Friday, April 29, 2011

Minority Kids Succeeding in College


There's more to just doing well in high school because college is a major change of pace and kids need to be ready for it!
by Charlie Leck

Hope you’ll all forgive me for blogging so infrequently, but I’m still recuperating from my hip replacement surgery and I still find it difficult to sit at my keyboard for long periods. I actually experimented a little with Google’s new voice recognition service found on its Chrome 11 browser. It didn’t work very well for me. I like too much the process of writing, rewriting, redrafting, and then applying the final editing and grooming. I couldn’t do all that verbally. In another couple of weeks, I’ll be drowning you with blogs again.

I spent the morning reading and browsing through the latest Alumni Magazine from Teach for America [Spring 2001/Edition XI]. We’re supporters of this organization and we send them a relatively significant contribution each year. As I’ve boasted here a number of times, our youngest put in three years for Teach for America and we were very proud of her for doing so. I came across a terrific story by Ting Yu, called A Matter of Degrees. I spent some careful and enjoyable time with it. I’d love to link you to an on-line copy of this article, but I’ve not been able to find one. If you really want to read it, send me an email and I’ll mail you a photo copy. (As an aside, Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach for America has a new book on the market called A Chance to Make History. I’ve ordered it and you may want to as well. All of the author’s proceeds on the sale of the book go to Teach for America.

I’ll start at this point, which is revealed about half-way through the article, but it’s the kingpin upon which the article is based, so we’ll get it out here:

“In the last 20 years, the United States has plummeted from first place to 12 in college graduation rates for young people, trailing behind Canada, Russia, and seven other OECD states. The cost to students, as well as the economy, is high. Those without college degrees have almost double the unemployment rate of those with them.”

Here’s what’s happening. In a rush to improve college entrance rates for minority and poverty level children, we’ve improved the level of college preparatory courses in many of those schools. However, we haven’t prepared these children for the dramatic change in the academic atmosphere they will encounter in America’s colleges and universities. Young people from these backgrounds are often overwhelmed by the experience of being so alone in approaching study projects such as they will have in college. They haven’t been taught how to do independent study, how to seek help and how to use the massive resources a major college or university would have available to help them.

So now, high schools, like the one in which our daughter taught from 2007 through 2010, have learned they must do more than just raise grade-point averages and college entrance examination scores. The children in those schools, who do not normally have role models at home, have also got to be prepared to meet the hard times of isolated, lonely and individual study and research. Edward Wang, a Teach for America alum and one of the teachers at that school, Thurgood Marshall Academy in Harlem, is featured in the magazine story. He says: “We are fighting a battle to extend the vision beyond the 12th grade.”

My daughter went to a private school that emphasized preparation for future academic requirements. In 5th grade, the entire year was spent with a brilliant teacher who had a single goal and that was to prepare her students for Junior High School. In her middle and high school years, the school concentrated on making sure students could survive the rigors of academic study in the world’s finest university settings.

America’s colleges have to participate in this project as well. They need to step up and make sure entering freshmen from these low income situations have the kind of guidance they need to make the adjustment to the “next” level. The article points to Florida State University (FSU) with great pride –

“Today 74 percent of black students at FSU graduate, compared with 69 percent of Caucasian students. The school’s Center for Academic Retention and Enhancement (CARE) is geared toward incoming first-generation and low-income freshmen.”

The battle to reduce the academic gap between white and minority students goes on. It’s one of the most important efforts in America. In your community and your schools, you should be aware of this "gap" and what's being done to close it.

_________________________

Why not become a follower?
If you read my blog regularly, why not become a follower? All you have to do is click in the upper right hand corner and establish a simple means of communication. Then you'll be informed every time a new blog is posted here. If all that's confusing, here's Google's explanation of how to do it! If you don’t want to post comments on the blog, but would like to communicate with me about it, send me an email if you’d like.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Let there be Loud Clashing Cymbals and the Sound of Brass


I read my first e-book today and, as far as I know, the earth did not stop spinning in the heavens.
by Charlie Leck

(The Good Rat by Jimmy Breslin)
“I can barely handle legitimate people. They all proclaim immaculate honesty, but each day they commit the most serious of all felonies, being a bore. To whom do you care to listen, Warren Buffett, the second richest and single most boring person on earth, or Burt Kaplan out of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn?

“He testifies in simple declarative sentences, subject, verb and object, one following the other to start a rhythm that is compelling to the jury’s ear. As I listen on this first morning of excruciating excitement, Kaplan comes out of all the ages of crime, out of Dostoyevsky, out of the Moors Murders, out of Murder Inc. A few words spoken by Burt Kaplan on his Brooklyn porch send animals rushing out to kill. I am thinking this when the court breaks for lunch. I go over to the Park Plaza Diner right across the street. When I walk in, Bettina Schein comes up to me. She is a pretty and smart criminal lawyer assisting Bruce Cutler, who represents one of the cops.

“’What do you think of the witness?’ she says.

“’I was just thinking of...’

“’Rashkolnikov!’ she says.”

Let me assure you that it did not feel the same as I read the last sentence in the last paragraph on the last page. First of all, there was no book to close. There was no place on the inside-front-cover to adhere my book plate. I did not need to go over to the Bs in the fiction section of my library to fit it into its place with the other Breslin books between the BOs and the BREZ authors.

Yet, the world had not come to an end. Quite the opposite, this morning, as I sat in a big easy chair in my living room, reading in the dull gray light of a very rainy and gloomy morning, the electricity in the area shut down and it went dark in the house as all the lights flickered and went off. I was startled, but not by the flickering, failing lights. I was very surprised to see that my ebook reader – my iPad – glowed on brightly. And, I was able to read on as if nothing had happened around me.

The only little inconvenience I had was that I felt I wanted to make a notation on one paragraph about a quotation I wanted to include in this blog; and I had to reach for a post-it note to jot down the page number and position of the words so I could later find them and type them out here.

