ASU Emeritus Voices Journal, Vol. 30

Voices

The Science of Paul Scowen

Emeritus Voices

The Journal of the Emeritus College at Arizona State University

Editorial Board

Editor

Richard J. Jacob

Assistant Editor

Joann Tongret

Editorial Assistants

Megan Joyce

Advisory Board

Jean R. Brink (2022)

Aleksandra Gruzinska (2023)

Randel Helms (2022)

Sarah Hudelson (2023)

Leslie Kane (2022)

Shannon Perry (2023)

John Reich (2022)

Stephen Siek (2023)

Ernie Stech (2022)

Harvey Smith, Chair (2022)

JoAnn Tongret (2022)

Emeritus College

Old Main, Room 102 PO Box 873002

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emerituscollege@asu.edu

Emeritus College

A place and a purpose.

Emeritus Voices is the literary and scholarly Journal of the Emeritus College at Arizona State University. The Journal is intended for the expression, edification, and enjoyment of members of the Emeritus College and others interested in the content. The Journal provides a vehicle for interdisciplinary interaction and education. Submissions are invited for fiction, non–fiction, memoir, essay, poetry, scholarship, review, photography, graphic arts, etc., exploring all facets of creativity, scholarship and life experience.

Instructions for submissions can be found at: emerituscollege.asu.edu/submission-guidlines

Correspondence should be sent to Editor, Emeritus Voices Arizona State University

P.O. Box 873002, Tempe, AZ 85287-3002, or emerituscollege@asu.edu

Emeritus Voices considers for publication letters from its readers in response to articles published in the journal. Letters will be selected on the basis of interest, thoughtfulness, cogency and reasonableness. Letters may be submitted by email or postal mail. See Submission Guidelines in this issue for details.

Copyright © 2022

Unless indicated otherwise, the copyright for each individual article, poem or illustration in this issue is retained by the author, artist or owner (as indicated in the illustrations credits on p. 182).

Arizona State University

Tempe, AZ 85281

Printed in the United States of America

ISSN 1942-3039

To Catch a Rainbow Richard Jacob

As some of you know, in addition to my day job as a physicist, I was a semi-professional musician; that is to say, I gladly accepted payment for gigs. This often led, in conversational settings with new or casual acquaintances, to my collocutor, not wanting to discuss physics (I never blame them) resorting to the observation that many of their scientific friends, especially from the quantitative sciences, enjoy performing music avocationally, some of them quite well. I would agree; I have observed the same. And then, the new line of discussion apparently bearing fruit, they invariably go on to hypothesize that the reason must be that music—die holde Kunst—can be broken down to mathematical intervals and progressions, it being implied that of course scientists cannot possibly have truly artistic souls. Left brain, right brain and all that. At this point I would suddenly discover that I wanted an hors d’oeuvre from a tray across the room. But occasionally I would spend the time and patience to explain as best I could that it is in fact the other way around, at least for me and most of the musician scientists I know. It is our love of our science, whatever it may be, as an art form; of our work as an artistic endeavor; not its rigor, that expands our attention and efforts beyond that to which we are primarily dedicated. As the most iconic scientist of the Twentieth Century said, “After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in esthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest scientists are always artists as well.” (A. E.) Of course,

the art of the scientist has always to satisfy the constraints of observation and logic, but this need be no barrier to beauty, imagination or the other aesthetic virtues. Maxwell’s equations governing electricity and magnetism are jaw-droppingly beautiful; Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, expressed mathematically, is awesome in its efficient simplicity, like a couplet from the world’s best-revered poet; the pictorial reconstruction from data of the collision of two gold atoms at speeds near that of light defies brush and pallet.

None of this is to assuage my frustration at an old pet peeve, but rather to introduce with pleasure to the faithful Emeritus Voices reader the extension of our usual art pictorial, featuring in each issue one of the Emeritus College’s graphic and performance artists, to the art of our scientist colleagues. Our first scientist cum artist is astronomer Paul Scowen. I hope his amazing photographs from the universe around us inspire you as they do me.

But Scowen is not the only Paul, featured in this issue, to demonstrate the entanglement of the “two cultures.” Geologist Paul Knauth invites us along in his search for ever-clearer skies under which to search the heavens “for purely aesthetic reasons—I’m not doing any science.” And Harvey Smith is persuasive in his portrayal of mathematics as being much more than the cold consideration of numbers and equations. This larger than usual issue of Emeritus Voices (we seem to have emerged from our COVID cocoons) contains thoughtful analyses by Terry Bell on Lincoln’s effective interpretation of texts, in David Berman’s review of Arizona minorities’ battles for voting rights, Gretchen Bataille’s survey of changing patterns in higher education and Dirk Raat’s history of the Mormon pioneers’ interactions with Native Americans. Jeanie Brink reveals an episode in her retirement life, Lee Croft engages with a cold-war spy, Aleksandra Gruzinska recalls her years as a young Polish refugee living on a German farm during World War II and Jane and Paul Jackson describe a scary recent health crisis. Shannon Perry takes her grandson to London! Tally ho! David Kader moves us with his essay of short fragments derived from a consciousness of holocaust horror, and Ernie Stech draws an important lesson from another

culture.

There is poetry to evoke a rainbow of emotions from Shannon, Perry, John Johnson, Babs Gordon and JoAnn Tongret; nostalgia from Tongret’s review of a favorite old movie and a suggestion or two by yours truly for reading the book behind that recent flick (or streaming the film from that book-club read.) Also check out Paul Jackson’s Golden Age of Hollywood impressions. And finally, I hope you like the new look of this, the 30th edition in Emeritus Voice’s fifteen-year existence. Fancy new clothes and accessories, many thanks to VisLab compositor, Megan Joyce.

A collision of gold nuclei in [an] experiment at RHIC (the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory) creates a fireball of pure energy from which thousands of new particles are born.

What is Math About? Harvey

A. Smith

I once mentioned to my dentist that I did research in mathematics. Surprised, he asked, "How can you do research in mathematics? Isn't it all known?" Repeating this, which I thought a funny story, I found my non-mathematical friends shared his view.

Teaching a course on the history of modern mathematics to math majors, I would ask them, as their first homework, to interpret the following unrhymed poem by a mathematician:

Paradox

By Clarence R. Wylie, Jr.

Not truth, nor certainty. These I foreswore

In my novitiate, as young men called To holy orders must abjure the world

‘If…, then…,’ this only I assert; And my successes are but pretty chains

Linking twin doubts, for it is vain to ask If what I postulate be justified, Or what I prove possess the stamp of fact.

Yet bridges stand, and men no longer crawl In two dimensions. And such triumphs stem

In no small measure from the power of this game, Played with the thrice-attenuated shades Of things, has over their originals. How frail the wand, but how profound the spell!

A few, inspired by literature classes, gave strange, recondite—even religious—interpretations. None of them understood that Wylie was precisely answering the title question of this lecture. Much of my course was devoted to explaining that in great detail. Here, I will give a one-lecture synopsis.

Ancient mathematics developed to meet practical ends: deciding how much to tax the peasants, building temples and pyramids, and settling boundary disputes after floods obliterated established markers. The latter use came to be called "geometry," from the Greek for "earth measurement." Allegedly, Egyptian priests, seeking to resolve disputes, developed a technique for getting the disputants to agree. Starting from a few assertions held in common by the parties, they would then argue logically to arrive at a conclusion which all must accept and so resolve the dispute. Some Greeks—notably Pythagoras—were fascinated by this practice. Pythagoras developed a religious cult devoted to seeking "truth" by this logical method, which he encountered while traveling in Egypt. Geometry flourished in Greek culture; the motto over the door to Plato's Academy in Athens read, "Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here."

Euclid of Alexandria wrote Elements of Geometry in the reign of the first Greek Pharaoh, Ptolemy I, around 300 BCE. It remained the standard approach to plane geometry for over two thousand years. Euclid stated ten assumptions, to which he thought every right-thinking person must agree. Five, like, "Things equal to the same thing are equal to each other," he called "axioms." A second five, such as, "Any two points can be connected by a straight line," he called "postulates" because he considered them less basic. Statements arrived at by arguing logically, assuming only the axioms

Clarence R. Wylie Editor’s note: The Editor had the great privilege of studying applied mathematics at both the undergraduate and graduate levels with Professor Wylie.

and postulates, were called “theorems.” Today, we don’t usually distinguish between "axioms" and “postulates.” The terms “point,” “line,” and “plane”—the idealized “objects” supposedly being studied—were never defined; everyone thought they sort of knew what those terms meant. Many scholars thought one of Euclid's postulates for plane geometry was overly complicated. It said, "For any line, and any point not on that line, there is exactly one line containing that point which has no point in common with the first line." Two lines in the plane that don't intersect are called "parallel," so this is called "the parallel postulate." They felt such a complicated statement should be provable as a theorem, rather than being a separate postulate. For two thousand years, they tried in vain to prove the parallel postulate from the others, rather than assuming it. In 1733, Girollamo Saccheri, a Jesuit priest, convinced himself he had succeeded and published Euclides ab Omni Naevo Vindicatus (Euclid Cleared of Every Blemish). His approach was to assume the falsity of Euclid's parallel postulate and try to establish a contradiction with the others, thereby proving it. Assuming there could be more than one parallel line, Saccheri correctly proved many strange-seeming

“The School of Athens” by Raphael Apostolic Palace of the Vatican

theorems, but he never really arrived at a contradiction. Finally, he decided the theorems he proved were so bizarre they contradicted common sense. That, he declared, constituted a contradiction of the other axioms.

Other mathematicians tried a similar, but different, approach. Instead of assuming there was only one parallel line—as Euclid had postulated—or more than one parallel line, as Saccheri had, they assumed there were none. Like Saccheri, they found no contradictions. Soon they realized the theorems they were proving described matters well-known to artists who were drawing scenes in perspective.

Imagine yourself as an artist painting a scene on a flat canvas. Everything along the same line extended from your eye corresponds to a single point on the canvas—the closest point on that line blocks the others from view. Now, think of your eye as being at the center of a sphere, with you looking along a line in a particular direction. To get a familiar picture of this situation, think of the sphere as being a globe of the Earth and the line of sight as being toward the point where the Greenwich meridian (0° longitude) crosses the equator (0° latitude). The north pole is overhead, and the south pole is down. You can see only things in front, between 90° east and 90° west.

