The "Letter" is Back

• Dear Mr. President:
  
  During my shift in the Emergency Room last night, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient whose smile revealed an expensive Shiny gold tooth, whose body was adorned with a wide assortment of elaborate and costly tattoos, who wore a very expensive brand of tennis shoes and who chatted on a new cellular telephone equipped with a popular R&B ringtone.
  
  While glancing over her Patient chart, I happened to notice that her payer status was listed as "Medicaid"! During my examination of her, the patient informed me that she smokes more than one costly pack of cigarettes every day and somehow still has money to buy pretzels and beer.
  ...
  And, you and our Congress expect me to pay for this woman's health care?
  
  I contend that our nation's "health care crisis" is not the result of a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. Rather, it is the result of a "crisis of culture", a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on luxuries and vices while refusing to take care of one's self or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance.
  
  It is a culture based on the irresponsible credo that "I can do whatever I want to because someone else will always take care of me". Once you fix this "culture crisis" that rewards irresponsibility and dependency, you'll be amazed at how quickly our nation's health care difficulties will disappear.
  
  Respectfully,
  STARNER JONES, MDSee More — with Randy Wood.

  

  
  

  
  

  I saw almost the same letter to the president about two years ago, placed on Facebook by a Tea Party enthusiast. This letter elaborates and refines the doctor's complaint by claiming the cell phone is new and has a new ringtone. In this new letter, the patient says she smokes heavily, and eats pretzels and drinks beer. Seemingly, this refutes in advance a justification for the patient on the grounds that she has just fallen into poverty. 

  
  

  The careful contrivance and the fact that the letter comes from a site called "Obama Makes Me Puke," leads me to  think it's a fraud. So, does anyone know of a Doctor Starner Jones, or who Randy Wood might be? 

FEARLESS PREDICTIONS for 2013

And now it's time for FEARLESS PREDICTIONS, the feature of this blog in which I try to guess what will happen in the year to come.

Before we do that, however, let us take a quick look back at last year's predictions.

The big prediction from last year happened just as forecast. President Obama was re-elected and defeated Mitt Romney, who I called the "Stepford Republican." As we look back, it's easy to say the election result was obvious, but it seemed less so last December. Democrats kept control of the Senate and Republicans retained a majority in the House, as predicted. It's looking like more gridlock in Washington, also as the 2011 edition of this blog said it would.

On the other hand, Charlie Sheen did not marry any of the women in show business I named, or anyone's mother/daughter/sister or other relative.

So, last year's score was pretty  good, but hardly perfect. Here's this year's forecast, which I trust will be better.

First, an  easy one. There will be a natural disaster somewhere on our planet sometime in 2013. This could be an earthquake, a flood, a hurricane, or a volcanic eruption, but whatever it is, we Americans will give it scant attention unless it happens in our country. Some politician will call it God's will and blame it all on gay marriage.

Now it gets a little harder. The "financial cliff" will turn out to be much ado about nothing. A last minute deal will be reached which will allow the filthy rich to get even filthier, and the national debt will continue to grow. There will be another big fight about the debt ceiling, which most people will greet with a yawn.

President Obama will get to make another Supreme Court nomination when Ruth Bader Ginsberg retires from the court. This will bring about another fight in the Senate, but the nominee will be confirmed.

Hillary Clinton also will retire from public life and devote herself to scrap-booking.

The Keystone pipeline project will win White House approval. Construction will begin as soon as sufficient private property is condemned by state governments. There will be no appreciable effect of the project on the nation's unemployment rate, and no spills during the year, prompting conservative politicians to call environmentalists "Nervous Nellies."

The unemployment rate will fall gradually through the year and be below six percent by next December. At the same time, the stock market will go up, and the Dow will close 2013 above the 15,000 mark. Republicans will insist that's not nearly good enough.

I hate to say it, but as American soldiers are drawn out of Afghanistan the Taliban will become more and more influential there. By year's end, President Obama will have to make a difficult choice between allowing them to gain complete control over the country or making an open-ended commitment there.

Likewise, the North Korean missile program will require a concerted international response, which, as you know, never really happens. The Obama administration will try to use diplomacy and an involved carrot and stick approach with the Koreans, while Congressional saber-rattlers call for  military action against the regime there. Korean rockets capable of carrying nuclear warheads to the United States will be built by year end.

Charlie Sheen will finish 2013 still single. Lindsey Lohan will have more trouble with the law, but her very expensive attorneys will keep her out of jail.

"Lincoln" will sweep the Oscars, winning all four of the most important awards.

The Powerball lottery will have its first billion dollar prize. I'll buy five tickets, but not one of my numbers will be a winner.

Despite re-stocking their team, the Boston Red Sox will finish the baseball season with a losing record. Ditto the Colorado Rockies.  The 2013 World Series will see the Toronto Blue Jays defeat the Atlanta Braves.

Violet Baker Baril will go through "terrible twos," and emerge by year's end as a delightful child. (She's always delightful to me, but I recognize that my opinion might not be entirely objective.)

The Curiosity rover on Mars will discover more complex molecules, but no definitive evidence of life there. Many more exoplanets will be found, including several "Goldilocks" ones, capable of engendering life more or less as we know it.

All of Kris' cats will survive 2013. None of them will require expensive medical care.

My children, nieces and nephews will all be gainfully employed for most of 2013.

We're going to have a white Christmas here in Colorado, with snow on Christmas day.

Kris and I will make a trip east during the year, and will journey to Nevada for our anniversary and to Hawaii for her sixtieth birthday in December. (The trips are already booked, so this is an easy one.)

I plan to leave my library job, and will devote myself to volunteer work.

Newtown Connecticut

The terrible shooting deaths at an elementary school in Connecticut have been much in the news the last few days, and almost everyone has weighed in with an opinion about how to stop such awful carnage. Personally, I am nearly in despair about the bloodshed and the deaths of little children, and have hesitated to say  anything about it myself because the bitterness and cynicism I am feeling would shock my family and friends, possibly including me.

Some time ago, in another post, I mentioned that the first funeral I ever attended was for a kindergarten boy who had shot himself to death with his father's gun, carelessly left in a dresser drawer. It happened just about this time of year, and I recall Sister John commenting to us about how sad that family would be on Christmas day without their child. Multiply that by all the devastated families in Newtown, and Aurora, and in Wisconsin, and I can't even remember the other places where there has been horrible violence committed with firearms.

Everyone seems to have an opinion concerning why this happens in America, and why it doesn't  happen so often in other places. Reactions vary across a spectrum. I saw a Facebook comment that said, "Fuck the Constitution. Twenty children are dead!" Another writer, using mostly capital letters, insisted "Gun control doesn't work and is not the answer!" Still others note the presumed autism of the murderer and claim that better public mental health care would have prevented the tragedy.

Pushing other agendas, there have been comments that banning prayer in public schools is responsible for these mass shootings, or that the deaths of inoffensive children is somehow God's judgement on America for allowing gay people to marry. The nincompoops of the Westboro Kansas Baptist Church plan to picket funerals to argue that point.

The sad fact is that although we will fulminate about these deaths and accuse each other of all kinds of base motives, nothing will change and there will be another massacre next year that will prompt more finger pointing and recriminations and the same the same horror will play out time after time until we are all under ground. (There. Is that bitter and cynical enough for everyone?)

I can't write any more about this and will have to wait a day or two before deciding whether to post it.

Remembering Lincoln

Last weekend, Kris and I went to the movies to see "Lincoln," the biopic directed by Stephen Spielberg, with Daniel Day-Lewis and Sally Fields as the title couple. The movie focuses on the last three months of Abraham Lincoln's life and his fight to get the proposed Thirteenth Amendment through the House of Representatives. In addition, the Lincoln's had to confront the desire of their oldest son, Robert, to enlist in the Union army.

