DailyNewsGems

Did Ethel Rosenberg Deserve the Electric Chair?

 

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg in 1951.

Photo Credit: Not provided.

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British author and journalist, Anne Sebba, who has written biographies on some shadowy British figures, including Jennie Churchill and Wallis Simpson, among others, traveled across the Atlantic to explore one of the most controversial characters of them all in her new book, “Ethel Rosenberg: An American Tragedy."

In one of the most highly debated cases in American history, Ethel, along with her husband, Julius Rosenberg, were tried and convicted of espionage for providing the Soviet Union classified information on the Manhattan Project. The Rosenbergs were executed in 1953.

Ethel Rosenberg was the first woman executed by the United States Government since Mary Surratt, an American boarding house owner, was hanged (July 7, 1865) for her role in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

The Manhattan Project was a code name attached to a top-secret project involving Allied scientists working to develop an atomic bomb. According to recorded testimony, British physicist Klaus Fuchs, working at Los Alamos, met with a Soviet agent (named Raymond) on two different occasions and transferred notes on the working design for the atomic bomb.

Fuchs would eventually be arrested and pressured to name his co-conspirators. He confessed to spying and passing to the Soviets information about the Manhattan Project.

There isn’t much debate surrounding Julius Rosenberg, the husband of Ethel Rosenberg. He was a card-carrying Communist party member since December 12, 1939, approximately six months after marrying Ethel in a small civil ceremony.

Mountains of court testimony, FBI records, and recently declassified cables, show irrefutably that Julius Rosenberg was a prime mover and shaker of a spy ring which involved transferring classified information about the development of the United States first atomic bomb from the Los Alamos Laboratory (New Mexico) to a courier, Harry Gold, who was alleged to have passed it on to the Soviets.

Testimony reveals David Greenglass, the brother of Ethel Rosenberg, passed a "sketch of a high-explosive lens mold" to Gold at Julius Rosenberg’s request; a sketch that was eventually transferred to the Soviets.

 Greenglass worked as a machinist-soldier stationed at Los Alamos. He was recruited by Julius Rosenberg to assist in this espionage ring.

 So, exactly how did Ethel become linked in this spy ring?

When the FBI questioned Greenglass on June 15, 1950; in addition to naming his wife Ruth and Julius Rosenberg in the spy ring, he told the feds that Ethel Rosenberg, the wife of Julius, was in Julius’s apartment room and typed hand written notes on classified information from him.

In fact, no handwritten or type-written notes were ever found and they were never presented in court, raising credibility problems for the prosecution’s case that Ethel Rosenberg was an accomplice to the spy ring. The charges that Ethel Rosenberg typed the notes, in other words, was unsubstantiated.

In exchange for their testimony, David and Ruth Greenglass were given appreciably lighter sentences.

It wouldn’t be divulged until 2008 that the Greenglass’s (both Ruth and David, active participants in the spying activity) lied in their original testimony about Ethel Rosenberg typing notes that would facilitate the spy ring. They later claim they were coerced by the prosecuting team, led by the ruthless firebrand Roy Cohn, to fabricate their story so they could force Ethel Rosenberg to disclose additional badly needed information about the spy ring.

In order to save his wife from prosecution, David Greenglass told journalist Sam Roberts that he was squeezed by the prosecution to commit perjury. His false testimony additionally saved his wife from prosecution.

David Greenglass was released from prison in 1960 after serving 10 years of his 15-year sentence. His wife, Ruth, was never charged.

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Groundless accusations against Ethel Rosenberg and the reason she was sentenced to death becomes the central focus of Anne Sebba’s fascinating book.

Most observers who have followed the Rosenberg case reach the overriding conclusion that threatening Ethel with a harsh punishment would make her share more information about the spy ring. She never offered prosecutor’s any more damaging information about the espionage activity because she wasn’t privy to such information. She was merely the wife of a Soviet spy, not a collaborator.

Martin Sobell, an American engineer, convicted of spying for the Soviet Union, told reporters in 2008 that Ethel was guilty only "of being Julius's wife.”

Anne Sebba writes that the true extent of Ethel’s complicity will probably never be clearly known, but points out, “it was not a crime under U.S. Law to approve spousal wrongdoing, either during the war or the time of the trial.”

The fact that Julius Rosenberg didn’t distance Ethel from the real crime capers during the intense questioning, left many historians and journalists scratching their heads why he wouldn’t save his own wife from possible execution.

Not all observers, however, are convinced Ethel Rosenberg wasn’t an active participant in the spy ring.

Mark Kramer, Director of the Cold War Studies Project at Harvard University, told me “the evidence against Ethel Rosenberg at the trial was overwhelming, and Soviet foreign intelligence documents that became available in 2005 provide conclusive evidence that she gave her husband invaluable assistance with his espionage ring.”   “She did not deserve to be put to death” Kramer concedes, “but she certainly was guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage and was justifiably convicted, despite the misdeeds of the prosecutors.” Kramer thought a sentence of 15 to 25 years for Ethel Rosenberg would have been more appropriate. 

Along with the dubious charges against Ethel Rosenberg, Anne Sebba drives home the critical point that the execution of the Rosenbergs happened during a time of heightened paranoia in the United States about Soviet aggression and Communist intrusion into leading American institutions.

At the time of the Rosenberg case, Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, the prominent ring leader of the “Second Red Scare,” charged that the State Department employed over 200 Communist agents, triggering fear and suspicion, leading to the blacklisting of a number of individuals who were hauled in front of McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee and accused of unfounded subversion and treason charges.

“For one brief moment in time,” Sebba wrote, “hysteria overtook common sense and, in order to appear strong in the face of credible Communist threat, the American government allowed this profoundly moral woman to be executed, and in the most brutally incompetent manner.” “It is hard to imagine,” Sebba went on to write, “any other country, in Western Europe of the wider free world, where this terrible fate would have been inflicted on Ethel.”

The death penalty unquestionably met with the approval of a number of Americans at the time. As many as 68% respondents in a 1953 survey, supported the death penalty.

The death penalty might have been ok with a majority of the American public, but there was pent-up outrage, internationally, for the death sentence of Ethel Rosenberg, which Anne Sebba underscores.

At the time of the trial, for example, The New York Times printed a letter from German born physicist, Albert Einstein, who wrote: “My conscience compels me to urge you (President Eisenhower) to commute the death sentence of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.”

The Vatican newspaper (L’Osservatore Romano) published a passionate plea from the pope not to execute the Rosenbergs. Before he left office, President Truman received as many as three million letters and telegrams asking the Rosenbergs not be put to death.

Further, U.S. Ambassador to France, C. Douglas Dillon, predicted (probably correctly) that the Rosenberg executions would be viewed, many years later, as a knee jerk reaction to McCarthyism. The majority in France, in fact, opposed the executions which they viewed as “unjustifiable punishment.”

For decades after the trial, the Rosenberg’s sons Robert and Michael Meeropol believed both their parents weren’t spies and fought vigorously to clear their names.

All that changed in 2008, when 91-year-old Martin Sobell admitted for the first time that he was a Soviet spy in a New York Times article. He additionally implicated Julius Rosenberg in the spy ring. According to the New York Times, “coupled with some of that grand jury testimony, Mr. Sobell’s admission bolsters what has become a widely held view among scholars: that Mr. Rosenberg was, indeed, guilty of spying, but that his wife was at most a bit player in the conspiracy and may have been framed by complicit prosecutors.”

After such a sobering revelation, the Rosenberg sons finally gave up the fight and acknowledged their father, Julius Rosenberg, was indeed a Soviet spy.

Both sons, however, continue to fight for the exoneration of their mother, Ethel Rosenberg. In 2016, they made an impassioned plea to President Barack Obama to clear her name without success.

Now that there’s a new president, I asked Michael Meeropol whether he and his brother would make a plea to President Joe Biden to decide for himself whether their mother was a spy?

Mr. Meeropol responded to my email only to say, “my brother and I are considering the possibilities, but we have not made any decisions yet.”

Thanks to Anne Sebba’s compelling narrative, readers are given an opportunity to decide for themselves whether prisoner number “10510” (from the Sing Sing prison overlooking the east bank of the Hudson River) really deserved to be executed shortly after 8 p.m. on June 19, 1953, along with her husband, Julius.

 

--Bill Lucey

WPLucey@gmail.com

June 19, 2021

Remembering 1948: Progress in Civil Rights and the World Champion Cleveland Indians

Larry Doby, left, with Satchel Paige, was the American League's first Black player.

Photo Credit: Sporting News, via Getty Images

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"Our Team: The Epic Story Of Four Men And The World Series That Changed Baseball," by Luke Epplin is more than a book about the 1948 World Series, the last time the Cleveland Indians won a World Series.

It’s actually a splendidly written, meticulously researched, and upbeat social history about the expansion of Black American baseball players into Major League Baseball.

Heaps of attention has historically been paid to Jackie Robinson in becoming the first African-American baseball player in Major League Baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, while Larry Doby, a 23-year-old outfielder for the Newark Eagles, (the first American League African-American player to smash the color barrier 11 weeks later), often receives little attention or becomes a mere footnote by baseball historians.

Epplin, a New York City writer, centers this American social saga on four individuals: two Black, and two white, all of whom changed the face of baseball forever. Biographical sketches presented of Larry Doby, Satchel Paige, Bill Veeck, and Bob Feller become, knowingly or not, the unsung heroes of the integration of baseball.

Had it not been for Doby and Satchel Paige breaking the color line, many argue, the Indians might not have won the 1948 World Series.

Luckily for baseball, the integration of Jackie Robinson, Larry Doby, Satchel Paige, and others, wouldn’t have been possible without two color-blind owners: Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers and of course, Veeck of the Cleveland Indians, who bought the Indians in June, 1946.

The progressive thinking Rickey reportedly said: “the greatest untapped reservoir of raw material in the history of the game is the Black race.” “The Negro,” Ricky observed, “will make us winners for years to come.”

Bill Veeck, meanwhile, not only wasn’t afraid of welcoming Black players into the big leagues, he enthusiastically widened his net with the hiring of Black security guards, vendors, janitors, groundskeepers, ushers and musicians, along with offering a front office job to Olympic gold medalist, Harrison Dillard.

Despite the overabundance of promising talent in the Negro Leagues, it would take years before the rest of baseball would sign Black players, including the New York Yankees who didn’t sign a Black player until 1955, the Detroit Tigers not until 1958, and the Boston Red Sox were the last to the party, by not signing a Black player until 1959, more than ten years after the game was officially integrated.

Alabama born, Satchel Paige, 42-years-old, came on board in July, 1948 during the Indians stretch run of the pennant race. Epplin underscores how Satch during his first month with the Indians, only surrendered seven runs over 38 and a third innings, while generating rock star status. His first three starts in MLB, attracted more than 200,000 fans, inspiring sports columnist for the Cleveland News, Ed McAuley, to write that Paige was “the greatest drawing card in the history of baseball”

Overall, Paige pitched 21 games in the 1948 regular season, including seven starts with two complete game shutouts. His ERA that year was an impressive 2.48.

Larry Doby became the first Black player to belt a home run in a World Series in Game 4 of the Boston Braves and Indians Series. The Indians disposed of the Boston Braves in six games. Doby additionally led the Indians with a .318 batting average in the 1948 Series.

Not many people associate Iowa native Bob Feller with progressive thinking in race relations, especially in 1948. Rapid Robert, in fact, told reporters during his barnstorming tours that he didn’t think many Black players had the right stuff to make it in MLB, including Jackie Robinson.

Cleveland owner Bill Veeck witnesses the signing of ace pitcher Bob Feller to a contract for the 1948 season. Despite the high hopes for the staff ace, the right-hander won 19 games and led the AL for the seventh and last time, while the velocity on his blazing fastball began to wane. 

Photo Credit: The Rucker Archive

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But if not for Feller’s widely reported barnstorming tours in the offseason, many in America wouldn’t be aware of the explosive talent of many Black players.

During the barnstorming tours, Joe DiMaggio, the “Yankee Clipper,” would say that Paige was the “best and fastest pitcher he ever faced.” Of course, many mainstream newspapers never published DiMaggio’s comments for fear it would imply Black players were better than whites.