Otherwise, I was surprised at the pleasure I took from reading this way. Had I save a part of some important rain forest somewhere? It’s a comfortable way to read and I had the freedom to enlarge the font size or to diminish it. I took the book with me to the doctor’s office this morning and read on as I awaited my lab tests to be taken. Three other people were reading from their ebook machines also.

The world is changing – and not spinning out of control.

(About the Author)
“Jimmy Breslin was born in Jamaica, Queens. He was awarded the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary. His bestselling and critically acclaimed books include The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight; Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?; The Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo GutiĆ©rrez; several anthologies; and the memoir, I Want to Thank my Brain for Remembering Me. He lives on Broadway, the Big Street in New York City

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

_________________________

Why not become a follower?
If you read my blog regularly, why not become a follower? All you have to do is click in the upper right hand corner and establish a simple means of communication. Then you'll be informed every time a new blog is posted here. If all that's confusing, here's Google's explanation of how to do it! If you don’t want to post comments on the blog, but would like to communicate with me about it, send me an email if you’d like.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

New Departments (or boards) within your Church


Local churches are usually over organized and can’t flow with the stream, but here are a couple of must boards for every church in America that they never seem to have.
by Charlie Leck

While recuperating from this whole hip replacement surgery there is incredible amounts of time to think after one has gotten utterly tired of the news babble from CNN. It’s difficult to sit up for too long on this sore buttocks and it’s difficult to read when one is lying on one’s side or tummy. Therefore, one probably thinks a little too much. In the last day I’ve been thinking about America’s pastors and priests. I can testify, it’s a tough job.

I’ve been there, on those boards or committees in local churches – whatever it is that they call them… Board of Deacons, Board of Trustees, Committee on Christian Education, Foreign Missions Committee, Adult Education Committee, Tithing Club – and even the Softball and Bowling Committee.

What I’ve never been on is the Homelessness Committee or the Hunger in our Community Committee. Why not?

Too many of the committees in our local churches look inward at the health and welfare of the congregation and its facilities. All well and good, I suppose, but this misses the church’s real call to discipleship. Does it not?

It takes a pretty corrupt reading of the gospels to come away thinking that Jesus called us to form a giant institutional organization that would be capable of granting people salvation. Little alterations of the original scriptures by the early, institutional church might occasionally give that impression if one doesn’t read carefully.

The call of Jesus to his disciples – both the original ones and to us – is blatantly clear…

Love and forgive those who need to be touched by God’s love and mercy!

Feed those who are hungry and give drink to the thirsty!

Shelter those without homes!

Cloth those in need (the naked)!
Bring health, healing and relief to those who are ill and diseased.

Believe me, in terms of the vitals that Jesus expressed to us, this comes way out ahead of the Committee to Search for a New Choir Director.

I was lying there in bed yesterday afternoon, three-quarters on my belly, listening to one more blatant radio show. It was about homelessness and hunger in America. I’ll say it plain: There shouldn’t be such things in America. We call ourselves the greatest nation in the world. Hearing that there are so many people hungry and without shelter makes me think of Jesus – the real guy and not the one that the early church made up. A different radio is on out in the kitchen and it’s tuned to a different station. The familiar sounds of an Easter weekend hymn glide through the house.

“Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Were you there when they laid him in the grave?”

Is this a cacophony? No, somehow, if you listen carefully, you can hear it growing and mellowing out into an extraordinary symphony with various parts of the orchestra playing back its own theme to the other parts

“On some nights,” the radio by my bedside is proclaiming, “there are as many as 3.5 million people homeless in America. In New York, alone, 37,000 people stay in homeless shelters every night.”

The sad, lonely voice rises from the kitchen radio: “Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.”

On a one night survey in January 2007, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development found that at least 671,888 people were living homeless. 58 percent of them spent the night in a shelter. 42 percent were unsheltered.

There is homelessness in surprising places. Idaho has one of the nation’s highest percentages of homelessness in relation to its population.

Veterans are more likely to be homeless than non-veterans!

Of course, health problems among the homeless are much higher and more significant than among the general population. The cost of treating the homeless is much higher by a staggering amount than treating the general population.

Minnesota Public Radio, in a one night count of the homeless in Minnesota in 2010 came up with a number that very nearly reached 10,000.

A Wilder Research Institute study reveals that about 8 percent of these homeless are over the age 55; and half of them had been homeless for more than a year; and 47 percent of them had spent some time in jail.

I hear the sounds emanating again in the kitchen

“Now the queen of seasons, bright with the day of splendor,
With royal feast of feasts, come its joy to render;
Comes to glad Jerusalem, who with true affection
Welcomes in unwearied strains Jesus’ resurrection.”

That’s nice! To me, however, it’s not what’s important. Jesus rises in each of our hearts only so far as we understand and accept him. Never mind the “Easter egg decorating committee,” I want to know where the “Homelessness Committee” is meeting.

_________________________

Why not become a follower?
If you read my blog regularly, why not become a follower? All you have to do is click in the upper right hand corner and establish a simple means of communication. Then you'll be informed every time a new blog is posted here. If all that's confusing, here's Google's explanation of how to do it! If you don’t want to post comments on the blog, but would like to communicate with me about it, send me an email if you’d like.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Trying to sit!


Home from the hospital, trying to get comfortable!
by Charlie Leck

The number of messages that have streamed in now that I’m “off the air” has been extremely flattering. Thanks so much for missing me. Those blogs that were posted right up through surgery, and a day or so afterward, were actually written before I went to the hospital and scheduled for posting at later times. I thought that I would surely be back to blogging by now but it doesn’t go very well in the recovery department.

