Category Archives: River of January

Past As Prelude

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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.

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.

 

This is no Fluke

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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?

White Man’s Burden

Here, in my state a showdown is brewing between the LGBT community and legislators in the capitol.

Idaho passed a Human Rights Act a number of sessions ago believing their votes showed what good folks they were.  They won’t discriminate against women, Jews, Blacks, or Japanese Americans who were interned here during WWII.  There will be no genocide, no back of the bus, nor will camps hold citizens.

These largely white, male reactionaries didn’t realize they had opened a Pandora’s Box of outcomes.  Where they thought they had passed an ‘everybody wins,’ warm and fuzzy law, the residents of Idaho took the lawmakers at their word.

That brings our story to today.  The LGBT community has nearly begged lawmakers to ‘Add the Words’ to the previous Act.  Four words to be precise.  The gay community insists that Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity amend the law as it stands currently.  However, lawmakers will not permit any hearing or even tolerate such an incomprehensible notion.  That is this conflict in a nutshell.  The majority of rural-dwelling, agrarian conservatives cannot fathom that alternative sexuality is real.  Roosters like hens, steer like cows, billy’s like nanny’s.  It’s very simple.  For the religious right, they look to multiple translations and versions of the Bible, and Adam and Eve reads clearly.

The problem centers on real life and real people.  Whether most farm animals (most) behave according to expectations, humans are something more.  Sexuality isn’t a black and white issue like race relations.  And the gay community is real and is suffering.  Simply because those in power refuse to recognize reality–physical bashing, job and housing discrimination, bullying, it is happening.  Haters know what lawmakers refuse to see.  By taking no action the Idaho legislature has condoned persecution.

I am reminded of a story of Queen Victoria.  It was the late 1800’s in London and Jack the Ripper was waging terror in the impoverished White Chapel neighborhood.  However, the Queen refused to recognize the crimes because she did not believe prostitution was real.  How could there be prostitutes murdered when the profession did not exist.  End of problem.

The LGBT community is real.  Even if law makers refuse to recognize the demographic, everybody else in society does.  That’s why the discrimination and abuses are carried out.  Legislators may not believe in alternative lifestyles, and in return we are certainly losing our belief in our legislators.

There are gay characters in my book, River of January, and though it wasn’t my business to out them, I could see they suffered.  One in particular lost his career and died very young after an unhappy, unfulfilled life.

This is, in America, and in my state, the last acceptable prejudice.  Those who govern the people must govern for all the people, whether or not they personally approve of alternative lifestyles.  E Pluribus Unum, Out of Many Come One.

Ambition V. ADHD

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In this first winter of my retirement some days weigh heavier than others.  Yesterday grew so onerous for example that I cleaned out the mudroom.  Trying to sort out my yearnings I thought about how anxious I am to see this book materialize, then I wondered if it’s just cabin fever.  

I am an ambitious person.  No matter what I complete, how well projects or objectives are met, I feel unfinished.  Is this the outcome of a driven personality?  A perfectionist? Or a nut-job?  Somehow the causes seem irrelevant when the restlessness drives me to pursue housework.  

I envy those who can putter around contentedly, planting flowers, decorating walls, and in many ways living in the moment and making that moment beautiful.  I try to attend to that affective side of myself, but never out of serenity,  Guilt haunts my activities, pushing me to complete the task.  Not love, not pleasure, not contentment.  Jesus how many antidepressants can one soul swallow?

In River of January I am working with people I understand.  We are kindred spirits, Chum, Helen and I.  They too drove themselves to find success. 

I get it, he wanted to do what he wanted to do.  And the man wanted to fly airplanes.  As remote as that possibility appeared from a family farm at the foot of the Appalachians, Chum pursued that single aim for all it was worth. 

Helen, too, aimed stardom, and she trained as if she were running a marathon.  They disregarded all the powers of inertia and conformity, pushing forward even though they had no guarantees of success.

I too, have no guarantees in this book effort, but my spirit is restless and pushes on anyway.  It’s just my nature. 

This couple lived in a unique time and place.  America convulsed with growth in the early to mid Twentieth Century, and they both found opportunity in the upheaval.  I am compelled to preserve their tale, and compelled to find some success sharing it in book form.

It snowed last night.  Shoveling ought to smooth the edge off my restless fidgeting. 

The Poetry of Protest

ImageAlice Paul

Today’s posting has nothing to do with my book.  Instead I am moved to comment on today’s news.

The news of Pete Seeger’s passing is popping up everywhere on all my personal media settings.  And I, as millions of others loved the music of Pete Seeger.  I always have.  The beauty of his voice alone, or with his group, “The Weavers” still echoes compellingly in my mind.

Yet, today, with his passing, I’m not thinking of the silenced music.  As essentially American as his voice and lyrics resonated, the lessons I learned from Pete Seeger are more linked to political conviction and courage.  His was the voice of the non-conformist, the social and political critic who challenged conventional beliefs.

