Kathleen's Big Adventure

Sometime before Christmas, our daughter Sarah and her husband, Vainateya Deshpande (Desh), who live in Washington, D.C., invited my wife Kathleen to visit during Inauguration Week. She left on the train from Elkhart Friday, January 16, in below-zero temperature. It was still pretty cold on Sunday, when the three of them visited Monticello. Here she is at a frozen birdbath outside the house. But to me, she seems a dark-haired Galadriel at her magic mirror.

Kathleen says that the underground part of the house extends beyond the limits of the house itself. Here are Kathleen and Sarah admiring Jefferson's house. Desh is saddled with the Curse of the Photographer. He took all the pictures, so he doesn't appear in any of them.

On Monday they went to the Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air and Space Museum, in Chantilly, Virginia. It's big enough to hold the Space Shuttle Enterprise, an Air France Concorde, the B-29 Enola Gay (the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb), and hundreds of other complete aircraft. Desh got a picture of Sarah and Kathleen in front of a P-47 Thunderbolt, the type of plane my father flew in World War II.

Tuesday, January 20 was the big day. The original plan was to join a friend of Sarah and Desh who was a staffer for Senator Edward Kennedy and observe the inauguration from the balcony of Kennedy's office. Somehow that plan fell through. But since the Senate office buildings are on the other side of the Capitol, there might not have been a lot to observe. Instead, they went to the Newseum on Pennsylvania Avenue, where they could see the procession from the White House to the Capitol and the Inaugural Parade. And they could watch the ceremony on a JumboTron. The Washington D. C. Transit system worked well for them. They took the bus from Sarah and Desh's apartment and arrived without a problem. The problems

began after they got to downtown Washington, where they had to

deal with long lines for security checks. The two hours of waiting did give Desh an opportunity to show the crowd and some of the individuals in it. One of the youngest participants in the festivities charmed everyone who saw her. While most of the people waiting to see the inauguration were focusing on Barack Obama, quite a few

were more than happy to see the departure of George W. Bush from the Executive Mansion. It's been eight very long years.

CNN was broadcasting from the Newseum. From her vantage point, Kathleen saw Cokie Roberts, Campbell Brown (who was noticeably pregnant), and George Will. Even though the people in the Newseum were inside, people kept their coats on. Still, it was a lot more comfortable than being out on the Mall in the 20-degree weather. And if they couldn't see the Inauguration directly, the JumboTron provided a larger-than-life view.

After the inauguration came the parade, with the wedge of police motorcycles bringing up the front. You can see beginning of a long line of portable toilets on the other side of the street. Somehow the crowds weren't that big on that side of the Avenue. I'm not sure the port-a-potties served their purpose.Then came the motorcade--the security and media vehicles and the President's (that's President Obama!) limousine--a stretch Cadillac Escalade--followed by more limousines and and security vehicles. Kathleen saw Sasha's pink mitten in the window. The parade, which went on for hours, included this 1950s-era Washington, D.C. transit bus, which garnered a lot of applause. I once drove a bus very much like this one when I was a student at the University of Iowa and drove the Cambus in a loop around the campus. There were a couple of 1953-vintage buses that were eventually replaced by modern 1956-models. This was in the early 1970s. There were a lot of bands, many from historically black colleges.

The Illinois float, with its John Deere tractor and image of Lincoln, was a highlight of the parade.

With the parade over, it was time to head back to Sarah and Desh's apartment, though not before eating an exorbitantly-priced meal at the Newseum cafeteria ($5 for a Coke, $9 for a personal pizza). Both Kathleen and Sarah came down with colds after their adventure, but it was surely worth it. I doubt whether there will be another inauguration like it in their lifetimes.

Forgotten Books Friday: The Dream-Detective

I first read Sax Rohmer’s The Dream -Detective in the late 1970s, when I was in my twenties. It was a Dover reprint of the 1926 edition, though the book itself came out in 1920. Before rereading it, I remembered it as enchanting. And, in some ways, it still is. The character of Moris Klaw is simply unforgettable. Here’s a description of him from the first episode of the book, “Tragedies in the Greek Room:”

“A very old man who carried his years lightly, or a younger man prematurely aged. None could say which. His skin had the hue of dirty vellum, and his hair, his shaggy brows, his scanty beard were so toneless as to defy classification in terms of colour. He wore an archaic brown bowler, smart, gold-rimmed pince-nez and a black silk muffler. A long, caped black coat completely enveloped the stooping figure; from beneath its mud-spattered edge peeped long-toed continental boots.”

A little further down the page:

“From the lining of his flat-topped hat he took out one of those small cylindrical scent-sprays and played its contents upon his high, bald brow. An odour of verbena filled the air.”

Moris Klaw is the proprietor of a curio shop in Wapping, in the East End of London, described in the second episode, “The Potsherd of Anubis:”

“Somewhere amid the misty gloom of this place, where the loot of a hundred ages, of every spot from pole to pole, veils its identity in the darkness, sits a large grey parrot. Faint perfumes and scuffling sounds tell of hidden animal life to the visitor; but the parrot proclaims itself stridently—

“’Moris Klaw! Moris Klaw! The devil’s come for you!’”

And then there’s his daughter, Isis, as described in the second episode:

“He invoked a goddess, and a goddess appeared: a brilliantly beautiful brunette, with delightfully curved scarlet lips and flashing eyes, whose fire the gloom could not dim.”

In the first episode, Klaw sleeps at the scene of a crime, on his “odicallly sterilised” cushion, where he picks up the “etheric storm” unleashed by the last thoughts of the murdered man.

In my work in progress, Things Done and Left Undone, Helena McKechnie wears verbena perfume and bears some resemblance to Isis (though her connection to the ancient world is Persian, not Egyptian). The metaphysician Liane Thorvaldsen can discern people’s dreams. So I’m indebted to Rohmer.