Now, imagine that you are at the center of a transparent spherical shell. All points on any particular vertical line you see in space will lie at the same longitude of the sphere, so you see and draw the line as a straight vertical line of longitude; if the original line were extended to infinity at both ends, the line would appear to run from pole to pole. Two different parallel vertical lines at the same longitude are seen as the same line by the artist since one lies behind the other. If they lie at different longitudes, they correspond to different longitudes

Projection on a sphere of a vertical line at a lateral angle as seen by an artist at the center of the sphere. (Colored spots indicate projections of circular objects.)

on the globe corresponding to circles—which, unlike the original parallel lines—intersect at the poles. The lines representing them on your canvas approach one another as they become more distant from the eye but, since your canvas is finite, you cannot show them intersecting. (Parallel lines that are not vertical behave similarly—just think of the globe being rotated so the plane containing both the circle and the artist’s eye passes through the north and south poles.)

We can think of our canvas as a plane perpendicular to the direction of vision. If the canvas is infinitely large, every visible point corresponds to a point on the canvas but, as the visible points approach the 90° limit of visibility in any direction, the points on the canvas move infinitely far away toward the edges of the canvas and parallel lines emanating from a distant origin at the center of the canvas would diverge as they approach the edge. This is how artists render a scene in strict perspective. For instance, a road of constant width is shown on the finite canvas as diverging as it gets farther away from its distant source near the center of the painting.

One-point perspective. The reader should convince himself that when viewed from appropriate angles from the center of a transparent spherical shell, all straight lines: sides of road, hedgerows and tree trunks, project onto great circle arcs on the sphere.

Since it is undefined, we can think of the word “line” as meaning a “great circle” on the visible hemisphere (i.e., a circle centered on the artist’s eye, as the longitudes are.) A great circle arc is the shortest distance between two points on the spherical surface. With the exception of the equator, the latitude circles on a globe are not great circles. If we take “line” to mean the portion of a great circle within the visible hemisphere, including its boundary circle, we can say there are no parallel lines.

Today, mathematicians call the visible hemisphere (together with the infinity circle, its diametrically opposite points being thought of as a single point) the projective plane. (Our artist is "projecting" the hemisphere of his vision onto the plane of the canvas.) A "line" in the projective plane, is defined to mean a great circle on that hemisphere. Similarly, it proved possible to construct a more complicated “hyperbolic” surface on which all Saccheri's theorems hold; as with the spherical surface, except for the parallel postulate, all of Euclid's axioms and postulates hold, but there are many parallels through a point, rather than just one. These examples provide two different "non-Euclidean" geometries. In one there are no parallels, and in the other there are infinitely many. Thus, the parallel postulate is not a theorem that can be proved from the other axioms and postulates.

By the mid-nineteenth century, it became apparent to many mathematicians that, rather than describing "reality," mathematics only studied the logical consequences of a set of axioms. This approach led to the development of wholly new fields of mathematics, including spaces with more than three dimensions—even infinitely many—and "curved" spaces. By the second decade of the twentieth century, when Einstein needed a four-dimensional (three space and one time) curved space for his theory of gravity, which is called general relativity, he found the theory of such spaces was already being studied by some Italian mathematicians and they helped him learn how to use their results. Two decades later, physicists found the mathematics they needed for quantum mechanics in a theory of infinite-dimensional spaces. Today mathematics is seen as being simply the process of studying the logical consequences

of a set of axioms about objects that are themselves undefined—just as "line", "point", and “plane” were left undefined by Euclid. If the axioms don't contradict one another, the question of whether they are "true"— in the sense of describing something in the physical universe—doesn't arise. That's a question for physicists and engineers, not mathematicians. Often, when the undefined "objects" (lines, etc.) being discussed in the axioms were given physical interpretations, the results obtained by pursuing the logical consequences of what might seem a bizarre set of axioms proved amazingly useful in unforeseen ways. That is what Wylie's poem is about.

Modern mathematics only says, "Here is a bunch of statements we will call 'axioms’ (The "ifs" of Wylie's poem.) about some undefined objects. We will reason that if they are true, then other statements about those objects, which we will call theorems, must also be true" (the "thens" of the poem.) We make no assertion about the axioms or the theorems themselves being "true" or "certain." Only that if the axioms are assumed to be true then the theorems must logically follow. (Of course, if the axioms contradict one another, some must be discarded, since they can't all be assumed true.)

Let me give a simple example: Suppose there is a (possibly infinite) set of objects which, for convenience, we will sometimes denote by letters. And suppose there is a rule for combining these objects to produce another of the objects. We will denote the combination of the objects a and b (in that order) by a•b. We assume the following axioms:

Axiom 1. For any objects a, b, and c, ((a•b)•c) = (a•(b•c)), where the parentheses denote the order in which the operations are done. That is, if a is combined with b first, (a•b) and the resulting object is combined with c, ((a•b)•c)), it produces the same result as if combine a with (b•c), the result of combining b with c, all in the given order.

Axiom 2. There is a particular object, e, called “the identity,” such that, for any object a, e•a = a•e = a. Combining e with any object, in either order, leaves that object unchanged.

Axiom 3. For any object a, there is an object a-1 (called the inverse of a), such that

A set of objects, with a “combining” operation satisfying 1), 2), and 3) is called a group, and their study is called group theory.

Some easy basic theorems in group theory are:

If e and f are both identities, then e = f. (There is only one identity.)

Proof: f = e•f = e

If c and d are both inverses of a, then c=d. (An object has only one inverse.)

Proof:

One example of a group is all the integers {…,-3,-2,-1,0,1,2,3,…} with • being the usual + operation of addition, e being the number 0, and the inverse of an integer being its negative. Another example is the set of positive rational number with • being the usual operation of multiplication, e being the rational number 1, and the inverse of a positive rational number being its reciprocal: (2/3) • (3/2) = (3/2) • (2/3) = (1/1) = e upon cancellation of the 2’s and the 3’s.

In these examples the operation • also satisfies the rule a•b = b•a. We might conjecture that this is a theorem that could be proved for all groups. That is not true. If we add it as another axiom, we get a special set of groups, called Abelian groups, named after the early 19th century Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrich Abel. Groups in which a•b = b•a doesn’t always hold are called “non-Abelian.” The group of all possible motions of an object in space, with a•b meaning “motion b, followed by motion a,” the identity being not moving, and the inverse of a motion being the reverse motion is an example of a group which is non-Abelian. (To see this, face north and let a be the motion of lying down and b be that of turning to the east. If you turn before lying down, you end up lying on your back, with your legs pointing east.

Rotations of a die showing the non-Abelian properties of successive rotations about the x and z axes.

If you lie down first and then turn east, you end up on your side facing east with your legs pointing north.) You can also try this exercise with a book or a die.

All of the above examples of groups have infinitely many objects. Again, this does not follow from the axioms. A set with only two elements e and a and the operations e•a = a•e = a, a•a = e, (a is its own inverse,) and e•e = e is a group. (Let e represent the set of all even integers and a represent all the odd integers. and • be the usual addition. The operations then just say that the sum of any even and any odd integer is odd, the sum of any two odd integers is even, and the sum of any two even integers is also even.)

There are mathematicians who spend their lives studying the theory of groups. It was a notable achievement when they were able to show how to construct all the finite groups, a project only completed, in 2004, after decades of effort. It took hundreds of pages to establish their results! Group theory is considered a part of "Abstract Algebra," (sometimes called "Modern Algebra" in older texts.")

There are also "Modern Geometries"—even geometries with only finitely many points and lines. They are sometimes named after the mathematician who first studied them. For instance, "Fano's Geometry" and "Young's Geometry" share the following four axioms, but they differ in a fifth, with Fano using the projective plane axiom of no parallels and Young using Euclid's parallel axiom of exactly one parallel:

Axiom 1. There exists at least one line.

Axiom 2. There are exactly three points on every line.

Axiom 3. Not all points are on the same line.

Rubik’s cube. The solutions to this popular puzzle are examples of group theory at work.

Axiom 4. There is exactly one line on any two points (two points determine a line.)

Axiom 5. (Fano) There is a common point on any two lines (i.e. there are no parallel lines.)

Axiom 5. (Young) For each line L and point P, not on L, there is exactly one line on P having no point in common with L. (i.e. Euclid’s “parallel postulate.”)

You might be interested in proving (or looking up) that Fano's geometry has exactly seven points and seven lines, while Young's geometry has exactly nine points and thirteen lines.

Young children are taught arithmetic without any axioms—often they start by counting their fingers. Does that mean that elementary arithmetic is not part of what we now call mathematics? In 1889, the Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano introduced five axioms about “natural numbers”.

Axiom 1. Zero is a natural number.

Axiom 2. Every natural number has a “successor”, which is also a natural number.

Axiom 3. Zero is not the successor of any natural number.

Axiom 4. If the successors of natural numbers are the same, those natural numbers are the same.

Axiom 5. If a set contains zero and also contains the successor of every natural number in the set, then the set contains all the natural numbers.

Starting from those axioms, one can define all of simple arithmetic, indeed all of the classical objects of analysis: the negative integers, the rational numbers, the real numbers, and the complex numbers. This was expounded, brilliantly and completely, in the little book Grundla-

Giuseppe Peano

gen der Analysis (Foundations of Analysis) that the great number theorist Edmund Landau initially wrote for the education of his daughters°. Published in 1930, it became an international best seller and is still in print and widely available in many languages, including English.

Wylie’s poem tells us that mathematics is not about truth; it’s about logical consistency. There can in fact be a danger in believing that mathematics describes nature. It may lead to overconfidence in making statements about nature based on mathematical assumptions, and a belief the future can be predicted using mathematics. Sometimes it can, and philosophers have wondered why this is so, but mathematical results only reflect what logically follows from the assumptions being made, which may or may not be valid. Many predictions based on mathematical models are highly accurate, but others have proved to be extremely misleading because their underlying assumptions turned out not to be true. The hope is always that in such cases, avé Einstein, a “truer” set of axioms can be found. But it is not guaranteed.

The axioms of plane geometry may be close enough to "truth" for laying out the boundaries of a farmer's field, but for determining the boundaries of a large state or world-wide exploration, the geometry of

Edmund Landau

Landau’s Foundations of Analysis

a sphere is needed. For even higher accuracy, the fact that the earth is not a sphere, but is flattened at the poles to be (approximately) an "oblate spheroid" may be required. For astronomical distances and powerful gravitational fields, the curved space-time of Einstein's relativity is needed. And to understand the physics involved in the basic workings of a microchip, one needs mathematical spaces of infinite dimension.

The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's must be beautiful; the ideas, like the colours or the words must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.

