Category Archives: US History

Art and Culture, Politics, US History

Clybourne Park

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Summer                                                                          Solstice Moon

Theater has been a passion of mine since early high school.  I acted in high school, college and seminary, quitting only when the time demands of theater exceeded what chunks I could give.  Not only did I act in college, but I had nearly enough credits for a theater minor, most of those credits in the history of theater.

Live performance, perhaps even more so in the age of high technology, has a sacred aspect, as it did in antiquity.  It bridges the solitary creative act in the playwright’s mind and yours with real people, not paint or notes or words on a page, but people who choose to imagine themselves into other people’s lives and feelings.

Tonight it was Bruce Norris’s edgy, often nasty Clybourne Park, a play willing to grasp the charged cable of race, in this case a cable stripped of its insulation, fully alive to our past and present predicament.  This play is worth reading, but even more it is worth seeing.  It is on the page minimalist, clever and spare; but on the stage it snakes like a downed power line, sparking here and there, totally dangerous.

( photo of the Guthrie performance)

If you believe race has settled down in our culture, see this play.  It will remind you that the road is long and the journey often bleak.

Memories, US History, World History

Happy Independence Day, World!

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Summer                                                                Solstice Moon

 

It is now the spring, then summer, then winter of our discontents.  We have had the Arab spring, now the vinegar rebellion in Brazil, the dislocation of Egypt’s president, widespread disruption in Istanbul.  There are those who say China’s population boils just below the eruption point.  We had the tea party rebellions here as well as the Occupy movement.

I’m not smart enough to know if these protests have some deep underlying connection, one feeding them in a Geist’s subtle movement, but I have my own experience of rebellion and protest.  People rebel for noble reasons, pacifists against war, for self-interested reasons, being draft eligible during a war, for ideological reasons, to support the masses, for the thrill of it, for the fun, for the sex, for the party, for the rock and roll.  And for various combinations of these reasons.

And, I think, increasingly because they can organize with greater ease.  When the main means of communication were leaflets handed out or stapled to telephone poles, phone calls from landlines, or mass meetings, getting folks to one place for an event had more steps, entailed more volunteers, demanded more discipline.  Now an e-mail can go out, a twitter feed, a facebook posting and all those connected can convene.  If they do, and I’m sure they do, use the old organizers trick of having each person contacted invite two more, then all you need is the grain of wheat on one corner of a chess board to see how vast crowds can become.  Fast.

It may be, just might be, that there is something in the water these days that says we’ve had enough.  Of authoritarianism.  Of despotism.  Of ham handed religious pronouncements substituting for policy.  Of the rich gathering in more and more while barricading themselves in enclaves of glass and steel.  Of the rich putting cordons around privilege and assets.  It’s bound to get noticed at some point, isn’t it?

Whatever it is, I find it hopeful.  When people finally decide to act, politicians will learn the truth that all governments get their power from the consent of the governed.  Some choose to give away their power because of fear or religious belief or ideological commitment, but push people far enough and those bandaids over the cancer of elitism and oligarchy will get ripped off.

That’s not to say that protest and rebellion are without their costs.  It is no accident that the conservatives among us fight to ensure order against frivolous assault.  The break down of public order is a dangerous moment, as much for the protester as for the protested against.  And revolutions don’t have a wonderful track record of ushering in utopia.  Far from it.  But I consider these actions against the leaden weight of tradition and scorn. Whether in a particular instance they achieve the goals they seek may not be so important as demonstrating again, and again, and if necessary yet again, that no government can ignore its people, allow the unchecked aggregation of wealth and influence, without peril.

This is, I suppose, why that poster boy of the Tea Party crowd, Thomas Jefferson, wrote the following words, which we celebrate tomorrow:

“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

Holidays, US History

Citizen

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Summer                                                                  Solstice Moon

Some heat.  A few flags.  Fireworks.  Gotta be the 4th of July.

In summer my thoughts often turn to our nation, its history, its struggles, its meaning.  Something about ice cream, watermelon on the front step, fried chicken that stirs up thoughts of Bunker Hill, Paul Revere, Antietam, Shiloh, O, Pioneers.  Often I follow those thoughts into books or movies, then at some point later a journey.

