Author Archives: gail chumbley

To Jamie At 70

Paling around with you Jamie I always knew something fun, risky, or outright naughty was in store. Boy did you pack some serious confidence in our capers, plus displayed an endless capacity for kindness.

Being this is your birthday I’ve been thinking over our shared escapades and memories, and three moments stand out from our school years.

It must have been around 1968 or ’69 I had a slumber party in our basement. OJ was there, and pretended to sleep while we put her hand in warm water to make her pee. Hilarious. But the high point of that night happened when some boys showed up at the window in the downstair’s bathroom. It was BB, remember him? There were also some other guys but B was the one you ushered through the window.

My heart fell into my feet because my parents were just up a floor and easily could have caught us. Also, your gutsy move in bringing a popular boy into my house was pretty damn cool. And that is a daring that simply reveals your audacity, even as a pre-teen.

Besides B was cute-I can see you nod as you read.

Sometime later, I’m sure there was snow on the ground, you called, inviting me to spend the night at your house. You laid down some big time pressure for me to convince my mom to let me come over. God knows what deals I had to negotiate, but I knew this invite was more of a summons, and I couldn’t refuse. When I got there you were pleased, smiling like the Cheshire Cat. In the living room you turned and put on an album on that stereo in the corner, then handed me the cover. It was the White Album, and you were the first person I knew who bought it. I can’t describe how much that meant, the kind consideration you extended by sharing that treasure with your lucky friend. I still think about that night, especially if a song from that album plays. Thank you again, it was a summons worthy of honoring.

Cocolalla Lake was the site of your most memorable achievement. If you recall my dad took us to our lake cabin in his truck and dropped us off. Debbie W came along and someone else. Maybe you remember our fourth. At any rate, after he left we all talked about how to get beer. We pooled our cash and you walked across the lake to the Sagle Market with somebody, maybe our fourth. All of 16 years old, you must have exuded that Jamie confidence and returned with the goods—a case of Coors. And we had quite the party, peeing outside and playing music at top volume.

A couple of days later my dad came to collect us, again in his truck, and we had tied up 24 beer cans, carefully weighing them down with the garbage we had to haul out.

Sitting on each others laps, it was, after all the early 1970’s, so who needed for seatbelts? As dad hit 60 miles per hour the trash bags started to whip open in the back, and sure enough beer cans popped out like a bag of popcorn. The jig was up and my stomach, once again, fell into my feet, but not you, Jamie. You sat serenely enjoying the drive. I swear you have cast iron nerves. At any rate we returned to Spokane with a much lighter load of trash, and wonderful memories of our weekend.

My dearest friend, your strength, intellect, and creativity made a deep impression on me back in those early days as I am sure it has for many others you have befriended through the years. Enjoy a most happy 70th and continue that honorable path you forged when we were just little girls.

Love you,

Gail

PS-My dad never said a word about the beer cans.

Never Forget

Martin Niemoller

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

—Martin Niemöller

German pastor and critic of Hitler and a concentration camp survivor.

The People Who Own It

And that — that brings me to the second mode of civil disobedience. There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus — and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it — that unless you’re free the machine will be prevented from working at all!!

Mario Savio, December 2, 1964

The GOP no longer pretends to care about the American people. Icons of wealth and raw power, along with compliant political figures parade in and out of Mar-a-Lago without a self-conscious blush. Former Trump critics now kiss his ring out of fear of disfavor and losing access to power. Many in the press are fearful of Trump as well, evident in the resignation of Ann Tenaes from the Washington Post over the paper’s censoring a critical Bezos cartoon, while NBC has threatened to jettison its progressive sister MSNBC.

At least smiling Ronald Reagan tried to demonstrate some kind of fidelity to American principles as his administration catered to the same rich and powerful.

This incoming crowd isn’t even trying to fake concern.

While America drowns in floods and burns in fire, both symptoms of advanced climate change, Mr. Musk has purchased access to Trump so Tesla can bring in cheaper, skilled technicians for his business operations. Not alone in his subservience, Mr. Zuckerberg too, along with Mr. Bezos, and Sam Altman, have made significant donations to Trump’s campaign while the world drowns and burns. These 21st Century tycoons intend to purchase the vain new president’s favor and clear the way for less public responsibility, and garner even more profits.

