returned to Columbia.  She restlessly moved from school to school driven by her often impossibly high expectations of the institutions, her own perfectionism, and a bristling refusal to bow to any restrictionsplaced on her as a woman.  Romance and its failure may also have played a part. White married fellow student Everett Chapman in 1924 and divorced him just two years later. She studied successively at the University of Michigan, Perdue, and Western Reserve University inCleveland, Ohio, before finally settling in comfortably at Cornell, in Ithaca, New York.  Perhaps it helped that Ithaca reminded her of her New Jersey home.  When she graduated she left a remarkable portfolio of campus photos for the student newspaper which concentrate on buildings and architectural detail.

                                        Bourke-White as a young photographer.

Despite the odds against her, White was determined to pursue a career as a photographer.  A year after graduating from Cornell in 1927 she established her own commercial photography studio in Cleveland, Ohio where she specialized in architectural and industrial work.  Symbolically, she abandoned her married name and the adopted the hyphenated name Bourke-White to preserve her independence and honor her mother equally with her father.

In her early days Bourke-White struggled to get commissions.  Her breakthrough came when she got a job from the Otis Steel Company to document their production process.  Even though she had been hired by the company, their security agents tried to block her access in the shaky grounds that steel was a defense industry and photos of production could risk the national security and plant superintendents and foremen worried that a mere woman could not stand the intense heatand danger of being close to blast furnaces and molten metal.  She got her way around these objections with flirtatious eyelash batting, and when that didn’t work, terrifying bullying.

Bourke-White endangered assistants and herself to capture the drama of molten steel at the the Otis Steel mill in Cleveland.

Once in the plants Bourke-White quickly discovered technical challenges.  She set up what she thought were brilliant, dramatic shots of steel being pouredthen discovered in the dark room that the black and white film she was using was not sensitive to the glowing red and orange of hot steel—the molten metalcame out nearly black in prints.  She solved the problem by lighting her shots by having assistants hold magnesium flares which produced a brilliant white light.  The aids sometimes had to be positioned dangerously close to the flowing steel and showering sparks, but she was heedless of their—and her own—safety.  The results were stunning.  No photographer had ever before captured the dazzling drama of hot steel.  When the shots were published, Bourke-White was recognized as a master of her medium.

That 1928 shoot led directly to a prestigious new job as associate editorand staff photographer for Fortune magazine in 1929.  In 1930 the magazine sent her to the Soviet Union where she became one of the first western photojournaliststo document Russian industry under communism.  That trip would help make her welcome a decade later when she was posted to Moscow as a foreign correspondent.

In 1936 Henry Luce, publisher of Time and Fortune bought the failing old humor magazine Life just for its name.  He wanted to launch a new weekly newsmagazine that would rely mostly on photography to tell its stories—a newsreel on slick paperas he envisioned it.  Bourke-White, already working for him at Fortuneand who had the strong support of Luce’s feminist wife Clair Boothe Luce,was his first hire for the new project.  Not only was she a photographer, but she set up the sophisticated photo lab that would be required to process and print the hundreds, often thousands of images that would pour into magazine every week from around the world.  When the new magazine hit the newsstands on November 23, 1936, Bourke-White photo of the Fort Peck Dam was on the cover.  The new magazine was an immediate success and almost instantly a national institution.

This photo of the Fort Peck Dam was featured on the inaugural issue of Henry Luce's Life Magazine.

Luce was an arch conservative and rabid anti-New Dealer, which was reflected in the editorial content of the magazine.  Hardly anyone, however, read Luce’s ranting editorials.  They turned to the magazine for the dramatic coverage of the world around them, including the stark poverty of the Depression years.  Luce never seemed to learn that the pictures that he printed worked against all of his politics.  Pictures by Bourke-White and others evoked sympathyfor the plight of workers, and celebrated he triumphs of things like CCC camps and WPA public works projects and actually rallied public support for the New Deal.  Luce never learned this lesson and in later years coverage of his photographers of the Civil Rights Movement, the emerging counterculture of the ‘60’s, and the experience of grunts on the ground in Vietnam all worked against his personal political agenda.

Bourke-White, who had made her reputation photographing industry, turned more and more to human subjects in her coverage of the Great Depression.  In 1937 she toured the South dramatically documenting conditions there.  The results were iconic photos like the one published on February 15, 1937 of displaced Black flood victims lined up for food in front of a huge billboard of a smiling white family in an automobilewith the tag line “World’s Highest Standard of Living—There’s No Way Like the American Way.”  Seldom was there a more deeply subversive photo ever published.

This Bourke-White photo is still used as a dramatic illustration the American class divide.

Besides shooting for Time, Bourke-White took her own photos on her swing through the South then collaboratedon a book with Erskine Caldwell, the Georgia-born Southern gothic novelistbest known for God’s Little Acre. Caldwell wrote the text and Bourke-White provided the photo illustrations and both collaborated on the captions.  Caleb Crain described the process in a 2009 New Yorker article:

Bourke-White lay in wait for her subjects with a flash and wrote with pleasure of having them “imprisoned on a sheet of film before they knew what had happened.” The resulting portraits are by turns sentimental and grotesque, and she and Caldwell printed them with contrived first-person captions.

The resulting book, Have You Seen Their Faces was published by Viking Press, with a paperback version by Modern Age Books following quickly.  It pre-dated the more celebrated collaboration of James Agee and Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men published in 1941 by four years.

The work with Caldwell also led to romance.  The couple married in 1939 and divorced in 1942 largely due to Bourke-White’s lengthy absences on overseas assignments.

Those assignments came as tensions in Europe were on the rise.  She was dispatched to survey what everyday life was like under the Fascists in Italy, Nazis in Germany, and Soviet Communists.  Despite being under tight surveillanceand often escorted by handlers meant to make sure that she only took positive photos, her keen eye was able to pick out many telling moments.  In the Soviet Union, her earlier visit there led to unprecedented access, including to Joseph Stalin himself in an informal an un-posed session which even caught the usually stern dictator laughing.

When War broke out in 1939, Bourke-White applied for credentialsas a war correspondent to various governments.  She even gave up her full time job at Time, which did not want to send her in harm’s way, in 1940 to become a freelance correspondent sending photos and articles to several American newspapers.  She did continue to sell pictures to Time and was eventually rehired by them to be a war correspondent.

In fact, Bourke-White became the first accredited American female war correspondent.  She was back in Moscow when Germany broke the Hitler-Stalin Pact and attacked the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.  In fact, she was the only western photographer in the Capital as the city came under Luftwaffe bombardment which set of firestorms.  She photographed the burning city from the roof of the American Embassy.

Ready to fly with the boys of the Army Air Force in 1942.

When the United States entered the war, Bourke-White became the first woman correspondent.  She was first attached to the Army Air Force in North Africa and became the first woman to fly on Combat bombing missions.  At desert air bases she had to dive for cover from strafing, and dive bombing Stukas.  Later she was assigned to Army infantry and artillery in Italy where the Army was bogged down in a grueling mountain campaigning.   She won the respect of the troops for her courage under frequent fire.

In between, Bourke-White was onboard the British troop ship SS Strathallanbound to North Africa from Englandwhen it was torpedoed and sunk.  She turned to the experience into the photo essay Women in Lifeboats which appeared in Life on February 22, 1943. 

Toward the end of the war Bourke-White toured recently capturedand occupied German territory with General George Patton.  She was with him at Buchenwald short days after the Death Camp was liberated.  The experience shook her to the core:

Using a camera was almost a relief. It interposed a slight barrier between myself and the horror in front of me.

Buchenwald survivors.  Bourke's photo were some of the first images of Nazi horrors that Americans got to see.

The photos she took, and which were published in Time were among the first and most detailed images of the horror that Americans got to see.  After the war she assembled and wrote Dear Fatherland, Rest Quietly: A Report On The Collapse Of Hitler’s Thousand Years.  It was an eyewitness account of devastated Germany after the war in which she displayed scant sympathy for the German civilians she held responsible for the rise of Hitler and still, in the face of overwhelming mounting evidence of atrocities, remained in denialabout national guilt and their own responsibility for the wretched conditions to which they had been lowered.   It was a tough book—and a highly controversial one.  

Among Bourke-Whites most important post-war assignments was the independence of the Indian sub-continent and the bloody partition of India and Pakistan.  She photographed all of the key players.  Her photograph of Mohandas Gandhi emaciated from fasting and sitting at his spinning wheel became one of the most recognizable images of him.  There was a stern photo of Pakistani founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah sitting upright in a chair.  But it was the photos of the devastating partition violence that stood out.  Somini Sengupta, a noted Indian journalist working for the New York Times called Bourke-White’s photographs “gut-wrenching, and staring at them, you glimpse the photographer's undaunted desire to stare down horror…Bourke-White’s photographs seem to scream from the page.” In 1948 she was back in India and again photographed and interviewed Gandhi hours before his assassination.

Gandhi and his spinning wheel.

These pictures were taken just two years after her experience at Buchenwald.  Bourke-White had seen more than her share of the horrors that humanity was capable of.

She continued to do fine work for Life until her Parkinson’s forced her retirement.  Even then she kept up a limited amount of freelance work.  But the tremorsof the disease made it increasingly difficult to hold a camera steady or to do the dark room work that she relished.  Experimental surgeriesto her nervous system in 1959 and 1961 reduced the tremors, but drastically affected her speech.  And the procedures could not halt the slow march of her body toward paralysis.

Unable to do much with her camera, Bourke-White penned a bestselling memoir, Portrait of Myselfpublished in 1963. 

She spent the rest of the decade in failing healthand increasing isolation in her Darien, Connecticut home.  A generous Time-Life pension and royalties from her books and photographs could not keep up with the rapidly mounting cost of her medical expenses and the need for 24 hour a day nursing care.  By the time she finally slipped away, she was broke.

Burke-White’s photos are on display and in the collections of several museums including the Brooklyn Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the New Mexico Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York as well as in the collection of the Library of Congress.

The rise of academic women’s studies almost on the heels of her death helped revive interest in Bourke-White and elevated her to new status as an inspirational role model.  Candice Bergen played her in the Academy Award winning film Gandhi in 1982 and Farrah Fawcett portrayed her in a made-for-TV bio pic, Double Exposure: The Story of Margaret Bourke-White in 1989.

The New Militancy of the 1969 Women’s Strike for Equality

26 August 2021 at 10:37

 

Bettty Freidan, the iconic founder of the second wave feminist movement, envisioned a march that would "get the attention of the press"  but had to fight dissent in the ranks.

In 1969 Betty Freidan thought it was a good idea to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment, which effectively gave American women the right to vote.  Freidan, the acknowledged founding mother of the modern Feminist Movement, was inspired by Alice Paul and the National Women’s Party who’s relentless and daring militancy pushed the long sought dream of suffrage to reality.  In turn she inspired the Women’s Marches that protested attacks on hard-fought for gains that drew hundreds of thousands to the National Mall in 2013.

Freidan began advocating and trying to organize “something big, something so big it will make national headlines” to galvanize the movement to new levels almost a year in advance.  She encountered a lot of resistance, even in the National Organization for Women (NOW), the country’s main feminist organization of which she was a founder.  Many members and leaders regarded a mass protest as too radical.  It also reflected tensions in the movement, barely 10 years old, between middle class white women and professionals and younger radicals comfortablewith confrontation through experience in the anti-war movementand who were tending toward separatism.

Older feminists thought the antics of young radicals like the burning of symbols of male domination outside the 1968 Miss American Pageant had discredited the movement.  The handful of women who participated were labled "bra burners" and the press portrayed the whole movement with the title.

In the eyes of some older activists these young Womens Libbers as they were mocked in the press, had already done damage to the movement with small, attention grabbing protests.  Most famous was the Bra Burning Protest held outside the Miss America Pageant in 1968.  The media had seized on that with a frenzy and Bra Burner had become synonymous with all feminists in the minds of much of the public.

While the NOW Board of Directors was slow to sign on, Friedan plunged ahead trying to plan and organize the event.  At first she used almost leaderless consciousness raising groups, a hallmark of ‘60’s feminism.  But sessions soon broke down in controversy between factions.  Even a month before the planned protest it was still mired almost to stalematebetween the middle class “founders” and the young radicals.

                        A poster promoting the New York Women's Strike.

Eventually Friedan’s prestigeamong both groups and some careful compromising won out.  NOW endorsed the action and the Callwent public.

The next hurdle was getting a permitfrom the City of New York for a planned march down Fifth Avenue, the sight of historic suffrage demonstrations before World War I.  The city flatly refused.  In response Friedan defiantly recastthe protest as the Strike for Women’s Equality and vowed to go on with or without a permit.

Publicity surrounding the refusal galvanizedsupport among activists of both factions.  Around the country NOW chapters and independent radical feminist groups planned actions in a score of cities.

In New York the Strike was set for Tuesday, August 26, 1970 at 5 pm to accommodate the thousands of women office workers who would pour out of Manhattan buildings at that hour.  Police attempted to confine the raucous protest to the sidewalks of Fifth Avenue.   NOW signs demanding equal pay for equal work, abortion access, and other mainstream issues, mixed with homemade signs both whimsical and angry.  Friedan and other leaders could only speak through bullhorns and were often drowned out by spontaneous chanting.  The crowd soon swelled to over 20,000 and the police could not keep them out of the streets.  Although few, if any, arrests were made, TV film footage broadcast later that night and the next day made it look like a near riot.

Meanwhile events in other cities were creative and often even more outrageous.

In Detroit, women staged a sit-in in a men’s restroom, protesting unequal facilities for men and women staffers. In Pittsburgh, women threw eggs at a radio host who dared them to show their liberation. Women in Washington, D.C. staged a march down Connecticut Avenue behind a banner reading “We Demand Equality”…[and] government workers organized a peaceful protest and staged a teach-in, which educated people about the injusticesdone to women, mindful that it was against the law for government workers to strike… in Minneapolis, women famously gathered and put on guerrilla theater, portraying key figures in the national abortion debate and classic stereotypical roles of women in American society; women were portrayed as mothers and wives, doing dishes, rearing children and doting obnoxiously on their husbands, all while wearing heelsand an apron.—Wikipedia

Prestigious news commentators were not even handed in their coverage.  Eric Sevareid of CBS News compared the movement to an infectious disease and ended his report claiming that the women of the movement were nothing more than “a band of braless bubbleheads.”  Another CBS stalwart Howard K. Smith was equally harshsaying women had no grounds at all to protest.  Small wonder that within days of the event a CBS poll showed two-thirds of American women did not feel they were oppressed.

Younger militants turned out in great number when the march seemed under attack by New York authorities.  They included at least some minority women.

It first it looked like the older feminists had been right after all.  The demonstrations had “played into the hands” of opponents of equality.  Friedan did not think so.  She brazenly declared the event a success.  “It exceeded my wildest dreams. It’s now a political movement and the message is clear.”

It turned out after the initial fuss died down, she was right.  The appalling response by the mainstream media actually drove the warring factions of the movement together, if still somewhat uneasily.  Militancy was adopted by more and more mainstream women.  NOW and other organizations were geared up for more political action and unafraid of confrontation.  Within a decade most Americans had accepted much of what had been a “radical” agenda in 1969.

Despite its central part in the evolution of the Feminist Movement, the Women’s Strike for Equality is not well remembered today. 

 

Allan Pinkerton— Spy Master, The Original Private Eye, and Union Buster

25 August 2021 at 10:35

 

Allan Pinkerton in 1861 as he gained fame a Lincoln's protector and secret agent.

Allan Pinkerton, America’s first detectiveand the founder of the security company that still bears his name was born on August 25, 1819 in Glasgow, Scotland.  Admired as a hero to some, he was despised by generations of workers as a union buster and scab herder. 

Pinkerton started as a class conscious working man.  The son of a duty disabled policeman, he apprenticed as a cooper and participated in the Chartist movement to obtain the franchisefor working men and other political reforms.  Chartist “riots” were violently suppressed by troops in many cities. 

Newly married and deeply disappointed by the failure to achieve the vote, Pinkerton decided to immigrate to the Canada at the age of 23 in 1842.  He and his wife were shipwrecked off Nova Scotia and came ashore pennilesswith only the clothes on their back.  A friend tipped him off to a job at a Chicago brewery.  He worked at his trade there for five years before relocating to rural Dundee, Illinois nearly fifty miles northwest of the city. 

He apparently wanted to go into business providing oak wood from the abundant local woodlots to the brewery but reportedly accidentally stumbled on a ring of counterfeiters, which he reported to local authorities.  In those days when each bank issued their own paper notes, counterfeiting was a common crime.  Several well organized gangs found the remote farmsteads of recently settled Kane and McHenry counties—good places to set up operations far away from police but close enough to the city to get their bad paper quickly into circulation. 

Pinkerton began using disguises, false identities and other tricks to track down counterfeiting gangs.  He was appointed a part time deputy sheriff and later began to work on contract for the banks whose notes were being counterfeited.  Pinkerton thought he had found a niche and a home. 

But he also supported the Underground Railway which used the rural area as a transportation path for the same reasons as it was chosen by the crooks.  His known abolitionist sentiments led to a crushing electoral defeatin a run for local office. 

But his daring exploits chasing counterfeiters had been picked up in the popular press.  He packed up his new reputation and returned to Chicago where he hired himself out as a freelance detective.  Among his customers were the Treasury Department in the pursuit of more counterfeiters and the Cook County Sheriff, who hired him to locatetwo girls who had been kidnapped and taken to Michigan.  He found the girls and shot one of the captors, making headlines for his daring do. 

The Sheriff hired him as a full time detective—the first such officer in any Illinois police agency.  He also continued to take private clients on the side.

Pinkerton's "seeing eye" became one of America's first and most recognizable company logos.

In 1855 he formed his own private agency, the North-Western Police Agency, soon to become The Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Its famous logo was an All Seeing Eye with the motto “We never sleep”—thus the origin of the term private eye.  Pinkerton quickly built a large operation with many operativeswho were trained in surveillance and under-coveroperations.  He demanded his operatives keep detailed records of their cases and on all known criminalsthey encountered.  He kept the records, including descriptions, aliases, known associates, and modes of operation of hundreds of criminals.  He even became the first to use photographsto identify suspects.  No other private law enforcement agency and few public ones had anything like the manpoweror sophistication of Pinkerton’s operations.

 Among the frequent customers of the new agency were the railroads, which is how Pinkerton came the attention of a railroad lawyer and politician, named Abraham Lincoln.  Pinkerton’s steadfast support of the Republican Party didn’t hurt either.  Lincoln tapped Pinkerton to assist his personal friend and bodyguard Ward Hill Lamon for security as he made his way from Illinois to Washington for his inauguration.  Pinkerton operatives uncovered a plot by Confederate sympathizers to kill Lincoln as he changed trains in Baltimore and allegedly foiled the attempt by sneaking the lanky Lincoln through town disguised as an old woman. 

Pinkerton, rear and Lincoln's friend and bodyguard Ward Hill Lamon with the goatee escorted President elect Lincoln on his perilous journey by train for the 1861 inauguration.

As the Civil Warerupted, Lincoln learned to his chagrin that the Army had no real intelligence service.  He tapped Pinkerton to become the first head of the new Intelligence Service, forerunner of the U.S. Secret Service.  Pinkerton deployed his operatives behind the lines, often disguised as Confederate soldiers and employed various tipsters.  He personally went on some missions in enemy territory using the name Major E.J. Allen.  He was very close to another old acquaintance from the Illinois Central Railroad, General George McClellan. 

Unfortunately, Pinkerton consistently overestimatedthe size of opposing Confederate forces by as much two times their actual numbers.  That caused the cautious McClellan to avoid battle with the main Confederate forces when possible while demanding ever more men and arms for the President.  Military historians agree now that had McClellan moved his vastly larger and better equipped army more quickly and with greater determination to follow up on successes, the war could have been significantly shorter. 

Pinkerton on horseback in George McClellan's headquarters provided disastrous over-estimates of Confederate numbers and strength which caused the cautious commanding general from taking decisive action.

Eventually Lincoln grew tired of both McClellan’s dithering and Pinkerton’s exaggerations.  Pinkerton left the Service after 1862, but his agency continued to contract with the government for numerous intelligence operations through the rest of the war. 

In post war years Pinkerton’s agencies pursued gangs of bank and train robbers, most notoriously Missouri outlaws Frank and Jesse James.  The Pinkerton Agency got a public black eye when its men threw a bomb killing a child and blowing the arm off the James boys’ stepmother.  After an operative who got a job working on an adjacent farm was discovered and killed, Pinkerton withdrew from the case.  He considered it the biggest failure of his career. 

Pinkerton range detectives like these played a bloody roll in range wars between Western cattle barons and small ranchers and homesteaders accused of rustling cattle.

Soon rapid post war industrialization led to growing labor unrest.  Pinkerton, the former Chartist, had no trouble enlisting his men as strike breakers and spies against unions.  One of the most famous early examples was the infiltration of the Molly McGuires, a secret organization of Irishminers in the Pennsylvania anthracite coal fields by Irish-born operative James McParland.  Identitiesof Molly leaders and members were passed to local employers who employed vigilantes, who may or may not have included other Pinkerton men, to ambush and kill them and their families.  McParland’s testimony in court also led to the execution of six men and the destruction of the Molly McGuires. 

Pinkerton detective James McParland infiltrated the Molly Maguires in the Pennsylvania coal fields sending several to the gallows.  He had a long career with the agency and years later arranged for Big Bill Haywood and Charles Moyers of the Western Federation of Miners to be kidnapped from Colorado to stand trial in Idaho on bogus charges of planting a bomb that killed a former governor.

McParland was rewarded with rapid promotion through the company ranks and specialized in labor cases.  Twenty years later he kidnapped Big Bill Haywood, Charles Moyers and other leaders of the Western Federation of Miners from Coloradoand took them on a sealed train to Idahowhere they were put on trial for the bombing murder of a former governor. 

Pinkerton in a Harper's Weekly illustration shortly before his death.

Pinkerton died in Chicago on July 1, 1884 at the age of 64.  He fell on the pavement and bit his tongue.  It became infected and he died in agony.

 By that time a huge amount of his company’s business was anti-union activity.  Company agents were involved in the gun battle with striking steelworkers during the Homestead Strike of 1891, suppressing the Pullman Strike of 1894, and in the infamous Ludlow Massacre of 1914 to list only a few of the most infamous cases. 

The agency also was hired by foreign governments to suppress local radicals, most famously by Spain to work against nationalists in Cuba who included the abolition of slavery as one of their top goals.

Dashiell Hammett, the inventor of tough guy detective fiction based his character the Continental Op on his experience as a labor spy in Butte, Montana.  He may have been involved in investigations that lead to the lynching of legendary IWW organizer Frank Little.  The bitter experience made him a life-long radical.

Dashiell Hammett became a young Pinkerton operative before World War I and became so disillusioned by the anti-union work he was called on to do, including work that may have led up to the lynching of Industrial Workers of the Word(IWW) organizer Frank Little in Butte, Montana, that the famous creator of hard-boiled detective fiction dedicated much of the rest of his life to supporting radical causes. 

In the 1930’s a Senate Committee led by Wisconsin Progressive/Republican Robert M. La Follette, Jr. investigated the Pinkerton Agency for its systematic use of spies to infiltrate labor unions.  To this day Pinkerton is a curse wordto unionists and the company is still used to protect scabs and harass picket lines. 

In 1999 the Pinkerton Agency and was acquired by the Swedish based international security firm Securitas AB.  It merged with its chief rival, the William J. Burns Detective Agency, in 2001.  Today it operates as an American subsidy of the Swedish firm under the name Pinkerton Consulting and Investigations.  And the work goes on.


Pete Rose Hustled Himself Out of Baseball

24 August 2021 at 11:07

                            Charley Hustle making the wrong kind of headlines.

On August 24, 1989 Pete Rose aka Charlie Hustle was banned from baseball for life for gambling on Cincinnati Reds games when he was manager by an outraged Commissioner of Baseball Bart Giamatti.

Considered a shoo-in for election to the Baseball Hall of Fame on the first ballot, Rose probably doomed his chances for ever being included by for years steadfastly denyinggambling on baseball despite mounting evidence, before sheepishly admitting guilt in his autobiography My Prison Without Bars. 

                                   Rose's rookie card still a hot commodity for collectors in mint condition.

Rose was a hometown product of Cincinnati, born to working class parentsin 1941.  The switch hitting right hander’s dream came true when he was called to the Big Show in 1963. In his stellar 23 year career as a player, most of the time with the Reds, Rose hit for a .303 batting average, tallied 4,256 hitsincluding 160 home runs and drove in a total of 1,394 runs.  He was famously aggressive on the base pathsdespite not being a fast runner and perfected a dangerous head-first slide. 

Among his many honors were Rookie of the Year in the National League in 1963, two Gold Gloves for his sparkling defensive play, three batting titles, 17 All Star Game appearances, and three World Championships with Cincinnati’s legendary Big Red Machine.  After playing for the Philadelphia Phillies and Montreal Expos from 1979 to ’84, controversial Reds owner Marge Schott brought Rose back as a player-managerto finish the ’84 season. 

Rose's signature head-first dive into base made him one of the most exciting players in baseball.

He played two more years in the combined role before retiring to concentrate on his bench duties.  He was undoubtedly the most popular player in Reds history and one of the most admired in baseball. 

But he was an inveterate gambler.  He claimed his regular bets with a major bookie did not include baseball, then after proof surfaced, that he did not bet on games he was part of.  When that claim, too, was disproven, he could only say that he bet for his team, not against it. 

Rose as Reds manager.

But gambling is the big no-no in Major League Base which was nearly killed by scandals in the 19th Century and again by the Black Sox scandal of 1919.  Baseball ignored a lot of misbehavior, including the nearly murderous attacks of Ty Cobb on fans, regular alcohol abuse by stars like Babe Ruth, and numerous instances of sexual peccadilloes.  It would not, however, forgive gambling. 

After his banishment Rose cut a pathetic figure.  Banned from even setting foot into a ball park, he made his living signing autographs and selling memorabilia.  Even that got him into trouble.  On April 20, 1990, Rose pleaded guilty to two charges of filing false income tax returns for not reporting income from selling autographs and memorabilia, and from horse racing winnings. He was sentenced to five months in the medium security Prison Camp at the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois and fined $50,000. Released on January 7, 1991 after having paid $366,041 in back taxes and interest he was required to perform 1000 hours of community service. 

Rose would sign anything for a buck, including humiliating admissions.

Rose’s 2004 autobiography was an attempt to both bring in much needed income and rehabilitate his reputation, possibly leading to a lifting of the lifelong ban and eligibility for the Hall of Fame.  Despite the vocal support of many players and some sportswriters, the book failed on the later count.

The steroid scandals of the early 21st Century were used by supporters to argue that Rose, who never used performance enhancing drugs and who played hard his entire career, deserved consideration to be included in the Hall while disgraced players like Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, and Roger Clemens remain eligible. 

Rose flogging his autobiography, My Prison Without Bars.  The book flopped as a plea for sympathy and as a bid to regain eligibility for the Hall of Fame.

Baseball is officially un-moved by these arguments. After rumors that he was considering lifting the ban surfaced in 2010, Commissioner Bud Selig quickly denied the reports.  Selig’s successor has been no more sympathetic and many of the sportswriters who admired and championed him have retired.  Baseball has moved on.  It is doubtful Pete Rose will ever enter the Hall of Fame. 

Edgar Lee Masters—Illinois Poet and Restless Soul

23 August 2021 at 11:40


                                 Edgar Lee Masters as a young man.

Edgar Lee Masters was the author of one of the greatest single volumes of American poetry ever—The Spoon River Anthology.  That book in which the denizens of a small 19th Century Illinois village graveyardtell their stories, is still a shockand an eye opener for anyone who bought into the Disney version of small town life as a kind of perfect idyll.

Masters was born on August 23, 1868 in Kansas where his father had briefly established a law practice.  When that failedthe family moved back to his grandparents farm near Petersburg in Menard County, Illinois.  In 1880 the family moved again to nearby Lewistown where the boy attended high school and showed an interest in both writing and following his father’s shaky footsteps in the law.  He had his first publication in the Chicago Daily News—a Democratic challenger to the dominance and hegemony in the state of the Republican Chicago Tribune.

Masters' modest boyhood home in Petersburg has been preserved.

In the late 1880’s he attended Knox Academy, the prep school for Knox College but was forced to drop outwhen his family could no longer support him.  After that he read law at his father’s office.  His dad was the village Freethinker and thus something of an outcast.  The practice revolved around the margins of local life, petty civil cases for those who could not afford the lawyers who hobnobbed with the judges and bankers, criminal cases, divorces, anything that exposed the underside of the community.  It was an eye-opening experience.

After passing the Bar, young Masters hot footed it out of town to Chicago in 1893 where he hoped to advance both his legal and writing careers. He went into practice with Kickham Scanlan and began to publish poetry under the name Dexter Wallace.

In 1898 he married the daughter of a prominent lawyer and began a family that grew to three children including a daughter Marsha who grew up to be a poet and a son Hilary who became a novelist.  But the union grew stormy due to Master’s extramarital affairs.

                                Masters--the lawyer/poet on the cusp of fame.

In 1903 Masters went into partnership with Clarence Darrow, already noted as a top labor and defense attorney.  They were united in their Democratic politics, instinctive radicalism, Freethought, and admiration for the labor Democrat hero, Governor John Peter Altgeld.  As a junior partner in the firm, Masters handled mostly routine criminal and civil cases for the poor, often pro bono.

Despite an amicable beginning, the partnership foundered in 1908 and formally broke up in 1911 due to a business dispute with Darrow and a messy, scandalous marriage.    Despite the bitter personal falling out, he remained an admirer of Darrow.

Masters published two little noted volumesof poetry under pen names in 1898 and 1910.

During his hiatus from the active practice of law as his partnership with Darrow disintegrated he began work on writing and polishing poems inspired by his hometown.  In 1914 he began to publish these in Reedy’s Mirror out of St. Louis under another nom de plume, Webster Ford.  A year later the poems were collected and issued as The Spoon River Anthology with the assistance and encouragement of Harriet Monroe of Poetry Magazine to instant critical and popular acclaim.

                                    The first edition of Spoon River Anthology.                                

Suddenly the obscure lawyer was famous.  He gradually wound down the practice of law to concentrate on a literary career.  Although he was embittered in old age that none of his subsequent work got the attention of that classic, he produced prolifically and with great skill.  In all there were 19 more volumes of verse including a sequel The New Spoon River, 12 plays, 6 novels, and 7 biographies.  Among the subjects of his biographies were fellow Illinois poet Vachel Lindsay, Mark Twain, and Walt Whitman to each of whom he owed a debt of gratitude.

His 1931 bio Lincoln the Man was a highly controversial self-proclaimed de-mythologizing of the Prairie President.  In part it was a direct refutation of fellow Illinois poet Carl Sandburg’slyrical and lionizing biographies.  His jealousy of Sandburg was well known, but he seems to have been most influenced a loyalty to the Democratic Party of the 19th Century which was already vanishing outside the Deep South.  He pictured Lincoln as a Whig tool of the banks and railroads from the beginning in service to concentrated wealthagainst the common man.  He was pictured as tyrant who rushed the country into an unwanted war to the applause of Eastern elites.  The book was a popular success in the South, but it virtually destroyed his own reputation with the liberal literary establishment, many previously admiring critics turning against his whole body of work.

Masters's feud with rival poet Sandburg of the reputation of Abraham Lincoln attracted national attention.  Sandburg triumphed and Masters's reputation was sullied.

He had quit the practice of law entirely by 1920 and moved to New York to concentrate on writing.  Masters finally divorced his first wife in 1923 years after abandoning the family.   In 1926 he married Ellen Coyne with whom he had another son, Hardin.

Although Masters won plaudits and honors including the Mark Twain Silver Medalin 1936, the Poetry Society of Americamedal in 1941, the Academy of American Poets Fellowship in 1942, and the Shelly Memorial Award in 1944 he never matched the fame and glory of his contemporary Carl Sandberg and often felt snubbedthe Eastern and academic poetry elite.  He was not experimental enough to be ranked with the Imagistsand modernists. 

However damaged Masters's reputation was at the time of his death, The Spoon River Anthology remained one of the most beloved volumes of American poetry and the writer was honored by U.S. postage stamp in 1970.

He died March 5, 1950, in a convalescent home near Philadelphia and was buried back home in Petersburg in the cemetery that inspired his greatest book.

Here are samples of Masters’ work.  First from The Spoon River Anthology:

Jim Brown was the trainer of a famous trotting horse, Dom Pedro.

Jim Brown

While I was handling Dom Pedro

I got at the thing that divides the race between men who are

For singing “Turkey in the straw” or “There is a fountain filled with blood”—

(Like Rile Potter used to sing it over at Concord);

For cards, or for Rev. Peet’s lecture on the holy land;

For skipping the light fantastic, or passing the plate;

For Pinafore, or a Sunday school cantata;

For men, or for money;

For the people or against them.

This was it:

Rev. Peet and the Social Purity Club,

Headed by Ben Pantier’s wife,

Went to the Village trustees,

And asked them to make me take Dom Pedro

From the barn of Wash McNeely, there at the edge of town,

To a barn outside of the corporation,

On the ground that it corrupted public morals.

Well, Ben Pantier and Fiddler Jones saved the day—

They thought it a slam on colts.

