Slashing NEA, NEH ...

So now we're reading that the new Trump budget is slashing spending for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities. There will not be much savings here--not much at all: The two combined are barely visible on a federal budget pie chart. A story today in the Chicago Tribune labels these cultural agencies (and two others under the gun) "negligible" in the overall federal budget. (Link to article.)

Rather than fling statistics around--rather than look at slices of pie charts--let me tell you a story.

In 1990 the National Endowment for the Humanities selected me to be one of a dozen secondary school teachers in the nation to attend a six-week summer seminar on Jack London out in Rohnert Park, California, not far from Glen Ellen, where London owned a ranch (now a park), the ranch where he died in 1916.

Leading our seminar was Prof. Earle C. Labor, one of the principal London scholars in the world. (His biography of London--based on a long life of scholarly ... labor--appeared in 2013. Jack London: An American Life is a wonderful book--detailed, accurate, accessible to general readers.) I was soon to discover, what a warm, engaging man Earle is. We were soon fast friends. And still are.

The NEH paid for me to drive out to California--provided a small living stipend--and, in its way, let me know that I was, well, important. I didn't know much about London at the time. I'd been teaching The Call of the Wild for a few years, had been reading London's other 49 books (!!), and was profoundly curious about this man and his work.

Day after day, I sat with Earle and with the other teachers (wonderful people), talking about what we'd read the night before. In the afternoons we would go on local trips (to the ranch and other relevant sites). And we each had a "project" to complete.

I settled on doing annotations for The Call of the Wild. Place-names, historical allusions to the Klondike Gold Rush, slang, names of characters--these are the sorts of things I began to research and annotate. It was a far larger project than I'd ever expected, and I knew I was going to be able to scratch only the surface of the topic. Earle understood this quite well. He was encouraging, and at the end of the summer he suggested I continue my work and publish my results in a new edition of Wild.

And so I did. For several years I chased down everything I could about that short novel, and in 1995 the University of Oklahoma Press published my The Call of the Wild, by Jack London: With an Illustrated Reader's Companion. It was full of old photographs, maps, charts. And many end notes and annotations.

Two years later the Press published a paperback version of the book--fewer photographs and notes--suitable for more general readers, classrooms, etc.  They also published my brief teacher's guide to the novel.

So ... all the work I'd done that summer--funded by the NEH--was now "out there"--available for all those other readers and teachers and students who could use it. And I hoped there would be many.

But the NEH and I were not through with each other. During the 1992-93 academic year, they awarded me one of fifty Teacher-Scholar Awards (one going to one teacher in each state)--an award my wife, Joyce, had won a few years earlier (always the follower, I!), an award that enabled me to spend a year doing more of the research for the editions of Wild I was working on.

In the summer of 1993 I got a research grant from the NEH to read the plays written by Shakespeare's contemporaries--a project that enabled me to enrich my students' experiences with the Bard--and to inform my writing about Shakespeare.

These grants led to other things: In 1997, I published with Scholastic Press (who also published that series about that little fellow Harry Potter!) Jack London: A Biography, a YA book that won some awards. But the best thing--It re-introduced many more young readers to London's astonishing life--and his varied works (only four of his fifty books are about dogs!).

So ... the National Endowment for the Humanities had a profound influence on my life, my career. It cost them very, very little, but it stimulated me, encouraged me, supported me as I sought both to satisfy my curiosity and improve my abilities to engage kids about Jack London, about Shakespeare, about reading and literature.

(Oh, I've also published (2012) a Shakespeare bio for YA readers on Kindle Direct. Thank you again, NEH.)

So ... the recent news about the Trump budget is that the administration and Congress are hoping to cut--drastically--the abilities of the NEA and NEH to fund and encourage people like me. And Joyce.

In my view this has not a thing to do with saving money but has everything to do with a kind of petty vindictiveness against those whom Trumpies like to label "elites." People like me. A retired schoolteacher. A writer. Living on a sufficient but hardly enriching pension. Hoping his health insurance will remain in force until his unrelenting cancer inevitably wins.

Frankenstein Sundae, 292

And yet another visitor—who was there at the same time as Trelawny—was Fanny Kemble, a member of the celebrated acting family, the Kembles, who lit the London stages for decades. Her father, Charles Kemble (brother to the talented performers John Kemble and Sarah Siddons), was part-owner of the Theater Royal, Covent Garden, and when Fanny was nineteen, he decided to “risk” casting her as Juliet in a production of the Bard’s play in October 1829. Charles was having financial “issues.” Fanny had not performed on the stage before—despite her family’s long history.