Much of the material for the movie comes from Doris Kearns Goodwin's massive history of Lincoln, Team of Rivals. Principal among the erstwhile rivals was William Seward, played in the movie by David  Strathairn. Early in the Lincoln presidency, Seward had learned that Lincoln was a superior politician, and by 1865 had developed an important but subservient role in the president's administration. In the movie, he is Lincoln's foil, giving sensible advice that Lincoln considers but rejects in order to pursue longer range objectives.

By January 1865, the Civil War was moving towards its end. Confederate forces in Virginia were greatly outnumbered and pinned to the trenches before Richmond and Petersburg. What forces the rebel nation could still muster in South and North  Carolina were nearly overwhelmed by the army of William Tecumseh Sherman. Still, to win a final victory would be the work of who knew how long and cost who knew how many lives.

And there hung one of Lincoln's problems. The Lincolns had produced four children in their marriage, all boys. One son, Edward, died as an adolescent in the 1850's and another, Willie, passed away after a short illness, possibly cholera, in February, 1862. Both parents were devastated by the loss. Now Robert would be risking his life, and Mary  pulls no punches telling Lincoln that she could not survive his loss, and that as president he had to prevent Robert's enlistment.

Could Lincoln use his powers as president to keep his own son from danger when so many other sons were serving in the front lines, or had already been killed or  injured? Although the movie doesn't say so explicitly, we know, and it shows, that Lincoln found a place for Robert on General Grant's staff.

In other words, Lincoln compromised. Robert was not entirely out of danger, but was not among the assault forces that finally shattered the Confederate lines in April 1865.

This was a subplot, though. The main plot line of the film dealt with Lincoln's efforts to get the proposed Thirteenth Amendment passed. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation had freed all slaves in areas of the country in rebellion, but Lincoln could not be sure the Supreme Court would uphold his action once the war was over. (In fact, secession and the Confederate government were the death blow to slavery, in my opinion. Part of the absurdity of secession was that it was undertaken to preserve the "southern way of life," including slavery, but the black Americans themselves would never have stood for the "peculiar institution" if they knew they could escape to the north without any threat of being captured there.)

Almost all the Democrats and a few Republicans in the House were opposed to the Amendment. (Remember, a measure must pass both houses of Congress by a two-thirds vote and be ratified by the state legislatures of three-fourths of the states to become an amendment.) In January 1865 Lincoln and his aids judged they were twenty votes short in the House. A number of Representatives had been defeated in the 1864 elections and would be out of Congress by the end of 1865, but were still serving at the beginning of the year. Most of these were Democrats, so the logical question, posed to the president by Seward, was, why not wait for the new Congress with more Republicans, when passage would be much easier?

Lincoln decided he could not wait. If the war ended in 1865 and a measure of normality was restored, there would be endless delays in Congress. So, the horse-trading began. Lame duck congressmen were looking for jobs, and Lincoln had jobs to give. Gradually, the deficit in votes was reduced, but still Lincoln didn't have enough votes as the time for the crucial tally neared. Lincoln inserted himself directly into the process, quietly meeting reluctant congressmen to urge passage, but was rebuffed on more than one occasion.

Finally, Lincoln had to deal with Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones), congressman from Pennsylvania, who wanted to use the amendment as a springboard, to produce real racial equality in America. Lincoln knew he could never win the support of the nervous Democrats unless the amendment focused solely on the political status of black Americans, not their social status, so Stevens had to be muzzled.

Eventually, Lincoln won. He kept his own Republican party together by restricting - at least in public - the scope of the amendment, and won over enough Democrats by a combination of his persuasive powers and a little political grease. He is able to tell a delegation from the southern states that the amendment will win ratification and that slavery is ended once and for all.

There is a little postscript or epilogue. Lincoln's second inaugural is seen and Lincoln says his wonderful closing sentences, "With malice towards none, with charity for all, let us bind up the nation's wounds." A month later, he and Mary go to Ford's Theater for a pleasant evening out.

The acting performances were superb. The costuming really evoked the 1860's. Spielberg, who is known for the dazzling light effects in his movies, uses all natural light, or candle and lantern power, which adds to the feel of a bygone time. Last, I think they stayed true to the facts of the time, telling a complicated story with grace, and letting Lincoln's humor - often of the barnyard variety - show through.

Go see it. You'll be glad you did. (By the way, it's a sad commentary on our times that the vampire movie "Twilight" has been running about seven times the gate receipts of "Lincoln.")

A Reminder of the Season

Just a little reminder tonight about the spirit of  Christmas from Charles Dickens.

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.
“Spirit! are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more.
“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!”
“Have they no refuge or resource?” cried Scrooge.
“Are there no prisons?” said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. “Are there no workhouses?”
The bell struck twelve.
Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of old Jacob Marley, and lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like a mist along the ground, towards him. 

Jamestown Island

Thirty years ago, in 1982, I was employed as the Natural Resources Management Specialist at Colonial National Historical Park. To be truthful, I didn't know much about natural resource management, though I was trying to learn as much  as possible.  Only later did I find out I had been about the seventh choice for the job. I suppose they were scraping the bottom of the baril when they hired me.

At that time, the National Park Service decided that there should be a new General Management Plan for the park, an effort undertaken once about every twenty years that specifies what the park managers should do until the next management plan is made. Often as not, none of the management recommendations are implemented, so they could save a lot of time and effort by simply copying the old plan every twenty years and calling it new. Lack of money is the reason the plans don't get accomplished.

But in 1982 we all went through the exercise, talking about all the wonderful visitor services we could provide and management actions we could take if only there was any money  to do so. Near the end of the whole process, there was a team meeting, almost a wrap-up session, and one of the planning professionals asked, "Is there a long-term problem we could be addressing here?"

I hadn't been invited to prior meetings, but was at the table for this one, and naively answered, "Well, Jamestown Island is actually sinking."

"Oh," said the planner, "Well, what about traffic congestion? Could we talk about that?"

Shortly afterward, I was called into the superintendent's office. It's almost never a good thing to be called into the superintendent's office, especially if the superintendent doesn't like you, and this one clearly didn't like me. (I know, I know, I might be the most likable  person on the planet, but the sad fact is that there are people who just don't  take to a fellow, no matter how much of a mensch he might be.)

Anyway, the superintendent didn't waste time on amenities, but asked me how I knew the island is sinking. I pointed out some minimal data and repeated what a geology professor had told me, that Jamestown is at the southern end of a tectonic plate stretching north  to Pennsylvania and the plate is gradually tipping, lifting Philadelphia and sinking Virginia.

"Well," he said, "I didn't come here to preside over Jamestown sinking into the ocean. What are you going to do about it?"

This was one of those moments when it didn't pay to answer too quickly. But I was already  on shaky ground with the man and figured I hadn't too much to lose. So I decided to just tell the unvarnished truth. "I suppose we could try to think of some way to jack up the island," I ventured. "It's completely unfeasible, of course. Or, we could build a kind of coffer dam around it to hold back the water. That would be an engineering project costing what, billions of dollars? Or, we could just take lots of  photographs, document everything we can think of and let the island go."

I was dismissed from his office rather bruskly.

I left Colonial National Historical Park a few years later and retired from federal service in 1997. I don't think I've been back to Jamestown in the fifteen years since then. I would be curious, though, to see whether the shoreline is obviously different now, and what, if anything, the Park Service is doing about it.

That superintendent has gone to his reward. I'll bet there's been yet another General Management Plan in the years since 1982.