For three consecutive barnstorming tours, Satchel Paige and Bob Feller met head-to-head.

Because of Feller’s major contribution with showcasing marquee Black ball players of the era through different sections of the country, Negro League players invited him to their Negro Baseball League Reunion in Kentucky.

Most fascinating about Epplin’s book of the 1948 World Series is that many of the progressive elements of the 1948 Cleveland Indians was mirroring many events and individuals outside of the diamond during the same year.

In 1948, for example, Atlanta, Georgia hired its first Black police officers at a time when a quarter of the Atlanta police department were reportedly members of the Ku Klux Klan. But much like Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby, Black Atlanta police officers in 1948 had to tolerate racial taunts and abuse, they couldn’t lose their temper, they couldn’t ride police squad cars, and they couldn’t arrest white suspects. They had to call for assistance.

Additionally, in 1948, Alice Coachman Davis won the high jump at the Olympics in London, England, becoming the first Black woman to win an Olympic Gold medal.

In 1948, Johnny Ritchey became the first African-American baseball player to play in the Pacific League as a member of the San Diego Padres.

Most importantly, President Harry Truman issued Executive Order 9981, which directed the armed forces to provide “equality of treatment and opportunity for all personnel without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin.”

Epplin chronicles how Larry Doby had to endure the humiliation of segregation in the military while serving his country. Robert H. Meyer, Professor Emeritus at Moravian College, observed that “Black vets, having just fought against Hitler and vicious bigotry, returned to the country to find themselves treated with a similar bigotry.”

Victoria W. Wolcott, Professor of History at the University of Buffalo, tells me, “1948 was an important milestone in the civil rights movement. It was a period of what historians refer to as “racial liberalism” following World War II.” “Because of migration,” Wolcott said, “during the war years large numbers of African Americans migrated to northern cities, where they could vote. The NAACP also grew significantly during the 1940s and even had some successful voter registration drives in southern cities like Atlanta—as well as legal victories that lead up to Brown v. Board of Education.

In his State of the Union address in 1948, President Truman made a major push for civil rights. Such progressive thinking lost him support in different sections of the country, but as it turned out, it was the Black vote he received which decisively helped him win the 1948 presidential election over Republican governor of New York, Thomas E. Dewey.

Gregg Ivers, Professor of Government in the School of Public Affairs at American University, depicts the 1940s as a “period underappreciated by the general public and even by educators, journalists, and others, who believe that the civil rights movement began with Brown and Rosa Parks.” “Nothing just happens,” Ivers stressed.

Ivers additionally pointed out that 1948 was the last year of the Negro Leagues, which opened up a fresh pool of Black players who were no longer bound to their teams and their domineering owners. Willie Mays played his last game in the Negro Leagues in 1948 as a member of the Birmingham Black Barons.

Progress with civil rights, however, ran into a major roadblock in the 1950s.

Jim Ralph, Professor of American History and Culture at Middlebury College, said so much of the progress with race relations in the mid and late 1940s, came to a screeching halt with the emergence of the Cold War and McCarthyism, which narrowed the activist tendencies of the country. “Left-leaning CIO unions,” Ralph observed, “which had often been pioneers in fighting against racist practices, were on the defensive.  A powerful voice for civil and workers’ rights like Paul Robeson found himself under attack for his sympathetic disposition toward the Soviet Union. “

As fascinating as Epplin’s book about the four central pillars in the integration of baseball is, the book, from this observer, is more a valentine to the City of Cleveland in 1948 during a time when industry was thriving, the city was prospering economically; a time when downtown Cleveland was bustling with restaurants, bars, and entertainment venues, and when civic pride was at an all-time high. It was the last time the Cleveland Indians were world champs, the toast of the town.

The years after 1948 in Cleveland, would usher in crushing heartbreak and disappointment.

As Epplin points out, “the year after Veeck departed, attendance dipped to below two million. Six seasons later, the Indians drew fewer than a million fans, second worst in the American League.”

Satchel Paige, moreover, would never taste another World Series appearance again. Ol’ Satch  was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1971 as the first electee of the Committee on Negro Baseball Leagues. He passed away on June 8, 1982.

Despite being the first African-American player in the American League, Larry Doby’s number wasn’t retired by the Indians until 1994, four years before he was elected to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. Many argue that Doby, for one reason or another, never lived up to his full potential.

Bob Feller would appear in only one All-Star game after 1948; 1951 would be the last year the Indians one-time staff ace would win more than twenty games (the same year he threw his third and final no-hitter) and would start in only 15 games in his final two seasons with the Tribe before retiring in 1956 with 266 wins, ranking him 28^th in history. Feller never won a World Series game.

Due to an impending divorce and wanting to set up his children with a trust fund, Veeck sold the Indians after the 1949 season. He would later emerge as owner of the St Louis Browns and the Chicago White Sox.

John A. Kirk, Professor of History at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, summed up the year 1948 best, when he told me: “1948 was certainly a year of hope, in terms of the direction of race relations, and of liberal and progressive movements more generally.”

--Bill Lucey

June 27, 2021

WPLucey@gmail.com

The New York Times Op-Ed Page is Retired after 50 Years

The digital age has tossed another print newspaper feature to the dustbin, much like the pica pole and the AP teletype machine.

According to New York Times Opinion Page editor, Kathleen Kingsbury, the paper has retired the term, “Op-Ed” and replaced it with the label “Guest Essays.”

Kingsbury considers Op-Ed, outdated and “clubby newspaper jargon,” now that a great many readers have migrated to the web and no longer feast their eyes on the editorial page. Readers are now greeted with a battalion of opinion columns, mountains of columnists, who appear to have hijacked the Times’ home page. Op-Ed means opposite the editorial page, and not as many readers think, opposing viewpoints (of the Editorial Page) or even, opinion and editorial.

The New York Times “Op-Ed” page was officially launched on September 21, 1970 . Guest columnists included: political scientist and National Security Advisor to President Johnson, W.W. Rostow, novelist Han Suyin, and mystery novelist and journalist, Gerald W. Johnson.

Soon after the New York Times rolled out their Op-Ed pages, other newspapers across the country fell in line with their own pages and guest columnists.

But not all newspapers followed the same format. In the 1970’s, the Chicago Tribune’s Op-Ed page showcased more liberal opinions to counter the Tribune’s “staunchly conservative views.” In the early 1980s, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, at least for a short time, dressed their op-ed page with more local writers, rather than syndicated writers. Former Plain Dealer editorial director, Mary Anne Sharkey, said the Plain Dealer set up a "Board of Contributors." “We actively recruited different voices from the community to contribute op-eds or essays,” Sharkey explained, “most were good writers and did not require a lot of editing.” The Board didn’t allow politicians to become board members, “but we did have representatives of the arts, business, clergy, activists, and a mix of women and minorities. I added a few more women because I felt the board was not diverse enough” Sharkey said.

Similar to The Plain Dealer, the Los Angeles Times op-ed actively promoted more local opinions.

Editor Herbert Bayard Swope created the Op-Ed page in 1921 for The New York World

Photo Credit: Ray and Judith Spinzia Collection

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The first Op-Ed page was actually hatched 100 years ago, not from the New York Times, but from the New York World, whose editor, Herbert Bayard Swope, in 1921, came up with the idea of having a full page of columnists offering opinions on news topics. The page was called Op-Ed. Unlike today’s Op-Ed pages, however, the New York World didn’t publish unsolicited manuscripts; rather, they relied on in-house staffers from a mighty group of writers, which included: Heywood Broun, Alexander Woollcott, Deems Taylor, Harry Hansen, and Franklin P. Adams.

Why did the New York Times decide to launch an Op-Ed page?

Editorial Page Editor John B. Oakes pushed for an Op-Ed page for The New York Times since the early 1960s

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

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According to a number of news accounts, the idea of featuring a page of columnists opposite the editorial page, came from editorial page editor, John B. Oakes, (aka “Johnny”) himself who in the early 1960s, received a long opinion piece from a Suez Canal Company representative about the Egyptian government’s seizure of the canal. There was no space for this piece in the Times, so Oakes began his campaign for an Op-Ed page. His pitch fell on deaf ears from publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger who wanted the page opposite the editorial page reserved for the obituary page, which was bringing in lucrative income.

The idea for an Op-Ed page was kicked around for a few more years without anything being resolved.

A major breakthrough came in 1966, when the New York Herald Tribune folded. The Tribune featured guest columnists from time to time and its editorials tended to have a conservative viewpoint, in contrast to the Times signature liberalism. This opened up an opportunity for Oakes to press again for an Op-Ed page, featuring conservative viewpoints. In addition to Oakes lobbying the publisher, assistant managing editor Harrison Salisbury was a strong advocate of the Times “providing a platform for responsible conservative opinion.”

After some administrative haggling, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, the Times publisher, gave the green light in 1970 to introduce an Op-Ed page, moving the obituary page to another section of the paper. Harrison Salisbury was the first opinion page editor under the direction of John B. Oakes, the editorial page director. The Times paid its contributors $125, which is about $700 in today’s dollars.

The Op-Ed page, as it turned out, was a smash success. In its first six months, the page reportedly produced a net profit of $112,000 (on $264,000) in revenue. The Times receives approximately 1200 op-ed submissions each week.

At first, the Times wanted to feature offbeat or whimsical essays from its contributors; so that readers would be given a break from the political and international news driving the day. It didn’t take long, however, before the Times Op-Ed, touched on many of the most explosive issues of the 1970s, including Vietnam, Watergate, Civil Rights, and the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), among other issues.

Despite the sound diversity of opinions from a wide range of celebrities, politicians, scholars, and columnists, the last 50 years wasn’t without its share of controversy.

One of the most controversial op-eds was written by Times reporter Sydney Schanberg, (a Pulitzer winner in 1976 for his coverage of the Communist takeover in Cambodia). In 1985, he fell out of favor with the Times editors for writing about the proposed underground highway, known as the Westway Project, in which he attacked "New York newspapers" (meaning, The Times) for failing to adequately report on the billions worth of overruns the project was costing.

On April 21, 1991, New York Times op-ed columnist, Anna Quindlen, put her job on the line when she criticized her own paper for their coverage of Patricia Bowman , the woman who who accused William Kennedy Smith of rape. The Times profile on Bowman implied her poor driving record and sexual history, which was described as a "wild streak," cast a shadow over the validity of her charge. Quindlen accused her editors of sexism and of falling below their normal high standards when they identified her simply because of the high visibility of the Kennedy name; and because another media competitor, NBC, already revealed her identity. Quindlen never mentions Bowman's name. Susan E. Tifft and Alex S. Jones in "The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind The New York Times," report that after Quindlen’s column was published, the Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr came by her desk (so everyone could hear), put his arm around her and complimented Quindlen on her column.

The reliability of Judith Miller’s sources during the Iraq war, prompted, op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd to blast her co-worker. Dowd’s column began, "I've always liked Judy Miller."  Dowd questioned Miller’s credibility as a journalist by acting as a pawn for the Bush administration's "Weapons of Mass Destruction" propaganda. She ended her column by suggesting the Times' integrity as an institution would be seriously comprised if Judy "Run Amok," should ever step foot in the Times newsroom again.

The beginning of the end for the Times Op-Ed pages may have been the publication of Senator Tom Cotton’s inflammatory essay, 'Send in the Troops', in which the Arkansas Republican pushed for federal troops to respond if there was violent rioting in major U.S. cities. Despite the publisher of the Times, AG Sulzberger, approving the essay, Twitter exploded over the Times publishing such a reckless column. The storm of controversy forced Editorial Page Director James Bennett to resign after receiving so much backlash on Twitter as well as from Times employees.

A month later, Bari Weiss, the paper’s op-ed page editor, posted her resignation letter online in which she accused her colleagues of “constant bullying by those who disagree with my views.” She additionally described the Times as a 'hostile work environment' and criticized the Times management for allowing her coworkers to “publicly smear” her on Twitter

So, as the Times opinion page enters a new era, many wonder whether the “Guest Essays” will vary much from the Op-Ed page of the last 50 years?