But while Sax Rohmer (the pseudonym of Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward), can create unforgettable characters and scenes, his plots are often stale unimaginative. The creator of the inscrutable Oriental villain, Dr. Fu Manchu, Rohmer can be just as stereotypical about other ethnic groups:

“It is wonderful, snake-like, the power of fascination some Hindus have over women—and always over blondes, Mr. Searles, always over blondes. It is a psychological problem.”
-Fifth Episode: “The Blue Rajah."

All right, I’m a little sensitive here because my blond daughter Sarah fell in love with and married a Hindu. And he’s simply a fine man. But then there are the greedy Jews in the Third Episode, “The Crusader’s Axe,”, and the “dagoes” of the Sixth Episode, “The Case of the Whispering Poplars.”

There are a few really original stories: Episode 4: "The Ivory Statue" and Episode 7: "The Headless Mummies" are certainly worth reading. Only the last episode, No. 9, "The Veil of Isis," really delves into the supernatural. It's by far the best story of the book. In spite of the title, Klaw's daughter does not appear in the episode, except in mention.

An excellent essay on The Dream-Detective can be found here.
I lifted the illustration from it.

In spite of the many stale plots and stereotyped villains, The Dream-Dectective gives us a truly original detective. And it's because of Moris Klaw that Rohmer's book deserves to be brought out of the netherworld of forgotten books.

Two Train Journeys, 40 Years Apart

A little more than forty years ago, thousands of Amercans watched as the train bearing the remains of Robert Francis Kennedy rolled slowly by on its journey from New York to Washington, D.C. Last Friday, another train traveling over the same line carried Barack Obama and Joe Biden from Philadelphia and Wilmington, respectively, to Washington. The cold weather and security concerns prevented huge crowds from gathering to watch the Obama train, but there were people who made the effort to watch it pass by.

The pundits and Obama's own staff have likened the president-elect's rail journey to that of Abraham Lincoln. But the analogy is flawed. Lincon was to take the helm of a nation on the brink of civil war. His journey was interrupted not by rallies, but by riots. The country was divided, and Lincoln's election had brought the crisis to a head. Lincoln wanted to be a uniter, but his principled opposition to the expansion of slavery made union impossible.

For me, Barack Obama has much more in common with Robert Kennedy. While I did my part as a high school volunteer for Eugene McCarthy in 1968, and considered RFK a usurper, I came to realize that Kennedy was the only candidate who could bring a divided nation together. The people who said they'd vote for Kennedy or George Wallace seemed totally oxymoronic, but we humans are contradictory. People whose prejudices led them to follow segregationist Wallace were also attracted to Kennedy, a man who had former Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee leader (now Congressman) John Lewis on his staff.

Obama has received the votes of many who might have supported a racist candidate in 1968. His optimism and "Yes We Can" spirit have broken barriers between races and between political viewpoints. He has given us the kind of hope that America hasn't seen since the death of Robert F. Kennedy. His presidency is one legacy of the two dreamers who died forty years ago--Kennedy and Martin Luther King, jr.

I can't watch the first video without tears welling up in my eyes. The second, while not as beautifully photographed, reminds us that Barack gives us the hope of fulfilling the dreams of both Kennedy and King.

The Devil of Davenport

In my six-month time working in Galesburg, I stayed with my in-laws in Davenport, Iowa. And I occasionally ventured over to the old Northwest Davenport neighborhood where I was reminded of a mystery I had planned to write many years ago. I had a name for the protagonist, and a general idea of the story. Friedrich Teufel is a reporter for a German-language newspaper in Davenport in the year 1916, when Iowa was voting on a constitutional amendment for woman suffrage. The German-American community was strongly against the amendment, as the women's movement at the time was led by prohibitionists. In the end, the amendment lost primarily because the German and Irish communities in eastern Iowa opposed it.

The story takes place before the election. A prominent feminist leader (possibly Carrie Chapman Catt, who was from Iowa) comes to Davenport to speak in favor of the amendment. Teufel tries to cover the event, is tossed out of the meeting, though not before making an impassioned plea that he is not a German, but a native-born American, who would report fairly on the event. A young woman, the widow of a British soldier killed on the Marne, takes notes of the speech, and in an act of defiance to her anti-German relatives, delivers her notes to the newspaper office.

Where it goes from there, I'm not sure. Most likely with the murder of a German-American leader working against the amendment, a romance between the Teufel and the widow, and the two working to solve the crime. And Teufel has to decide whether to vote for or against the amendment.

Teufel (German for devil) is a member the Northwest Davenport Turners, which for years met in the building pictured above. The Turners (Turnverein), founded by Prussian nationalist Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, came to America after the failed 1848 revolutions. Every, Turnhalle had a gymnasium--in fact Jahn is credited for inventing modern gymnastics. A number of American gymnasts, including Paul and Morgan Hamm, have received their training from the Turners.

Thanks to the Turners, Teufel is trained in gymnastics, boxing, and fencing. And he's fluent in German English, and French. But before I try to figure out the McGuffin for the Devil of Davenport, I need to finish Things Done and Left Undone.

Back to Normal for the New Year

Six months ago I started a job in Galesburg, Illinois. I thought it would be ideal--close to Kathleen's hometown of Davenport, Iowa and an affordable place to live. I hadn't reckoned on the exhausting and frustrating nature of the job. In November, when almost everyone I knew was ecstatic about Barack Obama's election, I was too depressed to join in the enthusiasm. I was glad to see, or rather hear, Obama win--I spent election night driving from Elkhart to Davenport--I didn't have that great joy that so many around me had.

When a position opened up at the Bloomington-Normal station, I bid on it. But I was held on the Galesburg position because there wasn't anyone to fill in. But as of Friday, I'll be "back to Normal." With two agents working at the station, it should be far less stressful than it was when I worked there earlier. I'll still be going back and forth to Elkhart as Kathleen and I work on getting the house in Elkhart ready to sell, but eventually, we expect to be settling in Bloomington or Normal--probably Bloomington.

I'll most likely have less access to the virtual world for the next few days.

Happy New Year to all!