She was an immediate hit—and crowd favorite. Among those seeing her were William Makepeace Thackeray and Washington Irving. The latter was a family friend, and, according to a 1982 biography of Kemble, She ran to him with great excitement following a production when he called on the Kembles to offer his congratulations.[1] She remained a London stage favorite and soon was traveling around for assorted reasons—performing, sight-seeing, working for social reform. (She was virulently opposed to slavery.) This is not the place to dive into Kemble’s remarkable life—but just to see what she had to say about Niagara Falls, a site she was visiting, as I said, at the same time as Trelawny. Who’d claimed to have swum the river below the Falls.

On August 1, 1832, Fanny and her family set sail for America, where they’d planned a performing tour—a tour that was very successful for them. Fanny kept a journal of that visit, and very near the end of it, she records her visit to the Falls. She and her family had met Trelawny late in June 1833, on a steam-boat departing from New York Harbor, heading up the Hudson River. Trelawny—no surprise (oh, did he ever attach himself like a refrigerator magnet to sturdy (and sexy) notables, wherever he found them!)—swopped in. Here’s what Fanny says in her journal that day:

Mr. Trelawney [sic] came and stood by me for a considerable time after we started. It is agreeable to talk to him, because he has known and seen so much. He has traversed the world in every direction, and been the friend of Byron and Shelley. … he is an uncommon man, and it is very interesting to hear him talk of what he has seen, and those he has known.[2]

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[1] J. C. Furnas, Fanny Kemble: Leading Lady of the Nineteenth-Century Stage (New York: Dial), 52.

[2] Journal of a Young Actress, ed. Monica Gough (New York: Columbia UP, 1990), 173.

Fanny Kemble, 1831

Of Fire Departments and Health Care

Last Friday we called the local fire department for the first time in our marriage. Joyce had smelled natural gas in the basement; we called; an officer was here in mere minutes. He checked our entire system, found two small leaks (nothing too immediately worrisome), marked them. We called our HVAC company, who sent someone here in less than an hour. Repairs. VISA. And all is well--for the nonce.

Perhaps some of you have forgotten that American fire departments used to be private enterprises? Until about the Civil War? Individual customers paid for the service of a company, and if you had a fire and lived right next door to a rival company, you were out of luck. You'd paid only for yours. So it's really not been all that long that we've had public, tax-supported fire departments. A good idea, I hope you agree.

As I've written here before, there are other services that I just do not believe should be privatized entirely--like schools, like police protection, like health care.

And now--as we face a looming crisis in health care--we find ourselves once again debating whether we, the taxpayers, should supply funds for everyone--the way we do with Medicare.

I am deeply committed to the answer "Yes." As I've written here before, without medical insurance, Joyce and I long ago would have been bankrupt, living in a box under the freeway. Both she and I have chronic illnesses, and even though we still spend a lot of our own money on medications and doctors' visits and other therapies, we can handle it. But we could not handle it without Medicare and without our supplementary policies.

So ... why do Joyce and I "deserve" this and other people don't? Because she and I have been fortunate in our lives? Solid families, good educations, steady employment opportunities?

We didn't have to go to bad schools, live in impoverished and/or dangerous neighborhoods, have to settle for minimum-wage jobs. We were lucky. Fortunate. Oh, and did I mention that we're white? Neither of us had anything to do with that, did we? But that has given us an enormous advantage in this far-from-colorblind culture of ours.

I believe in covering everyone. Everyone. It is the only humane thing to do. Debates about who "deserves" it and who doesn't are disgusting. Are unworthy of us. We all "deserve" help.

But the only way such a plan will work is if everyone pays in--just as we must do if we want to own a car or buy a house. Insurance for both is mandatory. Few people bitch about it. When you're healthy, you help pay for those who are not; when you're unhealthy, the rest of us pay to help you.

Sure, we don't need to own a car. Or a house. Be we will be using the health-care system. Sooner. Later.

I repeat: I believe we must help those whose circumstances just don't permit them to pay a lot. And that is one of the reasons we're here for, isn't it? To help one another? To promote the general welfare (as the Preamble to the Constitution says)? I am  happy to pay taxes to help those who need it. Happy to pay for public schools, for public roads and bridges, for water and sewer services, for streetlights and stoplights and sidewalks, for police protection.

For fire departments.

For health care for everyone.

