It's Been A Privilege

See, they said they were closing this hospital. It’s in a bad neighborhood south of Chicago. It’s losing a lot of money. They tried to give it away and nobody wanted to buy it. So they were closing it. The only sensible thing to do.

So a guy I know owns a company that does outplacement work. He scored a contract to provide outplacement services to the 1,400 people who were supposed to be out of work when this hospital closed. He wanted me to help the people there find work. I got the job, and got to work with a lot of people who’d never worked anywhere else.

There were people who did not ever have a resume. They went from Eisenhower High School to this hospital because they had an aunt who worked at the hospital. So they started working here cleaning or delivering supplies or whatever, and now they are a buyer in the purchasing department, and all of a sudden it’s not 1965 any more. They live two blocks from the hospital and never wanted or needed anything else. Their husband is on disability and they do not have other health insurance or income. They don’t want public aid or charity. They work for a living.

And this morning I met a lively, assertive red-haired lady who is a med tech in their microbiology lab. She’d worked here her whole career. And we talked a while. She has a particularly aggressive form of cancer. She required treatment. Even the relatively outstanding health insurance provided here would not cover the cost of her chemotherapy treatments.

She was very proud of the fact that her son plays drums for the music group “Kansas.” We went to the band’s website and looked at pictures of her red-haired son performing. Having a wonderful time.

The band’s website had a section about fundraising. She told me that the band agreed to stage a series of benefit concerts to raise money for her cancer treatments. So the band played, raised money, and paid for her chemotherapy and radiation, which was really expensive. She's cancer free for now.

Here are the lyrics to one of the band’s biggest hits…emphasis added.

“I close my eyes, only for a moment and the moment's gone.
all my dreams, pass before my eyes a curiosity.
dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind.”

“Same old song, just a drop of water in the endless sea.
all we do, crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see.
dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind.”

“Now, don't hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky.
It slips away, And all your money won't another minute buy.”

“Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind…
dust in the wind, everything is dust in the wind.”

I am so glad I was here to work with these people. Like Tom Hanks said in “Apollo 13,” “Gentlemen, it’s been a privilege flying with you.”

Garage Sale

One of the universities I teach weekend classes for, Central Michigan University, sent me to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas to teach this weekend. Fort Leavenworth is a large army base, specializing in training Special Forces personnel. It is sandwiched between the well-known federal penitentiary and the Missouri river which divides Kansas from Missouri. It’s a small class. About half of my students are Special Forces veterans. One returned from deployment due to a disabling injury and is glad to have the chance to complete a master’s degree on the G.I. bill. Two or more of my students who are in Special Forces have killed enemy combatants at close range; at least one in hand-to-hand combat.

Friday night my students warned me that it would take a long time to get onto the base Saturday morning, because of the garage sale.

Garage sale?

“Yeah. Twice a year Fort Leavenworth hosts a garage sale. Active duty members whose families are housed on base can sell all their stuff. It’s better than having to move or store it when they vacate base housing.”

Vacate base housing?

“Sure. Families cannot stay in post housing when the service member is deployed. They have to move off post and find somewhere else to stay.”

So people have to sell their stuff?

“They don’t have to. It’s just easier. And the great thing is, civilians come in from all over – they drive up from St. Louis, Kansas City, all over. A lot of bargains. The place is packed.”

Boy, was it. They started lining up to get on post at 6:00 a.m. It took me almost an hour to get through the main gate. Traffic was backed up for way over a mile, past the penitentiary. And everybody had their stuff out. A lot of clothing. A lot of toys. A lot of appliances – TVs, game consoles, microwaves, couches, beds, tables, dressers.


Home after home, apartment after apartment, stacked high with stuff. American consumer goods, stacked high and ready to move.

Civilians would offer half of asking prices. Military widows-to-be would say, no, but come back after 2:00; I’ll give it to you for half-off if it hasn’t sold by then.

The place, for one day, looked like a Simpsons version of a refugee camp. And the thing that was amazing about it was how thankful and cheerful everybody was.

Yeah, I am selling everything we own and moving off post.

Yeah, daddy’s going to Afghanistan or Iraq and may not come back, and we have to move off post, and we’re selling everything we own, but it’s OK, because this is what we do.

This is what we do.