 

—Edgar Lee Masters

 

Masters was not so down on Lincoln in those days as reflected in one of the most famous pieces from the collection.  Ann Rutledge’s grave, not far from the poet’s, is now marked with this poem. 

Ann Rutledge

 

Out of me unworthy and unknown

The vibrations of deathless music;

“With malice toward none, with charity for all.”

Out of me the forgiveness of millions toward millions,

And the beneficient face of a nation

Shining with justice and truth.

I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds,

Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln,

Wedded to him, not through union,

But through separation.

Bloom forever, O Republic,

From the dust of my bosom!

 

—Edgar Lee Masters

 

And finally, from a later collection a glimpse of the restless soul, the Freethinker taunted by a spiritual yearning he barely understood.

Inexorable Deities  

Deities!

Inexorable revealers,

Give me strength to endure

The gifts of the Muses,

Daughters of Memory.

When the sky is blue as Minerva’s eyes

Let me stand unshaken;

When the sea sings to the rising sun

Let me be unafraid;

When the meadow lark falls like a meteor

Through the light of afternoon,

An unloosened fountain of rapture,

Keep my heart from spilling

Its vital power;

When at the dawn

The dim souls of crocuses hear the calls

Of waking birds,

Give me to live but master the loveliness.

Keep my eyes unharmed from splendors

Unveiled by you,

And my ears at peace

Filled no less with the music

Of Passion and Pain, growth and change.

But O ye sacred and terrible powers,

Reckless of my mortality,

Strengthen me to behold a face,

To know the spirit of a beloved one

Yet to endure, yet to dare!

 

—Edgar Lee Masters

Wag, Wit, and Poet—Dorothy Parker

22 August 2021 at 11:56

Dorothy Parker--a stylish young post-World War I writer in a pensive pose.

Dorothy Parker is one of those writers now more famous for who she was than what she wrote.  She will forever be etched in the public mind as the queen of the Algonquin Roundtable, that shifting group of Manhattan wits and sophisticateswho daily gathered at an Algonquin Hotel table to exchange barbs and bon mots.  Through the Roaring Twenties and into the early years of the Depression the pithy sayings of these gin fueled repasts were breathlessly repeated in gossip columns read as avidly in Peoria as on Park Avenue. 

Despite her own very real accomplishments, Parker recognized this and even reveled in it.  “Every day,” she said, “I get up, brush my teeth, and sharpen my tongue.”

But Parker was a widely respected magazine journalist, critic, and above all a poet.  Her volumes of humorous verse were beloved best sellers.

Parker was born on August 22, 1893 on the Jersey Shore where her middle class Manhattan parents kept a summer cabin.  Her birth name was Rothschild—her father was of German Jewish descent (not related to the banking family) and her mother was of Scottish ancestry.  Her mother, Eliza died while staying at the same cabin just before her 5th birthday setting off a troubled and unhappy childhood.

Young Dot, as she was called, hated her father’s new wife and referred to her contemptuously as the “the housekeeper.”  She claimed her father physically abused her.  She was openly glad when her stepmother died in 1903.  Despite a Jewish father and a Protestant birth mother, she was sent to the Convent of the Blessed Sacrament School probably in hopes that the stern nuns would reign in her wild rebelliousness.  It didn’t work.  She was expelled when she was 14 for calling the Immaculate Conception “spontaneous combustion.”

After that she was shipped of for an indifferent education at a New Jersey finishing school mostly to keep her out of her father’s hair.  She graduated at age 18 in 1911.  Two years later her father died leaving most of his estate to a sister.  Dorothy went to work playing piano at a dancing school to earn a living.  In her spare time, she was writing verse.

She quickly established a career as a writer after selling her first poem to Vanity Fair in 1914.  Soon after she was hired as a staff writer at a sister publication, Vogue then moved to a similar job at Vanity Fair two years later.

In 1917 she met and married stockbrokerEdwin Pond Parker II.  They were soon separated by his service in World War I.  Not that she minded much.  Ambivalent about her Jewish identity, especially because she hated her father, she later joked that she got married to acquire a WASP name.  After Parker’s return from the war, the marriage was stormy and eventually ended in divorce in 1926.

Parker’s career really took off when she took over theater reviews at Vanity Fair from the vacationing P.G. Woodhouse.  Her criticism was arch, acerbic, witty, and penetrating.  Readers loved it.  Skewered playwrights, producers, directors, and actors felt differently. 

Some Round Table members: Art Samuals, Charles MacArthur, Groucho Marx, Dorothy Parker and Alexander Wollcott.

Parker and fellow staff members Robert Benchley and Robert E. Sherwood began to take a daily largely liquid lunch at the Algonquin Hotel.  They were soon joined by others and by 1919 folks were talking about the Roundtable.  Other early participants included Alexander Wolcott, newspaperman/playwright Charles MacArthur, Harpo Marx, sportswriter Haywood Broun and playwrights George F. Kaufmann and Marc Connolly.  Franklin Pierce Adams not only began posting quips from the table in his popular column The Conning Tower but printed whole poems by Parker and other members helping to make their public reputations.

Sometimes all the publicitythe wits received backfired.  Theater producers outraged over several quotes by Parker ridiculing their shows threatened to remove advertising from her employer.  Vanity Fair fired her. Benchley and Sherwood walked out in solidarity.  By then they were all hot commodities and could place poems, reviews and stories in all of the top magazines.

In 1925 Harold Ross founded the New Yorker and brought Parker and Benchley on board as part of his Editorial Board.  Parker really came into her own.  Her poems became a favorite feature and she contributed sharp, well drawn short stories as well.  Her caustic book reviews as the Constant Reader were very popular.

In 1926 her first volume of poems, drawn from her contributions to the New Yorker, other popular magazines and the Conning Tower sold an amazing 47,000 copies and had generally glowing reviews.  She followed with two more collections, Sunset Gun in 1928 and Death and Taxes in 1931.

Despite her success, which included collaboratingon plays with Kaufmann and Elmer Rice, Parker’s personal life was a shambles.  Not only was she drinking heavily, but she was subject to bouts of black depressionand suicidal thoughts, which she sometimes hinted at in her poems.  Her marriage was on the rocks and she was engaged in a series of sad, sometimes disastrous love affairs.  Affairs with MacArthur, who would go on to marryactress Helen Hayes, Benchley, and Wolcott resulted in pregnancies and abortions.  After the first she made the first of several suicide attempts.

Her love life and disappointments became the fodder of her most famous short story, Big Blonde published in The Bookman magazine.  It won the prestigious O. Henry Award for Best Short Story of 1929.  She went on to publish several story collections over the next decade.

Parker’s life changed dramatically in 1927 as she became interested in the campaign to save anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti from executionon dubious murder/bank robbery charges in Massachusetts.  Previously largely apolitical, she traveled to Boston to protest and was arrested and fined $5 for picketing.  The experience set of a commitment to leftist causes, social justice, and civil rights that only grew and lasted the rest of her life.

Caricaturist Al Hirschfeld's take on a later Round Table gathering.   

By the early 1930’s the old gang at the Algonquin and newer members like Tallulah Bankhead and Edna Ferber were drifting apart.  The group dynamics of members sleeping with each other or occasional other’s spouses must have contributed.  But so did the increasing demands of successful careers and political tensions between the more conservative members and the increasingly radicalized Parker.

One day in 1932 Ferber showed up for lunch and found the regular table occupied by, “a party from Kansas.”  It was all over.

About that time Parker began a relationship with a fellow New Yorker contributor and sometimes actor Allan Campbell.  Like her, he was of Jewish and Scottish heritage.  He was also ten years younger and an active bi-sexual.  The two were married in 1934 in Taos, New Mexicoon the way to Hollywood and the lure of lucrative new careers as screenwriters.

 

Parker with her second husband Allan Campbell shortly after their 1934 marriage.  Their relationship was fraught  with ups and downs--he was bi-sexual, both committed infidelity, both drank heavily and suffered serious depression.  Despite a divorce, war-time separation, reconciliation, remarriage, and being victimized by the MaCarthy Era Black list  they remained connected personally and professionally.

They first caught on at Paramount.  He was put under a contract for $350 which included acting in bit parts, and she got $1000 a week.  They soon, however, established themselves as a successful screen writing duo earning $2,000 to $5,000 a week free lancing a quality studios like MGM and Warner Bros.  Most of the 15 films on which they collaboratedwere competent, journeyman efforts.  But they earned an Academy Award nomination for the classic A Star is Born in 1937 with Janet Gaynor and Fredrick March.  When Parker’s friend and fellow left wing activist Lillian Hellman was called away from The Little Foxes to work on another project, they were called in two write additional dialogue for the Bette Davis.

The marriage broke up in divorce in 1938 but despite Parkers drinking and suicidal depressions, they continued to work together until Campbell entered the service as a military intelligence officer in World War II.  As her contribution to the war effort, she worked with Wolcott and Viking Presson a compact edition of her best stories and poems for soldiers serving overseas. After the War Viking released it for American readers as The Compact Dorothy Parker.  It has never since gone out of print. 

Viking Press's The Portable Dorothy Parker has never gone out of print.

After the war in 1947 Parker won another Oscar nomination for her contributions the Susan Hayward tearjerker Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman.  The tale of a woman whose life was disintegrating in alcoholism must have hit awfully close to the bone.

But Parker’s days in Hollywood were number as the Red Scare infected the industry.  For years she had been a leader of anti-Fascist crusades and organizations.  She had even reported on the Spanish Civil War for The Masses and had helped re-locate defeated veterans of the war to safety in Mexico.  She was active on or chaired several committees—most notably the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League which grew to 4,000 members and was accused funneling large sums of money to the Communist Party.

Parker’s last Hollywood job was The Fan, and adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan for Otto Preminger in 1949.  After that she was hauled before a Congressional Committee, pled the Fifth Amendment, and blacklisted.

In the midst of all of that, Parker re-married Campbell in 1950.  They separated, but did not divorce, in 1952 and Parker returned to New York to take up residency in the Volney Hotel.  Advanced alcoholism prevented her from returning to regular magazine work, although she submitted occasional reviews.  Mostly she made a small living as celebrity guest or panelist on such radio programs as Information Please and Author, Author.  She wrote monologues for old friends Tallulah Bankhead and Ilka Chase.

The ravages of alcoholism were evident in this mid-1960's portrait by Richard Avadon.

Despite her drinking, she remained as active as possible politically.  She was especially moved by the Civil Rights Movement as it unfolded on the streets of the South.

In 1960 she reconciled with Campbell and moved back to Los Angeles where the couple worked fitfully on un-realized projects.  In 1962 Campbell committed suicide.  In worse emotional shape than ever, Parker returned to the lonely life of a Volney Hotel drunk.

When she died of a heart attack on June 7, 1967 Parker left her estate, including valuable literary properties, to Martin Luther King, Jr. to support him in his work.  When he was killed days later the estate ended up in the hands of the NAACP.

The commemorative marker over Parker's ashes at NAACP headquarters in Baltimore.  A fan has left flowers and an airplane bottle of gin.

With no living relative or willing friend to claim them Parker’s ashes stayed in a file cabinet in her lawyer’s office for 17 years until the NAACP claimed them.  They buried them under a markeron the grounds of their Baltimore headquarters.  The plaque reads:

Here lie the ashes of Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) humorist, writer, critic. Defender of human and civil rights. For her epitaph she suggested, “Excuse my dust”. This memorial garden is dedicated to her noble spirit which celebrated the oneness of humankind and to the bonds of everlasting friendship between black and Jewish people. Dedicated by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. October 28, 1988.

Here is just a sample of Dorothy Parker’s poetry—snide, sarcastic, and finally movingly personal.

A Pig’s Eye View of Literature

The Lives and Times of John Keats,
Percy Bysshe Shelley, and
George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron

Byron and Shelley and Keats
Were a trio of Lyrical treats.
The forehead of Shelley was cluttered with curls,
And Keats never was a descendant of earls,
And Byron walked out with a number of girls,
But it didn't impair the poetical feats
Of Byron and Shelley,
Of Byron and Shelley,
Of Byron and Shelley and Keats.

–Dorothy Parker

 

Autobiography

Oh, both my shoes are shiny new,
And pristine is my hat;
My dress is 1922....
My life is all like that.

 

–Dorothy Parker

 

Of a Woman Dead, Young

If she had been beautiful, even,
Or wiser than women about her,
Or had moved with a certain defiance;
If she had had sons at her sides,
And she with her hands on their shoulders,
Sons, to make troubled the Gods-
But where was there wonder in her?
What had she, better or eviler,
Whose days were a pattering of peas
From the pod to the bowl in her lap?

That the pine tree is blasted by lightning,
And the bowlder split raw from the mountain,
And the river dried short in its rushing-
That I can know, and be humble.
But that They who have trodden the stars
Should turn from Their echoing highway
To trample a daisy, unnoticed
In a meadow of small, open flowers-
Where is Their triumph in that?
Where is Their pride, and Their vengeance?

 

–Dorothy Parker




 

After Storms Urgent Community Aid to Homeless Returns to Willow Crystal Lake

16 August 2021 at 07:00

Gale force winds that uprooted mature trees last week also damaged or destroyed homeless encampments. (Lake and McHenry County Scanner. Shelly Danhoff.)

Note:  Heretic, Rebel, a Thing to Flout will be on a brief hiatus beginning tomorrow through Sunday, August 28 while the proprietor takes a vacation.

The torrential downpours and gale force winds that tore through McHenry County last week destroyed or heavily damaged many of the campsites occupied by the unhousedTents were ripped up or blew awaySleeping bags, blankets, and pads were soaked with no good way to dry them.  Waterand mud spoiled food, cooking equipment, and personal hygiene items

Compassion for Campers, the program that provides camping gear and equipment to the homeless, expects extraordinary need and demand at the Community Empower Shower event this Friday, August 20 at Willow Crystal Lake, 100 S. Main Street from 10 am to 2 pm.

Compassion for Campers also has gear available at Warp Corps, 114 Benton St. in Woodstock, for daily walk-up availability.  The program will be in urgent need of donationsto restock its equipment and supplies.

 


Community Empower Showers provides wide ranging services for the homeless and those who are facing housing crisis will be held on the first and third Fridays of each month.   

Organizershave included even more groups, agency, and services for the homeless population.  The Empowerment Shower is a collaborative effort of many organizations and agencies including the Crystal Lake Food Bank, Consumer Credit Counseling, Family Health Partnership Clinic, Home of the Sparrow, Live 4 LALI, McHenry County Housing Authority, Pioneer Center, Prairie State Legal Services, Salvation Army, St. Vincent DePaul Society, Veterans Path to Hope, Willow Crystal Lake, and Warp Corps.

Services offered at no cost include:


Mobil showers

Laundry Facilities

Camping Supplies including Tent, Stove, Sleeping Bags

Toiletries/Personal Care items

Clothing

Onsite Meal

Food

Haircuts

Transportation

Assistance obtaining IDs, birth certificates, Social Security cards

Assistance with SSI/SSDI (Disability)

Assistance with Medical coverage, SNAP, TANF

Medical Access—Doctor care, Covid-19 vaccine

Debt Management Services/Advocacy

Shelter and Housing Referrals and Linkages

Domestic Violence support

Veteran’s Services

Substance Use/Harm Reduction Tools and Support

Mental Health, Spiritual, and Social Support Referrals

 


Contributionsto support Compassion for Campers including building reserves forhotel rooms during cold and snow emergencies this winter can be made by sending a check made out to Tree of Life UU Congregation, 5603 Bull Valley Road, McHenry, IL 60050 with Compassion for Campers on the memo line. The donations are placed in a dedicated fund and not used for any other purpose.  Tree of Life also donates all the administrative expenses of the program so 100% of all donations go directly to client assistance. 

Music, Mud, Memory, and Myth at The Woodstock Festival

15 August 2021 at 07:00

The crowd and stage at Woodstock.  Feel free to circle yourself if you were there.

A certain songsaid, “By the time we got to Woodstock/We were half a million strong.”  By last count 24,794,612 aging Baby Boomers have claimedat one time or another to attend the Woodstock Music & Art Fairwhich opened on August 15, 1969 on Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel, New York.  But then it was written by Joni Mitchell who missed it herself because her agent didn’t want her to miss an appearanceon the Dick Cavett Show.

Like Joni, I didn’t get to Woodstock either.  I was working a third shift printingdaily employment listings for Illinois Unemployment officesand was helping organize on the People’s Park Project at Halstead and Armitage as a new member of the Chicago Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)Of course, when I found out what I had missed, I, too, wished I had been there.  

Two rich young guys, John Roberts and Joel Rosenman took out ads in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal which read, “Young men with unlimited capital looking for interesting, legitimate investment opportunities and business propositions.”  It attracted the attention of and Artie Kornfield who came up with an idea to build a world class recording studio in rustic Woodstock, New York were artists like Bob Dylan and The Band were already living.  As discussions evolved, the idea of a festival to promote the studio and maybe featuring some of those local luminaries began to emerge.  


As envisioned it was a much more modest event than it became.  But, in a series of legendary steps and missteps it evolved into something unique.  After having trouble recruiting top acts, Creedence Clearwater Revival agreed to play for $10,000—a steep fee but one which signaled to other top acts that the festival would be worth doing.  Leading rock and roll acts, including the cream of the San Francisco psychedelic scene and one huge British Invasion group, The Who, were joined by folk music legends like Joan Baez and Arlo Guthrie.  

Planned as a for-profit program, tickets went on sale in New York City area record storesand by mail for $18 a day or $24 for all three—fairly steep pricesat a time when top concert tickets sold for less than $5 at most venues.  But sales were brisk.  186,000 were sold in advance and the promoters began to believe that as many as 200,000 would attend.  They could foresee a nice profit.  

This, however, far exceeded the 50,000 that promoters had told officials in Wallkill,where they had leased land in an industrial park.  Alarmed local residents protested voraciously. The town board votedin mid-July to require that gatherings of more than 5,000 have a permitand then officially denied the organizers’ application on the ground that port-a-potties would not meet local code.  

Scrambling to find an alternative, promoters found Bethel motel owner Elliot Tiber who had a permit already for another event and who offered the use of 15 acres behind his business.  A local real estate agent recommended Max Yasgur, whose farm abutted Tiber’s property with a gently sloping hillside that would make a natural amphitheaterfor a stage set up at the bottom in front of a pond.  

The Bethel Town Clerk and Supervisor approved permits for the event, but the board refused to issue them and ordered the clerk to post stop work notices on the site.  But it was too late, despite local alarm, early arrivals began coming into the area more than a week in advance.  

Traffic jams to the festival were so bad that many abandoned their cars on the road and walked for miles.

The underground press and progressive rock radio stations were spreading the word far and wide.  Everyone realized that far more people than expected would show up.  The organizers had to decide to try reinforcing fencingat the site to maintain a ticket for admission policy or put their resourcesinto finishing the large and elaborate stage and sound systemswhich were behind schedule.  They decided that fencing and security could lead to violence, as could the cancellation of the festival because the stage was not ready.  They opted for the stage.  

By August 14 roads to Bethel were becoming clogged and the crowds thick.  The fence was cut.  Like it or not for most Woodstock would be a free festival.  

The Woodstock Festival of our imagination.

The enormous crowds and the traffic snarls became a media event by themselves as network TV ran footage from helicopters of the hordes of hippiesdescending on the rural village.  Rather than discourage people, reports set even more on the road to join in what was being recognized as something astonishing.  

Torrential rains before and during the concert transformed the fields to seas of mud.   Conventional camping became impossible.  Shortages of food and water became critical.  The Hog Farm commune set up a free feed operation featuring brown rice and some vegetables.  Local residents took pity on the bedraggled hippies and made thousands of peanut butter sandwiches to be handed out.  

The Woodstock experience for most--mud and garbage far from the stage.

There was noshortage of drugsMarijuana smoke hung like a hazeover the crowd and LSD, including the famous bad brown acid that Hog Farmers warned about from the stage, was plentiful.  So, evidently was heroin, which resulted in at least one fatal overdose.  

Despite the hardship, the crowd remained peaceful and legendarily mellow.  From the first act, Richie Havens, to the last, an almost unknown guitarist named Jimi Hendrix, the music was spectacular.  Most of those in attendance even remember it, at least after their memories were refreshed by Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music, the landmark 1970 film directed by Michael Wadleigh and edited by Thelma Schoonmaker and Martin Scorsese, or by the multi-disc record albums that were released.

Jimi Hendrix who closed the show and Crosby, Stills, and Nash who debuted there were the festival's break-out stars.  Bob Dylan and the Band never signed on.  Janis Joplin and The Who turned in legendary performances.  An irritated Pete Townsend broke a guitar over Abbie Hoffman's head for making a political speech.

Joni Mitchell penned the memorial ditty which became an anthem hit for Crosby, Stills and Nash, the super group which debuted at Woodstock.  

The festival also boosted the careers of several other participants, none more so than Hendrix, who vaulted overnight to super star status.  

As for the organizers, they lost their shirts, at least at first.  They were deluged by unpaid bills and over 80 lawsuits.  Eventually revenuefrom the movie paid off all debts, but none of the original partners, now feuding among themselves, made any money.  

They, like their event, however, became legendary—even heroic—in later books and in the interesting 2008 film Taking Woodstock by Taiwanesedirector Ang Lee.

John Sebastian, formerly of the Lovin' Spoonful, on stage in 1969.  He did more than anyone to make tie dye a hippy fashion trend.  Fifty years later he signed on for the ill fated anniversary concert.

In 2019 Michael Lang, one of the original promoters who lost his shirt on the festival, tried to cash in on nostalgia by staging Woodstock 50 with big name current rock, rap, and pop acts and a couple of surviving artists from the original festival, Country Joe McDonald and John Sebastian.

Things began to unravelalmost from the start.  Lang lost his principle financial backer, Dentsu Aegis who tried unsuccessfully to cancel the event.  Then production partner Superfly dropped out a few days later.  Permits could not be obtained for the originally announced venue—the Watkins Glenn Raceway in upstate New York and the Town of Vernon near Utica.  By July most of the originally announced main acts including Jay-Z, Miley Cyrus, Santana, the Lumineers, and Dead and Company dropped out.  Finally, a last minute scramble to recast the festival as a voter registration event and a fundraiser for environmental groups, at a much smaller venue, the 15,000 seat Merriweather Pavilion inthe Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. also collapsed.  Lang threw in the towel in a press release issued on July 31.

Michael Lang's much hyped Woodstock 50 reboot crashed and burned.

The golden anniversary did not go uncommemorated, however, near its original home in Bethel.  The town held a string of events centered on the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts on the site of Max Yasgur’s farm.  Events included a sold-out Arlo Guthrie performance and Woodstockdocumentary screening on August 15; concerts by Ringo Starr on the 16th, John Fogarty on the 18th, and Santana on the17th, as well as art exhibitions, craft shows, and panel discussions.

The festival was celebrated with a new PBS documentary, Woodstock: Three Days that Defined a Generation.

Old hippie nostalgia--playing dress up in outfits they never really wore.  They can afford to hit the local cannabis dispensary for pricy legal pot.

Meanwhile aging hippies whether they actually made it to Woodstock or not fifty-two years ago or not, are putting on tie-dye, and digging out their old albums or copies of the movie.  And yeah, a lot of them will toke up, too.  It’s even legal now in many states which might take a little off the rebellious thrill.

 

Remembering Charlottesville—Murfin Verse

14 August 2021 at 07:00

Neo-Nazis and Klansmen were among those who flocked to the United the Right rally and march in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. 

Yesterday was the fourth anniversary of the clashes in Charlottesville, Virginiawhen a Unite the Right Rally supposedly in defense of “sacred” Confederate monuments faced off against anti-racist and, yes, anti-fascist counter demonstratorsKlansmen, neo-Nazis, self-appointed patriot militia, Proud Boys, and Two Percenters strutted their stuff carrying tiki torches and shouting slogans like “We will not be replaced!”  The right wingers taunted and attacked peaceful counter protestors and avowed black clad Anti-fa fought backPoliceeither stood aside or sometimes seemed to cooperate with the thugs.  Scores were injured in street fighting, and 32 year old Heather Heyer was killed when a car rammed through a crowd of anti-racists trying to block the path of the white nationalist marchers.

In some ways the events in Charlottesville were a preview of the insurrectionary siege of the Capitol on January 6 which included members of many of the same groups urged on by the same leaders.  And lest we think the threat has passed just this week Proud Boys, Trumpist fan boys, and Christian doministscame to Portland specifically to attack Black Lives Matter supporters and the Anti-fa who have long been a fixture in that city.  Two days of street brawls went on as the local police again stood aside.  Police there have been defiant of city leaders who have been trying to heal wounds from violent clashes last year. 

Anarchists, anti-fa, and members of the Industrial Workers of the World, (IWW) defended and protected clergy attempting to block White nationalist from their rallying point around a statue of Robert E. Lee.  The Black public intellectual Cornel West--seen upper right in the suit and sunglasses--bluntly reported that the Anti-fa "saved our lives."

The day after the Charlottesville confrontations, I spoke at a hastily called community vigil at the Tree of Life Unitarian Universalist Congregation in McHenry.  After remembering the blood sacrifice of anti-fascist hero Heather Heyer, I said that it fell to me to be the voice of anger and outrage.  I was not there to lead a chorus of Kumbaya.  I recalled that earlier in the day I had read remarks by Black scholar and activist Cornel West who was with religious leaders on both Friday night when the marching Nazis threatened the church where they gathered and on Saturday when they placed themselves around the scheduled park rallying point to block access to the Unite the Right marchers.  The ministers were confronted and menaced with imminent attack unprotected by police who had withdrawn. “The antifascists, and then, crucial, the anarchists, because they saved our lives, actually. We would have been completely crushed, and I’ll never forget that.”  West said.  These are the same anti-fascists that the Cheeto-in-Charge and far too much of the media held to be equally guilty for the violence.

The Old Man at the roadside candlelight vigil following the rally on the ground of the Tree of Life UU Congregation in McHenry where more than 200 gathered on short notice.

Then I read this:

 

Munich and Charlottesville

August 13, 2017

 

So is this how it felt on the streets of Munich

            when the strutting Brown Shirts

            in their polished jackboots,

            Sam Browne belts, and scarlet arm bands

            faced the scruffy Commies

            in their cloth caps

            and shirtsleeves rolled up

            and battled in the beerhalls,

            parks and streets.

 

All of the good people, the nice people

            cowered behind closed doors

            and wished it would go away—

                        all of the liberals, the Catholics,

                        the new-bred pacifists of the Great War,

                        the professors and doctors,

                        editors and intellectuals,

                        the Social Democrats,

                        even—my God!—the Jews

                        who had not gone Red—

            a pox on both your houses they solemnly intoned.

 

Hey, buddy, in retrospect those damn Bolshies

            look pretty good,

            like heroes even.

           

Things look a little different in Charlottesville,

            in brilliant color not grainy black and white

            and the Fascists can’t agree on a

            Boy Scout uniform and array themselves

            golf shirts and khakis, rainbow Klan hoods,

            biker black and studs, and strutting camo.

 

But the smell, you know, that stench,

            is just the same.

 

The question is—do you dare be a Red today

            or will you close your doors

            and go back to your game consoles

            and cat videos.

 

Which will it be, buddy?

 

—Patrick Murfin 

Felix Adler’s Modernism and Humanism Was Revolutionary in Religion

13 August 2021 at 10:23

 

                            Young Felix Adler in 1876.

Felix Adler, a man destined for the Rabbinate, took an unexpected left turn at Emanuel Kant and ended up founding a secular humanist religion.  The son of Rabbi Samuel Adler, a leading figure in the liberal 19th Century Reform movement among European Jews, Felix was born on August 13, 1851 in Alzey, Hesse, Germany.

When he was six years old his father moved the family to New York City to become the Rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, the cradle of Reform in America and the largest and most influential synagogue in New York.  The congregation then conducted its services in German, the language of its founders in 1847, and was the first in the nation to do away with sex segregationin worship allowing families to sit together, introduce music, and revisemany Orthodox rituals.

Although his highly culturedfather had some grave doubts about his son’s ability, he educated the boy grooming him as a successor.  He attended the prestigious private Columbia Grammar School and Preparatory Academy then went on to Columbia University where despite his father’s misgivings he graduated with Honors in 1870.

Then it was off to Europe for graduate education in preparation for the Rabbinate.  He was enrolled at Heidelberg University, the high temple of German culture.  There he fell in with bad influencesNeo-Kantian philosophers who posited that the existence or non-existence of God could never be proven either way and that morality could be developed independently of theology.  The experience shook him to his core and caused him to re-evaluate Judaism and all religion.

A post card of the handsome Temple Emanu-El erected in 1868 at the fashionable corner of 5th Avenue and 43rd Street in Manhattan.  It was served by Adler's father and he was the heir apparent as Rabbi until Felix gave his fateful lecture.

Back in New York in 1873 he was invited to give a sermon at Temple Emanu-El, an obvious audition for being anointed his father’s successor.  His lecture electrified—and shocked—the congregation.  Judaism of the Future neglected to mention God even once.  It was not ruminationon the Torah, the Talmud, the wisdom of great teachers.  Instead it was a bold, forward looking manifesto presenting Judaism as a secular religion of morality for all humanity, not just the closely guarded privilegeof a Chosen People.

The sermon destroyed any chances of succeeding his father.  In fact, he was never again even asked to speak before the entire congregation.  This must have been no surprise to him and may have even lifted a burden from his shoulders. 

But his speech did have its admirersand defenders in the congregation, including some of its wealthiest and most influential members.  Some of them endowed a non-residency Professorship of Hebrew and Oriental Literature at Cornell University in 1874.  There Adler thrived in his natural academic environment.  He was adoredby his students with whom he was glad to engage in back-and-forth intellectual exploration.  More dangerously, he tied ethics and morality to contemporary issues, particularly the concentration of wealth by the new Capitalist class, the subjugation of labor, and the emerging open class warfare of the era. His lectures were widely attended and reported in the press.

But his ideas were far too radical for the Board of Trustees when faced by unhappy and powerful alumni who accused him of atheism.  They refused to extend tenure and turned down a renewal of the endowment that paid his salary in 1876.  Adler was out of his job.

He turned his attention to pursuing the religious ideas outlined in his old sermon, which continued to generate controversy due to the widespread distribution of printed copies. On May 16, 1876 Adler delivered a major lecture more fully outlining his philosophy.  He once again urged the creation of a religious movement that could not be divided by theology, creed, or ritual but that allowed theists, atheists, agnostics and deists to act cooperatively on a moral basis for the improvementand enrichment of the human condition.

The lecture was widely reported and stirred up both indignation and interest.  Within a few weeks with the aid of supporters from Temple Emanu-EL including its President Joseph Seligman, lent him support.  In February of 1877 he incorporated the Society of Ethical Culture.  Although he dreamed of a wider movement, Ethical Humanism remained mostly a movement of culturally sophisticated Ashkenazi Jews, but through his widespread lecturing and publication also had impact far beyond his religious society and the others that it spawned in Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Chicago.

The principles of Ethical Culture were simple but profoundly revolutionary:

  • The belief that morality is independent of theology;
  • The affirmation that new moral problems have arisen in modern industrial society which have not been adequately dealt with by the world's religions;
  • The duty to engage in philanthropy in the advancement of morality;
  • The belief that self-reform should go in lock step with social reform;
  • The establishment of republican rather than monarchical governance of Ethical societies
  • The agreement that educating the young is the most important aim.

It was, in Adler’s oft repeated maxim, to be a religion of “Deeds not Creeds.”  Living up to that standard the New York Society under Adler’s personal leadership was quickly involved in multiple projects including a kindergarten, district nursing service and a hygienic tenement-house building company. 

The Society for Ethical Culture in New York City before the turn of the 20th Century.  The building is still in use.

Most significant was the creation of the Workingman’s School, a Sunday school and a summer home for children which would eventually become the Ethical Culture School which Adler served as Rectoruntil his death.  It became a school whose liberal curriculuminspired generations of leaders in the worlds of the arts, law and government, and science.  Among the graduates of the School and/or its high school prep division Fieldston School were photographer Diane Arbus,Red buster lawyer Roy Cohn (an anomaly), film maker Sophia Coppola,mogul/producer  Jeffrey Katzenberg, activist and sociologistStaughton Lynd, New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau, Poet Lauriat of the United States Howard Nemerov, Father of the Atomic BombJ. Robert Oppenheimer,novelist Belva Plain, musician/poet Gil Scott-Herron, composer and lyricist  Stephen Sondheim, and journalist broadcaster Barbara Walters.

That is indicative of the wide influence of Ethical Culture and it founder far beyond the few thousand members belonging to societies at any one time.  In 1892 the existing societies formed a loose federation, The American Ethical Union, but each society remained sometimes fiercely independent.

Adler’s impact as a moral philosopher was wide.  There was a small, but voracious, Free Thought movement in the United States in the late 19th Century of which the Great Agnostic, Robert Ingersoll was the most prominent spokesman.  A movement of agnostics, Deists, and open atheists, it was characterizedby open hostility to organized religion and often consumed in fruitless debate with its partisans.

Adler offered a new vision of humanism.  He took no position on the existence of God, salvation, or eternal life.  For him these were unknowable and best left to individual consciences.  In fact, he strove to overcome the bitter divisions of partisans of all religions and anti-religious philosophies by concentrating on moral service.  For that he and his movement were bitterly attacked by some, especially the take-no-prisoners atheists.  On the other hand, this vision greatly appealed to new generations of humanists.  By the way, the recent renaissance of the New Atheism has renewed this same debate.