Frankenstein Sundae, 291

I think of other Niagara Falls connections …

Frances “Fanny” Wright, recall, was the social reformer who met with and tried to convince Mary Shelley to join her at Nashoba, her settlement near Nashville, Tennessee, the settlement where she’d hoped to purchase slaves, train and educate them, release them, prepared for an occupation. Mary declined—though, as we’ve seen—Frances Trollope joined her for a while, then quickly escaped to Cincinnati, where she became a merchant before returning to England to become a popular novelist—though not so popular as her son Anthony would one day become.

But Francis Wright was in America more than once and during her travels visited Niagara Falls. An account of her 1819 visit (fourteen years prior to Trelawny’s) appears in her book Views of Society and Manners in America (1821).[1] She and her party stayed in rooms in a tavern about a half-dozen miles away, and on the first night she told of hearing the rumbling of the Falls in the distance. The next day(s) they approached and explored, and here’s a bit of what she said:

… we saw, on lifting our eyes, a corner of the summit of this graceful division of the cataract hanging above the projecting mass of trees, as it were in mid-air, like the snowy top of a mountain. Above, the dazzling white of the shivered water was thrown into contrast with the deep blue of the unspotted heavens. … From this spot (beneath the Table Rock) you feel, more than from any other, the height of the cataract and the weight of its waters. It seems a tumbling ocean, and you yourself a helpless atom amid these vast and eternal workings of gigantic nature! … Never surely did nature throw together so fantastically so much beauty with such terrific grandeur. … The shivering mortal stands on the brink ….

And yet another visitor—who was there at the same time as Trelawny—was Fanny Kemble, a member of the celebrated acting family, the Kembles, who lit the London stages for decades.

(Pictures from my 1999 visit.)

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[1] (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1963). Her account of her time at the Falls appears on pp. 23–28.

Sunday Sundries, 134

1. AOTW--Well, I think I had more candidates this week than in any previous week. I was simply overwhelmed with AOTWness. But I think I'll go with the dark-clothed dude who was on the road, on a bicycle (sans lights), after sunset. I didn't see him until I was alongside him. (I wonder if he's alive now? If not, this could be the first posthumous AOTW I've awarded!)

2. Last night (Saturday) we went to see Logan, about which we'd read some good things--in the papers, on Facebook. Also--and this is our principal excuse--one of our grandsons is named Logan. so ... what choice did we have? (Link to trailer for the film.) We'd read that it would be sanguinary (it was), and we'd read that it was "human" and all that. (It tried to be--but failed, in my view.) There was also an ultimately sad scene with an All-American farm family, African American, that seemed totally unnecessary to me. (In fact, I could easily have trimmed 45 min-an hour from this endless bloodbath.)

I was very impressed with the little girl, who was in virtually every scene. She--mostly silent--showed a variety of emotions and attitudes--rage, insouciance, tenderness, grief, etc. This has really been The Year of the Kid in films (this one, Moonlight, Lion, etc.) ... back when I was directing middle-school plays ... well, it would have been great to work with youngsters like these film stars--though, believe, me, I was always fortunate to have Talent Galore up on that Harmon School/Aurora High School stage!

It's always fun to watch Patrick Stewart, as well ... and the make-up people did a great job on Wolverine--the aging Wolverine.

Still ... a cliched plot, predictable, etc. Maybe it's time to give the series a breather?


3. I finished two very good books this week.

     - Sam Shepard's new book, The One Inside (with a foreword by Patti Smith!), is a stylistic delight--as Smith says, "Reality is overrated" (xii). It's a work of interlocking fictional snippets and snapshots (many only a page in length), and many deal with loss and family. There is an image throughout of the narrator's "tiny man" of a father--literally so: the size of a pinky finger, maybe smaller. He's wrapped like a mummy, comes unwrapped at times, and, I guess, represents Memory itself: Our deceased parents occupy our memories, yes, but they do not occupy much space ... but it is significant space. Unforgettable space.

The relationships between men and women are prominent here, as well--as they have been in Shepard's life and work. Things don't always work out (surprised?). And one character who appears continually we know only as "the Blackmail Girl"--who's there to ask about his ex-wife, about her relationship with the narrator, about the possibility of a future. And--no surprise in a Shepard work--the West, the sky, the horses, the dogs. Living alone on the Lone Prairie.

There's so much going on here--it's almost ludicrous to try to compress it all into a few paragraphs. So I won't. But I will recommend the book if you like Shepard's work, if you like reading fiction that abandons traditional narrative, that forces you to see the relevance between and among sections. I had fun doing so.