Jesus in History

Recently I read Bart D. Ehrman's book, Did Jesus Exist, subtitled The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. Ehrman is professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, and describes himself as a religious agnostic.

His approach to the question of Jesus' existence is as a professional  historian. What are the sources that talk about Jesus, are they verifiable, immediate, and disinterested?  For that matter, how do we know anything that supposedly happened in years gone by really did occur? Is it less reasonable to think Jesus existed than to believe Julius Caesar walked the earth, or Alexander the Great, or even further back in time, Hammurabi, or Ramses, or any of the other pharaohs? Do people who doubt Jesus was a flesh and blood man also question the existence of King David, or any other figure of antiquity?

The argument that there was a Jesus, viewed from a skeptical historical viewpoint relies on the multiplicity of the sources concerning him, at least one from a (more or less) Jewish writer, Josephus. Though Ehrman thinks Josephus' short paragraph about Jesus was doctored by Christians hundreds of years after it was first written, to affirm Jesus as the messiah, he does accept the bare bones of it as a recognition that there was a man named Jesus who lived in Galilee, was a wandering apocalyptic preacher, and who was executed by the Romans at the behest of the Jewish governing council, the Sanhedrin.

Reinforcing this, Ehrman points to Paul, who wrote that he tried to suppress the proto-Christian followers of Jesus, until his own conversion, which Ehrman says took place about 32 or 33 in the Common Era, that is only two or three years after Jesus' death. Paul claims he went to Jerusalem very shortly after that and spent two weeks with Cephus, meaning Peter, and James, the brother of Jesus. There his belief in Jesus as the messiah was confirmed.

Paul's writings constitute a substantial part of Ehrman's evidence about Jesus. Remember, he says, the epistles of Paul pre-date the gospels. They were written by a man who knew some of the followers of Jesus personally. (One  biographer of Paul claims the  "apostle of the gentiles" was a Pharisee, and might have been in Jerusalem at the time Jesus was put through his agonizing death. Perhaps he even witnessed it from afar.)

Another proof comes from the almost incontrovertible evidence that Pontius Pilate was a real person, and was the Roman prelate in Judea at the time Jesus was there. This lends at least some credence to the gospel stories.

Professor Ehrman spends considerable time in the book delving into the source documents for the gospel of Mark, the "Q" document and others now lost. He also cites the recent discoveries of other fragmentary gospels or collected sayings of Jesus which were discarded, or suppressed, by the early Christian leaders.

A last indication that Jesus lived is, ironically, his death. The Jewish vision of a messiah was as both a purifying prophet and a worldly king and conqueror who would chase away the unjust - that is the Romans -  and would institute a new heavenly kingdom on earth. It hardly was seen as a man executed for alleged blasphemy. Crucifixion was a disgrace. To believe the messiah had died on a cross was a radical departure from the accepted idea of what he would be like. Nobody would make up such a thing.

I'm convinced. I personally never doubted that there was a Jesus. As my skepticism has grown through the years, I have come to dismiss the miracles, exorcisms and cures of the gospels, but the charismatic apocalyptic preacher Ehrman describes sounds very believable to  me.

By the way, since it's Christmas season, Ehrman rains on our parade by saying he completely rejects the gospel accounts of Jesus' birth in Matthew and Luke. No choir of angels, no shepherds keeping watch, no kings/wisemen/magi, no virgin birth, no birth in Bethlehem for that matter. Ehrman says there is no evidence that Caesar Augustus ever conducted a census, therefore no reason for Joseph and Mary to go there.

In a previous post, I mentioned The Cherry Tree Carol, the first lines of which say, "When Joseph was an old man, an old man was he, he married virgin Mary, the queen of Galilee." Joseph's supposed greater age is used to explain the biblical references to Jesus' brothers as children from an earlier marriage. The other explanation is that in those days of extended families, cousins were called brothers. Neither argument seems very persuasive to me. 

Getting Ready for Christmas

The Huffington  Post has taken a timeout from discussing politics and religion to bring us someone's list of the fifteen greatest Christmas carols and hymns. Here they are, probably in no particular order, with presumed dates of composition.

Away In a Manger (1885)

The Holly and the Ivy (1710)

Ding Dong Merrily on High (1589)

Hark! the Herald Angels Sing (1739)

It Came Upon a Midnight Clear (1849)

Silent Night (1816)

The Twelve Days of Christmas (1842)

O Holy Night (1847)

Good King Wenceslas (1853)

Once in Royal David's City (1848)

The First Noel (1800)

O Come All Ye Faithful (1751)

I Saw Three Ships (1700)

We Wish You a Merry Christmas (1640)

Joy to the World (1719)

Well, that's the list. It struck me looking at it that there's a heavy emphasis on carols written in the nineteenth century, and especially the 1840's. That's also the decade that gave us Clement Moore's poem "A Visit from Saint Nicholas," and Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," which together revolutionized the modern Christmas holiday. There are six carols that were sung prior to the 1800's, and no twentieth century Christmas songs on the list.

As a boy, I was told that Martin Luther composed "Away in a Manger," and therefore it was not something a good Catholic could enjoy. I assume the church is well past such parochialism by now, or further research has proved Luther was not its author.

Some songs had to be left off the list, of course. Among the earlier Christmas carols, they might have included "The Coventry Carol," or "The Cherry Tree Carol." The "Cherry Tree" includes the interesting idea that Joseph was much older than Mary, thereby explaining the references to Jesus' brothers in the Bible as Joseph's children from a first marriage. More on that some other day.

Two nineteenth century carols that didn't make this reviewer's cut are "We Three Kings," and "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen." Just as an aside, Simon and Garfunkel did a very nice a capella version of "Gentlemen" on one of their albums. You can probably find it on the Internet. 

Most of these carols celebrate the birth of Jesus. "The Holly," and "The Twelve Days" do not, and "I Saw Three Ships" somehow puts Jesus and "his lady," meaning his mother, on a boat. This isn't the case with more recent Christmas songs, however. There were some lovely Christmas songs in the first half of the century, most especially "White Christmas," and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." The latter has a very wistful quality associated with soldiers missing from the Christmas holidays and the people they love, lonely at home. 

Even more recently - in my own lifetime - are the children's songs, "Frosty the Snowman," and "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer," that completely ignore the religious celebration of Christmas. Descending into what must be called God-awful songs, the last decade or two have given us "Grandma Got Run Over. . .," and "I Want a Hippopotamus. . . ."

Last year's Paul Simon song, "Getting Ready for Christmas," is several cuts above those, and provided the title for my little post, but it probably won't endure.

Every generation re-invents the Christmas holiday. New customs are adopted and older ones often fade away. We don't eat figgy pudding or dance reels on Christmas eve as young Ebenezer Scrooge did, and our 2012 way of keeping Christmas will undoubtedly seem quaint to our children and grandchildren, and so be it. 

At my house, when I was a boy, Christmas was a time of some tension and an annual contest between my parents. Though my father thought the expression "Keep Christ in Christmas" was trite, he was determined not to let the whole Santa Claus aspect of the season overshadow Christmas mass. My mother, on the other hand, liked the whole secular part of Christmas, and wanted us to have the toys and games that dad disapproved of. The two concepts are intertwined to a point where one always seems to diminish the other, and the culture as a whole always seems to win. Dad retreated with what good grace he could muster, even trying to smile as we tore into Christmas packages very early on Christmas morning and had to be dragged away from the tree for breakfast and church.

Years later I suggested that gifts be exchanged on  Christmas eve or Christmas afternoon and Christmas dinner might be eaten at the same times so Christmas morning could be devoted to church. He seemed to like the idea, so I'll pass it along to those of you who have children in the house.

