New Words & Walks

Could it be true that it is speech that develops the brain? I’m going to take a walk and think about it!
by Charlie Leck

I’ve been bringing myself down a peg or two lately by reading (rereading, really) Brenda Ueland. My, she was quite a broad. She was bright and creative and humorous. And, Lordsy, could she write. I’m trying to learn a thing or two from her.

One time a quite good friend of hers wrote to her and complained about her constant use of words that “ordinary” folk didn’t understand.

“We could easily race you around Lake Harriet and win,” wrote Agapetus, “but when it comes to language’s foggy labyrinth, we are regular Mutts and Jeffs.”

Ueland replied to her friend:

“No, Agapetus, you must look up the words, write them down and the derivation and then use them every day until they are a part of you. Now new and perfect words are a wonderful thing. They need not be long (I don’t like them long) but apropos. And you see the secret of being interesting is to be continually shocking the reader as he goes along with tiny shocks of surprise. When you are interested in talk, or in something written, there is a pull-along every second. You wait for each word, each phrase – because of the tiny shock of surprise in it – gratefully and eagerly as it comes.”

Further along in the essay, Ueland says, “…and the theory is that it is speech that develops the brain, and not the other way around.”

I image, at this point, Agapetus is shaking her head and conceding that Ueland is correct.

“The more words you know, the better, the more delicately, opulently you can think. Shakespeare, I was once told, used 39,000 words.”

One day I was reading through Ueland’s essays and I came upon this one, On Walking, which shocked me awake and brought a big smile to my face. I particularly include this excerpt for my lovely wife, known in her pre-marriage days as Anne Wakefield:

“The lake is turbulent and grey and cold. The sun at the horizon lights up the dun world with shafts of living gold light. And just crossing the bridge between Lake Harriet and Lake Calhoun I overtake Mr. Lyman Wakefield. He says he is walking from his house in Lynnhurst to the Minikhada Club. He says he agrees with me: It is much better to walk alone. Then is when you get recharged and it does wonders for you.”

That gentleman, I strongly suspect, was my wife’s grandfather, Lyman E. Wakefield, Sr.. It may have been her father, but, more likely, it was her grandfather, who lived in a lovely home in the Lynnhurst neighborhood and was a member of the Minikhada Club. A walk to the club would have brought him along the eastern shore of Lake Harriett, to where the old bandstand stood, and then up across the bridge to Lake Calhoun and along its western shore to the entrance of the club. For 7 or 8 months of the year it is a glorious walk.

I expect I’ve walked around Lake Harriett a year’s worth of times. They were glorious walks, even on very cold December nights. I gave thoughts to important agendas on those walks and calmed my mind. And, Mr. Wakefield was correct; for those walks did recharge me. I took one of them on the night I met my wife for the first time. We were both dinner guests at a home not more than 5 blocks from the home her grandfather built. I was quite taken by her that evening – as a matter of fact, I fell head over heels for her – and went walking around the lake to think about her. It was autumn and it was chilly; however, I felt only an extraordinary warmth burning inside me in a mellow way. On the peaceful stroll, I built up the courage and determination to call her within the next several days and that made all the difference.

I like Ueland’s rules about walking. She says there aren’t any. Establish your own pace. Just walk. Walk alone and allow your mind to establish its docket of thoughts. And, Anne’s grandfather was correct as well; for it does recharge you. I’m going to follow Ueland’s rules and start walking again; though I may take my dog along with me. He won’t be a bother. For old time’s sake, I’ll drive into Minneapolis on the first nice day and take a walk around Lake Harriett, to think about how lucky I’ve been.

Brenda Ueland: Strength to Your Sword Arm [Holy Cow Press, Duluth, Minnesota, 1993]

You can read about the Wakefield House, built by Anne's grandfather, on the City of Minneapolis web site/Wakefield House:

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Flag Day

What? Another day that I don’t quite understand!
by Charlie Leck

I’m sent scurrying to my Google search engine. I enter f-l-a-g-d-a-y…

Of the thousands of possibilities provided me, I opened the web site of The National Flag Day Foundation, which immediately and proudly informs me that Waubeka, Wisconsin is the “Birthplace of Flag Day!”