     - Some time ago I decided to read the Faulkner novels I'd somehow never read. In a recent "Sundries" I wrote about his first novel, Soldiers' Pay (1926); this time it's Mosquitoes (1927), a surprising novel that, for the most part, takes place aboard a yacht (the Nausikaa--hmmm, could there be Odyssey relevance?) that's taking a cruise of several days around Lake Pontchartrain near New Orleans. Or, at least, that was the plan. Stuff happens.

Aboard is an assortment of folks: the wealthy woman (widow) who owns the craft, some of her wealthy friends, some "artist" types (which she likes), one of whom is mostly identified as "the semitic man"), her niece and brother, and a couple of last-minute invitees, a young man, a young woman (courtesy of the niece--the aunt does not approve: they are ... common).

Faulkner organizes the book by days: First Day, Second Day, etc.--and even by hours: Nine O'Clock, Ten O'Clock, etc. And he shifts our attention from one group to the other as the novel progresses.

He has some things to say about art, about social class, about religion, about sex (this is one sexy book for 1927! People are naked (in the water and ou)t; people make moves on one another; and one sad guy--Mr. Talliaferro--is obsessed with women--and why they won't respond to him. He's always got a new (ineffective) strategy to employ.

Everyone is kind of dumb on board, I fear--even the artists, who talk about art (including writing) most of the time--though they do say some interesting things from time to time. I do love this paragraph about words uttered by Fairchild (a writer) on the third day:

You begin to substitute words for things and deeds, like the withered cuckold husband that took the Decameron to bed with him every night, and pretty soon the thing or deed becomes just a kind of shadow of a certain sound you make by shaping your mouth a certain way. But you have a confusion, too. I don't claim that words have life in themselves. But words brought into a happy conjunction produce something that lives, just as soil and climate and an acorn in proper conjunction will produce a tree. Words are like acorns, you know. Every one of 'em won't make a tree, but if you just have enough of 'em, you're bound to get a tree sooner or later (428--Lib of Amer ed.).

I also enjoyed some sly references to Frankenstein, to the drowning of Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1822. But it seems to be a novel about people trying to figure things out--love, literature and art, friendship, sex, social class, happiness.

Glad I read it--and it's not much like the other Faulkner I've read, so it was surprising, as well--something I always like in a novel! (Well ... usually.)

Oh, and also present? Mosquitoes. Lots of them. Buzzing in and out now and then. Biting. Annoying. And serving, perhaps, as a metaphor for these people, as well. Our buzzing, biting lives ...


4. I'm about to finish yet another journey through the 100+ episodes of The Rockford Files. How many times? Too many? Nah, not enough. I'll probably crank 'em up again in a month or so. Netflix no longer streams them (Hulu has some seasons), but no problem: I've got a complete DVD set!

I watch them when I've finished reading in the evening and am about about ready to crash. I rarely watch an episode in its entirety--usually 15 min of so before watching something both Joyce and I will enjoy.


5. And we're still very much enjoying Suspects, via Acorn TV.

6. A favorite word this week from my various word-of-the-day online suppliers:

     - from dictionary.com

My first quick look at the word, and I thought: Cool, a word about Lucifer! But, then, of course, Reason kicked in--lux--light. And words like lucent. I still would like to call some evil dude luciferous, though. If you check the dictionary sources, you will discover (as I just did), that "Lucifer" does have a connection to light ... check it out!

luciferous adjective [loo-SIF-er-uh s]

1. bringing or providing light.

2. providing insight or enlightenment.

QUOTES

An illumination on so vast a scale could be kept up only by the inexhaustible magazine of ether disseminated through space, and ever ready to manifest its luciferous properties on large spheres, whose attraction renders it sufficiently dense for the play of chemical affinity.

-- D. Vaughan, "On the Light of Suns, Meteors, and Temporary Stars," Report on the Twenty-Seventh Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1858

Becoming a Skeptic, Even a Cynic

skeptic: 2. a doubting or incredulous person

cynic:  3. exhibiting feelings ranging from distrustful doubt to contemptuous and mocking disbelief

     -from Merriam-Webster's

I'm not sure when this happened, becoming a skeptic, a cynic. Not in boyhood--I'm pretty sure of that. I believed pretty much everything I heard, everything I saw. I think about that movie with Ricky Gervais a few years ago--The Invention of Lying (2009). The world of that film was really a world of childhood: Everyone believes everything; no one lies.

Until, of course, someone does. And the world then becomes what it is--a vast collection of deceivers. (Link to film trailer.)