Like one I took down to Vicksburg to better understand the Western campaign and the true battle that determined the war.  Or, that time I stopped in Abilene, Kansas to see Eisenhower’s library and later in Independence, Missouri to see Trumans, then Springfield, Illinois where I saw Lincoln’s grave, the historic district, the new library and the village.  Just this year I wandered through Mount Vernon and saw the Washington and Lincoln Monuments.  Again.

This time, this year not so much of a jolt, U.S. history seems dormant for me right now, though the coming of the 4th does nudge me some.  Over the years I’ve been part of the radical left critique of Amerika, cruel hegemon, flawed defender of freedom and liberty.  And most of those critiques were true.  We keep down the poor, set aside people of color and women, too often intervene in other countries when we should stay at home, tending to our bridges and roads and epidemics and children requiring villages.

Yet now, older and more rooted here.  A devoted Midwesterner of some 66 years residence.  Yet now, I find this country my country and I do love it.  No, that does not mean I’ve slapped a love it or leave it bumper sticker on the Rav4.  It simply means that this is my home.  That I am an American, a citizen and a proud of these United States.

If love means unquestioning obedience to the government, then, no, but if love means standing alongside no matter what, without giving up the right to act as a citizen must, then yes.  These are my people and I am of them.

Here’s an interesting look at what it means to be an American now by scholar Terry Eagleton.  Worth the read.

 

Family, Memories, Travel, US History

Travel Memories

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Summer                                                                                      Solstice Moon

Funny how events that happen during a visit, often outside the particular place visited, shape memories.  Last night Jon, Jen, Ruth and Gabe were in Minneapolis when a riptide of lightning pulled heavy rain in its tow.  Jon said, “I knew if I could get to Columbia Heights, we’d be ok.”  They saw manhole covers burst up and forded one high spot, but managed to get back to our merely soggy home about 9:30 pm.

On a visit to Denver a year ago right now, James Holmes shot up a theater full of late night movie goers watching Batman:  The Dark Knight Rises.  This was in Aurora, not far from where my hotel and Jon and Jen’s home.  They teach in the Aurora school district, so the event hit them hard.

Back in 1968 I tried, briefly, to move to New York City.  Stymied by uncertain draft status I couldn’t find work.  But, I was there for Bobby Kennedy’s funeral held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.  Another trip a year earlier found me in Toronto during the time of what would become a historic John Cage concert, which I accidentally attended.

 

 

Memories, US History

A 50’s Boyhood

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Beltane                                                                        Early Growth Moon

As summer tries to take root, bringing heat to this winterspringsummerfall season we’ve
been having, Memorial Day arrives.  In my school days Memorial Day meant school was over until Labor Day.  The grandkids in Colorado go into June and start up again mid-August.

I recall those long summer breaks perhaps better than the school years they punctuated, especially at the elementary ages, grades 1-5.  They were hours upon end of baseball, bike riding, playing kick the can, hanging out at the field, a special place that could become a fort, a trench, a hideout, a bunker, an overnight camping spot.  This was kid world, immersed in the boiling mass of kids my age or so that lived on Monroe Street between 1952 and 1958-9.

To a young boy in Indiana this was the 50’s, the Atomic Age now lionized in Mad Men and  shops filled with retro furniture, plastic chairs with metal legs, formica tables, aluminum tumblrs, boomerang shaped end tables, blond furniture, poodle skirts and fancy aprons for high-heel clad cooks.

This was not our 50’s.  Our 50’s had sandlots, trips to the forbidden pit, the subtle ranking inevitable among groups of children, the magical evenings as dusk fell, bats swooped and we each found a hiding place behind an arbor vitae, an enclosed porch, a dark shadow beside a garage, waiting for the tag that would make us out or finding a chance for momentary glory when we could streak out, run like the wind and kick the tin can clattery clat clanging down the street.

Yes, we had homes and parents and bedrooms and breakfast but those were way stations, filling stations and kiddie hotels, holding us only until we could go out.  “I’m going out,” was a phrase common on our lips.

We knew the limits to our wandering which meant we could have, from time to time, the  experience of venturing beyond them, back to the old gravel pit now filled with water where instant drowning awaited–we imagined our sad funerals and weeping parents, or off into a far neighborhood, perhaps as far as downtown if we had pop bottles we had collected from the trash.

