Hi All–Tomorrow is the first big day for River. I have been asked to speak on our local radio station regarding the publication of my book. Yikes!
Wish me luck.
Author Archives: gail chumbley
Idle Observations
Foreign oppression has, more than once, moved American policy makers at home to react with oppression. From the French Revolution to today, overseas upheavals frighten those in power enough, to prompt the same repression at home.
For example:
Immediately after World War One, the US endured a period of destabilizing fear–America’s first Red Scare. The U.S., bitter over entering the Great War, grew intolerant of unorthodox political views and worked to silence dissent. Radicals, both homegrown and immigrants from Europe, felt the wrath of political crackdowns. Anarchists, such as emigres, Emma Goldman, and Alexander Berkman, found themselves on trial, then deported back to Russia, while a home grown Socialist, Eugene V. Debs ended up in prison. Scores of other political agitators were targeted by the Justice Department for printing radical views, and voicing public opposition.
Why the oppression?
The reaction began following the bloody 1917 Revolution in Russia. The murder of the last Romanov Tsar, with his family, paved the way for the world’s first Marxist-Leninist government, the USSR. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, (Lenin) seized the reins of the Bolshevik Party, and abolished all political opposition, outlining the aims of this new workers utopia, to overturn Capitalism worldwide.
The response in the U.S. came quick and harsh. Labor organizers, the leftest union, The Wobblies, and any other radical group deemed un-American was quashed. The U.S. government viewed dissent as treason, and Congress shaped specific legislation to silence protest. First passed and signed into law came The Espionage Act, in 1917, shortly followed by the Sedition Act the next year. No public speech, publications, nor use of the U.S. Mail to criticize government policy would be tolerated. Period.
In two test cases, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of both laws. The majority ruled in the first case that nonconformists and draft-resistors presented a “clear and present danger” to the US. In the second opinion the Court ruled much the same, but this time with an important dissent. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, wrote, ” . . . the ultimate good desired is better reached by the free trade in ideas . . .”
Still, non-conformists and dissidents endured government suppression.
The courts, the government, and public opinion merged to outlaw what they feared–an all-powerful, biased social/economic system, much like the restraint simultaneously underway in the Soviet Union.
This was not over.
After Hitler’s death in April, 1945, and the ending of WWII in Europe, Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin kept his Red Army in East Germany and Eastern Europe, nixing a promised democratic Polish government in favor of his puppet Communist regime in Warsaw. And that was just for starters. A frightening Cold War ensued between the Soviets and the West, that by 1963 witnessed the construction of an actual partition, aka, an Iron Curtain.
In America a political fever seethed, and Congress responded. Establishing HUAC, the House Un-American Activity Committee, to sniff out citizens who leaned to the left, ruining careers and lives in the process. This second Red Scare elevated the careers of Senator Joe McCarthy, and Congressman Richard Nixon.
This post originally intended to discuss the War on Terror. The objective to cast light on the American Taliban; those promoting God, Guns, and Gasoline. But now, with Russia up to its old tricks, all of us again, have a decision to make. Will Americans excuse Putin, grow complacent and emulate his corrupt oligarchy? That path is wide open, visited upon us via the former guy. He proudly rubbed shoulders with that murderer, and publicly praised Putin’s integrity.
But, at this very moment, another, clearer choice stands before the American public. President Zelensky has conducted a master class on the real cost of freedom. The Ukrainian people have lain down their lives to remind us we, are the original heirs of freedom.
In that spirit, this upheaval in the Ukraine is one we must emulate here at home. When Putin attacks Ukraine, he attacks us all. We are Americans, it’s time to take a stand for our liberty. This is not a drill.
Gail Chumbley is the author of “River of January,” and “River of January: Figure Eight.” Both titles are available on Kindle. Gail has authored two historic plays, “Clay,” concerning the life of Senator Henry Clay, and “Wolf By The Ears,” examining the foundation of American Slavery.
gailchumbley@gmail.com
Do You Understand Now?
My book, River of January is not, I repeat, not a romance novel. Does it contain a love story? Yes indeed, and a good one too. However, the two destined to find each other, Chum and Helen, meet later in the book.
The manuscript has made a small circle of rounds, either for review or because someone felt they could help promote the work. And of all the folks who have read it, only two readers complained that the romantic part didn’t come soon enough in the story. I have to admit that was frustrating to hear, because so much cool stuff transpires before they meet in the book. Paris, London, Rome, Vienna, dancing, singing, and ocean liners for Helen. Tragedy, endurance, ambition, aviation, air racing, and adventure for Chum. And all of the action is true and verifiable. What do these readers think? Is real life no more than a love story? Is their life no more than a love story?