The Reagan-Bush Legacy: Breaking Precedents

Let it never be said that I don’t credit the Reagan-Bush era for something. Now that it’s approaching its end (except in the Supreme Court, where its legacy will, unfortunately, live on), it’s time to note some amazing accomplishments of the three Republican presidents of that era. All three broke long-established patterns in the history of the American presidency.

Ronald Wilson Reagan broke the Prophet’s Curse, but just barely. The story begins with the Battle of Tippecanoe. Tenskwatawa, brother of Tecumseh, was a religious leader known as the Shawnee Prophet. He definitely didn’t have the military skills of his brother. In 1811, Tecumseh had assembled a coalition of native peoples at a camp on Burnett’s Creek near present-day Lafayette, Indiana. He had convinced people from tribes all over the region that they should stop fighting amongst themselves and unite against the Americans, who were steadily encroaching on their lands.

William Henry Harrison, whose military brilliance matched Tecumseh’s, had his army outside the Indian camp. Harrison knew that Tecumseh would never be so foolish as to mount an attack on the American army with his fairly small force. But Harrison also knew that Tecumseh was away from the camp, known as Prophetstown, and seems to have goaded Tenskwatawa into attacking. It’s unclear who shot first, but it appears that Tenskwatawa’s forces were moving in on the American camp. Harrison was prepared, and defeated the Indian coalition.

Two years later, at the Battle of the Thames, (at present-day Chatham-Kent, Ontario), Tecumseh, allied with British forces in the War of 1812, faced Harrison again. Harrison, with superior numbers, triumphed, and Tecumseh died in the battle.

The story goes that Tenskwatawa cursed Harrison and every president elected in a year ending in zero. Harrison, after giving a two-hour inaugural address in the rain, and without a topcoat, died a month after taking office. It's a pretty unlikely story, especially since Tenskwatawa died in 1834, six years before Harrison's election. But until Ronald Reagan, every president elected in a year ending in zero died in office:

Abraham Lincoln, elected 1860, assassinated 1865
James A. Garfield, elected 1880, assassinated 1881
William McKinley, elected 1900, assassinated 1901
Warren Gamaliel Harding, elected 1920, died of a heart attack 1923
Franklin D. Roosevelt, elected 1940, died of a cerebral hemorrhage 1945
John F. Kennedy, elected 1960, assassinated 1963

The only president to die in office outside the Prophet’s Curse was Zachary Taylor, who was elected in 1848, and died in 1850, after eating a dish of iced milk and cherries at a Fourth of July celebration. The cause of death was never established. Of course, Taylor was an officer in the War of 1812, and had fought Tecumseh’s ally, Black Hawk, at the Battle of Credit Island, (in present-day Davenport, Iowa). But Black Hawk and his British allies defeated Taylor’s forces in an ambush.

Ronald Reagan survived an assassination attempt on March 30, 1981. Modern medicine triumphed over the Prophet’s Curse. It appears that George W. Bush, elected(?) in 2000, will also live through his presidency. But then, does an election by a 5 to 4 vote in the Supreme Court count as an election?

George Herbert Walker Bush broke the Curse of the Sitting Vice President. Before 1988, the last time a sitting vice president had been elected to the presidency was in 1836, when Martin Van Buren, vice president under Andrew Jackson, was elected in his own right. Of course, there haven’t been many sitting vice presidents who have been nominated to run. John Breckinridge (1860), Richard Nixon (1960), and Hubert Humphrey (1968) are the only ones that I could find between Van Buren and Bush I. But still, it was a first.

That leaves George W. Bush, the only president to win office with less than a plurality of the popular vote and win re-election. The other three presidents who lost the popular vote either lost re-election (John Quincy Adams (elected 1824, defeated by Andrew Jackson, 1828) and Benjamin Harrison (defeated sitting president Grover Cleveland 1884, beaten by Cleveland, 1888) or did not seek a second term (Rutherford B. Hayes, elected 1876). Of course, vote suppression in Ohio probably cost John Kerry the 2004 election.

I don’t have a lot of good things to say about any of the three, but they all broke precedents.

Bah! Humbug!

Bah! Humbug! When the early Christians decided to celebrate the birth of Christ sometime in the fourth century, why did they choose December 25? Some say it was simply nine months after the Annunciation, March 25. Others suggest they wanted to co-opt pagan midwinter ceremonies, such as those of Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun. Of course, they were living in the Mediterranean, where the weather is relatively mild in December. They had no idea that the celebration of Christmas would become the commercial frenzy it is today. And they certainly didn’t expect that people in northern climes would insist on traveling long distances in abominable weather in order to be together at Christmas.

After dealing with trains delayed by broken rails, switch failures, and engine breakdowns, driving past slide-offs on Interstate 74, and finally being diverted off the same highway due to a fatal accident, I concluded that we’re insane to be traveling at this time of year. I’m insane, as I had been planning to drive back to Indiana in below-zero weather to be home with my family. Kathleen talked me out of it. With another winter storm rolling across the Midwest tomorrow, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, especially since I‘ve got to be back to Galesburg to work on Wednesday. (I’ll be working the evening shift Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.)

I’ve often muttered, “The Puritans were right.” Oliver Cromwell banned the celebration of Christmas when he became Lord Protector, though Charles II brought it back when the crown was restored. The Puritans of Massachusetts banned the public celebration of Christmas. Puritans saw the trappings of Christmas--the Yule Log and wassailing--as pagan. And of course they were. There’s some indication that wealthy Puritans were more bothered by wassailers demanding food and drink.

What became Christmas--the tree, the presents, Santa Claus, et cetera--was a Victorian invention. In fact, by marrying Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Queen Victoria had a lot to do with it. Albert brought the Christmas Tree, a German tradition, to England, where it migrated to America, and to the rest of the world. Charles Dickens, “the man who invented Christmas,” gave us The Christmas Carol, which is still a major influence on our perception of Christmas. (I admit to enjoying the book, and even more, the movie with Alistair Sim as Scrooge.)