And now, happy Thanksgiving, avoid all stores on Friday, and begin getting ready for Christmas. 

Oh, by the way, Meav, one of the Celtic women, does a very pretty "Silent Night" with the lyrics in Gaelic. It's really worth finding.

Socialism

My daughter posted recently on Facebook concerning the recent election and its aftermath, and was roundly condemned as a SOCIALIST (the reader's capitalization) by one of her readers. Briefly I was quite angry about the characterization, but then decided to just consider the source.

It got me thinking about how I treated socialism and communism when I was teaching western civilization. What follows is a short summary of what I said.

At about the beginning of the nineteenth century, a movement began in Europe and spread to the United States that came to be called Utopian Socialism. These Utopians believed that communal living was the most likely way to produce happiness and prosperity. Here in America, the best remembered of the communes was New Harmony Indiana. Work there was to be done willingly according to the skills of the residents, and proceeds were to be shared according to individual needs as determined by the community. In most communes,  people lived in family apartments or separate houses but usually ate communally and spent leisure time together. There probably was daycare for small children.

Outsiders often despised them. Part of the reason may have been the way in which the communes approached self-sufficiency, at least in staples, but I think what really got the goat of neighbors was suspicion about the sexual activities that might have been taking place in the communes. (That's  also a large part of what caused the animosity between the early  Mormons and their neighbors, but that's another story.)

These communes didn't last very long, by and large. Arguments about workloads and distribution of resources, coupled perhaps to the propensity of people living and working together to form romantic liaisons, brought them down.

By the 1840's they were mostly gone. That didn't mean, however, that people weren't still in favor of a more just distribution of the rewards of life. The hereditary aristocracies of Europe, along with the newly rich capitalists there and in America, were clearly taking the lion's share of the wealth created by laboring people.

Enter Karl Marx, a German who spent most of his life in England, working away on his analysis of economic history, living in poverty, supported in part by Friedrich Engels. Marx insisted that his interpretation was scientific, and he regarded the Utopian Socialists as foolish dreamers. According to Marx, history was moving inexorably towards real democracy. In the dim past, humanity was ruled by tyrants, but gradually a noble class had arisen which forced the absolute monarchs to share power and economic rewards with them. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, economic power had been seized to a large extent by a new class of entrepreneurs - capitalists - who further democratized things. It remained only for the proletariat - workers - to finally widen the economic democracy by seizing the resources of the earth and the man-made means of exploiting them. Then a great new day would begin in which everyone would share the fruits of labor, from each according to his ability to each according to his needs.

But of course the current possessors of wealth would not surrender peacefully, so a violent revolution would be needed. This, Marx seemed to believe, would not have to be protracted or very bloody. Until then, the resources would inevitably be concentrated into fewer and fewer hands as businesspeople were squeezed out of the middle class (read bourgeoisie) into the ranks of the workers.

Marx defended his theory tirelessly. Anyone who offered any adjustments to it was attacked vociferously. Still, as years passed, many people who accepted parts of Marx's analysis started to reject parts as well. Most particularly, socialist parties rose in Europe that believed in Marx but not in violent revolution. Socialist success would come through political organization leading to victory at the ballot box. Some of these people were ready to take whatever little triumphs they could, winning improved conditions for working people gradually. By the early years of the twentieth century they were a force to be reckoned with in European politics.

I won't go into the Russian socialists and communists here, except to say that Lenin turned Marx on his head with his theory of a "vanguard of the proletariat," and that revolution could come first in a comparatively backward country like Russia. (In fact by Lenin's day there was a large class of urban working people in Russia.)

Well, I would ask my students, what do you think? Do you see our own country as a place where wealth is being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands which care only about monopolizing resources, or do you see opportunities for clever people to prosper in ways that the financial oligarchs never anticipated?

And that's about it. I'm just left wondering if my daughter's critic knows any of this or is just throwing out an epithet for someone he disagrees with.

Wildlife

Kris and I went for a short hike this  afternoon at the state park near our home. We made it an easy walk, as the weather is cold and the sky  is overcast today. We had a little bit of snow this morning, though it melted off quickly, as November snows will. There were a few prairie dogs out and we saw two deer as we were leaving, but it was largely uneventful.

As we were driving into the park, however, Kris told me that a mountain lion was spotted in the park last week.  This big cat was near two of the hiking trails - not the ones we were on - and that it's the first time a lion was seen at such a low elevation since the park was established in 2006. We speculated a bit, thinking it might be a young animal who has just left its mother and is trying to establish a home range.

Neither of us has ever seen a mountain lion in the wild. It would be the event of the year for us to do so. Kris has seen at least one bobcat in the park, but I've never seen one of those either. In fact, she's ahead of me in spotting bears, eagles and several other species here in Colorado.

I try not to be jealous.

Earlier this week, though, on another much longer hike I took by myself, I did see a yearling mule deer buck. It was a two-pointer the way we count the antler points here in the west, and it didn't seem at all concerned about me. In fact, it let me get within about five feet of it. In all the tromping around Jamestown Island I did when I worked for the National Park Service, I never was able to get so close to a living wild deer. I almost could reach out and touch it.

So now we're home for the rest of the afternoon, flopping, and looking forward to a quiet evening together as old married people do. Here's hoping your evening will be as tranquil and as happy.

The Motley Economy

Morgan Housel, the "Motley Fool," has published an article in which he rates the most recent nineteen presidents - that is from Theodore Roosevelt to Barack Obama - on five economic criteria.Here are his ratings, with some commentary of my own. Statistics for October 2012 are not included.

1. Best president for stock market performance. Stocks went up more rapidly when Calvin Coolidge was president than for any other president on the list. Stocks averaged a 29.1 % growth rate during his tenure, easily outdistancing the runner-up, Gerald Ford, whose time in office saw stock market gains of 16.7%. Barack Obama is fourth at 15.2%.

Presidents, the Fool reminds us, are often given too much credit when the economy improves and take too much blame when things go badly. In that light, it's interesting to note that the worst stock market performance occurred when Coolidge's successor, Herbert Hoover, was in office, pursuing the same economic policies as Coolidge had.

President Obama's statistics are clearly improved by the steep market decline near the end of the Bush era of comparative laissez-faire.

2. Corporate profits. Readers might be surprised to find that corporate profits have been higher during the Obama presidency than at any time since 1901.

The Motley Fool notes, "A word here: Corporate profits were incredibly depressed from the financial crisis in January 2009, when President Obama entered office. That low starting point makes growth through today look massive. If, instead of January 2009, you use January 2008 profit levels as a starting base, average annual corporate profit growth under President Obama is 6.8%." Even allowing that, however, places Obama fifth among the nineteen presidents.

The two presidents Bush ranked seventeenth and eighteenth.

3. Real GDP per capita. Here President Obama did not do so well, ranking eleventh with a growth rate of 1.4%. The leader by a rather large margin was another Democrat, Franklin Roosevelt.  Like Obama, Roosevelt inherited a financial crisis, but unlike Obama, Roosevelt also was president during a major war that undoubtedly spurred income growth and productivity. Interestingly, second place on this list went to the now largely forgotten Warren Harding, also the beneficiary of a wartime boom.

The top ten split evenly between Democrats and Republicans, including Jimmy Carter in ninth position. The Bushes, father and son, are near the bottom of the list again. Only two presidents had negative growth, Theodore Roosevelt at -0.4% and Herbert Hoover at -8.2%

4. Inflation. Here a high number is not a good number. The president whose term experienced the highest inflation rate was Jimmy Carter, at 10.1% annually. To be sure, presidents must cope with all kinds of problems that affect the inflation rate. Wars, severe weather, depletion of resources or discovery of new resources are all largely outside the control of any president.

