The End of the Neighborhood

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Millie Schumacher lost her husband 27 years ago, but not her determination to ride out her time in the house on 17th Avenue in Grafton, Wisconsin where they'd raised eight kids. She stayed every day of those 27 years, until just after her 100th birthday. She needed a paid caretaker and some of those kids to watch over her fading status, but she and Ed had planted their flag, and there she would stay. Until the other day, when her incredible run ended.

As next door neighbors, we had gained something of an auxiliary family status. We played football, baseball, hide-and-go-seek, tag, and other things together. The parents stopped by each other's houses for a break, for a laugh, for a chance to celebrate a new car with something brown in a bottle, the level of which would get very low very fast. There were some conflicting moments, but they were only moments. It was a real neighborhood, the type of which are fading now with transience, in which kids and parents watched out for each other, exchanged gossip, and food.

We had a chance to relive some of those times at Millie's wake at St. Joseph's Church, where she and Ed had remained faithful Catholics for decades. Not all of the eight children were there--two had medical issues which wait for no one--but the stories flowed freely and old connections were renewed. We had plenty of laughs.

I couldn't stay for the perfunctory luncheon afterwards. I had an eye appointment back on the East Side of Milwaukee. That was fairly close to my current residence, but more than half an hour from Grafton. Damn thing took all of five minutes, too. But St. Joseph's Church was still more or less in the neighborhood, about a ten-minute walk from our houses. Its parking lot, once a recess playground (I wonder if it still is), borders 17th Avenue. I could have turned left coming out the backway and helped myself half a block to Highway 60 en route to the freeway, or I could turn right and drive past the old neighborhood on the way to a side road that got me eventually to the same place at a different entrance. I chose the latter.

It had been at least ten years since I had driven past the old neighborhood. Nostalgia may be fun for a moment, but eventually weighs one down because the only way anything in the world moves is forward--not necessarily in improvement, but connected with change. Wishing one had another chance at some station in life pursues a chimera that never gives back.

But good memories do. There's a house, now, on the open lot north of the Schumachers where we used to play baseball. Lots of runs were scored because there were just two on a side--we claimed a 'two-field' hitting restriction; left and center or right and center, the one undeclared being an automatic out. It's where I learned to hit the ball to right field, something that followed my career through high school and college. We had to be careful, too, when ground rule doubles bounced through the lot into and across the street so we avoided (sometimes barely) being smacked by passing cars.

It wasn't just a passing interest in baseball, either. Both Dads took their boys to Milwaukee Braves games in the late '50s and '60s when that franchise thrived here. I remember piling into various station wagons and sitting in the upper regions, which is all that either household could afford. In particular, I recall three games: 

• Ed Schumacher, that family's patriarch, was left-handed so he loved going to watch one of the greatest left-handers, the Braves' Warren Spahn, pitch against someone else who happened to be pretty good. One game pitted Spahn against the Pittsburgh Pirates' ace, Bob Friend, and Friend emerged as a 3-2 winner;
• In September 1960, very late in the season and after the Braves had been eliminated from pennant contention, another all-time great, Eddie Mathews, hit a homer off the right field foul pole to beat Pittsburgh in the 10th inning--on the day that the Pirates clinched the National League pennant because St. Louis had lost. We walked into the parking lot listening to them celebrate through open windows; and
• On what was called Spahnie Night in 1961, organized in honor of the 300-game winner, the San Francisco Giants came to town and routed him, with Willie Mays smashing a grand slam homer.

We played football by sharing both the lots on the Schumacher and Cebulski premises. It wasn't tag. The four of us older boys--Andy and Charlie Schumacher and Jeff and Mark Cebulski--all wound up playing in a more organized fashion in high school. Pete Schumacher, who came along later but who wanted to play with the big boys, was apparently told, as he repeated at the funeral, that he'd better not complain or cry or else he'd wind up in the house playing with Barbie dolls. So much for sensitivity training. He played in high school, too.

But high school also split us up. All eight Schumacher kids continued their Catholic education at Dominican High School in Whitefish Bay, getting rides there before they could own their own cars. The Cebulskis went to Grafton High, not very far from the neighborhood, just up the road from St. Joe's. So the neighborhood didn't take long to diverge. With different pursuits come different conversations, so we soon lost track of each other.

It diverged again when Lana Ross and I both attended Lawrence University. But she had already met Charlie, so dating her was out of the question. We saw each other every so often, so I kinda sorta kept in loose touch. I never saw her with another guy. As we moved through college, marriage looked more and more inevitable. They've been together more than half a century.

My most direct connection during that post-college time were two, both as Santa Claus (as I enjoy playing with my own extended family). I visited a couple of times to excite a few of the grandchildren during the '90s, after I'd been in the suit at our old home in the couple of years when we held the traditional Christmas Eve there. It had a feel of Santa making the rounds and added to the fun of it for me. The kids colored pictures for Santa and I kept several on the frig for a number of years.

Remembering that, perhaps, about 2008 or so, Millie's daughter Mary persuaded me to put on the suit for a luncheon at Jack Pandl's restaurant in Whitefish Bay, which at that point wasn't far from one of my many residences. I put on the get-up on a day where the high temperature didn't reach zero and the wind chill had to be -30. Millie, whose lucidity was flagging even then, was stunned and thrilled. Despite long underwear, I damn near froze to death but emerged pleased that I'd been a Good Samaritan. I did it for the neighborhood.

For the first time ever, the Schumacher home looked dark and empty as I rode past it. Millie had demanded the opportunity (an expensive one, I hear tell, with hired caretaking) to live in the family's original home until, well, she was done living. She got what she wanted, all the way through age 100. It had been more than just a place to stay. No matter when anyone came in through the breezeway into the kitchen, you couldn't help but catch the scent of yet another pie or cake or meal being cooked. Raising eight kids and welcoming their own kids back home was a full-time job, one Millie never shied away from, though for 19 years, she somehow managed to work at Smith Brothers restaurant in Port Washington, doing most likely what Mom did--raise money for the kids' college fees. Her positive energy resounded. Her smile wasn't perpetual, but it was her inclination.

Mom and Dad had moved to residency for the aged some twenty years ago. They are still with us at ages 99 and 97, respectively, never expecting to last this long. Our house was sold to one of Millie's granddaughters and her husband. As I headed past it, I noticed that there was a car parked in the circular drive in front, something that Dad was particularly proud that he had added to the property. It still looked like, and felt like, home.

I didn't mourn at that as much as I absorbed it. With the Schumacher home soon to change hands, the old neighborhood would just be that--a memory of a place and a time that felt more secure and welcoming and  vital, a place where families put their roots down and didn't think about going elsewhere. A simpler time and place where people weren't afraid to leave their front doors unlocked. Roots, yes, and wings; the irony was that, of course, none of us could stay.

The neighborhood houses still look well cared for, the kind which people could start a life and a world again. Millions would be jealous of what we did and how things ended up. This was America, spanning Eisenhower to Biden, the Cold War to the War on Terror, Marilyn Monroe to Taylor Swift. This was, if not the peak of world civilization, one that had earned its way that most of the rest of us who forged ahead and settled for: If not sheer excellence or opulence, a life that wasn't too bad. We never wanted for anything. 

It was reasonably secure, too. Crime was a distant concept from which we were immune. In the middle of a continent separated by two oceans, we were relatively safe, too, from the worst that the rest of the world could threaten except for one terrifying moment in 1962 when two leaders had a gut-check and concluded that now wasn't the time to blow each other's nations into eternity.

So we made it, the neighbors and us. The houses still stand as tribute to a generation that did its due diligence, that put its head down and got through first a horrifying depression and then a world war that welcomed back those who survived and then decided not to have anything like that happen again. After 70 years, the neighborhood will completely change hands now. But it'll never be just another street, though. Not to me. I drove south past what used to be Zirtzlaff's and Kroner's and Wagner's, up that little hill, then turned left on Falls Road. And was gone.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Are You Not Entertained?