G. H. Hardy

Ironies and Epiphanies

A Note of Some Importance to a Father

Ernie Stetch

In my years of teaching undergraduates, I was fortunate to have classes of 25-30 students, and we spent much class time in discussion and interaction. Thus, I was able to learn about the learners as individuals. I made it a regular practice, at the end of each semester, to identify several as good human beings. To me, that meant they were open and honest and displayed maturity. If I had been their age, I would have wanted them as friends.

In private, I asked each student for his or her parents’ address and said I would be sending them a note of appreciation of their offspring. I believed that their goodness arose out of parental values and modeling. Of course, the students were pleased and thanked me.

This went on for six or seven years, and I never received a reply from the parents. Neither did I expect one. It was a case of giving without expecting return.

Some years after leaving the full-time academic world, I did get an e-mail from a former colleague. He had met one of our graduates at an art exhibit. She said that her father had died in the previous year, and

she told him about my practice of sending notes to parents. When the family opened the man’s wallet, tucked in between cards, was a folded note. A note from me. Something he clearly prized.

Working with Buddy Ebsen

JoAnn

Yeoman Tongret

Many years ago, I had the pleasure of working with Buddy Ebsen, well known for his starring roles in the television series The Beverly Hillbillies, Barnaby Jones, and Davy Crockett. I was choreographing a production of Carousel and Buddy was hired in the cameo role of the angel who offers Billy Bigelow a second chance. The musical was produced at Gammage Auditorium by the Musical Theatre of Arizona.

Then in his 80’s, Buddy was as bright and energetic and charming as anyone could imagine. Before film and TV, Buddy had starred in Vaudeville as half of a dancing duo with his sister, Vilma. Vaudeville, for those not familiar with that incredibly popular form of theatre, was a blue-collar, family-friendly, variety revue that appealed to everyone on some level. It was, as is most of the theatre profession, a tight knit and outgoing community; a large family of entertainers ranging from mega stars to performing seals.

Buddy and I became pals during the rehearsal period and, since I knew Phoenix, I was asked to accompany him to the local TV station, where he filmed some commercials for the production. While the crew was setting up the lights he had time to regale the producer, the interviewer, and me with some

stories—including when he had to relinquish his role of the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz because he was poisoned by the earliest version of the silver emulsion paint in his makeup.

But the best story was yet to come. As vaudevillians toured the country, those who used the local pit orchestra for their number had few, if any, musical rehearsals. They just handed the sheet music to the conductor, sang a phrase for tempo and hoped for the best. As Buddy tells it, the dancers came up with something better. They developed the tradition of the “time step.” As tap dancers pulled into town they added variations of sound and complexity to this combination of percussive information. Then with all the flash of a top-billing act, Buddy got up, shed fifty years and did a single, a double, and a triple time step to illustrate his story. By that time every available employee of the station had slipped into the studio from the booth, the cafeteria, or the editing room to enjoy and applaud.

It was a lesson in time travel, passion, pride, and in the melding of generations, gender, and hierarchy. I’ll bet that everyone who was there still remembers Buddy Ebsen’s visit. I certainly won’t forget it.

A Memorable Student Evaluation of My Teaching Expertise

Shannon E. Perry

As a nursing professor, I taught in the classroom and the clinical area in my specialty of maternity nursing. I was the co-author of the textbook we used. Evaluations in the classroom consisted of multiple-choice tests and sometimes papers. In the clinical area, students were evaluated by observations of the care they provided and by written nursing care plans. Students were required to submit one or more written nursing care plans for evaluation. The textbook contained examples of care plans which students could use as a model.

I had one male student, about 35 years of age, who had emigrated

from Russia. He had some difficulty understanding the requirements for the care plans and toward the end of the semester had not submitted a satisfactory one which was required to pass the course. I informed him that I would give him one last chance to submit a satisfactory care plan. If the plan were not acceptable, he would fail the course. Within a day or two, he submitted a carefully written out care plan. As I read it, I recognized it. He had copied the care plan from the textbook, and it was a care plan that I had written! Needless to say, it was not satisfactory, and I informed him of that fact and that he would not pass the course.

He drew himself up to his full height and with barely concealed fury told me that “I have worked for the KGB; you are WORSE than the KGB!” Needless to say, I did not receive his vote for “Teacher of the Year.”

I learned later that he enrolled in another nursing program and was successful, graduating and obtaining a license to practice nursing so he was able to meet his goal of becoming a nurse.

Faced with the sacredness of life and of the human person, and before the marvels of the universe, wonder is the only appropriate attitude.

Pope John Paul II

Lincoln’s Deadly Hermeneutics

Terence Ball

My aim here is to extend and further explore the deeper meaning of a phrase that I coined some years ago: “deadly hermeneutics”: roughly, the idea that hermeneutics—the art of textual interpretation—can be, and often is, a deadly business, inasmuch as peoples’ lives, liberties and well-being hang in the balance. (1) By way of introduction and illustration I first consider briefly three modern examples of deadly hermeneutics. I then provide a short account of the hermeneutical-political situation in which Abraham Lincoln found himself in the run-up to the Civil War and subsequently during the war itself. This requires that I sketch an overview of the Southern case for secession and, more particularly, their interpretation of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to legitimize that radical move. I then attempt to show how Lincoln invoked and used a counter-interpretation of the Declaration in various of his speeches. I next look at President Lincoln's interpretation of the Constitution in the Emancipation Proclamation (1863), his suspension of Habeas Corpus and, finally, his finest, briefest—and at the time highly controversial—Gettysburg Address.

IIt is a truism that political actors interpret texts to legitimate and justify their actions and policies. For example, consider first how radical Islamists’ interpretation of the Qur’an lends legitimacy (in their eyes, at least) to a particular interpretation of the concepts of jihad (“struggle”) and takfir (the punishment of apostates,) which translates rather quickly into a strategy of terrorism and mass murder. What critics view as rank

rationalization, radical Islamists view as moral justification. Closer to home, radical anti-abortionists cite scripture by way of justifying their bombing of clinics and the killing of abortion providers. Or, if these two examples of deadly hermeneutics seem to be too theological and insufficiently “political,” consider Stalin’s situation in the mid-1930s.

In the course of consolidating his power, Stalin purged potential rivals who were put on trial on trumped-up charges and summarily shot. His fear of and animus toward Trotsky, Bukharin and other political opponents was perhaps understandable; but the execution of others appears, initially at least, to be puzzling, if not inexplicable. Consider the case of David Riazanov, the mild-mannered and deeply learned founder of The Marx-Engels Institute and editor of the MEGA (Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe, or collected works). Stalin ordered Riazanov shot and publication of the MEGA stopped, and also saw to it that several works by Lenin were omitted from the latter’s Collected Works. (2) At the same time Stalin published his first foray into Marxian theory, Dialectical and Historical Materialism (1938) which reappeared the following year as a chapter in his partisan history of the Russian Revolution and the Communist Party, the History of the CPSU (B), in 1939. (3) All of these events are interconnected. Stalin, who had initially been educated for the priesthood in a Russian Orthodox seminary knew that control over the meaning and interpretation of key texts was itself an important source of political power, authority, and legitimacy. Scholars and theorists who knew much more about Marx and Marxian theory than Stalin did had therefore to be silenced or even eliminated if Stalin's interpretations were to be accepted as authoritative. Hence his—quite literally—deadly hermeneutics.

II

The abrupt transition from Stalin to Lincoln is not quite as strange as it might first appear. Bound by his oath of office to uphold the Constitution, Lincoln lacked the power that Stalin had and exercised so ruthlessly. But he knew what Stalin and all or most major political figures know: that having one’s interpretations of key texts accepted as

authoritative is an important and perhaps indeed indispensable source of power—and political legitimacy. As early as 1838 Lincoln—like Machiavelli, Rousseau and other republican thinkers he had probably never read—advocated a “political religion” as a kind of civic cement to bind citizens to their nation and generations to each other. (4) As with any religion, a political or civil religion must have one or more sacred texts that must be read closely and interpreted carefully and perhaps creatively. For Lincoln the two major texts were the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Of the two, the Declaration was in his view the more basic or fundamental, not only because it was written earlier, but because, Lincoln believed, it made the United States a nation. The Constitution was secondary inasmuch as it promulgated the basic law by which that nation was to organize and govern itself. Moreover, Lincoln used the Declaration as an interpretive lens through which to read, to criticize—and finally to amend—the Constitution. This was no idle intellectual exercise. The 1850s saw constitutional crises of unprecedented scope and severity. Many Southerners spoke openly of secession. In their view secession was tantamount to another American Revolution and could be justified by invoking both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. For them, the operative part of the Declaration was

. . . whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [for which government is instituted], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundations and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. . .

If Northern abolitionists and the newly formed Republican Party had their way, white Southerners claimed, slavery would be abolished, their lives endangered, their safety and happiness imperiled, and poverty would replace prosperity. If secession was the only way to stave this off, then so be it. According to the Declaration—as they interpreted

it—they clearly had this right. (5)

But what of the Constitution? It says nothing at all about secession. And that, Southern apologists argued, is precisely the point: if the law is silent about action x, then x is legally permissible. As Hobbes famously said about “the liberty of subjects”: “Lyberties . . . depend on the silence of the law. In cases where the Sovereign has prescribed no rule, there the Subject hath the liberty to do, or forbeare, according to his own discretion.” (6) Since the Constitution says nothing about secession, then surely secession is constitutionally permissible. And when the Constitution does speak, it speaks in favor of the South and slavery though without using the words slave or slavery. For purposes of apportioning representatives in the House, each slave is to count for 3/5 of a person but is to be without the rights of a citizen (Art. I, sec. 2). The Constitution explicitly states that escaped slaves must by law be returned to their masters (Art. IV, sec. 2). It also gives Congress the power to outlaw (after 1808) the importation of slaves—but not the institution of slavery itself (Art. I, sec. 9). (7) And, not least, the concluding clause of the Fifth Amendment—the so-called “takings clause”—stipulates that “private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation.” It would therefore be unconstitutional to abolish slavery without the federal government (i) bearing the burden of specifying precisely the “public use” to which former slaves would then be put and (ii) compensating slave-owners for the loss of their (human) property. Hence the Constitution, according to the Southern reading, is a pro-slavery document.

Many Northerners regarded this interpretation of the Constitution as unassailable. Even prominent abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips agreed that the Constitution was a pro-slavery compact. It was, Garrison said, “a Covenant with Death, an Agreement with Hell,” and to underscore his point he publicly burned a copy in 1844. (8) For Garrison and the abolitionists, the Declaration and the Constitution were dueling documents, the first standing for human liberty and dignity, and the second for slavery and humiliation.