That all lay before us as Memorial Day came, with the legionnaire color squad straining and sweating in those uniforms that fit so well back in their service days, the band playing patriotic music and a few floats with a queen or two doing the wave.  Dogs barked.  Clouds rode high in the blue sky and war was in the past, something to remember.

 

 

Great Work, Health, Politics, US History, Weather +Climate

Ogallala Blue

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Beltane                                                                                Early Growth Moon

A post written this time by Woolly Bill Schmidt.  My comment below.

From Bill:

We may be able to ignore the effect that humans have on global warming or even deny that it is happening.  It is difficult to explain away the effect that we humans (farmers in this case) are having on an important earth resource.  And the farmers are crying because they can no longer farm in ways that don’t make sense relative to what they are given.  Maybe it is time to pay attention to our local environments and live/farm within the limits of what is provided by earth environments.  Tapping the aquifers to irrigate farm land is like shooting yourself in the foot.  The aquifer is not infinite and pretty soon you don’t even have enough water to drink.

Here’s a link to a New York Times article about the plight of Kansas (Midwestern) farmers who have robbed the aquifer and now it is drying up.

“And when the groundwater runs out, it is gone for good. Refilling the aquifer would require hundreds, if not thousands, of years of rains.

The irony of using insane amounts of water for fracking to get more oil would be laughable if it were not so sad. Literally hundreds of millions of gallons of water per day are being used for this process, poisoned by who knows what chemicals and with a fraction, if any, of that water being recovered.”

 

This is the cost of pumping 1,600 gallons per minute to irrigate farm land.  And on page 2 of this article, the same farmer is continuing to drill more wells.  Reminds me of a song:  Pete Seeger “Where have all the flowers gone” —  “When will we ever learn.”

 

My Willa Cather Moment With This Problem

I’ve told this story to the Woollies and others many times, I imagine, a sort of recurring tale like so many offer to others, unaware of their repetitiveness.  But, it’s worth retelling.

Twice I’ve visited Red Cloud, Nebraska, a small town on the Kansas/Nebraska border, and home to Willa Cather, a favorite American regional author of mine:  Death Comes for the Archbishop, O’ Pioneers, The Professor and many others.

In the Willa Cather Center there I remember, back in 2005 or so, speaking with the folks behind the desk.  It was really hot, 107 or so, and we got to talking about climate change and agriculture.  Since I have a long standing interest in the Ogallala Aquifer, I asked about irrigation.

The conversation became animated because it turned out that in the spring, when the farmers began irrigating their fields, the towns wells would go dry.  It seems they’ve pumped the aquifer out enough that the volume of water available in their area can’t sustain the needs of both town and country.

Here’s a good resource on this issue, which nuances it:  Ogallala Blue.

Minnesota, Politics, US History

Proud. Again.

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Beltane                                                                        Early Growth Moon

Proud to be a Minnesotan.  Again.  Finally.  It has been a long, long time in the conservative weeds with no new taxes chanted ahead of every policy debate, ruining the things that have made Minnesota the strong, progressive state I loved when I first moved here over 40 years ago.  Now, in one legislative session we have more money going into education instead of raiding our school systems piggy banks while raising property taxes.  And, incredibly and beautifully and thankfully, we have marriage as an institution available to all Minnesotans.

It is not, after all, gay marriage, anymore than it is hetero marriage or African marriage or white marriage.  No, it is a legally sanctioned bonding of two people for the purpose of creating a strong family unit, whether that unit is two people or two plus kids.  Hopefully, in not too many years, we will look back on this debate and shake our heads, “Why was that such a big deal?”

An open civic society, a thriving K-12 system with post-secondary education appropriate for all, a world class health system, diverse cultural life and a commitment to a healthy environment, that’s the Minnesota I love and I can begin to see it emerging again from the compassion drought we’ve suffered under the tax-obsessed Republicans.

As Leonard Cohen sings, Hallelujah!