It is a day, I guess, to pay respects to and salute our flag; so, this I now do.

I’m in the middle of a chapter right now, in E.L. Doctorow’s novel, The March, that is about the burning of Columbia, South Carolina, in February, 1865. The book itself is about General William Tecumseh Sherman’s march, in command of over 60,000 troops, across Georgia in the latter months of 1864 and the climactic capture of Savannah.

[Doctorow, in case you don’t remember, is also the author of two extraordinary and highly regarded novels: Ragtime (’75) and Billy Bathgate (’68).]

The novel is thoroughly researched and Doctorow spent a considerable amount of time with General Sherman’s papers and journals in order to be accurate – even though the novel is dream-like and sees events through the eyes of several fictitious, marvelously drawn characters. (I unequivocally recommend the book to you.)

I bring this up because of the word-picture Doctorow draws of the Confederate Flag flying over the state capital building as he and his troop approached Columbia.

And that, in turn, makes me think of the anger and conflict that the confederate flag continues to foment among so many Americans every time they see it displayed; and how, after 150 years it still is such an emotional symbol. Its display, like the Nazi swastika, should be limited to museums only; for it symbolizes to most Americans the cruel institution of slavery and racial degradation. A few years ago, when I was in Mississippi, to honor the memory of the slain civil rights workers of 1964, the Confederate Flag was brazenly flown here and there by individual property owners who wished to make their own statement about the successes of the Civil Rights movement in the South.

Of course, the source of the great fire that burned the city of Columbia in 1865 is a matter of dispute. Yankee troops reported that soldiers of the confederacy began it by trying to burn the stored bales of cotton that they were leaving behind, so that they would not fall into the hands of the Union Army. Those with sympathies toward the southern armies claim that Sherman, himself, burned down the city. Doctorow’s story baptizes both sides with blame and it is probably an accurate picture. It is a story that literally made me cringe, at times, as I read it.

The following is an account of some of the savagery that a Colonel Teack, special assistant to General Sherman, witnesses immediately after his departure from the General’s side for the evening.

“After the General had turned a corner, Colonel Teack withdrew a flask from his tunic and took a long swig. The heat of the burning house was like the summer sun on his face. It felt good.

“It seemed to him an exemplary justice come to this state that had led the South to war. Earlier in the day he had seen a company of Union soldiers who had been among the hundreds imprisoned right here in the city’s insane asylum. The condition they were in appalled him. Filthy, foul-smelling, their skin scabrous, they were hollow-eyed creatures shambling to parade in a pathetic imitation of soldiering. You saw the structures of them through the skin, the bony residue of their half-human life, and you didn’t want to look at them. The capital city of the Confederacy had treated these soldiers not as prisoners of war but as dogs in a cage. General Sherman had seen these men and had wept and now all he could think of was the Southern belles he had kissed.

“He had sworn to wreak terror, hadn’t he? His orders were being followed. All these riotous, drunken arsonists, these rapers and looters – here were some, coming out of this fine house now, their arms filled with sacks of silver plate, loops of pearl and watches on fobs hanging from their hands – what were they but men who needed a night of freedom from this South-made war that had disrupted their lives and threatened still to take them? Now they stopped a moment to throw some torches in the windows. A soldier glanced at Teack to see his reaction and, when none was forthcoming, smiled and snapped a salute.

“If these acts of vandalism are performed as vengeance, Teack thought, why, that is an efficiency of which an army should be proud.

“What had brought on the almost universal drunkenness was the pillaging of a distillery on River Street. The Colonel found this out by following the trail back as men staggered by him with buckets of whiskey in their arms. It was a large brick building with loading platforms on which soldiers lay passed out. Inside was a bit livelier. The men had a nigger girl down on the floor and were taking their turns on her. They were pulling another down from a ladder that she was trying to climb, kicking and screaming. Teack refilled his flask from a butt of bourbon and went on his way.”