Here then was the hermeneutical situation in which Lincoln found himself in the 1850s. The Declaration's “self-evident” truth that “all men are created equal” was dismissed by many, both South and North, as either a “self-evident lie” (as Senator John Pettit of Indiana asserted), or as applying solely to “all white men” (Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, amongst many others), or as simply a “glittering generality” (Senator Rufus Choate of Maine) that played no part in the Declaration's avowed purpose in declaring American independence from Great Britain (John C. Calhoun). Southern apologists for slavery alternately said that the Declaration—inasmuch as it defended a right of revolution (which in their view was exactly equivalent to secession)—was a vital and living document or, when it suited them, as dead as the proverbial door-nail. And in their view no part of the Declaration was deader than “All men are created equal.” As for the Constitution, it was simply pro-slavery, for the reasons to which I have already alluded.

Lincoln’s task was both hermeneutical and political. He had to dispute and refute the then-influential interpretations just recounted, and do so in a way that would be widely regarded as demonstrably correct and therefore, almost by definition, persuasive. In the political climate of the 1850s this would, he knew, be an uphill struggle—a struggle, above all, to save the Union.

Different as they were, Southern secessionists and radical abolitionists agreed about one thing: Neither regarded the preservation of the Union as being of paramount importance. Preserving the institution of slavery was the primary aim of the former, and abolishing slavery the principal goal of the latter. Many abolitionists believed that the Union established by the Constitution was rotten to the core; if ending slavery meant disunion and civil war, then so be it. Southern secessionists argued that the Union created by the Constitution was an arrangement of convenience; if any state or states were inconvenienced, then they could by right leave the Union at will. The Constitution’s silence secured them that right.

Lincoln strove to save the Union and to make good on the Declara-

tion’s affirmation that all men are created equal. To many contemporaries this dual aspiration was simply a rank contradiction. You can have one or the other, but not both. Just as sailing against the wind requires tacking, so going into the political headwind required that Lincoln pursue a radical agenda while presenting himself as a conservative who sought only to preserve the Union. “What is conservatism?” he asks. “Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?”

(9) On Lincoln's telling, he was the true conservative, and secessionists and abolitionists alike were radicals who would forget—or radically reinterpret—the Declaration and the Constitution, and rend the Union asunder. What follows is a somewhat simplified account and analysis of Lincoln's hermeneutical-political strategy, focusing in particular on his interpretation of the Declaration of Independence.

Lincoln’s stature as a political thinker and his contribution to political thought remains a matter of scholarly controversy. He is certainly no Aristotle or Hobbes or Montesquieu or, for that matter, Thomas Jefferson. (10) But he is closer to Jefferson than one might imagine. For Lincoln is arguably the closest and most careful—and perhaps most creative—reader that Jefferson has ever had. And he interpreted Jefferson’s intentions in drafting the Declaration of Independence to counter the interpretations advanced by others who would reduce the Declaration to a mere pièce d’occasion. Perhaps the most important and influential among the latter was Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina.

Calhoun contended that the Declaration had the one-off practical purpose of declaring the American colonies’ independence from Great Britain. Once its work was done it had no further or deeper purpose. Against abolitionists who quoted the opening paragraphs, and particularly the phrase “all men are created equal,” Calhoun countered that “It was inserted into our Declaration of Independence without any necessity. It made no necessary part of our justification in separating from the parent country, and declaring ourselves independent.” (11)

Why then, Lincoln asks, were those paragraphs and that passage

“inserted” by Jefferson and not removed (as were other passages of Jefferson’s draft) by the Congress? In answering, Lincoln constructed a wholly original and innovative interpretation of the Declaration’s meaning. On Lincoln’s reading the Declaration had a dual purpose. The first and most obvious was to declare the American colonies’ independence from Great Britain. The second and less obvious—though no less important—was to issue a warning and a challenge to future generations of Americans. “The assertion that ‘all men are created equal’ was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain; and it was placed in the Declaration, not for that, but for future use.” (12) This was a theme to which Lincoln returned repeatedly. “The principles of Jefferson,” Lincoln wrote, “are the definitions and axioms of free society . . .. All honor to Jefferson—to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence . . . had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and to embalm it there, that to-day and in coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.” (13) And in a speech delivered at Independence Hall on the eve of his first inauguration Lincoln said:

I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. . .. I have often inquired of myself, what great principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy [i.e., the United States] so long together. It was not the mere matter of the separation of the colonies from the mother land; but something in that Declaration giving liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights would be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in that Declaration of Independence. (14)

Lincoln insisted time and again that the Declaration’s “all men are created equal” did indeed apply to all men (and women) of all races. His opponents, North and South, contended that this famous phrase refers to all white men. In the North, during the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates, Senator Douglas reiterated this point at every opportunity. And in the South, Confederate Vice-President Alexander Stephens not only repudiated Lincoln’s reading of the Declaration but added that “Our new [Confederate] government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth

that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery . . . is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.” (15)

Stephens, Calhoun, and others embraced slavery as a “positive good”; Lincoln believed it a great evil that could be tolerated only if doing so would preserve the Union intact. It was the extension of that institution into the western territories that was intolerable. That, however, is what was afoot in 1854.

Lincoln debating Douglas

The 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, sponsored by Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which forbade the extension of the institution of slavery into the territories acquired through the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, north of parallel 36˚ 30’. Incorporated into the Act was Douglas's doctrine of “popular sovereignty,” according to which white male residents in the territories would decide democratically whether their territory would enter the Union as a free or a slave state. Douglas himself professed to be indifferent as to whether any territory would be admitted into the Union as a free or a slave state. To this Lincoln thundered,

This declared indifference, but as I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world—enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites—causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty—criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest. (16)

With the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act,

Our republican robe is soiled, and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify it. Let us turn and wash it white, in the spirit, if not the blood, of the Revolution. . .. Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices, and policy, which harmonize with it. . .. If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union; but we shall have saved it, as to make, and keep it, forever worthy of the saving. (17)

Whilst the Kansas-Nebraska Act was a political disaster, it was in Lincoln’s view a disaster with the legislative remedy of repeal. And if the growing ranks of Republicans had their way, it would be. But then, three years after passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, came the even more disastrous Dred Scott decision.

A slave whose master had taken him to the free state of Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory, Dred Scott argued that he was legally free since slavery was not legal in any free state or territory. When his case finally reached the Supreme Court, a majority (seven of nine Justices) ruled that Scott was not and could not be a citizen; therefore, he had no legal “standing” to bring a case; but, clearly contradicting itself, the Court took the case anyway, ruling against Scott. That long and legally tortuous majority opinion, written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, is succinctly summarized by Lincoln:

The Constitution of the United States forbids Congress to deprive a man of his property, without due process of law; the right of property in slaves is distinctly and expressly affirmed in that Constitution; therefore, if Congress shall undertake to say that a man’s slave is no longer his slave, when he crosses a certain line into a territory, that is depriving him of his property without due process of law, and is unconstitutional.

(18)

But the loss was not Scott’s alone. The Dred Scott Decision was radical and far-reaching. Indeed, it went much further than the Kansas-Nebraska Act, in that it declared the Missouri Compromise to have been unconstitutional and said that slavery could not be excluded anywhere, including already-existing free states and future states to be carved out of the western territories. Congress, the Court said, had no authority to outlaw slavery anywhere in the United States. (19) In deciding the case the majority felt it necessary to take into account the Declaration of Independence, and in particular the passage which states that “all men are created equal.” “The general words [‘all men are created equal’] would seem to embrace the whole human family,” Taney wrote. “But it is too clear for dispute that the enslaved African race were not intended to be included [in the Declaration of Independence].” The Court also

declared that even free Negroes and mulattos were not intended to be included in the Declaration. The author and signers of “that memorable instrument” believed that blacks are “beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” (20) Blacks, the Court concluded, never were, are not now, and never can be citizens of the United States.

The Dred Scott decision seemed to deal a death-blow against the Republican Party’s aim of stopping slavery’s spread. Alarmed at the new prospect of slavery’s seemingly inevitable westward extension, Lincoln once again weighed in with a measured but blistering attack on that decision and on Douglas, who had defended it. Lincoln’s critique was at heart a hermeneutical one about the proper way of interpreting the Declaration’s meaning. Taney’s (and Douglas’s) assertion—and it is merely that—that the Declaration of Independence’s promise of equality applies only to whites, not to blacks, says Lincoln, is both erroneous and absurd on its face. Their denial is nothing less than a blatant and willful distortion of the plain words of the Declaration that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” The words “all men” mean “all men.” Lincoln excoriates Douglas and Taney

for doing this obvious violence to the plain unmistakable language of the Declaration. I think the authors of that noble instrument intended to include all men, but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral developments, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness, in what respects they did consider all men created equal in “certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This they said, and this meant. (21)

Clearly the institution of slavery is incompatible with the Declaration, inasmuch as slavery denies the rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and all too often the right to life itself. Once regarded almost as secular scripture, the Declaration is now demeaned and defamed: “to aid in making the bondage of the negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, and sneered at, and construed, and hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it.” (22)

To illuminate and illustrate his point, Lincoln quotes Douglas's statement that in declaring all men equal Jefferson and the Congress were referring to “the white race alone” and more specifically still to “British subjects on this continent being equal to British subjects born and residing in Great Britain.” “My good friends,” Lincoln retorts, “read that carefully over some leisure hour, and ponder well upon it—see what a mere wreck—mangled ruin—it makes of our once glorious Declaration…. I had thought the Declaration promised something better than the condition of British subjects; but no, it only meant that we should be equal to them in their own oppressed and unequal condition.” (23) To read the Declaration as Douglas and Taney did, reduces it to inanity and absurdity.

But, Douglas countered, to interpret the Declaration as Lincoln and the Republicans did, would not only eventually destroy the institution of slavery but would allow blacks to associate with whites on equal terms. The utterly unacceptable result will be that blacks will “amalgamate” (i.e., intermarry) with whites. Lincoln’s reply was at once principled, humorous, and acerbic. Douglas and other Democrats are “especially horrified at the thought of the mixing blood by the white and black races: agreed for once—a thousand times agreed. There are white men enough to marry all the white women, and black men enough to marry all the black women; and so, let them be married.” (24) He forthrightly rejected “that counterfeit logic which concludes that, because I do not want a black woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. I need not have her for either, I can just leave her alone.” And then he added: “In some respects she certainly is not my equal; but in her

natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without asking leave of anyone else, she is my equal, and the equal of all others.”

