World War I, an American soldier’s diary

At the end of this Library of Congress blog  https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2018/03/world-war-i-an-american-soldiers-journey-home/?loclr=ealocb  is a link to the amazing performance by Douglas Taurel based on the diary of a WWI soldier, Irving Greenwald.  It’s very moving and quite vivid.  You almost feel like you’re on the battle field with him.  We’re in the midst of remembering the centennial of WWI—and this is a worthy project.  At Lakeside last summer we had a week devoted to WWI.

This website explains how the author/actor Taurel prepared his script from the diary, which he says was extremely well-written. http://www.theamericansoldiersoloshow.com/a-soldier-life-in-word-war-i-irving-greenwald/

“Reading a soldier’s diary requires a tremendous amount of patience. For the soldiers of the First World War, the actual fighting took up a very small amount of their time. In reality, the life of a soldier in war is filled with a tremendous amount of minutia.  Reading a soldier’s diary requires time to digest all of that soldier’s life while in service, from his day-to-day life in training, through what it means to endure life in the trenches, to mustering heroic courage in combat.

For the Library of Congress’s commemoration of the centennial of the First World War, I was invited to write a new play based on the life of Irving Greenwald, a soldier from WWI. Greenwald was part of the Lost Battalion, and his diary is preserved by the Library’s Veterans History Project. I will perform a one-man play on Veteran’s Day.

Irving Greenwald left 465 days of his diary’s entries, and I set out in May to read all of them, with a goal to read ten days’ worth of his diary entries each day. I aimed to complete the entire diary in a little over a month. Some days I read more, and some days I read less. “

Because of my age, I did know veterans of WWI, although my earliest memories are of WWII. When I came across this blog, I thought about some of them that I knew, then pulled “War Record of Mount Morris” (1947) from my shelf, and although it covers about 500 soldiers that had a WWII connection to Mt. Morris, it includes a list from WWI, The Civil War, and Spanish American War.  Frank Aufderbeck lived next door to us on Hitt St. Don Clark was the grandfather of my nieces and nephews. Harold Knodle was the husband of one of my teachers. Many names on the list are familiar, although I didn’t know them personally.

My summer of 1958, part 4

What does an 18 year old do for a social life while living on a farm with her grandparents?  Not much except spend time with adults.  See Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 for the story about why I was living on a farm the summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college. Transcribed from my diary!

Perhaps it was a good thing, but my boyfriend had to go to Minnesota for the summer of 1958 for civil engineer camp. According to my diary, he called about 11:30 on June 6 and said he would stop by before leaving, so I grabbed a pail of water to wash up, put on some clean clothes and we said good-bye before he left. Going after the mail, either walking or driving to Franklin Grove, was a favorite activity and I got my first letter from him on June 9. I would often stop at the local drug store to get a Coke and read my mail the diary says. I mentioned letters from college friends, some other boys I’d dated, and my great uncle Edwin who lived in Ohio.

On Saturday June 14 I was picked up by a relative so I could go to my uncle’s wedding, which was a lovely event and I sat with my other grandmother (groom’s mother). I spent the night at my parents’ home and my brother drove me back to the farm after church with them.  That Sunday afternoon Aunt Muriel and Uncle John came down with my cousin Gayle and we girls had a good visit.  By this time, Grandma and I were wearing on each others’ nerves, and I noted in the diary I started to read Norman Vincent Peale’s “Power of Positive Thinking.” I was probably acting like a normal, self-centered teen-ager, which I’m sure was difficult for her. I didn’t sympathize then, but for her age and declining health, the stresses in her life and still being in deep grief over the death of her sonin WWII, she was doing better than I realized then.

The big activity of June 16 was cleaning the house and ironing clothes and in the evening I walked in the bean field and watched the men making hay. I’m sure I wished I was at the skating rink or movie, although I didn’t write that. Finally, someone my own age showed up.  On the evening of June 17 friends from high school/college—Sylvia, Sharon and Lynne drove down from Mt. Morris to see me and I wrote we had a lot of fun talking.

Uncle Leslie and Aunt Bernice would come out from Chicago about once a week and all of 5 of us would go to Dixon to eat and shop for groceries, and Bernice and I would chat while Leslie talked to his parents.  She often brought cake or cookies with her.

One rather interesting “social” event was meeting a woman, Mrs. Sharkey, on Sunday morning June 22 when I drove to Dixon, and I attended a Catholic Mass with her at St. Patrick’s  (my first and only until 2017) and she loaned me her prayer book.  She was a widow and invited me to her apartment for coffee, and I note in my diary that her china was the same pattern as Grandma’s.  In late summer 1960 I went to Dixon to the store where she worked and bought my everyday china from her. A sweet memory of a dear Christian woman.

It’s not clear from my diary why I was in Dixon on a Sunday morning, probably looking for the Church of the Brethren thinking I'd see friends from college, but later that day I drove to Mt. Morris, had supper with my other grandparents because no one was home at my parents.  Perhaps I just wanted a bath (we still had no indoor plumbing at the farm).  I recorded that my Aunt Lois (who died this last December at 91) had a baby girl the day before (that would be cousin Rhonda) and that I drove my Dad’s new red Ford Ranchero.  Dad never removed the keys from his cars, so I suppose I just hopped in and went for a joy ride stopping to talk to people I knew!

On June 25 Grandma wanted to see Dr. Boyle in Mt. Morris so we drove there and I had a chance to visit with my girlfriend, Lynne.  On many days I wrote that I walked down the lane to the neighbors after supper. Often they would give me fresh produce from their garden which I would work into my menus  Addie and Dale were 38 and 39 (died in 2016 and 2017),  had four adorable children and were fun to be around.  I also went to church and their Sunday School class, really old folks like 30 or 40, and I don’t mention meeting anyone my age.  I also visited an immigrant couple, Dora and Zieg, down the other lane who were learning English by watching TV (my grandparents didn’t have a TV).  On June 30, two sisters-in-law of my boyfriend stopped to visit me at the farm.

On July 4 after baking a cherry pie, making a big dinner of meatloaf and baked beans and sprinkling the laundry (no permanent press then—wash, starch, dry, sprinkle, iron), I walked to the neighbors down the lane and Martha Brumbaugh came by and offered to take me to Mt. Morris, so we went after supper and I caught up with high school friends Nancy, Priscilla and Lynne to attend the July 4 talent show in Mt. Morris. Sylvia drove me back to Franklin Grove that evening. Rereading this, I am surprised at all the driving back and forth and I seemed rather casual about the transportation  arrangements.  If Sylvia hadn’t offered, how would I have gotten back to the farm? It’s about 19 miles, with hilly, winding roads, and a long lane off the high-way, or about 40 minutes. Did it ever occur to me at 18 how many people I inconvenienced?  If so, I didn’t mention it.