Kingsbury indicated in her column that the Times would continue to “seek out opposing views for its guest essays,” but she did underscore that “we have our thumb on our scale in the name of progress, fairness, and shared humanity.”

 

--Bill Lucey

WPLucey@gmail.com

May 2, 2021

 

Noteworthy New York Times Op-Ed essays

American Culture: October 20, 1973, “On to Disneyland and Real Unreality" by Toni Morrison.

Humor: July 15, 1972, “A Guide to Civil Disobedience’’ by Woody Allen

Censorship: February 17, 1989: “India Bans a Book” By Salman Rushdie who discusses the Indian Finance ministry banning his novel “The Satanic Verses” under the Customs Act. Rushdie had been in hiding since Iran threatened his life, claiming “The Satanic Verses’’ blasphemed Mohammed.

American Culture: January 16, 1974 “Downhill All the Way” by E.B. White, essayist and poet on his whimsical recommendations for 1974.

Vietnam: May 17, 1975: “The Demise of South Vietnam’’ by William C. Westmoreland, a retired general who headed the United States forces in Vietnam.

Kent State Shootings: May 4, 1972: “Kent State: May 4, 1970’’ by Arthur S. Krause who had a daughter killed at Kent State.

Watergate: January 11, 1974: “A Soliloquy” by Clare Boothe Luce, playwright and journalist on whether to impeach Nixon.

Women's Equality: March 19, 1976: “200 Years of Sexism Rampant” by Letty Cottin Pegrebin, editor of Ms. Magazine

Civil Rights: January 16, 1989: “King’s Heritage’’ (race relations in America) by author Taylor Branch

AIDS: November 27, 1985: “Get Moving on AIDS” by Robert E. Pollack, dean of Columbia College of Columbia University, advocating an effective vaccine against HTLV III, the virus that causes AIDS.

9/11: "Correspondent; America's Emergency Line: 9/11" by Bill Keller--the first time the term "9/11'' is used in a newspaper column.

Media Corporate Culture: March 10, 1987: “From Murrow to Mediocrity” by Dan Rather on over 200 employees losing their jobs so that executives can earn more profit. 

Italian-American Stereotypes: July 24, 1972: "We Might Call This The Politics of Fantasy" by Frank Sinatra

The Great Recession: August. 13, 2010 "Obama’s dreadful job on the economy" By Bob Herbert

Global Warming March 19, 1989:  "An Ecological Kristallnacht. Listen" by Tennessee Senator Al Gore

Ken Burns Explores Ernest Hemingway: The Man, the Writer, and the Myth in New Documentary

Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns is at it again.

Monday, April 5, the creator of prize-winning documentaries on the American Civil War, Jazz Music, and Baseball, teamed with director and producer, Lynn Novick, for a new documentary on American literature icon Ernest Hemingway. It will be a six-hour documentary broadcast over three nights.

The film preview promises to smash the man behind the myth and dispel many misplaced notions many have about the American literature legend.

If you talk to enough American literature scholars, you get the sense that many readers don’t even bother to read Hemingway because of the chauvinistic reputation attached to his bull-fighting, hard drinking, multiple marriages (four in all), killing animals for sport, and writing about the scourge of war.

We are, after all, living in the era of the MeToo Movement (the social movement against sexual abuse and sexual harassment), a crusade against bullying, responsible drinking habits, and overall--a kinder gentler era than when Hemingway was plying his trade.

Many think the macho image often attributed to Hemingway is unreasonably exaggerated.

Author Gioia Diliberto in her biography of Hadley Hemingway (Hemingway’s first wife), titled “Paris without End,” wrote: "For all his macho posturing, Hemingway at his best wrote love stories that brilliantly charted the emotional nuances in relationships between men and women.” “His great talent,” Diliberto explained, “was in evoking the most intimate moments of longing, and all his fictional love stories flow from the central love story in his own life -- his marriage to Hadley."

Verna Kale, Professor of English and Associate Editor of The Hemingway Letters Project  at Pennsylvania State University, echoing Diliberto’s sentiments, said that Hemingway’s popular success, and the adaptation by fiction writers of his innovations, “obscure how innovative his work was in its time.  He refused to follow political or literary trends, and as a result his work has the kind of longevity that makes him widely read and studied today, and I do believe he qualifies as one of the greatest American writers--not just of novels but of short stories and what we now call creative nonfiction.”

Kale provided a sneak peek into what to expect from the upcoming PBS documentary. “His reputation as a masculine icon and celebrity may have undermined the appreciation of his work,” Kale observed.  “Both the documentary film and the ongoing project to publish Hemingway's correspondence show that he was a complicated person, full of contradictions. The film and his letters show the sides of him that are often overlooked: his sensitivity, his concern for family and friends, his interests in art and music, his commitment to anti-fascism.” Kale did point out that the film hardly sugar coats his character flaws. Hemingway could be “violent, angry, and proud,” Kale said.

Others aren’t so infatuated by the iconic status that Hemingway enjoys.

Writer and public intellectual, Gore Vidal, told political commentator Pat Buchanan in 1984: “I have a very low view of Hemingway; he’s sort of a Field & Stream writer. His gift for publicity propelled him ever forward. He didn’t develop.”

 Later in the interview with Buchanan, Vidal, said “For Whom the Bell Tolls is an embarrassing book which even he came to realize that.”

 Novelist Kurt Vonnegut remarked in 1990, following the rise of the feminist movements, Hemingway is “a little hard to read nowadays.” 

The brawny image of Hemingway wasn’t so pronounced in his novels as it was in the Esquire magazine pieces that he wrote in the 1930’s in which he projected himself to be tough as nails, vulgar, an adventurous outdoorsman, and a hopeless playboy and carouser.

Even in the prime of his career, Hemingway’s contemporaries pelted him with some harsh criticism.

In 1927, writer Virginia Woolf blasted Hemingway’s “self-conscious virility” of his fiction and with what she considered his “excessive use of dialogue.”

British writer Wyndham Lewis in his study of Hemingway (“The Dumb Ox”), faulted the American novelist for creating “stupid and insensitive characters” and of presenting them in a kind of baby talk borrowed from Gertrude Stein. 

While showering him with well-deserved praise for his literary skills, both Woolf and Lewis were highly critical of Hemingway for embracing unrealistically muscular characters by touching on such violent topics as war, boxing, and bullfighting, among others.

Arnold Weinstein, an American literary scholar at Brown University thinks, sadly, that the new age in American society has lessened the importance of Hemingway in college classrooms. I'd wager that English departments at elite universities have relatively little of Hemingway in their courses,” Weinstein told me. “Needless to say,” Weinstein continued; “there's lots of company, and there'll be even more of it as we move ahead, since there is an ever greater, ever angrier awareness of the systemic flaws, blind spots and injustices in American culture.”

Weinstein said that he’s still teaching, but his repertoire of authors is “imploding.” “It’s a pity given that Hemingway’s work with its depths, ambiguities and virtues are under the radar screen.”

Despite the criticism of Hemingway, especially in the 21^st century, living as we are in a more refined society, Suzanne Clark, Professor in the English Department at the University of Oregon, thinks Hemingway “is doubtless one of the great American writers of the 20th century, and he endures, in spite of much sniping at him.”  “Part of the reason why he endures,” Clark argues, “is that his style, which seems so simple, so straightforwardly factual, rewards close reading the way a poem does.  Hemingway seems easy but is after all as complex as the human experience. “ 

Ernest Miller Hemingway was born July 2, 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois. Soon after graduating from Oak Park High School, he began his writing career as a cub reporter for the Kansas City Star as a police reporter and feature story writing before venturing off to Italy where he was an ambulance driver for the Red Cross in World War I. As an ambulance driver he was badly injured when a heavy machine-gun bullet ripped through his right knee. It was his first taste of war which would permeate many of his works of literature.

The Hemingway canon is vast from cub reporter to feature writer to war correspondent, short story writer, and novelist. But when people discuss Hemingway, they for the most part, center on four novels: “The Sun Also Rises” (1926), “A Farewell to Arms” (1929), “For Whom the Bells Tolls” (1940), and “The Old Man and the Sea” (1952).  Many of his short stories have also been widely hailed as splendid works of literature, including “Big Two-Hearted River,” “The Killers,’’ “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” “A Clean Well-Lighted Place,” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,”

What distinguished Hemingway from his predecessors, especially 19^th century authors were his simple, direct writing style.

“The Sun Also Rises”, was Hemingway’s first novel. It was published in 1926, a piece of fiction about a group of American and English expatriates in Paris, all of whom have suffered both physically and emotionally during World War I.

In reviewing “The Sun Also Rises,’’ The New York Times wrote “Mr. Hemingway writes a most admirable dialogue. It has the terse vigor of Ring Lardner at his best. It suggests the double meanings of Ford Madox Ford's records of talk. Mr. Hemingway makes his characters say one thing, convey still another, and when a whole passage of talk has been given, the reader finds himself the richer by a totally unexpected mood, a mood often enough of outrageous familiarity with obscure heartbreaks.” “No amount of analysis,” the Times went on to write, “can convey the quality of "The Sun Also Rises." It is a truly gripping story, told in a lean, hard, athletic narrative prose that puts more literary English to shame. “

By the time he had written “For Whom the Bell Tolls’’ in 1940, Hemingway was considered one of the greatest novelists in American literature if not the world.  In their review "For Whom the Bell Tolls," J. Donald Adams, editor of The New York Times Book Review wrote: “This is the best book Ernest Hemingway has written, the fullest, the deepest, the truest. It will I think, be one of the major novels in American literature.” Adams summed up his review of For Whom the Bell Tolls by writing: “This is the work of a mature artist, of a mature mind.”

Ernest Hemingway in Kenya in 1952

Photo Credit:Earl Theisen / Getty

***

Before the publication of “The Old Man and Sea” in 1952, Hemingway spent a great deal of time stowed away in Finca Vigia, Cuba, where he lived from 1939 until 1960. “The Old Man and the Sea” was a novella about a Cuban fisherman and his battles with a giant marlin.

It was a smash success, earning Hemingway a Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and the following year, a Nobel Prize in literature in 1954.

In the New York Times review of  "The Old Man and the Sea" on August 28, 1952, Orville Prescott, the primary book reviewer for the New York Times , wrote: “The Old Man and the Sea" is fresh and healthy and the old man's ordeal is moving.”

“But good as "The Old Man and the Sea" is,” Prescott wrote, “it is good only in a limited way. The fisherman is not a well-characterized individual. He is a symbol of an attitude toward life. He often thinks and talks poetically and symbolically and so artificially.”

 After suffering from near fatal airplane crashes in Africa, in 1954, Hemingway’s health plummeted. He began suffering from severe depression, landing him in the hospital, where he underwent electroshock treatments.

Much like his father in 1928, the celebrated American novelist committed suicide on July 2, 1961 with one of his shotguns at his home in in Ketchum, Idaho. He was 61.

Whether Hemingway is still considered a major force in American literature, the Ken Burns and Lynn Novick documentary will undoubtedly answer that question over the next few nights.

Charles Scribner Jr., the longtime head of the Charles Scribner's Sons book publishing company said in a 1982 lecture that “Hemingway’s books were the “foundation stones’’ of the firm’s publishing reputation.”

NOTE: Vern Kale, Associate Editor of The Hemingway Letters Project welcomes viewers of the documentary to the watch party and discussion on April 10, hosted by the Hemingway Society.

--Bill Lucey

WPLucey@gmail.com

April 3, 2021

The Diary of Anne Frank: 69 Years after the New York Times Book Review

Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank, a gifted Jewish writer and diarist, never survived the Holocaust.

***

For those who love books and reading, you might be interested to know that the New York Times Book Review section celebrates its 125^th anniversary this year.

About 90 % of the books on my reading list are books I added after reading the Times Sunday Review of Books.

When did it all begin?

On October 10, 1896, the Times book review section was officially launched. It was originally published in the Saturday Review of Books and Art, based on the prevailing opinion that books should be treated as news. In 1911, it was moved to Sunday.