(25) As for the black man, in the wake of the Dred Scott decision,

All the powers of the earth seem rapidly combining against him. Mammon is after him; ambition follows, and philosophy follows, and the Theology of the day is fast joining the cry. They have him in a prison house; they have searched his person, and left no prying instrument with him. One after another they have closed the heavy iron doors upon him, and now they have him . . . bolted in with a lock of a hundred keys, which can never be unlocked without the concurrence of every key; the keys in the hands of a hundred different men, and they scattered to a hundred different and distant places . . . (26)

American slavery, it seemed, was here to stay.

A year after the Dred Scot decision Lincoln debated Douglas in the U.S. senatorial election in Illinois. The seven Lincoln-Douglas debates were to a remarkable degree hermeneutical contests over the meaning of the Missouri Compromise, its repeal by the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the effective repeal of both by the Supreme Court in its Dred Scott decision—and, not least, the meaning of the Declaration of Independence itself.

Reiterating his defense of the Dred Scott decision, Douglas denied that the Declaration of Independence referred to “all men” regardless of race. He repeated his and Chief Justice Taney’s claim that in writing “all men are created equal,” Jefferson meant all white men. To argue otherwise, as Lincoln had, is a “monstrous heresy.” Douglas asserted that “The signers of the Declaration of Independence never dreamed of the negro when they were writing that document. They referred to white men, to men of European birth and European descent, when they

declared the equality of all men. . .. [T]his government was made by our fathers on the white basis. It was made by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever. . .” (27)

When campaigning in the negrophobic southern part of the state, Lincoln was not above defending himself in terms that were racist, or close to it: “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people.” (28) Even so, Lincoln argued for a rough kind of racial equality, even as he appeared to equivocate. He assuaged his audience by speaking in favor of racial segregation and black inferiority even as he argued for the natural rights of all races:

I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary, but I had that notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. [Loud cheers.] I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with [Senator] Douglas he is not my equal in many respects—certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of [Senator] Douglas, and the equal of every living man. [Great applause.] (29)

The apparent pander in the first sentence serves a prelude to a ringing reaffirmation (begun midway through the second sentence) of the natural rights of all human beings, regardless of race. In the quicksand that was Illinois politics, this was a daring statement of moral principle, drawn from the Declaration of Independence as interpreted by Lincoln.

VI

When he became president in 1861 Lincoln relied less on the Declaration as he interpreted it and more on the Constitution he had taken an oath to uphold. In his First Inaugural Address, President Lincoln countered the constitutional argument made by Southern secessionists. Just as he had given pride of place to the opening words of the Declaration, Lincoln now focused on the Preamble to the Constitution, which was written and ratified “to form a more perfect Union . . .” Lincoln reasoned that the Union could not be perfected by dismembering it. (30) But southern secessionists were not dissuaded. And the war came.

Once the war was underway Lincoln was determined to see it through—and to see its meaning made clear by being couched in the language of the Declaration of Independence.

Two of President Lincoln’s wartime measures were immediately and immensely controversial. The first was his Emancipation Proclamation, the second his suspension of Habeas Corpus. Lincoln’s hermeneutical strategy was to justify both by interpreting—in a breathtakingly broad way—the vaguely defined powers given by the Constitution to a president in wartime or other times of national emergency. So broadly and liberally did Lincoln interpret the Constitution that some legal scholars have averred that he virtually created his own Constitution— “Lincoln’s Constitution.” (31)

Here is what the Constitution says about the president’s powers as commander-in-chief: “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the Actual Service of the United States” (Art. I, sec. 2). That is all. It says nothing about the extent of, or limita-

tions upon, a president’s wartime powers. Lincoln held that his power to emancipate Southern slaves—in apparent violation of the “takings” clause of the Fifth Amendment—and to suspend habeas corpus were implied: if doing these things aided the Union war effort, then he as commander-in-chief has the authority to do them. President Lincoln pushed the doctrine of “implied powers” (derived from the Necessary and Proper Clause in Art. I, sec. 8) up to and perhaps beyond its breaking point.

When President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, it was greeted with cheers from Frederick Douglass and other abolitionists, and with jeers from Democrats and Southern sympathizers. Contrary to a popular and persistent misunderstanding, the Proclamation did not free all American slaves with a single stroke of the president’s pen. It aimed to free only those slaves residing in the Confederacy; it did not touch slavery in the slave-holding but non-rebellious border states (Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri and West Virginia). The Proclamation was made as a matter of “military necessity,” and publicly justified on those grounds alone. Lincoln reasoned, rightly, that the labor of southern slaves was propping up and prolonging the Confederate war effort. If he could induce many of those slaves to escape in hope of finding freedom, he could cripple the South's ability to fight. In his capacity as commander-in-chief Lincoln issued the Proclamation as a businesslike executive order. Richard Hofstadter is correct, if rather unfair, in complaining that “The Emancipation Proclamation had all the moral grandeur of a bill of lading.” (32) The lowkey prose of the Proclamation was intentional. Lincoln sought to free slaves in the rebellious Confederacy without alarming slave owners and sympathizers in the loyal border states.

But there was another, now often overlooked but then-controversial, clause of the Final Emancipation Proclamation. Escaped male slaves, it said, were eligible to enlist as Union soldiers and sailors: “such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations and other places

(33) This provision of the Proclamation greatly upset and offended

many in the border states and displeased Democrats in the North. In Illinois Peace Democrats drafted resolutions opposing the Emancipation Proclamation, and especially its provision for arming freed blacks. What would come next? they asked. Black emancipation? Enfranchisement? Equality with whites? Intermarriage? The very thought was anathema to them and to many in Illinois and across the North. Union soldiers, they said, had not enlisted to free the slaves but to save the Union; if the aim is now to free the slaves, northern soldiers would and should lay down their arms and cease to fight. (34)

As though the Emancipation Proclamation were not controversial enough, two days after issuing its preliminary version Lincoln made public his Proclamation Suspending Habeas Corpus. (35) Once again, Lincoln's justification turned on his interpretation of the Constitution. He invoked “military necessity” and his constitutional powers as commander-in-chief. Confederate sympathizers in the North and the border states had cut telegraph wires, torn up sections of railroad tracks along which Union troops and supplies were transported, and stirred up anti-war and anti-black feelings (indeed the two were seen by some as interchangeable) among northern laborers. Under Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus such fifth columnists could be (and indeed were) arrested and imprisoned without trial. When Chief Justice Taney and other critics complained that Lincoln's suspension was unconstitutional, Lincoln quoted the words of the Constitution back at them. “Ours is a clear case of rebellion—. . . in fact, a clear, flagrant, and gigantic case of rebellion; and the provision of the Constitution [Art. I, sec. 9] that ‘the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it,’ is the provision which specially applies to our present case.” (36)

But the central constitutional question was concerned with who had the authority to suspend habeas corpus. Since the provision quoted by Lincoln is in Article I—which enumerates the powers of Congress— it appears that Lincoln did indeed overstep his constitutional authority and usurp a power that properly belonged to Congress. This seems a clear-cut case of constitutional misinterpretation—or perhaps creative

interpretation—on Lincoln’s part. And when Chief Justice Taney issued a court order to block Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus, he simply ignored it. VII

A turning-point in the war came with the Battle of Gettysburg when Union forces began to turn the tide against the Confederacy. Because losses on both sides were especially horrific, it was decided to turn the battlefield into a national cemetery. Lincoln was invited to the dedication ceremony to—as the invitation said— “make a few appropriate remarks.” Those few remarks became The Gettysburg Address. In his best and briefest address Lincoln effectively recast the meaning of the Civil War by reframing the larger meaning of the war in the words and principles of the Declaration of Independence, as he interpreted it.

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” That opening sentence alone was controversial because, among other things, Lincoln radically reinterprets both the date and the meaning of the American Founding. If you do the math, Lincoln dates the American founding back to 1776 and the Declaration of Independence, and not to 1788 and the ratification of the Constitution. The Declaration says that all men are created equal, with certain unalienable rights, including the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; the Constitution denies what the Declaration declares and affirms, and condones the institution of slavery. In so doing Lincoln seems to sign onto the abolitionist view that the Declaration, not the Constitution, is the first and truer charter of American liberty, and the Constitution—unless amended to accord with the Declaration by abolishing slavery—is forever freighted and stained with the blood of slaves.

Lincoln then goes on to reframe the reasons for which the Civil War was still being fought. As a matter of historical fact—attested to by Lincoln’s pre-war speeches, along with letters written and speeches delivered early in the war—the war was waged originally to keep the

Union intact, and nothing more. But as a matter of moral meaning, the Civil War was recast by Lincoln as a conflict of an altogether different sort—as a struggle to deliver on the promise of the “real” founding of 1776, which was stated in the form of a "proposition" that all men are created equal. In one brief speech Lincoln reframes the Framing, refounds the Founding, and radically recasts the meaning of the murderous and fratricidal Civil War—no mean feat, surely.

Garry Wills exaggerates only slightly when he says that in delivering the Gettysburg Address Lincoln

performed one of the most daring acts of open-air sleightof-hand ever witnessed by the unsuspecting. Everyone in that vast throng of thousands was having his or her intellectual pocket picked. The crowd departed with a new thing in its ideological luggage, that new constitution Lincoln had substituted for the one they brought there with them. They walked off from those curving graves on the hillside, under a changed sky, into a different America. Lincoln had revolutionized the Revolution, giving [Americans] a new past to live with that would change their future indefinitely. (37)

At least some of Lincoln's contemporaries noticed what he had done, and decried the deed. Democratic editorial writers all across the country said that Lincoln had traduced and misinterpreted the constitution he had sworn to uphold and in so doing had dishonored his office and demeaned the dead. The Constitution, they noted, says nothing at all about equality and it condones slavery. As one Democratic newspaper editorialized, “It was to uphold this constitution, and the Union created by it, that our officers and soldiers gave their lives at Gettysburg. How dare he, then, standing on their graves, misstate the cause for which they died, and libel the statesmen who founded the government? They were men possessing too much self-respect to declare that negroes were their equals, or were entitled to equal privileges.” (38)

Thus, the speech that every American schoolchild now recites al-

most as if it were scripture was quite controversial in its day. It was controversial precisely because Lincoln had at last laid all his cards on the table by publicly interpreting the Constitution and the Founding through the lens of the Declaration of Independence’s “all men are created equal.” And it was Lincoln’s Declaration-based interpretation that was incorporated into the Constitution in the so-called “Reconstruction amendments.” Lincoln worked diligently for but did not live to witness the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment (1865), which abolished slavery; the Fourteenth (1866), which declared former slaves and their offspring to be full citizens entitled to “the equal protection of the laws”; and the Fifteenth (1869), which gave male citizens of African descent the right to vote.