I still don't know whether to be angry or sad. Time named Taylor Swift as its Person of the Year.

Time has existed now for 100 years and named Someone of the Year since 1927; the first was Charles Lindbergh. Even after having switched over from Man of the Year to Person of the Year, its selections have reflected the gravitas of the times in which they've lived and their effects upon it. Some of the winners: FDR (twice in three years); Mahatma Gandhi; even Wallis Simpson, whose love for Prince Edward VII forced his abdication from the British throne, a Western scandal with no equal. And all three of them were named in the 1930s.

You don't have the like the people themselves, but it's pretty tough, until now, to doubt their impact. Ex- was named in 2017, for instance, and Newt Gingrich in 1995, and Joseph Stalin (also twice in three years). Each are rogues who broke down guardrails of political behavior; we are feeling that today.

But Taylor Swift? What has she done that has had a sufficient impact besides make songs I don't know? I'm sorry, but I don't feel it. You could, I suppose, compare her favorably with Lindbergh in terms of the reactions to their exploits (Lindbergh's foray into politics created a deep dive to isolationism when it appeared clear that the U.S. should seriously consider getting into the growing world war; that, however, was down the road a few years), but it takes no courage for Taylor Swift to perform. Her money is impressive; she is reportedly a billionaire now. But her effects are purely in escapism--and there, I think, Time is making a comment that I wonder is within its intent.

Within the celebratory, congratulatory article that appeared a quote from Swift herself to describe her benefits to the public at large. "Ultimately, we can convolute it all we want, or try to overcomplicate it but there's only one question [she continues in a booming voice]: Are you not entertained?"

The irony of that comment cannot be ignored. It is exactly why ex- still has a chance to be re-elected president, and it's the bottom of the discontent with Joe Biden. Biden wants you to look away from his personality and at the work of government, the competence of which has certainly improved since he's taken over. Ex- wants you to look away from anything he might do and look at him. His rhetoric is lulling his supporters to sleep, again; he's getting away with getting them to believe he cares about them--again.

But above all, look at Joe Biden and you aren't entertained in the least. He has little charisma. His presidency is always a work in progress and is never quite on display. Biden wants you to accept that no situation is perfect, that the best people can often do is cope successfully. He wants you to understand that settling somewhere in the middle is best for the polity and, barring absolute disaster, is the maximum he or anyone else can do.

That obscures the successes Biden has had--in warding off a recession; in bringing inflation down; in creating an impressive number of jobs. But those aren't exciting things. That's what government is supposed to do, even though the effort to accomplish those things have taken an extraordinary effort. None of it is entertaining. It's all lunchpail stuff.

People aren't drawn to that, though. By itself, competent government won't continue to win elections. It must advertise itself, brag a little about itself--especially against someone whose only calling card is bragging about things that aren't true.

Ex- will entertain you, first and foremost. He oozes charisma, though it is based on deception and lies. It's fun to go to his rallies and trash someone, anyone, who doesn't meet his requirements of absolute loyalty or whiteness. He is unleashed again, now with four years of experience to spin and twist and exaggerate and deceive. Just by saying so, he brings people under his rotten wing.

It is the underside of politics--the pied piper who entertains us while leading us off the cliff. The Atlantic magazine has recently run an entire issue about what will happen if he takes over again, what with four years of some information about how government works under his belt. It is chilling and dangerous for anyone who might object to another four years of abuse.

The Colorado Supreme Court has ruled that the state can bar ex- from the ballot next November. Naturally, the ruling will be reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court, more than half of which will be caught in their own trap of what they refer to as "originalism," because Colorado's ruling is based on the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1865: Not exactly "original," but not grand spanking new, either.

 I don't think it'll fly. The U.S. Supreme Court has a procedural way out: It can say that ex- hasn't been convicted of having led an insurrection (yet), so since that hasn't been proven in court, no state court can make any restriction on him, a former federal official--yet. It must wait for the decision in ex-'s insurrection trial.

That puts tremendous pressure on Jack Smith, Special Counsel, and the court hearing that case but okay: That that showdown should matter that much is no surprise. Ex- is desperately trying to game that system with challenges that post nothing more than delays that would allow him to say, at some point, too-bad-so-sad, while Smith is trying to do the same to expedite the whole matter. Process is time spent, and that's ex-'s hole card. Meanwhile, the clock ticks--but for whom?

It provides us with macabre entertainment, though. We wait for courts to rule and determine when they will do so. Everyone's holding their breath for one reason or another. It's as if the Super Bowl is in some inexcerable overtime period, where everyone mills around the 50-yard line as we wait for someone to break out and end this thing. There is pushback to pushback.

It brings us to 2024, and whether we will be those who choose to be entertained or participants. We can put the latter off only so long, making the Taylor Swifts the objects of our attention instead of dealing with the ultimate determination of whether we really do prefer to govern ourselves, or turn over the reins to an unqualified (even after four years of self-serving indolence), uncaring monster. Whether a very messy democracy is still the way to wander forward, or the complete withdrawal of any responsibility to guide our lives. It is the choice we've dodged much of this year, pretending that it doesn't matter yet. The clock ticks.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Grafton's Moment in the Sun

It felt like the thing to do. Grafton High School was having a moment in the sun. Its football team had won its way into the state Division 3 tournament finals in Madison at Camp Randall Stadium. I had to go.

I once played quarterback for Grafton's football team. That was more than half a century ago. 

Generally, we were pretty successful. We lost three games over two seasons, two of which we probably should have won, but we won at least a share of the conference championship both times. We had good, stingy defenses and offenses which were usually pretty productive.

There were no playoffs back then. I remember writing one of my sports columns decrying the inclination to begin playoffs, asking pointedly what was wrong with a bunch of conference champions without spoiling nearly all their seasons with a final-game loss, which playoffs arrange for. But that was long ago and far away. Besides, the WIAA, the governing organization of interscholastic sports in the state, has divided the competition seven ways, thus providing for as many champions as can be in a state this size. In football, size of school has a lot to do with how many large people you can put on the field. Dominance is crucial in a combative sport like football, and a school without that many behemoths stands to have its players hurt far more often if they play other schools that have a much greater enrollment. 

Despite the equipment improvements, that remains on the shelf. The New York Times has just run an article about today's players getting what's called CTE, the effects of intense compact on someone's brain. It was originally found in professional players who had undergone a great deal of mayhem, but it's now being found in high school players too, since many of them began playing football in grade school--something I used to decry, too, to no avail.

I worked at maintenance in the summer to earn money for my college experience at or around that same high school, which had been turned into an elementary school; the new high school had been built connecting it. Since then, I returned only momentarily for things like coaching basketball against Grafton, playing in a recreational basketball league, and covering an outstanding set of Grafton football teams that constituted a temporary dynasty in the 1980s.

So when Grafton High got into the Division 3 state title football game, I went with sentimentality but an open mind. I had no idea exactly how good that team was, or whether they had much of a chance against their opponents, Rice Lake, which played an entirely different schedule.

Grafton brought an enormous band of faithful, larger than that of Rice Lake, mostly, I'd imagine, since Camp Randall is about 90 minutes from the high school campus. Rice Lake is from the northwest part of the state, about four hours away. Their fans were just as rabid.

Deservedly so. The scores that Rice Lake had been dialing up against their opponents usually began with the numeral 5. 5, as in fifty. I don't care who you're playing, getting 50 points most of the time in high school games suggests steamrolling, especially since Wisconsin respects the national high school rule that makes the clock go without stoppage when the margin becomes beyond 35 points--meaning that in most of its games, Rice Lake had that much less time to amass its enormous scores.