The “whole hip replacement” surgery in the hospital and the whole routine surrounding it went really, really well. I had a great, caring set of nurses and assistant nurses. I wanted to take a couple of them home with me. The time flew by and here I was at home. Now this is a different experience. There’s the pain! Then there’s the constipation (I don’t deal well with constipation and never have.) It (I mean it as in “constipation”) makes it difficult to eat and certainly to enjoy anything one eats. There’s also the difficulty in trying to find a comfortable chair. I haven’t. It certainly isn’t that extra-highly toilet seat that’s been installed in my bathroom.

Jasper, our black lab, was very happy to see me. Mother doesn’t know where I keep the treats.

Enough! Here’s a few unfinished notes from previous blogs.

(One) Silas Jayne by Bryan Alaspa
Don’t buy it. It’s joke of a book with material just regurgitated from the two others I wrote about that dealt with this subject. I’m so embarrassed about the poor quality of this book I won’t even give it away, so into recycling it goes. Alaspa calls himself a writer in the biographical notes. He’s not and it’s not close.

iPad (version two)
Yup, wouldn’t you know, my iPad showed up on the day I got out of the hospital. I’ve been playing with it quite a bit since. It’s cool, but I’m trying to figure out why I needed it. It provides me my first e book reading devise. Pretty cool! Sometimes the pages turn when I don’t want them to, as if there is a ghost reading along with me who wants me to hurry along.

I’m looking now at the weather app on the iPad. It’s only 46 here and cloudy and a bright white snow covers everything. I see, though, that the market is up.

My butt hurts. I’ll call it a day.

_________________________

Why not become a follower?
If you read my blog regularly, why not become a follower? All you have to do is click in the upper right hand corner and establish a simple means of communication. Then you'll be informed every time a new blog is posted here. If all that's confusing, here's Google's explanation of how to do it! If you don’t want to post comments on the blog, but would like to communicate with me about it, send me an email if you’d like.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Raising Money for the USA


Maybe America should hire a fund raiser who could make the appeal to the nation for contributions to shrink or eliminate the debt!
by Charlie Leck

There are several dozen organizations around here who are not embarrassed to approach us for contributions to their institutions and the work they do.

We try to be smart givers to both our community and to worthy national and international organizations. We could be living a lot higher on the hog, but we think it’s important to give generously to important organizations that do essential work.

So, such thoughts make a question inevitable…

Wouldn’t you make a contribution to the good, old USA if you were asked and if you believed it was going to a worthy cause? I’ll bet millions and millions of individuals would? Maybe foundations or corporations would also contribute.

I’m made to think of this because of the fund raiser for one of the organizations I mentioned above, who makes a regular practice of courting me and keeping me up to date on what her organization is doing for the community and how important that work is. She always gets us to loosen our purse strings further than we would have had she not made the personal request.

Why doesn’t the nation in which we live do this too? There are millions who would give hundreds and hundreds who would give millions. It could be a part of our tax return forms. Contribution check-offs.

Maybe it’s something we’d only have to do when we were in crisis times such as the one we are in now.

I’d rather do that than see programs to care for the needy being cut.

Giving money to my country would be more important to me than taking a golf trip to Ireland.

_________________________

Why not become a follower?
If you read my blog regularly, why not become a follower? All you have to do is click in the upper right hand corner and establish a simple means of communication. Then you'll be informed every time a new blog is posted here. If all that's confusing, here's Google's explanation of how to do it! If you don’t want to post comments on the blog, but would like to communicate with me about it, send me an email if you’d like.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Silas Jayne


This is a review of a very dirty story about awful people who preyed on the wealthy – it’s filled with accounts of abuse of children, extortion and murder and even the slaughter of over-insured horses.
by Charlie Leck

It was in the summer of 1987. I walked into the horse barn where Elise was working her miracles on one of Anne’s driving horses, grooming it to perfection. She flashed an enormous smile at me and her eyes glowed with happiness. Though she was always a joyful and cheerful person, this smile went even beyond the norm. I asked her what was up, curious about her mood.

“I just heard it on the radio,” she said. “Si Jayne is dead!”

Unbridled Rage, by Gene O’Shea (Berkley Books, New York, 2005) is something of a reader’s sequel to a book I wrote about here a couple of weeks agoHot Blood, by Ken Englade (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1996). I just finished O’Shea’s book and found it a page turner and went through it in a matter of about six hours.

It also dealt with the dirty, underbelly of the Chicago horse industry – or perhaps it could be more appropriately titled “the horse racket.” Again, Silas Jayne is one of the prime characters in this true story and O’Shea doesn’t make him come off any cleaner or less evil than Englade did.

Let me explain why I’m so suddenly interested in this topic even though it is very sleazy and ugly. If you haven’t a strong stomach for violence and abuse, you won’t want to read these books. There are two reasons why I’m drawn to them. (1) My wife was significantly involved in the hunter/jumper world of horses when I met her – and so is her sister – and so were her parents. And, her mother had a very unpleasant encounter with the violent side of Silas Jayne, which would have scared the bejeebers out of most people, but only served to make Anne’s mother very pissed off. (2) I’ve met some of the minor characters in these stories and I even admired a couple of them – but I’m not having second thoughts about all that stuff. Most people in the business are good and conscientious competitors. Anne knew many of the characters in this story and a number of them more than in just a passing way.

A couple of readers of my earlier blog chastised me for making it sound like this terrible behavior and unethical approach was a common part of the horse world. If I did that, I’m sorry. Had I been doing that, I would have been including even ourselves in the stereotype. Not at all! This sleaziness was very significant in Chicagoland in the 50s and on through the 80s, but it is not typical of the hunter/jumper world nationally or, for that matter, of most of the Chicago horse owners and competitors.

Here’s where you start.
(1) People who own hunter and jumper horses are normally pretty wealthy – or they damned well better be if they’re going to survive in that competitive sport. (2) Where there are wealthy people, there are probably going to be some miserable scaly-wags who are out to take advantage of them. That’s precisely what happened in the Chicago area. Guys, like the awful Silas Jayne, came swooping in like vultures on such a crowd and tried to get into the pockets of some of these people and into the pants of some of the prettier ones (whether girls or boys).