Over here in the States, Clement Clarke Moore, or someone (there‘s a controversy about the authorship), wrote “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” usually known by its first line, “Twas the night before Christmas.” The poem confounded the Dutch traditions of St. Nicholas’ Day with Christmas. There are many legends about Nicholas of Myra, a fourth-century Greek bishop who lived in what is now Turkey, but the most famous is of the three bags of gold. A poor man had three daughters, but not money enough to provide dowries for them. Without dowries, the young women would almost certainly have had to become prostitutes just to support themselves. The man was too proud to accept charity, so Nicholas, under the cover of darkness, tossed three bags of gold, one for each daughter, through the man’s window. Thus began the tradition of gift-giving on St. Nicholas’ Day, December 6. In Holland and Germany, children set their shoes outside their door or by the chimney on the night of December 5, and “Saint Nicholas,” (Sinterklaas in Dutch) fills them with candy or small toys. (Kathleen brought this tradition to our household. This year was the first where there were no children at home to put shoes outside their door.) Moore (or whoever wrote the poem) took these Dutch St. Nicholas Day traditions and transferred them to Christmas. Sinterklass became Santa Claus, lost his bishop’s miter, and began saying little but “Ho, Ho, Ho.”

And while I’m down on Christmas right now, especially the way we celebrate it here in the United States, I expect to be enchanted by a beautiful Episcopal mass Wednesday night or Thursday morning. Once the buying spree is over, and we get to the babe in the manger (or in the house, if you use Matthew’s gospel), then Christmas is an entirely different holiday. In fact, the celebration of Christmas goes on, culminating on January 6, with the arrival of the magicians from the East. My Bah! Humbug!, will, I hope, turn to “Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

My first disappointment with Barack Obama

It had to happen. Every new president has to move toward a consensus. But I'm troubled by Barack Obama's decision to have Rick Warren give the invocation at his inauguration. Yes, it's purely symbolic. But symbolism is important in a presidency, and Warren symbolizes intolerance. Most recently he was active in supporting California's Proposition 8, which outlawed gay marriage in that state. But personally, his his efforts to bring about a schism in the Episcopal Church--my church--trouble me even more. He's been working to break up my church for at least three years. In November, 2005, he spoke at a Pittsburgh meeting of Episcopal Church dissidents opposed to the consecration of Gene Robinson, an openly gay man in a committed relationship, as Bishop of New Hampshire. An excerpt from a November 11, 2005 New York Times article:


The Episcopalians and Anglicans were joined by well-known American evangelical Christians, most notably the Rev. Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., and author of "The Purpose-Driven Life." Mr. Warren gave encouragement to conservative church dissidents who are trying to break with the Episcopal Church but who have often been stymied by disputes with their dioceses over ownership of church property.


"What's more important is your faith, not your facilities," he told the crowd at the Convention Center here. "The church is people, not the steeple. They might get the building, but you get the blessing."


Warren, whose megachurch is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, is self-serving at best when he works to break up another church. He is a divider, not a uniter. There are conservatives who oppose the ordination of gays and lesbians, but are committed to the staying in the Episcopal Church. Bishop Edward Stuart Little of the Diocese of Northern Indiana is a good example.

For Obama to un-invite Warren would cause even more problems for the president-elect. If Warren has any decency, he'll politely decline the invitation and allow Obama to choose someone who will bring the country together.

Cleverest headline on the Rod Blagojevich Pay-for-Play Scandal

From the Galesburg, IL Zephyr:


"What Hath Rod Wrought?"

Changing Place Names: Would You Fall in Love in Jesselton? Or Kota Kinabulu?

As I listened to coverage of the terrorist murders in India's financial capital (sadly, one rarely hears news from that part of the world unless it involves the loss of human life), I noticed that the correspondents referred to the city by its official name, Mumbai, while the vast majority of Indians called it Bombay, its former name. My son-in-law, who comes from a city nearby, calls it Bombay, as does Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found.

The Portuguese, who in 1534 appropriated the islands that would make up the city, called the area Bombaim, which may mean "good bay" or "little bay." When the English took over in 1661, after receiving the island as dowry for Catherine de Braganza, who married Charles II, they Anglicized it to Bombay. Hindi- and Urdu-speakers called it Bambai, while Marathi- and Gujarati-speakers called it Mumbai. In 1996 the government of Maharashtra renamed the city Mumbai, in an effort to remove colonial names. Mumbai is derived from the Hindu goddess Mumbadevi.

Other cities in India have had similar changes: Madras became Chennai in 1996 because Madras was believed to be a Portuguese name (a contraction of Madre de Deus), or more likely from the Madeiros family. Although Chennai predates Madras, quite a few of the residents still refer to the city by its old name.


Malaysia has also changed names--most notably Jesselton, in Malaysian Borneo, which was renamed Kota Kinabalu--literally, the city of [nearby] Mount Kinabalu--in 1968. I suspect the new name has been more accepted there, but Malaysian singer Pete Teo's hit, "Jesselton Tonight," uses the old name. But its line "Would you fall in love in Jesselton ere days of 'burn baby burn' hearkens back to earlier days. "Burn baby burn" refers not to H. Rap Brown's slogan of the 1960s but to the destruction of forests for agriculture.


Other countries have been much more successful in getting new names to stick. I don't expect Zimbabwe to revert to Rhodesia after Robert Mugabe is out of power. Nor will Kinshasa go back to Leopoldville. If a name represents a despotic government, it usually will be replaced. Leningrad is now St. Petersburg, thus replacing the name of one despot with that of an earlier one (though Tsar Peter the Great had the modesty to name it for the saint who shared his name). Tsaritsyn became Stalingrad in 1925, but Nikita Khrushchev renamed it Volgograd in 1961. I suspect that someday Myanmar will again be Burma. In fact, virtually all the opponents of the despotic Myanmar government call the nation Burma.

But the most successful sub-Saharan African country, the Republic of South Africa, has kept Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, etc. , even though they're reminders of the colonial past. Maybe they've decided that changing the name doesn't change the reality.