The Civil War and the Reconstruction that followed it amounted to nothing less than a second American Revolution. (39)

VIII

Lincoln believed with every fiber of his being that in opposing the prefatory principle inscribed in the Declaration of Independence, Senator Douglas, the Taney Court (in the Dred Scott decision), and final-

Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address: “…with malice towards none...”

ly the Confederacy were not only on the wrong side of morality, but on the wrong side of history as well. The opponents of slavery will be remembered, and its defenders forgotten. Every schoolboy, Lincoln wrote, knows that William Wilberforce and Granville Sharp helped to end the English slave trade; but who, he asked, “can now name a single man who labored to retard [that cause]?” Although its opponents “blazed, like tallow-candles for a century, at last they flickered in the socket, died out, stank in the dark for a brief season, and were remembered no more, even by the smell.” (40)

Lincoln, by contrast, is remembered. Throughout his life he thirsted not only for office but for fame. Fame, in the classical republican sense, is as close as humans can come to achieving immortality. Fame belongs to those who speak great words and perform great deeds. And no deed is greater than that of founding a free and long-lived republic. (41) But what of one who re-founds a foundering and divided republic, by preserving it intact while making it more truly free by emancipating its slaves and thereby redeeming the promise of its founding principle that all men are created equal? Therein lies Lincoln’s achievement and his unique claim to fame. And he could hardly have achieved lasting fame, had he not so brilliantly and skillfully practiced his own version of deadly hermeneutics.

References

1. Terence Ball, “Deadly Hermeneutics; or, Sinn and the Social Scientist,” in Ball (ed.), Idioms of Inquiry: Critique and Renewal in Political Science (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987), pp. 95-112.

2. Roy A. Medvedev, Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism, trans. Colleen Taylor (New York: Knopf, 1972), Ch. 14.

3. Stalin’s History was a thinly veiled attempt to refute his archenemy Trotsky’s interpretation of actions and events in his

History of the Russian Revolution (1930).

4. Address to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, 27 January 1838, in Don E. Fehrenbacher (ed.), Lincoln: Speeches and Writings [hereinafter SW], 2 vols. (New York: Library of America, 1989), I, p. 32.

5. My greatly abbreviated summary of the secessionist and proslavery arguments and interpretations of the Declaration and the Constitution is drawn from Thomas R. Dew, Chancellor Harper, and other Southern advocates of slavery and secession, along with Southern states’ subsequent declarations of secession. See, among other works, Cotton is King, and Pro-Slavery Arguments: Comprising the Writings of Hammond, Harper, Christy, Stringfellow, Hodge, Bledsoe, and Cartwright, ed. E.N. Elliott (Augusta, GA: Pritchard, Abbott & Loomis, 1860). See, further, the immediate post-secessionist arguments advanced in various Southern states’ declarations of secession, and most particularly the earliest—that of South Carolina, which became a model or template for those that followed—The South Carolina Declaration of Causes of Secession of December 24, 1860, in H.S. Commager, ed., Documents of American History, 7th ed. (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1963), vol. I, pp. 372-74.

6. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991 [1651]), Bk. II, ch. 21, p. 152.

7. Interestingly, the Constitution of the Confederate States of America (1861) outlawed the importation of slaves. This is hardly surprising, since that prohibition would increase the value of slaves already residing (and reproducing) in the CSA. See further Marshall L. DeRosa, The Confederate Constitution of 1861 (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 1991).

8. Garrison to Rev. Samuel J. May, 17 July 1845, in Walter M. Merrill, ed., The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison (1973), vol. 3, p. 303.

9. Cooper Union Address, 27 February 1860.

10. Several modern scholars have however attempted to recruit Lincoln into the ranks of political philosophers. See, inter alia, Harry V. Jaffa, Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, 2nd ed. (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1982); Garry Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), esp. ch. 4; Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln as a Man of Ideas (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2009); Ronald C. White, Jr., Lincoln’s Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002); and – most recently and extensively – John Burt, Lincoln’s Tragic Pragmatism: Lincoln, Douglas, and Moral Conflict (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013)and George Kateb, Lincoln’s Political Thought (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015).

11. John C. Calhoun, Speech on Oregon Bill, 27 June 1848, in Ross M. Lence (ed.), Union and Liberty: The Political Philosophy of John C. Calhoun (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1992), p. 566.

12. Speech on the Dred Scott Decision, 26 June 1857, SW I, p. 398-99.

13. AL to Henry Pierce and others, 6 April 1859, SW II, p. 19.

14. Speech at Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, SW II, p. 213.

15. Alexander H. Stephens, Cornerstone Speech, 21 March 1861; in S. J. Hammond et al (eds.), Classics of American Political and Constitutional Thought, 2 vols. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2007), I, pp. 1090-93.

16. Speech on the Kansas-Nebraska Act, SW I, p. 315.

17. Speech on the Kansas-Nebraska Act, SW I, pp. 339-40.

18. Speech at Columbus, Ohio, 16 Sept. 1859, in SW II, p. 52.

19. On that decision's doleful impact, see Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978).

20. Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), in Henry Steele Commager, ed., Documents of American History, 7th ed. (New York: AppletonCentury-Crofts, 1963), 2 vols., I, p. 342.

21. Speech on the Dred Scott Decision, 26 June 1857, in SW I, p. 398.

22. Ibid., p. 396.

23. Ibid., p. 399-400.

24. Ibid., p. 400.

25. Ibid., pp. 397-8.

26. Ibid., pp. 396-7.

27. Fifth Lincoln-Douglas Debate, SW I, pp. 697-8.

28. Fourth debate, SW I, p. 636.

29. First Lincoln-Douglas Debate, 21 August 1858, SW I, p. 512.

30. First Inaugural Address, 4 March 1861, SW II, p. 218.

31. Daniel A. Farber, Lincoln’s Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), contends that Lincoln’s actions, although controversial at the time, nevertheless pass constitutional muster by today’s standards.

32. Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition (New York: Knopf, 1973), p. 159.

33. Final Emancipation Proclamation, 1 January 1863, SW II, p.425.

34. Although doubtless true of some Union soldiers, it was by no means true of all, as Chandra Manning shows in What This Cruel War was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War (New York: Random House, 2007).

35. Proclamation Suspending the Writ of Habeas Corpus, 24 Sept. 1862, SW II, 371.

36. AL to Erastus Corning and others, 12 June 1863, SW II, p. 457.

37. Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg, p. 38.

38. See James M. McPherson, Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).

39. “The President at Gettysburg,” Chicago Times, 23 November 1863; quoted in Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg, pp. 38-39.

40. Fragment on the Struggle Against Slavery, July 1858, SW I, p. 438.

41. See, inter alia, Francis Bacon’s ranking of famous men: “In the first place are . . . founders of states and commonwealths.” (“Of Honour and Reputation,” Essays, in H.G. Dick, ed., Selected Writings of Francis Bacon (New York: Modern Library, 1957), p. 137). Or Alexander Hamilton’s observation that “the love of fame [is] the ruling passion of the noblest minds”: Federalist 72, in Terence Ball, ed., The Federalist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 353.

And what I was feeling was the wonder Of being more than me, of being more Than mere here and now allowed I had become a shining star, a burning nova Exploded with love Flying through an endlessly Expanding universe Away from the me that was Toward a me that is beyond Understanding. -

Walter Dean Myers

A Russian Spy at Arizona State University

Lee B. Croft

In the 1983-4 academic year a group of four Arizona State University (ASU) faculty (Stephen Batalden and Fred Giffin of Russian History, Bill Welsh of Political Science and I, Lee B. Croft, of the Department of Foreign Languages’ Russian section), formed the Russian and East European Studies Consortium (predecessor of the current Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies) under the directorship of Russian History Professor Stephen K. Batalden. One of our Consortium’s first collaborative projects, conceived by ASU Economics Prof. Marvin Jackson, was the harboring of Soviet diplomatic defectors under the protection of the CIA in our remote desert locale and training them to become effective news broadcast staff for the efforts of our Cold War surrogate radio stations, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty.

In the fall semester of 1983 a woman defector from the Soviet Union’s diplomatic legation in Yugoslavia became our “guest” under an assumed name. As Coordinator of the Russian Language Program at ASU, I became one of her new compatriots and mentors. We found for her an apartment within walking distance to the Tempe campus, and she was enrolled in classes for non-English-language émigrés in ASU’s American Language and Culture Program, which she reportedly found rewarding. She was often a guest in my home, and I arranged for her to give Russian-language lectures to our students, to consortium members and to our Arizona State chapter of the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages.

In early 1984, a Russian-speaking bearded man of forty arrived in Phoenix by air from Munich accompanying our guest’s youngest (eightyear-old) daughter on a visit to her mother. Our faculty group had not been informed of any such visit, and when I asked our guest about him, she told me he was Oleg Aleksandrovich Tumanov, a now thoroughly cleared, polygraph examined, and trusted Soviet defector himself from the sixties…a “former Soviet James Bond,” she said…who had defected by swimming ashore to Libya as a sailor on the Russian navy destroyer Spravedlivyj (“The Just”) in the Mediterranean in 1965, and that he was now a respected editor for Radio Liberty in Munich where she aspired to begin work to help him in “bringing down the Soviet Union.”

I found Oleg to be charming and took him for a ride in my white 1967 Jaguar XKE convertible sports car to Phoenix’s large Metrocenter shopping mall. I later made notes on the conversation, which took place in Russian. He told me that he was married and that his wife was, a “Latvian girl” he called “Sveta,” and that he and Sveta had a two-year-old daughter named Alexandra, whom they called “Sasha.” He asked me how much I had paid for the Jaguar and I told him that my wife had negotiated a price of $8,000 for it, a “real bargain for such a low-miles classic car.” He asked me how many other cars we owned and I answered “two.” He asked me how much money I made as an Associate Professor of Russian at Arizona State University and I told him “$22,000 a year.” He then commented that he made more than double that in German marks at Radio Liberty. Did I know any American professors of Russian who were pro-Soviet in their political stances, he asked. “No,” I told him. “The American professors of Russian, native Russian émigrés or not, are overwhelmingly unanimous in their anti-Soviet politics. They all want to see the Soviet Union changed into a democracy somehow…” He asked me to tell him about my other

Oleg Tumanov

Russian-teaching colleagues at ASU. He was impressed that one of our professors, Dr. Dora Burton, was a medical doctor and a survivor of the terrible 900-day siege of Leningrad during WWII. I told him how I admired her ability to recite Russian poetry, and he asked me who was my favorite Russian poet. I answered that I had two favorites: Alexander Pushkin and Anna Akhmatova. Oleg seemed most interested, however, in my colleague Professor Rolfs Ekmanis, who had been recording anti-Soviet broadcast content in Latvian for Radio Free Europe under the pseudonym of “Maris Rauda” for years. “I’d very much like to meet him,” he said. But that did not happen.