You wanna buy a horse, lady?
One could get a pretty good taste of high society and the wealthier side of town through horses. In the 50s and 60s, there were constantly people trying to break into the hunter/jumper world in all of American’s major horse towns – New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Lexington and a number of other places. To get in, and to fit in, you needed a horse that could do some winning or at least be competitive. If you were a rookie to the world, there were dozens of no-goods who wanted to take advantage of you by selling you an over-priced horse, charging you over-priced training fees and selling you high priced tack (saddles, bridles, etc.) that was often stolen from some other wealthy horse owner.

The perpetrators of these nasty schemes didn’t feel too much guilt about it because they figured they were dealing with the super rich who wouldn’t even miss the hundred grand or so they were chiseling them out of.

That appears to be the case in the instance of the wealthy widow and heiress to the Brach Candy fortune, Helen Brach. She got taken badly for a few hundred thousand and realized she’d been made a fool of. Never mind she could afford the losses!

Helen Brach made a lot of loud noise about going to the Illinois State’s Attorney with her story about organized crime in the horse industry. She ended up missing and has never been found. There’s a pretty reliable story that she was killed by the mob and cremated by them in the Gary, Indiana steel mill furnaces.

The hangers-on that this criminal element attracted were really dirty – people you wouldn’t ever want your children to know. And that’s part of the problem. The rich were sending their children to some of these Chicago establishments for lessons and then hearing the sales pitches about buying that “very talented” child her own horse.

Silas Jayne was an evil, evil man. There’s no doubt about the fact that he was a psychopath; however, he had a large part of the hunter/jumper show horse circuit cornered in Chicago in the 50s and 60s and 70s. He liked it if the horses that came out of his stables won. He was really angry if they didn’t and he would do things about it – bad things – atrociously bad things.

“Like all good con men, Silas figured out a new angle. Unlike grafters who prey on a victim’s greed, Silas’ scam appealed to the paternal instincts of the wealthy men who frequented his stable. Into this world of greed and deceit many an unwitting parent entrusted his or her daughter. Silas often sold his wealthy patrons broken-down, ready-for-the-glue-factory nags at inflated prices. The con was a not a one-shot opportunity, but an ongoing process. After a few weeks or months, Silas would tell a girl’s parents that their daughter had a genuine talent but was being held back because she needed a better horse. In short order many parents purchase a second, more expensive horse.

“On top of all his other traits – killer, con man and sadist – Silas was also a pederast. It wasn’t something Silas hid from people in the horse business. He often bragged about such assaults as ‘funning with them.’

“Silas had little fear that his shady horse scheme would be reported to authorities. He treated patrons that threatened to go to the police over a deal in one of two ways. Silas’ direct method included threats of violence or actual violence. One wealthy factory owner who threatened to file a lawsuit against Silas after buying sickly horses from him received a series of anonymous phone calls. When the phone calls failed to deter a lawsuit, a bomb was detonated outside the man’s home. The lawsuit was quickly dropped.

“Silas’ other method of dissuading unhappy customers with daughters was to threaten to ruin a young girl’s reputation by spreading rumors that he and a few of his stable hands had had sex with the girl. Faced with these choices, no one was willing to complain to the police about Silas.

This was the type of man some of Chicago’s leading families trusted their daughters to spend hours with….”

That is the nicer part of the whole story. It’s amazing to me how Silas Jayne could just keep on going and not get his ass hauled off to prison, but the fact is that he had very strong connections in Chicago’s mob and he had very good friends in the city and county police departments. He had paid good money for these friends. It enabled him to get away with hiring a hit man to murder his own brother and, possibly, another to kill Helen Brach.

He’s such an awful character that I’m curiously drawn to find out more about it and what made him tick. The fact that my wife and her family (especially her mother)also had frightening encounters with this man adds to this curiosity. It’s why I’m anxiously awaiting a third and more recently written book about him in this unintended trilogy: Silas Jayne: Chicago’s Suburban Gangster by Bryan Alaspa (2010).

“When the body of Silas Jayne was brought out of the hospital, the people who were the most surprised at how he died were those who had been investigating and watching him for years. Silas Jayne had fooled all of them by dying peacefully in his sleep. Given the life he had led and the things he was convicted of and suspected of doing, a far more violent ending seemed in the cards.” [The opening words of Bryan Alaspa’s book]

I’m left a little uneasy about beginning Alaspa’s book, however, because he erroneously credits the authorship of Upton Sinclair’s extraordinary novel, The Jungle, to Carl Sandberg. One, I guess, can forgive him for having a momentary mind lapse; but, why in heaven’s name didn’t his editors or publisher catch the error?

Silas Jayne also had a very close connection with one of the most famous and frightening crimes in Chicago history. It ranks right up there with the Valentine’s Day Massacre and the serial killers John Wayne Gacy and William Speck. It had the entire metropolitan area of Chicago in a state of total panic for months.

Silas Jayne was born in 1907. His brother George was born in 1923 to a different father. Silas was convicted of rape when he was 17 years old and spent a year behind bars. His stepfather, brother George’s father, represented him in court and was upset at the easiness of the sentence. He had recommended a minimum sentence of four years: “He’s a wild young man. A year in jail won’t hurt him!”

Silas and two older brothers, Frank and DeForest were rank and tough guys. They were called, by those who knew them, the Jesse Jayne Gang.

Silas opened the first Idle Hour Stable in 1932 at the age of 25. It was at Lincoln and Peterson avenues in Chicago. It was the same year that Kenneth Hansen was born. Hansen would one day go to work for Silas and commit some gruesome crimes for the gangster, including an arrangement of the murder of Silas’ brother, George Jayne. However, that would not be the worst of Hansen crimes.