You see, in MAGA-world Trump is never wrong. Wrong doesn’t exist. The title “felon” carries no shame among supporters, nor rape, fraud, insurrection, or theft of sensitive US intelligence. Trump’s malfeasance is more a badge of honor with his supporters than a deal breaker.

American propriety and concern for the United States are sentiments of another, past era. Statesmanship, decency, and integrity are long gone. In the last days of the 2024 campaign Donald Trump mimed oral sex with his microphone, and no one at the rally appeared offended, not even so-called Christians. In any reality would President Carter had done such a thing? Would President Bush? Moreover, MAGA supporters self-righteously wrap themselves in neo-fascist certainty, nurtured by a steady diet of propaganda and misinformation. There is no longer a bottom.

Overseas enemies are delighted. Putin and Xi have waited a lifetime to overrun the United States. That simple fact should give us all pause on the political state of the nation. The Kremlin and Beijing are reveling in the certainty of easy access to the inner sanctum of American security.

And why wouldn’t they be?

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made known he will no longer fact check posts plastered across his site. This is the same Mark Zuckerberg who threw Trump off Facebook not so long ago for disseminating misinformation. That Zuckerberg seemed to care about the country that has made his fortune. Adding insult to injury this same 21st Century robber baron announced the company will no longer practice diversity in hiring Facebook employees.

His decisions are unacceptable and unAmerican.

Though it certainly makes no difference in the larger scheme, I have decided to take a tiny seed of action by closing my Facebook account. As a writer, Facebook is a convenient way to publish my work as it appears also on Threads and Instagram. However, as Mario Savio so eloquently stated in 1964, I can no longer participate. My spirit is thoroughly sick and outraged with the alarming direction the Republican Party has eagerly chosen to sell out our nation for their 30 pieces of silver.

Though the gears and wheels have been replaced by motherboards, and circuits, the principle holds. The machine requires the public to participate, to provide the metaphoric oxygen for it to survive. And it is down to us alone, the American people. We must demand fair play and decency from the powerful.

If you feel the same please share this post, I know I can’t be alone in my objections.

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir River of January and River of January: Figure Eight. Chumbley has also written three plays, Clay, Wolf By The Ears, and Peer Review, exploring the life of Henry Clay, the advent of chattel slavery, and four visits to DJT from past presidents.

chumbleg.blog

Connecting the Dots

Political polls have waned in recent years as reliable measures of public sentiment. The complex world of cyber communications has rendered accurate assessments nearly impossible to measure. Apart from the unexpected twists and turns of daily events, the American public seems to have decided their choices well before election day. The 2024 choice for chief executive began in the fall of 2016 with the release of the Hollywood Access clip between host, Billy Bush and guest, Donald Trump.

The vulgar misogyny revealed in that tape offended every thinking woman across the country. Following Trump’s surprise victory outrage spilled over as women from every point across the nation protested that an unfit and unacceptable man had reached the highest office in the land. Two months later approximately 500,000 women traveled to Washington DC to protest Trump’s ascendence to office, while sister marches gathered across all 50 states, with more around the world, numbering somewhere around 4 million women.

Not long after this historic march the “Me Too” movement gathered momentum. From prominent celebrities such as Mira Sorvino and Ashley Judd, to everyday women, all shared their #MeToo story across the internet. Clearly sexism and predatory male behavior had touched all of our lives, at one point or another, and women were through with bad behavior.

A flurry of political activity followed the March as well. According to Time Magazine women seeking elected office jumped to a 350% increase from 2016, with many winning seats in state legislatures, governorships, and federal offices. Vice President Harris was not the first woman to seek the vice presidency, but she is the first elected to office. Other women came forward with stories directly linked to Trump. E. Jean Carrol, and Stephanie Clifford, among others, spoke out to expose the neanderthal behavior of the 45th president. From their courage Mr. Trump has been convicted of sexual assault and financial fraud.