Having said that, the inflation rate during the Obama term is 2.2%. Economists mostly agree that some inflation is a desirable thing, if only to make things a little easier for debtors and as a way off making deflation less likely. Deflation, they say, is much worse than inflation, in that it shuts down bank lending and crushes debtors under the double burden of paying off loans that carry interest with money that becomes more and more valuable. The Obama rate comes just between Bush the Younger at 2.3% and Theodore Roosevelt at 2.0. There actually was deflation during the 1920's with Presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. President Nixon, who was almost obsessive in his stated desire to fight inflation, saw an average annual rate of 6.2%.

5. The unemployment rate. Mitt Romney has based much of his candidacy this year on the unemployment problem, but statistics indicate the unemployment rate at the end of September 2012 is exactly the same as it was in January 2009 when Barack Obama took office. Eight presidents saw a falling unemployment rate during their terms and nine presided during years when the unemployment rate went up. Once again, Franklin Roosevelt had the best record, but his performance must be mentioned in the context of the terrible situation he inherited and World War II, when there was virtually full employment.

Holding the line at 7.8% as President Obama has done, might not seem like much of an achievement, but as the campaign ads claim, the economy was contracting drastically in January 2009. It rocketed up to 10% within a few months. That being the case, it's clear that the unemployment rate has been falling slowly during the last three years of the Obama term.

Unemployment is a lagging economic indicator. Employers don't hire until existing inventories are nearly all gone and cash on hand is growing. Both the stock markets and the corporate profit rates indicate that has about happened now. Whoever wins the presidential election can expect a lower unemployment rate next year. A simple look around at the increasing construction pace confirms it.

So, how do we sum up?  I'll do it in one sentence. There really is no economic case for replacing President Obama.

Hamlet

A couple of nights ago, I watched a BBC production of "Hamlet," featuring David Tennant as Hamlet, and Patrick Stewart as Claudius and old Hamlet's ghost. This production is set in the 20th century, allowing the players to wear modern clothes, and giving the production a kind of immediacy. I liked it very much. Tennant is nearly overwhelming in the title role, and Patrick Stewart is an urbane, almost sympathetic villain.

I wondered as I watched, what had happened at Elsinore before the play began. Hamlet obviously holds his dead father in high regard and is extremely distressed that his mother Gertrude has married the old king's brother only a few months after old Hamlet's sudden death. But Hamlet's opinion of his father might not square with what other people thought. In fact, as I remember, old Hamlet drops a very broad hint that he's now in hell.

Perhaps he was a very bad man and a very bad king. Maybe he and Gertrude were unhappy together. We might guess that Gertrude and Claudius were attracted to each other while old Hamlet still lived. Later in the play, when Claudius confesses to the audience that he did indeed kill the old king, he says his motives were ambition and lust. So he wanted his sister-in-law, even if she didn't yet return his love.

Now about the opening scenes, when the ghost appears to Marcellus, Bernardo, and Horatio. As a schoolboy, I always pooh-poohed the ghosts and witches in Shakespeare as figments for a credulous crowd, fantastic and foolish to modern readers. Now, grown-up and a little more understanding of both playcraft and psychology, I get that the supernatural characters are figments, but occurring within the characters' own minds. Hamlet imagines his father's ghost, meaning he has been moping about the old man's death and it suddenly crosses his  mind that his father was murdered and his uncle did the deed. In fact the whole opening of the play might be considered to have happened as Hamlet's musings.

I'd be willing to bet I'm not the first person to have thought of this. Readers might well be thinking, "Well, he finally figured it out," as they read this blog. If that's the case, please just chalk this post up as the belated insight of someone who enjoys Shakespeare, but is only  just now putting things together.

And, get hold of that BBC production. It's really very good.

President Romney

Let us say, for the sake of argument, that Mitt Romney wins the presidential election on November 6. I  don't think it will happen, but I'm not nearly as sure about it as I was a month ago. President Obama might well have kicked away his re-election chances during that first debate on October 3.

But suppose there will be a Romney presidency. Let us also suppose that the Democrats will keep their present majority in the Senate. (GOP gains in North Dakota and Nebraska offset by Democratic wins in Maine and Massachusetts. There might be some other changes, but those appear to be the most likely.)  Further, let us say that despite Democratic gains in the House of Representatives, Republicans maintain a small majority there.

Romney  is  pledged to repeal Obamacare and replace it with "something common sense that works." Republicans in the House quickly will pass a repeal bill when the new Congress meets in January. It's possible that a couple of Democrats in the Senate would vote to repeal, so the Democrats will threaten a filibuster to prevent a vote. Republicans might let that happen, and we'd be treated to weeks of senators talking about their dear old mothers and reading recipes into the Congressional Record. The Senate rules are frankly ludicrous, allowing a minority to stop anything they don't like, and the Democrats have learned from past masters - the senate Republicans - how to thwart the majority.

Perhaps the Senate will vote to enforce cloture after weeks of acrimony and the repeal bill passes, to be signed immediately and gleefully by the new president. In truth, Romney has nothing to replace Obamacare, and we revert to the status quo of 2009. Insurance companies can once again refuse to cover illnesses because of pre-existing conditions, both real and bogus, young people must buy their own coverage beginning at age twenty-two, and women can be charged higher premiums than men. Millions of people lose their chance to buy insurance at all because of cost or prior poor health. Lifetime maximums will once again be written into policies.

Romney will ask the Congress to extend the "Bush era" tax cuts permanently, and Congress, with their eyes on future elections, will do so right speedily. Whatever Romney said about closing tax loopholes for wealthy taxpayers during his campaign, he will do nothing once in office and neither will Congress. Money made by money will continue to be taxed at a much  lower rate than money made by work. And despite what Romney promised, the annual deficit will get much larger.

Congress will move to cut federal spending to keep things from getting out of hand completely, but Republicans have never been averse to spending, whatever they say about it, so expect some very large construction projects to be approved, most especially the Keystone pipeline. Big construction projects mean big contracts, after all, with big profits for construction firms.

What will be on their chopping block, aside from Big Bird? The National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities come to mind. These barely  make a dent in federal spending, so what else? Since President Romney wants to buy more warships and other weapons, he and Congress will need to cut almost every other federal discretionary spending program, and make a huge reduction in force of the civilian government employees to even come close to balancing the budget. So, those of you who like to visit public lands, for example, don't expect to receive any interpretive walks or talks, or any rescue services for that matter. Don't expect that the medicines, food and water you use will be inspected adequately. Don't think the states will get any federal money for relief of indigent people. Say good-bye to any public funding for Planned Parenthood.

Do expect an attempt to weaken the Clean Air and Clean Water acts, and the Endangered Species Act could itself become endangered. Do expect an attempt to criminalize some or all abortions. (Republicans have promised that before, and haven't delivered on it. If I was more cynical, I'd say they deliberately don't want to pass such a law because then they wouldn't be able to use it as an issue, election after election.) Do expect them to  end any tax laws favorable to the development of renewable energy in favor  of new give-aways to the petroleum industry. Do expect President Romney to threaten Iran. Romney will meet the Obama timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan, despite having criticized Obama for setting a calendar date for doing so.

Expect the rich to get richer and the poor  to get poorer. Ain't we got fun.

Debate 2

Last night I watched the presidential debate. That is to say, I  sat at the library counter and watched the video on the CNN feed without any audio. So what follows is just an impression based on what my eyes saw.

President Obama was clearly much more alert and engaged than he was in Denver two weeks ago. That isn't saying too much, as he was almost asleep then. The president has a million dollar smile and it was on exhibit last night.