Grafton had a very good team that got hot. It had lost to Port Washington 35-7 early in the season, for instance, but came back to defeat it 22-21 in the playoffs. Having not followed football in the state for a long time, having just learned that Grafton had changed conferences and been bumped down to Division 3, I had no idea whether Rice Lake had slipped into the finals because of weak competition.

It hadn't. It became apparent quite early that Rice Lake had a bevy of very good athletes who could break away for a score at any time. Grafton's task was to slow them down and keep the game within reach. This it did, and nearly pulled off what would have been another upset. Grafton had a good quarterback, Brady Hilgart, and a strong running back named Tommy Lutz. Any one of five Rice Lake players were fast enough to break away, but Lutz was very difficult to bring down. Thus were the philosophies of offense: One dared you to stop people from many different angles, the other hitched its horse to one saddle and dared you to stop that. Both worked pretty well.

Parking in Madison being what it is, I came late to the game, and Rice Lake had already scored on a long pass. But Grafton came back and scored at the beginning of the second quarter to draw within 8-6. Rice Lake's placekicker had an approach like the pre-soccer style kickers of yesteryear, straight on, something I quite frankly hadn't seen for 50-plus years, and obviously didn't have confidence in him to maintain a steady point-after, so it abandoned that approach and always went for two. The score begged Grafton to do the same to catch up, but the coach ordered a point-after kick that went through confidently but left Grafton behind, 8-7, something I simply don't understand. What if nobody else scored?

But he must have had confidence in his offense, which did not let him down. Rice Lake scored to make it 14-7, but missed their two-point conversion. Grafton responded by scoring and tied it with another very good extra point kick. Grafton's kicker, doing the now-traditional soccer style, had plenty of leg and probably could have nailed a 40-yard field goal--something worth keeping in mind should the game come to that.

The game remained tied at 14 at the half. As the teams went to their locker rooms, the Grafton band struck up the school song. Time to stand up!

Three cheers for Grafton High School,

Hail orange and black!

We are the Blackhawks,

Spirits we'll not lack (Fight! Fight! Fight!)

So fight with all your might, boys,

Fight for her fame,

Go Grafton Blackhawks,

We will win this game!

Still knew it like my name. We sang it so often during our state basketball tournament run in 1966, my freshman year, that we were likely to hum it in our sleep. The state tournament did not respect school class designations back then, so all the schools were bunched into pairings. It took seven victories to make it to the big show. Grafton, enrollment about 420 back then, was one of those Davids that went to Madison to play in the old University of Wisconsin Field House to take on Goliaths like Madison East, which we upset in the quarterfinals. The run ended the next day when Wisconsin Rapids was too much for us. But the anticipation, the suspense, the bus rides on which we yelled on the way to games and slept on the way back, the school assemblies, were all memorable. 

State football tournaments began in Wisconsin in the mid-1970s. It was left to conjecture over Friday night beers to deduce what some of the great teams of the 1950s and '60s might have done. It would have been interesting to see what might have happened to the team that immediately followed the basketball run in the fall of 1966. It was a tremendous juggernaut with several terrific players. I was a sophomore and got into a couple of the more lopsided victories. Otherwise, I was reduced to keeping track of what plays were being called and how many yards they made, supposedly for quick reference to tell what could be called at a crucial point of a game. But there weren't many crucial moments in that season; we walloped everyone by at least two touchdowns and also ran up big scores. It was all great to watch from the sideline. We had four consecutive teams that either finished as champions or co-champions, and I'm confident we would have made a dent in playoff proceedings each time. But that one, in 1966, had the talent, swagger and poise of something truly special.

There is nothing quite like going to a state tournament final. The Grafton of 2023 had to win four games to get here; after long a mid-season squeaker to Greenfield, it found its groove and downed the last four opponents by a combined 199-7--again, remarkable because of the 35-point, continuous clock rule. After an easy first round win over Wisconsin Lutheran, though, it pulled off that upset over Port, eased past Menasha, and brought down Stoughton in a 17-6 win that was closer than the final score. 

The Rice Lake Warriors had bolted through its tournament run by a combined total of 188-78. It had given its last four regular season foes a combined 196-43 drubbing. So both teams were capable of scoring explosions, but Rice Lake was kind of scary.

I marveled at the sophistication with which both teams organized their attacks. The Warriors' offense was a double-split, double-wing, where one wingback or another came back in motion to create lots of deception, not unlike the approach used by Army, Navy, or Air Force. Grafton sometimes went to formations with five wide receivers and competently moved the ball well with that approach. But Rice Lake didn't allow long gains, making the Blackhawks earn their way downfield. As a result, both teams burned the clock and it limited the number of possessions they had. Either way, 50 years ago, these formations would have been unheard of on the high school level. They operated with efficiency and calm disposal. Nobody looked confused about anything.

Rice Lake came out and scored again in the third quarter. It went for two again, but failed, making it 20-14. Grafton returned the favor early in the 4th, as Lutz plowed through a stiff goal line stand from the one-yard line with Category 5 collisions galore.

When the Blackhawks lined up for the extra point, the game looked about to turn. But the Warriors broke through and blocked it. That was Grafton's high-water mark. Had it taken the lead, who knows what would have happened?

But Rice Lake never lost its poise. Grafton tried to contain its potent offense but fortune intervened. Rice Lake gained a first down with a nice run in Grafton territory, fumbled, but recovered it. On the very next play, Rice Lake's fine quarterback, Jakob Kurtz, rolled to his left and found an open receiver. He threw it too high, and the ball was tipped. It looked like another opportunity for Grafton to change the game's momentum, but the ball traveled downfield and was caught in perfect stride by another Rice Lake receiver, who ran to the Grafton 16 before being corralled. Four plays later, Rice Lake had taken an irreversible lead. It added the conversion to make it 28-20.

Grafton took over with more than four minutes left, plenty of time to travel the length of the field and perhaps tie the game. Grafton's quarterback, Brady Hilgart, also did well to move the Blackhawks to midfield. There the drive stalled when, on fourth down, he couldn't find an open receiver, tried to run for the first down, and was swarmed under for no gain.

Grafton remained alive, though. It had all its time-outs left, which it used for the three downs in which Rice Lake failed to advance the ball to make a first down. About 1:30 remained with the ball in Blackhawk territory. Rice Lake had played very good containment defense, so assuming no big punt runback from near Grafton's own goal line, that would put Grafton in a tough spot without any ability to stop the clock. But the Warriors sealed that issue; they decided to fake the punt on fourth down and ran for a first down, which allowed it to run out the clock and guarantee the victory. 

Grafton had acquitted itself well. The kids had much to be proud of. Someone had to win, but the competitive moment had not been too big for them in the cavernous stadium with replays galore on the massive TV screen above one end. I can't say there were any controversial officials' calls on which to build conjecture, either. How do I know they did a good job? Nobody noticed them. No nasty signs were dangled, no fights started. The traditional handshake lineup began. 

I was glad to have gone. There is chaos elsewhere in many places, but there was none here. Competitive sports can, sometimes, restore a sense of order and decency. That my alma mater had participated in one expression of that gave me a nice connection, a sense of continuity. Not a bad way for kids to grow up.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Why Do We Only Know Now?

(Any comments--contact me at dadofprince@gmail.com. Thanks!)

It's a terrific movie, even though it's more than three hours long. I honestly didn't notice.

"Killers of the Flower Moon" is a story that has been aching to be told. Based on a book by David Grann, a reporter for the New York Times, it depicts what amounts to a slaughter in slow motion, an act of moral depravity that leaves one's blood cold to consider the calculation of it all.