Of course, Adler continued to be a great influence in the development of the American Reform movement among Jews despite his separation from them.  His ideas helped shape new generations of Rabbis and lay leaders which were reflected in Congregations.  Only since the end of World War II, has there been somewhat of a retreat from the Adler tradition to incorporatingmore traditional Jewish ritual.

                    Adler collaborated with Unitarian Jenkin Lloyd Jones's Unity Movement.

Adler also appealed to liberal Protestants, especially those in the emerging Social Gospel movement.  But nowhere was his influence felt more deeplythan among the most socially advanced Unitarians.  Adler became a collaborator with Jenkin Lloyd Jones, head of the quasi-independentWestern Unitarian Conference and the denomination’s leading liberal voice.  He contributed regularly to Jones’s Unity Magazine and was a frequent speaker Unity Club meetings, mid-week educational lectures hosted by many Mid-Western congregations.  The vision of a post-creedal religion with an emphasis on social justice and action was shared by the two men.  Together they helped infuse sometimes stuffy 19th and early 20th Century Unitarianism with the genetic religious humanism that came to dominate the faith.

As Humanism rose to dominance in American Unitarianism there was talk of merger or consolidationwith Ethical Culture in the 1930s and again in the 1950’s.  In the end the different cultural roots, not to say lingering anti-Semitism in some of the Unitarianism’s older New England congregations prevented further action.  However, the two movements remain close and ordained Unitarian Universalist ministers have sometimes been called to serve Ethical Culture Societies. 

In 1902 Adler was able to return to academia as the Chair of Political and Social Ethics at Columbia University, where he taught until his death in 1933.  The position elevated his public profile even more and he greatly influenced two generations of student.

After years of concentrating on domestic justice issues, the Spanish American War aroused a new interest in world affairs for Adler.  Initially he had supported the war as a way to liberate the peoples of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines.  But when it quickly became apparentthe United States was actually more interested in acquiring its own empire, Adler became a voracious critic and leading anti-imperialist.  The “supreme worth of the person”—a construction that sounds familiar to Unitarian Universalist ears—was the basis of Ethical Culture and Adler’s overarching principlein world affairs, that no single country, faith, political or economic philosophy could lay claim to superior institutions and lifestyle choices of other peoples.

When for similar reasons Adler opposed American entry into World War I his German birth was used to attack him as an agentof the Kaiser and he attracted the unwanted attention of Federal Authorities.  He may have only escaped prosecution for his anti-war writings and speeches because powerful friends in New York politics interceded on his behalf.  His opinions also caused rifts in Ethical Culture Societies, especially after the war when he surprised many by also speaking out againstthe League of Nations as an imperialist club of the winners of that war.  Instead, he proposed an international Parliament of Parliaments elected by the legislative bodies of all nations and representing various classes of people, rather than just the economic and social elite, so that common interests and not national differenceswould prevail.

 

                    Adler in 1926.

Over his long career Adler published prodigiously, a seemingly endless streamof articles, pamphlets, published lectures and sermons, and academic papers.  Among his books which were deeply influential were Creed and Deed (1878), Moral Instruction of Children (1892), Life and Destiny (1905), The Religion of Duty (1906), Essentials of Spirituality (1908), An Ethical Philosophy of Life (1918), The Reconstruction of the Spiritual Ideal (1925), and Our Part in this World.  A collection of his The Ethics of Marriage for the Lowell Institute in 1896–97 was also widely read.

Adler acted on his belief by service to many worthy causes. He the founding chairman of the National Child Labor Committee in 1904 which hired his student Lewis Hine to record conditions many child laborers suffered in a series of searing documentary photographs. In 1917 Adler served on the Civil Liberties Bureau which was speaking out for war-time dissident.  The Bureau later became the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) with which he remained active. In 1928 he became President of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association. He also served on the first Executive Board of the National Urban League.

After Adler diedin New York City on April 24, 1933 at the age of 81, his Ethical Cultural movement struggled.  There was a post-war revival of sorts with new societies springing up in suburban enclaves and university towns, often focused around the Sunday schools for children.  Societies have tended to become somewhat more conventional in their religious practices so that many Sunday services closely parallelchurch services without the mention of God.

The logo used by many Ethical Culture societies evokes a man with out-stretched arms inscribed in a circle as in Leonardo Di Vinci's famous sketch, but also the ban-the-bomb peace symbol and even an earlier version of the UUA's flaming chalice in a circle.

Today Ethical Humanism is a small, but influential voice for rational humanism with about 24 congregations and a few thousand members.  But as always, Felix Adler’s influence extends far beyond that to generations of humanists who may never have heard his name.


The Fate of the Kursk and Its Crew on Putin’s Hands

12 August 2021 at 09:54

The Russian nuclear powered attack submarine Kurst designed during the last days of the USSR was one of the most modern and prestigious ships in the new Russian Navy.  She was better maintained than most of the fleet but even her was not in top condition as noted by visible rust on her hull and her crew lacked training.

On August 12, 2000 the Russian submarine K-141 Kursk sank in shallow waters in the Barents Sea (north of Russia and northeast of the Scandinavian Peninsula) after being ripped apart by two powerful explosions.  All 118 officers and seamen aboard died, although as many as 23 may have lived for days in an aft compartmentfruitlessly awaiting the rescue which at the shallow depth of 354 feet should have been possible. 

The Kursk was the largest nuclear powered attack submarineever built.  It measured over 500 feet long and was four stories high at the conning tower.  Designated by NATO as an Oscar IIclass sub, it was designed in the waning days of the Soviet Union but was the first ship completed under the Russian Republic in 1994. 

It was a very technologically advanced warship.  It’s thick, extra-hard high nickel chrome content stainless steel was corrosion resistant and left a weak magnetic signature deterring detection by NATO Magnetic Anomaly Detection(MAD) systems. There was a nearly 7 inch air gap between the outer shell and a thick steel inner hull.  The ship could carry 24 anti-ship cruise missiles armed with either conventional high explosives or tactical nuclear war heads and several torpedoes. 

The Kursk was assigned to the Russian Northern Fleet and based at Vidyaevo in the Kolsky District of Murmansk Oblast.  In the turmoil following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the resulting economic crisis and hyper-inflation, the condition of the Northern Fleet deteriorated badly.  Much of the fleet was allowed to rust at anchor.  Maintenance of even active ships was neglected, including care for the Russian Navy’s specialized submarine rescue ships.  Sailors went without out pay for as long as two years and were sometimes seen in villages in the area literally begging for food.  Many experienced officers and men left or abandoned the service.  Training was neglected.  The Kursk, considered a show piece and object of national pride, fared better than most of the fleet, but certainly was not up to top operational standards. 

When tough guy Vladimir Putin assumed control of Russia in 1999, he made rebuilding the military and Navy a high priority.  The Kusk was one of the ships that benefited from his attention.  Freshly outfitted, Putin dispatched it on a mission in the Mediterranean to monitor the U.S. Navy Sixth Fleet during the Kosovo War. 

After that successful flexing of naval power, the Kusk was assigned that August to the Northern Fleet’s largest training exercise in nine years.  The exercise involved four advanced attack submarines, the fleet's flagship Pyotr Velikiy (Peter the Great) and a flotilla of smaller ships.  The Kusk was making attack runs at the Pyotr Velikiy using dummy torpedoes when an explosion wracked the bow of the ship at 11:28 AM local time followed by an even more powerful blast, which was recorded at the equivalent of 3 to 7 tons of TNT, a little more than two minutes later. 

The second explosion sent debris through most of the length of the submarine.  The ship sank quickly with the immediate loss of most hands.  However, Captain Lieutenant Dmitriy Kolesnikov and twenty-two others made it to a sealed compartment in the aft where they survived for some time. 

Kursk was salvaged by Dutch companies which cut away the bow where possible nuclear-tipped cruise missiles may have been located. 

Russian authorities have always maintained that they must have died quickly, but evidence from salvage operations conducted in 2001by the Dutch companies Mammoet and Smit International indicated that they may have awaited rescue for days before being killed in a flash fire in the half-submergedcompartment. 

Soon after the accident British and Norwegian ships monitoring the exercise offered to come to the rescue of possible survivors.  But Putin, who was on vacation on the Black Sea, and Navy brass turned down the offer out of a combination of national pride and to protect secrets about the ship’s capacityand armaments.  Russian attempts at rescue and recovery were unsuccessful.  Putin did not return to Moscow or issue a public statement on the disaster for a week. 

The best reconstruction of the accident indicated that a hydrogen peroxide fueled supercavitating torpedo exploded when the highly concentrated propellant seeped through rust in the torpedo casing and exploded.  Heat from the first blast set off six or seven torpedo war heads and the secondary explosions were probably fatal to the ship. 

Vladimir Putin was interviewed in 2000 about the Kurskcatastrophe on RTR, the international service of VGTRK, a state-owned Russian broadcaster.  He denied there were nuclear weapons aboard and tried to deflect blame.

These kind of hot torpedo accidents were a known hazard to submarines.  A similar accident sank the British sub HMS Sidon in 1956 and is the principle suspected cause in the loss of the U.S. Navy’s USS Scorpion in 1968. 

Russia always denied that the ship’s missiles were armed with nuclear weapons, but it was a concern for the salvage companies, who cut the ship’s bow away from the rest of the boat before raising her.  The bow, including much of her armament, was destroyed by explosive charges in 2002.  The reactor was defueled and taken to Sayda Bay on the northern Kola Peninsulawhere reactor compartments were floated on piers.  The rest of the hulk was cut up for scrap.

The conning tower of Kursk today serves as a memorial in Murmansk.

The loss of the pride of the Northern Fleet, the botched attempts at rescue, and the fact that salvage had to be performed by Western companies despite a shallow depth close to Russian shores remains an embarrassment for Russia and for Vladimir Putin.


Jack London Reporting—Kelly’s Army Hits the Rails to Washington

11 August 2021 at 10:55

 

Police in the Bay Area confront members of Kelly's Industrial Army as they were forming for the long trip to Washington.  More than 1000 would head out on commandeered freight trains.

It was on this day in 1894 that the Western stepchild of Coxey’s Army was dispersed with the customary cracked heads by police and Army Troops in Washington, D.C.   That was months after Jacob S. Coxey and his top lieutenants were arrested for walking on the grass of the Capitol Building on May 1.  Although 6,000 were camped across the Potomac in Maryland without their leaders they began drifting offand their camp was eventually cleaned out. Coxey, an Ohio businessman and with utopian social theories organized his march of the unemployed from his hometown of Massillon, Ohio to demand that Congress supply relief for rampant unemploymentcaused by the Panic of 1893 with a program of public works.  His Commonweal of Christ appealed to many.  The march was organized and disciplined as an army, largely led by members of the Grand Army of the Republic, Civil War veterans. 

Despite its remarkable orderliness, the first ever mass demonstration in the nation’s Capitol was met with dread by officials who feared it was rife with anarchism and revolution. 

"General” Charles T. Kelley addresses his army in San Francisco, February 1914.

Although the initial troops under Coxey himself were dispersed, other “armies” inspired by it straggled into the city from all over the country as the summer wore on.  None came further under more difficult circumstances than Kelley’s Army.  “General” Charles T. Kelly raised his Industrial Army from the unemployed from the streets of San Francisco, Oakland, San Pedro and other points in California and along the West Coast.  It included many veteran seasonal workers and casual laborers especially hard hit by the Panic, experienced hobos who knew their way around railroads.

Over 1,000 men set out, organized militarily in companies planning to beat it to Washington on freight trains.  They made their way across the West as far as the Missouri River on commandeered trains.  They were fed by sympathetic farmers and towns people along the route, many of whom were just as hard hit by the Panic and resentful of the Railroads who conspired to keep freight rates high crippling the agricultural economy and bleeding cash strapped citizens with overpriced consumer goods.

Along the way they picked up many new recruits nearly doubling in size.  Those included a young cowboy and hard rock miner, William D. Heywood, known to his pals as Big Bill.  Another, catching up to the main body just before it crossed the Missouri into Iowa was a young former San Francisco Bay oyster pirate, sailor, and tramp named Jack London.

By the time Kelley’s Army straggled into Washington it had dwindled to only about 300, most lost in the long hike on footfrom the Mississippi at Cairo, Illinois.  London, who had deserted near Hanibal, Missouri was not among them.  They were greeted by stragglers from other Armies, including a contingentfrom far away Seattle.

Kelly's Army arrives at the transfer point in Council Bluff, Iowa.  Young hobo Jack London had joined shortly before.

After being chased from the city on August 11, Colorado Congressman and sympathizer Lafe Pence arranged for transportation to return Kelly’s men as far west as his state.  Contributions to that cause came from fat cats eager to get the riffraff out of the city.

Rather thandescribe the trials and adventures of Kelly’s Army, I think I will leave that to the more skillful hands of London who within a decade was world famous as one of America’s top novelists.  In 1907 he published a memoir of his younger days as a tramp, My Life in the Underworld.  His vivid account of his days with the Army was excerpted in the October issue of Cosmopolitan.  It is remarkable not only for the story it tells, but for London’s frank willingness to paint himself in a sometimes unfavorable light.

Buckle up—this is a great read.

 

Young Jack London.


The March of Kelly's Army

The Story of an Extraordinary Migration

By Jack London

It was once my fortune to travel a few weeks with a “push” that numbered two thousand. This was known as “Kelly’s Army.” Across the “wild and woolly West,” clear from California, General Kelly and his heroes had captured trains; but they fell down when they crossed the Missouri and went up against the effete East. The East hadn’t the slightest intention of giving free transportation to two thousand hoboes. Kelly’s Army lay helplessly for some time at Council Bluffs. The day I joined it, made desperate by delay, it marched out to capture a train.

It was quite an imposing sight. General Kelly sat a magnificent black charger, and with waving banners, to the martial music of fife and drum, company by company, in two divisions, his two thousand counter marched before him and followed the wagon-road to the little town of Weston, seven miles away. Being the latest recruit, I was in the last company of the last regiment of the Second Division, and, furthermore, in the last rank of the rear-guard. The army went into camp at Weston beside the railroad track—beside the tracks, rather, for two roads went through, the Chicago, Milwaukee, & St. Paul, and the Rock Island.

Our intention was to take the first train out, but the railroad officials “coppered” our play and won. There was no first train. They tied up the two lines and stopped running trains. In the meantime, while we lay by the dead tracks, the good people of Omaha and Council Bluffs were bestirring themselves. Preparations were making to form a mob, capture a train in Council Bluffs, run it down to us, and make us a present of it. The railroad officials coppered that play, too. They didn't wait for the mob. Early in the morning of the second day, and engine, with a single private car attached, arrived at the station and side-tracked. At this sign the life had renewed on the dead roads, the whole army lined up beside the track.

But never did life renew so monstrously as it did on those two roads. From the west came the whistle of a locomotive. It was coming in our direction, bound east. We were bound east. A stir of preparation ran down our ranks. The whistle tooted fast and furiously, and the train thundered past at top speed. The hobo didn’t live that could have boarded it. Another locomotive whistled, and another train came through at top speed, and another, and another, train after train, train after train, till toward the last the trains were composed of passenger-coaches, box-cars, flat cars, dead engines, cabooses, mail-cars, wrecking-appliances, and all the riffraff of worn-out and abandoned rolling-stock that collects in the yards of great railways. When the yards at Council bluffs had been completely cleaned, the private car and engine went east, and the roads died for keeps.

That day went by, and the next, and nothing moved, and in the meantime, pelted by sleet and rain, Kelly’s two thousand hoboes lay beside the tracks. But that night the good people of Council Bluffs went the railroad officials one better. A mob formed in Council Bluffs, crossed the river to Omaha, and there joined with another mob in a raid on the Union Pacific yards. First they captured an engine, next they made up a train, and then the united mobs piled aboard, crossed the Missouri, and ran down the Rock Island right of way to turn the train over to us. The railroad officials tried to copper this play, but fell down, to the mortal terror of the section-boss and one member of the section-gang at Weston. This pair, under secret telegraphic orders, tried to wreck our train-load of sympathizers by tearing up the track. It happened that we were suspicious and had our patrols out. Caught red-handed at train-wrecking, and surrounded by two thousand infuriated hoboes, that section-gang boss and assistant prepared to meet death. I don't remember what saved them, unless it was the arrival of the train.

It was our turn to fall down, and we did, hard. In their haste, the two mobs had neglected to make up a sufficiently long train. There wasn’t room for two thousand hoboes to ride. So the mobs and the hoboes had a talkfest, fraternized, sang songs, and parted, the mobs going back to Omaha on their captured train, the hoboes pulling out next morning on a one-hundred-and-forty-mile march to Des Moines. It was not until Kelly's Army crossed the Missouri that it began to walk, and after that it never rode again. It cost the railroads slathers of money, but they were acting on principle, and they won.

Underwood, Avoca, Walnut, Atlantic, Anita, Adair, Casey, Stuart, Dexter, Earlham, Desoto, Vanmeter, Booneville, Commerce, Valley Junction—how the names of the towns come back to me as I con the map and trace our route through the fat Iowa country! And the hospitable Iowa farmer folk! They turned out with their wagons and carried our baggage and gave us hot lunches at noon by the wayside; mayors of comfortable little towns made speeches of welcome and hastened us on our way; deputations of little girls and maidens came out to meet us, and the good citizens turned out by hundreds, locked arms, and marched with us down their main streets. It was circus day when we came to town, and every day was circus day for us, for there were many towns. 

In the evenings our camps were invaded by whole populations. Every company had its camp-fire, and around each fire something was doing. The cooks in my company, Company L, were song-and-dance artists and contributed most of our entertainment. In another part of the encampment the glee-club would be singing—one of its star voices was the “dentist,” drawn from Company L, and we were mighty proud of him. Also, he pulled teeth for the whole army, and, since the extractions usually occurred at meal-time, our digestions were stimulated by a variety of incident. The dentist had no anesthetics, but two or three of us were always ready to volunteer to hold down the patient. In addition to the diversions of the companies and the glee-club, church services were usually held, local preachers officiating, and always there was a great making of political speeches. A lot of talent can be dug out of two thousand hoboes. I remember we had a picked baseball nine, and on Sundays we made a practice of putting it all over the local nines. Sometimes we did it twice on Sundays.

Last year, while on a lecturing trip, I rode into Des Moines in a Pullman—I don’t mean a “side-door Pullman,” but the real thing. On the outskirts of the city I saw the old stove-works, and my heart leaped. It was there, at the stove-works, a dozen years before, that the army lay down and swore a mighty oath that its feet were sore and that it would walk no more. We took possession of the stove-works and told Des Moines that we had come to stay—that we’d walked in, but we’d be blessed if we’d walk out. Des Moines was hospitable, but this was too much of a good thing. Do a little mental arithmetic, gentle reader. Two thousand hoboes, eating three square meals a day, forty-two thousand meals a week, or one hundred and sixty-eight thousand meals for the shortest month in the calendar. We had no money. It was up to Des Moines.

Des Moines was desperate. We lay in camp, made political speeches, held sacred concerts, pulled teeth, played baseball and seven-up, and ate our six thousand meals a day, and Des Moines paid for them. Des Moines pleaded with the railroads, but they were obdurate; they had said we shouldn’t ride, and that settled it. To permit us to ride would be to establish a precedent, and there weren’t going to be any precedents. And still we went on eating. That was the terrifying factor in the situation. We were bound for Washington, and Des Moines would have had to float municipal bonds to pay all our railroad fares, even at special rates; and if we remained much longer she'd have to float bones anyway to feed us.

Then some local genius solved the problem. We wouldn’t walk. Very good; we should ride. From Des Moines to Keokuk on the Mississippi flowed the Des Moines River. This particular stretch of river was three hundred miles long. We could ride on it, said the local genius; and, once equipped with floating-stock, we could ride on down the Mississippi to the Ohio, and thence up the Ohio, winding up with a short portage over the mountains to Washington. Des Moines took up a collection. Public-spirited citizens contributed several thousand dollars. Lumber, rope, nails, and cotton for calking were bought in large quantities, and on the banks for the Des Moines was inaugurated a tremendous era of ship-building. Now the Des Moines is a picayune stream, unduly dignified by the appellation of “river.” In our spacious Western land it would be called a “creek.” The oldest inhabitants shook their heads and said we couldn’t make it, that there wasn’t enough water to float us. Des Moines didn’t care, so long as it got rid of us, and we were such well-fed optimists that we didn’t care either.

On Wednesday, May 9, 1894, we got underway and started on our colossal picnic. Des Moines had got off pretty easily, and she certainly owes a statue in bronze to the local genius who got her out of her difficulty. True, Des Moines had to pay for our boats; we had eaten sixty-six thousand meals at the stove-works; and we took twelve thousand additional meals along with us in our commissary—as a precaution against famine in the wilds; but then think what it would have meant if we had remained at Des Moines eleven months instead of eleven days. Also, when we departed, we promised Des Moines we’d come back if the river failed to float us. 

It was all very well having twelve thousand meals in the commissary, and no doubt the commissary “ducks” enjoyed them; for the commissary promptly got lost, and my boat, for one, never saw it again. The company formation was hopelessly broken up during the river trip. In any camp of men there will always be found a certain percentage of shirks, of helpless, of just ordinary, and of hustlers. There were ten men in my boat, and they were the cream of Company L. Every man was a hustler. For two reasons I was included in the ten. First, I was as good a hustler as ever “threw his feet,” and, next, I was “Sailor Jack.” I understood boats and boating. The ten of us forgot the remaining forty men of Company L, and by the time we had missed one meal we promptly forgot the commissary. We were independent. We went down the river “on our own,” hustling our “chew-in’s,” beating every boat in the fleet, and, alas! that I must say it, sometimes taking possession of the stores the farmer folk had collected for the army. 

For a good part of the three hundred miles we were from half a day to a day or so in advance of the army. We had managed to get hold of several American flags. When we approached a small town, or when we saw a group of farmers gathered on the bank, we ran up our flags, called ourselves the “advanced boat,” and demanded to know what provisions had been collected for the army. We represented the army, of course, and the provisions were turned over to us. But there wasn't anything small about us. We never took more than we could get away with. But we did take the cream of everything. For instance, if some philanthropic farmer had donated several dollars' worth of tobacco, we took it. So, also, we took butter and sugar, coffee, and canned goods; but when the stores consisted of sacks of beans and flour, or two or three slaughtered steers, we resolutely refrained and went our way, leaving orders to turn such provisions over to the commissary-boats whose business was to follow behind us.

My, but the ten of us did live on the fat of the land! For a long time General Kelly vainly tried to head us off. He sent two rowers, in a light, round-bottomed boat, to overtake us and put a stop to our piratical careers. They overtook us all right, but they were two and we were ten. They were empowered by General Kelly to make us prisoners, and they told us so. When we expressed disinclination to become prisoners, they hurried ahead to the next town to invoke the aid of the authorities. We went ashore immediately and cooked an early supper; and under the cloak of darkness we ran by the town and its authorities.

I kept a diary on part of the trip, and as I read it over now I note one persistently recurring phrase, namely, “Living fine.”  We did live fine. We even disdained to use coffee boiled in water. We made our coffee out of milk, calling the wonderful beverage, if I remember rightly, “pale Vienna.”

While we were ahead, skimming the cream, and while the commissary was lost far behind, the main army, coming along in the middle, starved. This was hard on the army, I’ll allow; but then, the ten of us were individualists. We had initiative and enterprise. We ardently believed that the grub was to the man who got there first, the pale Vienna to the strong. On one stretch the army went forty-eight hours without grub; and then it arrived at a small village of some three hundred inhabitants, the name of which I do not remember, though I think it was Red Rock. This town, following the practice of all towns through which the army passed, had appointed a committee of safety. Counting five to a family, Red Rock consisted of sixty households. Her committee of safety was scared stiff by the eruption of two thousand hungry hobos who lined their boats two and three deep along the river bank. General Kelly was a fair man. He had no intention of working hardship on the village. He did not expect sixty households to furnish two thousand meals. Besides, the army had its treasure-chest. 

But the committee of safety lost its head. “No encouragement to the invader,” was its program, and when General Kelly wanted to buy food, the committee refused to sell. It had nothing to sell; General Kelly's money was “no good” in that burg. And then General Kelly went into action. The bugles blew. The army left the boats and on top of the bank formed in battle array. The committee was there to see. General Kelly’s speech was brief. 

“Boys,” he said, “when did you eat last?”

 “Day before yesterday,” they shouted. “Are you hungry?” 

A mighty affirmation from two thousand throats shook the atmosphere. Then General Kelly turned to the committee of safety.  “You see, gentlemen, the situation,” said he. “My men have eaten nothing in forty-eight hours. If I turn them loose upon your town, I’ll not be responsible for what happens. They are desperate. I offered to buy food for them, but you refused to sell. I now withdraw my offer. Instead, I shall demand. I give you five minutes to decide. Either kill me six steers and give me four thousand rations, or I turn the men loose. Five minutes, gentlemen.”

The terrified committee of safety looked at the two thousand hungry hobos and collapsed. It didn’t wait the five minutes. It wasn’t going to take any chances. The killing of the steers and the collecting of the rations began forthwith, and the army dined.

And still the ten graceless individualists soared along ahead and gathered in everything in sight. But General Kelly fixed us. He sent horsemen down each bank, warning farmers and townspeople against us. They did their work thoroughly all right. The erstwhile hospitable farmers gave us a cold reception. Also, they summoned the constables when we tied up to the bank, and loosed the dogs. I know. Two of the latter caught me with a barbed-wire fence between me and the river. I was carrying two buckets of milk for the pale Vienna. I didn't damage the fence any; but we drank plebeian coffee boiled in vulgar water, and I had to throw my feet for another pair of trousers. I wonder, gentle reader, if you every essayed hastily to climb a barbed-wire fence with a bucket of milk in each hand. Ever since that day I have had a prejudice against barbed wire, and I have gathered statistics on the subject.

Unable to make an honest living so long as General Kelly kept his horsemen ahead of us, we returned to the army and raised a revolution. It was a small affair, but it devastated Company L of the Second Division. The captain of Company L refused to recognize us; said we were deserters, traitors, scalawags; and when he drew rations for Company L from the commissary he wouldn't give us any. That captain didn't appreciate us, or he wouldn't have refused us grub. Promptly we intrigued with the first lieutenant. He joined us with the nine men in his boat, and in return we elected him captain of Company M. The captain of Company L raised a roar. Down upon us came General Kelly, Colonel Speed, and Colonel Baker. The twenty of us stood firm, and our revolution was ratified.

But we never bothered with the commissary. Our hustlers drew better rations from the farmers. Our new captain, however, doubted us. He never knew when he’d see the ten of us again, once we got under way in the morning, so he called in a blacksmith to clinch his captaincy. In the stern of our boat, one on each side, were driven two heavy eye-bolts of iron. Correspondingly, on the bow of his boat, were fastened two huge iron hooks. The boats were brought together, end on, the hooks dropped into the eye-bolts, and there we were, hard and fast. We couldn't lose that captain. But we were irrepressible. Out of our very manacles we wrought an invincible device that enabled us to outdistance every other boat in the fleet.

Like all great inventions, this one of ours was accidental. We discovered it the first time we ran on a snag in a bit of a rapid. The head-boat hung up and anchored, and the tail-boat swung around in the current, pivoting the head-boat on the snag. I was at the stern of the tail-boat, steering. In vain we tried to shove off. Then I ordered the men from the head-boat into the tail-boat. Immediately the head-boat floated clear, and its men returned into it. After that snags, reefs, shoals, and bars had no terrors for us. The instant the head-boat struck, the men in it leaped into the tail-boat. Of course the head-boat floated over the obstruction and the tai-boat then struck. Like automatons the twenty men now in the tail-boat leaped into the head-boat, and the tail-boat floated off.

The boats used by the army were all alike—made by the mile and sawed off. They were flatboats, and their lines were rectangles. Each boat was six feet wide, ten feet long, and a foot and a half deep. Thus, when our two boats were hooked together, I was at the stern steering a craft twenty feet long, containing twenty husky hobos who “spelled” each other at the oars and paddles, and loaded with blankets, cooking-outfit, and our own private commissary.

Still we caused General Kelly trouble. He had called in his horsemen, and substituted three police boats that traveled in the van and allowed no boats to pass them. The craft containing Company M crowded the police boats hard. We could have passed them easily, but it was against the rules. So we kept at a respectable distance astern and waited. Ahead, we knew was virgin farming country, unbegged and generous; but we waited. White water was all we needed, and when we rounded a bend and a rapid showed up we knew what would happen. Smash! Policed boat number one goes on a boulder and hangs up. Bang! Police boat number two follows suit. Whop! Police boat number three encounters the common fate of all. Of course our boat does the same thing; but, one, two, the men are out of the head-boat and into the tail-boat; one, two, they are out of the tail-boat and into the head-boat; and one, two, the men who belong in the tail-boat are back in it, and we are dashing on. “Stop!” shriek the police boats. “How can we?” we wail plaintively as we surge past, caught in that remorseless current that sweeps us on out of sight and into the hospitable country that replenishes our private commissary with the cream of its contributions. Again we drink pale Vienna and realized that the grub is to the man who gets there.

Poor General Kelly! He devised another scheme. The whole fleet started ahead of us. Company M of the Second Division started in its proper place in the line, which was last. And it took us only one day to get ahead of that particular scheme. Twenty-five miles of bad water lay before us—all rapids, shoals, bars, and boulders. It was over that stretch of water that the oldest inhabitants of Des Moines had shaken their heads. Nearly two hundred boats entered the bad water ahead of us, and they piled up in the most astounding manner. We went through that stranded fleet like hemlock through the fire. There was no avoiding the boulders, bars, and snags except by getting out on the bank. We didn’t avoid them. We went right over them, one, two, one, two, head-boat, tail-boat, tail-boat, head-boat, all hands back and forward and back again. We camped alone that night, and loafed in camp all the next day while the army patched and repaired its wrecked boats and straggled up to us.

There was no stopping our cussedness. We rigged up a mast, piled on the canvas (blankets), and traveled short hours while the army worked overtime to keep us in sight. Then General Kelly had recourse to diplomacy. No boat could touch us in the straight-away. The ban of the police boats was lifted. Colonel Speed was put aboard, and with this distinguished officer we had the honor of arriving first at Keokuk on the Mississippi. And right here I want to say to General Kelly and Colonel Speed that here's my hand. You were heroes, both of you, and you were men. And I'm sorry for at least ten per cent. of the trouble that was given you by Company M.

At Keokuk the whole fleet was lashed together in a huge raft, and, after being wind-bound a day, a steamboat took us in tow down the Mississippi to Quincy, Illinois, where we camped on Goose Island. Here the raft idea was abandoned, the boats being joined together in groups of four and decked over. Somebody told me that Quincy was the richest town of its size in the United States. When I head this I was immediately overcome by an irresistible impulse to throw my feet. No “blowed-in-the-glass profesh” could possibly pas by such a promising burg. I crossed the river to Quincy in a small dugout; but I came back in a large river-boat, down to the gunwales with the results of my thrown feet. Of course I kept all the money I had collected, though I paid the boat hire; also I took my pick of the underwear, socks, cast-off clothes, shirts, “kicks,” and “sky-pieces”; and when Company M had taken all it wanted there was still a respectable heap that was turned over to Company L. Alas, I was young and prodigal in those days! I told a thousand “stories” to the good people of Quincy, and every story was “good”; but since I have come to write for the magazines I have often regretted the wealth of story I lavished that day in Quincy, Illinois.

It was at Hannibal, Missouri, that the ten invincibles went to pieces. It was not planned. We just naturally flew apart. The Boiler-Maker and I deserted secretly. On the same day Scotty and Davy made a swift sneak for the Illinois shore; also McAvoy and Fish achieved their get-away. This accounts for six of the then; what became of the remaining four I do not know.

As a sample of life on the road, I make the following quotations from my diary of the several days following my desertion: 

Friday, May 25th.  Boiler-Maker and I left the camp on the island. We went ashore on the Illinois side in a skiff and walked six miles on the C. B. & Q. to Fell Creek. We had gone six miles out of our way, but we got on a hand-car and rode six miles to Hull’s, on the Wabash. While there we met McAvoy, Fish, Scotty, and Davy, who had also pulled out from the army.

Saturday, May 26th.  At 2.11 a. m. we caught the Cannon-ball as she slowed up at the crossing. Scotty and Davy were ditched. The four of us were ditched at the Bluffs, forty miles farther on. In the afternoon Fish and McAvoy caught a freight while Boiler-Maker and I were away getting something to eat.

Sunday, May 27th.  At 3.21 a.m we caught the Cannon-ball and found Scotty and Davy on the blind. We were all ditched at daylight at Jacksonville. The C. & A. runs through here, and we’re going to take that. Boiler-Maker went off, but didn’t return. Guess he caught a freight.

Monday, May 28th.  Boiler-Maker didn’t show up. Scotty and Davy went off to sleep somewhere and didn’t get back in time to catch the K. C. passenger at 3.30 a.m. I caught her and rode her till after sunrise to Mason City. Caught a cattle train and rode all night.