And so it was, in 1940s and 50s Oklahoma, I grew up believing cowboys were better than Indians, that only heroism was at stake in the Alamo, that Davy Crockett was flawless, that cowboys sometimes stopped shooting to sing a song, that Mousketeer Doreene would like me (if she only knew me), that God would strike dead those boys who swore on the playground (He didn't; I joined them), that black people belonged in the back of the bus and at different schools. Such was my world.

In college, an English major, I first began reading writers who didn't celebrate life but who satirized it, who saw in it a darkness that rejected all light, who questioned the way things are, wondered why they couldn't be another way.

Out on my own, I was shocked to learn about all the lying about Vietnam. My dad was a veteran of two wars (World War II, Korea--though he did not go abroad for the latter), and he steadfastly refused to believe the government would lie. I begged to differ. And the differing became so profound that my brothers and I eventually agreed we would not discuss the war with Dad: It was too upsetting for all of us.

And as the years rolled on, and as I read more and more, as I saw and heard more and more, I began to realize that most of it was, at the least, questionable. "Open to question"--as the saying once went.

Even later, I learned about what psychologists call the "confirmation bias"--our preference for believing only that information that fits with what we already believe. We hate Obama, so we are happy to believe he wasn't born here, that he had some sort of nefarious plan to destroy democracy and become a dictator, that Obamacare is some kind of Socialist Evil.

We hate Trump, so we are happy to believe that he's in Putin's pocket, that his tax returns contain dark secrets, that he's clueless, the puppet of the Kremlin and Steve Bannon.

We blame Obama for all of the economy's ills--give him no credit for the recovery; we credit Trump for this month's gains, although they are merely in line with what was already going on.

And on and on and on.

Now, I actually do believe some of those things about Trump, and until he releases his returns, till we know everything about the Russian involvement in our election (and we must admit, don't we, that it happened on some level?), I will remain skeptical about him. Deeply so.

But I'm skeptical about almost everything now. When I see a story in my news feeds that seems too awesome to be true, well, that's because it probably is not true--or has been slanted/exaggerated/altered beyond recognition. Folks on both ends of the political continuum do that these days. Distort. Even fabricate. You must be careful.

I am a political liberal, a life-long Democrat, and I believe that the government needs to help people--in all kinds of ways--improved public schools (greatly improved), health care for all, public amenities and necessities (roads, bridges, fire and police protection, libraries, etc.). I believe some fundamental institutions can not be for-profit (schools, colleges, health care), for the profit motive puts profit first, people second (or not at all).

And we need regulations because, well, people cheat. In every profession and enterprise. When I was teaching, I would not pass out tests to the kids, then go to the teachers' lounge for coffee. Trust must ever be balanced with Distrust (and Cynicism). When people bark about removing regulations, this is what I immediately think: They want to cheat.

And lie.

Just a cynic, I guess.

... To be continued ... maybe ...

Frankenstein Sundae, 290

He describes this experience in far greater detail in his un-mailed account—but the details are basically the same. Now … a word in his defense. He was a strong swimmer—and later in his life swam every day in the ocean near his home in England. But the Niagara River? Just above the rapids and whirlpool? Could a person do that?

I wasn’t sure. So in early March 2000, I decided to take a drive to the Falls to find out. I planned the trip so I wouldn’t just be “Falls watching” (or thinking about leaping in—just to see); I wanted to do some research, too. Was there any record of Trelawny’s swim? Was there even any evidence of his presence there?

No and yes.

As I wrote long, long ago in these pages I was lucky, right away. Here’s what I wrote long ago: at the Niagara Falls Public Library … a couple of staff members found for me the 1833 guest register of the Eagle Hotel, and there I saw the signatures of “Capt. Trelawney” on July 18 and Fanny Kemble, the renowned actress from the famous theater family, who’d signed in the day before.

He was in Room 25 in the Eagle.

But in none of the local papers (there was more than one) could I find any reference to or account of Trelawny’s swim across the river—across and back—that he’d written about. I worked my way down to the riverside later in the day and took some pictures. And as I stood there while that mighty stream churned by, I had a single thought: No way. Even today, when the river has been subject to some engineering (for hydro-electric power), the current remains so swift, so daunting, that I don’t see how a person could make it across and back and alive.

I did find this on a Niagara Falls daredevil website: On October 1st 1957, Claus R. Kirkoff successfully swam through the Lower Rapids in an attempt to gain illegal entry into the United States of America, from which he had been previously deported.[1]

Okay, but I still think of Trelawny’s account? No way!  (My photos.)

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[1] http://www.niagarafallsinfo.com/history-item.php?entry_id=1492&current_category_id=290