Dispersed to reservation land in Oklahoma, the Osage tribe found itself camped squarely above an incredibly rich oil deposit. This was the early 1920s, when automobiles were first gaining popularity in the American culture. The monetary boom was incredible, and the Osage took maximum advantage. Per capita, they became the richest people in the world. They bought expensive cars, lived in enormous mansions, hired whites as chauffeurs.

But the white culture was caught unawares, and jealousy and racism combined into a toxic stew. First by legislation in the national Congress, then by trickery and murder, that money changed hands. Playing the long game, white men married Native women to gain access to the 'headlight,' the legal permission to claim benefits from inheritances, then they killed them--sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly so as not to raise suspicion.

The depiction of this is brilliantly done, as you might guess, by director Martin Scorcese, who appears in a brief cameo first before the film begins to thank people for coming to face the terrible results of greed and avarice, and then comes in at the end as part of his own film. Starring are Robert DiNiro and Leonardo DiCaprio as perpetrators in this awful scheme. It is a film with all the earmarks of a classic.

It is Lily Gladstone as DiCaprio's Native wife who steals the film, though. She is the confused eyes and ears of the oncoming trouble, and is typically victimized by the web of deception that's needed to maintain access to the huge reservoir of cash available. I'll let you either read the book--I've heard it's quite good--or see the film to discover her fate.

Here's my question, though, echoing someone to whom I mentioned the film: Why do we only know this now? Why is this such a revelation one hundred years later?

Because the history of minority groups in this country needs to be hidden, that's why. I taught history for 30 years and I had absolutely no idea about this. None. I thought that, with the revelation of the Tulsa massacre of blacks in 1921--which took long enough to find common school history books--Oklahoma's racism had reached a peak. Uh-uh. There was more. Much more.

That's an embarrassment. Or at least it should be to those who keep track of such things. That people were subjected to lengthy incarceration for such crimes shouldn't have been sufficient to fulfill retribution. The country should have known about it, discussed it, and made sure it was chronicled in its history books.

It wasn't. Somewhere, somehow, someone decided that this wasn't part of our national priorities. I'm not in the least surprised.

After all, just half a century before that outrageous event, we were killing, and were proud to be killing without conscience, other Natives for being in the way of our expanding settlements. The Osage that found themselves sitting atop buckets of money were in fact being shoved onto what others believed to be worthless land, just so someone could say that they were promised something--the vast vestiges of broken treaties and mass murders, willing and accidental, that followed.

That millions of mostly white kids throughout America were robbed of this information is the creation of mass deception, deception that is still being promoted today. It's almost necessary, lest we admit to ourselves that these Natives, as well as those who preceded them, had equal value to the rest of us. It is necessary, too, to a culture that refuses to admit that racism has always permeated it, lying just beneath daily life, surfacing here and there like an emotional volcano.

If this had happened to WASPs, there would be no end of weeping and gnashing of teeth. Instead, this is another footnote to the racism that survives and thrives right now, racism that has flourished and will continue to flourish unabated if the wrong person gets elected president next year. Remember, he was responsible for the separation of thousands of children from immigrant families. Press vigilance couldn't stop it. Moral rectitude certainly couldn't stop it. The only thing that stopped it was electoral defeat.

It was his quickly assembled gang of historical tricksters, too, that devised a "1776 Project" in an attempt to counteract the "1619 Project," the latter of which unearthed new facts and new attitudes towards a new understanding that the very basis of the development of the resources that made us the world powerhouse we are came from the need for white supremacy. The former's thinking blossomed in the sewage pits, and brought forth the quasi-truth that some of the slaves acquired skills because they had been enslaved--as if they couldn't have learned them, or even gotten better skills, had they been free. These it-wasn't-all-bad dismissals remove the need for reckoning with a past that has had some acts of serious, unreported corruption.

Martin Scorcese has seen that, and has spent considerable time and attention to just one, terrifying process of minority slaughter. More than 300--no one knows exactly how many--Osage people were killed by this complex plot. That it took months to remove them from the earth instead of one cavalry charge at a time against Native resistance does not diminish the simple fact that many whites were complicit about both branches of the same genocide. We have never overlooked it, but we have failed repeatedly to deal with its enormity.

We went on instead, mournful like having someone's else's pet getting run over by a car, then turning away and getting on with our profitable lives. That failure was not lost on Hitler, who said more than once that his model for ridding the world of all Jews was that of Americans and their collective disdain, and racial dominance, of the Natives who were here first and who were pushed around and wiped out until almost none were left. If our whites did that, why couldn't he? What gave them their right to moral rectitude?

And why are we ignoring that, too? Because one who is clearly following in his footsteps is now plotting on revenge toward others who, in the interim period between what might be his two terrible reigns, have done their best to reveal truths that he's understandably (to understand, though, is not to approve), but deservedly, uncomfortable with. Some of these are now being played out, or soon will be played out, in court. We will see what accountability he faces. Remember: Hitler served only nine months in prison for trying to overthrow his government.

If that ugly history won't matter, nothing will. We will be left with no past that will matter, either. And no future.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Cassidy Hutchinson: Brave As Can Be

Say this for Cassidy Hutchinson: She's brave as can be.

Since her book Enough came out, she's been on with Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell, and Jimmy Kimmel (as far as I know). They are letting her hawk it. She needed the money.

Here's the part that's fascinating, though: There's been no screaming from the right-wing, and not even from ex- himself. Nothing, at least not as far as I've heard. Barely a peep since she appeared in front of the Jan. 6 committee last fall.

This is an anomaly. Any critic of ex- is usually the subject of a massive, exaggerated, disingenuous put-down as soon as he learns of the criticism, regardless of the verifiability of the accusation. The point is, of course, not only to divert your attention back to the one who can't get enough of it, but in its exaggeration to make something about it rub off and suggest that the opposite is true or that the accuser has skeletons in their closet that haven't been revealed--yet.

Makes you wonder why. I have some suggestions:

She's a female. Ex-'s chauvinism is working against him. Too, he also knows that verbally abusing a young woman seems over the top all by itself, regardless of the lies that underly it.

They've already tried to intimidate her to no avail. Recall that in addition to the 'insider' information that Hutchinson supplied to the 1/6 Committee, she also added, upon Liz Cheney's prodding, that nefarious (Can there be anything else?) members of ex-'s entourage called her and gently encouraged her to remain a member of "the team" in her testimony--that is, not to say anything that would shed poor light on him. But the point of her appearance was to do exactly that, because she had already tried to dodge or hold back significantly damning information--and her conscience had bothered her too much. That is, contrary to ex- and most people working for him, she has one.

Her position wasn't very important so not enough people will pay attention. To be a helper to ex-'s Chief of Staff, the obsequious Mark Meadows, seems minor enough. But proximation suggests insider-ness, and the fact that Hutchinson sought out Alexander Butterfield, the revealer of the Nixon White House tapes, shows that though the public might not even know of you or your position, your strategic presence can't be hidden. And in this case, it shouldn't be.

She hasn't turned Democrat. Not by a long shot. She declares herself a solid Reaganite, which to me is what got her in this trouble to begin with. What she's left out of her narrative, in fact, prompts some questions, especially about her support of ex- during the 2016 campaign. Such as: She writes about ex-'s so-called "moderate" positions, but what about his bloated, inflated, lying rhetoric about lots of other things? That didn't have an impact? 

And echoing her clear dislike for Mike McKenna, who she insisted was horribly sexist and who she says she had a hand in firing from the White House staff, what about the Access Hollywood incident where ex- discusses grabbing women in the crotch and being able to do anything men want to do to them if you're "a star"? There's no comment about that. Does she mean to say she was, like millions of others, willing to overlook that? To brush it off? Plenty of men have said and done far less and been castigated thoroughly for sexism (see: Al Franken, Jimmy Fallon). Really? She didn't mind that? She didn't take that seriously?