A series of stables were opened by the Jayne brothers over the next 20 years, the new ones in the northern suburbs. At one of them, in River Grove, ten horses died in a mysterious fire in 1940.

During World War II, Silas and his mobster employees were involved in the horse meat scandals. Beef cattle were in short supply and enormously expensive. Silas sold horse meat to restaurants that was supposed to have been beef. He also arranged for the rustling of cattle from farmers in the rich agricultural land north and west of the city.

In 1947, Silas murdered a Chicago mobster who dared to come to one of his stables in Hickory Hills, seeking to collect a street tax for the mob. Silas buried the body at the stable.

But, the startling crime that held Chicago in fear’s grip for months and months was yet to come.

The crime occurred on October 16, 1955. Kenneth Hanson worked for Silas at that time as a general stable hand – cleaning stalls, grooming horses, doing repairs.

Three young boys, Bobby Peterson (13) and two brothers, John Schuessler (13) and Anton (11) joined up and headed to downtown Chicago in mid-afternoon to take in a movie. Somehow they met up with Kenneth Hanson and the plans were expanded somewhat. After the movie they were going out to a stable owned by Silas Jayne to ride horses. They said goodbye to a friend they’d met up with at a downtown bowling alley and told him about the riding adventure they were off to. Early that evening they were seen hitch-hiking north by several people.

Somehow, Kenneth Hanson met them at an agreed upon spot and took them to Idle Hour Stable, not to ride horses but to sexually abuse each of them in turn and, though it wasn’t his usual modus operandi in having forced sex with hundreds of boys before this, to murder them. In the process there was a great deal of screaming in the workroom where Hanson molested the children. Silas Jayne heard the ruckus and came upon the scene. Of course, he was furious, but his biggest concern was what the event and the publicity about it would do to his business. He helped load the bodies into Hanson’s car and gave Hanson instructions about where to dispose of the boys.

The brutalized naked bodies were found two days later in a nearby forest preserve. The murders and the investigation of them held the city spell-bound and sent it into a panic for days and days that stretched into weeks and months. It would be nearly 40 years before an arrest was made in the case and only then because clues were turned up during the investigation of the murder of candy heiress, Helen Brach.

During those 40 years, Silas Jayne had arranged the murder of his brother George and a number of other people who had gotten too close to exposing his crimes, including Helen Brach.

“Silas Jayne was as cold and brutal as Capone on his worst day. He ordered the killing of people and their entire families with the ease of ordering a cheeseburger at a hamburger stand. He was not above brutalizing women, children and even his own family. These days, those who feel little or no remorse for the crimes they commit are known as sociopaths. Had Silas Jayne lived in different times, he would have been given the label and perhaps been treated for his illness. Since he did not, however, he committed his crimes almost without reprisal for a very long time.” [Alaspa]

In the Spring of 1973, Silas Jayne was tried for the 1970 murder of his brother George. He was defended by the famous F. Lee Bailey. Silas was found guilty only of conspiracy to commit murder and sentenced to spend six to twenty-six years in prison. He continued to give orders to his gangster employees while imprisoned. In April of ’76 a fire destroyed a horse stable in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. The arsonist, who had been a cellmate of Silas Jayne was captured and claimed that Silas paid him $30,000 to torch the place where 33 horses died.

While Silas sat in prison, a jury awarded George Jayne’s widow one million dollars in a wrongful death suit against Silas.

Six years after entering prison in connection with the murder of his brother, Silas was released. He offered George’s widow 250,000 dollars. She refused.

In 1980, Silas was tried for the Wisconsin stable fire and was acquitted.

In 1987, at the age of 80 years and 10 days, Silas Jayne died of leukemia. I remember that day quite well. A young and wonderful lady who worked on our farm and groomed horses for us beamed a broad, bright smile at me when I walked into the barn that day while she was tending to a horse.

“Hey, why the big smile?” I asked.

“I just heard it on the radio. Si Jayne is dead!”

_________________________

Why not become a follower?
If you read my blog regularly, why not become a follower? All you have to do is click in the upper right hand corner and establish a simple means of communication. Then you'll be informed every time a new blog is posted here. If all that's confusing, here's Google's explanation of how to do it! If you don’t want to post comments on the blog, but would like to communicate with me about it, send me an email if you’d like.

Friday, April 15, 2011

Injustice in Mississippi Haunts Me


Why is the state of Mississippi so blasƩ about its number of unsolved murders?
by Charlie Leck

Sunday night, Sixty Minutes did a feature on a murder that was committed in Amite County, down in Mississippi, nearly 50 years ago. No one was ever arrested. [You can watch a replay of the show here!]

The victim was Louis Allen. It was a cold blooded, merciless killing of a black man who was seeking justice in another murder that he had witnessed in 1961. The local law-enforcement authorities down there, meaning the County Sheriff, just wanted Mr. Allen to keep his mouth shut, but the man had a conscience and he couldn’t.

Why had it taken so long for Louis Allen to speak up? Well, that’s what I hated about Mississippi in 1964 and what still stinks so terribly inside me even five decades later. People in Mississippi keep telling me to stop being such a hypocrite because racism and racial inequality was just as real in the North as it was in Mississippi. No! It wasn’t! It wasn’t at all! Black people didn’t have to be afraid of ignorant, hateful men, wearing hooded, white robes, showing up in their yards on a dark night with torches and a hangman’s noose. Mississippi was a brutal, hateful, miserable place and I hated everything about it. Back then most white people didn’t even regard it as a crime to kill a black man. That doesn’t mean they thought it ought to happen all the time, but, when it did, it was just better to look the other way and disregard the incident. That what all the white people did after Mr. Allen was murdered – they just looked the other way.

Louis Allen kept quiet about the murder he witnessed because he knew what was going to happen to him when he spoke the truth.

