Monday, February 10th, 2003

Tenth day of February, 2003, in beauuuuuuutiful Bismarck, North Dakota, on the east bank of one of the last stretches of sort-of wild on America's longest river, the Missouri. Mostly frozen, is the Missouri – but discharge from the upstream dam can run her open on any untimely warm day. At the moment, in the earliest hours past midnight, the temperature hovers below zero, brisk enough to make the forgetful aware should he storm out of the house sans his trousers this morning in haste to take on the challenges of this glorious day.

Among the famous folk born on this 10 February is Boris Pasternak (1890), who Dr. Zhivago was the must-read of the last couple of years of the 1950s and beyond. Pasternak knew about crisp snowy days – he wrote about them in his epic novel so quickly banned by the Soviet Union after he finished telling the tale of more than fifty characters during the first fifty years of the twentieth century. Most folks will remember the film, not the novel – especially the haunting "Laura's Theme" by by Maurice Jarre — the movie didn't come along until 1965, but what a movie! Pasternak died in May 1960, just after I graduated from high school.

It's also the day the Snozzola was born, Jimmy Durante, bless his soul, born on this day in 1893, damned near saw his eighty-seventh birthday. He hosted variety shows on television in the late 50s – and he's heard by kids today every time a tape of "Frosty the Snowman" is popped into a VCR – or a DVD disk. Durante loved people – in fact, he made a young waitress he met in Calabash, North Carolina famous by signing off his programs for decades with "Good-night Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are." You can read the whole story here. Fact is, I've always wondered where that came from – I learned something new this day. Today's birthday girl has to be Leontyne Price (1927), who can sing and then some. She knows it – she once said, "I totally and completely admit, with no qualms at all, my egomania, my selfishness, coupled with a really magnificent voice." Because she was a black American, there were actually protests from sponsors when she sang the lead in the National Broadcasting Company's televised production of Puccini's Tosca in 1955 – but she sang down all the bigots and racists the artsy-fartsy opera group could muster. Happy birthday, Ms. Price. The world's a better place because of you.

And the world of yours truly and his family is infinitely better because my friend and relative, Norm Albers is around. He turns sixty-six today – and continues to offer proof positive that being a friend and relative are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Just over five years older than I, Norman is the youngest son of my uncle Otto, who was everything any kid could possibly want in an uncle. He took me to rodeos, got me my first job, brought me bib overalls when I was kid – and his son Norm carried on that tradition with my children with high humor and great generosity – what a guy, the one my spouse Leslie and I affectionately call "Stormin Norman" (picked up after the First Gulf War and the nickname of Norman Schwartzkopf – but Norm Albers "storms" around doing really good stuff for folks instead of invading Iraq). Norman was my childhood mentor – teaching me everything from how to shock grain to filleting a fish, telling me what I needed to know about the time of puberty. A self-taught master of such useful crafts and skills as carpentry, butchery, electrical wiring, and a host of others – including making some of the meanest sausage and tastiest of chili — howbeit eventually deadliest in terms of offensive consequences for the loved ones of those who indulge without the help of Beano – Norm is a man who could survive on a desert island – except he would go crazy without being able to visit with folks, and I mean visit. Norm can talk to someone – anyone – he meets for the first time for hours. In many ways, Stormin Norman is my hero – a man who can take care of himself and his family, do whatever is necessary to make things work, get along with most anyone – and have the sense to marry the right woman to both enjoy his exuberance and share his zest for life. That much Norm and I have in common – we married wisely, which is a good thing for Albers to do – and Norm's wife Idell and my spouse Leslie are two of the longest-suffering, unflinchingly supporting Albers' wives of all time.

Norm and Idell have three great kids – their daughter Karla was the baby-sitter for our Albert and Gretchen when they were young, and she brought all the wisdom of Norm and Idell to the task – no small part of what is the best in our children is due to the Norm/Idell factor. They have been there since the time I first discovered I had pancreatic cancer, and they've been with us every step of the way. In the most miserable of my nadirs following chemo, they've been there to play a few games of pinochle – one of the great Albers' vices.

I don't know if you know about pinochle, Albers style, kola – 'tis more than a simple diversion. We most often play a particular twist on cut-throat, every-person-for-him/herself, single-bid, three-card-kitty. It's a deck of forty-eight, double cards nine to ace. Dealt six, each player bids once, beginning with the player to the left of the dealer. Players can draw six in the four-handed version we play – and the successful bidder gets the kitty of three as well. Play is with six cards. Meld is traditional pinochle, the count cards in the tricks are aces, tens, and kings – with an additional point for last trick. The game is played to 50. Naturally, there are quarters and dollars changing hands – pay every other player on the spot if you don't make your bid – fifty cents a piece. The winner gets a buck from the other three players. 'Tis a wonderful game to take your mind off such matters as being diagnosed with terminal cancer or the prospect of another Gulf War or the ever-rising price of gasoline. Cursing and swearing is tolerated – even encouraged during these pinochle games – along with an occasional forceful tossing-down of the cards after being "set" (failing to make a bid). 'Tis a game of the triumph of hope over any possible reality – and the potential of the miraculous hand – like double-pinochle-with-an-ace-to-save-it – melding 30 with double jack of diamonds, double queen of spades, and having the ace of diamonds or spades with one of those suits trump – at the time you are wallowing with 15 or 16 points and one of your opponents is ready to "go out" (win the game) with 48 or 49. Idell and Leslie usually have a beer or two during a two- or three-hour session of pinochle. Norm and I have coffee – sometimes I'll indulge in an O'Doul's, and Norm might have a shot of something -–and there's perhaps the weest bit of snacking.

I have a strong suspicion that playing pinochle with Stormin & Idell might be like fishing – the time spent at a table together over 48 cards doesn't count toward one's allotted time here in the middle world. That's why so many Albers live so damn long, in spite of considerable physical problems. We're going to have a game sometime this week before I go back to Zion, Illinois, and another round of chemo treatment – maybe even tonight, on Stormin's birthday. Happy birthday, Norman. You are one hell of a good friend – the kind of guy that comes up with the idea of teaching our son Albert how to drive the day of my father Albert's funeral – taking him out in the field along with my big brother Jim in the old red pickup – or picking up our Gretchen and taking her out to find a job – she got within a hour after you two left by sheer luck – but you're a lucky man, Norman – and I love it when the weest bit rubs off.

Be well, kola – take care of yourselves and of each other – I wish you the Norm Albers approach in your endeavor to do both.

Ev Albers

Sunday, February 9th, 2003

Of course . . . it's the finest of days in the best of places, Dakota, this 9th day of February, 2003. Late yesterday afternoon, my spouse took me the movies, something that I do but three, maybe four times a year. She had previewed About Schmidt in its entirety to make sure it would be suitable for me. It was – Jack Nicholson is masterful. The story is an old one – yet another version of what was the major topic of the novel in Russia at one point in the nineteenth century, the superfluous man and the ageless big humanities question, "What the hell have I done in my life to justify the space I've taken up and resources I've used? Who's going to care when I'm gone, shuffled on to Buffalo, taken the long, one-way train trip to Missoula?"

The later curious euphemism was coined by a priest at St. Wenscelaus in Dickinson, located a block from the house my wife Leslie grew up in. Her father, Alfons, went to a funeral back in the late 1970s and came back with news that the priest said death was nothing more than a long one-way trip to Missoula. It amused Alfons mightily. I'm still trying to figure out what the metaphor means.

Schmidt finds the weest bit of redemption in tumultuous months following his retirement and his wife's sudden death by taking the classical journey outward to explore inward. In the end, it's a simple reaching out to another human for no other reason than the fact that a total stranger shares one's humanity that gives meaning to Schmidt's life – but, you have to see for yourself whether or not it works.

I awoke this morning with Schmidt's big question on my mind – reminders of mortality (like the presence of pancreatic cancer) often bring folks of six decades and more of life behind them to consideration of when it all stops. I'm a believer in the Jungian notion of synchronicity – that is, there are meaningful coincidences happening to us all of the time. While I doubt they are personally orchestrated by a valet-like angel, synchronicity events are, to me, evidence that there's more than mere chance determining our individual and collective fate. This morning, I was thumbing through one of the poetry anthologies from my teaching days in the early 1970s. The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry fell open to poem by William Empson, the English poet and critic (1906-1984) who will be celebrated this summer at Sheffield University on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of his first taking the chair of Professor of English. Empson also taught at the University of Pekin and lived in China before and after World War II. He titled his second collection of poems, published in 1940, The Gathering Storm -- a phrase that would be made famous by Winston Churchill. In was in 1940 that he wrote the poem I hit upon at 2:00 A.M. this morning:

Ignorance of Death
Then there is the civilising love of death, by which
Even music and painting tell you what else to love.
Buddhists and Christians contrive to agree about death

Making death their ideal basis for different ideals.
The communists however disapprove of death
Except when practical. The people who dig up

Corpses and rape them are I understand not reported,
The Fruedians regrd the death-wish as fundmental,
Though "the clamour of life" proceeds its rival "Eros."

Whether you are to admire a given case for making less clamour
Is not their story. Liberal hopefulness
Regards death as a mere border to an improving picture.

Because we have neither hereditary nor direct knowledge of death
It is the trigger of the literary man's biggest gun
And we are happy to equate it to any conceived calm.

Heaven me, when a man is ready to die about something
Other than himself, and is in fact ready because of that,
Not because of himself, that is something clear about himself.

Otherwise I feel very blank upon this topic,
And I think that though important, and proper for anyone to bring up,
It is one that most people should be prepared to be blank upon.

I think you were right, Professor Empson – for the most part. The old question of what a human is ready to die for -- what principle, what other person, what cause – has always been looked upon with a most jaundiced eye by the likes of Professor Empson, because there's always been a huge distance between what folks say and what they are really willing to lay down their lives for. For Americans, it's been a while since the last Gulf war – longer since Vietnam.

What about after we've gotten on the train for the long trip to Missoula? About Schmidt offers little in terms of hope for the immortal legacy – beyond that single act of redemption that follows a generous, anonymous gift to a stranger. OMF (our mutual friend) Tom McGrath recalled the "human condition" in one of the final poems in the collection Death Song:

​LEFT TOWN
On Monday he died.
A few heard of it and were shocked but not surprised.

On Tuesday
A newspaper noted his passing.

On Wednesday
There was a small service and some people came.

On Friday
They buried or burned him at the beginning of a long weekend.

On Saturday
They went to the beach, doped, drank, fornicated, had a "good time."

On Sunday
With headaches, a few went to a bar and one remembered a line of a poem.

He would have understood perfectly the "human condition."

'Tis Sunday, and a fine one at that, kola. It is time for a poem and time to access how well you are taking care of yourselves and of each other -–and for reconsidering who that other you should take care of should be – if you've seen About Schmidt, you'll know what that question is about.

Ev Albers

Saturday, February 8th, 2003

Glorious day in Dakota, of course. While the Northeast digs out a bit from some snow storms, we're tooling around here in beauuuuutiful North Dakota in what will probably be shirt-sleeve weather – or, at least, a sans long-johns day. 'Tis an ominous day for the world – once more, war is imminent. Collectively, we humans, huddled as we are in social compacts that continue the all-too-human penchant to define our worth in terms of being better than another group, suffer from a peculiar kind of malaise that makes us our own worst enemy. As OMF (our mutual friend, Thomas Matthew McGrath) said in "Another Quandary,"

I tell myself each day:
Joy lies beyond despair.
But how can I get there
When I stand in my own way?

'Twas despair and depression, possibly made far worse by what he had hoped was a cure, that brought one of the great voices of rock and roll to commit suicide on this day in 1990. He was fifty-five. Del Shannon, dubbed the "Prince of Despair" and the "Troubled Troubadour" by artsy-fartsy columnists wondering why, why, why he went away when he seemed to be doing all right – living in California in an $800,000 home, pulling down at least six figures a year – a loving wife and children, and yet another rebound in his career – why would he do it?

Family and some friends say it was the cure he was trying to being a man of constant sorrow that did him in --

Shannon was on the top of the charts in 1961 for many weeks with his greatest hit, "Runaway." By 1984, it had been played over two million times on the air, and over 200 different artists had recorded the song worldwide – from Europe to Australia to Asia – two hundred! Shannon was considered the great one by many of those who followed him, as well as by his contemporaries. Some of you remember – although you have to be eligible for the senior discount to really remember the way it was when Del Shannon sang that haunting song in falsetto (he was the first white artist to record in falsetto – a technique later made so famous by Roy Orbison).

As I walk alone I wonder what went wrong
With our love a love that was so strong
And as I still walk on I think of
The things we've done together
While our hearts were young

I'm walking in the rain
Tears are falling and I feel the pain
Wishing you were here by me
To end this misery and I wonder
I won-won-won-won wonder
Why why why why why why she ran away
And I wonder where she will stay
My little runaway run-run-run-run runaway

I'm walking in the rain
Tears are falling and I feel the pain
Wishing you were here by me
To end this misery and I wonder
I won-won-won-won wonder
Why why why why why why she ran away
And I wonder where she will stay
My little runaway run-run-run-run runaway
Run run run run runaway.

Shannon was really Charles Westhover from Michigan, where he started singing for folks when he was eight years old. go here for the Del Shannon web site. A confessed alcoholic, Shannon often said that he hated the taste of liquor but loved where it took him – to the numbness, the nowhere. But he had given up the drink for good in 1978, a dozen years before he did himself in; and he had some great times with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. When he met his worst enemy, himself, he was earnestly in search of help.

Today is the birthday of an American writer who found some answers for herself – Kate Chopin, born on this day in 1850 (died in 1904 of a stroke – far too young). Best known for her novel The Awakening, published in 1899, Kate Chopin outraged many with her novel about a woman in search of physical and spiritual happiness, love in all of its possibilities in her time. She has been read and taught ever since. Chopin once wrote, "There are some people who leave impressions not so lasting as the imprint of an oar upon the water. " Chopin wasn't one of them. Nor was Charles Westover, aka Del Shannon. There are those who are mightily concerned about the "impression" they give and will leave. I was reminded the other day by my old friend, George Frein, who has so ably presented chautauqua characterizations of everyone from Father Pierre DeSmet to Henry Adams and Mark Twain – and who recently took on presenting a first-person humanities interpretation of John Adams. George wrote me from South Carolina, "John Adams said during the time when so many wanted war with France and it would have made him popular to have one: 'Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.' He made peace in very trying times and he did it almost on his own. He said all they needed to put on his tombstone was, 'He kept the peace with France.'"

Of course, we have to make peace with ourselves before we can make it with others, and as OMF notes, it ain't easy, kola. That's why it's so important for you to take care of yourselves and to watch out and care for each other. It is a great day to do so, even if there's a few snow flakes or it's the weest bit cold – and, by the way, I'm learning every day that one of the great antidotes to the blues is finding someway to do something for someone else --

Ev Albers

Friday, February 7th, 2003

How could a day be any more glorious – one that promises to be brisk enough to keep the boxelder bugs dormant, sunny enough so one casts a reassuring shadow -- a cool and calm (well, perhaps the weest bit windy) day on which to be productive and creative as we do what we can for each other. The birthday boys and girls of this February 7th were productive folk, indeed, and most of them lived long, if not prosperously: Charles Dickens (1812-1870) wrote so much that even those who have devoted their lives to being scholars of his works have difficulty keeping them all straight; Eubie Blake, African American musician and composer (1883-1983), wrote over 1,000 songs; Laura Ingalls Wilder of Little House on the Prairie fame (1867-1957); and the Black Lion, Frederick Douglass (1817-1895) who not only wrote but spoke at great length – sometimes for several hours without losing his audience. Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) wrote at length, sometimes less than kindly, about small-town middle America – but the folks at Sauk Center, Minnesota, honor him anyway by naming major streets after him. These are just a few of the famous February 7ths – all of whom have moved along beyond the middle world. Garth Brooks is still here – he's had a year to recover from being forty – (he turns forty-one today). He did once supposedly say something that's not bad advice: "I just wake up and say, 'You're a bum, go do something worthwhile today!'"

But on this beauuuuuutiful day in Dakota, when there's much to do, a day when this great job I have with the North Dakota Humanities Council will take me from editing and producing tabloids on Métis music and the railroad strikes in North Dakota in the 1890s to working on this summer's Chautauqua, 'tis fitting and proper to pay particular attention to the legacy of Sir Thomas More, the man of all seasons born on this day in 1478 – beheaded in 1535, canonized in 1935, and immortalized on stage (1960) and on film (1966) in the production Man of All Seasons.  There's so much that resounds in timeless fashion in terms of universal values from More to our time, more than a half millennium, 500 years since his birth. Consider this tribute by the great humanist, Erasmus, a contemporary of More:

Begin Erasmus Quote
He seems born and framed for friendship, and is a most faithful and enduring friend. He is easy of access to all; but if he chances to get familiar with one whose vices admit no correction, he manages to loosen and let go the intimacy rather than to break it off suddenly. When he finds any sincere and according to his heart, he so delights in their society and conversation as to place in it the principal charm of life. He abhors games of tennis, dice, cards, and the like, by which most gentlemen kill time. Though he is rather too negligent of his own interests, no one is more diligent in those of his friends. In a word, if you want a perfect model of friendship, you will find it in no one better than in More. In society he is so polite, so sweet-mannered, that no one is of so melancholy a disposition as not to be cheered by him, and there is no misfortune that he does not alleviate. Since his boyhood he has so delighted in merriment, that it seems to be part of his nature; yet he does not carry it to buffoonery, nor did he ever like biting pleasantries. When a youth he both wrote and acted some small comedies. If a retort is made against himself, even without ground, he likes it from the pleasure he finds in witty repartees. Hence he amused himself with composing epigrams when a young man, and enjoyed Lucian above all writers. Indeed, it was he who pushed me to write the "Praise of Folly," that is to say, he made a camel frisk.

In human affairs there is nothing from which he does not extract enjoyment, even from things that are most serious. If he converses with the learned and judicious, he delights in their talent; if with the ignorant and foolish, he enjoys their stupidity. He is not even offended by professional jesters. With a wonderful dexterity he accommodates himself to every disposition. As a rule, in talking with women, even with his own wife, he is full of jokes and banter.
End Erasmus Quote

Imagine, kola, a world where the leaders would be of the ilk of Thomas More! More wrote a Utopia, a work in the best of the humanities tradition – thinking of what ought to be. I love reading Utopias, kola – they are something of a Dakota tradition, you know – and here we've even attempted to implement them with such as the great agrarian political insurgence of the the 1910s when farmers took over the government with the Nonpartisan League – that's why the state of North Dakota owns and operates a bank and a mill and elevator – but that's a long weekend story, and this a Friday with much to do on other things. The most curious, laudable characteristic of More's Utopia is that he wrote about how a rational people of different beliefs could come together to form a workable social compact. More himself did not believe in what the citizens of his imaginary society agreed to – he personally would have found euthanasia and divorce abhorrent – and the toleration of different religious beliefs was far from what Catholic Europe of the 1500s could accept. Nonetheless, More imagined that reasonable people would accept personal actions that some found wrong, but were actions that did no harm to the common good.

Look for an "enchanted world" today, kola – as More said, "An enchanted world is one that speaks to the soul, to the mysterious depths of the heart and imagination where we find value, love, and union with the world around us. As mystics of many religions have taught, that sense of rapturous union can give a sensation of fulfillment that makes life purposeful and vibrant." One way to do that, of course, is to approach the day with that which Erasmus said More brought to life: "a wonderful dexterity" that "accommodates . . . to every disposition." But my fellow husbands out there – I would be the weest bit more cautious about overdoing what Erasmus said More was able to pull off with his wife: being "full of jokes and banter." I'll wager that there were times when Jane Colt – his first wife with whom he had four children in six years – they were married in 1505, and she died in 1511 – or his second wife, Alice Middleton, whom he married in 1511, said, "Enough, already, Tom! Let's get serious for a minute!" Be well, kola, take care of yourselves and of each other.

​Ev Albers

Thursday, February 6th, 2003

​February 6, 2003, the 92nd birthday of President Ronald Reagan. Last year, President Bush marked his 91st by signing legislation that would make Reagan's boyhood home in Dixon, Illinois, a national historic site, but that's now in doubt - too much money say some in the Park Service. I don't know what happened to Dick Armey's bill to rename Alzheimer's Disease "Reagan's Disease." Back in November, Armey, who was born in North Dakota and still has many relatives here (we are too modest to make a big deal of this), said back in October,

"No one is more strongly associated with this degenerative brain disease than Ronald Reagan, the man who restored pride to America and singlehandedly ended the Cold War. For all he has given this country, this is the least we can give back."

Most curious. I am infinitely saddened by Reagan's disease, kola - 'tis by far the most malicious plague of our time. The greatest gift of whatever god may be is the kind of memory that allows us to ponder where we humans have been in our unending quest for building a better society.

In the words of OMF (Our Mutual Friend) Thomas Matthew McGrath

                         But all time is redeemed by the single man-
Who remembers and resurrects.
                                               And I remember.
                                                                         I keep
The winter count.

In 1947, Reagan was president of the Screen Actor's Guild, and he appeared as a "friendly witness" before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (Congress Richard Nixon was a member of the Committee). Here is the last part of Reagan's testimony ("Stripling" is staff member Robert E. Stripling and "Chairman" is the Committee Chairman J. Parnell Thomas)

Begin Reagan Testimony
STRIPLING: Mr. Reagan, what is your feeling about what steps should be taken to rid the motion picture industry of any communist influences?

REAGAN: Well, sir, 99 percent of us are pretty well aware of what is going on, and I think, within the bounds of our democratic rights and never once stepping over the rights given us by democracy, we have done a pretty good job in our business of keeping those people's activities curtailed. After all, we must recognize them at present as a political party. On that basis we have exposed their lies when we came across them, we have opposed their propaganda, and I can certainly testify that in the case of the Screen Actors Guild we have been eminently successful in preventing them from, with their usual tactics, trying to run a majority of an organization with a well organized minority.
In opposing those people, the best thing to do is make democracy work. In the Screen Actors Guild we make it work by insuring everyone a vote and by keeping everyone informed. I believe that, as Thomas Jefferson put it, if all the American people know all of the facts they will never make a mistake. Whether the party should be outlawed, that is a matter for the government to decide. As a citizen, I would hesitate to see any political party outlawed on the basis of its political ideology.
However, if it is proven that an organization is an agent of foreign power, or in any way not a legitimate political party -- and I think the government is capable of proving that -- then that is another matter. I happen to be very proud of the industry in which I work; I happen to be very proud of the way in which we conducted the fight. I do not believe the communists have ever at any time been able to use the motion picture screen as a sounding board for their philosophy or ideology.

CHAIRMAN: There is one thing that you said that interested me very much. That was the quotation from Jefferson. That is why this committee was created by the House of Representatives: to acquaint the American people with the facts.
Once the American people are acquainted with the facts there is no question but what the American people will do the kind of job that they want done: that is, to make America just as pure as we can possibly make it. We want to thank you very much for coming here today.

REAGAN: Sir, I detest, I abhor their philosophy, but I detest more than that their tactics, which are those of the fifth column, and are dishonest, but at the same time I never as a citizen want to see our country become urged, by either fear or resentment of this group, that we ever compromise with any of our democratic principles through that fear or resentment. I still think that democracy can do it.
End Reagan Testimony

In all fairness, Ronald Reagan was a New Deal Democrat in 1947, married to another Democrat, Jane Wyman, and he wanted nothing more than to convince the Committee with his great rhetorical skills that the movie industry could police itself. But before it was over, he found himself being forced to cooperate more than he wanted.

Among those who had no time for the witch hunting was Thomas Matthew McGrath. His statement before that same committee in 1953 reflects the unflinching courage and commitment to human dignity of this place's gift to the millennia --
Thomas Matthew McGrath's Speech to the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1953
After a dead serious consideration of the effects of this committee's work and of my relation to it, I find that for the following reasons I must refuse to cooperate with this body.

In the first place, as a teacher, my first responsibility is to my students. To cooperate with this committee would be to set for them an example of accommodation to forces which can only have, as their end effect, the destruction of education itself. Such accommodation on my part would ruin my value as a teacher, and I am proud to say that a great majority of my students--and I believe this is true of students generally--do not want me to accommodate myself to this committee. In a certain sense, I have no choice in the matter--the students would not want me back in the classroom if I were to take any course of action other than the one I am pursuing.

Secondly, as a teacher, I have a responsibility to the profession itself. We teachers have no professional oath of the sort that doctors take, but there is a kind of unwritten oath which we follow to teach as honestly, fairly and fully as we can. The effect of the committee is destructive of such an ideal, destructive of academic freedom. As Mr. Justice Douglas has said: "This system of spying and surveillance with its accompanying reports and trials cannot go hand in hand with academic freedom. It produces standardized thought, not the pursuit of truth." A teacher who will tack and turn with every shift of the political wind cannot be a good teacher. I have never done this myself, nor will I ever. In regard to my teaching I have tried to hold to two guidelines, the first from Chaucer that "gladly will I learn and gladly teach"; the second a paraphrase of the motto of the late General Stilwell: "Illiterati on carborundum."

Thirdly, as a poet I must refuse to cooperate with the committee on what I can only call esthetic grounds. The view of life which we receive through the great works of art is a privileged one--it is a view of life according to probability or necessity, not subject to the chance and accident of our real world and therefore in a sense truer than the life we see lived all around us. I believe that one of the things required of us is to try to give life an esthetic ground, to give it some of the pattern and beauty of art. I have tried as best I can to do this with my own life, and while I do not claim any very great success, it would be anti-climactic, destructive of the pattern of my life, if I were to cooperate with the committee. Then too, poets have been notorious non-cooperators where committees of this sort are concerned. As a traditionalist, I would prefer to take my stand with Marvell, Blake, Shelley and Garcia Lorca rather than with innovators like Mr. Jackson. I do not wish to bring dishonor upon my tribe.

These, then are reasons for refusing to cooperate, but I am aware that none of them is acceptable to the committee. When I was notified to appear here, my first instinct was simply to refuse to answer committee questions out of personal principle and on the grounds of the rights of man and let it go at that. On further consideration, however, I have come to feel that such a stand would be mere self-indulgence and that it would weaken the fight which other witnesses have made to protect the rights guaranteed under our Constitution. Therefore I further refuse to answer the committee on the grounds of the fourth amendment. I regard this committee as usurpers of illegal powers and my enforced appearance here as in the nature of unreasonable search and seizure.

I further refuse on the grounds of the first amendment, which in guaranteeing free speech also guarantees my right to be silent. Although the first amendment expressly forbids any abridgment of this and other freedoms, the committee is illegally engaged in the establishment of a religion of fear. I cannot cooperate with it in this unconstitutional activity. Lastly, it is my duty to refuse to answer this committee, claiming my rights under the fifth amendment as a whole and in all its parts, and understanding that the fifth amendment was inserted in the Constitution to bulwark the first amendment against the activities of committees such as this one, that no one may be forced to bear witness against himself.
End McGrath Statement

Once more, we live in interesting times. Before us again is the question of how much individual freedom needs to jeopardized in the interest of our collective security. Cando, North Dakota, native son Dick Armey says we have already gone to far in our war on terrorism in compromising those "God-given" privileges guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. Were OMF here, he would doubtlessly be standing with Dick Armey on this one. Tom McGrath often spoke our collective amnesia -- society's "Reagan's Disease" if you will. He put it rather bluntly: "We're a people who forget our history about every fifteen goddamn minutes." We must remember, seems to me, how dangerous 'tis to begin putting people away for what they say or what we think they believe, the color of their skin or the sound of their vowels. We've been there, done that, and we're less than fully human because we did what we did.

Be well this glorious day in Dakota, kola -- a beauuuuuuuuutiful day to be alive. Take care of yourselves and of each other.

Ev Albers

Wednesday, February 5th, 2003

​Curious – today, February 5, 2003 – marks the 103rd anniversary of the birth of the man with the hole in his shoe, Adlai Stevenson of Illinois – born in 1900. Stevenson lived just a few months beyond his sixty-fifth birthday. Today, Secretary of State Colin Powell goes to the United Nations Security Council to convince the world that Iraq is lying about its weapons of mass destruction. Back in October 1963, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations was Adlai Stevenson. He confronted the Soviet Ambassador Zorin with evidence of missiles in Cuba and said he was prepared "to wait until hell freezes over" for an admission that they existed. It was arguably the most dramatic exchange of the entire Cold War.

Adlai Stevenson was my hero when I was ten years old. I confess, I liked him better than Ike. read an excellent biography here. Kola, friends, you have to understand that not even ten year olds confessed publicly to liking Democrats back in 1952 in Hannover Township in Oliver County. I really didn't know the difference between Republicans and Democrats – and I wasn't much of a political being at ten, but I did like Adlai. He was governor of Illinois – ran twice against Ike (1952 & 1956). In 1952, a photographer caught him sitting with his feet up, displaying a large hole in the sole of one of his shoes. Adlai's answer was "better a hole in the shoe than a hole in the head." We didn't have television yet back in 1952, but I do remember seeing him at Grandma Henke's on TV in 1956, and, of course, I'll never forget seeing him on October 25, 1962, confronting Ambassador Zorin and then showing the missiles in Cuba after Zorin refused to answer.

Stevenson once addressed a large crowd of "eggheads" (so called because Stevenson and his followers had a reputation for being intellectuals) – "I hear it said now and then that I am talking over the heads of the people. (crowd: 'No') Well if it’s a mistake to appeal to intelligence and reason instead of emotion and prejudice then I plea guilty to the charge."

His most famous saying, of course, is "Flattery is all right--if you don't inhale." Stevenson's influence on politics was enormous – the nation was not ready to elect someone of his humor and intellect in the 1950s, but they would be later. Think of it – he urged passage of a treaty banning nuclear testing in 1956 at a time the public was in no mood for banning any weapons. Stevenson said, "There are worse things than losing an election. The worst thing is to lose one's convictions and not tell the people the truth." And in 1952, when most politicians were in fear and trembling of Senator Joe McCarthy and his witch hunters, Stevenson took him on directly in his home state where he gave a speech in which he said, "Because we believe in the free mind, we are also fighting those who, in the name of anti-Communism, would assail the community of freedom itself." Stevenson had great problems with McCarthy's notion that anyone who wasn't behind him 100 percent was against him and therefore, with the communists. It was during the McCarthy era that OMF (Our Mutual Friend) Thomas Matthew McGrath was accused and refused to cooperate with the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1953. What a statement! I'm going to post it here tomorrow – but here's a small sample: "In regard to my teaching I have tried to hold to two guidelines, the first from Chaucer that 'gladly will I learn and gladly teach'; the second a paraphrase of the motto of the late General Stilwell: 'Illiterati non Carborundum'."

Permit me, dear kola, to add McGrath's paraphrase to my best advice, this 5th day of February, 2003 – a glorious, beauuuuuuuutiful day in Dakota – take care of yourselves, take care of each other – and Illiterati non Carborundum. Oh, sorry – but as Tom always said to his students, "If you don't know what it means, look it up!"

Ev Albers

Tuesday, February 4th, 2003

I don't know, exactly, what awoke me in the weest hours of this Tuesday, February 04, 2003 – perhaps being abed by 7:00 P.M. does it, perhaps the hankering for some Polska Kielbaska sausage, wondrous stuff made from turkey, beef and pork – best not to ask which parts, methinks. I saw it in the refrigerator last night – there because of a loving, tolerant spouse who bought it against her better judgement just to indulge my returning appetite, back after the "nadir" which follows a week or so after my monthly round of five days of chemo.

It could have been the sheer exuberance of being alive and reasonably well to celebrate J. Danforth Quayle's fifty-sixth birthday. That's right, former vice president Dan Quayle is a mere lad of fifty-six, barely qualified for AARP and not eligible for senior discounts at most midwestern eateries, including those in glorious Dakota, where they expect you to be at least sixty. There's a most interesting place in Huntington, Indiana – the Dan Quayle Center and United States Vice Presidential Museum. Five vice presidents hailed from Indiana, which Quayle began representing as a Congressman when he was a year short of thirty. The Dan Quayle Center has one of the snappiest web sites I've looked at in a long time (I'm not kidding about this) -- see for yourself. Quayle was George Herbert Walker Bush's Vice President – and while in office back in 1988-1992, he spent a lot of time traveling – forty-seven different countries.

There are other web sites devoted to Dan Quayle that emphasis his greatest contribution to humankind, the one completely ignored by his snappy vice president site – I speak, of course, of Dan Quayle's way with words. 'Tis Quayle who reminded us that "We don't want to go back to tomorrow, we want to go forward." We'll never forget such wisdom as

Begin Quayle wisdom
Mars is essentially in the same orbit... Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe.

What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is. -- Vice President Dan speaking to the United Negro College Fund, 5/9/89

I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy - but that could change.

The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century.

The loss of life will be irreplaceable.
End Quayle's Wisdom

Dan Quayle's just one year older than Alice Cooper, who celebrates his fifty-fifth birthday today. Not many folks know that the shocking Cooper established and sustains the Solid Rock Foundation, which he describes as a Christian nonprofit organization to help inner city kids stay out of gangs and away from guns and drugs. His foundation raises up to $150,000 each year to benefit this cause. Cooper's a recovering alcoholic, a family man, married to Sheryl for around a quarter century, father of Calico, Dashiell, and Sonora Rose. He's a model citizen of Phoenix, Arizona, where he came as Vincent Furnier when he was ten. His family brought him for his health – he suffered from asthma.

I'm awake this morning to celebrate the life and work of Betty Friedan, who turns eighty-two today. Dan Quayle wasn't describing her when he said, "Most women do not want to be liberated from their essential natures as women," and, I daresay, Betty Friedan would say that Dan Quayle wasn't describing most women. We've come a long way since she wrote The Feminine Mystique in 1963, and done some in the thirty years since she observed, "The problem that has no name--which is simply the fact that American women are kept from growing to their full human capacities--is taking a far greater toll on the physical and mental health of our country than any known disease." We haven't solved the problem completely, yet Betty must be pleased today.

Rosa Parks must be pleased as well. The woman who refused to move further back in the bus and caused all of that fuss in 1955, when Dan Quayle was but eight, turns ninety today. Happy Birthday, Rosa! There are some folks doing great work for youngsters and the young-at-heart on the Internet – Scholastic. Here's Scholastic on the fantastic Rosa Parks. There's so much to be thankful for on this glorioius, beauuuuuutiful day in Dakota – among them the quiet work of Rosa Parks, which continues with The Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development -- you can read all about her gift to America here.

My gift to you today, kola – this day that will be a good one, yea, a great one – is a bit of the exquisite poetry of Naomi Shihab Nye. In these months following "the future dissolving in moment," those times I've been told I would most certainly die sooner instead of later, I've been sustained and nurtured by your kindness, kola. Here's Nye's "Kindness" from the collection Words Under the Words

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Columbia

Be well, kola, and take care of yourselves and each other. As Dan Quayle said (speaking of a possible manned mission to Mars), "It's time for the human race to join the solar system."

Ev Albers

Monday, February 3rd, 2003

Had that plane not gone down -- probably because of ice -- at Mason City, Iowa, the Big Bopper might have lived to turn seventy-two today, February 3, 2003. It's the weest bit icy, still – was sheer ice yesterday – here in glorious Dakota. J.P. Richardson, known to his friends as "Jape," was twenty-eight when that plane on its way to Fargo, North Dakota, was found piled in broken heap next to a fence line. It carried three whom we often heard on our car radios back in Oliver County in the 50s – the Big Bopper, Buddy Holly, and Ritchie Valens, who was only a year older than I was. Holly was the big star, of course – and he chartered the plane at Clear Lake, Iowa. Jape caught a ride in the tiny plane because he had the flu and didn't want to ride in the bus that had heating problems – Waylon Jennings, who played bass for Holly, gave up his seat for the Big Bopper could go up. The little plane went up around 1:00 A.M.

Born Jiles Perry Richardson, Jape was a Texas boy. He and his wife Adrian had one child, and she was pregnant with another when he died. He was a guy who could have been as ordinary as any of us who listened to "Chantilly Lace" – in 1958, it was the third most played tune in the nation. Jerry Lee Lewis later made the Big Bopper's song even more famous, but no one could sing it the way he did. But the Big Bopper willed himself to be bigger than life. In May 1957, as a disk jockey, he broadcast for six days straight, spinning 1,821 records. Folks of all ages loved the Big Bopper – after his funeral in Beaumont, Texas, the streets were lined with people watching the procession proceed to the cemetery. The Big Bopper wore checkered jackets and zoot suits – he was outrageous on stage. Not many of his twenty-eight songs are remembered, although some were made mightily famous by others, including "Running Bear" and "White Lightning," which country-western great George Jones made a hit.

 Hellooo Baby!: The Best of the Big Bopper, 1954-1959

Click above to check out the album of some of the Big Bopper's best. Jape was something of an old guy for rock 'n roll back in 1959 – he was twenty-eight, after all! But I've been thinking about those glorious days of the late 1950s – cruising around Oliver County in my maroon '48 Ford listening to the Big Bopper on the radio – and realizing that gals and guys like me have turned 60! Fact is, if you can remember where you were and what you were doing the day music died on this day in 1959, you qualify for AARP and can get the senior discount at theaters and restaurants. Many are grandpas and grandmas. Ah, but, in the words of one of the Big Bopper's songs, what's "Walking Through My Dreams" sometimes ignores sixty-year-old body – I'm bopping again or swaying once more tooling around in the old '48 Ford, singing along to the Big Bopper's "Chantilly Lace." Click and listen if you wish.

Oooh BAAAABY, you knoooooow what I like!
Chantilly lace and a pretty face
and a pony tail a-hangin down
and a wiggle when you walk
and a giggle when you talk
makes the world go round
round
round.

'Tis the song, not the sentiment, that I like. Never was all that fond of pony tails, and I always preferred a woman's laughter (young and young at heart) to giggles, but I do like that song. I think I'll pack the Big Bopper for my next trip to Zion, Illinois, for five days of chemo. There's nothing like a bit of music that makes you "feel real loose, like a long-necked goose." That's how I feel this beauuuuuuuutiful morning in Dakota, kola. I trust that there's time for some laughter, even silliness in your day today, as you take care of yourselves and of each other.

​Ev Albers

Sunday, February 2nd, 2003

​February 2, 2003 in the Banana Belt of the Northern Plains, beauuuuuuutiful southcentral North Dakota on the east side of the Missouri will dawn in six hours or so. Promises to be a glorious day indeed, this Groundhog Day 2003. I don't recall a Groundhog Day when I've felt particularly better --- I trust that the sun will be out today so that I can make sure I have a shadow, I feel so good.

Seeing (or having) a shadow is the key to understanding Groundhog Day, which is grounded (forgive the word choice) in ancient ritual that have nothing to do with groundhogs at all and everything to do with whether or not a traveler to the underworld has a shadow when he appears to an expectant group who have sent him down or hope to benefit from his descent.

There are many memorial names among the birthday boys and girls of February 2nd - most of whom no longer cast a shadow, including two of the greatest violinists:
1. Vienna-born Fritz Kreisler (02/02/1875-01/29/1962), who also composed some sixty works for the violin, including Liebesleid (Sorrow of Love) and its counterpart, Liebesfreud (Joy of Love) - Kreisler was so great that he commanded huge fees. When Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt asked his fee to play for one of her little events, Kreisler told her it would cost $10,000. Mrs. Vanderbilt said that was a agreeable, but, she said, "I hope you understand that you should not mingle with my guests." "In that case," said Kreisler, "my fee is only $500.
2. Jascha Heifetz (02/02/1901-12/10/1987), Russian-born (actually, Lithuanian) virtuoso who gave his first concert at the age of five - he won several Grammy Awards in the 1960s and was given a lifetime achievement Grammy late in the 1980s.

Irish writer James Joyce was born on this day in 1882, Ayn Rand with all her Looking-Out-For-Number-One was born in Russia in 1902, and Henry Havelock Ellis (who gave us more information that any of us probably needed about the incredible range of peculiarities of human sexual practice) was born in 1859. None of them are alive - But Christie Brinkley is - she turns forty-nine today. and Farah Fawcett is fifty-six. Brinkley once said, profoundly, "I wish my butt did not go sideways, but I guess I have to face that."

James Dickey, born on this day in 1923 (died January 19, 1997) was the American poet and novelist who gave us Delieverance -- now there's the story of the Jungian shadow getting out!

But back to Groundhog Day - it's all about bears, not groundhogs, and it has to do with to going to the underworld - to the sphere of death on behalf of the whole community. It's the story behind the story of Beowulf and The Odyssey, and it's as old as the tales of the first Cro-Magnum humans telling of bears mating human women. It's a remnant of among the oldest of rituals of Indo-European folk, including the Ainu of Japan (read more about them here) , who were still raising bear cubs and ritualistically killing them as ambassadors to the underworld well into the twentieth century. Before bear cubs were raised as village pets, pampered and petted until they were sent to the underworld to appease those gods - by killing them - humans had to do it - special heroes. Bears are the most humanlike of mammals in many ways, so they were substituted somewhere along the line.