But she stays in her own lane for the most part. She doesn't comment about policy matters much. She's not there to do that. She's there to tell you what happened--what almost happened--to her. She admittedly was drawn in by the atmosphere of the White House and the somehow magical personality of its then most famous resident. To quote her directly:

    I had adored the president. I'd been very close to Mark Meadows (Chief of Staff, of whom more down below). I had loved working in the White House (as Meadows' chief assistant). I deeply cared for the people there. I believed sincerely that we were serving the interests of the American people. I regretted the belligerence and crudity of some of the president's messaging: the inappropriate, unpresidential tweets. But you can become inured to it, and I did. I often laughed with colleagues at his communications, when I should have seen them for what they were--mean-spirited. Politics is a team sport, and I was a willing teammate.

    Even [ex's] tantrums hadn't made me angry. Whenever I witnessed or heard about him losing his tamper, it hurt me to see him upset. My first thought was why had people let it go so far. Couldn't we have done more--could I have done more--to serve him better, to avoid upsetting him.

    My views of [ex-] would change as I witnessed his selfish recklessness threatening the country's constitutional order. My resolve only strengthened when my loyalties to him and my former colleagues were put in direct conflict with my obligation to the country.

Her ambition must have blinded her. Wouldn't be the first time that ever happened. Being that close to ultimate power has its undeniable lure. And she never explains what it is that attracted her to ex- that much--something I'd like to hear from people. What she didn't know--what she couldn't have known until it was too late--was that that approximation has its price. The more she knew, the more uncomfortable she got with paying it.

Mark Meadows became very uncomfortable, to the point at which he was trying to do anything to avoid being held responsible for the chaos and complete disregard for the law that came crashing down around him. Hutchinson's youth, her willingness to please, and her (right up until the end) blind loyalty made her the perfect pawn for Meadows to jettison acts he should have taken on himself. 

Clearly, according to Hutchinson's account, Meadows knew what was being planned for January 6. He knew it was wrong. He knew it would threaten members of the same Congress that until very recently he had been a member of, and still knew many of those members. But he did nothing, or next to nothing. His neglect makes him blatantly complicit in the terrible assault on the Capitol. He could have stormed into the Oval Office and had the confrontation that was needed that afternoon; he didn't. He could have resigned on the spot and walked away; he didn't. 

While none of that might have changed the outcome, it would have established Meadows as enough of a patriot for people to conclude that he, too, put country over dangerous, ridiculous personal loyalty. Instead, he comes off as an obsequious, repulsive leaker, a non-entity with a title that becomes more absurd by the moment. During his legal machinations, he has claimed that executive immunity rubbed off on him because of his proximation to the rogue president. Not only is that absurd, he must know deep inside that the legal claims cannot eclipse personal failings.

Cassidy Hutchinson could have resigned, too, but she didn't, either. After ex-'s term mercifully ends, she gets caught up in the clutches of what she called [Ex-] World, in which loyalty is rewarded as long as it is absolute and personal. She is given a lawyer within the realm who guides her around having to say things that might incriminate her bosses--that "I don't remember" does not constitute perjury, even though she did remember many things and quite well. She seems to survive that potential prosecution, but not that of her conscience, which knows that she has not served her country the way she originally promised--to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." 

Maybe her youth and idealism blocked the jadedness that political experience tends to engender; maybe she finally understands that she is but a pawn in a much larger game, though one closer to he who wants to be king than she finally realizes; once used thoroughly, she will be given a token job for a token fundraiser, disappearing into an almost invisible, continuously corrupt wheel. Maybe, like her drifting, shambling father, she surmises that she has again run into a supposedly strong male who is quite the opposite, who is nothing more than inflated rhetoric inside a windbag, who needs her far more than she needs him. 

Regardless, she finds the strength to pit her tormentors against each other, to beat them at their own deceptive game. She manages to find lawyers who are genuinely interested in her story and for whom they will work pro bono. Nearly broke, she has found the key that opens the door. She must still walk a tightrope, but she does so by using some of the skills she has learned.

Eventually, it brings her back to the Capitol's Cannon Building, where she had spent lots of time in her original job working for Congresspeople, to perform the live testimony that she wants to dodge but increasingly knows she can't. Considering all that she writes about leading up to that moment, all the personal fears and attitudes that she must handle alone, her near-flawlessly poised testimony is all the more remarkable. As she approaches that daunting moment, she has unforeseen help and encouragement from then-Congresswoman Liz Cheney, whose support and gravitas serve as bracing ballast and without which I doubt that Hutchinson would have been so successful.

She found as inspiration none other than Butterfield, left in a similar position in the Nixon White House, and whose testimony began the downhill slide that culminated in Nixon's resignation in 1974. He was 97 when Hutchinson read Bob Woodward's biographical account of Butterfield's odyssey from fudging to truth. Hutchinson read that book endlessly, found sufficient inspiration from it, and resolved to meet him to compare experiences. Her book ends on that note.

I fear for her now. What we don't know, what we probably shouldn't know, is where she now is, who she now works for, how she earns a living. After all, she's only 25. Having been catapulted into unwanted fame, she runs into unknown supporters and detractors haphazardly. I can't help but wonder if one of the latter will have worse things in mind for her, especially if ex- winds up in jail.

For the time being, though, the receipts from this work are likely to pay her bills nicely. I couldn't find her book at Milwaukee's best independent bookstore, located just a block away from my residence. Nobody could. It had to be back-ordered. It has already hit the New York Times best seller list. I can't call it brilliant, but it's honest. Coming from a land in which honestly was at a near-deficit, it makes her quite the standout, brave as brave can be.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

National Friends of Libraries Week: Does That Include You?

This is National Friends of Libraries Week. I thought I'd point that out.

Someone is always declaring some kind of National Something or Other Week or Day, so if the above declaration doesn't impress you, you can scarcely be blamed. But right now, in this atmosphere, it might be especially vital to know that.

Libraries are under attack nowadays because their contents aren't always flavored vanilla. They don't always adhere to someone else's morals and ethics; indeed, they spend significant time questioning, if not directly opposing, what those morals and ethics are. But that's the point: Those authors aren't blindly shuffling forward, like zombies, in a world where nothing is doubted, nothing is challenged. 

Your mind can close itself off with certain truths that agree with your world view, with your preferences. But that's the wrong approach. Truth today, as many historians can tell you, isn't necessarily the whole truth of tomorrow. The relentless job of research and its documentation in things like books is to continue to unearth, and add onto if not actually refute, those truths we've comfortably come to accept and burn into our brains. One set of facts, as we understand them, allows us, even requires us, to ask questions about what might come next.

Neither does that rule out those who deal in fiction, the novelists who imagine worlds and circumstances that could be, that could happen, to inspire others to do the same. Not only isn't this a bad idea, it's one of the best: It was Einstein, after all, who said "Imagination is more important than knowledge."

The two are intertwined. One leads to the other. I wish that for our sake, Einstein would have added the word "even" to put between "is" and "more," to make it read, "Imagination is even more important than knowledge," to emphasize the inextricable link. But he was dealing in physics, where the quest for truth inspires more and more and more. I'm not sure he thought he had to add that little word. I wonder what he would think today, now that some people find truth more threatening than ever, now that they grasp it for the first time.

That quest has been getting people in trouble for centuries. But it has the same basis upon which people are trying to take out new information now--religion. Religion can be a good thing, guiding us toward personal peace and goodness, but it can also pull us toward darkness and the sin of suppression disguised as protection against evil, or what someone calls evil. 

Stopping the spread of knowledge isn't stopping the work of the devil, it's doing that work. It's preventing us from fulfilling the expansion of our minds, the major advantage we have from the lower primates.