But if a name change is to be truly successful, it needs to be supported by the people. Had India changed Bombay to Mumbai in 1947, in the days of independence, the people might have embraced it. But to change the name a half century after Indian independence and without any popular referendum made no sense. But then, the expense of changing it back may make even less sense. There's the old joke about the expense of changing Boulder Dam to Hoover Dam--that it would have cost less if Hoover had changed his name to Herbert Boulder. So I suspect that Mumbai will continue to be the official name of India's largest city, while its residents will keep calling it Bombay.

Jack Mabley, R.I.P

In doing research for my Dickens Challenge novel, which in part takes place during the 1968 Chicago Democratic convention, I stumbled upon Jack Mabley, the Chicago American columnist who, in August 1968, publicized the Yippies' so-called plans to put LSD in the Chicago water supply, have Yippie women seduce delegates by posing as prostitutes, and then put LSD in their drinks, etc. I had read Mabley before and believed him to be something of a right-winger. I was wrong. While the American was a right-wing paper (the afternoon paper published by The Tribune Company), Mabley was not a rightist, but someone who was alarmed by the Yippie movement and took their guerilla theater a bit too seriously.

When I did a Google search for Mabley, I learned he had died in January, 2006, at the age of 90. I also found his blog, Jack Mabley's Web Log. And in it I found two predictions: one sadly wrong, the other dead-on:

I’ve never hesitated to make predictions. They don’t jeopardize my reputation because my reputation is being wrong more than right. On that note, I predict that Kerry’s margin of victory will be substantial. And he’ll carry a flock of Democrats into public offices with him. And Barack Obama will be the first person of color to become President.

Rest in peace, Jack. Sorry you didn't live to see your prediction come true.

Forty-five years

Like most of the people in my generation, I can remember where I was when I first learned of President Kennedy's assassination. For me it was outside the cafeteria at Madison Junior High School in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I wasn't having an easy time in seventh grade, and the announcement of this catastrophe didn't make it any better. When it was time to go to math class, which met in one of the many barracks-classrooms erected to house the overflow of students of the postwar baby boom, I learned a little more.

I don't remember the teacher's name. I wasn't good at math, and this teacher wasn't my favorite. She had once confiscated a little doodle I made--spacemen getting out of a flying saucer while people all around ignored them--and sent it to the counselor, who decided it was a clear sign of serious emotional problems. That day she tried to calm students down, giving us in somber tones the facts as she knew them. At one pont a girl asked if Kennedy had been shot "with a rifle or a gun," causing some titters, and easing the tension. But the teacher berated the titterers and brought the tension level back up.

Mercifully, Albuquerque Public Schools decided to dismiss students before math class was over. I watched the coverage of the assassination, and the funeral, on our black-and-white TV. The news commentators referred to the new president by his full name--Lyndon Baines Johnson--which prompted my father to say that he hoped they'd stop using the Baines.

I was eleven that year, and turned twelve at the end of November. (Being a year younger than most of my classmates surely exacerbated my problems in junior high.) For me, the Kennedy assassination was tied in with sad events in my personal and family life. I had been a top student in sixth grade, but ended up with three Ds on my report card that semester. I probably would have received them had there not been an assassination, but the shock of Kennedy's death did affect my studies. My father, at a loss to know what to do , spanked me for the 3-D report card. I resented it for a long time, and fantsized about running away, escaping to the Midwest, where the world seemed more civilized.

The next year, my parents sent me to the Albuquerque Academy, where I did much better. I wasn't fantasizing about running away, but my dreams of returning to the Midwest came true, though not in the best way.

For this was also a time when my parents' marriage was deteriorating. I must have sensed it emotionally, if not intellectually. My brother, four years younger, sensed it better than I. When our mother asked him if he knew what a divorce was, he said, it was when you got "unmarried." "You're going to get one," he immediately added.

The divorce took place in the summer of 1965. My mother, brother, and I moved to Iowa City, wher she worked on a Master of Fine Arts and eventually began working for Paul Engle, who was then in charge of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa.

All of this turmoil in my own life, and that of my family, took place in the aftermath of that terrible day in November, forty-five years ago. I'm sure I would be a different person--perhaps less fatalistic and more self-confident--had Oswald's bullet missed the president.

On January 20 of next year, we shall, for the first time in forty-five years, have a young, attractive, energetic, optimistic, and progressive president. let us hope and pray that he is able to serve his term and be re-elected in 2012. For the sake of our nation and of all the people, at home and abroad, who have put so much hope in him, I pray that Barack Obama has a long and successful presidency.

Barack Obama, FDR, and NPR

Driving from Galesburg to Elkhart Sunday afternoon, blissfully unaware of the lake-effect snowstorm awaiting me in northwestern Indiana, I was listening to Weekend All things Considered on National Public Radio. I've never met the host, Andrea Seabrook, but I think of her as a friend--someone who brings a smile to my face by just the sound of her voice. Seabrook's audience may be in the millions, but she makes you feel as though you're part of her special circle of friends.

Susan Stamberg is a woman I'd trust about anything except Thanksgiving food. I've listened to her since she was co-host of All Things Considered in the early 1970s. She doesn't have the intimacy of Seabrook, but her voice has an air of authority and experience.

But that afternoon, Seabrook got Stamberg on the line to grouse about Barack Obama's decision to put his weekly radio talks on YouTube. I'm not sure they were entirely serious, but it bothered me that Stamberg made the comment that if radio was good enough for FDR, is should be good enough for the president-elect. The trouble is, radio wasn't good enough for Franklin D. Roosevelt, as the YouTube video shows. Of course there was no YouTube during FDR's presidency, and television was in its infancy. But there was video, in the form of newsreels. I'm old enough to remember when movie theaters showed newsreels, along with cartoons and short features, before the main attraction. By the mid-1960s most cinemas had abandoned the newsreel. But in FDR's time, newsreels were the only way to see and hear the news. And FDR took advantage of them by making his "Fireside Chats" avaialble to the reels. If there had been a YouTube, he would have been on it.

I rely on NPR almost exclusively for my news. And I agree with Stamberg and Seabrook about the advantages of radio over audio-visual. For one thing, it's something I can do while I'm driving, or lying in bed with my eyes closed. But Obama has the duty to communicate with as many people as he can. That includes the people who don't listen to radio, as well as those who don't happen to be listening at the time of day he gives his weekly talk.

An outrage? Or, as Stamberg says, like having roast beef on Thanksgiving? No to the first. And as for the second, roast beef on Thanksgiving isn't such a bad idea. The Pilgrims of the Plymouth Plantation, whose 1621 harvest festival inspired the American Thanksgiving, ate venison along with turkey and fish. While a steer isn't a deer, it's still a hoofed animal. Close enough. Besides, Stamberg's ideas about Thanksgiving food are, well, a little bit suspect.

My thanks to the Millennials

I first noticed the brilliance of Barack Obama’s campaign when I was looking up Hanover College on the Internet. I believe it was on the U.S. News college rankings website. When I pulled up the Hanover College page, there was an ad for Barack Obama, telling prospective Indiana students that there was only one day left to register for the primary.

My son, then a senior at Elkhart Memorial High School, voted for Obama in the primary, as did many of his classmates. Obama nearly won that primary. Hillary Clinton’s Pyrrhic victory in Indiana, coupled with her huge loss in North Carolina the same day, sealed the nomination for Obama. While Obama put together a vast coalition, the Millennial Generation--those between 18 and 30--was crucial to his victory.

Thirty-six years ago, another insurgent Democrat was counting on another huge generation to put him into the White House. He was, of course, George McGovern, and the generation was mine. I voted for him in 1972, but so many of my fellow Baby Boomers failed even to register, let alone vote.

The ‘72 campaign also occurred at a time when we were fighting an unpopular war and when the administration in power was trampling on the Bill of Rights. But the McGovern campaign (though not McGovern himself) spent much political capital righting past wrongs against fellow Democrats. Perhaps Richard J. Daley deserved to be thrown out of the Democratic Convention, but that one act cost McGovern Illinois.

McGovern gave his beautiful “Come Home, America” acceptance speech at around three in the morning, thanks to his supporters’ petty squabbles on the convention floor. Of course, he has to take responsibility for failing to control his enthusiastic, but vindictive, adherents. His failure to vet his first vice presidential choice, Thomas Eagleton, cost him dearly, in those days when clinical depression was far less understood. And his campaign was so tightly focused on opposition to the war that when Henry Kissinger announced that peace was at hand, McGovern had lost his main issue. The threat of being drafted to fight in Southeast Asia had been lifted; Richard Nixon coasted to a landslide victory.

Barack Obama was against the Iraq war, but General David Petraeus’s brilliant strategy of co-opting the Sunni militias and drastically reducing the violence in that war did not put an end to the Obama message. He did not depend on the antiwar issue, but talked as much about the economy, the environment, and America's role in the world as a whole, that his candidacy did not implode. His campaign had the benefit of Hillary Clinton’s endorsement. The prediction that her supporters would defect to the Republicans, widely touted, did not come true. (John McCain’s patronizing selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate surely hurt him with former Clinton backers.) In contrast, the 1972 credentials fight between McGovern and Hubert Humphrey was still smoldering in November.

But Obama’s greatest strength, through the whole campaign, was his unrelenting optimism and message of hope. It is was the strength of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John and Robert Kennedy. It connected with so many of us from every generation. And it brought a great new generation to the polls in large numbers. The Millennials did what we Boomers could not do: elect an insurgent Democrat to the White House.

The Pitfalls of Dog Ownership, or Contemplating 1970s Trailer Life

Ten years ago this December, a dog followed my daughter Sarah home. Well, not exactly followed. Sarah coaxed him back with soothing words. Sarah had been wanting a dog for some time. She knew that my childhood dog had been a Golden Retriever mix. The dog she led home looked a lot like him. When I got home that night, Kathleen said she had a surprise. I came into the living room and saw a beautiful Golden Retriever mix, with white paws and a black spot on his muzzle, sitting on my son Jim’s lap. I couldn’t say no. Jim named him Copper, because he was the color of a copper penny.

Copper was a stray, and he had been abused. For quite a while he was afraid of me. He had no problem with women and children, but he was terrified of adult men. We checked with the city, and the animal control people said that it we had him for 30 days, he was ours. We took him to the vet, and he got the requisite shots, along with treatment for three different kinds of parasites--hookworms, roundworms, and tapeworms.

About a month after we got him, some children came to the door and said that Copper was their dog. The family who owned him had taken off for the month of December. Recreational vehicle manufacturers often shut down for a month around Christmas, giving their employees an unpaid vacation. The dog had gotten out of their yard, and the family had left town without the dog. Kathleen told them that we’d already spent $150 on the dog, and that she’d have to talk to the children’s parents. We never heard anything from them again.

He’s been a wonderful companion for the past decade. For an eleven-year-old dog, he’s in good health, and can still do a walk of several miles and (unfortunately) jump a fence. But we’ve just learned the pitfalls of dog ownership.

We own a house in Elkhart, Indiana--a big, three-bedroom American Foursquare, which we have no hope of selling until spring. We’re slowly getting the house ready to sell--drywall work, plumbing, and electrical work, along with some other less important work. And slowly moving stuff out of the house to Davenport, Goodwill, the recycling center, or the landfill.

Meanwhile I’m staying in Davenport with my in-laws, driving the 55 miles each way to my job in Galesburg, and then a seven-hour drive to and from Elkhart every week. I have a week off, so Kathleen and I came to Davenport to look for a temporary place in Galesburg--a small house or even apartment to rent between now and next year. We figured there would be lots of places to rent. There are literally hundreds of vacant houses in Galesburg, a city which has yet to recover from Whirlpool’s closing of the former Maytag plant in 2004.

But nobody wants to rent, especially to a couple with a dog. People would rather let their houses sit empty rather than take a risk on renting. We visited two real estate agencies who gave us little hope. We got the same reaction from the third, but just as we were walking off in disappointment, an agent, appropriately named Carl Admire, asked us to come back to his office. He gave us some other alternatives, and showed real concern for us.