At the amusement park outside Metrocenter Mall, I paid to have Oleg attempt to hit baseballs in the amusement park’s batting cages… this after he told me that the American sport appeared to him to resemble the Russian children’s game called laptá, which involves hitting a hard leather ball with a stick called a bitá. But he was unable to hit any balls, swung the bat very awkwardly, and was clearly frightened and even fled the batting cage when one ball, pitched at little-league speed (55 mph), barely missed his nose and loudly smacked into the backstop.

In the mall’s Mexican buffet line, he was asked by a server if he wanted any guacamole on the tamales I had suggested for him. He asked me in Russian what guacamole was and I explained that it was a popular Mexican garnish. So, he said that he would like to try some and received a serious-sized dollop of it onto his tamale plate. He took a look and groaned, “Bleh! I can’t eat that goop…it’s green,” and pushed the whole tray away. In the mall itself, Oleg was most interested in looking at men’s suits and shoes. He admitted that he spent too much money on fashionable clothing, and told me that he also collected rare coins and stamps. But he did not want to purchase anything at the mall. “I’m traveling with only one small bag on this trip,” he said.

The next morning when I arrived at my ASU office I found Oleg unpinning and removing from our Russian-Section bulletin board a diagram I had drawn of a grant project I had submitted to the NSA’s National Cryptologic School that involved integrating the Soviet Union’s “Channel One” television broadcasts into ASU’s Russian Language

instruction by intercepting and decoding the broadcasts which were transmitted via the polar-orbiting Molnija (“Lightning”) Soviet satellites. When he realized I was seeing him remove the diagram from the bulletin board, he asked me if he could have it, and I told him, “Sure… it’s not a secret. It’s even been in the newspaper.” We then discussed the project and my applications for funds to pay for it.

Lee B. Croft’s Diagram for a grant proposal to the National Security Agency in 1984. Published in both Lee B. Croft’s Russian in Arizona (IIHS, 2007, p. 46, see Bibliography) and in Kerry Pace Meyer’s “Russian Intelligence Activity in the Pre-perestroika Era: A Case Study,” ASU Barrett Honors College Honors Thesis, November 2003, Appendix, p. i).

I then accompanied Oleg to the small office of my close colleague, Stephen Batalden, the Director of the Consortium, in the neighboring Social Science Building’s History Department. When I introduced Oleg to Batalden, Steve immediately said to him, “I know you. We’ve already met.” But Oleg frowned and nodded his head negatively, saying “I don’t think so. I’m sure we’ve never met.” But Steve persisted, saying “Yes, we have met. It was last year in the office in London, England, of Alexander Piatigorsky, the renowned Soviet dissident buddhology scholar.”

Oleg squinted his eyes and then admitted, “Yes, you could be correct. I have also visited ‘Sasha’ there.” Steve asked, “How is Sasha?” and Oleg replied, “He is dead. He was run over by a hit-and-run driver on a London street just last month.” This answer stunned Steve and me. Dr. Piatigorsky, a prominent Russian and Jewish dissident emigre philosopher and Lecturer at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, had come to ASU as Steve’s guest a year or so before and regaled our university audience with the story of how Josef Stalin had maliciously loosed the Communist Youth Organization on the Buddhist Buryat minority north of Mongolia before and during World War II, killing or arresting large numbers of them and eradicating their temples…a “genocide” was Piatigorsky’s description of it. Steve was obviously upset by Oleg’s news of his friend and colleague’s death.

When Oleg and I left Steve and returned to my office, he told me that he would be departing Phoenix the next day to return to Radio Liberty in Munich. I asked him if he needed a ride to the airport and he said, “No thank you. I will use a taxi.” He then left my office and I never saw him again.

In less than an hour after Oleg Tumanov left my ASU office, I received a phone call from Batalden. He told me that he had just talked with Sasha Piatigorsky by phone in London, and that Piatigorsky told him that he was not, as Oleg Tumanov had informed us, dead, but that he had indeed been knocked down and injured by an unknown London driver on a street near his office. He had, he said, “luckily survived.” Steve then told me firmly, “Lee, that guy Oleg is a spy. We should have nothing further to do with him. Certainly, don’t bring him to my office again.”

Steve and I ruminated considerably after Oleg’s departure from us about what would cause him to announce to us that Sasha Piatigorsky had been struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver. Did Oleg, as a spy, know about the apparent attempt on Piatigorsky’s life in advance of it and just assumed it had taken place as planned? We were well aware of the dangers to the anti-Soviet personnel working in the U. S. cold-war surrogate radio stations. We knew, for example, of the 1978 assassina-

tion of Radio Free Europe contributor Georgi Markov, who had been shot in the thigh by a ricin-contaminated poison pellet fired by an innocuous-appearing passerby from a micro-engineered umbrella while walking on a London street. And we were aware of the large bomb, later reported to have been the work of the famous terrorist “Carlos the Jackel” (aka Ilich Ramirez Sanchez) and his band of terrorists at the behest of the Soviet KGB-mentored Romanian secret police under Dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, that was exploded outside the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Building in Munich in February 1981, severely injuring several people and causing major structural damage to the building and the loss of important personnel records. It was a puzzle about the fellow, that was for sure. We resolved to inform someone appropriate in our government intelligence organs about this…CIA, NSA, FBI… but just whom?

Fortuitously, I was already scheduled that month to be interviewed by the then Director of Radio Liberty, George Bailey. He was coming through Phoenix to interview me for a position in the administration of Radio Liberty and also in the administration of Russian Language instruction at the United States Army Russian Institute in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria. I was planning to take a leave from ASU to start these positions and had gone so far as to get passports for my high-school-age sons so they could accompany my wife and me to work in Germany. So, I assured Steve Batalden that I would inform George Bailey, Oleg Tumanov’s boss as Director of Radio Liberty and with well-known contacts in our European intelligence community, of our recent unnerving experience with his Russian defector employee.

The meeting with George Bailey was in the lounge of the Phoenix Airport Hilton Hotel near Sky Harbor Airport. I certainly thought that the interview, which took about two hours, went well for me. Bailey told me that he knew and admired my uncle, Lt. Col. ret. Bliss H. Croft, a highly decorated three-war combat veteran and one of the eight “originals” who began the “Green Berets.” He related that he and Bliss had once played for rival high school football teams. We reminisced further about my uncle, but then when we got around to Oleg Tumanov’s visit

to ASU and his informing us erroneously of Piatigorsky’s “accident,” he turned quite serious…it was clear that he knew Tumanov well… and he told me “I’ll take care of this, don’t worry.”

Unfortunately for me, by then, Bailey had been relieved of his directorship of Radio Liberty, allegedly for not cutting content that was “Russian nationalistic” and “antisemitic” …topics that he had discussed with me as problems he faced in the Radio Liberty administration. My possibility of a position with him in Germany disappeared with his replacement. His book, Armageddon in Prime Time (see Bibliography) is a prescient masterpiece and highly recommended for reading even, nay especially, now that a new “Cold War” with Russia is threatening world peace.

I did not just tell Bailey the story. I also told it to at least two U. S. State Department investigators who came to my ASU office, as they often did, to investigate program graduates for security clearances so they could fill positions in government security organizations. I did not follow up further with Bailey or with any of the State Department investigators about Oleg Tumanov, but expected that I would soon hear of his being subject to some investigation and likely arrest for espionage. Our program guest, the woman for whom he brought her daughter to ASU, left us before the end of the semester and returned to Munich. When I told her about Oleg’s Piatigorsky misinformation, she was dismissive of the suggestion that he was therefore a spy. “There’s no way he could be a spy,” she insisted. “He may have heard somehow about Piatigorsky’s accident and just misremembered the result of it.” After she left, she was apparently not regarded to be a security risk at Radio Liberty, where she began her employment as an editor’s aide. Later, in the summer of 1988, after I had written a letter to Arizona Senator John McCain supporting this woman’s case for U. S. citizenship, my wife and I and our eight- month-old son stayed with her and her three daughters in their Munich apartment while she tried to arrange a meeting for me with Eugene Pell, President and Chief Executive Officer of both Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. But I demurred, deciding that I would remain a Professor at ASU.

Two years went by after Oleg Tumanov’s visit to ASU, and we heard nothing more about him. During that time my grant project (the diagram of which was taken off my office bulletin board by Tumanov) to import and decode the Soviet “Channel One” television broadcasts with a tracking dish focusing on the polar-orbiting Molnija satellites was approved by the National Cryptologic School of the NSA in a preliminary amount to pay for the first stages of fabrication of the dish apparatus…with the rest to come later. But this did not happen. First, the government’s Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act to require more rigorous consideration of expenditures of this grant nature postponed the funding for a year. And then, during that year, the Soviet Union ceased using the Molnija satellites to broadcast their Channel One internationally, and transferred the broadcasts to their geosynchronous Raduga (“Rainbow”) satellites, which extended the earth footprint of their broadcasts far enough westward to include Cuba…but no further, thus eliminating the possibility of receiving the broadcasts in further-west Arizona. My project was made moot and its funding was cancelled. Of course, I asked myself, “Did the Soviets, under the ill and paranoid Konstantin Chernenko, who considered the broadcast media (radio and television) to be of paramount importance in the ideological struggle with the United States and other western powers, decide to change the broadcast technology of their Channel One television programs in response to Oleg Tumanov’s informing them about how one of the U.S.’s leading Russian language and culture programs, the one at ASU, was planning to use their own broadcasts against them?”