Tuesday, May 29th.  Arrived in Chicago at 7 a.m. . . . 

And years afterward, in China, I had the grief of learning that the device we employed to navigate the rapids of the Des Moines—the one-two-one-two, head-boat-tail-boat proposition—was not originated by us. The Chinese river-boatmen had for thousands of years used a similar device to negotiate “bad water.” It is a good trick all right, even if we don’t get the credit. It answers Doctor Jordan’s test of truth: “Will it work? Will you trust your life to it?”

When Red-Faced America Paid Reparations to Detainees

10 August 2021 at 10:51

From George Takei's graphic memoir They Called Us Enemy.

Given the disgraceful circumstances of our concentration camps for immigrants,asylum seekers, and whatever brown skinned legal residents and citizens get swept up, perhaps it is good to remember this tidbit of American History.  Will our heirs and progeny be as mortifiedby us and how will they have to atone for our crimes?

On August 10, 1988, more than 45 years after the start of internment, the United States government authorized reparations payments to Japanese-Americans detained during World War II.

President Ronald Reagan signing the bill apologizing for World War II internment of Japanese-Americans and authorizing largely symbolic reparations.  Regan was less interested in justice for the formerly interred than in sullying the reputation of Democratic Party hero Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Ten weeks after the December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, ordering 120,000 people of Japanese descent—including 75,000 American citizens—into internment camps. The announced purpose was to protect the West Coast from sabotage and collusion with the enemy, but the perceived threat was based more in racial prejudice than military strategy, as the great majority German-American and Italian-Americanresidents were allowed to remain in their homes undisturbed.  And despite the large pre-war German-American Bundwith its openly pro-Nazi rallies and proven networks of spies and saboteurs.  

For the length of the war, Americans of Japanese descent and Japanese nationals—many of denied American citizenship based on racially discriminatory quotas—were imprisoned in makeshift internment camps throughout the West Coast and as far east as Arkansas. Interned people were forced to abandon their homes, farms, and businesses, or sell them at rock bottom prices, losing economic stability and generational wealth. The 1944 U.S. Supreme Court decision Korematsu v. U.S., upheld Roosevelt’s executive order.

A member of the Nesei 442nd Regiment on guard in France in 1945.  Under Trump many immigrant volunteers in the U.S. Armed Forces who had tacitly been promised a path to citizenship were targeted for deportation.

Despite the trauma the great majority of the detainees remained loyal to America and thousands of their young men volunteered for service in the Armed forces.  That included members of the 442nd Infantry Regiment made up of Niseisecond generation American citizens—that became the most decorated unit of it size during the war for its hard-fighting service in Italy and France

After the war, Japanese-Americans returned home to distrust and resentment. Wartime internment traumatized an entire generation of people and continues to impact their descendants.

After the war the detainees were often unwanted back in their home communities.

Inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, survivors of internment organized to demand that the United States government address this history.

In 1980, Congress established a commission to investigate the internment camps and their legacy. The report decried Japanese internment as a “grave injustice” and acknowledged that the internment was fueled by “racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.”

The decade-long efforts of Japanese American civil rights advocates were realized when President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which provided an apology and compensation of $20,000 to living survivors of Japanese internment. An estimated 50,000 people interned during the war died before the reparation act’s passage.

Although Japanese Americans were gratified by the acknowledgement of the grave injustice done to them and for the formal apology, the cash settlements were a drop in the bucket compared to actual losses. 

A one day evacuation sale at a Japanese-American owned business.  Many did not have the time or opportunity to even attempt to get some value for their abandoned property.

Hard working and industrious Japanese had some of the finest farms on the West Coast, prosperous businesses in towns and cities as well as high-rates of home ownership.  All of that caused resentment and envy by their neighbors, many of whom swooped in to claim their property legallyor by winked-at outright theft.  A mere $20,000 came nowhere near making up those losses, especially considering inflation.  And by denying recompense to the tens of thousands who had already died, their heirs were effectively cheated as well.

In the decades after the apology and reparations, a public consensus grew that the internment was one of the blackest episodes in American history.  But under the Trump maladministration and its xenophobic immigration policies with new camps were built—and proposals made to actually use former Japanese internment camps—sprang up like mushrooms.  A slew of apologists, right-wing ideologues, and outright White nationalists—not only defended the camps but exult in them.  And they assailed the birthright citizenship of the Nisei generations.  Like Japanese millions of Latinx Americans are still derided as alien stains on White America.

A Trump re-election rally in Iowa where more than half of his supports agreed that World War II internment was justified and wanted the same treatment for Muslim-Americans.  They also supported the border concentration camps by even larger margins.

Trump shared that view and occasionally threatened to try to end birthright citizenship by fiatexecutive order.  Many of his Make America Great Again devotees cheer it on.  An unthinkable cancer is still spreading.

All because we are already forgetting the lessons of Manzanar.


That Little Book by the Slacker in the Woods

9 August 2021 at 11:59

On August 9, 1854 one of the most influential books in American history was published in Boston by Ticknor and Fields, the publisher of the Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The slender book, Walden; or, Life in the Woods, by 37 year old Henry David Thoreau, was eagerly awaited by the Transcendentalists, his intellectual community and close circle of friends who were busy trying to re-imagineeverything from God to the politicsof human relations.  Few of them, however, suspected that it would outlast most of their own high flown essays, sermons, and poems

Thoreau spent two years in a small, shingledcabin on a woodlot owned by his friend Ralph Waldo Emersonnear a small lake not far from his hometown of Concord, Massachusetts.  People who have not read the book imagine that he lived the life of a hermit in a near wilderness.  Nothing could be further from the truth. 

The woodlot and cabin were a pleasant stroll from the very center of the town, perhaps the most intellectual village in American History where Emerson encouraged his coterie of friends and intellectual collaborators to settle in his orbit.  Throughout his stay Thoreau accepted visitors and regularly visited in return.  He typically spent Sunday afternoons dining and visiting with Emerson and other friends.  He also regularly saw his supportive, if perplexed, mother

It was Thoreau’s intention to experiment with living simply and frugally to avoid the distractions and temptation of society, commune with nature, and dedicate himself to a writing project, the book that would become, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.

Thoreau was an intellectually curious, somewhat socially inept, son of a local pencil makerof French descent and a mother of established New England stock.  He was born in Concord on July 12, 1817.  He was reared in the historic Concord Unitarian church served by Rev. Ezra Ripley until 1841.  When the beloved and liberal Ripley died that year and the pulpit was assumed by a new minister who he considered insufficientlyin touch with the divine and over concerned with doctrine, Thoreau resigned his membership and never returned, except for funeralsand rites of family and friends.  He remained, however within the broader intellectual life that encompassed many Unitarian ministers and lay people, and which was the hatching ground for the Transcendentalist movement.

He was educated at Harvard but did not settle into one of the expected respectable careers of law, medicine, ministry or business.  Instead, he became a schoolteacher and tutor—the occupation of a gentleman without other prospects.  After a brief stint as a public school teacher in Concord, which he resigned because he would not administer required corporal punishment, he and his beloved older brother John began their own Concord Academy in 1838.  The school shocked folks by taking students out of the classroom for frequent walksthrough the meadows and woods to explore nature and visits to local shops and businesses like the blacksmith where middle classstudents were shown how things were actually made.  The school ended when John died in his brother’s arms of tetanus in 1842.

Henry David Thoreau about the time he wrote Walden.

During these years Thoreau fell in with Emerson’s circle when the Sage of Concord returned to his ancestral home after his unsuccessful turn at a Boston pulpit.  He became one of the first members of the group that regularly congregated at the philosopher’s home.  Emerson enticed his friends to join him in Concord, and many did.  Others frequently made the short trip from Boston and Cambridge.  Among those regularly in this circle were Bronson Alcott (father of Louisa May), the poet Ellery Channing, Margaret Fuller (editor of The Dial), Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife Sophia and Sophia’s accomplished sisters Elizabeth and Mary Peabody

Although only a few years older than Thoreau, Emerson became a friend and surrogate father.  He encouraged Thoreau to publish his first work in The Dial and instructed him to start a personal journal.  From 1841-44 he actually lived most of the time in Emerson’s home functioning as a tutor to his children, an editorial assistant for the busy writer, and a handyman

Later, he would enter the family pencil business, working side by side with his employees.  He continued this, with the notable exception of his two years at Walden, for most of the rest of his life.  He was on one hand alienated by the distractions of day to day business, and on the other quite diligent.  He adapted new methods of pencil manufacture which mixed clay as a binder with graphite for improved stability and longer life, and in his last years pioneeredthe use of graphite to ink typesetting machines

He often spoke of establishing a small subsistence farm to get away from business and concentrate on his writing.  His move to Emerson’s woodlot in April of 1845 was sort of an experimental half-step to that dream.  Emerson agreed to allow Thoreau to build his cabin and cultivate a small garden in exchange for clearing part of the woodlot and continuing to do other chores for the Emerson family.

His plan was to live as simply as possible while supplying his basic needs for food, shelter, clothing and fuel.  The woodlot provided ample fuel, and the garden was productive. He also fished Walden Pond for food.  He did buy staplesflour, sugar, coffee, lard, etc.  His mother frequently brought gifts of food, and of course he dined regularly with Emerson. 

He built the simple one room 10 foot x 15 foot cottage, which he described as being in the English style, with shingled siding and a hard packed dirt floor.  In his meticulously kept records where he wrote that he spent only $28.12½ in his first year.  All of this he accounts in the first chapter of the book.  He actually cultivated an acre and a half in beansfor a cash crop, earning more than $8.00 from the sale of the harvest

N.C. Wyeth's 1933 Walden Pond Revisited depicts Thoreau, Walden Pond, the cabin and Concord in the distance.  It hangs in the Concord Museum and is the featured illustration of the Thoreau Society's web page.

The book is a somewhat rambling account of his time there and includes musings on his reading habits, solitude, the spirituals inspiration of nature; accounts for his daily activities including his housekeeping and chores, almost daily visits to Concord, and his rambles.  He kept track of visitors—more than 30 in all—including a runaway slave who he hid and helpedto escape.  He complained of the sound of a train whistle, which reminded him of the corruption of nature by commerce and extolleda basically vegetarian diet which he admittedly did not always keep himself.  He postulated a number of Higher Laws. 

On one trip into the village in July of 1846, Thoreau had a chance encounter with the local tax collector, who demanded paymentsfor six years in arrears Poll Taxes.  He refused to pay in protest to the Mexican War and the Fugitive Slave Law and was arrested.  He was released the next day when, against his will, his mother paid his arrearage.  He later used this experience as the basis for lectures at the Concord Lyceum in 1848, The Rights and Duties of the Individual in relation to Government, which he amended into an essay now known as Civil Disobedience published by Elizabeth Peabody in the Aesthetic Papers.  This is the work that informed the philosophies of Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

In August Thoreau briefly left Walden for to a trip to Maine, of which he would write much later in his book The Maine Woods.  Thoreau finished the manuscript account of his 1839 trip with his brother John and left the cabin in September 1847 after two years and two months.

He unsuccessfully sought a publisher for his manuscript and finally took Emerson’s advice to print it at his own expense.  He commissioned 1000 copies of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers from Emerson’s publisher but was only ever able to sell 300.  He had to work for years at the pencil factory to pay off this debt, which cooled his relationship with Emerson. 

While working at the factory, Thoreau polished his journal notes into a manuscript compressing his two year experience into a single year for the book, divided in symbolic seasonal quarters.  It was finally published in 1854. 

Thoreau became a prolific writer and essayist.  He produced books on local history and became an increasingly skilled naturalist.  His later books on nature helped inspire the ecology movement more than a century later.  He also remained a defiant abolitionist and became one of the few writers who publicly came to the defense of John Brown after the failed raid at Harper’s Ferry. 

Louisa May Alcott lived next door to Emerson as a young girl and knew Thoreau well.  She thought his neck whiskers repelled women.

He never married, although he claimed to be an admirer of women.  Louisa May Alcott believed his lopsided features and the scraggly neck beardhe wore in his Walden period repelled women who might otherwise have been interested.  Modern biographersrefer to him as largely asexual

He suffered from ConsumptionTuberculosis—from at least 1836, which left him in fragile health despite his frequent extended tramps in the woods and fields.  He contracted bronchitis while trying to count tree rings of recently felled old growth trees in a cold rainstorm in 1859 and never recovered his strength.  He spent his last years bed ridden and editing his final manuscripts. 

He died at peace with himself on May 6, 1862 at the age of 44.  Bronson Alcott arranged the funeral service where Ellery Channing read an original elegy and Emerson, almost beside himself with grief, delivered the eulogy.  He was buried in a family plotwhich was later moved to Concord’s Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. 

                                                
      
Critics were outraged by the 1967 U.S, postage stamp with they thought depicted Thoreau as a filthy hippy.  The 2017 Forever stamp issued on the bicentennial of his birth made him look more distinguished.

Thoreau’s reputation grew posthumously, especially after his journals and other private writings were published in the late 19th Century.  Walden became required readingin many high school English classes and influenced the emerging counter-culture of the 1960s.  

 

Hoopla for Chicago Picasso—Almost All is Forgiven

8 August 2021 at 07:00

                            Unveiling the Picasso in Daley Center Plaza in 1967 drew a crowd of gawkers.

The Chicago Picasso—it has no other name—turned 50 years old in August 2017 and it was a very big deal.  How big a deal it is might mystify non-Chicagoans who underestimate the Toddlin’ Town’s municipal vanity.   Aspirations to be lauded as a World Class City and center of the fine arts meets common Babbitt boosterism.  It was the subject of essays by two of the city’s sharpest newspapermen, Rick Kogan of the Tribune who was at the dedication and Neil Steinberg of the Sun-Times, who was not, as well as several magazine pieces, all sorts of TV time, and social media postings. 

The city itself is staged a reenactment of the unveiling on August 8 that year in Daley Plaza conceived byartist and historian Paul Duricawith all of the appropriate civic arts tsars and mavens and musical performances by the Chicago Children’s Choir and the After School Matters Orchestra.  The musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Lyric Opera Chorus evidently expected to get paid.  This gathering was actually a week early.  I don’t know why they didn’t pick the actual anniversary.  Maybe the Plaza was booked.

The actual dedication was held on August 15, 1967 during a summer had been in the news mostly for the riots that swept the South and West Sides.  Mayor Richard J. Daley, whose crown as Boss of The City That Works had been tarnished, was mighty gladfor the opportunity to show off just how highbrow the Hog Butcher to the World could really be.

Of course today the Picasso is a—mostlybeloved Chicago icon.  Back in 1967 many of the city’s elite cultural gatekeepers, some of whom had never gotten over the shock of the 1913 Armory Show and were widely looked down upon as mere provincials by Manhattan sophisticates, and the blue collar lunch box proletariat were united in despising and being mystified by the Spanish artist’s gift to a city he had never seen.  Many suspected a commie plot or foresaw a fall into decadence and corruption.  Others just thought it was ugly and dumb.

Classic Chicago chroniclers Studs Terkel and Mike Royko were both on hand to document the Picasso dedication.

Count Chicago’s keenest observer, Daily News columnist Mike Royko in the latter category.  He called it “big, homely metal thing …[with] a long stupid face…[that] looks like some giant insect that is about to eat a smaller, weaker insect. It has eyes that are pitiless, cold, mean.”  Which meant it was perfect for the city. “Its eyes are like the eyes of every slum owner who made a buck off the small and weak. And of every building inspector who took a wad from a slum owner to make it all possible.”

That other tireless chronicler of Chicago voices, Studs Terkel was on hand lugging around his heavy old reel-to-reel semi-portable tape recorder to capture the wisdom of the hoi polloi. Quotes from that tape litter almost all of the stories being done this week about the original dedication.  You can all most hear the hard bitten accents of some.  From Rick Hogan’s piece:

“A pelvic structure of a prehistoric monster,” “A politician because it’s got so many faces,” “A bird, “A big butterfly.” Some people were befuddled (“Is that the front view?”) and one was obviously a loyal Democrat (“If Daley says it’s good, it’s good enough for me”).

And from Steinberg’s :

“At first glance, it looks rather grotesque…” said one. “You got something like this, 99 percent of the people don’t know what it resembles,” observed another. “A nightmare,” added a third. “A woman!?” marveled another. “A woman, yes, definitely, now it makes some sense. At first, when they had no idea what it was, I didn’t think too much of it. But now I like the idea of a woman being placed at the civic center. It seems like the woman has to do with everything in life, and this has to do with the good things in life. This is a civic center and the goodness of a woman. That’s my idea.”

Which reminds us of the huge controversy about just what the hell the thing was, anyway, much of it fueled by the media.  There were many theories put forward—a vulture, the artist’s pet Afghan hound, a baboon, a starving lion, a woman of course, and just a big practical joke on the city.  As for me, youthful as I was at the time, I never had any doubtit was a woman.  Despite attempts to revive the controversy this year, mostly by clueless TV anchor people, it turned out that I was right.

Picasso's Head of a Woman sketch from 1962 is pretty definitive in confirming the artist's subject.

Art scholars have found doodles and sketches of similar forms dating back to Picasso’s halcyon days in Paris back in 1913.  Somewhat definitiveis a 1962 sketch of a nearly identical form that the artist clearly labeled Head of a Woman.  Hard to argue with that.  And we even know pretty certainly which womana teen age girlactually. 

Sylvette David was about 17 or 18 when Picasso spotted her in the company of her boyfriend walking by his studio in 1954.  The old satyr was smitten, as he often was.  He was able to get the girl with the long swan-like neck and the high pony tail that spread out behind it to pose for him for several studies, including a realistic profile and several cubist deconstructions.  Unlike many of his other muses he was never able to bed girl and in fact named one of his 40 compositions of her was called The One Who Said No.  That pony tail not only became the “wings” of the Chicago statue, it inspired the signature look casual look for Brigit Bardot.  Sylvette went on to her own successful career as a painter and artist now known asLydia Corbett.  She is now a lively 80 years old and recently said of Picasso, “I never thanked him enough. He immortalized me. I’m like the Mona Lisa. Amazing, don’t you think?”

Silvet David in 1954 with one of dozens of studies Picasso did of her.  That high pony tail that splayed out behind her head and neck would be echoed in a monumental sculpture more than a decade later.

Back in 1957, I was not at the unveiling.  I had graduated from Niles West High School in Skokie that spring and was spending the summer washing dishes at a Howard Johnson and getting ready to start Shimer College in Mt. Caroll, Illinois that fall.  I read all about the controversy in the papers, and undoubtedly devoured Royko’s sour take on it. I first saw it in person a few months later at an anti-war rally in the Plaza.  As a matter of fact all of my early encounters were at rallies and marcheswhere the towering sculpture dominatedthe wide open space. 

I remember being impressed by its size and how its rust brown surface echoed the cladding of the Dailey Center itself.  I was pretty sure that Picasso was not an art-to-match-the-sofa kind of guy.  I was right, he had not dictateda color.  That came from the supplier of the steel to construct it, the American Bridge Company division of the United States Steel Corporation which used naturally oxidizing COR-TEN steel, the same material as used in the building.  Over the years both have darkened to what is now a grey with only hints ofreddish brown.

Picasso was hands down the most famous artist in the world when he was visited by a committee of Chicago boosters bringing tacky gifts from Hizzoner with a request for him to create a monumental art work for otherwise desolate plaza of the new monument that the Mayor was erecting to himself.  The artist was amused, flattered, and skeptical.  But among the gifts was a photo of Oak Park’s native son Ernest Hemingway.  Picasso excitedly exclaimed, “My friend! I taught him everything he knew about bullfighting. Was he from Chicago?”  His visitors may have been a little vague in their reply.  At any rate he agreed—and more over agreed to make his creation a gift to the city.

                                      Picasso hastily sketching out his intention.

He started work in May, 1964 basing his design on sketches he had already made, including the Head of a Woman mentioned before.  He translated those two dimensional images into a three dimensional by making sketches on plywood,cutting out the parts, and assembling them with glue and wire.  He had been using a similar process to make smaller scale painted-on-sheet metal sculptures from his cubist reflections since Sylvette had posed for him.  But this time he proposed to leave the surface of the finished work raw, rather than painted in order to emphasize the shapes that seemed to shift when viewed from different angles.

Picasso with few revisions translated this first model into a 42 inch high maquette that was first displayed to the public in London during a major retrospective exhibit.  It drew raves from the British art cognisante.  Then the excited city hall put the model on display at the Art Institute where it remains to this day.  So Chicagoans, at least the museum visiting slice of the population knew what the pig in the poke was going to look like.  Some shared an excitement of being in the avant garde, but many were furious on both esthetic and political grounds—the artist was a known leftistand had recently been glad to accept a Lenin Prize, the Soviet Union’s answer to the Nobel Prize.  There was loose talk in some captive nation taverns in the city’s ethnic neighborhoods of blowing the damn thing to smithereens. 

The Woods Charitable Fund, Chauncey and Marion Deering McCormick Foundation, and the Field Foundation ponied up the roughly $352,000 cost of erecting the 50 foot high sculpture that would weigh 147 tons.  American Bridge created a final 12 high model for Picasso to approve that included some structural re-enforcements to support the enormous weight.  The artist agreed and fabrication work began at the U.S. Steel rolling mills in Gary, Indiana.

The partswere delivered by truck and instillation began on a re-enforced pedestal on May 2. 1967.  As it rose it was shrouded in scaffolding and canvas.  Work was completed in early August and final touches were put on dedication plans.

Gwendolyn Brooks looks as conflicted as she felt getting ready to read a poem before the unveiling of the statue.

On the big day the Plaza was filled with the curious. Mayor Daley and every other politicowith enough clout crowded the dais along with all of the accredited art lovers.  Gwendolyn Brooks was asked to compose and read a new work for the occasion. Chances were strong that Daley had never read the works of the Black woman with strong opinions about race relations in the city, urban renewal, rampant police brutality, and the rising voice of Black Power.  On the other hand the poet had scored Pulitzer Prize and someone had named her Chicago’s Poet Laureate so she was just what the doctor called for in a program meant to buck-up the city’s cultural credentials.  For her part Brooks was flattered to be asked and aware that this sort of thing was just what was expected of the Poet Laureate.  But she was conflicted.  She hardly knew what to think of what she had seen of the sculpture and wasn’t sure she liked it or approved.  “Man visits Art, but squirms...” was as much enthusiasm as she could muster that day just before the canvas shroud dropped.

The ever vigilant Royko took note, however, of the symbolism of Brooks’ prominent presence.  “When [Aldermen] Keane and Cullerton sit behind a lady poet, things are changing.”

By the time the 25th anniversary rolled around in 1982 and Brooks was invited back for another crack at it, she had grown used to and fond of the Picasso.  She could be more honestly effusive.

Set,
seasoned,
sardonic still,
I continue royal among you.
I astonish you still.
You never knew what I am.
That did not matter and does not.

When the drapery finally dropped some observers thought they observed a scowlon the Mayor’s face.  Others thought it was more of a bemused smirk as if he was pleased as punch at getting away with a world class con.  Likewise there are conflicting reports on the crowd reaction.  Loyal machine partisans in the mediareported cheers and applause.  Others describedstunned silence giving way gradually to the kind of polite pro-forma clapping you would give to a third rate singer.

Whatever the immediate reaction, the Picasso quickly became a Chicago icon.  As critic Desmond Morris, author of The Naked Ape, had predicted in defiance of the chorus nay sayers, the sculpture would “become an art landmark, one of the most famous sites in the world.”

Sometimes the Picasso was crudely rendered and hardly recognizable in souvenirs like this bracelet charm.

And thanks to city Law Department faux pasChicago lost the copyright on the monument’s image by publicly displaying it at the Art Institute without protection.  Souvenir stands were soon awash in post cards, posters, t-shirts,jewelry, snow-globes, bronze trinkets of all sizes, and high-end collector’s edition art models.  Something for every budget.  No one could come home from a Windy City visit without some kind of Picasso memorabilia.

On the cultural front, the statue was the first monumental outdoor modern public art in the country.  It immediately blew heroic bronzes and classical motifs out of the water. Within a decade it seemed that no public project could go up without a head-scratching set piece from downtown plazas and government buildings to modest village halls, suburban shopping malls, and even office and factory campuses.  This trend was accelerated with a Federal Government policy that 2% of the cost of new construction be set aside for the arts and state and local policiesthat aped it.  A lot of sculptors got work, not all of them creative genius like Picasso.

The Picasso has weathered to gray with just hints of the former rust brown.  Children continue to use it as the world's most expensive piece of playground equipment.

Nowhere was this more apparent than in Chicago’s Loop where Alexander Calder’s Stabile adorns the Dirksen Federal Building, Claus Oldenburg’s ironic Bat Column rises,  Marc Chagall’s mosaic covered monolith graced the First National Bank of Chicago Plaza, as well a works by Joan Miro’s and Henry Moore.  But so does mediocre stuffnot to mention the hideous Snoopy in Blender outside the white elephant James R. Thompson State of Illinois building.

Today Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate a/k/a The Bean in Millennium Park may have taken the title of Chicago’s most famous and photographed work of public art.   

 

The Test Ban Treaty of 1963—Corking the Nuclear Genie’s Bottle

7 August 2021 at 13:04

Signing the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in Moscow in 1963--Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Soviet Foreign Minister Andre Gromyko, and British Foreign Secretary Alec Douglas-Hume.  Among those is the first row behind them are U.S. negotiator W. Avril Harrington, Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, United Nations Secretary U Thant, Soviet Premier and Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev.

The Cold War seemed on the verge of becoming red hot in 1963.  Tensionsbetween the United States and the Soviet Union were at the breaking point after more than a decade of sharply rising hostile rhetoric on all sides and repeated clashes over flashpoint points like Berlin.  Less than a year earlier both sides had “come eyeball to eyeball” during the Cuban Missile Crisis and had narrowly avoided nuclear war.  Both sides were engaged in a very public race to produce more and bigger thermonuclear weapons and missiles to deliver those bombs on the other’s cities.  Huge nuclear weapons were routinely being detonated in tests meant to terrify enemies. 

In the U.S. and presumably the USSR school children were being regularly drilled at hiding under their desks in case of a nuclear attack.  A generation of children doubted that they would live toadulthood.  And anxiety was not confined to kids.  Popular culture first sublimated nuclear fears in 1950’s science fiction and monster movies but more recently had begun to face them directly in Peter George’s 1958 novel Red Alert which would soon become the inspiration for Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb;  Nevil Shute’s On the Beach and the 1959 film made from it; and  Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler’s Fail Safewhich happened to be serialized in the Saturday Evening Post the week of the Cuban Crisis.

The Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists was a grim reminder of the terror the world lived in with the ups and downs of the Cold War in the nuclear era.

Meanwhile the pesky editors of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists had been maintaining a Doomsday Clock since 1947 meant to highlight the danger of eminent nuclear war.  The clock was set at 7 minutes to Midnightat the beginning of 1963.  While actually an improvement over the early days of the arms race the frightening notice was getting wider public noticethan ever before.

In addition to fear of an end-of-the-world war, the constant nuclear tests themselves were fraying public nerves.  Radioactive fallout from American tests in the South Pacific and Nevada and Soviet explosions in remote central Asia had been tracked around the Northern Hemisphere.  The radioactive isotope strontium 90 released by the blasts had shown up in American milk.  In magazine article after article physicians fretted over the public health effects of exposure to fallout, especially possible genetic damage.

As a result the public was beginning tostir.  In Britain, which had joinedthe so-called nuclear club and conducted its own tests in addition to hosting American strategic bomber bases, a Ban the Bomb movement was quickly growing in numbers and militancy.  Now that was threatening to spread to the US where most forms of public dissent had been firmly squelched since the post-World War II Red Scare and McCarthy Era.  But now rumblings were spreading from beatnik coffee houses to college campuses.  Where a corporal’s guard of lonely protestors held anti-nuke and pro-peace placards just a few years earlier scores and then hundreds were suddenly turning out, including many middle class women.  Even in the Soviet Union where a tight lid was kept on everything, intellectuals were secretly circulating laboriously typed samizdat hand to hand.  Authorities East and West had reason to actbefore that sort of thing got out of hand.

Calls for some sort of control on atmospheric testing went back to the wake of the U.S. Castle Bravo test in the Pacific when a 15 megaton explosion unleashed the worst fallout episode in history with several inhabited islands and a Japanese fishing vessel under a “rain of death” of radioactive ash.  The same year Japan, particularly sensitive to nuclear fear as the only nation ever targeted by Atomic weapons, was contaminated by fallout from a Soviet Test.  In response Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru of India made the first call for a “standstill agreement on nuclear testing in the hopes it be a bridge to eventual nuclear disarmament.  The British Labor Party officially endorsed a similar moratorium monitored and guaranteed by the United Nations.

The United States, which felt that overwhelming nuclear superiority, was necessary to offset the Soviet Union’s huge conventional arms edge and massive Army.  The Soviets seemed more receptive. In 1955 Nikita Khrushchev first proposed talks on a test ban treaty.  The U.S. rejected the overtures.

A frame from a film of a U.S. atmospheric nuclear test in the South Pacific.

The Eisenhower administration remained internally divided over Test Ban talks through most of the rest of the decade with hawkish Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Edward Teller, anointed Father of the Atomic Bomb after dovish J. Robert Oppenheimer was publicly disgraced and stripped of his security clearance,  carrying the day in demanding that a Test Ban could only be negotiated as part of a wider disarmament agreement including conventional forces that the Soviet Union would never agree to. 

Britain’s entrenched Conservative government was also adamantly opposed to Test Ban talks despite a majority of the public backing it.  The Tories wanted to hold out until the U.K. could finish testing their own nuclear devises allowing it join the two superpowers.The first British test was in the Australian outback as early as 1952 but more were required to develop effective and credible weapons. They view possession of nuclear weapons as the only way the country, whose Empire was disintegrating, could maintain a position as a world power. 

The obstreperous French who were known to be racing to develop and deploy their own nuclear weapons as an independent force which would make them the dominant power of Western Europe.  None of those who already had the weapons wanted the French—or any other possible power like China—to succeed.  But Charles de Gaulle, who had become Prime Minister in June ’58 and would become President with vastly expanded powers in January 1959, would not engage in any discussions that would limit French opportunities. 

Nikita Khruschev's survival of an old Stalinist plot to oust him as Soviet Party Leader made possible his overtures to the west on nuclear disarmament and testing.

Soviet leader Khrushchev had just narrowly avoided ouster by a Stalinist Old Guard and had consolidated his power by ousting powerful figures including Defense Minister Marshal Gregory Zhukov who opposed any arms cooperation with the West.  Khrushchev was known to believe that any nuclear war was unwinnable and a mutual disaster.  He wanted to change attitudes in Politburo that such a war was inevitable.  He once again signaled willingness to engage in discussions on cutting or eliminating testing.

On March 31, 1958, the Supreme Sovietapproved Khrushchev’s decision to halt nuclear testing, conditional on other nuclear powers doing the same. Eisenhower and Macmillan rejected the offer as a propaganda gimmick.  Both had new testing they wanted to complete.  The U.S. launched the first Operation Hardtack I round of tests in the South Pacific on April 28.  Thirty-five more blasts went off with dizzying speed through August 18 of the same year—more than all other atmospheric tests in previous years combined.  The British also concluded a critical test of their weapon in Australia. 

Only as the bombs were going off to growing international public consternation did Eisenhower and Macmillan agree to international meetings of experts to determine proper control and verification measures.  This was in direct response to fears that the Soviet moratorium proposal would be ineffective because underground testing might not be verifiable. 

Eisenhower was responding to recommendations by the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC) which had concluded that a successful system for detecting underground tests could be created and by Secretary of State Dulles who had just been won over to that view.  Somewhat reluctantly Eisenhower proposed technical negotiationswith the Soviet Union on a test ban, a reversal of the long standing U.S. demand that such talks take place only in conjunction with negotiations over a general halt to nuclear weaponsproduction.  It was clear that rising public pressure was key to this change.  Ike privately told associates that continued resistance to a test ban would leave the U.S. in a state ofmoral isolation.”

On July 1, 1958 as the U.S. continued to set off its tests, the three recognized nuclear statesconvened the Conference of Expertsin Geneva, Switzerland to study means of detecting nuclear tests.  In addition to representatives of the powers, scientists and experts from Canada, Czechoslovakia, France, Poland, andRomania participated.  The official position of the United States was that these discussions were purely technical and preliminary, but both the British and Soviet delegations were instructed to try to achieve a political agreement if the technical problems were surmounted.   

Despite background political intrigue the technical talks actually went quite well.  The main issue was the ability of sensors to tell the difference between an underground test and an earthquake. Four methods were consideredmeasurement of acoustic waves, seismic signals, radio waves, and inspection ofradioactive debris. The Soviet felt each method could be effective.  The Americans believed that none or even any combination of monitoring would be sufficient without on-site observation to which the Soviets vigorously objected.  None-the-less by the end of August “extremely professional” consultation by the experts produced the Geneva System, an extensive control program, involving 160–170 land-based monitoring posts, 10 sea-based monitors, and occasional over-flights following a suspicious event.

Dr. Edward Teller, Father of the Hydrogen Bomb, was an ardent opponent of any test ban and of moratoriums on testing.  He was a tough bureaucratic infighter with strong support among hawks in Congress through both the Eisenhower and Kenned administrations.