I understand enough to say that these folks are looking for a marketable formula. They look for the effort to possess the elements that sell in fiction. However my work is creative nonfiction and follows no predictable pattern, just like any persons life. These two people pursued avenues that opened to them, as we all do. It’s just that their paths included vaudeville stages, the silver screen and the golden age of aviation. Isn’t that enough? I wrote the book to chronicle two actual lives. If the work sells on that merit, that will be wonderful. My limit is changing the story up to fit a commercial template. To even think of shuffling the events around feels sleazy and unethical.
It was my son, my sage, who reduced the conundrum down to a simple truth. He explained that once I commit the words to paper I lose control of how readers perceive them. And he is right. After the telling, the tale belongs to each individual and their unique interpretations. And that means letting go of the outcome.
Past As Prelude
I don’t remember the topic, I think it may have been health care, but a friend loudly complained, “I don’t care about the past, I care about now.” He was annoyed with me for suggesting there was turmoil with the passage of the Social Security Act under FDR and more with Medicare under LBJ. I have to admit that stunned me for a moment because I look behind nearly every current event that crosses the news.
As I am writing, Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded approval to deploy troops to the Ukraine. The demonstrators in Kiev made use of the Olympic media presence to make their move, and that was smart. But now that the cameras have gone, Putin is laying down some payback for the distraction to his Olympics. All done in the present tense and understandably awful.
But why? What is the back story? Who died and put Russia in command of the Ukraine?
Old story. It began when a Viking named Rurik founded Kievan Rus back in the day. And President Putin claims the same authority for this current invasion in 2014.
I am not trying to write a report for my fifth grade teacher, but the Russians do look at that region as within their sphere of influence. And believe me, I am not an expert on that part of the world–but the impact of Russia’s past claims to the south and west doesn’t require shiny credentials to understand.
After the 1917 Revolution and the First World War, the Ukraine folded into the emerging Soviet Union, it’s boundaries fading from maps for the next seventy years. During Marshall Stalin’s reign of terror in the 1930’s, nearly the entire middle class of Ukrainian farmers, “Kulaks,” were exterminated and the land collectivized.
Russian nationalism, it’s sense of blood and belonging, includes the southwestern region of the Ukraine. And they mean business. I remember the Ukrainian president who suffered mercury poisoning which left him alive, but quite disfigured. Though the proof is circumstantial, the likely perpetrator was the old Soviet KGB, or the agency’s non-Communist replacement. Putin was an operative at that time.
I offer very little in solutions to this aggressive action on the part of the Russian government. We in the West believe the people of the Ukraine deserve their own national integrity and future. Still the pull of history remains overwhelmingly powerful. All I can offer is an understanding of the roots to this conflict. The connection between the two republics stems from a past that is far more complicated and difficult than a headline.To assume that justice and fair play figures into this struggle for freedom is irrelevant. There has never been any such understanding between the Russians and their cousins.
A Russian scholar would certainly shed more historic light on the topic, and flesh out more details and episodes, especially concerning the Romanov Dynasty. However, this iron-clad dynamic exists between the two countries whether the western press examines the connection or not.
For the record, more remote republics are viewed in the same possessive light as the Ukraine, Chechnya for example. If the past provides any guidance, which I believe it does, this story is nowhere near over.
Retirement
No doubt that one of the primary reasons I retired was burn out. I had worked in secondary classrooms the length of my adult life and struggled the last couple years largely due to growing political pressure. You see, I bought into the idea that hard work paid off and came to realize that I was dead wrong. My hard work didn’t matter. None of my colleagues hard work mattered. My student performance outcomes, though well above the national average didn’t matter. Nothing moved policy makers except that they could hire two new teachers for the price of me, and many of my fellow staffers.
When the mortgage market imploded in 2008, Southwestern Idaho flat-lined economically. While teachers, such as myself, fought draconian budget cuts the legislature didn’t listen. They didn’t care. The brutal impact on classroom numbers and lack of materials made no difference, their ears were closed. In fact, the Great Recession instead provided an opportunity to attack our union and kill protections such as negotiations, due process, and arbitration rights. I found that regardless of my expertise and my kids remarkable growth I was handed more students in class (220 every other day) and less time to teach (down 25% a week).
When I realized I could swing retirement I took it.
I worry about what is behind me in public classrooms. There are enormously bright kids out there begging to be challenged. These young people are smart, but need skills and information to develop their optimum potential. However, as long as law makers settle for cheap, keeping salaries spartan, and classrooms packed, I cannot see America preparing for the future. The results will reflect the dismal investment.
In my state the Superintendent of Education denied that teachers were leaving education due to the perceived oppression from the legislature. And he can tell himself and the entire House and Senate that tale. It’s just not true. Teachers want to succeed, aspire to excellence, wish to see achievement among their students. That is why the miserly funding and lack of support by policy makers has had such a negative impact. No one wants to go into a job already set up to fail.
Teaching as a profession shouldn’t be done at such personal sacrifice.
English 101
I worked with quite a number of English teachers during my long thirty-three year teaching career. They, as a group of educators, contribute a great deal to the heart of a school. Over the years it has become my opinion that the purpose of language arts is to cultivate the dreams of dreamers, the hearts of romantics, and inspire the hero in all of us.
Back during my days in high school I recall reading Romeo and Juliet as a freshman. It surprised me that teen angst played a central role in a Shakespearean play. I suffered deeply from those same dramatics and felt validated that I didn’t suffer alone, Shakespeare understood. By my junior year I developed a serious crush on transcendentalist, Henry David Thoreau–that dude sought the identical truths troubling my path at the same time. In college, Flannery O’Conner’s A Good Man is Hard to Find haunted my thoughts for many months after reading.
In light of the power of the written word, I’ve never understood an English teacher’s penchant for dissecting the writing of their students. Correct their grammar, okay, but the voice on the paper is so personal that trimming and cobbling feels more like slashing and burning creativity. (Math teachers really hate it when English teachers correct their grammar. In one inservice an offending math presenter snapped back, “now for your algebra equation). I get the part about smoothing out sentences, polishing images and descriptions, but how much is too much intimidation and infringement on the writers soul.
This blog sounds somewhat defensive, and I am aware of my sensitivity. My book is in it’s final edits and reviewers are hopefully at work as I write, plowing their way through my manuscript. I have refrained from asking anyone from a Language Arts background to review my work, out of fear of a big red bad grade. Writing River of January has been such a journey, such a sacrifice of my time and heart, I don’t think I could bear to have banal technicalities flaying the story. I’ll let my publisher/editor suffer through those arcane changes.
The truth of the matter is that I did not set out in life to be a writer. I was a history teacher. In my area of expertise my students excelled in expository writing . . . you remember, the old blue book essays. The mechanics weren’t as important as voice, evidence, and argumentation. Where my writing lacks is in the finesse of perfect structure–and that is, I am painfully aware, my weakness.
So English teachers of America–give us heart, inspire us, and let us find our voices in our writing. Besides, since the start of this project I’ve written and rewritten so much that I can see sentence structure much more clearly. It takes hours and hours of writing to become a better writer. Put away your red pen and let the kids write amok. As they improve, then go back and point out the rules of sentence structure. For young learners the corrections will make so much more sense.
Gail Chumbley is author of River of January
Sad Tuesday
We had to euthanize our cat yesterday afternoon. She was old, would have been nineteen years in March. And despite the fact that we knew the day would arrive, no one told us it would be February 17, 2014. I had planned to vacuum.
It’s strange how losing such a little creature inspires such powerful pain. She’d been around so long, losing her seemed like it would never happen. I wasn’t prepared.
Odd how accustomed we became to her. Though small in stature, her presence loomed large around the place. The little thing had a combination meow-plus-purr sound that I found very predictable and comforting. Her chitter-chatter was as much a part of this cabin as the refrigerator vibrating, or the drip from the bathtub faucet. The void of her absence today shouts in its silence.
We most likely kept her going far too long. That was our issue. There had been earlier brushes with momentary paralysis, glandular issues, and diabetes. Yet the old thing still used her box properly, ate and drank like a truck driver, and talked and talked, rubbing herself on every door-sill and corner in our/her house.
That little girl surreptitiously weaseled her way so far into my heart, that my sorrow today has thrown me for a loop. An ice-cold straight razor has cut me from my heart to my stomach, flowing loss and regret.
Writing does help. I now seize the written word as my own form of exorcism and cleansing–banishing my demons of doubt and sorrow. Yet I can still picture her, lying on a towel, looking at us while the vet injected a syringe into her leg. Her little head lolled over, and my grief erupted.
Driving back up to mountains we kept telling each other it was the right thing to do.
River Of January
We have a book cover!
This is no Fluke
I spent a couple of days with my folks in Washington State, where I grew up. It’s always good to go, and even more imperative as they age. However, the part I seem to forget when I visit, is that time portal called their front door. When I step through, the world suddenly changes, and I have traveled back in time. The atmosphere inside, at the latest, is around 1970. That’s the truth–you can ask any of my childhood friends. Nixon unfortunately is still in the White House, and they still speak of John F. Kennedy with reverence.
Two of my brothers came over and we settled into the family room to answer questions on Jeopardy. My dad has his evening viewing schedule locked up. After Final Jeopardy, he flips over to MeTV for an old rerun of MASH. It isn’t a very humorous episode. Hawkeye and company are falling apart, dreaming of home, away from freezing Korea. So I attempt some lighter conversation. But no one is listening to me, they are glued to Colonel Potter while he dreams of his childhood horse.
The spell eventually breaks and we talk a bit. My older brother describes another rerun of the Jack Benny Show which was so funny he had to turn it off. It was too soon after his stomach surgery and it hurt to laugh. We’re talking about Jack Benny, not How I Met Your Mother.
The next verbal tussle involved the first episode of All In The Family that dealt with homosexuality. My younger brother argues that the gay guy was played by Charlton Heston, and I know he wasn’t. So we go back and forth arguing about that. He wants to bet five bucks. But, I’ve got him. I have my iPhone and internet service. I find a clip of that particular show and he grows quiet.
I can’t really fault my family for their desire to remain in a past time. Dad loves his Nelson Eddy movies, and figuring out the vocalists in big band pieces. It seems that talking played a bigger role in family life and socializing in 1970. Nobody could end the verbal give and take with substantiating, electronically generated facts.
I get it. I can see easily why I became a History instructor. I can understand why River of January was a temptation too irresistible to let go. I came by my passion honestly. And here, in my mountain house? I’d say it’s about 2005. I know I’m still pissed about the invasion of Iraq, House reruns occasionally flicker from the small screen in the living room, and in a guilty pleasure my Sirius Radio station is set to “Classic Vinyl.”
What year is it at your house?
Another View
I’m back. I’ve spent the last couple of days visiting my folks and checking out some mom and pop bookstores. It’s my hope to find some speaking opportunities to promote my forthcoming book, River of January, and perhaps sell a few.
Again, I have posted Lincoln’s picture as I did in my last post, because today is our 16th President’s 206th birthday. I like Lincoln. A lot. I am what one would call a “Lincoln-ista.” As I write, my standup cardboard Lincoln is presiding over the dining room table. It is after all his birthday!
A life lesson Mr. Lincoln seemed to apply frequently was understanding other points of view. He and his wife were both born in the border state of Kentucky. Slavery was legal in Kentucky until the Thirteenth Amendment abolished the practice. Lincoln understood the mindset of slave owners, he grew up among them. He knew the agricultural imperative of forced labor and the violent defense by planters who would lose their customary way of life. However, Lincoln disapproved of slavery. To him the issue was not only a moral one, but an economic wrong as well. He believed all men should enjoy the fruits of their own labor. Still Lincoln didn’t point fingers and shrilly condemn his Southern brethren–that would have been foolish and frankly unLincoln-like.
Lincoln tended to avoid resentments and harsh judgements. Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rival’s recounts an incident where Lincoln was to represent a railroad company in a Chicago trial. When he arrived to court, Lincoln found he had been fired and a “real lawyer,” Edwin M. Stanton was arguing for the company. Stanton made a snide comment about Lincoln’s crude and hayseed appearance within his hearing. Still, Lincoln remained in court as an observer, believing he could learn something from a Harvard trained attorney. Later, Lincoln made Stanton his Secretary of War. No offense taken, so none festered. As a member of the Cabinet, Stanton became deeply devoted to this uniquely principled president.
Now how does an examination of two qualities in President Lincoln have anything to do with my book? Well, more than you might think. Though Chum never had the stomach for unjustifiable character attacks, he didn’t waste his energy holding resentments. From my time in his company he never, ever gossiped or spoke badly of anyone that I can remember. His only remark close to snide, was the time he said Howard Hughes kept the Kleenex business booming. (Anyone who’s seen the DiCaprio movie understands). Helen however, seemed to be able to take criticism well. It was a must, a part of the business. She was a performer and required to stay sharp. From my study of her letters, Helen often attended other productions to see what she was up against as an artist. If she read poor reviews the girl took it in stride and learned. She improved her skills.
I, too would love to be free of resentments and to see the other person’s viewpoint without spite. Society is a collection of individuals with limitless opinions on limitless subjects. Believing that we are all absolutely right, and refuse to hear otherwise, does little in the way of progress. Chum didn’t let the obstacles of his time and place discourage him. Instead he was polite, courteous, and left the naysayers behind. Helen saw opportunity in adversity. She tenaciously used criticism and competition as guideposts to her success.
Not one among us have the market cornered on truth. But, as Lincoln knew, self righteous blowhards who refuse to bend, eventually break.
Gail Chumbley 