It's all based on fear--fear that we might learn something that will help us do something else that someone doesn't like. Ignorance accomplishes that far better than excess or additional knowledge. And that is based on a negative viewpoint of human nature, that left alone, we are inclined to do bad things, not good. We need controls, not additional freedom.

Judge that as you will. The real trouble comes when someone takes away someone else's rights due to moral evaluations they have no right to act upon. Not doing something that you think is wrong doesn't mean you can, must and have the right to do the same to someone else who doesn't think so. So if you don't think abortion is right, don't have one. If you don't think a certain book or books should be in the library, don't read them, don't look through them, don't think about them.

I've just learned that the EveryLibrary Institute, a public policy think tank for libraries, and Book Riot, the largest independent editorial book site in North American, announced the results of a recent survey about perceptions of public libraries and the issues they currently face. Over 850 parents with children under 18 were asked in September to share their views. Some of the top findings:

• 67% agreed or somewhat agreed that "banning books is a waste of time";
• 74% agreed or somewhat agreed that book bans infringe on their right to make decisions for their children;
• 92% said their children are safe at the library;
• 57% said that reading opens children to new ideas, new people, and new perspectives; and
• 44% said that teens should have access to books on controversial subjects and themes

It's that last statistic that bothers me. What constitutes "controversial"? Is that word a dog whistle for LGBTQ+ topics and trans-student issues? Or does it also include anything regarding sexual behavior, hetero- or homosexual? If so, that's the conversation we should be having. Kids need to know about sex. They surely should know more than our generation did. We'd like to think parents will be talking to them about it, but what information will they be imparting to them? We'd like to think it will be accurate, but what if it's based only on their own experiences, and not on science? Wouldn't that have the potential to do more damage instead of being helpful?

All of it leads to this ongoing question: What would hurt to have more information available about anything and everything, as long as it's accurate? What would it hurt to read about other people's experiences?

Sex isn't the only "controversial" place a library can go. There is still denial among people who don't think climate change is really happening. If you take "controversial" books about sex away, what about that, too? What if Greta Thunberg's library had had  no sources on that subject?

So, too, with race. White supremacy isn't fading from view, unfortunately. We need more works on racial mixing and harmony. Banning Ta Nehisi Coates sounds ridiculous, but to some it may not be. Closing minds about one thing makes it all that much easier to justify closing them to others that one may not have foreseen.

So if you haven't visited your public library in a while, this week wouldn't be a bad time to do that. I don't live in Shorewood, the border of which is just a few blocks north, but I've been allowed to join the board of the Friends of the Shorewood Public Library (the Advocacy Chair of which, Mary Armstrong, compiled the above stats, so kudos to her). Nobody's attacked that library yet--at least, not that I know of--but I want to be there to defend it if they do. I'm going to defend the right of information, the lifeblood of democracy, which dovetails with the right to read. 

It's another thing that we like to take for granted, but in today's excessively contentious society, we can't do that anymore. Should we turn our backs on it, it will be gone one day, and our lives will mean that much less. I can't change the world--tried that, didn't work--but for that little part of it, I'll be around to stand guard for people's freedoms and liberties. 

Happy National Friends of Libraries Week. Take out a book and enjoy it.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Israel at A Definitive Moment; Our Support Won't Waver

To begin with--and let me be clear--I'm no great fan of Israel. What it has done, at times, in its so-called self-defense strikes me as taking advantage of its endless, self-proclaimed victim's status. It has broken promises, it has double-dealed. Its expansionism is regrettable but, in a way, understandable if you accept Russian expansion that created the Iron Curtain and elsewhere (read Ukraine). The endless merry-go-round of attempted negotiation and compromise gets perpetually nowhere. It wants guarantees it cannot have. Its suspicions of its Arab neighbors cannot possibly extend good will anywhere. That suspicion is echoed back at it.

But so, too, it can be said of the Palestinians. They want, and many say deserve, a contiguous country of their own. They have tried everything, including bonding with some of those surrounding countries to provide support for their independence. That support has sometimes come to violence. Every time, Israel has endured and survived. Every time, the Palestinians have swallowed defeat and grown back its resentment and hatred.

You can use the Bible to justify both positions, so that won't do you any good. Islamic radicalism has taken hold, though. Regardless, this variable remains constant, not really a variable: The United States' backing of Israel has held steadfast. We keep trying to create a permanent solution, though. More than one president has personally intervened. The cameras have clicked, the smiles rampant, the handshakes exchanged, to eventually no avail.

But when it comes to existential issues, the U.S. hasn't budged. I said it to every single class I ever taught in which the issue of Israel has emerged and I'll say it again: Regardless of presidential administration, regardless of anything else that is happening at any given time, the United States will stand by and support Israel. "We will never abandon Israel," I would say. "Never."

That is not filled with wishful thinking. That is a stone fact, untinged by politics. After all, we supported Israel's creation in the United Nations in 1947, as an attempt to prevent another Holocaust by giving the Israelis the right to govern and thus protect themselves within a territory with which they were already familiar. We did not think Israel would have an atomic bomb, but it does. We did not think that Israel would take it upon itself to expand its borders more than once, but it has.

The United States has stood by and watched more than once. It even stood by as a gunboat, the U.S.S. Liberty, was attacked off Israeli shores in 1967 and about 40 U.S. seamen died. The mysteries surrounding that have never been completely unraveled.

Meanwhile, Israel has done some of the U.S.'s dirty work for it. I recall a book written by Arnaud DeBorchgrave, a foreign correspondent for Newsweek, back in the day in which it stood swinging in the ring with Time. It was called The Spike, trying to explain that truth gets delayed sometimes, if not cancelled out, by the exigencies of international politics. In that book the Mossad, the Israeli CIA, as it were, does America a favor and takes out a bad guy in a real quid pro quo. It's a novel, of course, so it can be explained away with plausible deniability. But still.

Is the commitment to Israel filled with internal American politics? Of course it is. But the bottom line has never moved. The rhetoric of ex-, filled with quasi-religious fervor (for he is not religious at all), and the ferociousness of President Biden's speech yesterday, have parallel emotional attachment. This, despite Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's striving to create an authoritarian regime in which the courts are token and unimportant. He's finding that difficult, though, as well he should. Israeli democracy has existed now for 75 years, long enough for democratic institutions to take hold and people's trust to support it. 

That, too, is why ex-, though he might in the end succeed in gaming our system to guarantee him power, found it and is finding it difficult to overcome. When people get used to something that delivers a modicum of justice and reflects, at least in part, a fulfillment of our Constitution (overall, with of course exceptions), they can't easily let it go. Most of us still respect the courts, which have come for him. Despite his bluster, lies and manipulation, he may yet go to jail, where he belongs. If he doesn't, if he manages to escape accountability, this will not be a good place to live. It will become a Republican, minority slaveocracy, and free speech, the watchword of American democracy, will be devastated, politicized, and made generally irrelevant.

With this vicious and barbaric invasion of Israel, Hamas has moved its chess piece into an untenable position, one which will be exposed when Israel gears up its military and goes counterassaulting building-to-building, which it it close to doing. It will only increase the depravity. 

Meanwhile, it's going to be increasingly prohibitive for any American government to enter into reasonable talks with people who kidnap and kill children and behead soldiers, a la ISIS in Iraq. Civilians will now die in large numbers on both sides of Gaza. If nobody else enters the war, what can possibly be accomplished by this? (Note: 22 Americans are also dead. That's its own challenge to Biden.)

The only thing that will happen is that Israel's paranoia about being attacked and conquered will only double down. Its citizens, without guarantees of safety, cannot possibly return to any kind of domestic peace equalled in any democratic system. It must remain on edge, taking stronger security matters into its own hands, burying any hope of rapprochement with its neighbors.

What would you do? Destroy the invaders, then pretend it never happened? Rely on diplomatic safeguards? With those monsters?