On a dark, cold, January night in 1964 they killed Louis Allen – blew him open with a shot gun as he got out of his pickup to open the gate onto his property. Most everybody is sure it was Deputy Sheriff Daniel Jones who committed the murder.

“If he didn’t do it,” Louis Allen’s son told Sixty Minutes, “he was the entrepreneur of it!”

What you’ll see in watching the video is that mum is still the word; that is, it is better to let sleeping dogs lie, better to get on and not look back, better to let a murderer get away with it.

Mississippi!

I wish I had taken more photographs in the black neighborhoods of Canton when I visited a couple of years ago. Had I, I could show them to you right here. But, I didn’t what to put people on display and make them feel uneasy, so I left the camera tucked away.

In the very same neighborhood in which I lived and worked during that summer of 1964, things hadn’t changed. The conditions were still awful and the level of poverty among black people was still shameful.

Mississippi haunts me and will for the rest of my life. How many, many innocent people died by violence – shamelessly murdered by the Klan – and no one has ever tried very hard to bring the killers to justice! A number of good people and organizations still seek such justice. I admire them, but I understand the realities, too. Time is running out quickly!

I’ll get all kinds of messages now from people who’ll argue it is just as bad up there in Minnesota. The plain, fact-of-the-matter is that it is not. Here citizens would not shut up. Here law enforcement would genuinely probe and investigate. Here perpetrators would be brought to justice.

It’s a sad story about Louis Allen; however, it’s only one of dozens of stories just like it. Mississippi should have tried to remove the stain, but it has not.

“Out, damn’d spot! Out, I say! One – two – why, then ‘tis time to do’t. Hell is murky.
[William Shakespeare: Macbeth Act 5, Scene 1]

_________________________

Why not become a follower?
If you read my blog regularly, why not become a follower? All you have to do is click in the upper right hand corner and establish a simple means of communication. Then you'll be informed every time a new blog is posted here. If all that's confusing, here's Google's explanation of how to do it! If you don’t want to post comments on the blog, but would like to communicate with me about it, send me an email if you’d like.


Thursday, April 14, 2011

What Had We allowed the South to Secede?


Eric Black Ink (graphic from MinnPost)

150 years ago, Lincoln felt strongly that the Union had to be preserved – whatever the cost!
by Charlie Leck

My dedication in the last year to a heavy amount of reading about Abraham Lincoln, the economy of 17th, 18th and 19th century American South, and the political management of the Civil War was one of the most enjoyable academic efforts I've ever undertaken. The endeavor included a fascinating on-line course offered at no cost by Yale University and led by Professor David Blight (PhD). I wrote about that here several months ago.

Now on Wednesday morning this week one of my favorite journalist/commentators reminds me that it is the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the American Civil War, when “Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter…” The South was, of course, asserting its constitutional right to secede from the Union and to stake claim to any federal properties within those southern states that had joined the Confederacy.

It seems to me that the horrors of that war were many, many more years back in our history than that. What I’m trying to say is that the Civil War seems like it belongs in ancient history rather than only 150 years ago. I guess when you get older 150 years doesn’t seem as far back as it might to a 15 year old.

In his fine column, Eric Black is contemporizing the question: “What if Lincoln had allowed the South to secede?”[click here to read it] Black speculates.

“It’s a wild counterfactual. Of course, hundreds of thousands who died over the next five years would have lived to die some other, presumably less violent, way. How long would slavery have lasted in the CSA? Would the South ever have reconsidered and tried to get back together with the North? Might the two countries have fought over ownership of the southwestern territories? Or might the two have become friends and allies?”

Black’s is a short piece and very well-worth reading. I recommend it to you.

__________________________________

Why not become a follower?

If you read my blog regularly, why not become a follower? All you have to do is click in the upper right hand corner and establish a simple means of communication. Then you'll be informed every time a new blog is posted here. If all that's confusing, here's Google's explanation of how to do it! If you don’t want to post comments on the blog, but would like to communicate with me about it, send me an email if you’d like.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

I’m a Proud Pappy this morning!


My wife came to bed last night with a song in her heart and I was so busy moaning and groaning about the pain in my hip that I didn’t hear her singing!
by Charlie Leck

“Did you see the email about our baby girl?”

I was struggling to sleep when my wife crawled into bed last night. She had a song in her heart and I’d not the guts to listen to her sing it. My hip was roaring and throbbing. So, she gave up and went to sleep.

In the morning, when the alarm went off, I at least remembered her excited voice from the night before, so, when she had shaken herself awake, I asked:

“What was that business about our little kid?”

She sent me scurrying (as fast as an old guy with a cane can scurry) to her computer.

“Look at that email! Read it”

There was a photo of our youngest child and a story about her that had come in from the alumni department of the private high school from which she had graduated. I read the account and wept a bit with pride. I knew nothing about her game-plan with the school. It was her decision, but I can’t be happier about it.

For security reasons I don’t want to reprint the story here. However, I’ll email a link to it to any of the reader’s I personally know if they want one – just send me an email and ask.

The long and the short of it is that our kid decided to include the private school she attended from K through high school as a beneficiary of her estate. The school’s newsletter says that “our school’s youngest planned giving partner is driven by a passion for education and a desire to influence its future.”

Our kid spent three years in the extraordinary Teach for America program (at the same time studying and getting her master’s degree in education) and then decided to stay in teaching.

She… is presently teaching middle school writing at Harlem Village Academies, a group of three successful charter schools that have produced outstanding results. Her teaching experiences have not only caused her to reflect on her high school education but also on the future of education in America.

“While she values the academic experiences she had at our school, she feels that its emphasis on educating the whole child was just as important. The athletic requirements made her a stronger person and helped develop her character as well as gain team-building experiences; classes within the arts program, particularly Bob Teslow's photography classes, broadened her horizons by building new skills.