On July 5 I wrote I had a 4 page letter from my boyfriend and I was beginning to miss him!  How shallow is that? He’d been writing several times a week. Also I went to the garden and picked over a quart of raspberries and some rhubarb.  Then I made 2 pies.  Aunt Muriel, Uncle John, their daughter Dianne and my mother came down in the evening.  I hope I served them some pie, although I didn’t write that in the diary!

         

I don’t have a photo of my cousins and Aunt Muriel from 1958, but this is 1959 at Gayle’s wedding. Aren’t they lovely!

From July 7 through the 11th my entries are very short.  Sylvia and Dave came to visit, I went to the neighbors to help with a birthday party and got home at 1 .m., I cleaned a lot, baked a lot, took a pie to Dora and Zieg.

July 12 is my last entry in the diary of my summer at the farm. I baked a blueberry pie that day, Uncle Leslie and Aunt Bernice came and we went to Dixon where I bought a wedding gift for my high school friend, Tina, who had moved to Florida after our junior year.  And I mentioned no one would want this job. . . nothing I did was right, and there are no other entries.  I think my father picked me up the next day or within a few days, and I spent the rest of the summer in Mt. Morris.  And I was probably much more appreciative of my own home, my mother’s cooking, and just doing what teen-agers do.

My summer of 1958, part 5

See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 for the story about why I was living on my grandparents’ farm in 1958, the summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college.  The diary also covers problems with the water, my menus and cooking, disagreements with my grandparents and my social life. Transcribed from my diary!

I’d forgotten so much of this, and yet, not much has changed in my personal interests and activities and Grandma and Grandpa been gone for over 55 years—1963 and 1968. The signs were there in 1958 for my future career as a librarian, I just didn’t know it then. Even the topics of my publications in the 1990s when I was a librarian at Ohio State university—the journals and books and their stories—I was holding the raw material in my hands in 1958. "A Bibliographic Field of Dreams," AB Bookman's Weekly for the Specialist Book World, in 1994;   "A Commitment to Women--The Ohio Cultivator and The Ohio Farmer of the 19th Century," Serials Librarian in 1998; research on home libraries , spanning two farm family collections for the years 1850-1930.

The diary begins on June 1, 1958 with Grandma and I having a long talk—some of which I probably knew before. I recorded other conversations too personal to repeat. Who but me would remember now she had a baby named Glenn Oliver who died at birth?   I wrote down that Grandma and Grandpa met in college in Mt. Morris, Illinois, in the 1890s when both belonged to the same boarding club.  She was raised on a farm near Ashton, Illinois, and graduated from Ashton High School;  he was raised on a farm near Dayton, Ohio. Both had a financially comfortable life, being younger than their siblings, and enjoyed travel, reading and hobbies—hers was painting, his was bicycles. I’ve often wondered if he’d ever met the Wright brothers whose home and bicycle shop were in Dayton.  They were members of the same small religious group (German Baptist Brethren, later called Church of the Brethren).  They had gone their separate ways after meeting in college—she returned to the farm to take care of her sick mother, and he and his brother had gone on an adventure west, teaching school in the Dakotas and working as lumberjacks in the northwest. Because her father was able to support her, she told me, the local school board would not hire her as a teacher, but she continued with art lessons and “did the books” for her father’s numerous farms.

 
The farm home near Englewood, Ohio where Grandpa grew up, one of 9 children.

The boarding club where my grandparents met at Mt. Morris College. She is back row far left, and he is front row far right

I loved learning family history, and Grandma and I talked a lot that summer.  By attrition, sixty years later I’m the only one left in the family who keeps track. I have a genealogy software program, I’ve written several family stories I distribute to my cousins and siblings, a family cookbook, and in my own house, I still have many books and clippings and even some clothing that belonged to these grandparents.  There will never be another home for them since there is no one to pass them on to.
June 5: “After supper dishes I straightened things and cut a fresh bouquet.  Then I looked at old books, clippings and pictures until 11.  I sure found some interesting things.” (Grandma had a parlor for clipping articles out of her journals, and a large walk-in closet with special shelving for her journals dating back to the 1890s.)

June 6: “Grandma and I talked after dishes.  She still worries about Clare (son who died in WWII), whether or not she had tied him down.”. . . “Browsing the tool shed I found agricultural books over 100 years old, also an English grammar from 1850.”

June 24: “Mom came down about 3 p.m. while I was straightening Grandmas’s  magazines.  I drove our car to town  . . . I had a letter from Lynne. . . The water is fixed so I took a bath and read some journals and went to bed.”

Also in my diary are a lot of visits with the neighbors in the evening, especially the Jaspers (both of whom died within the last two years in their 90s), and I learned from their stories about their pasts and families.

Another interest still strong 60 years later is all the letters I mentioned in the diary. Going to the post office each afternoon, then opening my mail at the drug store was a special treat noted often in the diary.  I had several letters a week from my boyfriend who was attending classes in Minnesota, letters from college friends, and even a few from friends living just 20 miles away.

June 11: “ I walked into town (Franklin Grove) to look at the library.  It is pretty nice for a small town.  I got the mail, had a wonderful letter and bought a coke.  Very nice afternoon.”

June 15: “After dishes I wrote letters, studied Spanish and read Good Housekeeping. . . After supper I wrote more letters and read to page 38 in Don Quixote, which I think is a very dull book.”

June 16: “I got a letter from [boyfriend] intended for his parents and one from [another boy I’d dated at Manchester].  I mailed 6 letters.”

June 23: “I walked into town and got 4 letters.  I read them in the Drug Store. . . wrote to Richard (son of Uncle Leslie and Aunt Bernice) after dishes and read and listened to the radio.”

I still do a lot of correspondence, now mostly by e-mail—some of the same people I visited with or wrote to that summer. In the 1990s, I compiled all the “real” letters I had from parents, siblings, cousins and friends and excerpted all the  items about the holidays from Halloween through the New Year and called it “Winters past, winters’ post.”  These letters recorded the ordinary events of our lives to the faint drumbeat of the cold war, the civil rights movement, space flight, the VietNam war, political campaigns, Watergate, economic growth and slowdown cycles, the rise of feminism, employment crises, career changes and family reconfigurations. On and on we wrote, from the conservatism of the Eisenhower years, on through the upheaval of the 60's, the stagnation of the 70's, then into the conservatism of Reagan/Bush in the 80s. National and international events are rarely discussed in these letters as though we were pulling the family close into the nest for a respite from the world's woes. When my children were about 35, I compiled from letters to my parents, all the cute, wonderful and strange things they’d done or said.

I also saved letters from others, and at various life events, bundled them up and returned to sender. Others did the same for me.  In 2004 four years after Mom's death I received a bundle of letters my mother had written to her cousin, Marianne in Iowa.  For about 30 years I saved all the Christmas/holiday letters we’d received from friends and family, and just this past year we said good-bye.