We wait for effective journalism. Why? We have to know--have to--who's funding and supplying the invaders. Palestine can't do it alone. Who's backing this? And, upon discovery, what's next? (Note: save journalists are already dead, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.)

But rely on this: At any one, defining moment, at any existential threat, we stand foursquare behind Israel--despite the double-crossing they themselves have done, despite the promises they themselves have broken. Anything else remains unthinkable. Especially now.

Those talks concerning a Palestinian homeland, talks that I have always supported? Forget it. Who would put any credence in them now?

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Be Good to Our Kids? The Truth Wins Out? Let's Hope So.

There's an ad on TV. You've probably seen it. It's been on several different kinds of TV shows, so it must be well-funded. In fact, $176,000 was paid, apparently, to get it on a recent Packers telecast.

It's got some young Black fellow with his daughter. Right up close, nothing else. He says, in essence, that critical race theory has to go because it's divisive. That jumps to a number of conclusions.

It assumes that critical race theory has been absorbed by our educational system. The long version of this ad shows you a teacher in Martin Luther King, Jr. School in Milwaukee, being videoed while declaring that the Pledge of Allegiance be made to the "Afro-American nation." Interviewed later, the teacher said that that was part of a "cultural immersion" in the school.

But the video shows you that and only that. It wants you to believe that that display is somehow linked to critical race theory. It makes no attempt to link it, no explanation as to why the teacher made that statement. It assumes you'll do it for them.

If this group advertises in other large cities, is it gambling that one display in one other city will make people conclude that the teacher is typical of all public school teachers throughout the nation? Or just in big cities, where Black students predominate?

It refers to a website named BeGoodToOurKids.com. So I looked it up.

It's very simple, very unobtrusive. But very misleading, like the TV ad.

It says: "We take positions, but not partisan sides." That is disingenuous. It implies an attempt at unbiased reporting. It is anything but that. Black people speaking against Black issues asks, by implication, Black voters to switch to conservative, read Republican, affinity. These people just aren't announcing that. It's subtle but clear as a cloudless day.

So who's paying for this? Langdon Law, a conservative group from Ohio, led by a fellow named David Langdon. According to the Center for Media and Democracy, a media watchdog for corruption, Langdon Law contributed more than $400,000 to the recall campaign of Mr. F. Gow, Most Recent Former Governor of Wisconsin, in 2011. This, apparently, was done through something called the Coalition to Restore American Values, the funds of which come from a Koch Brothers think tank.

Once again, before I become blue in the face: critical race theory can't be taught to grade school kids. It's much too complicated. It involves concepts understood and developed only at a graduate collegiate level, something that kids of the little girl's age simply can't grasp. All this is about Christopher Rufo, who has managed to scare nearly everybody into thinking that this is being inculcated throughout our educational system, at every level. It never has been, and the only reason it's being mentioned at all is because of people like him, whose intent it is to connect that fear to The 1619 Project, begun before the last presidential election by people with a particular edge toward telling the whole truth about slavery and its effects on all of us, like it or not.

It can't be taught to the overwhelming majority of high school students, either. That's because the right has insisted upon standardized testing, the results of which demand that history teachers, like all other teachers, completely cover the curriculum they've been presented with. With those time constraints, it's simply impossible to introduce something like critical race theory, which would involve sophistication and especially time to develop. It can't be squeezed in.

But it's given an excuse for the governor of Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, to declare that the children of her state stand threatened by "indoctrination," meaning an interpretation of history that makes her, and some other white people, uncomfortable. Rufo's self-proclaimed intent (see his bio on Wikipedia) is to sow distrust in the public education system and to take it apart. He wants people to connect all that is wrong with the system with critical race theory and its apparent absorption by teachers and administration.

That is nonsense, but that is also a very convenient version of non-facts that's easier to put out there because people won't take the opportunity to straighten themselves out. In all my years of teaching, 30 to be exact, I never heard the phrase 'critical race theory' discussed in any faculty discussion, in any discussion in the social studies department, in any writings I ran into. Not once. And I tried hard to teach the civil rights movement in a positive and thorough way. Maybe I would have run into it had I gotten a master's degree in history. But I didn't, and I didn't have to to maintain my teaching license.

This is about an advanced level of race-baiting by utilization of unsuspecting members of the very race it's designed to bait--the ultimate in cynicism. "When the truth comes out, we all win," mutters a background voice at the end of the ad.

Yes, I certainly hope so. And now the "truth" will have to include this enormous attempt at deception, pretending to describe critical race theory by saying that it's divisive. Don't be fooled by this bogus generalization. It's the ad that's divisive. It's based on a lie in an era in which the truth matters less and less.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Two Filling Stations on One Exit

(Any comments, direct them to dadofprince@gmail.com. Thanks!)

The Waldo exit on I-43, just south of Sheboygan, is not much different than hundreds of its kind. It features a family-style restaurant between two franchise-owned filling stations. It's what I noticed about the latter that's fascinated me.

One is a Kwik-Trip, one of the most popular stations in this state. Like many of its kind, it has not only plenty of gasoline but lots of food, both presently cooking and refrigeratedly wrapped for those who'd rather not take the time and stop at that restaurant. It also has what are generally known as "groceries," or things one forgot to add to the cooler or the RV or whatever one is packing tight. It also includes things to wear in case one gets the sudden urge to put on something representing (mostly) this state and its environs or just in pride that you belong to it or would like to.

The other is Love's. It has everything the Kwik-Trip does. Anyone who travels the Interstate system--and who doesn't?--shouldn't be surprised by this. Love's is located on the north side of Highway Q, Kwik-Trip on the south. You have to take a slight drive off that county road to actually get to either station. The locations are equivalent in accessibility.

You'd think it's a horse apiece, until you look at the price of the gasoline. At least the last two times I stopped at that exit, a long weekend apart, Love's price was about, and remained, a quarter less per gallon than Kwik-Trip's.

Yup. The last two times. Actually, on the first trip, the difference was 34 cents per gallon. The second visit, it had been pared down to 25.

None of this difference was secret. Both stations have one of those huge towers which electronically display the gasoline price. So anybody paying decent attention would understand the enormous difference by the time they left the freeway and stopped for gas.

But a quarter a gallon? You'd think, with the relative sameness in accessibility, the Love's station would be teeming with traffic and the Kwik-Trip would hear crickets. Not so. You'd think, too, that someone might have tugged at the shirt of some Kwik-Trip attendant and said something like, Been looking across the road lately? in order not to get muscled out of a lot of traffic.

But apparently, nobody did. Or, if they did, the admonition got ignored. Must have, or else a much larger adjustment would have been made.

Here's the thing, though: What about everyone who ignored the price difference? Was it intentional, or mindless?

Like me, for instance. Me. Mindless me, who never looked at Love's price the first time around until I had pulled out of the Kwik-Trip station. Head slap! D'oh!

What was it about my attitude that caused that? I had no other reason to choose Kwik-Trip besides the price of petrol. I screwed myself out of 34 cents per gallon.

So let's say I put in ten gallons or so. I lost at least $3.40--just poured it down the drain. I could have bought another whole gallon next door, driven about 33 miles without replacement. I was a wise consumer--not.

Here's the other thing--I'm quite sure I wasn't alone. I'd like to think I have a reasonable amount of intelligence. I used none of it during that stop.

Or did I? 

Did I use another kind of intelligence--emotional? Did I settle for a comfort zone instead of making a rational, logical price choice? And is that the only time I've ever done that?

Well, no. And, I would guess, plenty of others have done the same thing--acted without thinking about it, acting automatically, as if we're pre-programmed to do so.

We do so with so many things, but particularly with shopping for groceries. If we're used to taking the store brand, we do so without looking at the ingredients or calories we're about to imbibe, information that, not too long ago, wasn't provided. If we take the better-known brand, we do the same. Doing otherwise takes judgment--and time.