It wasn’t until August 9, 1942 that the Book Review section added a “Best Seller’s List.”

So, here we are, well into the 21^st century and I wondered which books, reviewed by the New York Times, have weathered the test of time and are still relevant?

There are so many books that are so influential and are as relevant today as when they were first published.

One of the first books that sprang to mind was “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank.

Jeffrey Shandler, professor in the department of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University thinks that “without a doubt Anne Frank's diary is one of the most influential books of the 20th century, in part because it has become one of the most widely read books of any kind, translated into dozens of languages and published in many millions of copies since it first appeared in Dutch in 1947.”

“Those who read the whole diary,” Shandler explained, “can see that it is a more complex text than the most familiar phrases that have been plucked from it. The diary voices anxieties as well as hopes about the dire situation Anne and her fellow Jews were facing and also dwells on Anne's coming of age under extraordinary circumstances” For this reason, Shandler said, “it has been recognized as an important text of adolescent female writing.”

Anneliese Marie Frank, a girl of Jewish heritage, was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1929. Her childhood took a drastic turn when she was about four years old.

In 1933, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazis assumed power, Anne Frank, along with her elder sister, Margot, and their parents, Otto and Edith Frank, fled to Amsterdam. But when Nazi tanks stormed into the Netherlands on May 10, 1940 and cruel anti-Jewish decrees were introduced, the Franks took refuge in Otto Frank’s office building. The Franks and four other Jews hid in a “secret annex,” (at Prinsengracht 263) which was a group of rooms at the top and back of a building that served as a warehouse and office for Frank’s Dutch-owned business. Otto Frank ran a pectin business. Pectin is a key ingredient for making jams, jellies, and other preserves.

During the day they had to be quiet, but later in the evening, they were free to roam around.

On her 13^th birthday, Anne Frank was presented with a red-checkered diary by her father, which she affectionately called “Kitty,” her imaginary friend. Anne would write in the diary from July 5, 1942 until August 1, 1944. Three days later, the family was captured by the Nazis and sent to Westerbork, a transit camp in Drente, in the north of Holland. Less than a month later, they were deported to Auschwitz, the primary Nazi death camp in Poland. Less than two months later, Anne (15 years old) and her sister Margot (18 years old) were taken to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in what is today Lower Saxony in northern Germany. There, emaciated and malnourished, they died from typhus. Historians estimate Anne and her sister died sometime in the spring of 1945. A mere 6-7% of Jewish children survived the Holocaust, compared with 33% among adults. Margot and Anne Frank were among the 6 million Jewish people and 1.5 million children murdered by Nazis.

Of the eight people that hid in the ‘’secret annex,’’ Otto Frank was the only one who survived. He was one of about 7,500 liberated from Auschwitz, out of more than one million.

One of the few remaining relics of his family was his daughter Anne’s diary, which was given to him by Miep Gies, one of the helpers in the annex who helped hide eight individuals from the Nazis, including Otto Frank and his family. Gies had kept the diary in a desk drawer.

After removing some highly personal and embarrassing passages, Otto Frank sought out a publisher for the diary, On June 25, 1947, Anne Frank's Het Achterhuis (The Secret Annex) was published in Dutch in a small edition of 3,036 copies.

After some modest success, Otto Frank successfully signed deals with publishers in West Germany (the Federal Republic of Germany) and in France. Frank's Het Achterhuis (The Secret Annex) was published in both German and French in 1950. The book wasn’t a best seller, but it did sell a respectable 4,600 first edition copies.

The real game changer for Anne Frank’s diary didn’t come until 1952, when the diary was published in English as “The Diary of a Young Girl.”

American novelist Meyer Levin wrote a review of the book on the cover of the New York Times Book Review section on June 15, 1952.  After the review, sales of Anne Frank’s Diary exploded. A second print run of 15,000 copies was issued, followed by a third of 45,000 copies. It wasn’t long before, millions had read “The Diary of Young Girl.”

In the review, Levin wrote: “her book is not a classic to be left on the library shelf. It is a warm and stirring confession, to be read over and over for insight and enjoyment.”

Describing the optimistic view Anne Frank held of the human race despite the torment and harsh conditions they were living under, Meyer went on to write “There is anguish in the thought of how much creative power, how much sheer beauty of living, was cut off through genocide. But through her diary Anne goes on living. This wise and wonderful young girl brings back a poignant delight in the infinite human spirit.”

Most surprising to any who read Meyer’s book review, is the understanding of how stylish Anne Frank’s writing was at such a tender age. “I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, If I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.”

And as if to portend her imminent death, Anne wrote: “I want to go on living even after my death.” …. “I am grateful to God for giving me this gift, this possibility of developing myself and of writing, of expressing all that is in me.”

The central message Anne Frank wanted to communicate to all of us was “in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart."

F.K Schoeman, Associate Professor of English and Jewish Studies and director of the Jewish Studies program at the University of South Carolina, describing the unconscionable hate and discrimination that existed in Anne Frank’s lifetime, says, “we are implicitly asked by her diary to be aware of what it means to live in a racist, hateful, antisemitic, misogynistic, unjust world for the victims of these wrong ideals.” “The "lesson," so to speak, of The Diary,” Schoeman continued. “lies beyond the last page of the diary: the fact that when we let democracy and justice slip through our fingers, an innocent 15-year-old girl (and 1.5 million more children like her) can be tortured and murdered while the world looks on without doing anything to help.” 

“The Diary of a Young Girl” became so popular and so widely read after Meyer Levin’s book review, that a play about Anne Frank was written by the husband-and-wife team of Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, which opened on Broadway at the Cort Theater on October 5,1955 and continued through June 22, 1957, after 717 performances.

It was a smash success, winning a string of Tony awards, including Best Play, and Best Director (Garson Kanin). The play additionally received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, along with a 1956 New York Drama Critics Circle award for Best Play.

The play was then adapted for a motion picture, which premiered in 1959. The film didn’t match the blockbuster success of the Broadway play, but it did earn Hollywood actress Shelley Winters an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. “The Diary of Anne Frank” also took home Oscars for Best Cinematography (Black-and-White), and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (Black-and-White).

Since Levin’s book review, along with the Broadway and film productions, the diary has been translated into some 70 languages and circulated in an estimated 30 million copies. 

Today, there is a cottage industry of tributes to Anne Frank and her diary, which includes: other films and television programs, ballets, operas, musical productions, paintings, drawings, sculpture, popular books, postage stamps, commemorative coins, videotapes, CD-ROMS, and mountains more.

A sliding bookcase in the "secret annex" that concealed the entrance to the hiding place at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam

Photo Source: Anne Frank House, Westermarkt 20, 1016 DK Amsterdam

***

In 1957, the house that Anne Frank and her family hid in (in the center of Amsterdam) was on the brink of being destroyed. But since there was so much fascination with Anne Frank, the house was preserved (with the “secret annex” intact) and opened as a museum on May 3, 1960.

In 2019, 1.3 million visitors paid a visit to the Anne Frank House, about 80,000 more than in 2018 and 40,000 more than in 2017 when the museum was renovated. According to a museum spokesperson, the number of visitors in 2020 was limited to 396,779, due to the COVID pandemic.

Asked whether the Diary of Anne Frank with its universal message of “courage” and “hope” in the face of danger still resonates today, Sara Sewell, Professor of History at Virginia Wesleyan University, thinks that the “diary had a tremendous impact on Holocaust Studies across the globe, particularly a generation or two ago. As the history of the Holocaust entered the US classroom, it was largely through Anne Frank, as she made this history accessible to millions of students who were also teenagers.”

As much as she praises Anne Frank’s diary for having such a profound impact on understanding the Holocaust, Sewell does point out a critical weakness of the Diary. The problem of “learning about the Holocaust through this text,” Sewell cautions, “is that it ends just as she began the most horrific phase of her persecution.” “In other words,” Sewell explained, “what people most need to know about the Holocaust (death camps and survival, death in camps) is not discussed, and therefore, readers have a skewed view of the Holocaust.”

It is rare, indeed, when a book review propels a book to such towering heights, but there’s no mistaking that Meyer Levin’s New York Times book review, written almost 70 years ago, helped immeasurably in making Anne Frank a household name, both here in the United States and around the globe.

 ---Bill Lucey

March 21, 2021

WPLucey@gmail.com

117th Congress: By the Numbers

House members are sworn in at the Capitol's House chamber on the first day of the 117th Congress.

Photo Credit: Caroline Brehman/CQ Roll Call

***

How well do you know your 117^th Congress?

It’s been open for business since January 3^rd; when Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was re-elected Speaker of the House by a slim margin, coming away with 216 votes, narrowly outdueling House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) who captured 209 votes. This will be Pelosi’s fourth term as Speaker of the House and mostly likely her last.

Over in the Senate, the composition of this august body mirrors the sentiment of the nation: evenly divided, especially when it comes to politics. There are now 50 seats held by Republicans, 48 seats held by Democrats, and two held by independents who caucus with the Democrats, creating a 50-50 split. Vice President Kamala Harris, of course, will cast tie-breaking votes.

This narrow edge for the Democrats, paved the way for President Joe Biden to successfully push through his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill with a 50-49 party-line vote. The bill swings back to the House for a final vote. After much bickering in a marathon session, the bill will provide billions of dollars to combat the pandemic and extend badly needed economic aid to individuals, states, cities, small businesses, and low-income families.

So far, President Biden, less than two months into his administration appears to have the wind at his back. Despite the bill’s exorbitant cost, public opinion polls, such as the one conducted by Monmouth University, found more than 60 percent of Americans support the $1.9 trillion package.

U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi of Calif., waves the gavel on the opening day of the 117th Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 3, 2021.

Photo Credit: Bill Clark/AP

***

So, with the House of Representatives preparing for a final vote on Wednesday on President Biden's historic $1.9 trillion Covid relief plan, now is about as good a time as any to become more acquainted with your new Congress.

Since 1789, 12,415 individuals have served as either Representatives (11,101 individuals) or Senators (1,994 individuals). Of these individuals, 680 have served in both chambers.

117 Congress: By the Numbers

 Party Affiliation

• 225 Democrats in the House of Representatives (including 4 Delegates), 213 Republicans (including 1 Delegate and the Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico), and 3 vacant seats.

• 50 Republicans, 48 Democrats in the Senate, and 2 Independents, who both caucus with the Democrats.

Age

58.4 is the average age of Members of the House; of Senators, 64.3 years.

The youngest Representative in the 117th Congress, and the youngest House Member since 1965, is Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), born August 1, 1995, who was 25 at the beginning of the 117th Congress.

The oldest Representative is Don Young (R-AK), born June 9, 1933, who was 87.

The youngest Senator in the 117th Congress is Jon Ossoff (D-GA), born February 16, 1987, who was 33 at the beginning of the Congress

The oldest Senator in the 117th Congress is Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), born June 22, 1933, who was 87.

NOTE: The U.S. Constitution requires Representatives to be at least 25 years old when they take office, while Senators must be at least 30 years old when they take office.

 Length of Service

• The average length of service for Representatives is 8.9 years (4.5 House terms); for Senators, 11.0 years (1.8 Senate terms).

Professions of the 117^th Congress

• 47 Senators have previous House service

• 113 Members have worked in education, including teachers, professors, instructors, school fundraisers, counselors, administrators, or coaches (85 in the House, including 2 Delegates, 28 in the Senate).

• 4 physicians in the Senate, 14 physicians in the House, plus 5 dentists and 1 veterinarian; 2 psychologists (in the House), an optometrist (in the Senate), 2 pharmacists (in the House), and 3 nurses and 1 physician assistant (in the House).

• 7 ordained ministers (5 in the House, 2 in the Senate)

• 38 former mayors (31 in the House, 7 in the Senate)

• 13 former state governors (12 in the Senate, 1 in the House) and 10 lieutenant governors (5 in the Senate, 5 in the House)

• 7 attorneys general of their states (6 in the Senate, 1 in the House) and 8 secretaries of state (3 in the Senate, 5 in the House.)

• 16 former judges (all but 1 in the House) and 38 prosecutors (9 in the Senate, 29 in the House) have served in city, county, state, federal, or military capacities.