Our kid was lucky. The school she is now generously remembering set high standards for her by, as its founder said, “expecting good things of all.”

“This inspires all students to achieve their goals, whether they are in academics, athletics or the arts.”

It was great to read her touching comments in the alumni newsletter.

"I see students every day who, if they had the opportunities I did, would be able to excel and reach profoundly high levels of success. However, many of these students are, instead, struggling in failing schools. I know that I must attempt to change this using a multifaceted approach, and planned giving is a part of this."

So, our daughter named her former school as a partial beneficiary of her estate. I vaguely remember having a conversation with her about this some time ago, but, of course, I wasn’t expecting such prompt action on her part. She wants any such funds the school gets to be designated to need-based tuition assistance. It’s her hope that more students will have access to the quality of education she had.

I got really pumped to read that a PhD is also in her future plans. The things a parent learns by reading a newsletter. It was nice to sense both her maturity and happiness, too, especially in some of the comments she made to the interviewer…

"I love teaching at Harlem Village Academies because I have the privilege of working with some of the brightest, most driven people I've ever met."

I’m proud to boast about her this morning. I’d like to take some credit, but her great strength and drive comes from her mother – and I know it! That’s okay! I’m just happy to be tagging along.

And, the hip ain’t hurtin’ so much this morning. I, too, have a song in my heart!

You can learn more about Harlem Village Academies here

Here's a terrific video about the teachers at Harlem Village Academies
"Schools Designed for Teachers"

or, if you want to see how Harlem Village Academies rock, take a look at this video

_________________________

Why not become a follower?
If you read my blog regularly, why not become a follower? All you have to do is click in the upper right hand corner and establish a simple means of communication. Then you'll be informed every time a new blog is posted here. If all that's confusing, here's Google's explanation of how to do it! If you don’t want to post comments on the blog, but would like to communicate with me about it, send me an email if you’d like.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Most Giving of the Wealthy


Here are ten of America's wealthiest who keep giving back.
by Charlie Leck

Jenna Ellis sent me an interesting email telling me about an article that she thought might interest my readers. It’s called 10 Wealthy Americans Who Give the Most Back! I found it extremely interesting and I think you will, too.

Irwin Jacobs, a Minnesotan, is on the list.

It’s interesting to review the organizations and institutions to which these people have given such huge amounts of money. I wish there were more organizations that served the poor and homeless, but one still has to be impressed with this amount of giving. Bill and Linda Gates are certainly doing wonderful things all around the world.l

_________________________

Why not become a follower?
If you read my blog regularly, why not become a follower? All you have to do is click in the upper right hand corner and establish a simple means of communication. Then you'll be informed every time a new blog is posted here. If all that's confusing, here's Google's explanation of how to do it! If you don’t want to post comments on the blog, but would like to communicate with me about it, send me an email if you’d like.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Forever Hip!


I slashed around in bed last night and had a terrible time sleeping!
by Charlie Leck

It wasn’t that 18 inch putt Tiger Woods missed on the number 11 green yesterday in the Masters that was keeping me awake, but it was ugly enough that it might have done so several years ago. I remember when Woods could knock down putts just with his sheer force of will. That was, of course, before that Thanksgiving weekend a year and a half ago. Woods doesn’t have that will power and dominating control over a golf ball anymore. People speculate about what might be wrong with Tiger’s swing. Believe me, it isn’t his swing. It’s his mind. Unless he figures out a way to get his head clear again and his mind in control on the golf course, we’ll never again see the old Tiger. And, that saddens me.

But, no, it was the hip that kept me awake last night. The pain throbbed and pounded away in there as I struggled to find a position in bed that would give it and me some comfort. Only four more nights like this and then the surgery.

I tried doing the relaxation thing they had tried to show us at the hospital in pre-surgery instruction class. The Penny George Institute for Heath and Healing (one of those holistic health and medicine organizations) had sent someone into the classroom to lead us in a relaxation exercise. Amazingly it had worked for me as I sat there in a chair, behind a table.

“Relax your head and your eyes and the skin of your face and the muscles in your neck!” The instructor led us, with these commands, down our entire body – right through relaxing our little tootsies. And, it had worked and the pain had just seeped out of me.”

It didn’t work last night. Perhaps it’s because I kept challenging myself.

“Ga-dammit, relax!”

At one point in the middle of the night, as thunder clashed and lightening streaked across the sky, I rose up on an elbow and looked up into the dark space at the top of the room and cried out in frustration.

“All right, all ready! How ‘bout giving me a little peace!”

“Huh?” My wife stirred but didn’t really awaken.

I let my head crash back down into the pillow and something strange happened. Something washed over my body and the pain receded and disappeared.

I was a bit shaken and I thought a bit about what had happened.

I had uttered a plea to heaven. Had it been answered?

“I’m not that easy,” I said into the darkness. “You’re not winning me over with a little thing like that.”

Again my wife stirred.

“What are you talking about?”

“Nothing! I’m just having a private conversation over here. Go back to sleep.”

“You’re crazy,” she uttered, even as she drifted off to sleep again.

I waited patiently and thought. The pain had not returned. My hip was quiet and at peace. This time I whispered into the darkness.

“I wouldn’t give a dime for a god who would do a cheap trick like that!”

I waited. There wasn’t any answer.

“Why aren’t you downtown on a night like this? I’m here in a comfortable bed, next to someone who loves me," I said. "Why aren’t you tending to those homeless people who live beneath the freeway bridge? Imagine how they must feel on a night like this, when you’re spouting all that booming and crashing and sparks are flying. That’s where you should be!”

Again, there was no reply. There was also no pain. I felt my face breaking out into a sweat.

“It worked,” I whispered.

“What worked?” My wife mumbled the question at me, rather than to me.

“Oh, that relaxation bit they showed us the other day at the hospital. I tried it and it worked.”

“Good,” she said, “now sleep.”