Likewise,  Mitt Romney looked happy and engaged for awhile. I remember thinking after fifteen minutes or so of the debate that he looked like a very good salesman who was trying to convince me I  should buy a product that I don't really need or want.

By the time an hour had gone by, I thought Romney was showing his age; he looked like a sixty-five year old man. There's nothing wrong  with that, he is sixty-five, but he looked tired for awhile. I wondered, "If this guy has to wake up at three in the morning for some crisis, will he be able to pull himself together?"

Romney rallied in the last half hour. He has a dash  of distinguished looking gray at his temples, and near the end reminded me of the kind of loan officer who smilingly tells people he cannot approve their loan applications. I also wondered how much Grecian Formula he has to  apply to get that carefully coiffed look. (What is it about Republican candidates, by the way, that they can't let us know they've gone gray? Ronald Reagan never showed a single strand of gray, even in his mid-seventies.)

CNN was running an electronic tape across the bottom of the screen, a kind of "approval-o-meter" of undecided voters. For the most part, these people seemed to like the responses of most men, though I thought they liked Obama's answers a little more. Oddly, it looked as though the undecided men liked Obama more and the women favored Romney, both marginally.

As I write this, I'm listening to a replay of the debate. I'm not an undecided voter. I have my mail-in ballot right here and will mark it for President Obama. I'll just say that I like the president's answer on energy much better than Romney's, I just wish Obama went further and said clearly that we must move towards a post-fossil fuel society by every means we can muster.

Ironically, the CNN replay broke for commercial, and there was an ad by "clean coal" claiming the Environmental Protection Agency is preventing full exploitation of coal resources.

I'm glad they finally  got around to discussing an environmental issue after concentrating almost exclusively on taxes and the deficit which, important though they are, by no means are all we need to  be concerned about.

Smut

Smut!

Give me smut and nothing but

A dirty novel I can't shut

If it's uncut

And unsubt-

le

I thrill

To any book like "Fanny Hill"

And I suppose I always will

If it is swill

And really fil-

thy

Oh, smut!

I'm a market they can't glut

I don't know what

Compares with smut

Hip-hip-hooray

Don't let them take it away.

That's a bit of a sarcastic song by Tom Lehrer, written about forty years ago. I recalled it last night as I was making the last sweep of the evening through the library where I work, and spied a novel called "Italian Stallions" on our new releases shelf. Curiously, I opened it to a random page and read two sentences, in which a young woman was inviting a man to "pop her cherry."

I was frankly embarrassed and put it back on the shelf. 

I don't think of myself as a  prude, and I am fervently against censorship. There is a place for such books, and I've read some of them during my life. I agree with the psychologists and sociologists who say that pornography can actually prevent sex crimes by providing a kind of pressure release valve for potential rapists and molesters. Also, some books that look at sex graphically have important literary value. Another verse of the Tom Lehrer song I quoted at the beginning of this post refers to "Lady Chatterley's Lover," by D.H. Lawrence, one of the more important writers of the twentieth century.

But in the public library, accessible to children and adolescents? I really have a problem with that. Library policy, by the way, is that we don't evaluate or censor what patrons want to borrow. When I issue a library card to a child, I often mention that it's up to the parent to monitor what the young person checks out, not up to the librarians.

Currently, the "Fifty Shades. . ." trilogy has been at the top of the best seller lists and our  library stocks all three volumes. Strictly to stay au courant, I read most of the first book, and found it just awful. The writing was a cut above romance novels and most dirty books, but the subject matter - sadism and masochism - left me disgusted. 

In a country of over 300 million people, there's probably nothing that doesn't happen from time to time. I'm sure there are hugely rich young men who have such psychological problems that they derive pleasure from inflicting pain on women, and women who are willing to take the pain to be close to their abusers. Some people, both male and female, get pleasure from pain. What troubles me so much about these books is that it suggests such things are the normal activities of the sexual world. Impressionable young people might get the idea that women generally take gratification from pain, and that the only  way a woman can attract or keep the interest of a man is to accept his abuse.  

My point here, and I do have one,  is that what for years was considered smut has gone mainstream. I don't mind that, in fact think that there's an important place for sexually explicit writing, but that the public library isn't it.

"Clean" Coal?

The following editorial was in yesterday's Washington Post.

The Washington Post

“I LIKE COAL,” Mitt Romney declared during last Wednesday’s presidential debate.
Both candidates have catered to coal-state voters, but Mr. Romney has been particularly full-throated in his pandering. Not only did he back the “clean coal” myth last Wednesday; in August he promised Ohio coal miners that he would save their jobs. “We have 250 years of coal,” Mr. Romney said then. “Why in the heck wouldn’t we use it?” His explanation for trouble in coal country is that President Obama has a wayward obsession with regulating the economy, resulting in an unnecessary “war on coal,” a term that popped up again last month in one of his campaign advertisements.

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His monument is all around D.C.

Mr. Romney is wrong on almost every point. The coal industry cannot and should not continue operating as it has, and Mr. Obama is not the reason. Cheap natural gas has gutted the economic case for burning coal. Climate change and coal-related pollution explain why that’s a good thing.
Natural gas is coal’s primary competitor, and with the increasing use of hydraulic fracturing to extract gas trapped in subterranean shale formations, its price has plummeted. Power companies used to dispatch gas-fired electricity last because it was the most expensive. Now the chief executive of Duke Energy, the country’s largest electric power holding company, says his firm uses coal as a last resort.
A study from the Brattle Group finds that coal use is more sensitive to the price of gas than to new government regulations. It projects that 59,000 to 77,000 megawatts of coal-fired power will come offline over the next five years, more than its 2010 estimate, despite the fact that, under Obama, the Environmental Protection Agency’s coal-plant regulations turned out to be more lenient than the researchers had expected. The power plants’ reason: low electricity demand and low natural gas prices. Brattle also calculates that a $1 drop in the price of gas would double the magnitude of coal-plant closings over the next five years.
Even if the price of natural gas rises somewhat, it will still be a major component of any rational, medium-term climate-change policy, since the transition from coal to gas is technologically easy and coal is particularly dirty. Part of the reason the EPA has written so many rules affecting coal is that burning it produces many types of pollution — not only carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to warming but also a noxious mixture of fine particles and gases, encouraging heart attacks, asthma and other ailments, which tax the economy in hospital costs, sick days and early death.
When the economics of energy help to redress environmental and public-health problems, the country’s leaders should cheer. They also should help those who depend on the industry prepare for transition, not tell them fairy tales. 

The Last of the Light Brigade

In 1854, as part of the Crimean War, now almost completely forgotten, a light brigade of English soldiers was foolishly ordered to charge a Russian strong point, and suffered heavy losses for no military advantage. If the charge is remembered at all today, it's because of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem, "The Charge of the Light Brigade." 

Thirty-seven years later, another English poet, Rudyard Kipling, also wrote about the brigade, the survivors of which had fallen on hard times back in Blighty. The poem pleads for better care of old veterans and suggests that private charity is not nearly enough to keep them in the dignity they deserve.

The Last of the Light Brigade by Rudyard Kipling

1891

There were thirty million English who talked of England's might,
There were twenty broken troopers who lacked a bed for the night.
They had neither food nor money, they had neither service nor trade;
They were only shiftless soldiers, the last of the Light Brigade.

They felt that life was fleeting; they knew not that art was long,
That though they were dying of famine, they lived in deathless song.
They asked for a little money to keep the wolf from the door;
And the thirty million English sent twenty pounds and four!

They laid their heads together that were scarred and lined and grey;
Keen were the Russian sabres, but want was keener than they;
And an old Troop-Sergeant muttered, "Let us go to the man who writes
The things on Balaclava the kiddies at school recites."

They went without bands or colours, a regiment ten-file strong,
To look for the Master-singer who had crowned them all in his song;
And, waiting his servant's order, by the garden gate they stayed,
A desolate little cluster, the last of the Light Brigade.

They strove to stand to attention, to straighen the toil-bowed back;
They drilled on an empty stomach, the loose-knit files fell slack;
With stooping of weary shoulders, in garments tattered and frayed,
They shambled into his presence, the last of the Light Brigade.

The old Troop-Sergeant was spokesman, and "Beggin' your pardon," he said,
"You wrote o' the Light Brigade, sir. Here's all that isn't dead.
An' it's all come true what you wrote, sir, regardin' the mouth of hell;
For we're all of us nigh to the workhouse, an' we thought we'd call an' tell.

"No, thank you, we don't want food, sir; but couldn't you take an' write
A sort of 'to be conbnued' and 'see next page' o'the fight?
We think that someone has blundered, an' couldn't you tell'em how?
You wrote we were heroes once, sir. Please, write we are starving now."

The poor little army departed, limping and lean and forlorn.
And the heart of the Master-singer grew hot with "the sconrn of scorn."
And he wrote for them wonderful verses that swept the land like flame,
Till the fatted souls of the English were scourged with the thing called Shamme.

O thirty million English that babble of England's might,
Behold there are twenty heroes who lack their food to-night;
Our children's children are lisping to "honour the charge they made --"
And we leave to the streets and the workhouse the charge of the Light Brigade! 

Civil Rights

A Tea Party web posting is criticizing black Democrats for their overwhelming support of President Barack Obama. It seems that a black actress who says she's voting for Mitt Romney for president has been the subject of hate mail, and accusations that she's deserting the candidate and party that fought for equality for all Americans.

The posting goes on to say that it was the Democrats who defended slavery, who were tied to the Ku Klux Klan, who fastened segregation on black Americans, who beat and lynched black men and abused black women, while the Republicans fought to secure civil rights and liberties for all Americans.

At least a part of that is true, but it doesn't come close to telling the whole story. Yes, southern Democrats and numerous northern Dems too, favored human race slavery. Even northern Democrats who went to war to preserve the Union by and large opposed  emancipation. Their slogan was, "The Union as it was, the Constitution as it is," meaning no amendment banning slavery.

In the aftermath of the war, the Klan, a terrorist organization if there ever was one, was closely allied with white southern Democrats. It's also true that a Republican president, Ulysses Grant, used the army, trying to eradicate the Klan, an effort that was soon abandoned by his Republican successor, Rutherford Hayes. Thereafter, neither party did much to protect black Americans, but it was the Democrats who instituted Jim Crow laws and kept them in force until the 1960's.

Speaking as a history teacher, I always made a point of telling my students that it was President Theodore Roosevelt and his  successor, William Howard Taft, who took some baby steps towards racial equality, including hiring some black civil servants, and their Democratic successor, Woodrow Wilson, who fired all the black government employees.

However, things were changing by the 1920's. In 1921, the new Republican president, Warren G. Harding, made a speech  in Birmingham Alabama, in which he said, "Let the black man vote when he's ready to vote," which was widely taken to mean, never. Meanwhile, a new Ku Klux Klan flourished in the 1920's, opposed by both  northern Democrats and Republicans. It's true that a resolution condemning the Klan was defeated at the 1924 Democratic convention, but the Democrats' party rules in those days required a two-thirds majority to  do much of anything, and the resolution did get almost that  large a majority.

By the 1940's, the northern Democrats were clearly the controlling factor in the party, though there remained an obstreperous fanatical minority of southern Democrats who could block civil rights legislation by filibustering the Senate. Nevertheless, President Harry Truman, a Democrat, integrated the armed forces. Southern Democrats were so upset they deserted Truman in 1948 to run their own presidential candidate, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, on what was widely called the Dixiecrat ticket. Truman won the election.

Dwight Eisenhower, the great hero of World War II, became president in 1953, as cracks appeared in the Democratic "solid south." Eisenhower had no publicly held position on race relations.

In 1953, shortly after President Eisenhower took office, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court died. Eisenhower quickly decided on Earl Warren of California as his nominee to be the new Chief. Eisenhower was aware that lawsuits were headed to the court challenging segregation in the public schools. At the first meeting of the two men, which took place at a breakfast meeting of southern Republicans, Warren was shocked when the president said quietly, "Look at these people. They're not bad people. They just want don't their precious little daughters going to school and being seated next to some big black buck."

Nevertheless, it was the Warren court, headed by a Republican, that struck down segregated schools in the Brown v.Board of Education decision. (The case for segregation, by the way, was argued by John W. Davis, who was once the Democratic party's candidate for president.)

Eisenhower did nothing to foster integration until 1957, when he sent the army to enforce a court order to  integrate Little Rock Central High School.

Campaigning in 1960, John F. Kennedy, who needed to carry at least a few southern states, said nothing about civil rights. Neither did Vice-President Richard Nixon, his Republican opponent. Instead they fussed about who would do more to defend two tiny uninhabited islands off the coast of China.

As the pressure to end segregation generally grew, with Freedom Riders, sit-ins, and attempts by black Americans to integrate southern universities, Kennedy tried to finesse the situation, sending U.S. Marshals to enforce the law, but withholding the army, even as civil rights leaders and workers were murdered. By 1963, however, he could not turn a blind eye to the struggle any longer, especially when mass arrests, police dogs and fire hoses were used on demonstrators  in Birmingham. Kennedy sent a civil rights bill to Congress that would ban segregation in most public accommodations. Southern Democrats in the Senate launched a filibuster.

It was president Johnson who guided the bill to passage, twisting every Senator's arm as hard as he could, aided to some extent by the Republican leader, Everett Dirkson. But the man who  was about to be nominated as the Republican party candidate for president, Barry Goldwater, voted against it.

This was a real sea change in American politics. It placed the Republican party, the party of Lincoln, in opposition to equal rights for black Americans. Now, I personally reject the idea that Goldwater was in any way a racist. He based his opposition on the premise that a businessman could decide who he wanted to do business with, and that was none  of the government's affair. But Strom Thurmond, the ex-Dixiecrat, left the Democrats and became a Republican. So too did millions of white southerners.

The election avalanche for Lyndon Johnson that fall swept over the entire country, except the states of  the old Confederacy, and Goldwater's home state of Arizona. The Democratic south was no more. Four years later, Richard Nixon, the political phoenix, won the White House using a "southern strategy" of trimming on the issue of racial equality. The south has been the most reliable Republican constituency ever since.

Nixon, ultimately cynical, used the image of aggressive black people to scare and infuriate whites. Probably his nastiest trick was to hire black women who characterized themselves as the "National Welfare Rights Organization," paraded at the 1972 Democratic convention and were as obnoxious as possible.

Democrats continued to win some elections in the south. Notably, in 1970, Reuben Askew of Florida and Jimmy Carter of Georgia both became governors, saying the time for segregation was past. Carter went on to win most of the southern states in his 1976 campaign for president, then lost almost all of them in 1980.

So now back to the original proposition. Is a black American who intends to vote for Mitt Romney in this year's election somehow betraying the best interests of the black community, and a black president? Is the Republican party the true defender of racial equality?

Answering the first question, I'd say certainly not. It's no more a betrayal for a black American to vote for Romney than it is for a white American to vote for Obama. (Like me, for instance.) Political polls indicate something like ninety-five percent of black Americans who vote will cast ballots for the president. That should be an indication that they know who will protect their rights, but the five percent who are voting Republican must also be accorded the presumption that they think they know what their own best interests are and those of our country.