• 4 Ambassadors (two in each chamber).

• 238 former state or territorial legislators (45 in the Senate, 193 in the House, including 2 Delegates and the Resident Commissioner from Puerto Rico).

• 78 former congressional staffers (15 in the Senate, 63 in the House, including 3 Delegates), as well as 5 former congressional pages (2 in the House and 3 in the Senate).

• 2 sheriffs, 1 police chief and 3 other police officers, 1 fire chief, 1 firefighter, 2 CIA employees, and 1 FBI agent (all in the House).

• 1 Peace Corps volunteer in the House.

• 1 physicist and 1 chemist, both in the House, and 1 geologist in the Senate; 9 engineers (8 in the House and 1 in the Senate).

• 21 public relations or communications professionals (3 in the Senate, 18 in the House), and 7 accountants (1 in the Senate and 6 in the House.

• 6 software company executives in the House and 2 in the Senate

• 38 consultants (7 in the Senate, 31 in the House), 5 car dealership owners (all in the House), and 4 venture capitalists (2 in the House, 2 in the Senate).

• 16 bankers or bank executives (4 in the Senate, 12 in the House), 27 veterans of the real estate industry (3 in the Senate, 24 in the House), and 8 Members who have worked in the construction industry (1 in the Senate, 7 in the House).

• 7 social workers (2 in the Senate, 5 in the House) and 3 union representatives (all in the House).

• 16 nonprofit executives or founders (15 in the House, 1 in the Senate) 2 radio talk show hosts (both in the House); 4 radio or television broadcasters, managers, or owners (3 in the House, 1 in the Senate); 7 reporters or journalists (1 in the Senate, 6 in the House); and 3 newspaper publishers in the House.

• 18 insurance agents or executives (3 in the Senate, 15 in the House) and 7 Members who have worked in the securities industry (all in the House.

• 1 artist, 1 book publisher, and 2 speechwriters (all in the House), and 2 documentary filmmakers in the Senate.

• 6 restaurateurs (5 in the House, 1 in the Senate), as well as 2 coffee shop and 1 wine store owners (all in the House), and 1 brewpub owner in the Senate.

• 27 farmers, ranchers, or cattle farm owners (6 in the Senate, 21 in the House); 1 almond orchard owner and vintner, as well as a forester and a fruit orchard worker (all in the House.

• 1 flight attendant and 4 pilots, all in the House, and 1 astronaut in the Senate

• 3 professional football players, 1 hockey player, 1 baseball player, and 1 mixed martial arts fighter (all in the House)

• 7 current members of the military reserves (6 in the House, 1 in the Senate) and 7 current members of the National Guard (all in the House).

Education

The vast majority of Members (93.8% of House Members and 100% of Senators) at the beginning of the 117th Congress have earned at least a bachelor’s degree. 67 % of House Members and 76% of Senators hold educational degrees beyond a bachelors.

• 22 Members of the House have no educational degree beyond a high school diploma or GE

• 5 Members of the House have associate’s degrees as their highest degrees

• 108 Members of the House and 18 Senators earned a master’s degree as their highest attained degrees.

• 144 Members of the House (32.7% of the House) and 50 Senators (50% of the Senate) hold law degrees

• 22 Representatives and 4 Senators have doctoral (Ph.D., D.Phil., Ed.D., or D. Min) degrees

• 20 Members of the House and 5 Senators have medical degrees.

• 3 Representatives and 1 Senator are graduates of the U.S. Military Academy

• 1 Senator graduated from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy

• 1 Representative graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy

• 1 Senator graduated from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy

• 5 Representatives and one Senator were Rhodes Scholars

• 2 Representatives were Fulbright Scholars

• 2 Representatives were Marshall Scholars

• 2 Representatives and one Senator were Truman Scholars

 Congressional Service: 117^th Congress

• 57 of the House Members (12.9% of the total House membership) had first been elected to the House in November 2020, and 9 of the Senators (9% of the total Senate membership) had first been elected to the Senate in November 2020.

• 131 House Members (29.7% of House Members) had no more than two years of House experience, and 18 Senators (18% of Senators) had no more than two years of Senate experience.

 Religion

• 55.4% of Members (236 in the House, 58 in the Senate) are Protestant, with Baptist as the most represented denomination, followed by Methodist

• 29.8% of Members (134 in the House, 24 in the Senate) are Catholic

• 6.3% of Members (25 in the House, 9 in the Senate) are Jewish

• 1.7% of Members (6 in the House, 3 in the Senate) are Mormon (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)

• 2 Members (1 in the House, 1 in the Senate) are Buddhist, 3 Representatives are Muslim, and 2 Representatives are Hindu

Gender

• 147 women Members (27.2% of the total membership) serve in the 117th Congress, 16 more than at the beginning of the 116th Congress

• 123 women, including 3 Delegates as well as the Resident Commissioner, serve in the House and 24 in the Senate

• Of the 123 women in the House, 91 are Democrats, including 2 of the Delegates, and 32 are Republicans, including 1 Delegate as well as the Resident Commissioner

• Of the 24 women in the Senate, 16 are Democrats and 8 are Republicans.

Ethnicity

African American Members

• There are a record 61 African American Members (11.3% of the total membership) in the 117th Congress, 4 more than at the beginning of the 116th Congress

• 58 serve in the House, including two Delegates, and three serve in the Senate

• 56 of the African-American House Members, including two Delegates, are Democrats, and two are Republicans

• 2 of the Senators are Democrats and one is Republican.

• 27 African American women, including two Delegates, serve in Congress, all in the House.

 Hispanic/Latino American Members

• 54 Hispanic or Latino Members in the 117th Congress, representing 10.0% of the total membership and a record number.

• 47 serve in the House, including two Delegates and the Resident Commissioner, and 7 in the Senate

• Of the Members of the House, 34 are Democrats (including 2 Delegates) and 13 are Republicans (including the Resident Commissioner).

• 14 are women, including the Resident Commissioner. Of the 7 Hispanic Senators (3 Republicans, 4 Democrats), 1 is a woman.

 Asian/Pacific Islander American Members

• 20 Members of the 117th Congress (3.8% of the total membership) are of Asian, South Asian, or Pacific Islander ancestry

• 18 of them (15 Democrats, 3 Republicans) serve in the House, and 2 (both Democrats) serve in the Senate

• 11 of the Asian, Pacific Islander, or South Asian American Members are female; 9 in the House, and 2 in the Senate

American Indian Members

 6 American Indian (Native American) or Native Hawaiian Members of the 117th Congress: 3 of each party, all in the House, representing 1.1% of the total congressional membership, a record number.

 Foreign Birth

• 28 Representatives and 5 Senators (6.1% of the 117th Congress) were born outside the United States; their places of birth include Canada, Cuba, Germany, Guatemala, Japan, Peru, and India.

NOTE: The U.S. Constitution requires that Representatives be citizens for seven years and Senators be citizens for nine years before they take office.

Military Service

• 91 individuals (16.8% of the total membership) who had served or were serving in the military, fewer than at the beginning of the 116th Congress (96 Members).

• 75 veterans in the House (including 4 female Members, as well as 1 Delegate)

• 16 veterans in the Senate, including 2 women

• 6 House Members and one Senator are still serving in the reserves, and 7 House Members are still serving in the National Guard

• 2 of the 6 female veterans are combat veterans.

NOTE: According to the Military Times, the 117th Congress veterans’ numbers are at the “lowest since the start of World War II.”

Source: Congressional Research Service (CRS); Pew Research Center; Congressional Quarterly (CQ)

---Bill Lucey

March 9, 2021

WPLucey@gmail.com

Digitizing the Vatican Library Brings the Past Back to Life

Now that we are well into the 21^st century, have medieval social historians, like Joëlle Rollo-Koster from the University of Rhode Island, faded into the thin night air and lost their relevance?

Hardly!

Turns out, Rollo-Koster is more relevant than ever. With the COVID-19 pandemic gripping the world (deaths having soared past the two million mark worldwide), many are seeking out her knowledge and expertise to learn how COVID compares with the Black Death of the 14^th century. About 25 million people are estimated to have died in Europe from the plague between 1347 and 1351.

But thanks largely to the digitization of documents from the Vatican Archives, mostly on CD-ROMs, researchers like Rollo-Koster are able to search 14^th century manuscripts to see how the word, “plague,” for example, was used, before, during (1348) and after the Black Death.  

Thanks to the magic of digitization (including advanced key word functions), Rollo-Koster didn’t have to plow through 500,000 documents (an impossible task) and was able to narrow her search down to a manageable 300 entries to see how the word was used.

Rollo-Koster discovered the word, “scourge’’ was used to describe heretics or bad rulers. It wasn’t until after Black Death that scourge was used to describe the disease. If she hadn’t been able to access the Vatican Archives, such precise information would have never been found.

The digitization of documents from the Vatican Library and Vatican Archives is still far from being completed, but even at this early stage, it has been an incredible boon for researchers. The Avignon registrars from the Avignon papacy (1309 to 1376), for example, which totals about 500,000 documents, all are digitized.

Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903), opened the Vatican Archives to historians in 1883. 

Anthony Grafton, an American historian of early modern Europe at Princeton University and author of “Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture,” tells me that “DigiVatLab (Digital Vatican Library) during the last year, “has enabled scholars all over the world to continue to make discoveries and publish them, even when the library had to close (due to COVID), and it will continue to provide that service as normal conditions resume.”

Prior to DigiVatLab, Grafton said, scholars would have to journey to Rome on a sabbatical or during the interval between Commencement and the annual closing of the library.

Daniel Gallagher, a lecturer of Latin in the Department of Classics at Cornell University, says the digitization has helped expand accessibility to a wider group of scholars, especially those unable to make the trek to Rome.  Gallagher said “there are many scholars of Chinese history who have the expertise and access to corresponding sources outside the Vatican collection who can shed light on what is in the connection related to the Church’s activity in China.” Exciting stuff, Gallagher thinks.  “Correspondence between the missionary Jesuits and Franciscans in China and the Holy See reveals much about the culture and religion the missionaries were encountering and the means they used to communicate the Christian message to the natives they encountered. “

Once you consider how much rare material is actually housed inside the Vatican Library, you have a greater appreciation why it will take quite some time to digitize the entire collection.

It’s literally unfathomable to think that the library preserves 80,000 manuscripts of late-antique, medieval, Byzantine, and Renaissance provenance, in dozens of languages, from Aramaic to Old Church Slavonic just for starters. Also, at the Vatican Library, there are 60,00 or more of western manuscripts, 8,000 books printed before 1500, along with a vast collection of nonwestern books and manuscripts, treasures of humanity. It houses two million printed books. In fact, if you placed the books end to end in the Vatican Library it would measure 31 miles.  Add to this: a 4th-century Bible, the world's oldest, as well as copies of St Peter's letters and the gospels of Luke and John, dating from the 3rd century and written in Greek on papyrus.

Of particular interest to many is a 1493-book about Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the New World and 11 or 12 love letters of King Henry VIII to his alluring mistress, Anne Boleyn, which includes a hand drawn heart at the bottom of the page by the smitten English king. Henry’s love letters were actually stolen by a Vatican spy to build a case against his annulment request from Catherine of Aragon. A 1,600-year-old manuscript, displaying Virgil's poems once studied by Raphael can be found at the Library as well, though that manuscript is largely off-limits even to the most credentialed scholars.

Believe it or not, prior to the 17^th century, the Vatican lent out its holdings to the general public. Patrons would often check out books with the chain still on them as a reminder they belong to the library. The Vatican Library, as you might imagine, back then, maintained a primitive circulation system (simple notebooks, registrars). Still, according to Anthony Grafton, “librarians from Platina [Italian Renaissance Humanist] on swore solemn oaths to preserve and account for every book in their care.”

Professor Joëlle Rollo-Koster

Photo by Michael Salerno Photography

***

To get a sense of a typical day for a scholar in the Vatican Library or Vatican Archives in the 21^st century, Professor Joëlle Rollo-Koster, after rushing home to feed her dog on a pleasant Kingston, Rhode Island afternoon, took some time with me over the phone to discuss her experiences researching at the Vatican Library, mostly the Vatican Archives.

Rollo-Koster first explained to me that the Vatican Library is used primarily by literary scholars, the Vatican Archives, on the other hand, are mainly used by historians, especially social historians such as herself.

The criteria for gaining access to the library or archives is fairly straightforward: you need to be a researcher, historian, or scholar and need a letter of introduction. If you write a book using sources from the Archives, you need to give the book to the Library/Archives.

You can’t enter the library until you stopped by the Prefect or Secretary, were they’ll check your credentials, letter of introduction, and passport. At that point, they’ll issue you a pass which records exactly when you entered the Library.  All your personal items, moreover, are kept in a locker room. Personal items are strictly forbidden inside the Library or Archives.

Well into the 1980s, women who entered the Vatican Library or Archives had to be dressed in a long skirt. Pants worn by females were forbidden. The dress code imposed on women was relaxed sometime in the 1990s. Patrons to the Library aren’t allowed to make Xerox copies themselves. They need to fill out a form and present it to a library employee, which is then sent to the Prefect for approval.

Rollo-Koster said her area of study requires her to examine documents from the 1300s. To my surprise, Rollo-Koster said many of the documents are gorgeous, in tip-top shape, others are old and decrepit. Most librarians will then display the documents on a table underneath a book stand.

If patrons get hungry at the Library, they’re allowed to exit in the courtyard between the Archives and the Library. Many of the scholars will smoke cigarettes and talk with others about their projects. They also have access to a coffee shop and small cafeteria. “You have some of the best food in Rome here,” Rollo-Koster said.  If you arrive early enough, you can find a table. Otherwise, you just eat outside.

The French born Rollo-Koster (born and raised in Toulon) tells me the biggest satisfaction she gets through researching and writing about the 14^th century, is she is able to look at records of the lesser-known characters and bring their history to life.  “For hundreds of years,” Rollo-Koster continued, “no one paid attention, no one was interested in social history. They were interested in the history of the popes and the kings. The fact that those documents have been preserved, gives me a gate of entry. Those little guys who have disappeared from history, can have their stories retold, thanks to the Archives. “

Another major point that Rollo-Koster stressed to me is that contrary to popular belief, the 14^th century documents found at the Vatican Library and Archives are not dry, dead documents. “Documents can really bring life” “My aim” Rollo-Koster said, “is to bring back to life, all those people who have disappeared from history. The Vatican Archives gives me access to those people.”

So, exactly when did the Vatican Library and Archives collect such a staggering amount of information?

Most historians point to the well-read Pope Nicholas V (1447-1455), beginning in 1451, who re-established Rome as an academic center of worldwide stature, by building a modest library of over 1,200 volumes, including his personal collection of Greek and Roman classics and a series of texts brought from Constantinople. Nicholas wanted to establish not only a collection of books, but an institution. Nicholas additionally wanted to create a library at St Peter’s for general use by the Roman Court.

Pope Sixtus IV (1471-1484) is credited with propelling the Vatican Library into an institution with the installation of books in a custom-built and beautifully decorated suite of rooms with gorgeous paintings.

A lesser-known fact about the growth of the Vatican Library is many from the Vatican were dispatched to ransack private and institutional libraries across Europe, searching in monasteries, above all for rare texts that had been copied and studied in antiquity and the early Middle Ages; documents, in other words that had fallen out of fashion. Leading erudite copyists were employed by the Vatican to translate into Latin the works of Greek poets, philosophers, and historians, many of which had been unknown in the West since ancient times.

Others, such as historian and Italian humanist Furvio Orsini, sold his books to the Vatican in exchange for a pension. The books remained in his possession until his death.

By Sixtus’s death in 1484, the Vatican Library housed more than 3,600 manuscripts. The concept of a central archive of the Holy See didn’t develop until Pope Paul V (1605-1621). In 1783, all remaining material in Avignon was brought to Rome; and in 1798 the archives of Castel Sant'Angelo (papal residence, fortress) were transferred to the apostolic palace, the official residence of the pope.

Today, the library now includes a rich history of science, learning, and the arts, on par with any institution in the world.  This we have Pope Nicholas V to thank for rejecting the common belief in the 15th century that Renaissance humanism represented a potential threat to the Church and its teachings.  Nicholas, undoubtedly going against the grain, encouraged the study of the pagan classics. 

Diana Walsh Pasulka, Professor of Catholic Studies at University of North Carolina Wilmington, underscores how preserving and learning from history is so critical to the continuation of civil society. Pasulka, for example, tells me that she has “uncovered primary sources that enrich our understanding of not only European history, but also data that helps contemporary industries, such as the space industry and others.” “The digitization of these materials,” Pasulka continued “is one of the most important endeavors that has been undertaken to preserve knowledge of historical records that are fragile and in danger of being lost forever.”

Most importantly, the digitization of the Vatican Library and Archives means it is joining the ranks of other prominent institutions who have digitized their archives, such as the British Museum, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Cambridge University, and the Library of Congress.

--Bill Lucey

WPLucey@gmail.com

February 28, 2021

 

The Most Viewed Online Articles in 2020

Photo Credit: USA Today Network

***

Thankfully, 2020, is nearing its painful end.

Americans were shocked to their core when they learned that Hall of Fame NBA player Kobe Bryant on Sunday, January 26, was killed in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, California, while in route from John Wayne Airport to Camarillo Airport. Nine people were on board: retired professional basketball player Kobe Bryant, his 13 year-old daughter Gianna, baseball coach John Altobelli, five other passengers, and the pilot.  No one survived the crash

The Kobe Bryant tragedy was truly a foretaste of what a horrible year it would be.

Worldwide, a respiratory tract infection struck like a horrifying tidal wave.

On January 20^th, a 35-year-old man returning from China contracted the first case of Coronavirus.

On March 13, President Trump declared coronavirus a national emergency; and on April 3, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended everyone to consider wearing a cloth or fabric face masks in public.

How deadly was coronavirus?

In the United States, there were 319,000 deaths from COVID-19 as of December 21. Worldwide, there have been 1.7 million deaths from the coronavirus.

COVID-19 surpassed heart disease as the leading cause of death in the United States, according to the CDC. Practically the same number of Americans died from the disease each day as did the number killed in the September 11 terror attacks or the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Small wonder, then, that 2020 was declared the Year of the Nurse and Midwife by the World Health Organization (WHO).

In practical terms, 2020 was a year that never was.

Most celebrated events and annual rituals were cancelled due to the virus, which included the Tokyo Games (Summer Olympics), the Wimbledon tennis tournament, NASCAR racing, the NCAA men and women’s Division I basketball tournaments, and St Patrick’s Day parades in both Dublin, Ireland and Boston. In addition, most museums slammed their doors shut, including the Louvre Museum in Paris, while the Cannes Film Festival, and the Rolling Stones North American tour were abruptly cancelled.

Both the NBA and MLB postponed their seasons and returned with reduced schedules.

On October 11, the Lakers defeated the Miami Heat to capture a record-tying 17th NBA title ; and on Oct. 27 in MLB, The Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the Tampa Bay Rays to win the team’s first World Series title since 1988.

The economic impact due to the coronavirus was crippling. The United States slipped into a recession, the largest economic recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Not surprisingly, President Donald Trump dominated most of the news cycle and Twitter posts during 2020, never more so than during his impeachment trial that began on January 16 and ended on February 5, when he was acquitted on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress . Trump was accused of pressuring Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to announce investigations into former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr in exchange for nearly $400 million in vital military assistance.

The year ended with Trump losing in his quest for a second presidential term. On November 3, Democrat Joe Biden, 77, with 306 electoral votes defeated President Donald Trump to become the 46th president of the United States. Barack Obama’s VP received more than 78 million votes across the country — the most votes cast for any presidential candidate in history.

2020 didn’t pass without major racial strife.

On May 25, a Minneapolis police officer (Derek Chauvin) was filmed pressing his knee on the neck of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American male, for more than eight minutes, killing him, as three other officers stood by.

Chauvin was charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter; the Minnesota attorney general increased the charge to second-degree murder on June 3. Charges against three other fired officers were also filed.

The unconscionable act by the Minneapolis police officer sparked protests across 100 cities around the world. Other demonstrations were held on June 6 to voice protests against systemic racism and police brutality.

Despite the historic recession and rising unemployment from COVID-19, there were a few, those happy few, doing extremely well financially.

In August, Forbes Magazine reported that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos became the first person in history to have a net worth exceeding $200 billion. During the same month, Apple Inc., the multinational technology company, became the first U.S. company to be valued at over $2 trillion.

The year ended on an especially sad note when longtime Jeopardy host, Alex Trebek, 80, died on November 8, following his long battle with pancreatic cancer.

On December 11, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized emergency use of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech, providing a glimmer of hope that the deadly virus will be eliminated in the months ahead.

To get a sense of what major stories sparked the interest of readers during the year, I asked some news organizations and popular websites which story drew the most traffic.

What follows is a collection of the most viewed online articles in 2020.

CNN

Tracking Covid-19 Cases in the U.S.

Election 2020 Presidential Results

L.A. Times

Federal Investigators Look for Answers in Kobe Bryant Helicopter Crash. 

Tampa Bay Times

Tom Brady arriving in Tampa Bay and staying at Derek Jeter’s mansion 

Florida coronavirus cases are growing fast. Here’s what that means.

The Telegraph (U.K.)

Exclusive: Government Scientist Neil Ferguson Resigns After Breaking Lockdown Rules to Meet His Married Lover

Financial Times

Coronavirus Tracker

The Economist

The US 2020 election results: The Economist’s breakdown of the votes for the president, Senate and House of Representatives

FOX NEWS

Coronavirus in the US: State-by-state breakdown

AXIOS

Scoop: Trump’s Plan to Declare Premature Victory

Politico

Coronavirus Will Change the World Permanently: Here’s How

Buzzfeed

Non-Americans Are Sharing the Bizarre Things that Americans Think are Normal and It’s Surprising

The Marshall Project

The Short, Fraught History of the ‘Thin Blue Line’ American Flag

ProPublica

A Medical Worker Describes Terrifying Lung Failure From COVID-19 — Even in His Young Patients

Tracking PPP Loans:  Search Every Company Approved for Federal Loans Over $150k

OpenSecrets.org

Senate Intel chair unloaded stocks in mid-February before coronavirus rocked markets

FBI

FBI Seeking Assistance Connecting Victims to Samuel Little’s Confessions 

Ten Most Wanted Fugitives

New Yorker

Top 25 Stories of 2020

New York Magazine

Buying Myself Back: When Does a Model Own Her Own Image

How the Coronavirus Could Take Over Your Body (Before You Ever Feel It)

New York Review of Books

The Sickness in Our Food Supply

ESPN

Kobe Bryant, daughter Gianna die in helicopter crash

Weather Channel

Aerial View of Devastation Along Louisiana’s Coast from Hurricane Laura

Watch Man in Russia Cheat Death

 

--Bill Lucey

December 21, 2020

WPLucey@gmail.com

Netflix Blockbuster The Crown (Season 4) Sparks Mixed Reaction

Prince Charles and Princess Diana are played by Josh O'Connor and Emma Corrin in the Netflix drama, The Crown.

Photo Credit: Alex Bailey/Netflix

***

Nothing but frowns from the Crown.

The Crown, season 4, the gripping historical drama about England’s royal family at long last made its way back to Netflix last month. It’s been greeted by a vast, enthusiastic audience, reportedly over 29 million worldwide in its first week alone, according to figures compiled by British media.

Season 4 deals largely with Queen Elizabeth II’s power struggles and personality clashes (particularly over South Africa sanctions) with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as well as the marriage and explosive marital spats between Prince Charles and his newlywed bride, Diana Spencer. Now in her second season, Queen Elizabeth II is played with such commanding flair by Academy Award winner Olivia Colman.

The reviews, so far, have been overwhelmingly positive, many arguing that season 4 is the best season yet. English actress Emma Corrin’s depiction of young, shy Diana Spencer has especially met with rave views for magnificently capturing the body language, speech rhythms, and the minor nuances of Princess Di.

It’s not clear to many whether the royal family has tuned into the Netflix drama, but reactions seeping into press reports suggests they are taking a rather dim view of The Crown.

Royal historian Hugo Vickers told the Washington Post that Charles is portrayed, wrongly, “as a wimp … and actually a pretty evil, murderous character,’’ while the Queen is much too sullen on the show and Princess Margaret (played by Helena Bonham Carter), a tabloid caricature.

Former New York Times executive editor, Jill Abramson, now a professor of creative writing at Harvard University, says her reaction to season 4 is “that every character in the royal family has become loathsome save poor Diana.” “Even Princess Margaret,” Abramson said, “who was gloriously outrageous and human in previous season, is stiff and unsympathetic. “

British historian Patrick Allitt and professor of American History at Emory University, argues Margaret Thatcher played by Gillian Anderson isn’t really representative of the Margaret Thatcher he remembered.

“My main criticism is that too often Margaret Thatcher,” Allitt explained, “is depicted as emotionally vulnerable and at times even as slightly frail.  That's not my memory of her at all--her pushy, bullying, scary manner doesn't come through adequately.  Even senior male politicians were often terrified of her, while her command of all the detailed information on every issue was prodigious.” 

Patrick Allitt’s assessment over the portrayal of Margaret Thatcher is well taken. As talented an actress as Gillian Anderson is, her frail depiction of the British PM made it appear she was walking around a nursing home with other old, feeble patients compared to the combative “Iron Lady’’ everyone remembers in the 1980s.

Even Tina Brown, journalist, magazine editor, and author of the “Diana Chronicles,” chimed in to say, “Mrs. Thatcher was a much defter and more charming political player than as written here but Gillian Andersen in the part is so brilliant, I don’t care.”

Unquestionably, Charles, Prince of Wales, the heir apparent to the British throne as the eldest son of Queen Elizabeth II (played splendidly by English actor, Josh O’Connor), is painted as a stuffy aristocrat, preoccupied with gardening, polo, horseback riding and his insatiable love for the opera.  And most damaging of all, he’s still madly in love with his true soulmate, Camilla Parker Bowles (played in The Crown by Emerald Fennell).

Prince Charles first laid eyes on Camilla Shand when she was 23 at a polo match at Windsor Great Park in 1970 and reportedly fell head over heels in love with her. Camilla married Andrew Parker Bowles, a British Army officer, in 1973. It was a stormy marriage, which ended in divorce in 1995.

The lack of true love Charles feels toward Diana is revealed as early as his engagement when asked if he is in love; the prince weakly smiles and answers ‘’whatever in love means.”

Such an icy answer was an ominous portent of what kind of marriage awaited the couple. Diana would later say that the “whatever in love’’ response was ghastly “and absolutely traumatized me.”

Charles first met Diana Spencer when she was 16 years old, while dating her older sister, Sarah.  According to press reports, Lady Sarah reintroduced Charles and Diana at a 1977 pheasant hunt at Althorp, the stately home and estate held by the aristocratic Spencer family for more than 500 years, in Northamptonshire England, approximately 75 miles northwest of London.

Diana was born in Norfolk, England on July 1, 1961, the third of the Lord and Lady Althorp’s four children.  Her father, the Viscount Althorp, who became an earl in 1975 was a remote descendant of the Stuart kings; and a direct descendant of King Charles II (1630-1685).

In addition, Diana’s family, the Spencer’s are related to Sir Winston Churchill and at least eight U.S. presidents, including George Washington, John Adams, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

As widely chronicled in books and news articles, Diana, a shy reserved child growing up was emotionally fractured when her parents divorced when she was only eight years old. In a bitter contentious divorce, Diana’s mother ran off with the heir to a wallpaper fortune.

Arguably, one of the most unsettling parts of season 4 centers on Princess Diana’s battles with bulimia, an eating disorder second only to opioid overdose as the deadliest mental illness. About 26% of people with eating disorders, studies reveal, attempt suicide.

There are a number of scenes of Diana gorging herself with food, only to be painfully hunched over a bathroom toilet disgorging herself of the food she just ate.

In the book, “Diana: Her True Story--in Her Own Words''  by royal biographer Andrew Morton, Diana said the ‘’bulimia started the week after we got engaged.” She remembers Charles putting his hand on her waistline and saying, “Oh, a bit chubby here, aren’t we?” The offhanded remark triggered her eating disorder.

Sometimes, it takes a prominent news maker like Princess Diana to bring public attention to an illness or disease. Lynn Slawsky, Executive Director of the National Association of Anorexia and Associated Disorders (ANAD) thinks Diana’s eating disorder as portrayed in The Crown, helps immeasurably in building public awareness and to start a conversation, which according to Slawsky, “helps reduce stigma, which is often a deterrent to getting help.”

ANAD is a leading provider of free, peer support for anyone in eating disorder recovery.

Slawsky did express her disappointment that the website listed at the beginning of episodes 3, 6, and 10 of The Crown (season 4) had very little to do with eating disorders.  “I had to dig around for a few minutes before finding information about it under self-harm and suicide,” Slawsky said. “Given the trigger warning was for eating disorder behavior,” Slawsky explained, “the resources provided should have been for help with eating disorders. People who are distressed and triggered may not have the patience to dig through the wannatalkaboutit website.”

Photo Credit: Creative Expansions Inc

***

The Crown, unquestionably, depicts Princess Diana in a sympathetic light, saddled in a loveless marriage, while surrounded by a cold, unsympathetic Queen and royal family. Many argue Prince Charles was unfairly cut to shreds, making him appear more villainous than princely.

Keith Wrightson, an early modern’ England historian at Yale University, tells me that he always felt sorry for Charles.

“He had no life. He had to endure the demands of his ghastly father, Prince Phillip, and an awful scheming uncle, Mountbatten (aka “Dickie,” a British royal officer and an uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh). Charles was forced to conform to expectation,” Wrightson observed.

Wrightson, a British born historian, attended Cambridge University at the same time as Prince Charles during the rebellious 1960s, “I saw him twice in three years,” Wrightson said. “On the second occasion I was standing quite near him and his bodyguard and noticed that he was really well shaved; perfectly smooth cheeks and jaw. It seemed symbolic of his situation, surrounded as he was by youths with long hair, trying to grow moustaches and sideburns.”

Wrightson remembers the young Charles as shy, embarrassed to be noticed, who usually slipped into lectures slightly late and left slightly early. Charles tutors told Wrightson that the young prince was fascinated with leftish political theory of the time, and tried to think about how that could be reconciled with his own privileged position and role. But his interest was stopped in its tracks by his father, Prince Phillip, who harshly disapproved and prohibited Charles from reading such inflammatory material.

In sizing up the highly publicized ruptured relationship between Charles and Diana, Wrightson says, “people feel sorry for Diana.  I felt sorry for him. It seems he always loved Camilla; so, I hope they have found something personal to compensate - apart from the obvious compensations of wealth, estates, leisure, and lack of any material insecurity. But what kind of life has it been?  Hard for me to imagine.”

For those who think Charles is being unfairly demonized in The Crown, author Tina Brown cautions readers that British screenwriter and playwright, Peter Morgan, the creator and showrunner of The Crown, has a predilection for rearranging the furniture.

“[Peter] Morgan,” Brown said, ‘is very clever about shifting empathy around the characters and who knows what he will make the audience feel about Diana in the next season.”

Among other stage, film, and television productions, Peter Morgan was the playwright for “The Audience.” “Frost/Nixon” and screenwriter for the motion picture, “The Queen” (2006), a biographical drama that chronicled the death of Diana, Princess of Wales on August 31, 1997.

Warren Hoge, former London bureau chief for The New York Times, and currently vice president and director of external relations at the International Peace Institute (IPI) is also a keen admirer of Peter Morgan and his blockbuster Netflix drama. Whether we should accept the Crown as fact or pure fiction is one area where Hoge might have some reservations. “I generally have little problem with artistic license being taken to further a good historical story,” Hoge said, “but depicting nearly contemporaneous events presents fresh challenges to the practice, much like how Oliver Stone seriously misrepresented events and characters and inserted conspiracy theories in his JFK.”

Oliver Dowden, the British government’s culture secretary, recently requested that Netflix add a disclaimer to the new season, to underscore that The Crown is fiction and not historically accurate. Netflix flatly refused, saying, “we have always presented ‘The Crown’ as a drama — and we have every confidence our members understand it’s a work of fiction that’s broadly based on historical events.”

Despite Prince Charles absorbing some punishing blows in Season 4 of The Crown, Hoge thinks that “public judgment of him and even of Camilla will weather chapter five and six, and who knows, maybe he’ll be King by then.”

As The Crown season 4 wrapped up: Charles and Diana’s marriage had become largely irreconcilable. After 1986, Charles resumed his romantic relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles, while Diana lunged into romantic flings with cavalry officer James Hewitt and her bodyguard, Barry Mannakee.

Fans of The Crown will have to wait until 2022 before season 5 hits Netflix again to see how the show’s creator, Peter Morgan, unravels this Greek tragedy before our eyes.

It was originally thought that season 5 of The Crown would be its last. Morgan, however, had a change of heart and announced back in July that there would, indeed, be a sixth season, which would be its last.

In a press release, Morgan stated: “As we started to discuss the story lines for Series 5, it soon became clear that in order to do justice to the richness and complexity of the story we should go back to the original plan and do six seasons” “To be clear,” Morgan stressed, “Series 6 will not bring us any closer to present day — it will simply enable us to cover the same period in greater detail.”

-Bill Lucey

WPLucey@gmail.com

December 13, 2020

Charles Dickens Revisited: 150 Years Later

Portrait Of Charles Dickens is a painting by William Powell Frith

***

Have you wondered how our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens, is holding up after all these years?

2020 marked the 150^th year of his death. The celebrated Victorian novelist died on June 9, 1870 after suffering a brain aneurysm. He was 58, leaving his final novel, Edwin Drood unfinished.

The Dickens canon includes: 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles. Dickens also lectured and performed readings extensively (including the United States), while championing children's rights, education, penal reform, legal reform, sanitation, and public health.

As the conventions of society advance in the 21^st century, some iconic historical figures once widely admired have fallen into disgrace to the point of having their memorials and statutes removed or destroyed for not clinging to 21^st century progressive thinking in previous centuries.

In the United States, the primary author of the Declaration of Independence and third U.S. President, Thomas Jefferson; along with the original liberal lion, Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, have been scorned for their ownership of slaves.

Across the Atlantic, Prime Minister of the Cape Colony from 1890-1896, Cecil Rhodes is despised for his imperialism and colonization; and may have paved the way for Apartheid in South Africa. In his will, he left sizeable fortunes to Oxford University to establish the Rhodes scholarships to provide places at Oxford for students from the United States, the British colonies, and Germany. Former president Bill Clinton, United States Ambassador Susan Rice, and U.S. Senator Cory Booker, among others, were recipients of Rhodes benevolence.

And in June of this year, the British Bulldog, Winston Churchill’s statue in Parliament Square in London was sprayed over for a couple of days with the phrase “Churchill was a racist.” Many argue Churchill was unsympathetic to Blacks and their struggles for equality. He was also known to have expressed some grotesque racial epithets about not only Blacks, but people from India.

So, as one of the finest English novelists in British literature is being lionized and honored 150 years after his death, I wondered if there are any shocking occurrences of Dickens past that were swept under the rug and only recently have come to light?

Robert L. Patten, Professor (Emeritus) of Humanities and English at Rice University, observed that “Dickens could be vicious, breaking with friends, colleagues, and some of his children—he told one son that it would have been better if his brother had never lived.” “There were times,’’ Patten explained, “especially after the first Indian uprising and the massacre at Cawnpore, when he could be deeply, terribly racist. But his efforts, in periodicals as well as fictions, in speeches as well as philanthropy, to help the poor, the suffering, the abused, the uneducated, to better lives, was massive, sustained, and immensely influential.”