Not long after his election Trump packed the Supreme Court with inexperienced and disingenuous judges who overturned hard-won medical protections for American women. In 2022’s Dobbs V Jackson Women’s Health Organization fifty years of reproductive rights were gone almost at once. Roe V Wade died, along with an increased number of women and girls, especially in those states with new draconian medical restrictions. The viability of fetuses, life threatening complications for the mother, and victims of incest and rape found no physician willing to risk medical assistance.

More than Trump’s kissing up to tyrants like Putin, more than the January 6th coup attempt, more than inflation or immigration, or his serious legal problems, none have impacted more Americans than predatory male offenses and the right for a woman to direct her own life.

No poll can measure the deep-seated outrage women collectively feel at this moment, two days before the 2024 presidential election. To examine each episode separately from 2016 to now doesn’t fit a pollster’s brief questionnaire—but linking them together over a period of time does, much like connecting the dots on paper reveals a persuasive picture. 

Outside of some fluke or other Trump antics, Kamala Harris will prevail on Tuesday.

Postscript, 11/9/24. Little did we realize the number of women suffering from Stockholm syndrome across America.

Gail Chumbley is a history educator and writer.

A Good Deal

A painting by Valeriy Franchuk, “Harvest of famine” (2000)

A Reblog.

NBC news recently ran a piece on Trump meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy. In a video clip Mr. Trump announced that he had spoken with Zelenskyy about opening talks with Vladimir Putin to end the conflict between the two countries. Trump stated to the cameras that Russian President Vladimir Putin would give Ukraine a “good deal.”

Mr. Trump does not know nor does he care about Ukrainian history. If he did, the president would understand that negotiating with the Russian leader is unthinkable, a non-starter. To understand why is to look not only into Ukraine’s recent past but back into the 1930’s.

Putin’s first attempted assassination targeted Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko. In 2004 Yushchenko narrowly escaped death after surviving dioxin poisoning, a combination of toxic chemicals which left him weakened and permanently disfigured.

Putin, as a former KGB operative is a master of murder, and why the International Criminal Court has an arrest warrant for him.

An impulsive hustler by nature Trump shows little interest in the crimes of Vladimir Putin. After the recent meeting in Alaska, Trump again called on Zelenskyy to make a deal with Putin. That the Russian has targeted Zelenskyy in numerous assassination attempts on multiple occasions, including three failed hits in one week is of no consequence.

However this narrative reaches back further to the early Twentieth Century, when another strongman, Josef Stalin rose to power.

Following the 1924 death of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, Stalin coldly and efficiently murdered his own rivals consolidating his power as an absolute despot.

Launching his Five Year Plan, Stalin’s vision for economic prosperity, he ordered collectivization of Ukrainian farms, seizing land and harvests for Russia’s consumption. Calling farmers Kulaks, a pejorative name, Stalin justified his actions by fabricating enemies, complete with mass arrests, show trials, executions, and deporting thousands to Siberia. In that period alone thousands of Ukrainians perished in freezing rail cars, or worked to death in frigid Siberian work camps.

The total number of transportation deaths remains unknown.

However transport was not the worst weapon employed by Stalin. Ukrainian Communist party workers not only stole seasonal harvests but also the seed for future planting.

A genocide followed.

From 1930 through 1933 millions of Ukrainians starved to death or resorted to cannibalism due to Stalin’s disastrous Five Year Plan. Production dropped under the forced collective effort, and the Communist leader had to find scapegoats for the disaster, so he pinned blame on the farmers. Kulaks were dying in massive numbers on purpose to undermine the Kremin’s economic plan.

Stalin insisted he was the victim of treachery.

Called the Holodomor, (death by hunger) as it is remembered, cost the lives of somewhere between 3.5 to 5 million Ukrainians. Adding that number to those deported to Siberian gulags it is safe to say that the Ukrainian people suffered a monstrous horror.

Ukrainian memories and justifiable outrage remain vivid.

As for that ‘good deal’ with Vladimir Putin, President Zelenskyy is not interested. The Ukrainian President has no faith in Russian promises, and is not impressed by Mr. Trump and his previous effort to shake Zelenskyy down for corrupt political ends.

Today thousands more Ukrainian soldiers and civilians have lost their lives fighting this Putin-engineered war, but with national memory to guide them Ukrainians will not back down. Ever.

Independence from Russian oppression is relatively new and very fragile, and that nation will never surrender on Trump’s assurances of a ‘good deal.’ The people of that battered nation know better.

So should we.

This is the web site of the Ukrainian Embassy in DC if you’d like to make a contribution.

https://www.ukrainehouse.us/

Gail Chumbley is a history educator and writer.

Beyond The Symbols

Patriotic symbols, music, and the Pledge of Allegiance recited at a solemn ceremony can be deeply moving. A simple presentation of the flag at a formal function can be awe-inspiring. The lone, austere notes of Taps played at a military funeral elevates a moment into sacred reverence.

The sounds and symbols of American devotion are powerful.

Still, as commanding as recitations, patriotic colors, and America the Beautiful can feel, deeper symbols in our shared history can reveal so much more.

In his book, Washington’s Crossing, historian David Hackett Fischer introduces his volume with a discussion of Emmanuel Leutze’s famous painting of the same name. Fischer guides the reader through elements in the painting, noting passengers figure by figure as they frantically navigate the frozen Delaware River on that long ago Christmas night. 

Why is this particular work especially moving? Because at that juncture, December 25, 1776, the Revolutionary War looked to be flaming out after barely a start. Defeat had dogged Washington’s Continentals after being chased off of Long Island, and driven out of New York City the previous summer. As Washington planned his surprise Christmas attack, victorious Redcoats had settled into winter camp in New York City.

Humiliated, Washington knew he had to strike hard and he had to win.

Viewing his situation with the “clarity of desperation” the General ordered an assault on Hessian (German mercenary) held Trenton, New Jersey. The Continental army would have to use the element of surprise fighting against a better armed and better fed opponent. Risky to the extreme, Washington knew we, meaning America, for all time, was dependent upon his actions that night.

As for the painting, the artist depicts freezing soldiers huddled in a boat with more watercraft in the backdrop. From the starboard side, (to the right of General Washington) sits an oars-man, distinctly Black, putting his back into his strokes, ploughing through dangerous ice floes. Behind him, facing forward at the bow, is another swarthy figure, perhaps a Native American. He is desperately kicking ice with his left boot while handling a sharpened pole to break open a passage through the impossible crust. To the foreground an immigrant (a Scot by the look of his hat) studies the river’s surface closely as he pulls forward to port, while another behind him, in fisherman gear, studies the treacherous water. Others are made up of rustics, one at the tiller, along with a wounded passenger.

General Washington centers the painting as he is the central figure of the drama. Behind the General is Major James Monroe, and another rugged frontiersman by the looks of his garb. Both men are grasping a 13-star (Betsy Ross) flag, in a grip that elicits an attitude of determination and desperation, with perhaps a bit of warmth. Below both flag bearers sits a WOMAN, yes, a woman pulling her oar with an analytic eye upon the clotting water.

Black, Native, white, immigrant, the highborn, the humble, men and women, yesterday, today, and the future: all of our American lives balanced on the gamble played that night in 1776.

The point I believe Leutze is trying to convey is that we all don’t have to be the same. No one has to agree on the details of our beliefs to ride on that boat. The truth is Americans all have and had different realities and ambitions: differing views of liberty. Still, all onboard had to carefully respect each other’s space and not overturn that fragile vessel, Liberty, for we must stay afloat and row in the same direction. It is in all our interests to do so.

And that metaphor of America, that boat, tested our resolve on one of the nation’s most critical nights. Inspiration doesn’t come any better than from Leutze’s allegorical Washington’s Crossing.

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir, River of January, and River of January: Figure Eight. Chumbley has also penned two stage plays, Clay, and Wolf By The Ears, concerning the life of Senator Henry Clay, and an in-depth examination of the beginnings of American slavery. Gail is currently working on another piece, Peer Review, best described as Dickens A Christmas Carol meets presidential history.