My summer of 1958, part 2

In the summer of 1958 I lived on my grandparents’ farm near Franklin Grove, IL when they were in their 80s and I was 18.  (See Part 1)  They were lured back to Illinois with their young son Leslie in 1908 from Wichita, Kansas, where they had lived since 1901 with  the promise of this farm home to help her ill father, then in his 80s. They took care of him until he died in 1912.  My grandmother was the only survivor of his four adult children, her oldest brother Ira having recently died of blood poisoning from an injury on his farm near Ashton and the home place. (Diphtheria and childbirth having taken the other two, Will and Martha, in the 19th century.)  Ira was the one who was helping her father manage the farms.

What our family knew as the farm house had been put together using a small house ca. 1850s, and a larger, early 1900's style, an unspectacular, 8 room, boxy farm house. Grandma had it remodeled adding a huge gracious dining room, with a bedroom and balcony above it where she had hanging plants and flowers and a second staircase, a big airy kitchen with "modern" features like a built in corn cob storage for the blue and black cookstove, manual dishwasher, a metal topped table with flour bins, a walk-in pantry/storage room, an upstairs servant's bedroom, plus two bathrooms, a dumbwaiter, a generator in the basement and a utility sink at the back door for washing up before entering the house. The dining room and the bedroom above it were the new part that joined the 19th c. and 20th c. houses together.

Some updates had been done by 1958, but the house was in poor repair.  Grandpa was not “handy” and Grandma was not a fastidious housekeeper, being much more interested in the business end of farming. And they were old—his hearing had failed, and she’d had several small strokes and falls. So, according to my steno pad diary the well wasn’t working and I was hand pumping the water I used for cleaning, cooking and dishes.  I don’t mention our drinking water in the diary, but it does give me pause to think we were probably drinking unsafe water.

I didn’t understand it then, but do now—Grandma fretted to the point of tears that she wasn’t there when Martin came to fix the well the first time.  According to my diary, Martin didn’t return until June 6.  I can’t recall how the laundry was done, but mentioned in the diary  (June 3) that Grandma had worn herself out and was out of breath gathering up laundry and we had to rush to get her to the hair dresser.  On June 6 I noted I drove to town, mailed some letters and picked up the laundry—it was $8.10.  That day after working in the garden I wrote that I washed my hair and tennis shoes—and I used only one bucket of water to do both jobs!

I wrote that the well drillers came on June 18th, and by the 20th were finished after 105 feet of drilling and finding 41 feet of water although I was still pumping pails of water for household use. A plumber had to reconnect the house to the well source.   Usually, taking a bath wouldn’t be  an event for a teen diary, but I mentioned it on June 27, and washed my hair on the 28th so maybe it was awhile before we got water in the house.

2643 Also reading at the Lake, Team of Rivals

Actually, I'm listening to Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals, the story of how President Lincoln packed his cabinet with some of the most brilliant minds and anti-slavery people of his era. However, the book has over 900 pages, so since I'm only on disk 10, I don't think I'll finish before we leave for Finland. The author is particularly outstanding in fleshing out the main characters with their wives, children, and close associates.

". . . The comparative approach has also yielded an interesting cast of female characters to provide perspective on the Lincolns’ marriage. The fiercely idealistic Frances Seward served as her husband’s social conscience. The beautiful Kate Chase made her father’s quest for the presidency the ruling passion of her life, while the devoted Julia Bathes created a blissful home that gradually enticed her husband away from public ambitions. Like Frances Seward, Mary Lincoln displayed a striking intelligence; like Kate Chase, she possessed what was then considered an unladylike interest in politics. Mary’s detractors have suggested that if she had created a more tranquil domestic life for her family, Lincoln might have been satisfied to remain in Springfield. Yet the idea that he could have been a contented homebody, like Edward Bates, contradicts everything we know of the powerful ambition that drove him from his earliest days.

By widening the lens to include Lincoln’s colleagues and their families, my story benefited from a treasure trove of primary sources that have not generally been sued in Lincoln biographies. The correspondence of the Seward family contains nearly five thousand letters, including an eight-hundred-page diary that Seward’s daughter Fanny kept from her fifteenth year until two weeks before her death at the age of twenty-one."

In my opinion, both the feminists and the male biographers of some of our most famous Americans have ignored or scorned the roles women played in their lives. Mary Lincoln comes out of this looking better than most portrayals, simply by using original sources, rather than Lincoln's enemies as the source. This has been an excellent review of the issues of slavery (which I think strongly resemble many of the immigration issues of the 21st century), and also the power and education levels of women "who also served." Also, Lincoln's nature and bouts with depression make a lot more sense when viewed through the sufferings of some of the other men around him, like Edwin Stanton, who nearly went insane after the death of his wife and daughter. According to his sister, at night he would lay out her bed clothes and walk through the house crying and calling out her name.

"In addition to the voluminous journals in which Salmon Chase recorded the events of four decades, he wrote thousands of personal letters. A revealing section of his daughter Kate’s diary also survives, along with dozens of letters from her husband, William Sprague. The unpublished section of the diary that Bates began in 1846 provides a more intimate glimpse of the man than the published diary that starts in 1859. Letters to his wife, Julia, during his years in Congress expose the warmth beneath his stolid exterior. Stanton’s emotional letters to his family and his sister’s unpublished memoir reveal the devotion and idealism that connected the passionate, hard-driving war secretary to his president. The correspondence of Montgomery Blaire’s sister, Elizabeth Blaire Lee, and her husband, Captain Samuel Phillips Lee, leaves a memorable picture of a daily life in wartime Washington. The diary of Gideon Welles, of course, has long been recognized for its penetrating insights into the workings of the Lincoln administration." From the author’s introduction

In this age of e-mails, text-messaging, and blogs, I do wonder what historians will have to work with when they write about our current crop of 20-somethings who will someday be in the halls of Congres.

Sex diary of RFK Jr.

Robert Kennedy, Jr's sex diary has been published and although I think he's no moral prize and this is the pot calling the kettle black, "During lock up [with Al Sharpton], he apparently had plenty of time to critique his fellow Democrats, saying that Sharpton 'has done more damage to the black cause' than segregationist governors in the south who prevented school integration. '(Sharpton's) transparent venal blackmail and extortion schemes taint all black leadership,' Kennedy wrote."

Sounds like he was trying to keep up with his uncle, JFK, or maybe his grandfather who was also randy.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2415988/RFK-Jrs-secret-sex-diary-RFK-Jr-slammed-creepy-Al-Sharpton-said-Andrew-Cuomo-lacked-humanity-diary-kept-ranking-of-women-cheated-with.html

My summer of 1958, part 3

What does an 18 year old do all day while living on a farm with her grandparents who aren’t thrilled to have her “help?” See Part 1 and Part 2 for the story about why I was there and what the farm was like.

The diary I kept that summer reveals a lot of cooking and cleaning, certainly more than I do now. Also some gardening—surprise—didn’t remember that at all!  Although I thought they were rather set in their ways and not too friendly then, 60 years later rereading the diary, I’m amazed and admiring at their flexibility and good humor at my housekeeping abilities.

June 1: “The food situation was bad.  Bacon and cold baloney are the only meats in the house. For some reason there are about 2 doz. lemons.  I fixed an orange and banana fruit dish and mixed some peas and potatoes for something hot—and also a meat sandwich.” Note:  when I was a child I thought eating baloney sandwiches at grandma's house was a wonderful treat since my mother never made them.

June 2: “We had scrambled eggs for breakfast, chicken a la king, biscuits, pineapple-cottage cheese salad and tapioca for dinner (noon) and “left-over loaf” and a mixture of green vegetables and fruit salad and tapioca-applesauce.”

June 3: “I mixed up some apricot-buttermilk  bread and put that in the oven at 7:30 a.m. I fixed grandpa and me soft boiled eggs and we all had mixed fruit.  They seem to enjoy fresh fruit in most any type of combination. . . For dinner I fixed hot dogs with bacon, corn and fruit with the fresh bread. . . I bought $10.84 worth of groceries—12 boxes of Jello and 2 puddings to make sure we wouldn’t run out for awhile.  For supper I fixed liver, boiled potatoes, orange-carrot-banana Jello salad and bread.” (My parents showed up around 8 p.m., I made coffee and Dad and I talked in the kitchen) “ and he sure liked that bread I made.”

June 4: I fixed pancakes for breakfast; they might have tasted better if the skillet were  not so rusty. I fixed minute steaks, beans, orange Jello salad and bread pudding for dinner (noon). . . for supper we had soup.

June 5: “The oatmeal I made for breakfast tasted like paste. . . macaroni and cheese for dinner—not much better than the oatmeal. . . soup for supper.

June 7: “I dusted some before breakfast—we had cereal, eggs and juice. . .[ate lunch in Dixon]  For supper I fixed liver, mashed potatoes, tossed salad, relish plate, and strawberry shortcake.  I used the good dishes and really had fun, but what a clean-up job..  After dishes were over I tried to make a strawberry cream pie, but it didn’t work!”

June 9: A reversal of meals--onion soup and baloney sandwiches for dinner and meat loaf, cabbage slaw and melon for supper.

June 10: Oatmeal for breakfast; hamburgers, corn creole and pear salad for dinner; fruit plate for supper with custard.

June 11: Ham, asparagus, cabbage salad and custard.  Soup, sandwiches and Jello for supper.

June 12:  Grandpa's birthday.  I baked a date cake for him, "a major project." Lima bean casserole. Took some cake to the neighbors in the evening.

June 13: Made out a menu and schedule for next week. Chicken pot pie for dinner; meat plate, potatoes & peas and tomatoes and banana bread for supper.

June 16: Hamburgers, mashed potatoes & gravy, tossed salad and blackberry pie for dinner.

June 20: Baked a coffee cake which didn't turn out, so I put it in Jello. Creamed ham and rice for dinner; hotdogs, corn and Jello for supper.  Decided to quit, but had a long talk with Grandma and we worked things out.

June 24: Baked a raisin pie; baked chicken for supper and salmon for dinner (noon) trying to use up food due to refrigerator repair.

June 26: I baked all morning (complained to diary they weren't appreciative). Home made rolls, strawberry parfait, deviled eggs, asparagus and tuna cakes.  Baked pinwheel cookies, ate 10, and sent the rest to my boyfriend in Minnesota. Supper was creamed dried beef and peas on hot rolls.

June 27: Baked rolls for breakfast and made cocoa. Macaroni and cheese for dinner, corn bread and creamed chicken for supper. 

June 30: Cleaned out the kitchen cupboards; washed plastic bags. Pork chops, baked potatoes, corn and apricot tarts for dinner

July 2: Hamburgers, tossed salad, fruit for dinner and potato salad, tomato slices, beets and rhubarb parfait for supper.

July 3: Cess pool backed up into the basement. Liver, asparagus, corn and fruit for dinner.

July 4: Baked a cherry pie, meat loaf, baked beans, fresh rolls.  Salad and soup for supper.

July 11: Fried chicken, lima beans, dressing, cranberry sauce, and crumb cake. Made Henny Penny muffins (uses left over chicken in batter) for supper, then baked a peach-butterscotch pie for the neighbors' anniversary.

I didn’t note in my diary if these menus were my choice or theirs, but reading them over in the following weeks I see a lot of hot dogs, liver and asparagus—which it seems I would go out and cut stalks along the lane. And they were a generation that loved Jello—one of the first convenience foods of the 20th century. Rereading the meals, it seems like a lot of food and they were probably not used to that.

The cleaning I mention makes me wonder how they felt about that—true, they couldn’t do a lot, and dust would blow in from the fields, but if someone came in my house and immediately started dusting everything would I be pleased or insulted?

June 3: “I took down the curtains in my room, washed them and the windows, dusted the halls and stairsteps and ran the sweeper.  Every time I pumped a pail of water I felt guilty—but it does my muscles good even if the water supply is low.” There wasn’t a washing machine so I assume I hand washed the curtains.  I always wrote about washing dishes right after a meal and what time I finished, because I think Mother warned me not to leave any dirty dishes around (not sure it was bugs, mice, or Grandma’s preference).

June 4: “I cleaned out the bread cupboard before breakfast and then had my coffee while I listened to the radio.  **This “revolution” in France seems a long way off from the tranquility of the farm.” . . . in the shed “I found the clippers and decided to try my hand at sharpening them on the old wheel.  I’m not much of a bush clipper, but I attacked the job with unusual pep and concern.  Well, at least we can see the bird bath now from the dining room. . . After dishes I ran the dust mop around and swept a few rugs with the broom.” It seems Grandma wouldn’t let me run the vacuum cleaner which was the whole house kind with tubes built into the walls. I mentioned it several times in the diary, with no explanation why.

June 5:  “I spent most of the morning sewing up the hem in Grandma’s navy blue slip and mending a pillow.   . . In the afternoon we all went to Ashton to look at some cattle Dale wanted to buy, and they finally decided on 89 head. . . After cleaning up the supper dishes I cut a fresh bouquet.”

June 6: I put on an old shirt “and a pair of peddle pushers and went out to the garden for lovely 2 hours of sweat and dirt.  I took my good old time about spading the garden—mixed it with a little tool shed browsing and knife sharpening. . . When I finished my “garden” looked like a fresh grave, but I was happy.”

June 9: “After supper I planted tomatoes and wrote letters."

June 10: "started in on the filthy stove.  The mouse dirt was really thick and there were old nests behind the stove.  I put clean paper in the drawers and put the pans and stuff in them."

June 11: Scrubbed the bathroom floors. Dusted 4 rooms, mopped the kitchen floor and washed the two porch doors. Scraped the paint off the dog door stop.

June 17: Cleaned the silverware and dusted my room and the two west bedrooms. I wrote that I was an intrusion on their privacy and they never said thank you.

June 19: Walked to town after supper, but the lane was like quicksand so it took longer.  On the way back I spoke Spanish and sang hymns. (This sounds sort of pious, but I think it was boredom.) I had also walked in on the 18th after supper to the Ives Drug store, and because it was getting dark by 9 I cut through a freshly cultivated bean field and snagged my dress on barbed wire, was wearing sandals, so was a mess when I got back, but "saved 10 minutes."

June 20: Cleaned dining and living rooms, swept the pantry, clipped the grass on the west fence--was still pumping water.

June 27: Cleaned the dining room and 2 living rooms and mopped the porch; caught a ride with a neighbor to Ashton to shop for groceries. 

**I have no recollection of a revolution in France in the summer of 1958, so I had to look that one up.  And sure enough, there was one due to the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62) which led to collapse of the Fourth Republic and its replacement by the Fifth Republic led by Charles de Gaulle who returned to power after a twelve-year absence (Wikipedia). So there I was sipping coffee and clipping bushes in Illinois and not paying attention while deGaulle was forming a new cabinet in France.  Without TV and the Internet we just had no idea. . . 

991 Weather Report

A blog is a "web log," a diary you keep on the internet. Therefore, it is OK to place an entry in your very own personal diary about the crazy weather. It is April 24, 2005, Dear Diary, 3:30 in the afternoon, and snowing. Even in Ohio, I think this is a record. My daughter called from Cleveland last night to check on our weather. They had gone up to help her in-laws and she had become quite ill and was checking on travel conditions for the trip home. They already had an inch on the ground in Cleveland, but we just had a mist, I told her. By 6:30 this morning, I looked out over stretches of white. But I must say, a coating of snow on the bright green grass, the flowering crabs and the yellow and red tulips is an awesome sight.

Occasionally, I look at my mother's letters, but only for her hand writing. Mother was a saint, everyone says so, but even reading between the lines I can't find her. Her letters were crop and weather reports, and somehow, re-reading how the garden was doing and what storm had just passed on June 14, 1973 isn't terribly fascinating 30+ years later. Except to recall how she looked in the garden in her straw hat, her fingers twitching in wet leather gloves waiting for me to finish talking so she could get back to the weeding. And the storms are lovely to recall, because here in the city we might see something coming up over the trees suddenly, but staring out over the soybeans and corn in Lee County Illinois, the storms are magnificent, rolling, boiling, and sometimes fooling you and skipping on over to Amboy or Rochelle.

One time back in the 1950s we children found my father's letters written while he was a Marine in WWII. Daddy had won an award for typing at Polo high school--30 wpm I think I saw on the card. It was that, or possibly his age (30 when he enlisted) or number of dependants, that probably kept him out of combat to return home to his wife, four children, large extended family, and job at the end of 1945. The letters were tied with a pink ribbon and tucked under blankets in the attic chest, so of course it was an invitation for little folks to read them. Mother was a calm, reasonable, rational person who rarely raised her voice or scolded, but she decided that those letters then must be destroyed. Our discovery in the attic may be the reason her own letters were about temperatures, soil, root crops and compost. It's possible she may have written about snow in April. Some day I'll check.

Happy July 1 from Lakeside, Ohio

I had a 2 mile walk this morning, east on Third and then back west along the lake. Now sitting on a ice pack.  Right leg bursa not too bad, but thought I’d nip any inflammation in the bud—or in the bursa. I’ve now walked or cycled 1038 miles since Dec. 26.  Coolish today, but they are predicting a nice day, zero rain. Big storm last night about 10 p.m. but it seems to have moved over the lake.  Is there anything as useless as a diary/blog that discusses weather?  I have a calendar/garden diary of my mother’s from the 1970s.  It’s almost funny.

The Lakeside grounds crew is here cutting up the limbs from storm damage Friday and Saturday.  Our tree is on the easement, which means they clean it up.  Our neighbors’ Hackberry which fell over is on their property, so they have to pay.  If it had damaged their cottage, insurance would cover it, but it didn’t.  It actually looks like it’s on their neighbor’s property, except back in the day when people weren’t too sure, that driveway is 4’ over the line.

I bought a new microwave (smaller) in May, but it doesn’t seem to be heating all that great, which was the problem with the 20 year old it replaced.  The old one has been given away, and I don’t think I have the receipt here because everything seemed fine a month ago.

I left after the first 2 numbers of last night’s program, Hey Mavis.  It was sort of jazz, sort of blue grass, and mostly original material.  I usually wait until intermission.  It wasn’t bad, but just not what I felt like listening to, so I walked home and stopped to chat with a neighbor.  We had a nice chat with the young couple sitting in front of us at Hoover, but they left before I did.  They were staying in a B&B which must be tough with small children (one a baby), but she had fallen in love with Lakeside.

This year my husband joined “The guy’s club.”  I think it was originally a spoof on The Women’s Club which has been around for about 90 years, and they had no agenda and no programs. Their dues support various Lakeside projects. But they do march with their drill team (carry power drills and wear matching t-shirts) in the July 4 parade, and go to lunch.  So today he’s going to lunch with them.  He knows most of them from sailing, but has never joined.

  

My summer of 1958, part 1

If you had said to me, “Remember the time you lived at the farm and the well was dry?” I would have responded, “I remember the farm, but don’t recall a problem with the water.”

That’s why it’s nice to have a diary, that retro pen and paper version of a blog, which stands for [world wide] web log. While searching for another notebook, I unpacked a box and found my diary from 1958, a stenographer’s notebook with green tint pages and perfect handwriting in real ink, telling about my days with my grandparents on their farm between Franklin Grove and Ashton, Illinois.  I was there from June 1 to July 12, 1958, and indeed, the water problems were a focus of the first few weeks. I’d totally forgotten that part about pumping water, using a bucket, and driving to my parents’ home to take a bath.

To back up a bit, you need to understand my mother.  Just the sweetest and dearest soul, and always had a solution to anyone’s problem, especially anyone in her family. After my freshman year at Manchester College I wasn’t happy, and wanted to transfer, but I also needed a job for the summer.  My Oakwood dorm friends had all secured something interesting or exciting, and I was faced with going back to Mt. Morris and perhaps working at the drug store where I worked in high school, if it had reopened by then (had been a fire), or fill in at the town library (yawn) where I’d also worked in high school.

The steno pad’s first 10 pages were filled with notes comparing Manchester with Murray--the history, religion connections, majors, costs (Manchester’s tuition and fees were higher, but room and board lower—and all laughable by today’s standards, ca. $1,000/year).  Also in the steno pad were notes about the University of Chicago in a fine arts curriculum and vocational guidance with a minor in Spanish. Expenses were higher—about $1,755, but student jobs looked plentiful.  And then notes about the University of Illinois, what would transfer, a major in Spanish and a minor in Russian.  The notes end there, but I did transfer to Illinois and just by coincidence, that’s where my boyfriend was.

So back to Mother.  I got a little sidetracked.  She knew I was unhappy and that I didn’t have a job;  she knew her parents who were 82 and 84 (b. 1876 and 1874) shouldn’t be alone in their big old farm house in very poor condition. Although Mother and her siblings Muriel and Leslie, and the neighbors checked in often, it wasn’t the same as someone in residence. Neither one of them would consider moving, although they did spend their winters in an apartment in Orlando, Florida. Somehow, Mother convinced me I’d be doing her a favor if I worked as a housekeeper for Grandma, and she also convinced Grandma that Norma needed a summer job. Perfect.  She was a master at this! My grandparents didn’t really want me there (weren’t convinced they needed any help) and I couldn’t have imagined a less inviting or a more lonely place to be (I had spent the summer of 1957 in California at a church mission in Fresno and a year at college with many friends), but my mother appealed to my “missionary” spirit which was still rather strong in those days. I was the 50’s version of the SJW—social justice warrior.

I arrived at the farm about 4:15 on June 1, 1958.  My brother drove me there and helped unload all my clothes. . . .Stay tuned for the next installment of the Summer of 1958 down on the farm.

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

This will be my summer reading—The Greater Journey

For our first meeting in the fall, our book club group usually choses the largest one, and McCullough always writes whoppers. I love non-fiction, and this one sounds fascinating.

In The Greater Journey, he tells the enthralling, inspiring—and until now, untold—story of the adventurous American artists, writers, doctors, politicians, and others who set off for Paris in the years between 1830 and 1900, hungry to learn and to excel in their work. What they achieved would profoundly alter American history.

Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female doctor in America, was one of this intrepid band. Another was Charles Sumner, whose encounters with black students at the Sorbonne inspired him to become the most powerful voice for abolition in the U.S. Senate. Friends James Fenimore Cooper and Samuel F. B. Morse worked unrelentingly every day in Paris, Morse not only painting what would be his masterpiece, but also bringing home his momentous idea for the telegraph. Harriet Beecher Stowe traveled to Paris to escape the controversy generated by her book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Three of the greatest American artists ever—sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, painters Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent—flourished in Paris, inspired by French masters.

Almost forgotten today, the heroic American ambassador Elihu Washburne bravely remained at his post through the Franco-Prussian War, the long Siege of Paris, and the nightmare of the Commune. His vivid diary account of the starvation and suffering endured by the people of Paris is published here for the first time.

Telling their stories with power and intimacy, McCullough brings us into the lives of remarkable men and women who, in Saint-Gaudens’ phrase, longed “to soar into the blue.”

                  

Visiting former coffee spots and coffee blogs

After I got Bob settled in this morning for his Zoom men's Bible Study I headed down the road a mile or so to Panera's at Five Points next to the Aldi's grocery where I could shop at 9 a.m. I rarely go there any more for my morning coffee, but at one time (pre-2015) I was a regular and had many friends I would see each morning while I read the Wall Street Journal.

I used to have a blog (Coffee Spills) devoted to my coffee habits--the places I enjoyed and the people I met--staff and customers. I continued it until December 2014 because I was parting ways with a habit begun in 1956 and saving the money for a trip to Spain (about $2, 5 times a week). I glanced at my final entry today before my closing--

November 10, 2014: "It happened in the parking lot. I was getting out of my car; one space away was a man on the passenger side of his car straightening his pant leg. He looked at me and said cheerily, "I change my socks 20 times a day; I guess I'm a little weird." "Uh, you betcha," I thought, but I said, "If it works for you." So I just had to Google it. I found 6.5% of Americans change their socks more than once a day. But 20 times seems a bit OCD."

November. 21, 2012: "I greeted a coffee shop friend today with a casual remark about "How are you celebrating Thanksgiving?" But she wasn't feeling thankful. It turns out a trusted employee, a woman she’s known and been friends with for 25 years, was embezzling from her. Now they both have lawyers, and the woman has admitted to stealing about $100,000, but my friend suspects it’s much more. And as you may guess, losing the money hurts, but not as much as her feeling of grief and backstabbing over this woman whom she considered a friend. She said, “She smiled at me every day, clucked over my children, we did things together. What sort of psychopath does this?” A very sad holiday."

January 7, 2005: "The clerk at the coffee shop told me today (Friday) she'd been late to work every day this week. She's supposed to start at 6 a.m. but didn't get to work until 6:10. I've supervised enough people in my work life to see a problem.

Bad work habits and excuses do not ever fool a supervisor. We've heard every story from alarm clocks to a tear in my slacks, to a sick baby to a traffic jam. Actually, I've heard some fairly imaginative ones, but didn't believe a word.

The solution is always the same for the employee who wants to move ahead to a better job, or keep the one she/he has. Whether a bakery clerk, an auto tech, or a library assistant, always plan to arrive early--15 minutes is good. That way you can handle the dog throwing up or the malfunctioning traffic light. And if you actually do arrive early, straighten up your clothes, comb your hair, wash your hands and turn on that smile. And don't ever kid yourself that coming in 15 minutes early on Thursday makes up for being 15 minutes late on Friday."

Reading my old blogs is like looking through someone else's diary. I often don't recall the occasion and had forgotten that one. That habit change did work--I think I saved about $500 for the trip and learned to make coffee (decaf) at home. Now if I go out for coffee with a friend, we go to McDonald's where it's $.60.

Just start a blog

Today I received an e-mail from someone (don't remember--they might have scooped my e-mail address from another FWD list) which extolled the wonders and benefits of their workshop--and I'd only have to spend a few hundred dollars and leave the country! I was told I could. . .

+ Believe in your creativity
+ Stimulate your perceptive abilities
+ Find inspiration in the world around you
+ Get over creative blocks and the fear of failure
+ Engage your curiosity
+ Recognize and use your creative instincts
+ Give yourself the time, permission, and nourishment to do creative work
+ Develop a daily practice to accomplish these goals
+ Work collaboratively
+ Use your memories to engage the imagination

I can do all that for free by blogging. I post my memories, my poetry, my paintings; I comment on my volunteer activities and promote programming that I admire; I research the topics pretty carefully--after all that was my profession--information; I pull a lot of material off my own bookshelves or go to the library when I don't trust what I find in pixel dust; I leave a lot of material in "draft" until it has time to settle and percolate a bit.

And still. And yet. There are people--friends, family and total hit-and-run strangers who come in anonymity--who disagree with me. And that's fine. This is my diary (web log), and I'll write from my own perspective. Just like the paid reporters from the New York Times and Wall Street Journal that these same critics are willing to pay for. They will praise me for my memory or humor pieces, and then turn around and chastise me for caring that my country, under a new president who is trashing our former leaders and our history, destroying our economy, and high fiving and bowing to communist and despot leaders abroad, is going to hell in a handbasket of their making.

Hypocrisy and short sightedness are not in short supply. Common sense and knowledge of history are.

The class reunion blog has ended

It was time.  It was supposed to be just our 50th reunion blog for the Mt. Morris High School class of 1957.  Now we’re past 60 years since we graduated!  I really appreciate those who contributed stories and photos—Mike Balluff the class president is a great story teller--but recently it was being referred to as “Norma’s blog.” I figured it was time to close the diary (which I actually did in 2010, but I kept updating it so often, I finally went back to occasional posting as there was news).  Before I closed it, I pulled out the updates from 2010 and made them separate entries, mostly obituaries, making them easier to find. 

Facebook really made blogs obsolete, and Twitter is eating Facebook’s lunch, that said, I think Mt. Morris has at least 4 FB pages plus a webpage. Not bad for a small town of less than 3,000 with no high school or elementary school.  At this blog I write on approximately 15 topics, of which Mt. Morris, education, business, medicine, retirement, church, books, films, fashion, food, family, health, etc. are in there with what’s going on in the world.  There’s really a lot of variety also in the 1957 class blog, some funny posts and some sad.  And all the women were beautiful and the men all had hair!

 

September 22, 2018 class breakfast

Yesterday I cleaned out several boxes of negatives from our collective photo albums and found a bunch from the 1950s.  If I find anything pertinent (and someone who still develops b & w), I’ll back date them and add to the class blog.

Two local history titles on Jerome, Ohio

I’ve been living in Columbus since 1967, and I admit that until today I’d never hear of Jerome, Ohio, which is just up the road near Dublin, and was described 65 years ago by Johnny Jones, columnist 1940-1971 for the Columbus Dispatch, as “American as apple pie” and off the state highways where you cross the O’Shaughnessy Dam Bridge near the Columbus Zoo. With Dublin spreading out, Jerome had a 90% increase in population in the last decade, from about 4,000 in 2000 to 7500 in 2010. Author of the first book, Les Gates, grew up in Jerome and recorded his fond memories in a small book titled simply “Jerome” (3d ed. 2014). Gates returned to the home place after serving in the military and was in the insurance business for many years in Dublin, OH.  After a few words about his parents and life on the Gates farm at 7379 Brock Road, he continues with memories, photos and descriptions of neighboring farms, the local school and business establishments like the Twin Oaks Golf Course and Seely Grocery Store. Gates is about my age, and includes stories of his years at Dublin High School with photos of his team sports, baseball and football.

In a conversation with another Jerome resident, 99 year old Mary Alice Schacherbauer, Les Gates learned she had a diary of her writings with memories and musings from 1914 to 2014. With his interest in Jerome, Les and his wife Mary decided to edit and publish her memories also  as “Days I remember; my memories and musings from 1914 to 2014. “ Mrs. Schacherbauer is about the age of my parents, so I particularly enjoyed her stories of school in the 1920s, and found to my surprise that people had school buses back then.  My parents lived on farms near Dixon, Illinois, and walked to school. She and her husband Lee married in 1937 and were active in the Jerome United Methodist Church.  She includes family stories and has many fond memories of grandparents and aunts and uncles. Several of her poems are included, and she closes with prayer for “our country, our world, our way of life.” One hundred years old and she has seen a lot of changes, but still enjoys life and especially her memories.

You can purchase one or both titles from Amazon or at local gift shops. Or you can contact Les Gates at goldengator1938@yahoo.com.

Probably not potato chips and ice cream

“The Mediterranean-style diet (MedDiet) involves substantial intake of fruits, vegetables, and fish, and a lower consumption of dairy, red meat, and sugars. Over the past 15 years, much empirical evidence supports the suggestion that a MedDiet may be beneficial with respect to reducing the incidence of cardiovascular disease, cancer, metabolic syndrome, and dementia. A number of cross-sectional studies that have examined the impact of MedDiet on cognition have yielded largely positive results. The objective of this review is to evaluate longitudinal and prospective trials to gain an understanding of how a MedDiet may impact cognitive processes over time. The included studies were aimed at improving cognition or minimizing of cognitive decline. Studies reviewed included assessments of dietary status using either a food frequency questionnaire or a food diary assessment. Eighteen articles meeting our inclusion criteria were subjected to systematic review. These revealed that higher adherence to a MedDiet is associated with slower rates of cognitive decline, reduced conversion to Alzheimer’s disease, and improvements in cognitive function. The specific cognitive domains that were found to benefit with improved Mediterranean Diet Score were memory (delayed recognition, long-term, and working memory), executive function, and visual constructs. The current review has also considered a number of methodological issues in making recommendations for future research. The utilization of a dietary pattern, such as the MedDiet, will be essential as part of the armamentarium to maintain quality of life and reduce the potential social and economic burden of dementia.”

Adherence to a Mediterranean-Style Diet and Effects on Cognition in Adults: A Qualitative Evaluation and Systematic Review of Longitudinal and Prospective Trials. Roy J. Hardman, Greg Kennedy, Helen Macpherson, Andrew B. Scholey and Andrew Pipingas. Frontiers in Nutrition, vol. 3, page 22 -, 2016. DOI 10.3389/fnut.2016.00022

BMI calculator from Mayo Clinic

Adult BMI calculator based on 2013 AHA/ACC/TOS Guideline for the Management of Overweight and Obesity in Adults: A Report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force on Practice Guidelines and The Obesity Society. BMI classification. World Health Organization. http://apps.who.int/bmi/index.jsp?introPage=intro_3.html.
 http://www.mayoclinic.org/bmi-calculator/itt-20084938

In addition to healthy eating, the site recommends 

• Exercise. Aim for 30 to 60 minutes of moderately intense activity daily.


• Set action goals focused on specific healthy activities such as improving muscle tone through strength training or starting a daily food and activity diary.

We're in good hands

If Lakeside's young people are any indication, our nation is in good hands--or will be in 10-20 years. And our schools are perhaps doing a better job than nay sayers report. I'm in a fiction class at the Rhein Center this week and most of the class is about ages 12-15. There's only one other adult. These beautiful kids are incredibly articulate, motivated, aware, and fabulous writers. I was stunned. I'm definitely the slacker in the group when it comes to writing. I didn't meet any young people like this among my children's classmates in the 1980s (and Upper Arlington has one of the best school systems in the state), none in my generation, and none in my parents'. They are better than most of the fiction bloggers twice their age with college courses that I've read. Some of my "classmates" have been writing seriously and energetically half their lives. Admittedly, that's not a lot of years on my calendar, but it's huge on theirs. Even taking into consideration that maybe it's typical for teens to exaggerate a bit--28 novels and published poetry (which one girl reported)? True, she admitted that the novels weren't finished or polished, but when I was her age I was writing a short paragraph once or twice a week to "Dear Diary." And supportive! I think they've all been in critique classes before--they listen attentively and find something good in each piece when we share. They know the vocabulary of writing and how to use it. And when I say they are beautiful, I include physical beauty as well. Yet, most report being on the outside among their peers. Some of that I'm sure is the normal teenage angst where you ardently believe everyone else has it together, but also people who go on to become novelists, artists and screen writers probably do have a different emotional stair to climb. They are definitely on their way.

This is the Rhein Center's 10th year of offering classes. Established in a dilapitated, boarded up building in memory of C. Kirk Rhein, Jr., a son and grandson of Lakesiders lost in TWA Flight 800, it is now a pleasant, busy, humming hive of laughter and effort. I'm sure it's a joy every day to family members to see this building so well used.

In the afternoon I'm in a flower painting watercolor class. I rarely do flowers, although I have tried. I learned a new technique, and if you get even one "take away" from either a class or a sermon, it's a good day. One of my classmates is in my husband's perspective drawing class in the morning. She was so excited about it--gives me something to think about, she said. Whatever! Figuring out perspective is just frustrating for me.

Then in the evening Sue and I went to the movie theater in Lakeside (the only one in the county) to see "The Visitor," a very low key, but touching and timely film about personal loss, friendship and illegal immigration. Well worth seeing if it comes to your area. The NYT review is good, if somewhat nit-picky (but that's what they are paid to do), and this one really over reaches, as though those of us who are insulted and dismayed by an immigration law, first established by liberals in the 60s "to be fair" by limiting whites and westerners, have no heart or soul. Nonsense in wasted pixels.

Is WaPo reporter complicit in blaming U.S.?

So it was the fault of President Carter and all those nasty capitalists of the 1970s that these coddled, wealthy, ungrateful people were spies for Communist Cuba?

"What Walter Kendall Myers kept hidden, according to documents unsealed in court Friday, was a deep and long-standing anger toward his country, an anger that allegedly made him willing to spy for Cuba for three decades.

"I have become so bitter these past few months. Watching the evening news is a radicalizing experience," he wrote in his diary in 1978, referring to what he described as greedy U.S. oil companies, inadequate health care and "the utter complacency of the oppressed" in America. On a trip to Cuba, federal law enforcement officials said in legal filings, Myers found a new inspiration: the communist revolution.

Myers, 72, and his wife, Gwendolyn, 71, pleaded not guilty Friday to charges of conspiracy, being agents of a foreign government and wire fraud. Their arrest left friends and former colleagues slack-jawed, unable to square the man depicted in the indictment with the witty intellectual with a prep-school background they knew. Washington Post in a much too sympathetic story for my tastes by Mary Beth Sheridan

Don't you wonder about wealthy people, children of privilege and elitist educations (like our first couple) deciding that everyone should be poor like the Cubans? What kind of guilt does that?

The author of this piece apparently was really stunned 4 years ago when through her "embedded" experience with the military she discovered such shocking things about our soldiers--they were decent, patriotic, and non brainwashed. Imagine.

"First of all, she said she was "overwhelmed by the military," but she did learn by being embedded that members of our armed forces were not "blood-thirsty maniacs." Yes, she really did say that.

In fact, she said, they were "really decent people." And even "sweet." Of course, after being shot at they were eager to shoot back — a military attitude that seemed to surprise her.

She also reported that when she asked soldiers why were they in Iraq, every single one told her, "to help the Iraqi people." Again she was surprised that the military could create such a unity of purpose even though, she said, she didn't see any "brainwashing" going on. She also noted that many soldiers had no opinion about the war. They had gone where they were ordered to go, like all good soldiers. Such an attitude seemed to dazzle her as well.

She didn't have anything much to say about "reporters as citizens," but clearly she appeared to be one citizen who had very little familiarity with, or understanding of, or even quite possibly respect for the military before her tour of duty. In a way, it is kind of sad that only after some first-hand experience did she learn what most American citizens believe: that American soldiers are "decent people." And that it is those soldiers, not our journalists, after all, who protect our freedom of the press." Reporters as citizens

Sourcing the Morgenthau 1939 quote

At the coffee shop this morning another imbiber handed me a quote on a torn piece of paper, "We are spending more money than we have ever spent before, and it does not work. After eight years we have just as much unemployment as when we started, and an enormous debt to boot. - U.S. Secretary Henry Morgenthau. . . May 1939." Being a librarian, I looked into his handsome face and said, "Do you know the source?" And he didn't.

So when I got home I googled it, and found every conservative, libertarian and anti-Bam source on the internet is using it. That's not a good sign. Even going to a fact checking web site like Snopes or Factcheck is dicey, because even those are political, whether liberal or conservative. Someone, somewhere, must know where the original is, but with libraries like Fisher in the College of Business at OSU closing because it's all free on the internet, I don't know if I could find a paper copy. And these days, for this librarian [retired], paper is the "gold standard." Anything digitized, like all that stuff Obama promised us would be up there for us to read, can be altered. And although his staff had wiped out all the Bush stuff on January 20, they can't even get his press conferences up in a timely fashion so you can fact check. (I wonder if his IT staff paid their taxes?)

Anyway, I only recently (yesterday) began reading Alan Caruba because he'd written about coal, which is extremely important to Ohio's economy, which Obama and his green friends are trying to kill. Here's what I found in a Caruba blog.

In 1939, ten years after the crash on Wall Street, the Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., told the House Ways and Means Committee:

“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong…somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises…I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started…And an enormous debt to boot!”
Does history repeat itself? Yes, it does. And there is every appearance that the White House and the Congress intends to repeat many of the errors of the last Depression that came to be known as Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal.

With exquisite timing, after ten years of research, professor of history, Burton Folsom, Jr. has published “New Deal or Raw Deal? How FDR’s Economic Legacy has Damaged America” ($27.00, Threshold Editions).

To get an idea of just how bad the U.S. economy was during the 1930’s, Folsom notes that, even though the U.S. had budget surpluses in 1930 and 1931, government spending “ballooned and far outstripped revenue from taxes.” It was the Wall Street Crash of 1929 that precipitated the Depression, but it was FDR’s “solutions” that deepened and lengthened it, actually preventing any solution.

I'm guessing he found the source in Folsom's notes, but unless I see the committee report somewhere in print, I'll reserve judgement on the authenticity. Some quotes are just too good to be true, and after 8 years in office, I'm not sure Roosevelt had any people left who would question his plans. Anyone got a source?

And please, let's not give all the credit for the mess to FDR! President Hoover first did what Obama is doing now with help in the fall from Hank and Ben before he took office, spiking the unemployment to the 20% range. FDR's policies just lengthened it. If those two presidents had sat on their hands, if they'd just gone on vacation or wherever the summer White House was in those days, we'd be a much different country today. Regardless of whether we have a Democrat or a Republican in office, we've been bankrupting our country with social spending, not military spending, for years.


You can see from this that spending on social/human services levels or dips a little under a Reagan or a Bush, but it doesn't really go down. We'll be stuck with SCHIP and summer lunches for children forever, even though they've never been proven to help poor children or decrease poverty. In America, it's all about intentions, never results. If it feels good, it must be good. Which brings me back to the Morgenthau quote--got a paper source?

Update: Caruba has kindly confirmed the source from the Folsom book: Morgenthau Diary, May 9, 1939, Franklin Roosevelt Presidential Library.