The one alternative that seemed to make sense was to buy an older mobile home, use that as my Galesburg residence until we sold our house, and then sell the trailer and buy a real house. It’s something we might be able to afford. The mobile home we looked at is in a decent park, populated mainly by retired people.

The trailer dates back to 1978 and looks it. Those 1970s colors of burnt orange, avocado, and harvest gold predominate. There’s even a built-in radio with an 8-track tape player. I’m not bothered by such things as orange carpets, though Kathleen is. But we’d own it (though having to pay lot rent), and Copper would be with us.

Voting for the Rooster

I cast my vote at the courthouse last week, just in case I get stuck working on Election Day. I voted the straight ticket, so I filled in the little oval right next to the Democratic Party rooster. In virtually every other state, the Democratic emblem is the donkey, while the Republicans use the elephant. Not in Indiana. It’s the rooster and the eagle here.

The rooster as party emblem goes back to 1840, during the presidential campaign between Democrat Martin Van Buren and Whig William Henry Harrison. It was a tight race in Indiana, and both parties were calling out their best speakers to speak, or in the lingo of the time, to “crow” for their candidates. Joseph Chapman, a Democratic state representative from Greenfield, in Hancock County, was one such speaker. George Pattison, editor of the Indianapolis Constitution, sent a letter to the postmaster of Greenfield, which read in part, “Tell Chapman to Crow.”

Somehow the letter got into the hands of Whigs, who used the line to ridicule the Democrats. But the Whig effort backfired, and soon Democrats were chanting “Crow Chapman Crow. While Harrison won the election, the slogan stuck. Sometime later the Indiana Democratic Party adopted the rooster as its emblem.

After the Whig Party imploded in the 1850s, Northern Whigs and Free-Soil Democrats (those who opposed the expansion of slavery), formed the Republican Party. When Indiana Democrats urged voters to “vote for the big chick,” Republicans adopted the eagle, and the slogan, “Vote for the bird on the dollar.”

Thus, the Indiana rooster and eagle. The rooster emblem spread to other states, especially in the South, where it had more sinister legacy. The Alabama “white rooster” became a symbol of white supremacy. In the 1968 election, the Alabama ballot listed Hubert Humphrey under the Democratic donkey, but George Wallace, the segregationist candidate of the American Independent Party, had the rooster. In 1996 the Alabama Democratic Party formally adopted the donkey as its emblem due to the rooster’s racist associations.

But the Indiana rooster had no such legacy, so it remains the symbol of Indiana Democracy. Still, the reason for party emblems is mainly to aid illiterate voters. Illiteracy is much less common now than it was in the 1840s, but it still exists. For that reason I’ve argued that the donkey and elephant--universally recognized emblems--ought to be used on the Indiana ballot. It doesn’t seem likely to happen. Hoosiers are pretty stubborn.

Madison and the Gender Migration of Names

A couple of weeks ago, Kathleen learned that her twenty-something friend and coworker did not know the state capitals. The friend is intelligent, but she had never learned this basic of American geography--something that we baby boomers had to memorize.

So Kathleen decided to try to teach her. She did this by putting the capitals into categories: religious--St. Paul, Sacramento, Santa Fe, Salem, Concord, Providence; Native American--Tallahassee, Oklahoma City, Topeka, Cheyenne, Honolulu (maybe Native Hawaiian for the last); French--Des Moines, Baton Rouge, Boise, Montpelier, Pierre. There was a big category of English place names, such as Boston, Richmond, and Dover. Little Rock and Salt Lake City locate the city with a natural feature. A few, such as Phoenix and Bismarck were one of a class (Mythological Creatures and Iron Chancellors?).

But the cleverest category she came up with was women’s names. One is stretching it--Juneau is pronounced the same as Juno, but was actually named after a prospector named Joe Juneau. But the categories are mnemonic, not historical. Most of the others are pretty obvious--Augusta, Atlanta, Helena, Olympia. Annapolis, named for Anne Arundel, is also on the list. And one more that I wouldn’t have put in the class: Madison. In the past twenty years or so, the surname of our fourth president has become a popular girls’ name. And as a mnemonic, it worked.

Which is a way to get into the tendency of men’s names morphing into women’s names. And after they do, it’s unlikely that they’ll ever be used for boys again. Most of these gender-changing names seem to fall into certain patterns. When men’s names share a traditionally feminine ending, they a seem to be fair game. Names ending in the latter a, such as Sasha, Dana, and Elisha have moved into the feminine column, at least in the United States. Judith (Hebrew in origin) and Edith (Anglo-Saxon), have made Meredith (Welsh) an acceptable girls’ name. Then there are the many-ley/ly names: Shirley, Beverly, Ashley, Kimberly, etc. (Somehow, Bradley has escaped feminization.) At one time, Lesley was a girls’ name, while Leslie was for boys. But in the States, it’s almost exclusively a girls’ name, whatever the spelling. Similarly, Tracy/Tracey and Stacy/Stacey are almost exclusively girls’ names in the USA.

Then there’s the “sounds the same” category. There are quite a few young women named
Aubrey today. I suspect it became a girls’ name because it sounds like Audrey.

A lot of surnames--Kelly, Taylor, and Courtney, for example, have become girl's names. I’m not sure why Kelly is a common girls’ name, while Murphy, despite the television program Murphy Brown, isn’t. Whether Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol will start a trend for that name, I don’t know. I hope not. Ditto for her boys’ names, Track and Trig.

When names make the transition, from masculine to feminine (I don't know any that have gone the other way), they usually do so completely. But Sidney, which shows up as a girl’s name as early as 1901, in Frank Norris’s novel, The Octopus, and Jordan, which is the name of a major female character in Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1922), are still used for both men and women.

And then there’s Madison. According to Wikipedia, it started with the 1984 movie Splash, in which Daryl Hannah plays a mermaid who takes the name Madison from the avenue in New York. But I suspect it wouldn’t have caught on if the nickname Maddie hadn’t been popular as a result of Maddie Hayes, the character played by Cybil Shepherd on the TV series, Moonlighting. Madeleine (or even Madolyn, the spelling of the character's name) is currently out of fashion, so it’s Madison to the rescue.