If we have a chance to save water or other necessary resources, we rarely do so. We leave the water running while brushing our teeth. We leave the light on in the next room even though we're finished with our business in there. We throw away plastic containers instead of recycling them.

Are we too busy to do that kind of thinking? Or are we overwhelmed with the number of choices we could make every day, but don't? And does that transfer over to the far more important kinds of choices we should be making honestly and with a depth of thought that we never use?

Like: Voting?

Don't most of us vote automatically nowadays? Hasn't the polarization between the two major parties forced us to do so without evaluating their positions, since we already know what they are? Don't we do so mindlessly, almost carelessly, like people like me who don't look at the gas prices?

We are supposed to have the freedom of the secret ballot. But there have been times when that freedom was in name only. More than a century ago, the Democrats of the large cities rounded up immigrant, voting age males by way of ward "heelers," who brought them "to heel" at election time by reminding them how they got their jobs and homes--most likely through a system of controlled bribery. The ballots were of a different color depending on which party's candidate you intended to vote for. That's hardly secret.

And, of course, the racial intimidation of Blacks by white supremacists have suppressed that vote for decades. It's still happening through new election laws in some states that make it more difficult, not less, to stand in line on Election Day, or to vote on any other day but Election Day. Those laws, in a switch of attention, have been passed by Republican state legislative majorities.

Yet, the unfairness doesn't always get outed at the ballot box. People vote for a particular party by rationalizing that, on balance, one is still better than the other even though there's something fundamentally wrong with it, like filling up at the Kwik-Trip with gas prices 25 cents higher. People just say to themselves, I just like this one, dammit. I always have and I always will, regardless of the extra price they have to pay for that choice. They put their heads down and get it done.

Like those of us who actually vote. We are so cavalier with that fundamental right and obligation that we scarcely notice when someone is trying to mess with it. It's that neglect that is coming back to haunt us, because if anyone's vote is tainted, so is the meaning of ours. But we drive right past it, like getting gas at a far more expensive place. Either way, we pay the price for it.

I wonder how many people have come to grips about that lately. January 6 and all that was about erasing the meaning of our votes. So, too, is the possibility of the Wisconsin legislative Republicans impeaching Judge Janet Protosiewicz even before she's had a chance to rule on anything in front of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. It's beyond sour grapes, though it's that, too. It's about cynicism and conniving and undermining. It's about tearing down all guardrails to get one's way.

Everyone should be outraged about that. It's going about the destruction of our very democracy to diminish, if not eliminate, the meaning of our participation because someone doesn't like the results. If Republicans get away with this ridiculous stunt, I wouldn't be surprised if many people just stop voting altogether--which may be a subtle additional motivation behind all this.

But like getting gas, democracy can't exist without its fuel, elections. Take that away, and nobody goes anywhere. That seems to be one side's purpose: To freeze everything in place. But things move regardless. The world moves regardless. They think that now that they have power, they can even keep the planets from moving. They float in a la-la land of unreality, out of which they must be shaken.

We have to remain vigilant to know and act on the value of voting. Otherwise, someone may make us pay a price for it that, someday, may be too dear and, unlike the price of gas at two filling stations, too noticeably unchangeable.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Two Plans for Litter

(Any comments, please contact me at dadofprince@gmail.com. Thanks!)

I drove through the mostly barren countryside the other day, trailing a pickup truck. It weaved a little, so I was sure to maintain a wide following distance.

Suddenly, as it swerved again, a plastic water bottle flew from the passenger side window. It went right back behind the truck, right in my path. Of course it did no damage, but I felt it as it clucked on my grille. It was clear that it was meant to be thrown backwards, not out to the side.

The temerity, I thought, was both mystifying and disappointing. The next town was less than 20 minutes away. Couldn't they wait and toss it in some garbage can along a street, or alongside a McDonald's?

It all had the classic feel of a good-old-boy outing, even though it was maybe two in the afternoon. You know, guzzle some hard liquor, get hammered, and tell the world that no hoots were given, especially about the damage to the countryside's look caused by one little plastic bottle. What the hell would it hurt?

But I was offended. I felt like part of the junk that had been discarded. When someone makes it obvious that they don't care about your attitudes and don't share your values, what you want to do as soon as possible is to get yourself away from them. But of course, I couldn't. There was no alternative route to where I was going. I had to keep following them. It felt a little scarring, like I shared in their disdain. The only disdain I felt was for them.

They couldn't care less about my sensitivities about the environment, either. Something like 55 years ago, Lady Bird Johnson had embarked on a national beautification program that committed itself to cleaning up the growing litter along roadways. Obviously, those effects have fizzled away. I've seen the same on the Interstate; wrappers and bottles strewn horribly for a full mile sometimes. There are fines for such behavior, of course, but the enforcement of that can't be high on anyone's priority list. No wonder climate change is bearing down on us. No wonder we'd still rather not think about it.

Suddenly, though, the pickup's driver must have noticed me in his mirror and stuck his arm out his window. He slowed down and waved to let me go past. It was a two-lane road, so he'd seen that no oncoming traffic was present.

So what should I do? Just help myself to unexpected politeness, or scoot by and shake my finger at them in obvious scolding for tossing litter at me? I shuddered momentarily. For all I knew, one of them might have a weapon. Was it worth the trouble for me to act like a teacher, which is what I've been, and remind them of what they'd done?

No. Not worth it. If they had more garbage to jettison, at least I wouldn't be in the way. The next thing to get tossed at whoever trailed them might be a glass bottle. That damage might be enormous and even dangerous.

I accelerated and raced by. I even waved thank you, like I do in traffic jams when I'm either allowed in to a lane where everyone has to go, or squeeze in front of someone who's unconsciously let the parade have a spot open for it. Waving costs nothing and lets someone know that you're grateful. You've never met nor will you ever meet. But it's like being someone's guest, albeit for a few moments. Never hurts to make the person behind you feel valued. 

The boys in the pickup didn't deserve to feel valued, I didn't think, but neither would they feel justified in emptying a round from their shotgun to teach me a lesson. Even if they didn't have one, they could engage in hijinks like tailgating me at 60 miles per hour just to have a little terrifying fun. I had no stomach for that.

Besides, I was out of state, and that might give them an additional excuse to take out their frustrations, whatever they might be, on someone who had decided to be "uppity," as they might call it. I recalled the commercial: "You'd better not drive like that in this part of North Carolina (though it isn't where this happened)," some state patrolman said to someone he'd stopped. If you own where you live, you gain some self-appointed sanctimoniousness which might justify defending one's homeland with excessive attention. I wasn't picking that kind of fight, disgusted though I was. Add the possibility of drinking in that pickup, and well, their judgment, which was already sorely lacking, might for all I knew take a mean turn.

Contrast that with a moment while walking in a park the other day. I do that often not only to stretch my back but keep my heart, rearranged by triple by-pass surgery five years ago, stimulated as much as it can--jogging being impossible because my hip replacement two years ago didn't take as well as it should have. It's a well-kept park, free from litter. The users tend to be responsible and tidy. The surrounding neighborhoods are filled with old and new money, people who wouldn't remotely consider dropping a candy wrapper or tossing a plastic water bottle aside uncaringly. They like a well-kept ship. They get that part of a place's beauty is partly made up of trash that it lacks.

But I had never seen this before: A motorist driving through one of the park's roadways, suddenly stopped as I approached it. A refuse can stood at the juncture of the sidewalk and the road, just inside the curb. The driver, who kept his car running, simply got out and threw something into the can. It looked like a plastic water bottle.

I had to remark. "Great that you're thinking about the environment," I told him. He smiled and drove off.

One of these people were black. One was white. I'll let you figure out which was which.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark