A lot of people are talking, kinda nostalgically, about "normal". I don't know that combination of wage slavery, kleptocracy and inequality is something we really want to return to but there it is. Be that as it may, that's not the subject here.
The calls for a return to "normalcy" and the repeated use of that word in respectable publications is one of my pet peeves. My peevishness isn't rooted in some imagined dedication to the tenets of the King's English. (Technically that should be the Queen's English but what the hell?) My peeve is rooted in our history and who should know it in detail. "Normalcy" simply is not an English word. The word is, normality.
Frederick Lewis Allen was a leading American literary figure and respected historian of the first half of the twentieth century. As long-time editor of Harper's Magazine, he was a kind of be-all, end-all in journalism circles. Rightfully so. As a historian, he wrote the very influential and informative, "Only Yesterday". It's very well written and I guess how interesting it is, is up to you. I liked it just as a diversion.
Isn't that nice of me to recommend something written over 85-90 years ago? Like most things of that era, it is in black and white but I think you'll like it. Now, here's the hook. There is a difference between recommended reading and required reading. If you're a journalist or historian or a public official concerned with making American policy, this is required reading. If you haven't read Allen you really shouldn't be commenting because your education is incomplete, inadequate.
"Only Yesterday" is a social and political history of the 1920s. The first presidential campaign of that decade was, Harding v Cox. Harding campaigned on the slogan, "A Return to Normalcy". That drove the eastern, intellectual establishment wild. It set off a debate about the fact "normalcy" just isn't a word and Harding's other nostrums and platitudes were so much bullshit of equal, dubious value. The Republicans went to great lengths to prove it was, indeed, a word and cited with straight faces, ridiculous sources going back to, in one laughable case, 1857. Lewis recounts that all with a straight face.
Harding won the election with just over 60% of the popular vote. It did turn out the most polite description of Harding could be, "a real piece of work". Two confirmed affairs. One, confirmed, illegitimate daughter. About half his cabinet went to federal prison and the other half probably should have. The one guy, Forbes, yes one of those Forbes, fled to Europe before being apprehended. It was credibly whispered Harding was assassinated in a sort of palace coup, with the connivance of his wife because he had discussed coming clean about the various scandals with his Vice-President, Coolidge. You can imagine his wife's motives. That's pretty funny and the list of names is a roll-call of FDR's "malefactors of great wealth". It's also not my point.
If you're a journalist or someone involved in public policy in the United States and you don't know the proper word and the anecdote proving the mistake, it means you haven't read Allen's book and screams your education is inadequate and your conclusions half-formed and dismissable. It really bothers me to see that in the best of circles and on the front pages of national publications. Hopefully, now it will bother you too.
Politics, current thought, not so current but pertinent affairs from an older guy's perspective. Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. Dr King
Monday, May 25, 2020
Sunday, May 17, 2020
Road Trip!
As I get older I wonder about us as younger men. I overheard Kurt, one time, describe me as, "about a half an outlaw motherfucker". I think he was probably the strongest man I ever met and I considered his comment to be high praise, indeed. In a way, I still do but 35 years later, I wonder.
I do know, had I not been that man then I would not be this man now. You can make of that what you will but it is true.
I was driving from my parent's home to where I lived in Phoenix, Arizona. I was part of the great, unmentioned migration from the Northeast Rustbelt to the Sunbelt in search of employment in the mid-1970s and '80s. In point of fact, it was a movement of economic refugees that's never been, in my opinion, adequately explored and it won't be here. I'd been home on vacation from the oppressive summer, desert heat. My lifelong friend, Joe ( Kurt's older brother) decided to go back with me, mainly because he had nothing better to do.
To ourselves and those who knew us we were different guys but to the casual, world at large we were pretty much the same guy. Early thirties, working-class, denim-clad, lean, long-haired, full beards. Forty years later, kinda scruffy, sorta rough lookin guys. We couldn't have been too bad, we always had good looking girlfriends. I'm not telling those stories either. Some of them are pretty funny but not today.
We were serious about the drive. It would seem scandalous now but we only had a half bag of reefer which we barely touched and only drank 3/4 of a case of beer between us on the 44-hour trip. The reefer was awful which set off an argument between me and Joe that would go on, half-seriously for a decade. I wanted to kick the guy's ass who had ripped us off. Joe was like. Oh forget it, he's been a life-long friend. It was 20 years before I would even speak to the guy again, over 10 dollars. Joe was right but I don't think I missed anything.
Serious. To that end, I showed up at Joe's parent's house to pick him up for the trip at about 5:15 in the morning. He was ready and loaded his suitcase and got in.
Then he said, " Oh wait, I forgot something." and went back in the house. After a minute he came back out with a brown paper bag and tossed it in the back seat and off we went. I didn't ask. It was too early in the morning to care.
Here's something you don't see anymore but 40 years ago was a commonplace. On long car trips, the little kids used to just bounce around the back seat and entertain themselves and often entertain the occupants of the cars behind them on the highway with little, improvised Punch and Judy shows.
Sometime that afternoon or maybe the next afternoon we were following such a family on the interstate. Joe gave that little chuckle he had and reached over the seat for the forgotten paper bag. He withdrew a Grover, from Sesame Street, hand-puppet he'd brought just for the occasion.
I do know, had I not been that man then I would not be this man now. You can make of that what you will but it is true.
I was driving from my parent's home to where I lived in Phoenix, Arizona. I was part of the great, unmentioned migration from the Northeast Rustbelt to the Sunbelt in search of employment in the mid-1970s and '80s. In point of fact, it was a movement of economic refugees that's never been, in my opinion, adequately explored and it won't be here. I'd been home on vacation from the oppressive summer, desert heat. My lifelong friend, Joe ( Kurt's older brother) decided to go back with me, mainly because he had nothing better to do.
To ourselves and those who knew us we were different guys but to the casual, world at large we were pretty much the same guy. Early thirties, working-class, denim-clad, lean, long-haired, full beards. Forty years later, kinda scruffy, sorta rough lookin guys. We couldn't have been too bad, we always had good looking girlfriends. I'm not telling those stories either. Some of them are pretty funny but not today.
We were serious about the drive. It would seem scandalous now but we only had a half bag of reefer which we barely touched and only drank 3/4 of a case of beer between us on the 44-hour trip. The reefer was awful which set off an argument between me and Joe that would go on, half-seriously for a decade. I wanted to kick the guy's ass who had ripped us off. Joe was like. Oh forget it, he's been a life-long friend. It was 20 years before I would even speak to the guy again, over 10 dollars. Joe was right but I don't think I missed anything.
Serious. To that end, I showed up at Joe's parent's house to pick him up for the trip at about 5:15 in the morning. He was ready and loaded his suitcase and got in.
Then he said, " Oh wait, I forgot something." and went back in the house. After a minute he came back out with a brown paper bag and tossed it in the back seat and off we went. I didn't ask. It was too early in the morning to care.
Here's something you don't see anymore but 40 years ago was a commonplace. On long car trips, the little kids used to just bounce around the back seat and entertain themselves and often entertain the occupants of the cars behind them on the highway with little, improvised Punch and Judy shows.
Sometime that afternoon or maybe the next afternoon we were following such a family on the interstate. Joe gave that little chuckle he had and reached over the seat for the forgotten paper bag. He withdrew a Grover, from Sesame Street, hand-puppet he'd brought just for the occasion.
I wish I smiled like that more often now.
Ya see, Joe was wrong. He did have something better to do and he was doing it.
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