The Soviet delegation drafted the language to the plan which the British and American experts endorsed.  But no finalpolitical agreement had been reached.  Still to be determined was exactly who would be in charge of the monitoring and if and to what extent American demanded on-site inspection would be allowed.  Back in Washington hard liners led by Teller and Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) Chairman Lewis Strauss conducted a rear-guard action within the administration against the Geneva Plan.  Dulles and his brother, CIA Director Allan Dulles, prevailed with the President.

Eisenhower announced that the U.S. would initiate avoluntary one year ban on testingif Britain and the USSR agreed coupled with the initiation of negotiations on a stand-alone test ban treaty.  The British agreed followed by the Soviets on August 30.  The moratorium was to go into effect on October 31 when all parties had concluded already scheduled tests.  Shortly thereafter the Conference on the Discontinuance of Nuclear Tests convened in Geneva on August 31 and all parties agreed to extend the moratorium to three years during talks.

The Soviets kicked off negotiations by immediately offering a draft treaty in which the nuclear powers—“the original signers”—would agree to a comprehensive ban—including underground tests—based on monitoring employing the Geneva Plan and would also cooperate to try to prevent more nations—read France—from testing and obtaining weapons.  The Americans and Brits rejected the draft because it lacked on-site inspection and expressed doubts that the Geneva Plan was vigorous enough.

After raising expectations, the rapid slide of the Geneva talks into stalemate stirred public disappointment.  Britain’s already well established Ban the Bomb movement was able to turn out ever larger crowds for marches and demonstrations.  In the U.S. Linus Pauling and other were trying to mobilize a similar movement with early signs of success.  Recognizing that Soviet objections to on-site inspections were the main stumbling block influential Democratic Senator Albert Gore Sr. of Tennessee circulated a letter which was widely reprinted in the press suggesting that the U.S. seek a partial test ban on air detonations only.

In 1959 both sides inched toward compromise.  The Soviets had already agreed to allow some specific control measures to be included in a new try at a draft treaty.  By march several draft articles had been agreed on, but the two sides remained divided on the make-up of monitoring teams.  Eisenhower and Macmillan dropped all demands that a test ban agreement be considered only bridge to a comprehensive disarmament treaty.  That was a symbolic, but important concession and a reversal of long held policy.

In April they went further, essentially echoing Gore’s suggestion, and proposed graduated agreement where atmospheric tests would be banned first, with negotiations on underground and outer-space tests continuing.  In May the Soviets agreed to consider a proposal by Macmillan in which each of the original parties would be subject to a set number of on-site inspections each year.  They hoped that talks would peg that at a low number.

Through 1959 and into 1960 talks centered on new research that cast some doubt on the effectiveness of the Geneva Plan, reinforcing American concert for detection of underground tests, but also excluding subterraneantest from an agreement.  Macmillan proposed setting the number of on-site inspections at just three, a low number to which the Soviets readily agreed, but caused the Americans to balk.

British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and President Dwight Eisenhower were sometime uneasy partners in negotiations with the Soviets.  Macmillan with a restive public at home demanding disarmament almost desperately wanted to achieve an agreement.  Eisenhower was personally torn between deep suspicion of the Soviets and a desire to make a treaty his legacy of peace.  With an administration that was also divided and the President frequently reversed directions in negotiations depending on who last had his ear.   

Soviet-American relations seemed to be at their best since the onset of the Cold War.  Khrushchev had visited the U.S. in September 1959 and while the on-going test ban talks had not been a main point of discussion, the so-called Spirit of Camp David boded well for the mutual trust needed to make an agreement.  Hopes ran high that and treaty might even be wound up and ready for approval at a planned Big Four summit in Paris with Eisenhower, Macmillan, Khrushchev, and De Gaulle.  France had finally tested its bomb in March and was now hinting for the first time that it might join an agreement.

So close, yet so far.  A rapid series of events sent prospects for an early treaty into a tail-spin.  Eisenhower agreed to Macmillan’s set number of inspections, but suddenly demanded 20 with an option for more if research showed that certain low yield underground tests could not be detected under the Geneva System. That monkey wrench in the talks was quickly followed by the Soviets shooting down of an American U-2 spy plane which scuttled the summit talks. USSR also withdrew from the seismic research group in Geneva which subsequently dissolved.  Ironically the high altitude reconnaissance capacity of the U-2 would have rendered the high number of on-site tests demanded by the U.S. unnecessary.

The U2 Incident scuttled a Big Four summit meeting where many thought a Test Ban Treaty might be finalized.  It was followed by several other crisis confrontations which set back U.S. Soviet relations leading to the nearly calamitous Cuban Missile Crisis.                                                                                                                                        

Through the rest of the year repeated crises roiled U.S.-Soviet relations including the Congo Crisis in July and angryconfrontations at the United Nations in September at which Khrushchev famously pounded his shoe on the table.  The Cold War was once again in danger of going very hot.  The Geneva talks dissolved fruitlessly in December at the American election in put a Democrat and thus an entirely new administration into the White House.

When Harold Macmillan first met John F. Kennedy he ruefully confided that despite all of the external distractions, the real reason the Test Ban talks had collapsed was “the American ‘big holeobsession and the consequent insistence on a wantonly large number of on-site inspections.”

For his part Kennedy was eager to resume negotiations and ready to review the yo-yo policy reversals that had characterized the talks under Eisenhower.  But he was also interested in tying a test-ban treaty tonuclear proliferation—also a major concern of the Soviets.  “For once China, or France, or Sweden, or half a dozen other nations successfully test an atomic bomb, the security of both Russians and Americans is dangerously weakened.”

With a new team of American negotiators in place the Geneva talks resumed in march 1961.  But the new American proposal, while offering concessions in some areas still stuck by Eisenhower’s demand of 20 on-site inspections while both the Soviets and British favored just three.  The Soviets also objected to the proposed make-up of inspection teams and proposed a troika of equal representation between East and West and observers drawn from declared unaligned nations with a unanimous finding required.  That would have given the Soviets effective veto which was manifestly unsatisfactory to the U.S.

Complicating negotiations and U.S.-Soviet relations in general was Kennedy’s big hikes in defense spending, particularly for long and intermediate range missiles capable of striking the USSR and an expansion of the nuclear warhead arsenal.  This fulfilled campaign promises to close a non-existent Missile Gap.   The Soviets, of course, reciprocated and a renewed arms race was on.

In May the president used his brotherand confidant, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to make backchannel contacts through a Soviet intelligence officer to reduce the US demanded inspection to 15 a year.   Khrushchev rejected the overture out of hand. 

The Kennedy-Khrushchev summit in Vienna floundered over these same issued in June with the Soviet leader very angry with the young American, “hold out a finger to them—they chop off your whole hand,” he told his son.   It was now Khrushchev, in a polar reversal of positions, who demanded that a test ban be considered only in the context of “general and complete disarmament,” The Summit broke up acrimoniously and hard on the heels of that came the Berlin Crisis of 1961.

The Soviets announced that they would resume atmospheric testing that August.    In retaliationthe US resumed underground and laboratory testing on September 15. Kennedy announced funding for renewed atmospheric testing program in November.

Four years after a promising start a test ban seemed utterly impossible.

Macmillan met Kennedy in Bermuda in December to almost desperately plead for a permanent stop of the tests.  It was a testament to Brita’s reduced status as mere subordinate ally rather than full major power partner   that the Prime Minister was instead forced to agree to allow the U.S. to use its Christmas Island as a new test site since the Americans had blown up or contaminated all of their available South Pacific atolls.    

Despite these shows of belligerence, the Kennedy Administration was as rife with division on testing as was Eisenhower’s.  Against Teller and the usual hawkish Defense establishment United Nations Ambassador Adlai Stevenson, a highly respected elder statesman; the State Department; the United States Information Agency; and PSAC Chairman Jerome Wiesner opposed resuming atmospheric tests. Kennedy himself expressed serious moral qualms about the out of control arms race.   He worried along with Senator Hubert Humphrey that “might very well turn the political tides in the world in behalf of the Soviets.”  Indeed there was ample evidence that was already happening especially in the emerging Third World.

In the end, however, Kennedy could not resist the claims that resuming tests, whether they were needed or not, was necessary to “show resolve to the Soviets.  On April 25, 1962 the American suspension of atmospheric tests was officially lifted. 

With Geneva talks deader than a door nail new discussions began in March of 1962 with an 18-party UN Disarmament Conference and promptly slipped into a quagmire.  On August 27 the U.S. and Brittan finally offered two new draft proposals.  The first included a comprehensive ban verified by control posts under national command, but international supervision, and on-site inspections.   As fully expected the Soviets immediately rejected it.  The second proposal called for a partial test ban with underground tests would be excluded and. verified by national detection mechanisms,without supervision by a supra national body.  This was a substantial Western accommodation of Soviet concerns and worries within the Kennedy administration about being able to verify underground tests. 

Just as it looked like the new proposal could jump start negotiations, the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962blew up—the most dangerous nuclear confrontation in history.  It both complicated negotiations and scared the hell out of both sidesenough to push them forward.     In November the Soviets signaled agreement to a draft by technicians allowing for automated test detection stations a/k/a black boxes and a limited number of on-site inspections.  Of course both sides disagreed on the numbers of each.  Over the next week Kennedy three times reduced the American demand from an original 20 to seven.  The Soviets returned to their old offer of just three then April of 1963 yanked even that offer due to Khrushchev perceiving some slight.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Back home the Administration got mixed signals from Congress.  One group of Congressmen demanded a total rejection of current Soviet proposals and a return to the long abandoned Geneva System.  On the other hand, 34 mostly Democratic Senators led by Humphrey and Thomas Dodd of Connecticut introduced a resolution calling for Kennedy to propose another partial ban to the Soviet Union with national monitoring and no on-site inspections. In case of no Soviet agreement, the resolution called for Kennedy to continue to “pursue it with vigor, seeking the widest possible international support” while suspending all atmospheric and underwater tests.  The resolution bolstered the administrations attempts, but Kennedy was worried it would undercut the possibility of an ultimately more comprehensive ban. 

Kennedy publicly committed to renewed efforts in a March press conference as a means of preventing rapid nuclear proliferation, which he called “the greatest possible danger and hazard.”  He also explicitly rejected the known advise of his most hawkish advisors like Walt Rostow who wanted to tie a test ban pact to the withdrawal of Soviet troops in Cuba and keeping commitments to a neutral Laos.  The President committed to negotiations without preconditions.

President John F. Kennedy's commencement address at American University laid out his argument for the Test Ban to both the public and the Soviets.

In June in a commencement address at American University in Washington, Kennedy made an eloquent case for negotiations as a first step toward disarmament 

where a fresh start is badly needed—is in a treaty to outlaw nuclear tests. The conclusion of such a treaty—so near and yet so far—would check the spiraling arms race in one of its most dangerous areas. It would place the nuclear powers in a position to deal more effectively with one of the greatest hazards which man faces in 1963, the further spread of nuclear arms. It would increase our security—it would decrease the prospects of war. Surely this goal is sufficiently important to require our steady pursuit, yielding neither to the temptation to give up the whole effort nor the temptation to give up our insistence on vital and responsible safeguards.

To back up his rhetoric, Kennedy announced an agreement with Khrushchev and Macmillan to promptly resume comprehensive test ban negotiations in Moscow and a US unilateral halt to atmospheric tests.  Former Ambassador to the Soviet Union and Democratic Party powerhouse W. Averell Harriman was tapped to lead the American delegation, a signal that it was a top administration objectiveand not just a sham show.  Quintin Hogg, who the Americans held in low regard, was tapped by Macmillan as his representative.  The Soviets were represented at the top echelon by Foreign Minister Andre Gromyko.

Negotiations got underway on July 15 with opening remarks by Khrushchev himself who reiterated a Soviet offer dismissing the American inspection plan and offering instead a partial ban on atmospheric testing with no underground testing moratorium coupled with a non-aggression pact between NATO and the Warsaw Pact.  That position killed the possibility of pursuing the comprehensive ban Kennedy hoped for.  But Harriman in response said that the West would entertain a non-aggression pact, but that the way forward on that was long and difficult.  But he said a partial test ban was could be quickly concluded.  He asked for additional non-proliferation language but the Soviets argued that it, too, would require additional discussion.  They also held that the test ban was itself a non-proliferation step as other nations joined the original signers.

This set the framework for a surprisingly quick conclusion of the talks.  A number of thorny issues were dealt with and sometimes danced around with fancy, but evasive language.  That included the right of signatories to withdraw from the treaty and under what conditions; how to include stateslike China and East Germany that were not universally recognized, and the Soviets demand that recalcitrant France be required to sign before the treaty could go into effect. 

With final wordsmithing initialed by negotiators on July 25, just 10 days after talks began.  The next day Kennedy addressed the nation in a 26 minute live broadcast.  He said, “all mankind has been struggling to escape from the darkening prospect of mass destruction on earth ... Yesterday a shaft of light cut into the darkness,” and concluded with a favorite Chinese proverb, “A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.  And if that journey is a thousand miles, or even more, let history record that we, in this land, at this time, took the first step.”

All was not perfect.  Both the French and Chinese announced that they would not sign the treaty and continue to pursue their nuclear arms development.  Not unexpected, but a dash of cold water on worldwide hopes.

After final consultations by each government the on August 5, 1963, significantlythe eve of the anniversary of the Hiroshima bomb British Foreign Secretary Alec Douglas-Home, Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko, and US Secretary of State Dean Rusk signed the final agreement.

After a short, bitter fight by treaty opponents the Senate ratified the agreement on September 24 by a comfortable margin of 80 to 14.  There was predictable unanimity on the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet the next day.

While far from perfect the Partial Test Ban Treaty let the world breathe a little easier for a while. 

Participation in the Partial Test Ban Treaty--light green signed and ratified, dark green Acceded or succeeded, yellow only signed, red non signatory.

As a 14 year old kid in Cheyenne, Wyoming I so ardently supported the treaty that I wrote ultra-conservative Senator Milward Simpson who as Governor had my father W.M. Murfin in his Cabinet as Travel Commission Secretary to ask him to vote for the treaty.  Not only did he discount our personal connection—I had met him several times—he wrote back informing me that he had turned my letter over to the FBI as possible proof of Communist sympathies.

Ultimately 126 nations signed the treaty but 10 never ratified it and significant hold outs include France and China, each of which became nuclear powers, plus North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, and Saudi Arabia.  Signatories India and Pakistan openly developed nuclear weapons.  Israel is widely acknowledged to have the bomb but has never admitted it.  Several other nations are believed to possess the technology to quickly build a weapon including Japan, South Africa, Iran, and Brazil.  There are probably others as well as the possibility that terrorist organizations might be able to build so-called suitcase bombs. 


56 Years After the Voting Rights Act the Fight is On Again

6 August 2021 at 11:48

 

Veteran Civil Rights leader Jesse Jackson shown with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was among the hundreds arrested Monday at the Capitol protesting in support of voting rights.

NoteThis year we will forego our usual contemplation of the horrors of the first atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima to take note of another anniversary.

The anniversary of the Voting Rights Act generates more interest than usual this year because the gains once thought secure are under relentless attack Republican attack.  The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, named in honor of the former Civil Rights champion and long-time member of the House of Representative which aims to reverse attacks on voting rights made in state after state under GOP control is stalled in the Senate under threat of a filibuster and with so-called moderate Democrats refusing to provide the votes necessaryfor Vice President Kamala Harris to break a tie in the evenly divided body.

This week hundreds of protestors heeding the call of Rev. William Barber’s Moral Mondays and new Poor Peoples Campaign were arrested at the Capitol in Washington D.C. demanding an end to the filibuster, enactment of the Lewis Voting Rights Act, and other critical fairness and parity reforms.  In Texas, which is trying to pass some of the most draconian voter suppression bill in the country, there was a four-day Georgetown to Washington March involving thousands including Transportation Secretary and former Texas Representative Beto O’Rourke.  State and local marches and events are being held nation-wide. 

Rev. William Barber, Jr. (center) led the Georgetown to Austin March in Texas this week.

Under Section 5 of the landmark 1965 civil rights law, jurisdictionswith a history of discrimination needed to seek pre-approval of changes in voting rules that could affect minorities.  It blocked discriminationbefore it occurred. In Shelby County V. Holder last year the Trump packed Supreme Court invalidated Section 4—which laid out criteria for identifying states and localities covered by Section 5—claiming that current conditionsrequire a new coverage formula.  That left Section 5 intact but unenforceable.  The conservative majority on the court claimed that Congress could easily adopt a new formula and restore enforcement, knowing full well that with the House of Representatives then in the iron grip of reactionary Republican majorities and control of the Senate that no remedy would be enacted.

Since then, attacks on voting rights have intensifiedacross the country—and not just in the old Deep South.  Republican Legislatures and Governors have enacted waves of legislation aimed at curbing or discouraging voting by minorities and any groups of voters suspected of possible Democratic tendencies.  In the name of fighting a virtually nonexistent form of voter fraud—registration and voting by non-citizens misrepresenting their statusburdensome proof of identity legislation, including very limited numbers of approved identification documents and feesand charges for attaining those documents.  Places where applicants can obtain documents have been reduced requiring burdensome travel and their hours of operation restricted.  Students have been barred from registering where they attend college, even if they life there year round.  Early voting periods have been reduced and restricted.  Polling places have been eliminated and consolidated in minority areas to guarantee long and discouraging lines.  It seems like new and creative ways to curb registration or discourage voting are introduced every year, churned out by as model legislation by some rightwing think tank and spreading from Red State to Red State like a virus.

Many, maybe even most, of these restrictions eventually get struck down in the courts, but not before having their desired effect for an election cycle or two.  With Section 4 in place, many of these changes would have been stopped by Federal review before they were even put in place. 

Meanwhile there is a growing rank-and-file movement to reclaim voting rights in the same way as they were first won at bitter cost to begin with—with street protests and civil disobedience.  The NAACP’s Moral Monday movement in South Carolina is a model for a new activism and a movement that has been called the Selma of the 21st Century.

Lyndon Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  Among the witnesses are Senate Co-Sponsor and Republican Minority Leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. , Benjamin Hooks and Rosa Parks.

On August 6, 1965 President Lyndon Johnson signed the landmark National Voting Rights Act of 1965 in a ceremony at the White House attended by leaders of both parties in Congress and Civil Rights leaders including the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Benjamin Hooks

My generation, which grew up protesting the War in Vietnam, grew to regard Johnson as “the enemy.”  Yet his record on domestic issues was unmatched by any President except Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  His Great Society programs, though far from perfect, were the last great systematic assault on poverty in our history.  And this Texas wheeler-dealer accomplished what Northern liberal John F. Kennedynever could—a comprehensive legislative attack on discrimination and the subjugation of Black citizens. 

Perhaps we expected that subsequent Democratic Presidents would take up where Johnson left off without the stain of a fruitless war.  The fact is that whatever their intentions, none of them did.  The previous year the Civil Rights Act of 1964 opened doors of public accommodations in response to ongoing campaigns by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), branches of the National Association of Colored People (NAACP), and others. 

But the historic pattern of restricting voting by Blacks through the use of poll taxes, literacy tests, and outright intimidation that was the hallmark of the Jim Crow era after Southern Whites dismantled the reforms of post-Civil War Reconstruction, remained untouched.  With new militancy the SCLC and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) turned to campaigns to register voters. 

Voting rights demonstrations across the South, often brutally suppressed, like the first attempt of a march from Selma Alabama where young John Lewis had his skull fractured and the deaths of White civil rights workers pressured Lyndon Johnson to act and ultimately gave him the leverage to get an act through Congress.   In memory of his sacrifices the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act aims at protecting those gains and extending them.

That campaign took a bloody, violent turn in Selma, Alabama earlier that year. Marchers attempting to reach the local Court House to register were attacked and many severely beaten. Black demonstrator, Jimmy Lee Johnson, was killed during a march in near-by Marion City.  Then James Reeb, a White Unitarian Universalist Minister who had responded to a call by Dr. King for support, was beaten to death shortly after arriving in the city. 

Johnson instinctively knew that the death of the White minister would galvanize public sentiment and support in the way no number of Black deaths could. A few days later a massive Selma to Montgomery march was turned back with violence at the Edmund Pettis Bridge—Bloody Sunday.   

On March 15, Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress to call for the Voting Rights Act. It was introduced in the Senate on March 18 by Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield of Montana and Republican Minority Leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois. 

A second March to Montgomery, this time under the protection of Federal Authorities, got underway on March 21 and arrived at the Alabama capital for a massive rally on March 25 with the renewed purpose to supporting the Voting Rights Act.  After the rally a white Unitarian Universalist volunteer from Michigan, Viola Liuzzo, was shot and killed while drivinga Black demonstrator back to Selma. 

The deaths of a white minister and a white woman volunteer during the Selma Campaign spurred Congress to action on the Voting Rights act in a way the vastly more numerous murders of Black activists like Jimmy Lee Jackson had ever done.  White privilege thus leveraged the landmark act.  At least the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) recognized the sacrifice of Jackson along side UUs Rev. James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo in the memorial plaque that hangs in their Boston headquarters.

That only stepped up pressure on Congress, where despite a fierce last line of resistance by Southern Democrats, a filibusterwas broken, and the measure passed the upper chamber on May 26.   The vote was 77-19 with 47 Democrats in favor, 17 opposed and 30 Republicans—who still were proud to be the party of Lincoln—in favor and 2 opposed. 

Delaying tactics and attempts at gutting the measure by amendmentslowed action in the House of Representatives but it passed with minor amendments on a vote of 333-85 when Congress reconvened from the Independence Day recess on July 9.  A Conference Committee reconciliation of the two versions cleared the House on August 3 and the Senate the next day. 

Johnson wasted no time scheduling a signing ceremony for August 6, just allowing enough time for major Civil Rights figures including King and Rosa Parks to attend. 

 


The First English Colony in North America Was Not the One You Think

5 August 2021 at 11:57

 

Fishermen from Holland, Portugal, Normandy, and England put ashore at St. Johns in seasonal camps to dry, salt, and store the cod bounty from the Grand Banks for decades before a colony was officially established.

Ok, it’s quiz time, campers!  For 100 points and a gold star on your forehead, what was the first English colony in North America?  Bzzzzz.  If you said, I bet almost all of you did, Virginia (Jamestown) or Plymouth Plantation, you would be dead wrong.  By decades.

On August 5, 1583 Sir Humphrey Gilbert established that first English colony at what is now St. John’s,Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada.

Venetian navigator John Cabot sailing for England's King Henry VII discovered the deep natural harbor in what is now Newfoundland in 1497 and name it for St. John the Baptist.

John Cabot became the first European to sail into the deep a commodious harbor way back on June 24, 1497, the feast day of Saint John the Baptist and bestowed the Saint’s name on the place, although his exact landfall isunknown.  Cabot made his charts and reported back to his English employers including the information that the harbor had easy access to the seemingly endless cod fisheries offshore.

By the early 16th Century Portuguese from the Azores, Basques from Spain, and the French were annually visitingthe fisheries and sometimes making temporary camp ashore and tradingwith the natives.  On August 3 1527 English sailor John Rut on a missionfrom King Henry VIII to find the Northwest Passage that Cabot had been seeking thirty years earlier sailed into the harbor where he found eleven Norman, one Brittany, and two Portuguese fishing vessels moored.  He described the event in a letter to the King, the first ever written from North America.

By the 1640’s St. Johns, by now a well-established seasonal fishing camp, appeared in various Portuguese and French atlases.  Around that time Water Street running along the harbor shore was in use, making it the oldest street orroad in North America.

Reports on the rich fisheries and fine harbor began to attract English fishermen from the west country as well.  Within the next thirty years or so they dominated the annual summer runs.


Sir Humphrey Gilbert, a soldier/explorer/adventurer like his half-brother Sir Walter Raleigh, managed to set sail for the New World under a nearly expired six-year royal patent for exploration in 1683 with a small six or seven ship fleetcrewed by the dregs of English ports.  One ship sailed under the command of Raleigh, but he was forced to turn back when his ship was damaged in a storm.  

After trials and tribulationsGilbert and his little fleet arrived off St. Johns but found themselves blocked from landing by the united opposition of multinational fishing fleet which was commanded by an Englishman appointed by the seamen as Admiral.  One of Gilbert’s ship masters had committed piracy against the Portuguese some years earlier and was recognized.

Sir Humphrey Gilbert claimed St. John's as a colony of England and Queen Elizabeth I before astonished fishermen from half a dozen countries.

Eventually Gilbert satisfied the fishermen and was allowed to land on August 5.  They were astonished when Gilbert, waving his patent papers, claimed St. Johns and a vast surrounding area for the English Crown.  The claim was solemnized in a brief ceremony ashore.   After a few days Gilbert and his fleet sailed away, supposedly back to England.

But Gilbert decided to do a little freelance exploring first and managed to ground his largest vessel losingmost of his food,water, and supplies.  On board his personal favorite, a leaking tub called the Squirrel instead of the far more seaworthy Golden Hind, the ship that had circumnavigated the globe under Sir Francis Drake a few years earlier, he foundered and was lost on September 9.

But his claim made it safely back into the hands of Queen Elizabeth, officially making it the first colony in North America.  Plans for permanent settlement, however, were put aside for some years.  But the seasonal fishing village flourished, and the Queen and her successors made a pretty penny taxing the fleet.

Sometime before 1620 a permanent settlement was finally established, about the same time as Jamestown in 1619 and Plymouth a year later.  Shortly after it became the first incorporated English city on the continent.

An early view of the St. John's waterfront.

St. John’s because of its magnificent harbor and command of the rich Grand Bank fisheries became a strategic point for the control of the entire continent. The Dutch under Admiral Michiel de Ruyter temporarily seized the port in June 1665.  After that the English began to erect fortifications, which were re-enforced after each new threat.

French Admiral Pierre Le Moyne d’Ibervillecaptured and destroyed the town in 1696 and leveled the original earth work fortification.  The English returned the next year to find the town all but deserted after which stronger stone and masonry fortifications were built. The French attacked St. John’s again in 1705 and captured it in 1708 in the Battle of St. John’s. Both times the civilian town was leveled by fire.

The French attacked St. Johns in 1762 in the Seven Years War.

The French captured the town for the last time in 1762 during the Seven Years War known as the French and Indian War in the lower English colonies.  The English took it back after the Battle of Signal Hill, the final major action of the war.

The port city was a major English naval base and staging area for operations in both the American Revolution and the War of 1812.

British aviators John Alcock and Arthur Brown  made the first non-stop transatlantic flight in June 1919 taking off in a modified World War I Vickers Vimy bomber from St. John's.

Because it is the eastern most port in North America, St. Johns figured prominently in several communications and transportation firsts.  Guglielmo Marconi received the first transatlantic radio signal there from his wireless station in Poldhu, Cornwall in December 1901.  Alcock and Brown made the first transatlantic flight in a modified Vickers Vimy IV bomber, in June 1919 leaving from Lester’s Fieldin St. John’s and ending in a bog near Clifden, Connemara, Ireland.

St. John’s is the capital city of Newfoundland and Labrador which after a long history as an independent colony became the 10thProvince of Canada in 1949.

Colorful and picturesque St. John's harbor today.

In the 1990’s the cod fisheries of the Grand Banks, the economic engine of the city for hundreds of years, collapsed plunging the city and province into a depressionand causing a hemorrhage of population to the rest of Canada.

In recent years the development of the Hibernia, Terra Nova and White Rose oil fields has spurred population growth and commercial development.

 

Facing a Tsunami of New Homeless McHenry County Agencies Stick Finger in the Dike

4 August 2021 at 13:12

Missouri Democratic Representative Cori Bush camped out with other activists on the Capitol steps to get Congress to extend a moratorium on evictions and foreclosures.

A new wave of homelessness is about to swamp the U.S.  No one is prepared.  Most don’t even know it’s coming.  The few who have answers are ignored.  The Federal ban on rental evictions and home foreclosures during the Coronavirus pandemic emergencywas allowed to expire on August 1 and attempts to get an extension in Congress have run up against veracious Republican opposition—they are all suddenly budget hawks again and Democratic timidity despite the valiant efforts of formerly homeless Missouri Representative Cori Bush and progressive star Senator Elizabeth Warren of Missouri.

Hundreds of millions of emergency assistance to tenants, mortgagees, landlords, and lenders which could save man remains unspent by the states.  Many Red states do not want to use or release the money at all and most erect every barrierto making it practically available.  Blue states like Illinois have our own problemsoverwhelmed bureaucracy and application processes so complex that they leave applicants frustrated.  And now there is pressure in Congress by some including allegedly moderate Democrats to claw back unspent assistance to fund the supposedly bi-partisan compromise infrastructure bill.

While House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tries to resurrect relief in the House, the Center for Disease Control ordered moratoriums to continue in countieswith high rates of infections and hospitalization due to surging Delta variant infections.  But that is only temporary and still excludes much of the nation.  Lawyers are already lining up to challenge the ruling in Federal courts now packed with right wing judges.

Protests like this one in New York state are popping up around the country as the threat of evictions loom.

What does it mean? Evictions and foreclosures can now proceed in most places.  How long renters and homeowners have before being put out on the street will vary widely by state and jurisdiction.  Some can be put out by the end of the month.  Many others will be homeless this falland winter.

Here in Illinois, the state moratorium also expired on Sunday.  Cases can be filed in court immediately, but no judgements can be handed down until September 1.  Governor J.B. Pritzker promises to double-downefforts to distribute long delayed assistance and has pled for forbearance from landlords and lenders.  How many will heed that plea is in question.  My guess is not many.

For their part folks whose income was stopped or disrupted by the pandemic cannot suddenly come up with months of back rent or mortgage payments even if they have been able to return to work.  Savings have been exhausted, other creditors are demanding payment.  Many are low wage workers who housing security was already shaky due to soaring rents, home prices, and taxes.

In Chicago CBS Channel 2 News reported that 45 eviction notices were filed on Sunday, and eight in suburban Cook County.  No figures are yet available for the collar counties including McHenry, but everyone expects the courts to be swamped.

The upshot is that thousands will be unhoused in coming weeks and months including many families, the aged, and the disabled.  Most will have never experiencedhomelessness and will be unprepared for its brutal realities.



In McHenry County social service and government agencies, charities, and religious organizations have been working since July to offer comprehensive services to the unhoused and those in jeopardy at Community Empower Shower Events hosted by Willow Crystal Lake, 100 South Main Street on the first and third Fridays of every month from 10 am to 2 pm including this Friday, August 6 and Friday, August 20.

The Empowerment Shower is a collaborative effort of many organizations and agencies including Compassion for Campers, the Crystal Lake Food Bank, Consumer Credit Counseling, Home of the Sparrow, Live 4 LALI, McHenry County Housing Authority, Pioneer Center, Prairie State Legal Services, Salvation Army, St. Vincent DePaul Society, Veterans Path to Hope, Willow Crystal Lake, and Warp Corps.

Among the many services that will be offered at no cost are:

Mobil showers

Laundry Facilities

Camping Supplies including Tent, Stove, Sleeping Bags

Toiletries/Personal Care items

Clothing

Onsite Meal

Food

Haircuts

Transportation

Assistance obtaining IDs, birth certificates, Social Security cards

Assistance with SSI/SSDI (Disability)

Assistance with Medical coverage, SNAP, TANF

Medical Access—Doctor care, Covid-19 vaccine

Debt Management Services/Advocacy

Shelter and Housing Referrals and Linkages

Domestic Violence support

Veteran’s Services

Substance Use/Harm Reduction Tools and Support

Mental Health, Spiritual, and Social Support Referrals

This month information on obtaining bicycles and bike repair will be added to the mix.

All these services could be—and probably will—be swamped with the new dispossessed in the near future.  All understand that the only true solution for homelessness is permeant housing.  But there is no real effort to find, provide, or build that necessary housing locally and a good deal of fearmongering by opponents of affordable housingand victim blaming/shaming by ideologically ruthless so-called libertarians and the MAGA enthralled. 

Meanwhile all service providers will need assistance to continue the palliative efforts.

Compassion for Campers volunteers And Myer and Sue Rekenthaler ready for clients the the July 16 Community Empower Shower event at Willow Crystal Lake.  Much more gear will be required over the next months.

Compassion for Campers, the program that provides camping gear and equipmentto the McHenry County unhoused is one of those.  Contributions to support Compassion for Campers including building reserves for emergency hotel rooms during cold and snow emergencies this winter can be made by sending a check made out to Tree of Life UU Congregation, 5603 Bull Valley Road, McHenry, IL 60050 with Compassion for Campers on the memo line. The donationsare placed in a dedicated fund and not used for any other purpose.  Tree of Life also donates all the administrative expenses of the program so 100% of all donations go directly to client assistance.

Ships Passing in the Night —Columbus and the Jews of Spain

3 August 2021 at 11:20

Columbus kissing the ring of his patroness Queen Isabella of Spain while he co-monarch King Ferdinand and a Catholic Bishop look on as he prepares to depart the port of Palos in an illustration supporting the discovery myth.  Omitted were the ships carrying exiled Jews leaving the same port that day.

On August 3, 1492 two events of world changing significance brushed up against each other in SpainItalian-born mariner Christopher Columbus set out from the Atlantic port of Palos on his voyage to discover new trade routes to the Indies.  As his little three ship flotillaleft port it passed several vessels laden with Jews. 

Just weeks after Columbus’s patron Their Most Catholic Majesties Queen Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, joint monarchs of newly united Spain, had finally expelled the last of the Moors from Iberia by capturing the fabled city of Grenada earlier that year, they issued the Edict of Alhambra.  Isabella, Columbus’s main sponsor, was fanatically Catholic and under the influence of the Inquisition

Jews had lived and thrived as a significant minority in both Islamic and Christian areas of the Iberian Peninsula Spain for hundreds of years and going back to Roman times.  But over the previous 200 years, they had come under increasing pressure in Catholic areas.  In more tolerant Moorish regions, Jews thrived as philosophers, scientists, physicians, statesmen, and money lenders—a profession that was forbidden to Muslims and Christians alike. 

The Inquisition successfully petitioned the Joint Monarchs for the expulsion of the Jews of Spain, which they ordered in the Edict of Alhambra. 

The new decree ordered that the remaining Jews in the realm to either convert to Catholicism or leave Spain with four months.  Many Jews did choose baptism, but they and their decedents, called Marranos, remained under suspicionof secretly practicing Judaism and eventually themselves fell under the yoke of the Inquisition. 

Jews who would not convert were promised the protection of the monarchs while they disposed of their assets and were to be to be allowed to depart unmolested carrying with them their personal belongings, but no gold orsilver.  Forced to sell assets under these conditions, most Jews received only a fraction of their worth.  Others had property seized by Christians while authorities looked the other way, and many more had to simply abandon everything. 

Expelled from their homes and carrying with them what they could salvage, Spanish Jews begin the trek to ports like Palos to sail into exile.

Many voluntarily sailed before the deadline, mostly to North Africa where tolerant Moors welcomed them.  They and their descendants eventually spread over the Muslim world and became known as the Sephardic Jews

Jews unable to arrange their own transportation by the deadline were rounded up and placed on ships that scattered them across Europe to uncertain fates.  Some were given refuge in Portugal on promise of protection.   Prince Henry instead robbed and enslaved them.  Many arrived in Italian city states where some found a begrudging welcome and others were later massacred.  In all an estimated 250,000 Jews were expelled

Columbus, himself a devout Catholic, saw nothing wrong with any of this.  On his voyage he stumbled on the islands of the Caribbeanwithout realizing where he was and returned to Spain declaring that he had claimed the Indies for the monarchy.  He was rewardedwith the position of Viceroy over the new lands and the titleof Admiral of the Ocean Sea

The native Arawak people were among the Carib tribes tortured and annihilated by Columbus in his ruthless reign as Viceroy of the New World.

Columbus made more voyages in increasingly desperate attempts to prove that he had actually found the Orient.  He also became a despotic ruler.  He was socruel to the Native Carib peoplenations he essentially wiped from the face of the Earth in a decade—that even the Church was appalled.  He was eventually hauled back to Spain in chains and stripped of his titles and fortune. 

He spent the last few bitter years of his life trying to regain what he had lost and defending the increasingly dubious claim that he had reached Asia. 

As for Isabella and Ferdinand, they grew wealthy on the gold and silver of the dispersed Jews.  The Spanish Empire grew fat on gold looted from the Aztecs and Incas and from new mines of silver and gold worked by Native slaves. 

The losers were the displaced Jews and the conquered native peoples of the New World. 

Ginger Goodwin’s Murder--A Mob of Soldiers and Canada’s First General Strike

2 August 2021 at 10:32

A mob of recently discharged soldiers armed and organized by local employers and authorities raid the Vancouver Labour Temple injuring the Labour Council Secretary, a female employee, and a longshoreman.  Other labor leaders were hunted down and arrested and/or simply kidnapped.  The rank and file of the striking unions, however, continued to conduct the one day General Strike as planned.

 Note—We saw yesterday how labor opposition to World War I and the draft was used in the suppression of militant labor leading to the murder of an important radical unionist, Frank Little.  The same forces played out north of the Border with equally deadly results.

On August 2, 1918 Canada saw its first general strike, a well-planned and highly effective one day protest in Vancouver, British Columbia over the suspected murder of labor activist and draft opponent Albert “Ginger” Goodwin.  It came during a war year punctuated by several strikes and labor unrest in the key industries in western Canada including lumbering and milling, coal mining, and on the docks.  Instead of letting the one day action come and go authorities and industrial barons colluded to violently suppress it using hundreds of recently de-mobilized soldiers.

Patriotic fervorwas running high in Canada, particularly in British Columbia, considered the stronghold of the Dominion’s English speaking Empire Loyalists.  Canadian troops had been fighting in France for three years and had taken heavy casualties in some of the worst of the trench warfare carnage of the Western Front. 

On the other hand, decades of pent up labor frustration were coming to a head.  Many workers bitterly opposed the draft which they saw as “sending poor men’s sons to fight a rich man’s war.”  Socialism had taken deeper hold on Canadian workers than their American counter parts south of the border.  Many still took toheart the socialist international idealism of the pre-war periodwhich had laid hopes on preventing war by refusing to allow workers of one country to be used to kill workers of another.  Unfortunately, despite that high minded rhetoric, one by one the western Social Democratic Parties had fallen in line behind their national governments.  Many western workers bitterly objected to that and remained opposed to the Great War.  Workers also recognize a strategic opportunity to use a pressing need to ramp up war productioncoupled by a labor shortage created by the draft and general mobilization, to press for significant gainsin wages and working conditions.  The wave of strikes, large and small was a natural outgrowth of these circumstances.

The immediate precipitating cause of the General Strike was the death under highly suspicious circumstancesof Goodwin, a popular union leaderand militant

Albert "Ginger" Goodwin.

Goodwin was born in Treeton, England on May 10, 1887.  He immigrated to Canada in the early 20th Century and was working as a coal miner at Cumberland on Vancouver Island by late 1910.  In 1912 he joined the epic strike of the Cumberland mines that dragged on through the beginning of World War I.  The long, bitter strikes confirmed his working class militancy and lead him to taking a greater leading role as a radical and socialist in the trade union movement.  He also entered electoral politicsrunning as an anti-war Socialist Party of Canada candidate in the 1916 provincial elections. 

Goodwin’s rise to union leadership was even more impressive.  In December 1916 he was elected secretary of the Trailmen and Smelters Union local on Vancouver Island, a part of the historically radical Western Federation of Miners and the next year he was elected Vice President British Columbia Federation of Labour.  After the WFM changed its name to the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelt Workers (MMSW) he became President of District 6 and also of the Trail Trades and Labor Council which united the industrial union MMSW with craft unions in the mines and mills.  

He achieved all of this despite his well-known anti-war views and encouragementof draft resistance.  At first he did not, however, personally resist the draft in order to continue his labor work.  He duly registered and was granteda medical deferment on the basis of black lung disease from years in the coal mines and rotting teeth.  After he led a major strike of Trail Smeltermen in 1917 Goodwin found his deferment suddenly canceled and he was called up for active duty.  True to his principles, he fled, living for months in thebush supported by his fellow workers.

On July 27 while camping in the hills above Cumberland, Goodwin was discovered by Dominion Police Special Constable Dan Campbell who shot him dead.  Campbell claimed self-defense although Goodwin’s gun was not fired or found near his body.

When word reached Vancouver the labor movement there was outraged and assumedthat Goodwin had been systematically hunted down and murdered.  That was probably a good assumption given that no investigation of the circumstances of the death was undertaken.  The Vancouver Trades and Labour Council (VTLC), not a notoriously radical body which included several relatively conservative craft unions, voted 171-1 in favor of calling a one day General Strike in protest.  There was also a feeling that an effective General Strike would demonstrate the power and solidarity of Vancouver labor, strengthening the hands of member unions in their upcoming confrontations with employers over wage and hour issues.

The strike call included the whole of British Columbia but with just a few days to organize, participation outside of Vancouver was spotty. But in the city with the full support of virtually all of the city’s unions, the strike was paralyzing, but peaceful.

Employers and local authorities—and perhaps the provincial and national governments had enough advance notice of the strike based on the widely publicized call to do some organizing of their own.  Someone with excellent connectionsarranged to rally by large numbers of recently discharged soldiers to protest disruptive strikes in key industries during a period of national emergency.  Labor was portrayed as “stabbing the troops in the back” and as German agents and/or Bolsheviks.  Not only were the men worked up into a frenzy, but they were also provided with automobiles and armed with clubs and pistols.  A detailed plan for a surprise attack on strike headquarters at the Labour Temple at 411 Dunsmuire Street was drawn up and key mob leaderswere provided with detailed layouts of the building.

Labor militant and well known Suffragist Helena Gutteridge's eye witness account of the raid on the Labour Temple stoked public outrage.  

The supposedly spontaneous mob attacked the building on the day of the strike.  At least 300 men ransacked the offices of the VTLC.  Twice attempts were made to throw VTLC Secretary Victor Midgely from the office window.  A female employee was badly roughed up and injured when she intervened toprevent it.  Midgely and a Longshoreman found in the office—probably acting as an unofficial security guard—were beatenand forced to kiss the Union Jack.  Prominent labor activist and suffragette Helena Gutteridge was also at the scene but was unharmed.  Her account of the attack was widely circulated afterwards.

The ex-soldiers searched the city for union leaders, arresting or kidnapping several.  But the strike was well enough organized that rank and file members kept it in force in good order with a minimum of violence, though there were several street scufflesbetween strike flying squads and the soldiers and local police

The strike ended as scheduled and most workers returned to work the next day.  Union officers, and strike leaders, however, were sacked and blackballed.

Ginger Goodwin's funeral procession in Cumberland, British Columbia, the mining town where he rose to prominence in the labor movement. 

To show the public that the strike had deep support of membership of the participating unions and was not foisted on them by a cabal of devious Bolsheviks, the officers of the VTLC and many member unions resigned en masse then stood for re-election.  The vast majority overwhelmingly re-elected.

The Vancouver General Strike helped set the table for the much larger and open-ended Winnipeg General Strike in June of 1919.  Vancouver would launch to most substantial sympathy strikes in support of Winnipeg that year.

In September of 1919 many leading members and unions of the VTLC bolted the Canadian Trades Council to help form the new One Big Union of Canada, an avowedlyrevolutionary union inspired by the Industrial Workers of the World in the States.  Like the IWW it adopted industrialunionism rather than craft divisions, although in practice many old craft locals that joined the OBU continued to function without much change except for better co-ordination with other crafts in their industries. 

                                        A One Big Union of Canada flyer from 1919 refuting a well orchestrated red baiting campaign.

The OBU was supported by the Socialist Party of Canada and by revolutionary syndicalists.  It flourishedin western Canada well into the 1920’s but was beset by red busting harassment from authorities and employers and sapped by poor internal organization.  Member unions began drifting back to the established unions.  Eventually it shrank to a few thousand members, most in the Winnipeg Transit Workers and merged with the Canadian Labor Congress in 1956.


Legendary “Half White, Half Indian, All IWW” Frank Little Lynched

1 August 2021 at 11:55

Although a recent biography by Frank Little's great grand niece casts doubt on oft repeated claims that the organizer was "half White, half Indian, all IWW"  many Native Americans are still proud to claim him including Blackfoot Louis Still Looking who painted this now on display at Butte-Silver Bow Archives.

On this morning four years ago out in Butte, the old Montana coper mining town where a good slice of often violent labor history went down, Wobblies from the Missoula General Membership Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World and other folks will gathered at the grave of Frank Little in Mountain View Cemetery and then caravanned to a picnic area near the Milwaukee Bridge where the tough as nails union organizer was lynched exactly 100 before.  They went out on the trestle where his tortured body was left dangling and laid a wreath.  My old friend and Fellow Worker working class troubadour Mark Ross who lived for a good many years in Butte returned to town for the event to sing.

The story of Little and his violent demise would make a hell of a great movie.  That one has never been made is testimonyto the suppression and erasure of labor history from popular culture.  Instead his memory ispreserved as a Wobbly folk hero, enshrined alongside other martyrs of the One Big Union like Joe Hill, the victims of the Centralia Massacre, and Westly Everet who was lynched in his Doughboy uniform.

In an effort to change that Little great-grand niece Jane Little Botkin, has written the now definitive book on her ancestor, Frank Little and the IWW:  The Blood that Stained an American Family.

Jane Little Botkin's book about her great grand uncle details the last 13 days of Frank Little's life in Butte and his murder.

Little was born in 1879 in Indian Territory, modern Oklahoma.  By his account his father was white and his mother was a member of the Cherokee Nation.  Other than that almost nothing was known about his family life and education until Botkin’s research and book.  Botkin disputesthe Native American lineage chalking it up as a good yarn.  Like many of the itinerant young workers Little left family and much of his identity behind when he hitthe rails looking for work sometime in his teens.

Those from Texas and Oklahoma often did some cowboying and joined the hugebands necessary to follow the wheat harvest north across the plains all the way in to Canada.  He might have headed to the Pacific Northwest to lumberjack and harvest fruit, hit the docksat San Pedro and other California ports, joined railroad construction gangs, and maybe even washed dishes in a skid road eatery.  Frank certainly was at home among these kinds of men, the dispossessed, mobile working class who would make up the core of the IWW in the West.

Around the turn of the 20th Century, Little found himself working in one of the most important industries in the West—hard rock metal mining.  This was brutally hard labor and among the most dangerous work in world. 

The mining industry had evolved from small owner operated claims around boom towns to huge industrial scale operations often owned and operated by Eastern financial interests.  Big companies bought up—and sometimes outright stole—small operations and then gobbled up local and regional operations creating  near monopoliesin gold, silver, lead, and copper mines.  The companies demanded 12 and 14 hour days of back breaking labor six days a week.  Safety of the miners was hardly aconsideration as workers could be replaced by a “reserve army of the unemployed.”  As in the coal industry, there were company towns and pay in script that could only be redeemed for over-priced goods at a company store.

Conditions fostered labor rebellion, at first largely spontaneous and unorganized.  From the 1870’s onward in the territories and states of the west barely beyond the frontier era where civil law was absent or purchased outright by mine owners, brutal, violent strikes were the hallmark of the industry.

By the 1890’s The Western Federation of Miners (WFM) were lending militant leadership and organization to the class war in the mines.  Little joined sometime around 1900 and was soon a risingorganizer in the field. 

In 1905 the WFM became the largest founding organization of the radical new IWW, which aimed to bring the muscular industrial unionism of the miners to all industries.  Steeped in the open warfare of the West, the WFM brought a particularly pugnacious variety of bare knuckle direct action to an organization also founded by parlor intellectuals like Daniel DeLeon of the Socialist Labor Party (SLP), mainline Socialists like Eugene V. Debs, and “home guard” industrial unionists from the East.

The WFM’s Charles Sherman was installed as the firstand onlyPresidentof the IWW.  But his high handed top-down exercise of executive authority was at odds  with the already growing culture of shop-floor democracy of the union and he clashed with DeLeon and other intellectuals in the movement.  After a year, Sherman was goneand the WFM disaffiliated from the new union.

But many WFM leaders and a lot of the rank and file, including William D. “Big Bill” Haywood and Vincent St. John, stuck by the IWW.  With Heywood on trial for the bombing murder of former Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg, St. John took on the job of General Secretary-Treasurer of the union.  Heywood followed after he was clearedin the famous trial in which he was defended by Clarence Darrow.

Little was proud to transfer his loyalties to the new revolutionary union.  For the next several years he seemed to be everywhere across the West in the thick of IWW strikes and battles in a number of industries.  In addition to his continued work with miners, he organized lumber workers in the Northwest, oil field workers in the boom towns of Texas and his native Oklahoma, and California fruit pickers.  He was noted for his fearlessness.

Wobblies are arraigned in Court after being arrested in the Spokane Free Speech fight.  They flooded the jails and broke municipal budgets until they won the right to hold street meetings.  Little was a regular participant in these campaigns and spent 30 days in jail in Spokane for reading the Declaration of Independence.

He was part of the Free Speech Campaigns in Missoula, Fresno, and Spokane.  The IWW relied on street corner orators like Little to reach migrant workers in the skid roads of towns.  From these areas of shoddy rooming houses, hotels, bars, and whore houses, bosses recruited workers for the lumber camps, mines and harvests.  In order to enforce strikes on those jobs, the IWW had to organize the transient workerswho would otherwise become a pool of scabs.  Town after town attempted to  shut down the street corner meetings by arresting speakers.  The IWW developed a tactic by which they would send out a call for “footloose Wobblies” to flock to the towns and overflow the jails by mounting their soapboxes one after another.  These successful free speech fights worked because eventually towns went nearbankrupt feeding and housing the hundreds of defiant IWW members that they rounded up. 

Little either helped organize the campaigns, or blew into town to take his place in thedisobedience.  In Spokane he was sentenced to 30 days in jail for readingthe Declaration of Independence.

Little was widely respected by the rank and file for his sheer fearlessness.  In 1915 in the company of James P. Cannon, much later the founder of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party, Little came to Duluth, Minnesota, the Iron Range port, in support of strike of ore-dock workersagainst the Great Northern Railway.  Little was kidnapped by company “detectives” and held prisoner in a remote cabin outside of town.  Rank and file members got wind of where he was being held and staged a daring rescue mission.

In 1916, Little was elected to the IWW General Executive Board.  The Board was already embroiled  in controversy over how to respond to the increasingly likely event of American intervention in World War I.  Little was elected as a radical among radicals, backing open and fervent opposition to the war and a possible draft as the only possible response for an organization dedicated to solidarity of theworld-wide working class. 

Ralph Chaplin, cartoonist, illustrator, pamphleteer, and author of the labor hymn Solidarity Forever became editor of Solidarity, the IWW English language newspaperin the East in 1917.  He led a board faction that argued against any overt anti-war agitation by the IWW for fear that it would excuse the unleashing of a massive government repression, “un-like anything we have ever seen.”  The majority of the Board led by Haywood—radicals but also practical union men—were against general opposition  but supported continued action in “essential war industries” even if strikes would disrupt war production.  Little was in the small minority who demanded opposition to the war on principle.   “Better to go out in a blaze of glory than to give in,” he said. “Either we’re for this capitalist slaughterfest or we’re against it. I’m ready to face a firing squad rather than compromise!”

After war was declared in April of 1917, Little headed back out to the field where “essential war production” was exactly the target of a major campaignin the copper industry that year.  There was hardly any more critical industry in that year than copper, which was essential in the manufacture of brass for millions of rifle and machine gun cartridges, and artillery shells.  It was also needed for the miles of telephone wire that would be strung along the front, electrical wiring, and automobile parts for an increasingly mechanized Army.

Little arrived in Bisbee, Arizona where IWW organized Metal Mine Workers Union No. 800.  Union presented a list of demands, most of them safely related, to the management of the largest mining company in the area, Phelps Dodge.  Despite his personal militancy, Little discouraged calling an immediate strike because the union had not laid enoughground work.  But when the rank-and-file voted to go out against the company on June 29, Little stood by them.  He soap boxed and helped bring out the largely unorganized workers at two other large operations idling 3,000 miners and shutting down 80% of local production.

In his speeches, Little was not shy about asserting his opposition to the war.  When accused of being a German agent, he told Arizona Governor Thomas Edward Campbell, “I don’t give a damn what country your country is fighting, I am fighting for the solidarity of labor.” 

Frank Little just missed the Bisbee Deportation.  He was on his way to Butte for another confrontation with the copper bosses.

On July 12 an army of over 2000 “special deputies” swarmed across Bisbee and near-by towns rounding up all know IWW members and strikers. Little had been called out of town on other union business just before and missed being one of 1,300 men were held at the point of machine guns and loaded into cattle cars.  Over a day and a half in blistering heat and with virtually no food or water they were hauled more than 200 miles away to tiny Hermanas, New Mexico where they were dumped and told they would be shot on sight if they returned to Bisbee.

Undeterred by what became known as the infamous Bisbee Deportation, Little wasted no time making his way to Butte where a resurgent IWW was aiding a strike against Anaconda Copper, operator of the world’s largest open pit mine.  Once again he fearlessly tied the worker’s cause to the broader war.  His fiery rhetoric included calling American Doughboys preparing to go the France as, “scabs in uniform.”

Predictably the local press, controlled by Anaconda, had a field day accusing Little and the IWW of being German agents.  They openly called for vigilante “justice” against the “traitors.” 

Meanwhile the town of Butte was infiltrated by Pinkerton Detectives charged with silencing the leaders and crushing the strike.  One of those agents was Dashiell Hammett who became so disgusted by the work that he became a lifelong radical.  He became the pre-eminent writer of hard boiled detective fiction.  His character, the nameless Continental Op, was based on his Pinkerton experience and his first novel Red Harvest was based on his Butte experience.

Wobbly troubadour and an old friend and fellow worker Mark Ross near the site of Frank Little's rooming house where he was beaten and kidnapped.  Now marked by this silhouette art instillation showing Little's body being carried away.  He was tied behind a car and dragged to the railroad trestle where they hung him. 

In the early hours of August 1, Little was seized in his rooming house bed by six masked men.  The beat him, tied him behind an automobileand dragged him out of town to railroad bridge.  There he was beaten again, and by some accounts castrated, before being hung from the trestle.  A note was pinned on him written in red crayon reading, “Others Take Notice. First and Last Warning,” and including the initials of several other IWW men and strike leaders.  The note was signed 3-7-77, the code used by the Virginia City Vigilance Committee more than four decades earlier.

The event was staged to look like it was the spontaneous act of outraged citizensacting in a time honored Western tradition.  Local police made no attempt to locate or identify the masked men and no charges were ever brought.  There is, however, considerable circumstantial evidence that the lynching was the well-planned work of the Pinkertons at the bidding of the Copper barons and that the motive was not patriotismbut as Big Bill Haywood said, “…because there is a strike in Butte, and he was helping to win it.”

                            Frank Little's death mask.

It turned out that Ralph Chaplin’s predictions were to come true.  After Little’s murder Montana declared martial law in Butte.  Union leaders and “traitors” were rounded up and arrested.  Both the strike and the IWW local were smashed.

And that was just the harbinger of sweeping action against the IWW and its leadership across thecountry.  Halls were raided, including the IWW General Headquarters in Chicago, which was ransacked.  IWW newspapers and pamphlets were banned from the mails.  Foreign born members were seizedand deported under the infamous Alien Acts, the legacy of John Adams’s long past crusade against his Jeffersonian Republican enemies.

Frank Little open and defiant anti-war stance was controversial even in the radical union.  But that was just an excuse to justify his murder.  It was his war on capitalism that got him killed.

After the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, which IWW leaders like Heywood openly admired, a Red Scare carried therepression on even after the war.  In 1919 101 IWW leaders were arrested and charged with sedition in Chicago and another 40 at Leavenworth, Kansas.  That included virtually the entire leadership of the union including Haywood and Chaplain.  Heywood would notoriously skip bond and go to the Soviet Union to avoid trial, for which old time Wobblies never forgave him.  Chaplain, who had foreseen it all, was among those who spent years behind bars.


U.S. Patent No. 1—Humdrum Need the Mother of Invention

31 July 2021 at 11:07


Samuel Hopkin's patent with the original signatures.  The date and number in the top right of the page were added after the Patent Act of 1836.

On July 31, 1790 President George Washington affixed his signature to a document granting the first United States Patent.  It was the culmination of a process that began when Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, himself an inventor with more than a passing interest in innovation, carefully reviewed the application.  When he concluded that the submission was both original and useful he signed the document and passed it on to Secretary of War Henry Knox who also approved it and then sent it to Attorney General Edmund Randolph.  Only when the last was finished with it did it land on Washington’s desk.

It was a cumbersome procedure entailing most of the Executive Branch of the still new Federal Government.  It was an improvisation by Jefferson who for some reason left out his rival for Washington’s favor, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton despite the New Yorker’s avowed interest in encouraging American industry.  Chances are very good that the snub was not accidental.

President George Washington and his Cabinet--Secretary of War Henry Knox, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and Attorney General Edmund Randolph.  All but Hamilton were involved in the review of the first patent.

Jefferson had to ad lib a review processbecause when Congress authorized the government to issue patents it neglected to say how it should be done.  The act simply authorized the government to carry out the powersdescribed in Article 1. Section 8 of the Constitution:

Congress shall have the power...to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.

The first person to take advantage of the new law was Samuel Hopkins, a Philadelphia inventor who petitioned for a patent on an improvement “in the making of Pot ash and Pearl ash by a new Apparatus and Process.”  As inventions go, it was pretty mundane, but potash, which was derived from the ash residue of vegetable matter, usually wood, and was used in the making of soap and candles.   Both of those necessities had usually been made at home in the Colonial Era.  Hopkins hoped his process would encourage their manufacture in small scale craft shops for local sale.  So it perfectly fit Jefferson’s key criterion—usefulness.

Samuel Hopkins was granted the first Patent for his new process of making potash. 

Hopkins was so excited about the prospects for his process that the very next year he was also granted the first patent from the Parliament of Lower Canada in 1791, and issued by the Governor General in Council Angus MacDonnel at Quebec City.

The approval process was repeated two more times that year for a new candle-making process and Oliver Evans’s flour-milling machinery.  The following year the trickle of applications became a rushing steam as innovative and ambitious dreamerssubmitted their ideas for a $4 fee—a cost that although not insignificant could be raised by most.   Whatever his own interest in examining the models and drawings, the work load was overwhelming the Cabinet and the President’s attention.

Jefferson substantially streamlined theprocess.  He handed over initial review to a State Department Clerk who would make a recommendation which he would approve and send on to the President for a final signature.  In practice the final two steps began to simply rubber stamp the Clerk’s determination.

This process continued into Jefferson’s own Presidency.   At his urging Congress created Patent Office with its own staff of clerks.  More than 10,000 patents were issued before 1836 when a fire destroyed all of the records.  That fire spurred Congress to enact the Patent Act of 1836 which authorized the hiring of professional patent examiners in addition to the clerks.  It also authorized new patent documents to be issued in all cases where the patent could be confirmed by other records such as copies held by the recipient.  2,845 patents were restored and issued a number beginning with an X.  That included Hopkins’ first patent.  The rest of the missing patents were voided.



To date there are more than five million patents that have been issued to Americans and other nationals by the U.S. Patent system.  Since 1975 patents have been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, a part of the Department of Commerce.

By the way a copy of Hopkins’ patent with the original signatures still exists and is held by the Chicago Historical Society.

Black Troops Slaughtered in the First SNAFU—The Battle of the Crater

30 July 2021 at 11:09

This Battle of the Crater souvenir post card was sold for decades around the Virginia battle field.  For all I know glossy print versions may still be available.  Like many depictions of the battle it show a valiant Confederate charge into the Yanks trapped in the crater.  It also minimizes the number of Black troops--only two are identifiable in this picture--despite the fact that they suffered virtual annihilation.  How history gets both the valient Lost Cause veneer and is white washed.

File this one in the best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley department.  The plan was brilliant.  Its execution nearly perfect down to the last detail.  The result exactly as desired, until mere mortal men marched into the breach.

By the summer of 1864 the grim carnage of the American Civil War had ground to a stalemate.  Since Gettysburg a year earlier Confederate General Robert E. Lee and his legendary Army of Northern Virginiahad been hard pressed by vastly superior Union forces of the Army of the Potomac under the direct command of Major General George Meade directlyand personally supervised by Commanding General Ulysses S Grant. 

Once famous for his audacious and aggressive maneuvers, Lee was forced to defend the Confederate capitol of Richmond.  He erected impressive earthen work fortifications in a wide ring around the city.  The old man was proving to be just as adept at what would be the future in the Industrial Agetrench warfare.

Lee dug in to defend his capitol. A war of maneuver settled into siege, stalemate, and trench warfare.  The breastworks of the Confederate Fort Mahone on the Petersburg line.

The key to Richmond was at the rail hub of Petersburg through which the city and the army could remain supplied with food,supplies, and munitions.  Grant called it the “backdoor to Richmond” and proceeded to lay siege to the city and its fortifications.

The armies faced each other along a 20mile front from the old Cold Harborbattlefield near Richmond to areas south of Petersburg.  An attempt to take the town by assaultended in failure on June 15.  Since then, the two armies had pounded each other with artillery, peppered the opposing lines with deadly fire from sharpshootersand snipers, and delicately probed each other’s lines with reconnaissance patrols.  Both commanding generals were frustrated.

Lt. Col. Henry Pleasants of the 48th Pennsylvania Infantry had an idea and commanded the perfect troops to make it happen. 

It took a mining engineer to come up with a solution to Grant’s problem—Lt. Col. Henry Pleasants, commanding the 48th Pennsylvania Infantry of Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside’s IX Corps.  His proposal was simple on paper—dig a long mineshaft from the Union siege trenches then under Confederate outer defenses until under the major fortification at thecenter of the Rebel lines, Elliott’s Salient.  Sappers would then plant and set off a huge mine which would blow the fort away and open a breach through which Union forces could pour, smashing the Confederate I Corpsand rolling up Petersburg before Lee could muster his forces from elsewhere along the lines.

Burnside was a once promising commander nursing a badly bruised reputation.  His indecision as Army of the Potomac commander at Fredericksburg in December of 1862 had thrown away the best chance for a quick end to the war and led to one of the bloodiest defeats the Army was ever handed.  Busted back to a Corps commander, his lack of aggressiveness at Spotsylvania Court House earlier that year had aggravatedGrant.  Burnside was determined to prove that he was imaginative and aggressive.  He quickly gave the go-ahead to Pleasant’s plan.  Up the chain of command Meade and Grant also signed off on it but were not much convinced it would work.  Neither lent much logistical support to the effort.

A successful and proven Division commander, Major General Ambrose Burnside had been elevated to quickly to command of the Army of the Potomac after Lincoln finally got fed up with George McClellan.  His indecision at Fredericksburg led to one of the Army's worst defeats.  Demoted to a Corps commander, he was blamed for over caution at Spotsylvania Court House.  Now he was an officer desperate to salvage his reputation.

Pleasants’ own troops, tough coal miners from the fields of western Pennsylvania, were just the men for the job.  They were maybe the only men in the Union army who would not consider the taskdrudgery.  In fact, for them digging in the soft Virginia soil must have seemed like a cakewalk.

Digging began in June and proceeded quickly.  The men had to scrounge lumber to shore up the tunnel and for the ingenious ventilation systemwhich sucked fresh air from the narrow mine entrance all the way to the face of the digging via a wooden ductFetid air at the end was heated by a constantly burning pit fire and vented out drawing the fresh air to fill the vacuum.  This system avoided the use of multiple air vents which could have been observed.

The miners dug by hand and removed the soil in wooden soapand ammunition boxes drawn by rope along a crude wooden plank rail. On July 17 the shaft reached under Elliott’s Salient at a depth of about fifty feet.  A perpendicular gallery about 75 feet long extended in both directions.

All of this had been accomplished un-detected by the enemy.  Confederate intelligence reported rumors of the mine to Lee about two weeks after construction began.  He didn’t believe it.  Finally, after receiving new report, he began desultory anti-mine efforts which failed to find or detect the shaft.

Confederate General John Pegram in charge of the artillery in the sector took the rumors more seriously, however, and on his own authority as a precaution had trenches and gun emplacements built to the rear of the Salient as a secondary line of defense.

Meade and Grant finally decided to go all in on the plan.  The gallery underneath the Confederate position was filled with 8,000 pounds of gunpowder in 320 kegs.  The main chamber was extended to 20 feet below the fort and was packed shut with 11 feet of earth in the side galleries and 32 feet of packed earth in the main gallery to prevent the explosion blasting out the mouth of the mine.

The miners' handiwork--the Union tunnel with the point of detonation of tons of explosive under the Confederate strong point.

On July 27 Grant sent Major Generals Winfield Scott Hancock and Phil Sheridan on a combined infantry/cavalry attack along the James River southwest of Richmond and miles from the Petersburg front.  In what became known as the First Battle of Deep Bottom or New Market Road the forces were repelled in two sharp days ofskirmishing around Fussell’s Mill and Bailey’s Creek.  Although Grant held out some hope that Hancock’s infantry could punch a hole in the defenses to allow Sheridan’s cavalry to pour into Richmond or failing that ride around the city severing rail connections, he was not entirely disappointed when the attacks were repulsed.   They had succeeded in causing Lee to send troops from Petersburg to re-enforce the line along the James.

Grant turned his personal attention to the well-developed plans for the Petersburg mine attack. 

Weeks earlier at an officer’s call Burnside had acceded to the plea of former New York City dance master Brigadier General Edward Ferrero to use his division of United States Colored Troops (USCT) as the leading assault unit.  Burnside, who originally had other plans, agreed.  The division was fresh, well equipped, and most importantly at full strength, 4,200 men—a rarity when veteran units were often whittled away to half their original size or less through combat loss, disease, and desertion.  The division was given a rarity for the Civil Wartwo full weeks of specialized training and instructions for this mission.  After the mine went off, they were to move ahead in the confusion of the enemy and secure the crest of the crater on either side to allow the rest of the Corps to pass along the rim or through the crater itself. 

When Meade reviewed the plans, he fretted that the unit which Burnside considered fresh was simply green and therefore unreliable in combat, especially in a critical role.  He also worried that if the Colored Troops failed, they would discourage commanders from accepting and fighting alongside of others.  Although Colored Troops had proved themselves in other theaters, they were new to the elite Army of the Potomac.  Grant agreed and ordered Burnside to revise the order of battleless than 24 hours before the attack.

At another officer’s call Burnside conducted a lottery among his three white divisions to select a lead.  Brigadier General James F. Ledlie of the 1st Division won the draw.  The Colored Division would join the two others in the second wave of the attack.

Ledlie returned to his unit but never issued the special instructionsfor taking the flanking rim first.  The men were told only that they would have the honor of leading a full frontal assault.

Brevet Brigadier General Edward Ferrero, a famed New York dancing master in civilian life and a veteran of several campaigns, commanded the division of U.S. Colored Troops at Petersburg.  He and his men were tapped to lead the assault after the mine blew up and underwent two weeks of special training.  At the last minute they were replaced in the order of battle by a white division for political reasons.

Meanwhile Col. Pleasants was deep underground personally supervising the final placement of the explosives and making sure the earthen plugs in the tunnel were strong.

The mine was supposed to be detonated at 3:30 in the morning of June 30.  But the Army had provided inferior fuses.  Two attempts to light it failed.  Finally, two volunteers crawled into the mine, found where the fuse had burned out had broken, and spliced a fresh fuse on the end.  It was after dawn when the mine finally blew up at 4:30, with enough light for Confederate pickets to recognize that there were large Union forces inside their lines.

The explosion itself went offflawlessly.  And impressively.  The fortifications of Elliott’s Salient were blown sky high killing most of the garrison.  Despite a little warning, the Confederate line was thrown into the anticipated confusion and panic.

Ledlie’s men at first seemed as stunned by the spectacle as the enemy.  They paused to take in the scene and had to be prodded forward by their officers and sergeants.  Ledlie himself was nowhere to be found.  He was well to the rear, completely out of line of sight of the battle in a bombproof bunker with Ferrero of the Colored Division.  Passing a bottle between them the two officers were getting quietly drunk.

The untrained and leaderless men of the 1st Division charged into the crater  instead of taking the rim as planned.  They were trapped.  The Turkey shoot commenced.

When the 1st Division reached the crater instead of securing the rim, they charged directly into it.  And at the bottom they stopped to gape at the destruction.  The delays allowed time for Brig. Gen. William Mahone to cobble together a Confederate force to rush to plug the breechRebs quickly occupied the vacant rim and commenced a turkey shoot of the defenseless men in the crater.  Troops madly tried to scramble up the sides, but found the dirt gave way under them.  They were trapped.

But they were not to be alone.  Burnside, refusing to be charged once again with indecision and lack of aggression, ordered the Colored Division forward to reinforce the trapped 1st.  Denied the rim, they followed into the crater.  Their appearance enraged the Confederates who intensified fire, including round after round of intense artillery fire.

Burnside ordered the Colored Division forward to reinforce the 1st.  They also pushed into the Crater and were trapped.  They were singled out by enraged Confederates and were nearly annihilated.  No prisoners were taken from them.  The wounded were shot or bayoneted. Only a handful escaped, mostly men who did not enter the crater.

The turkey shoot continued for more than two hours.  At one point some supporting troops did manage to flank the crater and advance inside the Confederate line taking trenches in brutalhand-to-hand combat. But there were not enough of them and could not be reinforced.  After holding out for a short while they were cleaned out of the trenches by a counterattack.

As the battle wound down, Confederate troops summarily executed Black soldiers trying to surrenderFearing retaliation by the Rebels, some White Union troops bayonetted the Blacks as well.  The Colored Division was virtually wiped out as an effective unit.

In all Union forces suffered 3,798 casualties including 504 killed, 1,881 wounded, and 1,413 missing or captured.  The Confederates lost 1,491—361 killed, 727 wounded, and 403 missing or captured.

The Crater after the battle.

Probably the best chance of the year at an early end to the war was thrown away.  Grant reported to Army Chief of Staff Henry W. Halleck, “It was the saddest affair I have witnessed in this war…Such an opportunity for carrying fortifications I have never seen and do not expect again to have.”

The finger pointing and blaming began immediately.  A Court of Inquiry pinned the rap on Burnside, who was relieved of command and never entrusted with another.  His reputation was ruined beyond repair.  All of his division commanders were censured, especially Ledlie and Ferrero.

One of the few to come out of the affair with an enhanced reputationwas Pleasants, whose troops were not engaged in the actual fighting that day.  He was rewarded for his plan and execution with a brevet to Brigadier General.

At war’s end in 1865 the Congressional Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War opened an inquiry into the debacle.  Pleasants testified that if Burnside had been allowed to retain his original order of Battle, that the operation would have been a success.  Grant concurred.  He wrote to the Commission:

General Burnside wanted to put his colored division in front, and I believe if he had done so it would have been a success. Still I agreed with General Meade as to his objections to that plan. General Meade said that if we put the colored troops in front (we had only one division) and it should prove a failure, it would then be said and very properly, that we were shoving these people ahead to get killed because we did not care anything about them. But that could not be said if we put white troops in front.

In the end, the commission agreed, laying the blame at Meade’s feet and exonerating Burnside.  Little good did that do for the general’s already destroyed reputation.

On the Confederate side Mahone was hailed a hero and became one of Lee’s most trusted division commanders in the last year of the war.

Far from the battle site where they were slaughtered the 28th Regiment U.S. Colored Troops are commemorated by a marker in Indianapolis, the city where the regiment was raised.

The Siege of Petersburg ground on for months more into a new year.  Union successes elsewhere, especially William Tecumseh Sherman’s operations in the Deep South, were sealing the fate of the Confederacy.  After Grant’s bloody Wilderness Campaign offensive, Lee was finally forced out of his trenches.  Richmond fell.  Lee surrendered.  The South was defeated.

But had the operation at the Crater gone as planned, maybe a million lives might have been saved. 

The Man Who Remembered—Booth Tarkington

29 July 2021 at 11:01

                            Booth Tarkington as a young writer.

Booth Tarkington, the American novelistand dramatist, was born on July 29, 1869 into a comfortable, upper middle class family in Indianapolis, Indiana.  His long and very productive career was marked by his close examination of those 19th Century Mid-Western rootsin the humorous, nostalgic vein of his popular Penrod novels and Seventeen, as well as more serious depictions as in The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams. 

At first educated in Indianapolis schools, his socially ambitious family had him transferred to Phillips Exeter Academy, the fashionable eastern boarding school that was a conduit to the Ivy League.  But his family lost some of their wealth in the Panic of 1879, and young Booth was sent instead to Indiana’s own Purdue University.  A gifted enough student not to have to work hard for decent grades, he was popular on campus and enjoyed his two years there. 

With improving fortunes, he was sent to Princeton to finish his education.  There he joined a theatrical group where he excelled as an actor and first turned his hand as a playwright.  He became one of the charter members when the drama club was re-formed as The Triangle Club, which continues to this day producing original work by students.  He also belonged to the Ivy Club, the oldest and most prestigious of Princeton’s dining clubs and editedthe Nassau Literary Magazine. 

Voted the most popular student of the class of 1893, Tarkington failed to graduate, missing credit in one class.  However, he kept close ties to both of his colleges and made significant gifts to each when he became a wealthy and successful writer.  A residence hall at Purdue was named for him after he underwrote its construction and both schools awarded him honorary degrees.  In fact, he was the only person ever to receive two honorary degrees from Princeton, a measure of his literary prestige in the first quarter of the 20th Century. 

                      
       
Two film adaptations were made from Tarkington's first novel and successful play adaptations Monsieur Beaucaire in 1924 with reigning superstar Rudolph Valentino and 22 years later with Bob Hope--both were comedies but the Hope vehicle was less heroic.  The original was the film lampooned in the classic MGM musical Singing in the Rain.                                                          

Upon leaving school, Tarkington was able to undertake the traditional grand tour of Europe and spent time in such upper-class enclaves as Kennebunkport,Maine between extended stays in Indianapolis.  He began successfully writing short stories for popular magazines.  In 1900 he had success with his second book, Monsieur Beaucaire.  Uncharacteristic of most of his work the slender novel was a comic historical romance set in 18th Century England.  It’s themes of social class and caste, however, would be reflected in more American scenes.  The book went on to be a successful play, was made into an operetta, and was twice filmed, in 1924 with Rudolph Valentino and 1946 with Bob Hope. 

Tarkington married in 1902 and set up primary residence in Indianapolis. The marriage, which produced one daughter, ended in divorce in 1911 and Tarkington married Susanah Keifer Robinson the following year.  In 1902, the year of his first marriage, Tarkington was elected to a single termas a Republican in the Indiana legislature, which gave him fodder for his book In the Arena: Stories of Political Life published in 1905. 

Tarkington was soon publishing nearly a book a year in addition to a volumeof poetry and plays, including adaptations of his books.  Later he would also do screenplaysfrom his work. 

Orson Welles's adaptation of The Magnificent Amerbersons with Joseph Cotten, Anne Baxter, Tim Hold and Agnes Moorehead is considered a masterpiece despite RKO taking the final cut from the boy genius and altering the ending.  

Penrod, the first of a series of books about the adventures of a small town boy of comfortable circumstances, began as magazine stories and was published in 1914 and was widely popular.  The next year Tarkington finished The Turmoil, the first book of the Growth trilogyabout the fall of an old wealth family and the rise of the industrial new rich.  The second book of that series, The Magnificent Ambersons was published in 1918 and is considered by most critics as him most important work.  It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1919.  Orson Wells famously made it into a classic film in 1941. 

This 1948 paperback edition of Seventeen is the one I found on my mother's bookshelves and stuffed into my back jeans pocket to read in the boughs of a willow over a Cheyenne pond one summer long ago.

In between, in 1916 came Seventeen, a much beloved, painfully comic tale of a young man’s unrequited love.  It is still an entertaining and enjoyable read.  In 1922 Tarkington won a second Pulitzer Prize for Alice Adams, his tale of a vivacious small town girl of modest means who plots to snag the handsome son of the town’s leading wealthy family.  It, too, was twice made into a film adapted for the screen most famously in 1935 by my distant kinswoman Jane Murfin for Katherine Hepburn. 

Presenting Lily Mars, published in 1933 told the story of a stage struck young woman and incorporated themes from Tarkington’s lifelong interest in the theater.  It was made into a MGM musical staring Judy Garland in 1943.

Tarkington in the 1920s.  His eyesight was already failing.  Soon he would keep up a prodigious output by dictation as he tried to come to grips with the changes around him that were erasing the innocent 19th Century small town life he treasured.

In the early ‘20’s Tarkington began to lose his sight and was blind by mid-decade.  He continued to produce a steady stream of novels, plays, and non-fiction by dictation up to his death in 1946. 

In all nine of his novels were top best sellers and several of his stage plays long running hits.  His reputation as a novelist has been eclipsed by harder edged work by later American writers.  Seventeen remains perennially in print as a juvenile favorite, but Tarkington is now best remembered for the films made of his work.

The Bonus March—MacArthur, Eisenhower, and Patton Do Hoover’s Dirty Work

28 July 2021 at 10:23

Bonus Marchers in the St. Louis rail yards in late May 1932 ready to hop B & O freights to Washington.  Marchers clogged the freight trains for weeks from all over the country.

Note—On January 6 the highest echelons of the Trump maladministration did everything they could to prevent National Guardsmen or Army troops from defending the Capitol from a violent insurrection.  It was a different story in 1932 when the full force of the Army was unleashed on veterans who never posed any threat to the Capitol or government.

Today is the anniversary of one of the most important mass protestsin American history being crushed by military force.  This is a bit of historical trivia that is never more relevant.

On July 28, 1932 Washington,D.C. became a battle zone when President Herbert Hoover ordered the Army to clear out veterans, their families, and supporters who had been camped since June pressing demands for an early payment of a bonus promised to World War I soldiers and sailors

It was nearly four years into the Great Depression with no relief from an almost total economic collapse in sight.  True unemployment was estimated to be nearing 25% with no safety net other than voluntary soup kitchens.  Tens of thousands of small businesses had failed dropping once solid citizens into povertyFarm income had collapsed.  Across the board, conditions were bleak

Veterans of the Great War were still relatively young men, most in their early 30s.  They had been welcomed home as heroes.  Despite the inevitable post-traumatic stresses of any war’s aftermath, most had married and were raising families when disaster struck.  Largely able bodied and well disciplined, they were perhaps the most employable men in America.  But many, very many, were in desperate shape that summer. 

In 1924 under pressure from veterans’ organizations, especially the American Legion, Congress had passed the Adjusted Service Certificate Law over the strenuous objections of President Calvin Coolidge.  Vets had been issued 3,662,374 bonus certificates, the face amount determined by a formula of how many days each soldier served with a greater payment for each day overseas.  The maximum amount due was $500 for domestic service up to $650 payable when the certificates matured in twenty years—1945. 

Although veterans were allowed to borrow against a percentage of that sum—eventually raised to 50%, the money had to be repaid with interest

Congress financed the scheme with annual appropriations of more than $12 million to fund the 1945 payments which were expected to be more than $3.5 billion.  Loans paid out against the certificates had already placed the fund in the red

None-the-less, in face of the dire emergency leading figures like popular retired Marine Corps General Smedley Butler began advocating for an immediate early payment of the bonus certificates. 

Texas Congressman Wright Patman, with hat in hand, is shown receiving a petitions from Veteran representatives in front of the Capital..  Patman sponsored legislation for an early payment of a promised bonus to World War I veterans.

Democratic Congressman Wright Patman of Texas, then in the second term of his long career, introduced a bill to authorize the payments.  It was ardently opposed by the President and Republicans in Congress. 

Hoover, a Quaker, had risen politically largely on his reputation as The Great Humanitarianfor his work feeding starving European civilians in the wake of the war.  He was the only engineer until Jimmy Carter to be elected President, a man of meticulous attention todetail, a deep attachment to Republican laissez faire economic philosophy, and a practically physical revulsion to disorder.”  He had responded to the Depression with cheerleading, rosy predictions for recovery, expressed sympathy for those affected but a firm belief that they were on their own and that the Federal Government had no Constitutional responsibility to them.  More concerned with the holy writ of a balance budget, he urged spending be slashed—a policy that not only did not help but actually deepened the Depression.  Naturally Hoover and unified Republicans railed against the proposed Patman Act as a budget buster.

The Bonus Expeditionary Forcewas organized by Walter W. Waters, a former sergeant in the AEF—American Expeditionary Force—in World War I, to descend in mass on Washington to pressureCongress to pass the Patman Act.  Veterans and their families from all over the country, but mostly from the East, responded to the call arriving in the city on June 17 as the Senate took up the bill, which had already cleared the House. 

Bonus Army camps may have had ramshackle huts and tents, but they were neatly organized with streets and maintained with military discipline, men assigned to clean-up, cooking, and security duties in addition to regular drilling.

Senate Republicans blocked actionon the bill and the Bonus Marchers settled into makeshift camps, nicknamed Hoovervilles.  Although the shabby camps were assembled from what tents could be obtained and junk scavenged from scrap yards, the veteran leaders exercised military discipline.  They were laid out in orderly streets, sanitation facilities were dug and maintained, common kitchens established, and camps patrolled by volunteer M.P.s.  Men had to register producing evidence of honorable discharge to be admitted and were each expected to do duty keeping the camps clean, orderly, and secure.  The men responded to daily reveille and held regular paradesAmerican flags were prominent.

The veterans were very concerned that the public see them as loyal patriots.  And by in large, despite being denounced as dangerous Communists in the most conservative press, the public was at least sympathetic to them. 

Over 17,000 men enrolled. Their wives and children plus some approved volunteer supportersespecially nurses and medical personnelswelled the camps to a total population of over 40,000.  The main camp was laid out on the mud flats and boggy ground by the Anacostia River across from the core of the city. 

Days before he ordered the Bonus Army dispersed and drive from Washington President Herbert Hoover was lampooned in the professional quality camp newspaper,  He was depicted as the Kaiser with a waxed moustache and wearing the Capital Dome and a German spiked helmet.  Men of every trade and level of education were in the camps, including the experienced journalists, artists, typographers, and printers who produced the paper.

Marchers gathered daily for orderly demonstrations near the Capitol.  By late July it was evident that the Republicans in the Senate would not budge and that the Patman Act was doomed.  Acting on direction of the President, Attorney General William D. Mitchell ordered District Police to “evacuate the city” of bonus marchers on the morning of July 28. 

Veteran leaders were taken by surprise by a police charge and the men resistedIll trained police responded by emptying their revolvers into the crowd killing two men outright and injuring dozensEnraged, the veterans fought back, pelting police with rocks, bricks, and anything else they could lay their hands on.  A few may have had handguns and fired back or fired with weapons taken from disarmed officers.  Police were forced to withdraw with nearly 70 men injured.  The veterans remained on Pennsylvania Avenue. 

Learning of the failure of the police, Hoover ordered the Army to take action.  Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur, in dress uniform and festooned with every decoration he ever received, decided to take personal command.  As commander of the famed Rainbow Division made up of National Guard units, many of the veterans in the streets had served under him. 

Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur in full dress uniform consults with his cavalry commander Major George S. Patton.  MacArthurs aide-de-camp Major Dwight Eisenhower is the officer at right with his hands on his hips.

MacArthur deployed two full regiments, the 12th Infantry, and the 3rd Cavalry supported by six battle tanks commanded by Maj. George S. Patton.  The Army arrived on the scene about 4:30 p.m. as Federal employees were leaving their offices.  MacArthur, with his aide Major Dwight Eisenhower at his side, ordered his troops to advance

At first many of the veterans were glad to see their brother soldiers.  Some believed that they had arrived to protect them from the police, others said they thought the advance at first was a parade in their honor.  Then Patton ordered his cavalry tocharge, sabers drawn.  As the horrified witnesses from surrounding office buildings screamed “Shame, Shame!” the cavalry crashed into the thick mass of veterans.  As the veterans reeled back toward their camps, the infantry came up with bayonets fixed.  Using adamsite gas, an arsenic based gas inducing violent vomiting, the troops began to clear the camps.  Women, children, and civilian volunteers alike were swept up. 

Patton's Light Tanks attacked Marchers on Pennsylvania Ave. as did his mounted cavalrymen behind them with sabers drawn and used.

Against the President’s explicit order, MacArthur crossed the Anacostia into the vast main camp.  Tents and huts were put to the torch, destroying all of the personal possessionsof the veterans and their families.  Survivors, including many injured, were scattered into the countrysidewhere local law enforcement personnel hectored them for days as they tried to find ways to get home.

In the end at least four veterans, including two of their leaders, William Hushka and Eric Carlson were killed and an estimated 1,017 injured.  Most historians agree that both of those figures are low because many of the injured were either unable to get medical treatment or afraid to seek it.  In addition, one woman suffered a miscarriage and an infant was killed.  Again historians, believe, based on eyewitness accounts, that other children, especially infants were killed or died later as result of the gas. 

The smoldering ruins of the main camp on the Anacostia mud flap.  Marchers and their families lost all of their personal belongings as they fled for their lives and were hectored and harassed for weeks by local authorities and sometimes vigilante mobs as they tried to make their way home.  Here and there local citizens organized aid and comfort.

Within a week newsreel footage of the attack was being played in every movie theater in the country.  Public outrage played a big part in the defeatof Hoover for re-election that November. 

But if veterans thought that Franklin D. Roosevelt would support payment of the Bonus, they were wrong.  Roosevelt wanted to use money for other projects and for direct relief.  But F.D.R. was not about to make the same mistake as Hoover when a smaller Bonus Army appeared in the summer of 1933.  Instead to sending in the Army, he sent Eleanor, who brought teato the veterans and urged them to instead enlistin the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). 

Hundreds took her up on the proposal and were put to work building thecauseway road to Key West, Florida.  When the Labor Day hurricane on September 2, 1935 killed 258 veterans working on the Highway, public sentiment again swung behind the veterans’ demand. 

In 1936 Congress over-rode Roosevelt’s veto to finally authorize the early payment of the promised bonus. 

After World War II the G.I. Bill with its promises of immediate money for education or a home purchase was enacted specifically in response to the plight of World War I vets.

In 1968 Resurrection City, the camp of the Poor People's Campaign was unmolested by troops.  President Lyndon Johnson remembered the Bonus March.

The 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom called by Martin Luther King, Jr. and his allies was inspired by the Bonus Marchers.  His 1968 plans for the Poor People’s Campaign, which included a camp of protesters, were even more evocative.  The Campaign, conducted after King’smurder, was not dispersed by troops.

  

Revisiting that Shattered Sunday Morning in Knoxville

27 July 2021 at 11:20

Police responding to a shooting at the Knoxville U.U. Congregation.

Note—Adapted from earlier posts.  Tragically timeless.

Periodic shooting outbreaksand mass killings have become a feature of modern American life.  It is already a cliché that they shock us, but no longer surpriseus.  Unless we are tethered to the event by ties to the victims, geography, or some other accident, our grief and outrage fade after a day or two and we resume our lives puttering away at the mundane until the next horror grabs our fleeting attention.

School shootings have become almost routine.  Incidents involving two or more injured or killed now occur about once a week.  That is so common that it takes multiple deaths to make more than local newscasts and several or a spectacular act of sacrificial heroism to lead the evening news.  Add attacks in workplaces, shopping centers, and the occasional rampage through a small town by some maniacout to eradicate family members.  The daily drive-by shootings in Chicago and other gang infested drug war battlegrounds.

We have even got used to the now ritualized dance that follows a particularly bloody outbreak.   Video of anguished families, portraits of the dead floating over grave looking anchor heads, the police reports, the scramble to peg the shooter as some sort of lone wolf or psychopath, the funerals, the pleas for gun reform on one hand and the snarling response that more guns and more armed citizen heroes on the other are the answer, then the vilification and attacks on victim families members who demand change.  We know it all so well we yawn now and turn the channel.

Of course, if we do have that personal connection, perhaps we have not given it up quite so casually just yet.  And in this world since we are, it is alleged, only separated by six degrees from any other mortal, many of us stumble into some unexpected connection.  It turns out that one of several young men who died a few years ago in that Colorado movie house protecting his girlfriend with his body, Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class John Larimer, was from here in Crystal Lake, Illinois.  At 27 he was just a year younger than my youngest daughter and although they went to different high schools they must inevitably had some mutual acquaintances.

One eruption of mayhem I feel a particular kinship to occurred 13 years ago today on July 27, 2008.  As these things go, it was not a major event.  They body count was low—only two dead and a handful injured.  If it were not for the somewhat unusual location of the shooting, it would have received no notice at all outside of Knoxville, Tennessee.

It was a Sunday morning—and it is always a Sunday morning in my mind when I remember it, regardless of the exact anniversary date.  A sad, disgruntled man whose lifewas unraveling, walked into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church that bright morning as children from two local congregations were getting ready to present their summer program, an adaptation of the sunny, iconic musical Annie.  He removed a shotgun, a primitive weapon compared to the high powered ordinance used in other killings, from a guitar case and began blasting away in the crowed sanctuary.  He kept firing until he was tackledand disarmed by congregants as others fled in terror leaving mangled bodies behind.

              
Shooting victims Greg McKendry , a  church usher who deliberately stood in front of the gunman to protect others and Linda Kraeger, a member of the Westside Unitarian Universalist Church in Farragut.
    

The killing spree turned out to be somewhat unusual in that it seemed to be motivated by something more than just a twisted desire for infamy based on a total body count of anonymous strangers.  The killer picked this church and the people in it.  He had a motive of sorts.  He wrote it down in a rambling manifestothat the police later found.  He believed that liberals had ruined his life.  And because he could not get to the politicians he especially despised, he sought to kill those who he thought had elected them, the liberal members of the local Unitarian Universalist Church.  Of course, it also turned out that his ex-wifehad been a member and that he had once been a welcome guest.  So perhaps his political motivations were mixedin with other harbored resentments.

My connection to this little horror comes not because I knew the victims, although I knew people very like them.  It came because I was accustomed to spending my Sunday mornings in another UU congregation in Woodstock, Illinois.  And I had been at summer services where liturgy was jettisoned in favor of some interesting or compelling program put on by the lay members.  And what could be more interesting, compelling and just plain delightful than beloved children you know by their first names singing familiar songs.  I felt it could have been me collecting the fatal buckshot, that it could have been my church.

The children never got to sing their songs that morning.  They were shepherded out of the church and away from danger.  But the next night when the whole of Knoxville seemed to gather at the near-by Presbyterian Church for a memorial service, they asked—no demanded—to sing their song.

Video of them singing that optimistic tune and of the whole assembly joining in moved me deeply. 

Naturally, I wrote a poem, which I read the next week in church and again on the first anniversary. 


Knoxville: 7/27/2008 10:26 A.M

 

They are about to sing about Tomorrow,

            as fresh and delicate as impatiens in the dew,

            when Yesterday, desperate and degraded

            bursts through the doors

            barking despair and death

            from the business end of a sawed of shotgun.

 

Tomorrow will have to wait,

            Yesterday—grievances and resentments,

            a life full of missed what-ifs

  and could-have-beens,

  of blame firmly fixed on Them,

  the very Them despised by

  all the herald angels of perfect virtue—

  has something to say.

 

Yesterday gives way to Now,

            the eternal, inescapable Now,

            flowing from muzzle flash

            to shattered flesh,

            the Now when things happen,

            not the reflections of Yesterday

            or the shadows of Tomorrow,

            the Now that always Is.

 

Now unites them,

            victims and perpetrator,

            the innocent and the guilty,

            the crimson Now.

 

Tomorrow there will be villain and martyrs,

            Tomorrow always knows about Yesterday,

            will tell you all about it in certain detail.

 

And yet Tomorrow those dewy impatiens

will sing at last—

The sun will come out Tomorrow,

            bet your bottom dollar on tomorrow

            come what may…

 

How wise those little Flowers

            To reunite us all in Sunshine.

 

—Patrick Murfin

  

Lundy’s Lane Battle from Seen from Different Sides of the Niagara

26 July 2021 at 12:20

American Regulars and New York Militia advance under General Jacob Brown  into heavy fire on British lines in the opening of the Battle of Lundy's Lane.  Brown is the wounded officer center.

The War of 1812 had been a disaster for American arms.  Cocky and nursing martial delusions, the fading reality of the frightfully narrow victory in the Revolutionary War was replaced in the public mind with a mythof an invincible citizen army.  A cadre of War Hawks had pushed a reluctant James Madisonto war.  Led by the likes of the young Henry Clay, the War Hawks hoped to put an end to British support for marauding native tribeson the frontier and to expand the new American Empireby the capture of Canada while Britain was distractedby Napoleon in Europe.

The pretext for the war was the impressment of American sailors at sea by the Royal Navy.  But it was only a pretext.  As outrageous and irksome as the seizures may have been those most affected, New England merchants, sailors, and whalers, were adamantly opposed to the war because of its disastrous results for American trade.

But the War Hawks pressed on.  The Regular Army consisted only of a couple of regiments of infantry scattered widely over frontier posts which hardly ever came together to drill at even the company level and units of costal artillery posted to a string of harbor forts.  That didn’t bother the Hawks.  They believed that a brave armed yeomanry, the militias, and volunteers would be sufficient to march on Montreal and York, the British capital.  They were wrong. 

America's first attempt at an invasion of Upper Canada across the Niagara frontier ended in disaster at the Battle of Queenstown Heights on October 13, 1812, the first major battle of the war.  New York militia under Major General Stephen Van Rennselaer broke and ran from smaller British, Canadian militia, and Native forces under concentrated artillery and musket fire.   Lieutenant Colonel Winfield Scott of the 2nd U.S. Artillery had command of the small number of Regulars on Queenstown Heights and was wounded and taken prisoner.  On parole, he made his way to Washington to lobby for the creation of more regular infantry regiments.  

Swaggering Yanks did succeed in briefly occupying—and burning—York early in the war but were soon sent reeling back across the border.  Forts Mackinac and Detroit fell and the garrison at Ft. Dearborn(now Chicago) was massacred.  In engagement after engagement the barely trained and ill equipped militia was put to rout, often fleeing at the first soundof musketry or the flash of British bayonets.  Tiny garrisons of Army Regulars were easily overwhelmed.  In upstate New York, across the Ohio Valley, and in the South the British armed and encouraged native allies who rampaged against isolated settlements.  Despite American successes at sea and the eventual naval domination of Lakes Champlain, Ontario, and Erie, British commanders had nothing but well deserved contempt for American troops.

In 1814, buoyed by naval success on the lakes, the Americans would try once again to invade Canada, this time across the Niagara River near the Falls.  The British knew it was coming.  They had re-enforced Canada with battle hardened veteran regiments with experience fighting Napoleon.  In addition, they had large auxiliaries of Indian allies, known to terrify the Americans.  Even their home grown militia was better drilled and armed than their U.S. counterparts and had the added motivation of defending their homes.  They were sure that not only could they defend British North America, but that eventually they would be able toslice through New York State and separate New England from the rest of the country.  That region, dominated by Federalists hostile to the Republicanadministration, was already restive and threatening secession.  It could be ripe for the picking.

                        U.S. Major General Jacob Brown.

But this time the Americans had something up their sleeves.  Under the leadership of two young career officers, Major General Jacob Brown and brevet Brigadier General Winfield Scott, Congress and the War Department had finally been convinced to raise new regiments of regular troops.  Quietly they raised, and more importantly disciplined, drilled, and trained two new regiments, the 21st and 25th Infantry, armed them with regulation military muskets tipped with glinting bayonets and secured scarce mobile field artillery to support them.  Unable to secure regulation blue cloth, Scott outfitted his regiment smartly in gray flannel and made sure they had the tall shako caps with shining brass badges and a plumethat made the men feel as worthy as any European troops.

        Brevet Brigadier General Winfield Scott.

Under the over-all commandof Brown, the two officers divided their force.  The main body, including the 21st and New York Militia crossed the river on July 3, 1814, quickly captured Fort Erie, and began to advance to the north.  Two days later Scott in command of the 25th made a surprise night crossing to the north in an attempt to catch the British in a classic pincher maneuver.

Scott encountered a force of British regulars of about equal strength to his own at Chippewa.  The aggressive Scott lined his men up and attacked.  They advanced with perfect military precision.  When British artillery tore into the ranks and vollies of musket fire felled men by the score, the soldiers dressed ranks and continued to advance.  The astonished British commander exclaimed, “Those are not the Tarrytown militia!  Those are by God Regulars!”  With bayonets lowered Scott put the veteran Redcoats to rout despite taking frightful losses of more than 300 men in his small force.

Scott and his smart regulars in grey uniforms and tall shako hats advanced with calm discipline into heavy British fire a Chippewa sending the Red Coats to flight despite heavy losses.

Pressing on, he rendezvousedwith Brown and together they continued to pursue the British.  They captured Queenstown but extended supply lines were harried by the local militia and Native auxiliaries forcing Brown to fall back to re-supply.

Meanwhile the British regrouped under General Phineas Raill and advanced south occupying positions at Lundy’s Lane.  Lt. General Gordon Drumond arrived to take personal command.  He ordered an advance along the east bankof the Niagara hoping to force Brown back across the river.  Instead Brown turned around and confidently began an advance against the British at Lundy Lane, an exposed position.  Informed of the advance, Raill ordered a withdrawal, but the order was countermanded by Drumond who also force marched additional troops to the scene from Fort George to the north.

The British were still re-occupying their positions when the Americans attacked on July 25th.  A brigade under Scott was badly mauled by British artillery.  Yet the 25th Infantry outflanked the combined British and Canadian forces and sent them to flight.  Raill was badly wounded and capturedby American dragoons.  But the fighting had been fierce and Scott’s forces had suffered heavy casualties.

The main body, regulars under Brigadier General Eleazer Wheelcock Ripley and New Your Volunteers drawn from the militia under Peter B. Porter, relieved Scott’s ravaged troops.  The relatively fresh 21st was dispatched to capture the British guns.  After a devastating volley of musketry and a bayonet charge, they did so.  British reinforcements blundered into the Americans now occupying the heightsand were repelled with heavy losses.

                            Lt. General Gordon Drummond.

Wounded, Drumond rallied his troops.  Both sides attacked and counter attacked into the night, sometimes firing into their own troopsin the smoke and confusion of the battle.  By midnight both were exhausted and fell back from the field.

The next day Brown ordered a retreat to Fort Erie, destroying British fortifications as they went.  The British, too broken to pursue, fell back on Queenstown to lick their wounds.  Both sides had lost about 850 men in the fighting.  Only 700 Americans remained fit for duty, the British had twice that.

Drumond would recoup to fight again.  He lay siege to Fort Erie but was defeated with heavy casualties.

Even the hardened British regulars were horrified by the carnage at Lundy’s Lane.  The fighting was as fierce as anything they had seen in Europe and the casualty figures astronomical.  Drumond in his official reportnoted, “Of so determined a Character were [the American] attacks directed against our guns that our Artillery Men were bayonetted by the enemy in the Act of loading, and the muzzles of the Enemy’s Guns were advanced within a few Yards of ours”.

The roll of the Canadian-raised Glengarry Light Infantry Fencibles and disciplined militia units in withstanding the repeated American charges at Lundy's Lane became an important symbol of Canadian identity.  Canadians claim victory in the battle for stopping the U.S. invasion despite leaving the battle ground briefly in the hands of the Americans.

Historians would argue about the outcome of the Niagara campaign and Lundy’s Lane.  Some would call it a draw.  Others call it a pyrrhic American victory.  Most settle that it was a narrow tactical win for the United States but a strategic victory for Britain in that it thwarted the American invasion of Canada.  The events are enshrined in Canadian history, where the battle is sometimes calledour Gettysburg” because it was the high water mark of American aggressiveness and insured that Canada would remain British.