It was a good day. Students told me that they sold everything, and got five hundred bucks for it. It will be a party Saturday night.

So goddam cheerful.

Thank God for the kind of people we have serving in our armed forces. No bitching, no complaining, just duty first, like they say in the Big Red One. It’s a privilege to help educate them. So we talked about the Bonus Army…

The Bonus Army

The Bonus Army or Bonus March or Bonus Expeditionary Force was an assemblage of about 17,000 World War I veterans, accompanied by their families and other affiliated groups, who demonstrated in Washington, DC, during the spring and summer of 1932.

The marchers were seeking immediate cash payment of Service Certificates granted eight years previously by the Adjusted Service Certificate Law of 1924. Each Service Certificate issued to a qualified soldier bore a face value equal to the soldier's promised payment plus interest. The sticking point was that the certificates, similar to bonds, were set to mature a full 20 years from the date of their original issue. Thus, under existing law, the certificates could not be redeemed until 1945.

The Bonus Army veterans were led by Walter W. Waters, a former Army sergeant, and were encouraged in their demand for immediate monetary payment by an appearance from retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, one of the most popular military figures of the time.

Arrival in Washington

The Bonus Army massed at the United States Capitol on June 17 as the U.S. Senate voted on the Patman Bonus Bill, which would have moved forward the date when World War I veterans received a cash bonus. Most of the Bonus Army camped in a Hooverville on the Anacostia Flats, then a swampy, muddy area across the Anacostia River from the federal core of Washington. The protesters had hoped that they could convince Congress to make payments that would be granted to veterans immediately, which would have provided relief for the marchers who were unemployed due to the Depression. The bill had passed the House of Representatives on June 15 but was blocked in the Senate.

Intervention of the military
The marchers were cleared and their camps were destroyed by the 12th Infantry Regiment from Fort Howard, Maryland, and the 3rd Cavalry Regiment under the command of Major George S. Patton from Fort Myer, Virginia, under the overall command of General Douglas MacArthur. The Posse Comitatus Act, prohibiting the U.S. military from being used for general law enforcement purposes in most instances, did not apply to Washington, DC, because it is one of several pieces of federal property under the direct governance of the U.S. Congress (United States Constitution, Article I. Section 8. Clause 17).

Dwight D. Eisenhower, as a member of MacArthur's staff, had strong reservations about the operation.

Troops carrying rifles with unsheathed bayonets and tear gas were sent into the Bonus Army's camps. President Hoover did not want the army to march across the Anacostia River into the protesters' largest encampment, but Douglas MacArthur felt this was a communist attempt to overthrow the government. Hundreds of veterans were injured, several were killed, including William Hushka and Eric Carlson; a wife of a veteran miscarried, and other casualties were inflicted. The visual image of U.S. armed soldiers confronting poor veterans of the recent Great War set the stage for Veteran relief and eventually the Veterans Administration.

By the end of the rout:
Two veterans were shot and killed.
Two infants died from tear gas asphyxiation.
An 11 week old baby was in critical condition resulting from shock due to tear gas exposure.
An 11 year old boy, David Barscheski was partially blinded by tear gas.
One bystander was shot in the shoulder.
One veteran, Christopher Bilger, had his ear severed by a Cavalry saber.
One veteran was stabbed in the hip with a bayonet.
At least twelve police were injured by the veterans.
Over 1,000 men, women, and children were exposed to the tear gas, including police, reporters, residents of Washington D.C., and ambulance drivers.
Although the public states the army burned down their camp, the bonus marchers burned their own camp. The army had helped set up the tents, shacks, and other dwellings. Reports of U.S. soldiers marching against their peers did not help Hoover's re-election efforts; neither did his open opposition to the Bonus Bill due to financial concerns. He now had no support at all. After the inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, some of the Bonus Army regrouped in Washington to restate its claims to the new President.

Aftermath

Franklin D. Roosevelt did not want to pay the bonus early, either, but handled the veterans with more skill when they marched on Washington again the next year. He sent his wife Eleanor to chat with the vets and pour coffee with them, and she persuaded many of them to sign up for jobs making a roadway to the Florida Keys, which was to become the Overseas Highway, the southernmost portion of U.S. Route 1. On September 2, the disastrous Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 killed 258 veterans working on the Highway. After seeing more newsreels of veterans giving their lives for a government that had taken them for granted, public sentiment built up so much that Congress could no longer afford to ignore it in an election year (1936).