The Gate of Horn, Gate of Ivory

In my last post, I mentioned a Chicago folk club called the Gate of Horn, which flourished in the 1950s and '60s. While the origin of the name is fairly well-known, I'll repeat it here. The Oneiroi, in Greek mythology, were either the sons (according to Ovid) or brothers (according to Hesiod)of Hypnos, the god of sleep. These winged daemons would send dreams to mortals through one of two portals. If they came through the gate of ivory, the dreams would be false, but those through the gate of horn were true. Several years ago, when I mentioned the myth to Kathleen, she noted immediately that the true dreams came through the more common material, where the more precious ivory produced false dreams.

The earliest reference to the two gates comes from the Odyssey, in which Persephone recounts a dream that Odysseus, her husband would return:

Stranger, dreams verily are baffling and unclear of meaning, and in no wise do they find fulfilment in all things for men. For two are the gates of shadowy dreams, and one is fashioned of horn and one of ivory. Those dreams that pass through the gate of sawn ivory deceive men, bringing words that find no fulfilment. But those that come forth through the gate of polished horn bring true issues to pass, when any mortal sees them. But in my case it was not from thence, methinks, that my strange dream came.

-Homer, The Odyssey, book 19, lines 560-569, Loeb Classical Library translation (via Wikipedia).


The Loeb translator, in a note, comments that "The play upon the words κέρας, 'horn,' and κραίνω, 'fulfil,' and upon ἐλέφας, 'ivory,' and ἐλεφαίρομαι, 'deceive,' cannot be preserved in English."


The gates also appear in Virgil's Aeneid, in which the hero, Aeneas, returns from the underworld by way of the ivory gate, which gave classical scholars a lot of room for interpretation. It seems to me that Virgil is cautioning the reader about the veracity of his story. Wikipedia uses the Dryden translation of Virgil, most likely because it's in the public domain. But it's also simply beautiful poetry. Aeneas, after visiting his dead father in the underworld, returns to the living world with the Cumean Sibyl:


Two gates the silent house of Sleep adorn;
Of polish'd ivory this, that of transparent horn:
True visions thro' transparent horn arise;
Thro' polish'd ivory pass deluding lies.
Of various things discoursing as he pass'd,
Anchises hither bends his steps at last.
Then, thro' the gate of iv'ry, he dismiss'd
His valiant offspring and divining guest.

-Virgil, The Aeneid, Book 6, lines 893-898, tr. John Dryden

The gates of horn and ivory have turned up in modern literature, most notably in Robert Holdstock's novel Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn in his Mythago Wood fantasy series.

And of course the myth of the two gates gave the name t0 the Chicago folk club, where Odetta, Bob Dylan, Bob Gibson, Hamilton Camp, and virtually every other prominent folksinger of the 1950s and '60s performed.

Obama is the One for Me

I was just a bit too young to participate in the American folk revival of the late 1950s and early Sixties. Chicago's great folk clubs, Gate of Horn and the Earl of Old Town were closed by the time I got there. But the folk artists of that era continue to fascinate me, with their renditions of both new and old acoustic music, and their liberal to left-wing politics.

One of the great figures of that era was Peggy Seeger--Mike's sister and Pete's half-sister, who was married to another legendary folk figure, the late Ewan MacColl.

I was searching YouTube, hoping to find the Peggy Seeger/Ewan MaColl song, Come Fill Up Your Glasses, which used to be played every New Year's Eve on the WFMT Radio program, the Midnight Special. I didn't find it, but I found that Peggy Seeger is still active in folk music and politics. Her song, "Obama is the One for Me" reminds us that the idealism of the 1960s never really died, no matter what the last forty years have done to crush it.

As American as...Chop Suey?

Sarah Palin, after finishing the vice presidential debate without saying anything really stupid, has now declared that Barack Obama “pals around with terrorists.” Yep, American presidential politics are back on the moral high ground. Which is why I’m writing about something else--traditional American food such as chop suey and German chocolate cake. Besides, it gives me an excuse to use Edward Hopper’s wonderful painting, “Chop Suey.”

“As American as apple pie.” Of course, apple pie isn’t originally American. Wikipedia shows a 1381 English recipe, which suggests that people had been eating apple pie even earlier. But there are some American dishes which most Americans believe are foreign, but are far more American than apple pie.

You won’t find chop suey in China. And while it’s harder to find it in the United States today than twenty years ago, it’s an American, or Chinese-American dish. Its origins are unclear. I had read in a Time-Life book on the cooking of the Great West that it was first served in San Francisco. The phrase means “mixed pieces” in Cantonese, and seems to have originated with Chinese immigrants in California. The dish caught on with white Americans, and chop suey houses were common all over the United States by the turn of the last century. A recipe for chop suey can be found here.

After eating chop suey at a Chinese-American restaurant, you usually have a fortune cookie. Another Chinese-American invention, though it appears to be an adaptation of a Japanese recipe. Still, the fortune cookie as we know it was developed in America.

When Americans go to Germany and ask for German Chocolate Cake, they’re likely to get blank stares, or perhaps an explanation that the cake isn’t really German. In fact, if Samuel German had been, say, Samuel Irish, then it would have become Irish Chocolate Cake.

Samuel German was an Englishman, working for the Baker’s Chocolate Company. In 1852 he created a chocolate bar with extra cocoa butter, which became known as German’s Sweet Chocolate. A little more than a century later, a Texas housewife sent in a recipe for German’s Sweet Chocolate Cake to a Dallas newspaper. The cake itself may be older than that, but its first appearance in print was 1957.

Somewhere along the line, German’s was shortened to German, and thus Americans believed the cake originated in Germany. But it’s clearly from the American South, complete with that staple of Southern dishes, the pecan. The original German’s Chocolate Cake recipe can be found here. It’s a delicious cake. It’s just not German.