On the other hand, in combination with American Naval victories on the Lakes, the British were forced to abandon any hope of invading the States from the north or sundering New England from the rest of the country.  And the memory of that grim fighting weighed heavily on the minds of the British negotiators at peace talks in Ghent.  Even the disastrous defeat of the American militia at Blandensburg, Maryland and Admiral Cockburn’ssubsequent burning of Washington just a few weeks after Lundy’s Lane could not erase British fears that eventually the Americans would be able to raise a real professional army and dominate the continent.

Lundy’s Lane goes a long way in explaining what many historians have regarded as the astonishingly generous terms to which the British agreed at Ghent, essentially the reversion to the status ante bellum of U.S. and Canadian borders.  The British would even have to evacuate the wide swath of Maine that they had captured.

Few Americans know anything about the War of 1812.  Many of those who do assume that it was the American victory at New Orleans garnered the generous peace terms.  But Andrew Jackson’s dramatic victory happened after the Treaty of Ghent had already been signed but before troops on either side could hear of it.

President Ronald Reagan reviewed the West Point Corps of Cadets on full dress parade in their grey uniforms and shakos inspired by Scott's troops at Lundy Lane.

Most Americans have never heard of the Niagara Campaign or the battles of Chippewa and Lundy Lane.  Even the War of 1812 itself is barely a historical footnote.  The victory lives on in this country in only two ways.  The Cadets Corps of the United States Military Academy at West Point wear gray and don plumed shakos for dress parades in honor of Winfield Scott’s Regulars.

And it has become the by-word of all professional soldiers that only regular troops—not militias, assemblages of short term volunteers or even hastily mustered National Guardsmenare fit to stand up under concerted hostile fire.

Time Machine—Murfin Verse for Matilda

25 July 2021 at 11:25

                                Matilda and Mom Maureen Murfin.
 

Time Machine

For Matilda Motoko Holmes

July 25, 2021

 

If Millie had a time machine

            she might go all the way back

            to yesterday when she swam

            with her mother

            and danced in the living room

            eyes shining and squealing.

 

More likely she would just go back

            to cuddling with her mom

            and bottle a few minutes ago

            as dawn crept in the window.

 

She would not leap forward

            to check out her first kiss

            high school graduation

            or any other life landmark.

 

And certainly not to see if

            civilization survives. 


What need for a time machine for her

            when it’s always now? 

 

—Patrick Murfin


                Matilda dancing.

Cleveland Surrenders—Baseball Team Finally Gets Non-Racist Moniker

24 July 2021 at 12:56

 

The new Cleveland name, logos and uniform patches were revealed this week.

While they attention of sports fans was diverted by the opening hoopla for the Tokyo Olympics on the traditional late Friday afternoon dump for stories flacks want buried the Cleveland American League franchise finally announced a new name starting next season—the Guardians.  The team put up a long, bitter fighting retreat before giving up the ghost of the Indians entirely.

They tried to soften the blow to fans who were bitterly opposed to the end of their cherished tradition by having Tom Hanks, America’s most beloved movie star, appear in an introductory video announcement.  Besides being a Hollywood liberal Hanks worked briefly in Cleveland theater early in his career and was a star of one of the most revered baseball films of all time, A League of Their Own. 

Two of the four art deco Bridge Guardians that inspired the new name can be seen from Progressive Field.

Also on hand was the winner of a contest to come up with the new name.  The Guardians is a reference to well-known art deco statues located on the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge spanning the Cuyahoga River and connects downtownCleveland where team’s home Progressive Field is located to the city’s trendy Ohio City neighborhood. The statues were known as the “Guardians of Traffic.”  The wing headgear of the statues will be echoed on a baseball logo.  It is probably no accident that Guardians rhymes with Indians.

At a press conference Friday, Cleveland owner Paul Dolan said the organization hopes Guardians will “divert us from a divisive path” and eventually be embraced by the entire fanbase and region.  “We acknowledge the name change will be difficult for some of us, and the transition will take time.  Those memories do not diminish with a new name.”

Fan outrage and disappointment was echoed and stoked by right-wing media wailing about cancel culture, their new buzzword bugaboo and the cherished tradition to be racistas possible.


A racially sensitive Cleveland fan arguing with a Native American that the Indians were just trying to honor his people.

It is worth a look back at how all of this came to be.

Back in January 2018 at the annual Major League Baseball Winter Meetings Cleveland ownership announced would stop using the onerous and offensive Chief Wahoo logo on their uniforms, in programs and scorecards, and on display at Progressive Field beginning in 2019.  They promised to reduce usage in that upcoming season but didn’t want to make the Chief’s die-hard fans suffer withdrawal cold turkey.

The team finally acted after years of protests by Native American and their allies and mounting pressure from MLB, League honchos, advertisers, and Progressive Insurance which pays through the nose for naming rights to the ballpark. Way back in 2000 when the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) held its annual General Assembly in Cleveland I participated with hundreds of delegates, Native Americans, and local activists in a march to the ballpark, then called Jacobs Field from the convention site through downtown in an epic pouring rainstorm to demand the mascot and team nickname be changed.  And that was well after protests on the issue began. 

Since then, hundreds of high school, inter-collegiate,amateur, and semi-pro teams in all sports have given up offensive logos, mascots, and team names.  My old high school in Skokie, Illinois dumped the nickname Indians years ago for the Wolves and the University of Illinois finally abandoned their war dancing mascot and Chief Illiniwek logo although they steadfastly refuse to give up the team moniker, the Fighting Illini, supposedly in honor of the all-but-vanished tribefrom which the state took its name.

Cleveland may have been the first professional team to partially break a solid wall ofopposition to Native American pressure.  Ownership of the Washington Redskins was belligerently defiant to demands that the team change its nickname from a slur used by White people akin to the use of the word “Niger”.  A few years ago, the United States Patent Office removed copywrite protection from the name and team logo because they were patently offensive, and act which threatened the massive profitability of official team merchandise to both the franchise and the National Football League.  The action was upheld through two roundsof appeals, but in 2018 in a separate case the new conservative majority on the Supreme Court ruled that, “the First Amendment forbids government regulators to deny registration because they find speech likely to offend others.”  Gleeful Washington ownership, with cheerleading from then Presidential Candidate Donald Trumpdeclared total victory and vindication. 

But the NFL ramped up pressure anyway.  Washington was forced to drop it former name and logo and had to play the Washington Football Team.  After troglodyte owner Daniel Snyder finally relented to pressure and the team was embroiled in yet another nasty controversy for sexual harassment and cultivating a hostile work environment his wife, former model Tanya Snyder was named as co-CEO said this summer that the team will announce a new name and logo in January for use in the 2023 season.  That name will not be the Warriors which Snyder tried to promote as an end-run around Native American objections.  Neither they nor the NFL were fooled or impressed by that gambit.

Apparently I wasn't the only one to come up with this suggested solution the Washington NFL team problem....

A while back I suggested to Washington ownership that they could solve the problem and keep the use of their beloved nickname if they would just change their logo and mascot to a russet potato.  Oddly, they never got back to me.

In Atlanta the National League Braves have also vowed to keep their name their logo which features a tomahawk, not a caricature or representation of a Native American.  A few years ago, they got rid of a mascot who danced on a giant tom-tom whenever the team hit a homerun and management has tried to discourage the widely criticized Tomahawk Chop cheer in their new digs at SunTrust Park in nearly lily white suburban Cobb County.  So far they have not had much luck.  Now pressure will mount on them as well.

In Chicago the Blackhawks logo is particularly revered.  In 2019 their scarlet red home sweaters emblazoned with war-painted profile allegedly representing the famed Fox-Sauk war chief,was named the most beautiful uniform in the National Hockey League.  A hard core of team fans exploded after the club won Stanley Cup Trophies in 2010, ’13, and ’15 and team merchandise has eclipsed both the faltering Bears and Bulls as the favorite of the winter sports bar crowd, Chicago hipsters and old fans from the city’s ethnic neighborhoods for once are united.  The Wirtz Family is making money like never before and now sit on top of the most valuable propertyin the NFL, largely due to attachment to the logo.  But they, too, might finally have to give way, probably preserving the name but changing the logo to a black raptor.

Chief Wahoo will still be available on "vintage" caps and other merchandise for sale at the ballpark and presumably on the team on-line store.  The other caps are a reminder of how others might feel about logo "tributes" to them.

In Cleveland, Chief Wahoo did not at first vanish completely from the ballpark.  Vintage caps, jerseys and other merchandise remained on sale in the stadium’s shops and souvenir stands.  The club retained their copyrighton the logo and continued to profit from the sale of the stuff.  In fact, the gear is expected to fly off the shelf this year and well into the future as defiant fans stampede to get it to wear to games and parade around town.

The team had hoped that the sacrifice of Chief Wahoo, which they insisted was an homage to a 19th Century Native American ballplayer on an entirely different and long vanished Cleveland team could preserve the name. Yeah, sure, blame it on the Indian….

Louis Sockalexis, a Penobscot from Maine, finally got a rookie card from Topps in 2003, a 105 years after he left the old National League Cleveland Spiders.

On March 9, 1897 the Cleveland Spiders of the National League signed a full-blooded Penobscot, Louis Sockalexis to the team roster.  The speedy young outfielder had first gained fame as a collegiate at Holy Cross and briefly for Notre Dame before being expelled for alcohol use.  Within days, he was signed by the very needy Spiders.  Almost immediately sports writers and fansbegan to informally call the team the Indians. 

The team, which included legendary hurler Cy Young, had been dealt a blow when team owners the Robinson Brothersbought a controlling interest in the St. Louis Cardinal franchise and stripped the Ohio squad of their star players to fill the Red Birdroster.  Cleveland fell to the bottom of the league like a stone.  It has been called the worst Major League team of all time.

In the first half of the seasonSockalexis gave them some hope with solid hitting, four home runs in the dead ball era, and especially with his base stealing.   After an injury limited his playing time the team slid back into oblivion. Attendance plummeted so badly that they had to play most of their games on the road, earning another nickname the Wanderers. 

The National League put the team out of its misery after the 1899 season. 

The following year the minor American League fielded a team in Cleveland playing in the Spiders’ old League Park.  In 1901 the American League broke the National Agreement by declaring itself a new Major League. 

The new club struggled to find a moniker that fit.  They tried on the Bluebirds, Blues, and Broncoswithout much success.  When star player Napoleon Lajoie joined the team in 1902 he was quickly named team captain and his squad dubbed the Naps.  Lajoie stayed with the team, part of the time as player/manager until as an aging star he was traded away in 1915 to Philadelphia. 

The selection of the Indians for the American League team in 1915 was not universally welcomed.  The Cleveland Plain Dealer ran this mocking cartoon that seemed to object on racist grounds.  Or it could be that the newspaper contest that picked the name was run in a competing paper.

A newspaper contest was launched to find a new name.  The Indians won, reportedly in honor of the long departed Sockalexis, but also to play on the success of the Boston Braves who had won the Word Seriesthe year before. 

There were still some tough years ahead, but things turned around with the arrival of Tris Speaker as player/manager in 1919 who led them to World Series victory against the Brooklyn Robins. 

The Chief Wahoo logo, however, does not date back to those glory days.  In fact, it did not make and appearance until the relatively late date of 1947 although at least three generic Indian profiles were sporadically used on uniforms in previous years..  That year a spunky young player/manager named Lou Boudreau and a red-hot pitcher Bob Feller were leading the team to something of a resurgence after years of futility.  Excitement was building even before the season and owner Bill Veek was eager to do anything to boost attendance at old Municipal Stadium.  Veek commissioned a new logo from a cartoonist who came up with the grinning caricature that later became known as Chief Wahoo. 

The original cartoon logo commissioned by Bill Veek and Larry Dolby, the first Black player in the American League, sporting it.

Veek was famously progressive on race issues and that season signed Larry Dolby as the first Black player in the American League just weeks after Jackie Robinson broke in with the Dodgers.  But that was the heyday of cowboy and Indian shoot-‘em-ups in the Saturday matinees.  No one objected.  But then, few were complaining about Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, or even pickaninnies as commercial icons.

The team placed fourth in the American League that year, 13 games behind the mighty Yankees, but they were clearly on the rise and fans came back to the ballpark to see them.  But that probably had more to do with Boudreau and Feller than a cartoon Indian.

                                                The team mascot got his name from the comic strip character Big Chief Wahoo.

The mascot character picked up his nick name from a Publisher’s Syndicate comic strip and short lived series of comic books from the 1940’s called Big Chief Wahoo.  And yea, the comics were as racist as you can imagine. 

Organized objections by Native Americans did not come until the rise of the American Indian Movement (AIM) in the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s and built steadily since then.  The team has periodically updated the Chief Wahoo logo and claimed that the last changes were intended to make the mascot less offensive.  Those changes satisfied on one.

As for the supposed inspiration for the team nickname, Sockalexis was describedby none other than John McGraw as the greatest natural talent he ever saw, had started out on an outstanding rookie season.  But the pressure of fame got to him,and he drank heavily.  Midway through the season he drunkenly leapt from a brothel window smashing his ankle.  He could play only sporadically the next two years and was out of the big leagues by the time the Spiders folded in 1899.

On Christmas Eve, 1913, Sockalexis died in Burlington, Maine.  He had suffered from chronic heart disease, diabetes, and complications of alcoholism.

Tokyo Olympics Uncertainty and Peril and a Look Back at Why I Love the Games

23 July 2021 at 13:02

The Olympic Rings outside the main Tokyo stadium were the opening and closing ceremonies and many events will be held without fans in the seats.

The long delayed Coronavirus Tokyo XXXII Olympiad are already underway—competition in futbol/football/soccer, baseball and softball, rowing, and archery are already underway.  While I am writing this the opening ceremony will begin in a stadium devoid of fans and far fewer athletes participating in the march of nations.  You can see it tonight in prime time in the U.S. on NBC.  Organizer promise the usual spectacle although the artistic director who designed the program was fired yesterday when a decades old bad joke about the Holocaustsurfaced.  The whole affair seems snake bit.

Yesterday 110 new positive caseslinked to the Games as those arriving in Tokyo undergo a rigorous testing program.  Besides athletes, coaches, officials, and the press well over 1000 individuals linked to the games have been identified.  Several athletes have been forced to withdraw including at least 9 Americans.  Others have opted not to compete citing health concerns as infection rates in the Japanese capitol soar.

.
Most Japanese are still opposed to opening the Games as new infections soar.  The country will take a huge loss on the expenses of the game with none of the income brought by visitors from around the world.  Even the prestige of hosting has been tarnished.  This magazine cover that mocked the official logo had to be retracted after Olympic organizers and the Japanese government threatened legal action.

But most athletes who can are taking their chances—a once-in-a-lifetime shot for 80% of the contestants.  They come without parents and familiesto root them on.  They will be confinedto the Olympic Village or their alternative housing and their completion venues.  Mingling with others even in the Village is heavily discouraged.  They will dine at tables divided by plastic shields and will sleep on cardboard beds in single Spartan cubicles to discourage the lively sexual adventures that have marked the last several Olympiads.  But with nothing much else to do, some forecast that coupling might even exceed the usual.  Just in case over 100,000 condoms will be available.

As usual, Americans are obsessed with their own contestants.  One potential track star Sha’Carri Richardson was booted from the U.S. Team for testing positive for cannabis stirring up a hornets’ nest of protest. The heavily favored U.S. Women’s Soccer Teamled by fierce feminist icon Megan Rapinoe has already suffered an embarrassing loss to Sweden in their first preliminary round.  The supposed new Dream Team Men’s Basketball Squad preformed badly in pre-Olympic matches and Chicago Bulls star Zach LaVine has so far not been able to join the team in Tokyo out of the usual “abundance of caution” because he was infected with Covid 19 last fall. 

Simone Biles at the 2021 U.S. Gymnastic Classic will be the star of the Olympics again.

American Olympic fans are counting on returning heroes including 5 time Olympic Gold Medal winning swimmer Katie Ledecky.  But the undisputed star if the extraordinary Simone Biles, the most decorated gymnast in history who is still regularly unveiling never-before-seen jaw droppers.

Biles brings to mind another Olympic gymnast.

I admit I am hooked on the Olympics, even obscure sports I don’t understand—maybe especially those sports where stadiums were empty and Americans perplexed.  The athletes in those events can never hope to really profit, even if they take home the Gold. 

A lot of that passion started 41 years ago.

Like most Americans I had a passing interest in the 1976 Montreal Olympics as a kind of quadrennial spectacle but knew next to nothing about the fine points of most of the events.  Women’s gymnastics was as foreign to me as water polo.  But I followed the Games on television anyhow. 

Nadia Comaneci in Montreal.

On July 18 I saw something that got my attention.  A diminutive dark haired 14 year old from Romania with big brown eyes and a shy smile mounted the uneven parallel bars and performed a routine so extraordinary even I knew that something special had occurred.  Nadia Comaneci had earned the first perfect score of 10 from notoriously picky and sometimes suspiciously political Olympic judges.  The automatic scoreboard was not even programmedto show such a score.  It flashed 1.0. 

Comaneci would go on to be awarded six more perfect scores during the competition and win Gold for All around performance and for the parallel bars and balance beam; a Bronze Medal in floor exercises; and single handedly propelled the Rumanian team to a Silver behind the mighty and traditionally dominant USSR team.  It was one of the most commanding athletic performances in any sport in history. 

She was an instant worldwide celebrity and inspired countless young girls from Portlandto Prague to take up the sport.  Gymnastics, which had received a boost four years earlier with the performance of another teenage phenomOlga Korbut, was elevated to a place as the central glamour event of subsequent Olympiads.   

Comaneci was born November 12, 1961 in Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej (now Oneşti), Romania.  The country was one of the grimmestof the Eastern European states where dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu, attempted a North Korean style overhaul of the culture.  The result was an impoverished nation, the abandonment of huge number of children to state orphanages, and the dislocation of the traditional Romanian rural culturewith demolition ofvillages and forced relocation to numbingly identical urban apartment complexes

Comaneci’s natural ability and agility were spotted early and she was enrolled in gymnastics by the time she was six when she was chosen to attend Béla Károlyi's experimental gymnastics school.  Her early success as a gymnast shieldedher and her family from the worst of the Ceauşescu regime.  Because her parents lived in the same town as Károlyi's school she was even allowed to live athome with her parents most of the time instead of being confined to barracks-like dormitories. 

By 1970 won the Romanian Nationals and was successfully competing internationally by 1972 at the age of 11.  She nearly swept the 1975 European Championships in Skien, Norway, winning the all-around and gold medals on every event but the floor exercise, in which she placed second.  By the run-up to the ’76 Olympics it was clear that she would be a major challenge to the USSR team that included Korbut and a rising young star, Nellie Kim. 

In March she earned her first perfect 10 at the American Cup at Madison Square Garden in New York, games that were televised in the U.S. and Europe.  She followed with perfect scores in meets in Japan and elsewhere.  So her Olympic triumph was not unexpected among followers of the sport. 

She returned from Montreal to Romania as a national heroine.  She was personally greeted by President Ceauşescu and became the youngest person every named Hero of Socialist Labor

But the government began to interfere in her career. As she was successfully defending her European Championship Ceauşescu abruptly ordered the Romanian team to leave the competition over a scoring controversy.  Back home she was ordered to leave her long-time coach Béla Karolyi and his wife Marta and placed with a politically reliable coach in Bucharest.  Miserable and lonely, Comaneci began gaining weight and slacking at practice causing her to place 4th in the 1978 World Championships.  After that she was allowed to return to the Károlyis.  

In 1979, slimmed down and disciplined, she won an unprecedented third consecutive European championship despite competing with an infected hand.  At the 1980 Moscow Games, unseen by most Americans because of the President Jimmy Carter’s boycott, she placed second, by a small margin, to Soviet Yelena Davydova in the all around, defended her Olympic title in the balance beam, and tied with Nellie Kim for the gold medal in the floor exercise. 

After a 1981 exhibition tour of the United States during which the Károlyis defected, Comaneci officially retired from competition.  Although allowed to accompany the Romanian team to the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles under heavy surveillance, she was banned from most international travel except to Moscowand Cuba. 

Comaneci was under intense scrutiny when she defected in 1989.

She was given prestigious positions with the Romanian Gymnastics Federation and took up coaching, but later said her life in the ‘80’s as “took on a new bleakness.”  In 1989, shortly before the revolution that deposed and executedCeauşescu, she made a daring escapewith a group of other young Romanians and eventually came to the United States in the company of Constantin Panait, a shady character and married father of four.  She shocked Americans who remembered her as a young girl by wearing highly revealing clothing over a curvaceous figure and slathered in thick, gaudy make-up.  She was trashed in the press for “looking like a whore.” 

She fled to Montreal, the city of her greatest triumph, where she took up coaching gymnastics and doing occasional modeling

                                                Bart Conner and Nadia on their wedding day in Bucharest.

Former American Olympian Bart Conner invited her to join the staff of his gym in Oklahoma City and the two became engaged in 1994.  The couple wed in Bucharest in 1996 on Comaneci’s first visit to her homeland since fleeing.  In 2010 she became a naturalized American Citizen, while retaining dual Romanian citizenship

Comaneci now acts as her homeland’s Honorary Consul General to the United States.  She and Connor continue to operate their gym as well as a string of athletic stores.   She is active in numerous charitable causes including Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors of the International Special Olympics and Vice President of the Board of Directors of the Muscular Dystrophy Association.  She has also personally funded the construction and operation of the Children’s Clinic in Bucharest to provide medical care and social services to Romanian children. 

In 2006 at the age of 45 she gave birth to a son

                                                        Comaneci on a recent red carpet not shy about her assets.

The little Romanian waif is all grown up now and doing very well, thank you. 

Murfin Verse Nightmare Redux—The Fire Next Time is Now

22 July 2021 at 16:06

Giant wildfires like this one in Oregon rage in the West with no prospect of being put out or contained any time soon.

Two years ago the world seemed on fire with horrific wildfiresacross the globe and rising sea levels threatening islandsand coasts.  Last year there was more of the same with fires consuming wide urban areas in California, burning old growth giant redwoods, and plunging much of the state into days of power outages.  This year wide-spread critical drought and record breaking heat set off an early Western fire season including an Oregon blaze that has already burned an area a third the size of Rhode Island and is spreading with no prospect of containment or control.  Experts think in may burn into November when snows may finally extinguish it.  Meanwhile the ash plume has spreadacross the continent and will girdle the Earth dimming skiesbut giving the scant joy of spectacular sunsets.

I have seen folks oohing and aahing over spectacular sunsets and red suns without realizing they are caused by wildfire smoke covering the continent.

Meanwhile epic floods have devastated much of the American South and Southeast, filled subways in New York City and China, and roared through Belgium and Germany.  New disastersand dire predictions make the news daily.

Time to revisit my 2019 poem.


The Fire Next Time is Now

August 27, 2019

 

For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water. But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.

 

           —2 Peter 3: 5-7  The Bible New King James Version

 

Okay, so Biblical Prophecy is not my thing.

Mumbo-jumbo, mystic-tristick bullshit.

It gives me a rash and a headache.

 

But this creeps me out, you know?

            Cripes look at the headlines!

                        Record Heat Wave Feeds Massive Australian Bush Fires

                        Wildfires Permanently Alter Alaska’s Forest Composition

                        Huge Wildfires in the Arctic and Far North Send a Planetary Warning

                        Siberia is Burning!

                        Lungs of the World Ablaze in the Amazon

                        More Fires Now Burning in Angola, Congo Than Amazon.

 

Maybe Peter, or whoever wrote in his name,

            was onto something after all.

            I don’t know exactly who is un-godly

—me probably, you maybe,

those guys over there,

but maybe the day of judgement and perdition

is on us all after all.

 

We failed somehow despite the warnings

            of a thousand prophets, Jeremiahs, and Cassandras

            who warned us over and over

            to do something before it’s too late.

 

Is it too late really?  We beg for answers from the Holy seers.

            Hear our plea

                        Al Gore

                        Neil deGrasse Tyson

                        Gagged scientists of NOAA and NASA

Greta Thunberg  and your children’s crusade

                        Elders of the Alaskan Nunakauyarmiut Tribe

 

Can we wake up, you know, like Scrooge on Christmas morning

            fresh and new, our eyes wide open

            and throw open the shutters to buy the world

            a turkey and a second chance?

 

Probably not that easy.

 

But you know what’s worse?

            That Bible guy said no flood this time,

            but he was wrong—

            the oceans rise, the world sinks

            Fire and Flood

                        Fire and Flood

                                    Fire and Flood.

 

—Patrick Murfin


Cheyenne’s Daddy of ‘em All Frontier Days Roars Back to Life

21 July 2021 at 11:47

Back in my old hometown of Cheyenne, Wyoming the annual rodeo completion cum bacchanal known as Cheyenne Frontier Days is getting underway after having been scrubbed last year for the Coronavirus pandemic.  This is being billedas the 125th edition of what has usually been held annually. Some events and things have been pared back and organizers do not expect it will attract the 200 thousand that generally attend the Daddy of ‘em All held over the ten days around the last full week in Julyvirtually swamping the Wyoming capitol city’s 64,000 residents.  But super-star entertainment appearances by Garth Brooks and Blake Shelton might bely the lowered expectations.

It is both the longest continuously held cowboy competitionin the world and by far the largestoutdoor competition of its kind.  Although there has been a National Finals Rodeo since 1956 to crown individual champions in each main professional rodeo event, that indoor competition, currently held in Las Vegas, lacks the pageantry and history that makes Frontier Days unique

Bronc riding at the first Frontier Day cowboy competition in 1897.  Spectators watched from carriages and horse back or perched on the rail fences.  A few hundred attended, but word spread fast and an annual event became a popular tourist spectacle.

The first Cheyenne Frontier Day was a one day contest for local cowboys working the big ranchesin the area on September 27, 1897.  The event included a raucous informal cowboy parade through downtownwith the boys whooping it up and riding wildly much as they had done when they brought their herds to the rail head after round-up every year. 

Cheyenne was then a bustling and modern small city, not only the Wyoming state capitol, but home to major Union Pacific Railroad facilities.  Its streets had been the first in the nation to be illuminated by electric arc lamps back in 1883.   Fueled by the wealth of cattle barons on Millionaire’s Row, the city considered itself up-to-date and cosmopolitan.  Even in 1896, however, just six years after statehoodand four years since the bloody events of the Johnson County War, residents were becoming nostalgic for their wild west heritage

The distinguished gentlemen of the first Frontier Committee donned their formal top hats best suits in their finest carriages.  Local cattle barons, bankers, railroad executives, and politicians.  Having their fine wheels drawn by oxen and a jack ass was a nice touch.

The first event was so successful that Frontier Day became an annual.  The competition was soon promoted nationally by the Union Pacific to boost tourist traffic on its trains, and the local business community loved the sound of cash registers ringing in local hotels, restaurants, bars, and brothels

In the early years cowgirls competed separately in most of the same events as the men.  Despite the popularity of their competitions, by the 1930s they were confined to "powderpuff" events like barrel racing.

By the turn of the 20th Century elements of the wild west shows popularized by Buffalo Bill Cody and others, including mock hold-ups of the Cheyenne to Deadwood stagecoach, Indian battles, and in particularly bad taste given recent the state’s recent history, a re-enacted lynching of rustlers were incorporated into pageantry surrounding the rodeo.  Other events like street dances, amateur theatrics, menageries, and carnivals were added to the ever growing event over the years as more days of competition were added to the rodeo. Cowgirl competitions were an early favorite. The cowgirls rode the same stockand took the same risks as the men but were judged separately.

From his special box erected on the arena floor former President Theodore Roosevelt shook hands with a cowgirl at the 1910 Frontier Days.

In 1910 former President Theodore Roosevelt was delighted to be on hand to congratulate the winning riders.  In 1903 he visited as sitting presidentand a special one day rodeo was staged in his honor and he participated in a ride over Sherman Hill from Cheyenne to Laramie with Senator Francis E. Warren and big-wigs of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association.   

By the 1930’s stars of Hollywood’s popular westerns, including the state’s own favorite son Col. Tim McCoy, were regularly making personal appearancesand sometimes incorporating the rodeo itself into their films.  Concerts by popular Hillbilly and Cowboy singers—and later the masters of Western Swing—were added to the mix. 

Since 1931 reigning over the event has been Miss Frontier and her Lady in Waiting.  The first was Jean Nimmo Dubois, a descendent of Esther Hobart Morris who was America’s first female Justice of the Peace in South Pass in 1869 and a heroine of the Wyoming suffrage movement. For the first three years the winner was selected on the basis of who could sell the most tickets to a dance.  Starting in 1934 the Frontier Committee has privately picked Miss Frontier and her Lady in Waiting, traditionally drawing on the daughters and granddaughters of local cattle barons or Cheyenne business leaders.  One requirement was that she had to be an expert horsewoman

Miss Frontier of 1936, Mary Helen Warren, granddaughter of Wyoming's first Governor and former Senator Francis E. Warren designed the fringed white buckskin culottes still worn by the rodeo queens.

Miss Frontier of 1936 was Mary Helen Warren Wolborn, granddaughter of the state’s founding patriarch Francis E. Warren.  She designed the distinctive white buckskin culottes worn to this day.  Her inspiration was a costume worn by celebrated fan dancer Sally Rand who had titillated audiences the year before. 

For a boy in Cheyenne in the 1950's rodeo champions like Casey Tibbs were bigger stars than baseball heroes like Mickey Mantel, Stan Musial, or Willie Mays.

The 1950’s were the Golden Age of Rodeo.  The most storied figures of the sport were active—Casey Tibbs, Big Jim Shoulders, the Bell Brothers, and the legendary rodeo clown and bulldogger Wilbur Plaugher—and shined in Cheyenne.  Monte Blue, known for playing the sheriff in countless B westerns, was the arena announcerfamous for his signature call at the beginning of each rodeo, “Let’s go, let’s show, let’s rodeo!” 

Chief Charley Red Cloud and Princess Blue Water of the Oglala Sioux brought their band to Frontier Days for many years shown here with Miss Frontier and her Lady in Waiting in 1956.

Chief Charley Red Cloud and Princes Blue Water, who had appeared with Buffalo Bill, brought their band of Oglala Sioux each year to perform traditional dancing and live in a teepee village on the grounds of Frontier Park.  Top movie and TV stars from Roy Rogers to Hugh O’Brian made personal appearancesand country music stars like Ernest Tubbs, Red Foley, and the Sons of the Pioneers performed nightly at the Frontier Pavilion.

During that era the famous saloons and bars downtown were a nightly explosions of cowboy contestants, tourists, and pretty young local girls—many of them really, really young—carousing and drinkingwith intermittent brawls all of which spilled into the streets until the wee-small hours.  I am told that in the interest of family entertainment local authorities have heavily clamped down on that and the evenings are pale and tame now.  Some old timers say downright boring.

                                My father W. M. Murfin in his first year as Secretary of the Frontier Committee in 1954.

From 1954 through 1956 my father, W. M. Murfin as Secretary of the Frontier Committee, played a leading rolein coordinating the rodeo and all the other activities.  My brother Tim and I reveled in riding in the parades and meeting the cowboys and celebrities that often came through our house. 

Today the whole Frontier Days extravaganza stretches over ten days and includes 9 rodeos sanctioned by the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA).  Day Money is awarded to the winners in each event for each rodeo.  At the end of the schedule Cheyenne Frontier Days champions are named in each event and an All Around Cowboy, who must compete in two or more events, are determined by the total amount of Day Money earned. There are also nights of separate Championship Bull Riding (CBR) competitions.

In 1963 Miss Frontier and her Lady in Waiting in their fringed white culottes led the parade down Capitol Boulevard with the Frontier Committee right behind them.

More than 2,500 local volunteers work on events that include the rodeo, 3 Grand Parades, pancake breakfasts, concerts, chili and chuck wagon cook-offs, the carnival, exhibits, Indian Village, and military open houses.  A traditional performance by the United States Air Force Thunderbirds is back with their aerial acrobatics.

This year in addition to Brooks and Shelton country music acts like Thomas Rhett, Cody Johnson, Maren Johnson, Kane Johnson, and Eric Church will headline Frontier Nights in the main arena.  Side venues will feature other acts, making Frontier Days a major music festival.

Frontier Days features three grand parades downtown with colorful floats, miniature trains, marching bands, equestrian units, and one of the world largest collections of functional carriages, coaches, buggies, hearses, and wagons.

I know many readers of this blog are animal lovers and abhor rodeo and the people who love it.  No question about it, rodeo can be brutal to both animals and human competitors—bull riding is hands down the most dangerous competitive sport in the world.  It remains so even though significant reforms have been made in how rodeo stock is handled.   Particularly dangerous events for animals like the Chuck Wagon Races—think horse drawn NASCAR with often horrific pile-ups—and Steer bustingroping a steer around the horns then pulling past the animal catching its feet and throwing it to the ground, a maneuverthat often resulted in broken necksor legs—have been eliminated but the Wild Horse Race which is more dangerous to competitors than the unbroken stock is still on.  Nothing short of abolition by law of all rodeo competition will satisfy most animal rights folks.  I understand that.  But I also love a good rodeo.  I guess you will have to lump me with the heartless brutes

 

 

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