I couldn’t sleep. It was too odd – feeling no pain was strange. I tried to close my eyes, but they were drawn to the little window near my face. I could see the lightening slashing across the sky. Thunder continued to rumble.

I thought about those people who slept out on the streets. What were they cramming their bodies into on a night like this? Where could they find shelter?

I whispered again into the darkness.

“If human beings are so danged smart, why can’t they figure out a way to rid the word of homelessness? How tough can it be to make sure everyone has a comfortable place to sleep at night and a good, healthy breakfast in the morning? How tough?”

No answer again – only the slashing lightening and rumbling thunder!

“And Jesus answered, saying: “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, who stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. By chance there came down a certain priest that way; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, and went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.”

I drifted off into a painless sleep.

_________________________

Why not become a follower?
If you read my blog regularly, why not become a follower? All you have to do is click in the upper right hand corner and establish a simple means of communication. Then you'll be informed every time a new blog is posted here. If all that's confusing, here's Google's explanation of how to do it! If you don’t want to post comments on the blog, but would like to communicate with me about it, send me an email if you’d like.

Congress Sucks


Both parties in Congress are making fools of their members and they should figure out a way to compromise and get the nation moving again!
by Charlie Leck

Nick Kristof in the New York Times gets it right with his most recent opinion column when he calls the Congress cowardly. He spares neither party and I am with him on this one.

Kristof writes...
"This isn't government we're watching; it's junior high.

"It’s unclear where the adults are, but they don’t seem to be in Washington. Beyond the malice of the threat to shut down the federal government, averted only at the last minute on Friday night, it’s painful how vapid the discourse is and how incompetent and cowardly our leaders have proved to be. "
I recommend you read this column. I just sent along a copy of it to my congressman.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Are We a Christian Nation?


How about talking about a morality budget for the nation – something we could be proud of and boast about to the nations of the world?
by Charlie Leck

I’m a member of this organization called Sojourners. In case you don’t know about it, it’s a religious – Christian – organization, but not a whacky, right-wing, Bible-totting one. Nor is it wildly liberal – not even liberal enough to suit me completely. The important thing about the organization is that it’s committed to morality and ethical behavior and thinks often about things from the perspective of Jesus. Sojourners for Justice and Peace they call their web site. They wonder about God’s politics instead of man’s.

It's an organization that deserves a little of your attention if you consider yourself a moderate Christian who isn’t too public about it.

Recently they sent a communication that said: “Religious leaders agree that we need a budget that is fiscally responsible AND morally acceptable.”

“What would Jesus cut?” It’s an interesting question that Sojourners poses.

That’s an interesting thought. I’m trying to wrap my brains around it. Where would Hosea, the profit of the Old Testament, make cuts? Or Gandhi?

For instance, Sojourners says that “Congress is considering a budget plan that would make a 9 percent cut in discretionary spending while giving a 2 percent increase for military spending. This would be devastating for domestic programs that provide basic nutrition, health, and opportunity to poor children and international aid programs that save lives every day.”

“As a country,” Sojourners says, “we face difficult financial choices, but one thing that should not be on the table is to abandon the poor and vulnerable while allowing more military spending.”

Can a nation think like that?

Sojourners thinks it’s possible!

They suggest we send the following email to our Congresspersons and Senators…

As a person of faith, I believe that the moral test of any society is how it treats its poor and most vulnerable. Our federal budget should reflect our best national values and priorities, so in regard to your upcoming budget vote I ask myself, "What would Jesus cut?"

As your constituent, I ask you to oppose any budget proposal that increases military spending while cutting domestic and international programs that benefit the poor, especially children.

Programs we need to invest in during these tough economic times include:

1. Critical child health and family nutrition programs

2. Proven work and income supports that lift families out of poverty

3. Support for education, especially in low-income communities

4. International aid that directly and literally save lives

In Great Britain, Prime Minister Cameron made the choice to delay a costly nuclear submarine program, while also increasing life-saving funding for international aid. The U.S. Congress should follow this example.

Do you believe that “the moral test of any society is how it treats its poor and most vulnerable?” I’m thinking about that and I’m wondering what a lot of my conservative friends would say about that.

“That’s not the job of government,” I can hear Herman saying. “That is why we have charities and non-profit organizations and churches!”

I know this: I’d be very proud – very proud indeed – to live in a nation that cared for those in need – that saw to it that they were fed and clothed and sheltered and given medical attention. If my nation put that first, before all other things, I’d be damned proud! And I wouldn’t care if my taxes went up a bit as a result of it. I’d even sing the National Anthem at the top of my lungs in the middle of the Nicollet Mall at the noon hour on a Thursday in June – and thank Uncle Sam from the bottom of my heart.

I’d be proud to be an American! And I might even sing out Lee Greewood’s patriotic song

And I’m proud to be an American,
where at least I know I’m free.
And I won’t forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.

And I gladly stand up,
next to you and defend her still today.
‘ Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land,
God bless the USA.

From the lakes of Minnesota,
to the hills of Tennessee.
Across the plains of Texas,
From sea to shining sea.

From Detroit down to Houston,
and New York to L.A.
Well there's pride in every American heart,
and it’s time we stand and say.

That I’m proud to be an American,
where at least I know I’m free.
And I won’t forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.

And I just might add my own closing verse and belt it out with tears in my eyes…

And I’m proud to be an American,
where we take care of those with need.
And we won’t forget the lost or ill,
or those who need a kindly deed.

You know, where are all those who are constantly asserting that we are a Christian nation? What would Jesus cut?

_________________________

Why not become a follower?
If you read my blog regularly, why not become a follower? All you have to do is click in the upper right hand corner and establish a simple means of communication. Then you'll be informed every time a new blog is posted here. If all that's confusing, here's Google's explanation of how to do it! If you don’t want to post comments on the blog, but would like to communicate with me about it, send me an email if you’d like.