Somewhere, sometime, long ago, some group decided that it maybe they would just let the chosen bear go to sleep, as they normally do. But the bear would be watched when he awoke to make sure he didn't see his shadow - if he did, the community was in deep trouble, and it wasn't just a matter of a few more weeks of winter. So what's the big deal with the "shadow"?

Well, when you make a trip to the underworld, Hades, you lose your shadow. You've been where the sun never shines, and, even if you return, your shadow stays in Hades.

By the time German folk were practicing a version of very old rituals in the centuries before their descendants immigrated to Pennsylvania, bears were gone - there wasn't a bear version of Punxsutawney Phil to wake up midway between winter solstice and spring equinox, the community's sacrificial ambassador to the underworld. So they substituted other hibernating animals. The German-Americans decided to use the groundhog. Now the consequence of the likes of Phil seeing his shadow is just the weest bit more winter (he's only been right about 39 percent of the time since records have been kept in 1887, by the way -- read all about it here ), but back when it all started, an ambassador coming back from the underworld meant that the sun might never shine again - or that there would be mighty tough times for a good while.

Now you know some of the "rest of the story," as Paul Harvey is wont to say. Today's poem to ponder is by OMF (Our Mutual Friend), Thomas Matthew McGrath, Dakota's gift to the millennia to come, who writes in "The Man in the Blizzard" in the collection Death Song:
THE MAN IN THE BLIZZARD
Even his tracks are gone!
And, of course, his shadow . . .
But he keeps walking around,
Searching
Certain that someone
(Himself perhaps)
Was here before--
Or will be.

Kola, I'm most interested in your take on this bit of McGrath - would you please log on to the webboard and give your ideas? click here (enter as a new user if you haven't already signed on) If that's too cumbersome, email me your thoughts and I'll post them to you and sign you up for getting the postings by email as well.

Be well, kola, take care of yourselves and each other - check out each other's shadow today.

Ev Albers

Saturday, February 1st, 2003

​Today, a gloriously balmy first day of February in Dakota, is the seventy-second birthday of Boris Yeltsin, born in 1931. He's alive. It's been about a decade since his heyday, his role bringing an end to Russian communism. There's not a single news item about him in anything I've seen for a long, long time. It's "Thank you very much, Boris - now leave us alone." It's also the day one of American's great poets was born - Langston Hughes (1902), who died on May 22, 1967. The African American poet whose plain-speaking work is celebrated around the world was just in the news this week: he was to have been one of three featured poets in a White House Symposium hosted by First Lady Laura Bush - along with Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson - on February 12th. The event has been cancelled because of possible political overtones and controversy in the wake of protest from some in the literary community over going to war with Iraq. A spokeswoman for Mrs. Bush, a former librarian and teacher who has held a series of very successful events celebrating American authors, said, "While Mrs. Bush respects the right of all Americans to express their opinions, she, too, has opinions and believes it would be inappropriate to turn a literary event into a political forum."

Langston Hughes lived through FBI surveillance and scrutiny by Joe McCarthy and his hunt for communists. Anything but a rabid political voice, he mostly wrote great poetry. go here for the great University of Kansas web site where you will finds reams of materials, photographs, and poetry posted for a grand symposium last February at Lawrence, "Let America Be America Again: An International Symposium on the Art, Life & Legacy of Langston Hughes." Hughes father wanted him to go to college, study engineering, and make money. Langston tried it, but quit - he wanted to be a poet. He lived with his grandmother a good while as a young man, and he never had much use for material things. More than anything else, his refusal to celebrate getting and spending ticked off a lot of people.

His poetry endures - my good friend Charles Everett Pace of Centre College in Kentucky does a marvelous Langston Hughes as a Chautauqua presentation - but I haven't seen it yet. Charles has been on the Great Plains for over a decade with the Great Plains Chautauqua Society as Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, and, currently, as York, the African American slave of William Clark who went to the Pacific and back with the Corps of Discovery. Those who have seen Pace's Hughes tell me that it captures and the humor and humanity of an American we should all be ashamed to admit we do not know, if such is the case.

Kola, let's have a national run on copies in the libraries and buy out all the book stores. Let's bring about republishing his poems by the millions. Hughes once said:

Begin Hughes Quote
Bitterness is not a part of me and so I cannot spew it. I see myself, I see the Negro people as, first of all human beings . . . aspiring for all the things that other Westerners aspire to, but conditioned by the outside pressures of prejudice and discrimination. Some of these situations are tragic, many of them humorous, all of them are wonder to write about. If we humans beings were not the resilient animals that nature has made of us, perhaps our species would not have survived. . . . But the universality which is common to all men makes of us all, basically brothers.
End Hughes Quote

So what are we here for, kola? Hughes had a "Motto" -

Motto
I play it cool
And dig all jive
That's the reason
I stay alive.

My motto,
As I live and learn,
Is:
Dig And Be Dug
In Return

I like Hughes' "Life is Fine." So, what if there are those days the weest uncomfortable (hell, let's face it, some of them for guys like me are downright shitty, but they're worse if you think about them and dwell on it)? There's a good deal to be said for a positive attitude - and today's one of those that my body is not particularly insistent that something's wrong with it, so I expect to be able to get on with life with considerably more than tired valor - I love it, kola, I love it! Here's Langston's

Life is Fine
So since I'm still here livin'
I guess I will live on.
I could've died for love--
But for livin' I was born.
Though you may hear me holler,
And you may see me cry--
I'll be dogged, sweet baby,
If you gonna see me die.
     Life is fine!
     Fine as wine!
     Life is fine!

And I trust 'tis for you, dear kola, who are there taking care of yourselves and of each other and making plans to get your hands on more Langston Hughes and making sure all your friends know about him.

Ev Albers