The second question requires a little more thought and review of the historical record. I've just outlined that for you, my many readers. I'd say that until about ninety years ago the answer would have been yes. But Warren Harding, Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon turned the Republicans away from civil rights, while Harry Truman and succeeding Democrats redeemed their party's reputation before history.

Baseball

It's time to take a break from writing about politics or society in favor of something that truly makes a difference in our lives. I mean baseball,  of course.

I started following baseball in the spring of 1955 when my older brother Larry asked me what team I hoped would win the pennant. I really didn't have any idea what he was talking about, but he explained that we should be for  the Red Sox since we came from Boston. That seemed sensible to me - I was five years old - so I said we should be for them. Larry immediately told me the Sox had finished fourth the previous year, and I said I wished more people had voted for them. That required another explanation, that baseball is an athletic contest, not an election.

Later that spring, my father took Larry and me to Miami Stadium to see the hometown Marlins play the Montreal Royals. Pitching for the Marlins was Satchel Paige. I hardly remember the game, but I mark it as a great experience, seeing a legend of the game my very first time in a ballpark.

Lately I've been thinking about the changes in the game  since I first became a fan. Major league players are paid much much more now than they were when I was a boy. Back then, a retiring ballplayer knew he'd have to start a new career. Nowadays, even a couple of years in the big leagues should leave a careful man set for life.

The inflation in salaries and the huge increase in the sales prices of teams has meant a great increase in ticket prices. My first major league game at Fenway Park in 1964 cost $2.50 for a reserved seat. Fifty years later the same seat costs about twenty times as much.

What really has changed is sports medicine. Even in the 1960's, baseball players, especially pitchers, were described vaguely as having "sore" arms. Writing in 1969, Jim Bouton talked about the conflicting advice given to pitchers  - rest, or throw more, or run - strengthen your legs to strengthen your arm. Bouton told the story of another pitcher on the Houston Astros - I think Don Wilson - who always seemed to do well for about four innings, then fell apart and was hit hard. Bouton explained that Wilson was in pain. He could stand the pain for about four innings, but then he would alter his delivery as the pain became unbearable, lose velocity and the touch on his off-speed pitches, and suffer the consequences.

Nowadays, we hear about "Tommy John" surgery almost to the point of nausea. Even very young players - think Stephen Strasburg - have the operation, lose a year but come back with brand new fully warranted arms. In addition, players now are afflicted with other maladies we didn't hear about half a century ago. Strained obliques and concussion now remove players from lineups for extended periods of time. Back when, men played through such things, and the quality of play was not as high.

The other thing I see as a significant difference is the quality of playing field maintenance. I was surprised recently when looking at a highlight film of the 1964 All-Star game in St. Louis to note bare spots in the infield grass. You would never see that on a major league diamond now, and on very few minor league fields for that matter.

Baseball history has many stories of games decided by bad hops, players tripping over uneven places on the field. Mickey Mantle's career, for example, was nearly ended before it could really begin when he fell over a sprinkler head in right field at Yankee Stadium and damaged his knee. The Mick still had a mighty career, but was running on one good leg for the rest of his playing days.

Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. I just hope the Bosox can restock their team by next spring.

Obamney for President

This is a letter I received from my cousin Bob. I don't think he'll mind if I post it  here.


Dear Peter,

I read your "Debate" piece on your blog.

It's interesting that in 1960, people who listened to the Kennedy/Nixon debate on the radio thought Nixon won and people who watched on TV thought Kennedy won.

I listened on the radio as I drove from Ashland, MA to Canton, MA - about 45 min on back roads.
I then listened as I shaved in the bathroom.

Dianne watched on TV and thought Romney clearly won. My impression from the RADIO was that
it was a draw, albeit Romney DID come across as more electrifying and confident.

Later, on WBZ, host Dan Rea talked about Obama's 'BODY LANGUAGE' which I had obviously not seen.
This morning on radio that's the BIG thing being talked about...how Obama LOOKED. Those who WATCHED
whether they like Obama or not thought he did badly.

I wish Romney was not the chameleon that he is. He has been all over the place on SO many issues and
while he did not raise taxes in Mass he DID increase fees FOURFOLD. Fees SKYROCKETED. And,
he has gone from very pro choice to pro life and pro gay rights to somewhat anti gay rights. On the other
hand, I really mean what I wrote in the past about Obama. He is a very nice guy who in my opinion has
absolutely no business being President.

I know I have pledged I will never vote for Romney. As it gets SO close to Nov, I actually MAY "hold my
nose and vote for him" but if I do it will be with little enthusiasm.

BOB

My only suggestion is that, since Massachusetts is clearly not competitive, if you don't  like either major party  candidate, find someone else, write in your own name, leave the presidential vote blank to voice your protest, or vote that perennial favorite, Mickey Mouse.

For myself,  I'll just repeat what I posted earlier this year. If Romney was a successful governor of Massachusetts, why isn't he competitive there in the presidential race? And if he wasn't a successful governor, what's he even doing running for president?

The Debate

People make their voting decisions on vague impressions as much as they do by checking a list of positions to determine which candidate they agree with more often than not. For half a century historians have been telling us that Richard Nixon lost the 1960 election because he looked pale and tired in his first debate with John Kennedy. Nixon's famous five o'clock shadow emphasized his pallor and his tendency to sweat heavily made him look worse, compared with the cool calm collected (and covered in pancake make-up) Kennedy.

I doubt that's all of the story. Despite being tied in the  public's mind to a popular outgoing president, Nixon was defeated by a weakening economy in the last month of the 1960 campaign. He said as much himself in his memoir.

Still, people want to look at the candidates side by side, and last night Mitt Romney  looked better than President Obama. Fact checkers this morning are all over Romney's statements, pointing out the numerous places where his claims don't square with reality, but it must be conceded that he looked capable and confident as he spoke. A little too wordy, maybe, but as if he could hardly wait to get started as president.

Our current president looked like he wanted to take a nap. Why is his delivery  so halting, I asked myself. Why does he look down at his podium so much while Romney talks (and talks and talks and talks). He looked like he was tacitly agreeing with all Romney's criticisms of him. It was, frankly, the worst visual impression left by a presidential candidate since Michael Dukakis decided to go for a ride in a tank.

The question, I suppose, is did it make any difference. Polls indicate that ninety percent of the electorate has already decided how to  vote. Was Romney impressive enough either to secure the ten percent who are on the fence, or change the minds of anyone who had been leaning towards Obama?

This morning's Denver Post, headlining that Romney "won" last night's debate, contains an article about undecided voters. The paper hosted fifteen people who said they have not yet made up their minds, and interviewed them after it was over to measure their reactions.

Only one said she had climbed off the fence and now intends to vote for Romney. One other person said he now leans toward the Republican.

That leaves thirteen of fifteen still undecided. Here are a few other comments they made.

"I don't think either of them  said anything they haven't said before. They should have focused more on what they would do specifically in each situation. Romney kept saying he was going to cut costs, and I think it was bad that he couldn't say specifically what he would cut."

"Obama struggled, but he had the misfortune of taking over a bad situation.  Romney seemed more confident, but of course since he's the challenger he could be more confident. I'm still not swayed either way."

"Romney was more relatable to the middle class. Obama, it felt like he was on the defensive. I'm leaning more toward Romney now, and I wasn't expecting that coming in."

The Post reports that the undecided voters didn't like it when Romney criticized Obama but most of them felt Romney did the better job as a debater. If that doesn't make  sense to you, it doesn't to me either.

Enough. It's time to get started on my day. I have a deck to stain.