Memories, Politics, US History

Folk

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Beltane                                                                 Early Growth Moon

Listening to 1960’s folk on Pandora.  Forgot how much folk music figured in the 1960’s.  I remember my first anti-American rhetoric coming in the Black Swan Coffee House in Stratford, Ontario where I was for the Shakespeare Festival.  It was an anti-Vietnam folk song sung in what would have been 1963 or so.  We were had barely begun our operations in Vietnam at that time.

Many of the early protest songs were folk songs, following the long, already established tradition among labor organizers.  There’s something about the acoustic, often with no band, that speaks deeper to me.  Kate and I support Folk Alley, too, which plays contemporary folk along with the occasional older songs.

The Coffee House circuit was big in the 1960’s a type of caffeine bar very different from Starbucks and Caribou.  They are coffee house lite, almost not there as cultural institutions, with their isolated patrons floating on the web while sipping pretentiously named drinks.  The 1960’s coffee house was more in line with the 18th and 19th century versions in England where much of the early scientific and industrial revolutions got their start.  The main difference is that the 1960’s version featured political plotting, resolve boosting through music and plenty of buzz to work on the next protest late into the night.

 

Politics, US History

The Moral Arc

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Beltane                                                                    Early Growth Moon

Gay marriage.  Yes.  That the vote to pass this measure in Minnesota might come two days after mother’s day.  Priceless.

In the long, long exile of a left perspective from the American political scene, beginning somewhere around Nixon and only now gradually beginning to lift and even now sporadically and with drone inflected interludes of neo-con thinking, it was Martin Luther King’s prescient rhetorical flourish that sustained me:  “The moral arc of the universe may be long, but it bends toward justice.”

And, I mean that.  When Reagan busted the air traffic controllers union, when he cut welfare programs and raised defense spending, when Bush I was elected and couldn’t recall what a grocery store scanner was for, when Clinton continued the dismantling of our welfare system and most dismally of all, when Bush II was elected by the Supreme Court, then reelected even after his fatal rhetorical flourishes, Axis of Evil and Mission Accomplished, even then I knew that history opens toward freedom and the breaking of tradition-forged chains and when that freedom comes and the chain’s links lie broken in the street, time does not revert.

Now, marriage will become, here in Minnesota at least, an expression of love between two people willing to commit to each other in a long-term, legally binding relationship.  There is not now and there never has been any problem with that.  But often the obvious and political reality don’t match.  Ask the atmosphere.  Rending the disjunction between justice and social reality was the focus of King’s life, Ghandi’s too; it is our focus as well, those who would end economic discrimination, further women’s full integration into life at all levels and make the world’s borders as open as possible.

 

US History

Who Are We?

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Spring                                                      Planting Moon

Hard to believe we move out of spring and into Beltane, the start of the Celtic summer or growing season, this week.  We’ve only just got our cold weather crops in the ground.  Fortunately for the cold weather crops temps are gonna drop again and rains will come in the plenties.

Finished reading a wonderful book by Nelson Algren, Chicago on the Make.  This 1951 work renders a picture of Chicago from its underbelly, sympathetically.  The writing reaches out from the page, grabs you by the lapel (if you have a lapel) and says, pay attention to this!  It’s important.  But also beautiful in the way a tractor coated with mud after a day in the field is beautiful, beautiful in the way a darkened coal miners face is to wife and children that night.  Quick to read, long to forget.

Started another by Jack Cash, Mind of the South.  This 1941 book, of which I was unaware, gets credit for nailing much about the south in an honest, intelligent analysis.  The version I’m reading is a 50 year anniversary edition with a wonderful introduction, but no change to the main body of the text.  Cash committed suicide six months after its publication.

Considering Chicago, as I have been for the trip I’d intended to take there in May, and now picking up Mind of the South, has left me wondering, again, about how to express the unique culture of the American Midwest, the Heartland of the world’s hegemon (for a few more months at least).  This is my culture, the one that has shaped me, in ways often invisible to my own eye.  What is our lederhosen and gingerbread cottage molding?  What is our calligraphy, poetry and painting style?  What is our wiener schnitzel?  Our chicory coffee and beignets?  How do we drive, compared to the biggest always wins philosophy of Mexico City?  What do we want for our children?  Ourselves?  What dreams propel us?  What fears haunt us?  Who are we?