Flag Day, huh? I’m reading the wrong stuff for the day, I guess. The story doesn’t make me feel much like saluting and singing national anthems.

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Never Grouchy on Sunday

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series of novels by Alexander McCall Smith is for those who both like mystery and gentle, lovely humor!
by Charlie Leck

My wife keeps the above sign, hanging from the wall above her work desk. I see it there whenever I’m muddling around in her office, looking for something or getting some little thing fixed on her computer. Naturally, I wonder about it and its meaning in her life. Certainly it doesn’t really have anything to do with me, now – do you think?

Today when I saw it, again, it reminded me of something I had read in one of Alexander McCall Smith’s little books in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Series. I went looking for it and found it in The Good Husband of Zebra Drive (2007). It comes right at the opening of the novel.

“It is useful, people generally agree, for a wife to wake up before her husband. Mma Ramotswe always rose from her bed an hour or so before Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni – a good thing for a wife to do because it affords time to accomplish at least some of the day’s tasks. But it is also a good thing for those wives whose husband are inclined to be irritable first thing in the morning – and by all accounts there are many of them, rather too many, in fact. If the wives of such men are up and about themselves – not that Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was ever like that; on the contrary, he was the most good-natured and gracious of men, rarely raising his voice, except occasionally when dealing with his two incorrigible apprentices at Tlokwent Road Speedy Motors. And anybody, no matter how even-tempered he might be, would have been inclined to raise his voice with such feckless young men.”

I don’t see myself as a person who awakens in grouchy moods in the morning, but it is difficult to hold a mirror up to oneself at the proper angle. Isn’t it?

I especially don’t awaken in a bad mood on Sunday mornings. It is, as I have said here a dozen times or more, my favorite time of the week. It is the New York Times morning – a couple of fried eggs and a slice of ham, with some god-awful toasted rice bread (I’ve been forced to go gluten-free these days) and a luscious cup of hot coffee with just a dash of caramel flavoring in it.

Even the dog knows to leave me alone on Sunday mornings, so I can immerse myself in some delightful, entertaining and educational reading. If I don’t have a Sunday morning golf round scheduled, I surface around noon and consider what I must do for the rest of the day.

As I work through my Sunday morning reading, I take notes occasionally, if I come across something that I think might fit into my blogs for the coming week.

The little woman tries to sleep in on Sunday mornings – at least until about seven. By that time I’ve finished a great deal of my reading and I can share anything that I think will particularly interest her.

Sundays are also meant for light reading. When the newspapers are set aside and I still have time before noon, I’ll pick up something to read just for enjoyment. That’s where Alexander McCall Smith comes in (stage right). His writing, as I hope you can see from the above quotation, is delightfully smooth and easy. He has a delicate sense of humor and his characters charm me. His novels in this particular series are never very long (approximately 200 pages) and you can put that away in no time without having to worry about thinking too much. The kicker that gets thrown in, which makes the endeavor so worthwhile, is that the little mysteries are wrapped in both fascinating writing and very good stories.

When one closes one of Smith’s books, one normally feels refreshed and better about life than when one started reading. For instance, here’s how the above mentioned book closes…

Mma Ramotswe smiled at Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. He was such a good man, such a kind man, and he was her husband.

“That engine I’ve been working on will run so sweetly,” he remarked as he poured his tea.

“Like life,” she said.

Ah, sweet Sunday mornings. These are times to repress thoughts about horrible oil spills and man’s deep-seeded tendencies toward selfishness and immorality!

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Target on Target

The recent success of Target Stores seems to be a sign that the economy is shaking itself awake!
by Charlie Leck

Don’t worry! I’m not trying to pretend to be a business writer or stock market observer. I’m far from either. Yet, there are certain signs that the economy is coming out of its doldrums and that has a certain lap-over affect into an arena in which I do spend time – namely political observations!

Target Corp (a Minnesota based company) recently announced dividend payments to its shareholders that were up 47 percent over the last pay out. At a stockholder meeting in Colorado, the CEO told his audience that shoppers were loosening up and spending again. Retailers, like Target, have particularly felt the pinch during recent hard times. Though the company remains guarded, preserving its reserves quite conservatively, it is an interesting sign that it is opening its first store in Manhattan this year.

Another Minnesota company, United Health Group increased its dividend payout this year – by more than a thousand percent.

The only events that could save progressive politicians in this year’s election are much improved economic signs and some job growth. This, of course, would then make the coming two years much less turbulent for the Obama administration. There’s not much a political activist can do to make this happen. One just has to sit back and watch one of the most unpredictable institutions in America – its stock market.

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Approaching 1,000th Blog

A Fresh Look, but the same old stuff!
by Charlie Leck

As you can see, my blog has a new look. If the distraction of the background (bookshelves) isn’t too much for you, you should find the rest of the blog much clearer and more readable. The background image, much like the area where I work on these regular blogs, gives me a peaceful setting.

Let me know your reaction!

I am fast approaching my 1,000 blog post since I began writing here and I am thinking about some way to celebrate that event for my regular readers (perhaps a prize drawing for something like a special trip to the Twin Cities of Minnesota – travel and hotel and a tour guide all paid for). Again, if you have ideas, let me know.

Whig Party Shattered (1859)!

What is going on with political parties in our day?
by Charlie Leck

It is a beautiful and sun-shiny Wednesday morning after a dull, chilly, grey and day long rain yesterday. I'm working on Friday's blog. It will require some reading and checking.

I find myself wading through our local newspapers and significant on-line news sources, trying to figure out what the primaries of Tuesday might mean in the longer run, and most particularly about the coming November elections. At the same time, I am reading my text books for the on-line Yale course I am monitoring (Civil War & Reconstruction), and the emphasis right now is on the incredible national elections of the 1856 and 1860. It sounds crazy; that is, juxtaposing these events – antebellum America and Tea Party America – against one another; nevertheless, I am having fun doing it.

As for the primaries on Tuesday, 8 June 2010
I see small glimmerings that the Tea Party may not be as forcefully influential on voters as they hoped, or as I feared, they would be. I see that out of both Arkansas and California. Carly Fiorina won the Republican race in California for the right to go up against Barbara Boxer in the November election for the U.S. Senate seat. Fiorina, a former CEO at Hewlett-Packard, beat two candidates, one of which the Tea Party had been touting.

However, in Nevada, the candidate backed by the Tea Party, Sharron Angle, defeated the two established Republicans who were running against her. Here, if examined closely, one can see how the two traditional Republicans split their supporters and Angle was able to come slipping through the divide. She’ll now have to run against Senator Harry Reid in the general election. That will be a race worth watching and I believe it will be incredibly close. It’s interesting that part of Angle’s platform is a privatization of Social Security. Can you, if you receive Social Security payments, image what would have happened to Social Security over the last ten years – since 9-11 – had the system been privatized? She favors phasing out Social Security and that puts the Senior vote in Nevada very much in Mr. Reid's favor. Ms. Angle also approves of processing nuclear wastes at Yuka Mountain, which is highly unfavorable to Nevada residents of all political stripes. Senator Reid suddenly looks like the moderate centrist candidate in that election.

In South Carolina, Ms. Nikki Haley, a Republican and the Tea Party candidate won in the primary election for the right to run for Governor. Again, she was running against three other Republicans and those votes were badly split and it is difficult to get a reading of the Tea Party’s effectiveness. She’ll now need to prevail in a run-off election before taking on the Democrat in the general election. I remind myself that this is South Carolina and the Republican candidate, whoever it turns out to be, is most likely going to win there. It is difficult to use this state as a measuring stick of the Tea Party’s strength. If their candidate doesn’t win in this run-off it will be an incredible blow to them.

The side-story in this gubernatorial battle in South Carolina is that it is a race to replace Governor Mark Sanford, famous for his extramarital sexcapades. During the campaign, Ms. Haley had to overcome accusations that she has been having a couple of extramarital affairs herself. My, oh my! It is interesting to me that Ms. Haley is of India-American descent and might become, if she is classified as such, the first non-white Governor of the state. This will be an interesting race to watch over the summer months. Haley will have to beat Congressman J. Gresham Barrett in the run-off. The winner of that race will certainly win the general election in November. The runoff will gather attention because Haley is endorsed by Sarah Palin and the Tea Party.

Sometime ago, I and many others were referring to the Tea Party as a divergent, third party movement. It is become clearer that it is really only another wing of the very conservative Republican Party movement. Though she would deny it, Sarah Palin is the Tea Party’s symbolic, if not de facto, leader. I think the movement’s success will very much depend on the coming success of Palin. And, I can’t personally imagine that the GOP is going to be willing to put its future into the hands of a wing-nut from Alaska. Of course, if her candidates win big this November, the Party big-wigs may have no choice in the matter at all. On the other hand, if the Tea Party fails to look good in this election, the Republican slot for President will be wide open once again.

The Tea Party, I believe, would have little influence in American politics if it weren’t for the constant fueling and refueling the crazies in the broadcast media keep giving it. It is like hundreds of millions of dollars in free advertising. This is a certain sign of what American politics has become and who controls it. Does the future of American politics belong to Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh?

In the 1850s, the United States saw the collapse of the great Whig Party and the birth of a Republican Party (far different than the modern version) that would take control of the nation and elect Abraham Lincoln in 1860. Back then, what we saw was the creation of a liberal Republican Party and its movement to ally itself with the northern rush to abolish slavery.

The future of the Republican Party
The stakes are high for Republicans. In the last twenty years the Grand Old Party has changed in extraordinary ways. It has become the party that tried to create a home for moderates, true conservatives and radical, right-wing extremists. Can a major political party survive such schizophrenia? It will be one of the interesting developments to watch over the next decade -- and that starts this November.

This comment, for instance, comes from a New York Times article on the current confusion in the Republican Party:

“...Republican leaders will have to answer the question some critics are already asking, which is how they managed to let a promising election season get so mightily out of control.”

Gail Collins in a NY Times opinion column suggests that election may be about much more than voter anger this year, and her point is interesting:

“We have been entertaining ourselves with theories about how this election year is going to be all about voter anger. Or Washington insiders. Or health care. Or TARP. But, really, it’s going to be about money. Gobs of cash falling on campaigns like tar balls on a beach.”

Lots of political candidates have been spending lots of money in the primaries. The two women who won the California primaries for Governor and the U.S. Senate spent over 100 million dollars of their own money on primary elections.

David Brooks, again in the NY Times, opines that red states seem to be getting redder, while the Tea Party is have trouble making progress in the blue states. The Republicans winning primaries in those states appear to be moderates.

Of course, as I can hear many of you saying, there is a whole summer and a good part of the autumn for campaigning yet; and none of us no where this thing is going to go. These questions will effect that…

How big a hit will Obama and the Dems take on the BP oil spill?

What kind of problems will arise in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Will Obama’s army of workers and donors show up in this election?

Will Obama’s campaigning make a difference and will candidates want his help?

What impact will Sarah Palin have? Or the Tea Party, for that matter?

Could the Tea Party methodology of conflict and anger actually hurt Republicans?

Will the economy show some improvement into the autumn?

Stay tuned because it is going to be a very interesting and an extremely important election that will, as did the elections of 1858 and 1860, define America for many decades to come.

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This comment came in from South Carolina and it is worth posting here:
"Charlie, Nikki Haley is a Sarah Palin with brains, says one of our good Democrat friends here in Aiken. Even more interesting in SC is the defeat of Congressman Vic Rawl, by a totally unknown man - 32 years old, and unemployed. ...Tony (man who identified N. Haley with S. Palin) thinks the Republicans had a Big part in supplying him (I can't even think of his name right now) with the necessary funds to get in the race - and somehow dug up all of his votes. Crazy indeed.
Donna"

U.S. History through a Truth Lens

We, the United States, are an insecure people and the nation is confused and befuddled about what it stands for!
by Charlie Leck

To any careful reader of American History, it is clear that the United States is not a pure and guiltless nation when it comes to expansionism and international aggression.

I imagine that making such statements puts me in the category of the disloyalists or, as Congresswoman Bachman might say, an anti-American traitor, or, as the late Senator Joseph McCarthy might have said, “a dirty, rotten, communist pinko.”

Yet, it is a historical fact that white, European explorers and settlers pushed America’s true native’s off their land and into territories in which they did not want to go. It was not only the great tribes of the Northeast who, in the 17th century, were either slaughtered or pushed westward, but it also happened in the Southeast when the five great Native American tribes (Crete, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee and Seminole) were pushed out of their lands and into the Great West). It happened across the nation as white expansionists rolled westward. Here in my own land, the Sioux were abused and mistreated and every treaty made with them was eventually violated.

In 1845, General Zachary Taylor, acting on orders sent to him by the President of the United States (Polk), moved troops south of the traditional Texas and U.S. border with Mexico, the Nueces River, all the way down to the Rio Grande, and declared that this land, which had always been recognized as a part of Mexico, to now be the territory of the United States.

Colonel Ethan Allen Hitchcock, a professional soldier, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, and a brilliant student of world history, kept a careful diary during those years that our nation invaded and took from Mexico its rightful property. In the spring of 1846, Hitchcock, sitting along the Rio Grande, made the following entry in his diary.

“I have said from the first that the United States are the aggressors… We have not one particle of right to be here… It looks as if the government sent a small force on purpose to bring on a war, so as to have a pretext for taking California and as much of this country as it chooses, for, whatever becomes of this army, there is no doubt of a war between the United States and Mexico… My heart is not in this business… but as a military man, I am bound to execute orders.”

And so, simply because we believed it was our “manifest destiny” we took the land down to the Rio Grande and then all of New Mexico, Arizona, parts of Utah, Colorado and all of Southern California.

Oh yes, we paid Mexico 15 million dollars in reparations. It caused an editor of the Whig Intelligencer to write: “We take nothing by conquest… thank God!”

Barely a voice of protest was raised in the antebellum United States. Those, like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, who did protest, were viewed as kooks. Our expansionist policies in the mid 1800s century were built upon lies and self-deception.

Times, over the years, have not much changed. We deceived ourselves about Vietnam and wasted thousands of lives there on a war that should never have been fought. Along the Rio Grande, in 1846, phony military excuses had to be created in order to initiate the war. The same thing happened in the Gulf of Tonkin a bit more than a hundred years later, allowing us to justify our massive use of force in a tiny nation that we didn’t understand in the slightest and in which we had no right to interfere.

History repeats itself.
We invaded Iraq because of a set of lies trumped up by the George W. Bush administration. There never were any weapons of mass destruction.

We went to Afghanistan in search of a terrorist giant and now we are there for other reasons that no one can really make clear to the American people.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost us trillions and trillions of dollars and, probably, were the cause behind the collapse of our economy. Yet, the Tea Party murmurs not a word about the unjustified and expensive wars. They complain about high taxes, deficit budgets and national debt. Look to the wars, fellows, and see the reasons for all three.

Manifest Destiny?
The term was first used by a journalist in New York in calling for the annexation of Texas. The Polk Administration adopted the concept to justify its plans for an expansion all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Later Presidents, as late as Ronald Reagan, used the term to explain dubious military actions (Grenada) taken under their administrations.

If you don’t realize you live in a crazy and mixed-up nation, controlled by forces other than a democratic public, you are simply being a fool.

I can only chuckle at people who tell me that saying these things makes me a radical thinker and I can only reply that they ought to open their history books. I am merely a reader of history.

The rain continues!
It’s raining now (Wednesday) and the morning is grey and sunless!
The oil is still gushing into the Gulf of Mexico and
pushing more filth on to the beaches and into the
estuaries of the gulf coast states. The region will not
be cleaned up and made whole again in my lifetime.
I am beginning to feel some kind of strange bond with the state of
Louisiana and its people and I wonder what I can personally do
that will go beyond just feeling so sorry for them.

Who was the famous American who said it? “Drill, baby, drill!”