Carolyn Oulton, Director of the International Centre for Victorian Women Writers at Canterbury Christ Church University (Canterbury, Kent, England), said that “people feel disappointed by his [Dicken's] personal failings in ways that they wouldn't in relation to other writers. They also make excuses for him - the endless speculation about whether Ellen Ternan was really his mistress - in ways that would be unthinkable and possibly unnecessary with regard to his contemporaries.”

Dickens marriage to Catherine Hogarth (April, 1836) became irrevocably disrupted when Ellen Ternan, an 18-year-old actress, met Dickens in August, 1857, when he was 45. She eventually became the novelist’s mistress. Catherine and Charles had 10 children together; Catherine also suffered two miscarriages. At the urging of her mother, Catherine Hogarth left Dickens in 1858 as the two of them drifted apart and increasingly became incompatible. Their separation was highly publicized and splashed across British newspapers.

Oulton points out that Dickens was capable of cruelty, but also great loyalty. “He worked relentlessly to make money for relations who had very little claim on him but also cast people off easily if they offended him. He made some dreadful comments about women (most Victorians did), but he also showed them a lot of professional respect. “

In commemorating 150 years since Charles Dickens death, Professor Oulton has mapped the different places the English novelist travelled through London, including the places where he wrote certain novels, such as David Copperfield and Great Expectations.

One critical chapter of Dickens life that remains untarnished 150 years after his death, was his vigorous agitation for improvements in the quality of life for the poor and less fortunate.

He experienced poverty at a young age. His family’s financial plight forced them to move to a poor era of London, Camden Town. At age 12, with his father experiencing mounting debts, the young Dickens was plucked from school and forced to work at Warren’s Blacking Warehouse, a factory which specialized in “blacking,’’ or shoe polish.

 ‘Please sir, may I have some more?’ James Mahoney’s illustration for chapter one of Dickens’s ‘Adventures of Oliver Twist.’ (Image: Public domain)

***

As he progressed into adulthood and began his writing career, Dickens walked his talk.

The trials and tribulations of his impoverished childhood found its voice in many of his novels, including The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Little Dorrit, and David Copperfield. Oliver Twist, Dickens second novel, is especially renowned for illustrating the harsh life and squalor of the slums of an orphan (Oliver Twist) trying to make his way through the mean streets of London.

Dickens additionally exposed the punishing brutality at an English boys’ school in Nicholas Nickleby (published in 1838). His father served time for debt at the Marshalesa Prison. The humiliation of a debtor’s prison found expression in Little Dorrit.

Remarkably, 150 years after his death, the legacy of Charles Dickens still lives on in the 21^st century.

To underscore Dickens staying power in the 21^st century, Robert L. Patten informed me that on the 200th anniversary of his birth, in 2012, “worldwide celebrations organized by the British Council and the Charles Dickens Museum reached an audience of over 60 million. More new copies of A Christmas Carol were sold that year in Italy than in the United Kingdom.”

Professor Patten has written extensively on Dickens, including authoring the books: "Charles Dickens and His Publishers," and "Charles Dickens and 'Boz': The Birth of the Industrial-Age Author."

George H. Ford, Professor of English at the University of Rochester, once wrote that “since the 1950s, Dickens reputation has risen to great heights, so high that recently there have been more written him each year than about any other author in the English language except Shakespeare.”

What’s more, in any movie database you’ll find at least fifty adaptations based on the books written by Charles Dickens.

Malcolm Andrews, Emeritus Professor of Victorian and Visual Studies in the School of English at the University of Kent (Canterbury, Kent, United Kingdom), informs me that “the Dickens Fellowship (founded in 1902), to which I belong and whose journal I edit) has branches all over the world.” “Not surprising,’’ Andrew said, “since he himself was/is an inspiration for fellowship: so much of his work was a mission to bring people together, to dissolve class divisions, to reunite families (hence his special concentration on Christmas), and to rejuvenate people's imaginations. On the latter note, one of my favorite quotations of his is this -- about his hoped-for legacy:”

“'I hope I have done my part to make the rising generation "more childish," in rendering them a little more imaginative, a little more gentle, and a little less conceited and hard, than they would have been without me. I desire to do nothing better.”

 As much as the literature of Dickens is still highly revered, Charlie Tyson PhD student in English at Harvard University, cautions, however, that Dickens novels have lost a little steam in college classrooms, mostly because his novels run so long, as many as 800 pages in some cases.

“Teachers,” Tyson tells me, “usually select Hard Times (well worth reading, but not Dickens's best) or Great Expectations. Last year I taught a seminar on "The Queer Bildungsroman" (a Bildungsroman is a coming-of-age novel) in which we read David Copperfield in full; my students loved it, but spending 25% of our semester on a single novel was something of a risk.”

Tyson additionally thinks writers like George Eliot and Thomas Hardy, among the Victorian novelists, packs more of a philosophical punch and exhibit more artistic control than Dickens. Still, Tyson contends Dickens “remains one of the best entry points into the classic phase of the English novel. He is especially good to read when you are a child, because he specializes in injustices and cruelties administered to children.”

Thankfully, Charles Dickens has held up reasonably well 150 years after his death. He’s still taught widely in college classrooms both in the United and Britain. His quotes from a Christmas Carol are still widely invoked around the holidays, especially “I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future.”

And his character flaws are largely dismissed as the antiquated spirit of the age in Victorian society.

Further, during a time when vast amounts of people are experiencing job losses, mounting debt, and financial hardship since COVID-19 ruthlessly struck the world, Dickens novels about suffering, stresses of the less fortunate, while attacking privilege, snobbery, and injustice--rings as true today as it did in the 19^th century.

One of the most tender lines about Dickens and his legacy came from an 1870 New York Times obituary of the English writer and social critic.”

“It is the accidents of life which decide the fate of men. In the lonely places of the earth his books have been unfailing solace to many an exile, and they have shed hope and light in many a sick room, and comforted a many an afflicted heart.”

--Bill Lucey

November 15, 2020

WPLucey@gmail.com

A Q&A with Former Indians' Player Brandon Guyer

One of the downsides of becoming attached to certain players on a professional team is knowing they are operating on borrowed time. They eventually go their own way and leave for new opportunities and greener pastures.

Such is the case with Cleveland Indians utility outfielder, Brandon Guyer, who was a member of the Cleveland Indians from 2016-2018, which included his appearance in the 2016 World Series, when the Cleveland Indians came up short against the Chicago Cubs in seven games. Guyer became the first player to ever enter as a substitute in a deciding Game 7 of World Series and collect two hits.

Along with his nine home runs and 32 RBI’s in 101 games with the Indians in 2016, Guyer distinguished himself in leading MLB with 31 hit by pitches. He batted .336 for the year.

After departing Cleveland after the 2018 season, he signed minor league deals with the Chicago White Sox and San Francisco Giants respectively, but fell victim to the injury bug. He was released by the Giants in March; and on July 6, 2020, the West Chester Pennsylvania native officially announced his retirement.

What is he doing now?

The seven-year veteran of Major League Baseball has written an e-book, The Fully Equipped Athlete in which he chronicles how an athlete can best prepare for a career in baseball, by not only helping them develop their physical skills, but also their nutritional and mental side, all three of these skill sets, Guyer argues, are essential if a baseball player hopes to reach his full potential. Many of the tools that Guyer writes about are the same fundamental tools he developed to break into the major leagues in 2011 with the Tampa Bay Rays.

The easy-going utility player was kind enough to answer some questions I had for him about his time in Cleveland, his family life, and what he’s doing now since retirement.

    Q. Prior to your retirement, you played in the major leagues for seven seasons. What were some of the contributing factors that led to your retirement at age 34?

A. “There were a couple factors that led to my retirement. First, I wanted to be around family more. Second, I told myself if I didn't make a big-league team that that would be it. Lastly, I already knew what I wanted to do in the next chapter of my life with Fully Equipped Athlete. All of those reasons made it that much easier.”

 Q. You played with the Cleveland Indians from 2016-2018. What are your favorite memories of Cleveland, Ohio as a vibrant city; and what special memories do you have of the team itself, including some individual players you were fortunate enough to play with?

A. “I could not have asked to play for a better organization or city than Cleveland. The fans were amazing and I will never forget the energy they had each and every game. It made it so much easier to play in front of fans that were so passionate just as they were. I was fortunate to play with so many great players there, so it's hard to pick just a couple. I'll just say that I am so grateful to have been part of teams that made it to the playoffs three years in a row.”

 Q. Now that you’re no longer under his clutches, what was your former manager, Terry Francona, like to play for? I notice he never embarrasses or calls out a member of the team. He seems to always have your back when reporters are in the room. But what about behind closed doors? Does he light a fire under your keister if a player screwed up or didn’t play up to his potential? Was he approachable as a manager if you had something to get off your chest?

A. “Terry Francona was amazing to play for! You couldn't ask for a better manager to play for. He kept everything loose and let us go out there and have fun. He demanded we play the game hard and the right way, and if we did that all was good. If someone made a mistake, he would never embarrass them or call them out even behind closed doors. He was exactly the same guy you see on TV or in interviews.”

Photo Credit: Fully Equipped Athlete

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Q. Now that you’re retired from Major League Baseball, you’ve begun a new chapter in your life with a new website and athletic program, the Fully Equipped Athlete . What is the objective of this new program and what do you hope to accomplish? Why did you start it?

A. "The mission of Fully Equipped Athlete is to equip athletes with the tools necessary to be great both on and off the field. There is not enough emphasis on the mental side, nutrition side, lifestyle side, etc. for athletes and I want to help them develop those skills so that they can unlock their full potential. Those tools are what helped me make the most of my talent, and I know it will do the same for each and every athlete we work with.”

 Q.) I once heard manager Terry Francona during a pregame interview, tell Tom Hamilton that the “mental” preparation for a game is just as important as the “physical” preparation. Do you agree with that? And what exactly did Tito mean by that?

 A.) “Yes, he is totally correct. The mental side is putting time in to learn about the opposing team and the pitcher you're going to face. Also, visualizing success and putting yourself in situations that you think may happen in the game so when you get there it will feel like you've already been there before.”

 Q.) During your professional baseball career, you and your lovely wife, Lindsay, have raised three adorable children: Riley, Camden, and a new member of the Guyer team, Cooper. How difficult is it for a professional baseball player to raise a family while bouncing from city-to-city over a six-month period? Do you feel more connected to your family now that you don’t have to do so much traveling?

 A.) “It is definitely a balance act to have kids and play baseball. For sure, it is harder for my wife as she has to be on her own with the kids when I am out of town. Without a doubt I feel more connected now and so thankful to be around them more and be more involved in their life.

Q. Where is home for you and Lindsay now?

A. “Home is in Rockville, Maryland.”

Q.) How difficult will it be for players to play a 60-day season in front of an empty stadium due to COVID-19? Will the competitiveness still be there?

A.” I think it will for sure be difficult at first, but eventually they will all get used to it. They are the best players in the world for a reason and when it's time to compete they will be able to flip the switch, with fans or not.”

 Q.) Prior to the Coronavirus mess, the big talk in MLB circles was the cheating scandal involving the Houston Astros during last year’s postseason, including suspicions Jose Altuve was wired. A number of Astro players, while admitting guilt, pointed out that they weren’t the only ones guilty of stealing signs. As far as you know, were there other players and other teams gaming the system to gain a competitive advantage?

A. “I am honestly not aware of other players or teams taking part in cheating. I know that no team I have been on has done it, but I cannot speak for all of the others. “

Brandon Guyer with his wife, Lindsay, and children, Riley and Camden, when he was with the Cleveland Indians.

Photo Credit: Fabwags.com 

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Brandon Guyer’s Favorites

Favorite Movie: Gladiator

Favorite Group/Artist: Lil Wayne

Favorite Athlete Growing Up: Ken Griffey Jr.

Favorite Team Growing Up: Philadelphia Phillies

Who Most Influenced You: My Father

Favorite Road City: Seattle

Favorite Road Stadium: Minute Maid Park (Houston)

Favorite TV Show: Ballers/Shark Tank

Source: Cleveland Indians Media Guide (2018)

--Bill Lucey

WPLucey@gmail.com

August 6, 2020