Roosevelt's veto was overridden, making the bonus a reality.

Perhaps the Bonus Army's greatest accomplishment was the piece of legislation known as the G. I. Bill of Rights. Passed in July, 1944, it immensely helped veterans from the Second World War to secure needed assistance from the federal government to help them fit back into civilian life, something the World War I veterans of the Bonus Army had not received.

The Bonus Army's activities can also be seen as a template for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, and popular political demonstrations and activism that took place in the U.S. later in the 20th century.

Homesick for Kingsport

I've now been away from home since Easter, and wondered why. Now I know..

On September 12, 1916, Kingsport residents demanded the death of circus elephant Mary (a five ton Asian elephant who performed in the Sparks World Famous Shows Circus) for her killing of a city hotel worker named Walter "Red" Eldridge, who was hired the day before as an assistant elephant trainer by the circus.

On the evening of September 12, Eldridge was killed by Mary in Kingsport, Tennessee while taking her to a nearby pond to splash and frolic and drink. There are several accounts of his death but the most widely accepted version is that he prodded her behind the ear with a hook after she reached down to nibble on a watermelon rind. She went into a rage, snatched Eldridge with her trunk, threw him against a drink stand and deliberately stepped on his head, crushing it. One of his ears was never found.

The details of the aftermath are confused in a haze of sensationalist newspaper stories and folklore. Most accounts indicate that she calmed down afterward and didn't charge the onlookers, who were chanting, "Kill the elephant!" Apparently, within minutes, a local blacksmith tried to oblige, firing more than two dozen rounds at the elephant with little effect.

Newspapers published claims that Murderous Mary had killed several workers in the past and noted that she was larger than the world famous Jumbo the elephant. Mary was impounded by the local sheriff, and the leaders of several nearby towns threatened not to allow the circus to visit if Mary was included.

The circus owner, Charlie Sparks, reluctantly decided that the only way to quickly resolve the potentially ruinous situation was to hold a public execution.

On the following day, a foggy and rainy September 13, 1916, she was transported by rail to Erwin, Tennessee where a crowd of over 2,500 people (including most of the town's children) assembled in the Clinchfield railroad yard to watch the hanging.

The Sopranos Ending Debate Rages On...

The Sopranos ending is not ambiguous, April 2, 2008

By Suzanne Kafantaris

Look, I cringe whenever I see the "ambiguous ending" argument, and I've got to say something about it. The ending was not ambiguous. It was definitive. There are masses of eerie evidence throughout the entire body of the show in support of its definitiveness.

For example: In season 2 or 3, when Christopher dies for a minute and goes to Hell, he comes back with a message for Tony and Paulie. That message is: "Three O'Clock." This doesn't refer to a time of day; it refers to a position relative to Tony's (and probably Paulie's) body.

In the last few minutes of the final episode, look at where Tony is sitting in the diner. Look at where the mysterious guy in the Members Only jacket (clue!) would be coming from, relative to Tony's body, when he emerges from the men's room (clue! from The Godfather!). He'd be at "Three O'Clock", relative to Tony's body.

Why does the camera spend so much time on this Members Only guy, on getting him into the bathroom right across from Tony, if he's just some random, unimportant extra?

The mural on the wall behind Tony foreshadows and prefigures everything that happens after the screen goes to black. Go back and watch the scene on your DVD, and pause it at shot of that mural. Take a good look. There's a furious burst of orange from a tiger (clue! from The Godfather! Orange is the color of death; cats are a bad omen). Beside the tiger panel is a panel of a football player, leaning to the left, with an orange tinge on his helmet (who else was a football player? Tony). There's a panel of a building that looks a bit like the Roman Forum (where Caesar was betrayed!), and a bit like the nursing home where Tony's mother plotted to betray him. Think about which member of Tony's "Family" is still alive and intact at the end, and ask yourself who the betrayer might be, for a horrifying little coda. And finally there's a smaller football player in the last panel (A.J.?) There are strange, seemingly random splashes of red color on the sleeves of some of the diners -- scan through the last few minutes and ask yourself what's going on with that. None of this is an accident -- every prop, position and angle of that last shot was carefully planned in minute detail. It's all right there, people. Everything that happens *after* the camera cuts to black is chillingly prefigured, in the mural and on the clothing of the diners. And it's a horrifying thing to go back and look at -- more resonant and frightening than the ickiest cinematic blood and gore.

And as far as foreshadowing goes: Look at what happens to Phil Leotardo as he is waving "bye bye" to his grandchildren. Look at the opening scene of the final episode -- Tony on his back in a coffin-like bed, organ music playing on the radio. That's not an accident.

That's not all. Why does the camera cut with such intensity back and forth between the seemingly mundane scenes of Tony, Carmella and A.J. eating onion rings in the diner, and the seemingly mundane scenes of Meadow repeatedly trying and failing to park her car? Why is there such intensity in the filming as she runs across the street and opens the door to the diner? What reason could there be for the way those scenes are filmed, except this: if Meadow had arrived just a few seconds earlier, she would be sitting beside her father, in the three o'clock position, protecting him from whatever is coming out of the men's room.

People, please! Let's give David Chase the credit he deserves for truly chilling and original film-making. That ending is not ambiguous.

Post a comment

Jeffrey A. Lunt says:
Interesting observations.... I think you may be on to something.

Posted on April 13, 2008 9:05 AM PDT

Rygar says:
There is a 3 O'Clock reference in Scarface

Tony Montana kills Frank and the detective on his payroll, when he walks in the room, the clock in the background says "3:00"


Your post: April 18, 2008 7:16 PM PDT

John P Bernat says:
But wait - there is even more evidence...

Orange is the color of the University of Tennessee football team.
Orange is also the color of Tony the Tiger from Sugar Frosted Flakes.
Oklahoma State University's Big Orange Bus is a shuttle service between the Stillwater and Tulsa campuses.
Big Orange Productions is a talent management agency which represents Gulden's zesty honey mustard, which might have been what the Soprano family put on the onion rings.
Big Orange Butyl Floor Cleaner, which is manufactured by Zep and shown inside the diner's men's room, is a non-caustic, orange granulated powder formulated for cleaning finished and unfinished concrete floors. It's no coincidence that this cleaner's anti-redepositing agents keep dirt and grime suspended for easy rinsing.
What could be more obvious??
Wake up, people!

Emancipation

Late last year my son called me. He said that he wanted to be emancipated. He wanted to be economically self-sufficient. He would work full-time at a good paying job. He would maintain his own health coverage, other benefits, complete his undergrad degree on his employer's tuition reimbursement plan. He would finish it "in due course" - a scary thought to me. But I was never so proud of him. And something hurt, for no rational reason.

His birthday was yesterday. As clear as yesterday, I saw him less than a minute after he was born. A new consciousness, a new being. I remember so clearly my first sight of him, thinking, in classic south side Chicago Polishness, "Oh my God, I am responsible for you."

I was not ready for it then. And now I am not ready to forego it. I want him to be little again, to hold his eight and a half pounds in my arms and fall asleep with him. I hear him cry. Then in the same instant I hear him laugh as a little boy, enjoying everything around us, learning and growing. I see him fall in love, showing that special contentment we only get from that.

Nothing bad should ever happen to him. He shouldn't get hit in the face with a batted ball. He shouldn't fall into the water and be afraid of drowning. He shouldn't be ridiculed by his peers at school. He shouldn't be dumped by a woman he loves. He shouldn't ever be too hot, or too cold, or too alone, or too unhappy.

That moment twenty-three years ago and this moment yesterday - and everything in between. See, it all just happened a second ago. It's all rolled up together. It all feels the same.

I did not know what love was until I saw him come out, come into the world. I never knew I could feel this way about anyone or anything. I don't want him to go, and I don't want him to stay and stagnate and atrophy as a human being (I've seen that, too). I burst with pride and love and hurt.

I'm way too sentimental. Thank God for that; it makes me feel alive.

Be free, my boy. Run with the adeboodie cows. Never suffer a day's pain, loneliness or despair. No matter what, know how much you are loved.

Finishing the Sopranos

The Sopranos are no more...

After "six" seasons stretching over ten years, we're done. Including a very controversial ending which I'll explain at the end of this posting [so if you haven't seen it and don't want to spoil it for yourself, stop now!].

The "final season" was broken into two separate components and takes a very interesting turn: inward. Throughout the series, we're exposed to each character's actions but a lot less to their thoughts. In this, we learn a lot more about what it is (besides money) that makes each person tick.

Not that what we see at all attractive. If we ever kidded ourselves into thinking that these people were heroes, this season pretty much scotches that perception.

Tony is a self-centered, violent, destructive man who is capable of emotional poetry. In my view, the poetry is not good enough to make the guy a hero - and that goes for everyone else here, too. [If you see a heroic figure in this bunch, let me know who it is.] This season could not have been created but for the loving care that went into creating and then writing each of these characters, and the great acting that brought each of them to life.

It is amazing that this series lasted as long as it has with the continued quality and increasing depth which we can see in it. Compare it to "Six Feet Under," for example, which had to resort to bizarre and shocking gimmicks to sustain itself.

In the latter part of this final season, Tony visits one of Christopher's girlfriends in Las Vegas and does some peyote. After a night of hallucinations and highly successful gambling (this on the heels of Tony losing pretty consistently and showing symptoms of a gambling addiction), they stumble out into the desert and watch the sun rise. Seeing the sun come up, in a montage of garish color against the desert rock formations, a disheveled Tony screams that message to God and the universe. "I get it!!!" He's winning at the table and that must mean that he's unlocked the mystery of - whatever: his panic attacks, his bad luck, his fears, his malaise.

Now, if only that meant Tony had found something approaching peace. In this final season, Tony curses the people he loves and even his own gene pool. He is enormously self-absorbed and hugely narcissistic, and more brutish than ever. He shows great empathy and horrible sociopathic fixation, sometimes in the same scene. When met with the expressed needs of people closest to him, a stock response is, "oh, poor you."

Respect, whether earned or not, becomes the only thing that matters. And people die.

The violence and loss is met with the classic urban phrase, "What are you gonna do?" The loyalty and allegiance that is at once the lifeblood and the illusion of Mafia life is summarized with Paulie's phrase, "When I get put to the test, what will I do?"

How could we have been brought to care so deeply for such unattractive people? Well, not like freaks in a carnival. Each character showed us so much of our own humanity, and taught us something about the value of unsparing, unsympathetic honesty.

The ending created a lot of controversy. In fact, it's very intentional. Several seasons ago, Tony and his younger family are stuck in a violent storm and seek refuge in Artie Bucco's restaurant. The resulting scene was so memorable to me that I made an audio recording of it to meditate on. They're served a really delicious impromptu meal, served by Artie himself, and just as they prepare to eat, Tony says the following, verbatim, amid rolling thunder and wind:

"Now wait a minute.

I'd like to propose a toast - to my family.

"Someday soon, you're going to have families of your own
and if you're lucky, you'll remember the little moments
Like this.
That were good.

"Cheers."

[SFX glasses click, storm noises increase outside, tree branch creaks loudly]

The scene is delivered with great power and emotion - I can view it or listen to it repeatedly and it loses none of its force or poetry.

Then, the last scene in the entire series: Tony is seated at a diner with his wife and son AJ, while his daughter frustratingly tries to parallel-park outside. He is "razzing" his son about a new job...Journey's "The Stranger" is prominently playing on the juke box.

TS: "It's an entry-level job. Buck up."

AJ: "Yeah - focus on the good times."

TS: "Don't be sarcastic."

AJ: "Isn't that what you said one time? 'Try to remember the times that were good'?"

TS: "Me?"

AJ: "Yeah."

TS: "Well, that's true, I guess."

[Music / SFX interval; waitress brings a plate of onion rings]

TS: "Oh, I went ahead and ordered something for the table."

[Music smash cuts to black on the song lyrics, "Don't Stop")

"I get it!!" The punishment for Tony's evil is the loss of the one thing he might really value: remembering the good moments. So as not to be tortured by how he killed the people and things that mean the most to him, to cope he must forget.

He said "if you're lucky, you'll remember the good moments." His son remembered the most valuable lesson Tony ever carried to him - and Tony couldn't even remember saying it. Tony's luck was restored to him in the last season, but he paid the price He won't be remembering the best things life offered to him. He forgot he even valued these things.