Seeger served in uniform during World War Two.  Though he was a young man when he soldiered, his participation says a great deal about the justness of America’s struggle against totalitarianism.  But after the war, Seeger seems to have instantly grasped the politics of the Cold War for was it was, an excuse to stifle the voice of opposition.  Seeger suffered for his convictions.  When popular thought demanded unified anti-Communist behavior, Seeger did not comply.  It was justice he sought, and in the days of racism and blind war mongering, Seeger would not close his eyes and pretend America practiced equality and liberty.  And his beliefs landed him in political hot water.

His banjo and singing voice were his only sword and sidearm– yet still he made himself a dangerous man to an American government that demanded wall to wall consensus.  This troubadour appeared to be fearless in expressing his thoughts, singing anywhere and everywhere he saw injustice.

The Vietnam War provided Seeger and a growing segment of Americans a broader platform to protest Johnson-Nixon policies in Southeast Asia.

I remember that he was to appear on “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” and sing Waist Deep in the Big Muddy, an anti-war song.  Such a powerful message!  The lyrics at bottom called out the man in the White House as a “big fool.”  CBS pulled Seeger from the show out of fear of retribution from stock holders, sponsors and hawkish politicians.  To their credit, the Smothers Brothers refused to go on until Seeger was allowed back on the show.  CBS caved, Seeger appeared, the feelings of America soured more on the war, and for a wide variety of reasons America withdrew from that nightmarish miasma.

This blog is a tribute to other voices of opposition across many generations of Americans.  The list is long of patriotic citizens who understood the First Amendment meant what it said.  We should honor the lives of those who resisted the tyranny of a majority they believed misguided.

William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Helen Hunt Jackson, Homer Plessy, Jacob Riis, Henry George, Lewis Hine, “Mother” Mary Harris Jones, Ida Tarbell, Ida B. Wells, Eugene V. Debs, Alice Paul, Big Bill Haywood, Phil Ochs, Mario Savio, Cesar Chavez, Bobby Kennedy, Diane Nash, Bayard Rustin, Daniel Ellsberg, Harvey Milk, and the other thousands of names left off this list.

Hoist one tonight for Pete Seeger and the multitude of others who braved the currents of popular thought, for there is nothing more American than to question the status quo.

Define Truth

One question raised about River of January is,”Are my characters brushes with the famous true?”  The short answer is yes.  Helen dined with Maurice Chevalier, and they performed on the same stage.  Chum crossed paths with Amelia Earhart regularly at Roosevelt Field.   The celebrity passages are factual.  I have their pictures with the famous, references from documents, and proof in aviation logbooks.

Creative non-fiction appears to be a new genre in search of defining itself.  Where exactly is the line between creative and non-fiction?  Though I need to tell this story, I certainly wasn’t alive at the time.  Frankly who knows what the characters precisely uttered to one another at any given time.  I tried to rely on personal and business letters, quoting at length when I could, to add tone, cadence and a feel for the era.  I am adding a lot of pictures for readers to visually connect to the characters, and the sights they photographed on their travels.  Additional color had to come from my imagination, with clues found  in the archive of family memorabilia.

My personal preference in reading is non-fiction history.  I have lived on a strong steady diet of biographies and general histories.  Still I wonder how any scholar concludes their work without feeling uneasily incomplete.  The subtleties of human interaction, the nuances of personal connection are more than left out.  We simply can’t know all facets of historic lives.  Our only alternative is to flesh out the tale with what we understand about the human condition.  And of course every writer struggles with their own blinders, biases, and preconceived notions.

For example the age old question of General Washington’s taciturn exterior has intrigued historians for two centuries.  Was he grave and somber because his teeth hurt?  Possibly.  Did he wish to hide his false teeth due to the fact they were unsightly,  fashioned out of a number of materials–ivory to human–to wood.  Are both theories wrong?  Did Washington remain stoic in appearance to evoke nobility and dignity?  Maybe.  In fact, all of the above could pass scrutiny.  Different historians have differing opinions.

I am not too troubled about shaping feelings in ways I think makes sense.  I’ve fallen in love, held my own in arguments, and felt more regrets than I care to claim.  That is the truth I rely upon to craft the creative element in this historical narrative.

I think all biography and history  possess an element of the unknown.  Whether the history is filtered through professional scholars such as Robert Remini, Doris Kearns Goodwin, or Miss Nobody Gail in her Idaho cabin, we are analyzing viable evidence to apply shape and logic to past lives.

Did Helen meet Sophie Tucker.  Yes.  She told us in a letter.  What did she say to her?  How did she act around her?  I ask myself what would I have said as an American to another famous American performing in London?  That’s the creative portion of this non-fiction format.

All things considered, creative non-fiction is an exciting new canvas for writing.  I feel like a kid in a candy store each time I turn over another photo or letter.