So yes, the ending might be intentionally ambiguous to some, since we don't remember what's important, either. This is, perhaps, the only way it could have ended.

We're human. Tony is us.

Well, whaddaya gonna do?

Living Hillary's History

I just got through listening to a book on tape called "Living History." It was written by Hillary Rodham Clinton a few years back, and I got it for only $5 from a store called Books-A-Million.

And I'm really glad I did.

She is now a front-running candidate for the Democratic nomination for President. As such, voters should all gain as much information about her as we can, in order to determine whether she deserves our vote. At all events, she's now best positioned to become our first female President.

My bias should be disclosed first. I'm not a registered Democrat or Republican; I've preferred to think of myself as an independent. An earlier posting here discloses that I lean toward Democrats, though, and I'm not ashamed of that.

In 1992 and 1996, I voted for Bill Clinton, and I'm not at all ashamed of that, either. I felt that we attained more global stability during his presidency, and, of course, since it was "the economy, stupid," we also enjoyed a considerable economic run-up. Honestly, though some labelled him "slick Willie," I liked having a really smart, agile President - even at the expense of having him mince words (like, "I did not have sex with that woman").

Now, there's Hillary. Some see her as "the wronged woman" and even admire her having stuck with Bill after the Lewsinsky scandal. To me, this can mean a lot of things, not the least of which is a decision based on political expediency as much as personal commitment or feeling. She would not get my vote for that.

"Living History" was heavily promoted in its time as providing Hillary's full reaction to accusations made against her and Bill, too - her commodities-trading profits, her failed health care reform initiative, and more. Well, she does react to those things in the book, for sure.

It is the unintended revelations that interested me most, though. And I listened to her read the book herself - that added a lot. A recurring theme that would cause me not to vote for her was this: she repeatedly cites Bill as having a more generous, forgiving nature than she does. She wants to stay and fight until her enemies are completely discredited and beaten. Bill, by contrast, would be just as pleased to "forgive and forget."

Bill Clinton was as politically beseiged as any 20th century president was - more so than any other, save perhaps Richard Nixon. And yet he somehow was able to retain a generosity of spirit which I came to admire more than I realized at the time. He exemplified what Steven Covey called a mentality of abundance rather than scarcity; looking for the "win-win" potential of conflict, rather than accepting a conflict as a zero-sum game.

Her own words, in this book, give little evidence of Hillary's equivalent capacity. She needs to win, and needs to see her opponents lose - and this is by her own admission. If you listen carefully to her perspectives on the conflicts and trials of the Clinton presidency, you could understand how she reasonably could come to feel that way.

My biggest concern in voting for her now is whether, with the perspective of age, a greater wisdom has come to her. Forgiving your enemies is a crucial quality of any president. Not naivete, mind you, but a "with malice toward none" sentiment. This exemplifies the best of American leadership, domestically and internationally, and is a "must-have" attribute of anyone I'd vote for as president.

I will be watching her campaign closely for this, because it is not demonstrated in her own book. Take a read or a listen to it and tell me whether you agree...

All The King's Men Noir

I'm glad to see that the Sean Penn version of this movie has sparked an interest in the academy award winning original.

In 1947, the movie version of a Pulizter-Prizewinning book of the same name won Best Picture. If you like film noir, you'll see why it won after viewing this old classic (easily available in two DVD versions).

There are the unmistakable marks of its time in this film. Of course, it was made just after the end of WW II, and drawing analogies to dictatorships and American socialism are right from the times themselves.

Broderick Crawford is really good as Willie, although some members of the supporting cast, especially John Ireland, are not up to the roles they play. I also don't know whether the direction was as good as it could be; there are some situations where the combination of writer/director is absolutely inspired, but I would not say that here.

The ultimate destruction of the old order is, to me, the most fascinating element of this film. Film Noir was all about that: a breakdown in an old social order, with nothing but a void seeming to replace it. That is much in evidence here exemplified, as it was in the book, by "Burden's Landing" and its complex blend of great principles lost, but old prejudices and injustices going away, too.

It's a fascinating movie, and still quite watchable today. I agree with some who say there that it is better than the remake, as good as the remake was...Sean Penn really surprised me.