In April 1986, I happened to see a news item on television reporting that Oleg Tumanov, a Russian defector who had become an important figure in Radio Liberty, had been revealed as a Russian spy and that he had escaped CIA surveillance and returned to the Soviet Union. The Soviet news agency TASS reported on April 28th that “Oleg Tumanov, former Acting Editor-in-Chief of the Russian service of Radio Liberty, spoke at an international press conference at the Press Center of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MID) of the USSR. He told newsmen how, after defecting to the west more than twenty years ago upon KGB in-

structions, he had found himself in an anti-Soviet trap set up by the military intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States.” He had reportedly become spooked by the news that one of his KGB superiors, a Colonel Victor P. Gundarev, had turned himself in to the U.S. Embassy in Athens, Greece, and applied for asylum. Knowing that Gundarev would very soon be detailing his intelligence activity for the USSR at Radio Liberty, Tumanov requested that his handlers extricate him covertly from Germany and effect his return to Moscow.

For years I thought that Tumanov’s real exposure took place after my reports of his strange visit to ASU to George Bailey and to the U.S. State Department investigators in 1984. And that, after that, our intelligence agencies were surely monitoring his every action, his every association, hoping to reveal other espionage activities of the KGB at Radio Liberty and elsewhere. But as time passed, several involved people wrote and published books which mentioned Tumanov’s role as a spy. Arch Puddington, Deputy Director of the New York Bureau of RFE/RL from 1985 in his 2000 book, Broadcasting Freedom: The Cold War Triumph of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty (see Bibliography), writes of the general workplace surprise when Tumanov was revealed as a spy. He relates: “When Yuri Handler, at the time Radio Liberty’s chief Russian editor in its New York bureau, visited Munich in 1986, he was told by several colleagues that Oleg Tumanov was a leading candidate for the Russian section’s chief editor position. One week later, Tumanov disappeared, only to turn up back in Moscow, where he revealed that he had been working for the KGB from the moment he began work in Munich in the late sixties.” And Richard H. Cummings, the very Director of Radio Liberty’s Security Section for most of Tumanov’s time working there, is the best example. In his 2009 book, Cold War Radio:

Oleg Tumanov (1986) on return to Moscow

The Dangerous History of American Broadcasting in Europe, 1950-1989 (see Bibliography), Cummings clearly states that “We didn’t suspect that Tumanov was working for the KGB. If it weren’t for Gundarev and the fact that Tumanov fled to Moscow, likely he would have continued to work at RFE/RL until retirement. He was an excellent editor and an excellent co-worker and made some good programs. At that time, we had no basis to suspect that he was working with the KGB. We had others under suspicion—but not Tumanov.”

To me it certainly appears now that the security people protecting Radio Liberty then were not told about how we at ASU had concluded that Oleg Tumanov was a spy. This seems to fault Bailey in particular since he was the Director of Radio Liberty itself when Tumanov came to ASU. But he had already been involved in the internal politics that led to his termination as Director. His problems there, just as he was interviewing me for a job, are well described in Puddington’s chapter “The Reagan Years” (pp. 253-284). And it isn’t hard to notice that there was a kind of tension between Bailey and his Security Section, led by Richard Cummings. Cummings, for example, does not mention George Bailey in his book’s 219 pages of text, and Bailey’s name is not listed in the index. Yet in Cummings’s “Appendix K: Selected Summary of Threats, Intimidations, Contacts, Intelligence Cases, and Notes” (pp. 269-286…cf. 276,) in the entry for May 1985 he lists: “3. The Soviet media campaign against RFE/RL continued. One published article called ‘The Black Pearl’ dealt with an alleged battle between Radio Liberty division director George Bailey and the RFE/RL security office. The article demonstrated how the security office won the battle and the war, and George Bailey was forced out of RFE/RL.”

Oleg Tumanov himself, when living in Moscow, wrote a book in 1993, (TUMANOV: Confessions of a KGB Agent…see Bibliography) about his experiences as an agent of the KGB. In it, he does not mention his 1984 visit to ASU at all. In 1988 he had had the incredible temerity to sue Radio Liberty in a Munich court that he be provided a retirement pension. Richard Cummings is quoted in Russian in Dmitrii Treshchanin’s The Ideal Spy…, (see Bibliography…translation mine): “This was pure

insolence. He thought, ‘Well, I worked 20 years there and I want my pension.’ He hired a lawyer. We refused him on several grounds, among which was the fact that he had kept his security pass. We maintained that this was our property, and that he should provide it back to us. But he did not receive a pension from us.”

So, Oleg Tumanov writes in 1993, when the Soviet Union was no more and Boris Yeltsin was leading a democratization of the Russian Federation, “These days I rarely leave my apartment. I don’t have a job and I live on the pension the state pays me. I spend my days reading books and papers. I go to bed early and rise late. I am forty-eight years old, but I sometimes feel like a very old man. I am alone among strangers, and among friends. Everything is mixed up; everything has changed. Émigrés who had been working against the Communist regime are now regarded not as enemies, but as national heroes.”

Bibliography

Bailey, George (1919-2001). Armageddon in Prime Time. Avon Books

(A division of the Hearst Corporation), New York City, New York, 1984. ISBN 0-380-89598-6. This book published by Tumanov’s immediate superior at Radio Liberty in the “Orwellian Year” of 1984 on the relationship of the United States and Russia during the Cold War is an insightful masterpiece, more germane to our current situation…a war of disinformation and propaganda… than ever. For issues of Bailey’s ouster as RL Director, see both Cummings and Puddington below.

Croft, Lee B., Boosman, Barry, Lutz, Katherine, Nielsen, James C. and Raymer, Aimee M. Russian in Arizona: A History of its Teaching. Institute for Issues in the History of Science (IIHS), Tempe, Arizona and Perm, Russian Federation, illustrated paperback ISBN is 978-1-4303-2355-6. Tumanov is mentioned on pp. 47, 138, and 180.

Oleg Tumanov: Confessions of a KGB Agent

Cummings, Richard. Cold War Radio: The Dangerous History of American Broadcasting in Europe, 1950-1989. McFarland & Company, inc., Publishers, Jefferson, North Carolina and London, 2009. ISBN is 978-0-7864-4138-9. Cummings (1944- ) was Radio Liberty’s head of security during the time Tumanov worked there.

Easton, William J. “‘Double Defector’ Back in Moscow After Twenty Years, Denounces Radio Free Europe,” Los Angeles Times article from April 29, 1986…available at latimes.com. Eaton’s other “double defectors” are Svetlana Alliluyeva (Josef Stalin’s daughter, 1926-2011, who lived in Scottsdale, Arizona, from 1970 to 1973 and was briefly married to Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation architect Wesley Peters, but returned to the Soviet Union in 1984); Oleg Bitov, a journalist who defected to England in 1983 and returned to the USSR after a year; and Vitalii Yurchenko, an intelligence officer for the KGB who defected to the U.S. and returned to Moscow in 1985 after only months of telling stories to our CIA.

Fradis, Aleksandr Alekseevich. (in Russian,) “Mata Hari in the Mirror” about Oleg Tumanov’s wife, Svetlana (neé Yeta Drits), after his redefection, by a fellow RFE/RL editor, Alexander Fradis available at LitNet.com, 11/12/2006.

Kalugin, Oleg Danilovich (1934-) with Fen Montaigne. The First Directorate: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West. St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1994. This book was a bestseller worldwide and was republished by Blake Publications in 1995 with ISBN 978-1-8568-5101-5. This second edition has the cover blurb “The Highest Ranking KGB Officer Ever to Break His Silence.” In 2009 another version of the book under the title Spymaster that does not include Fen Montaigne’s name on the cover or title page was published by the Perseus Books Group. This is the preferred version as it includes Kalugin’s updates and yet further details on his operations in espionage and in postSoviet politics as well. The ISBN of it, available on amazon.com is 978-0-465-01445-3. His personal history in KGB espionage is very interesting as evidenced in his Wikipedia entry.

Krupskii, Vasilii. (in Russian,) “People of Lubyanka (Moscow’s KGB headquarters) at ‘Liberty’ (meaning “Radio Liberty). cf. Independent Military Overview article from October 28, 2005. cf. https://nvo. ng.ru. Provides details on Tumanov’s enlistment as a KGB spy and

also his decision in 1986 to flee Europe after the defection to the west of one of his KGB “handlers,” Victor Gundarev.

Latysheva, Mariana. (in Russian,) “To Be the Wife of a Soviet Agent… the version of Svetlana Tumanova, wife of Oleg Tumanov, KGB agent at ‘Radio Liberty’) in agentura.ru. Cf. https://web.archive. org/web/20130622055520/http://agentura.ru/culture007/ tumanov.

Pace (now Meyer), Kerry. Russian Intelligence Activity in the Preperestroika Era: A Case Study. This is an ASU Barrett Honors College Honors Thesis which I supervised in November 2003. It’s an exemplary work in my opinion. Kerry had to avail herself of Freedom of Information act research on the advice of her committee member, ASU History Prof. (and former Ambassador to Colombia and Costa Rica) Lewis Tambs, to acquire data on Tumanov.

Puddington, Arch. Broadcasting Freedom: The Cold War Triumph of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. The University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, 2000. ISBN is 0-8131-9045-2. Puddington (1944-) served as the Deputy Director of the New York Bureau of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty from 1985 to 1993 and is Vice President for Research at Freedom House in New York. He has a chapter in this book entitled “Bombs, Spies, and Poisoned Umbrellas” (pp. 225-253) and he details the 1984 ouster of Radio Liberty Director George Bailey in the chapter called “The Reagan Years,” especially pp. 278-279.

Treshchanin, Dmitrii, et. al. (in Russian,) “The Ideal Spy. An agent of the KGB worked 20 years at ‘Radio Liberty” and left unrevealed.”

See: https://zona.media/article/2020/07/20/tumanov.

Tumanov, Oleg A. (1944-1997) TUMANOV: Confessions of a KGB Agent. Edition Q, inc. Chicago, Berlin, Tokyo, and Moscow. 1993. This illustrated hardback of the English translation by David Floyd has ISBN 0-86715-269-9. Also available are German and Russian versions. The three versions are quite the same, differing only in the language of publication. Tumanov was quite fluent in Russian, German, and English…in that order of facility.

A Wood Sculpture and Lessons in

Wu Wei and Wabi Sabi

Ernie Stech

Walking recently along a national forest trail, I noticed several weathered sticks laying on the ground. As I continued, I saw more. Picking up one of the pieces, ten or so inches long, it occurred to me that with several more I could fashion a representation of a mesa. Noticing turned into gathering. I ended up with a collection of five: one quite long, one a bit shorter, and three much shorter. I could visualize the longest as the base of the mesa and the others progressively shorter to represent sloping sides.

At home a few weeks later and with nothing else to do, I sat down outdoors with my mesa materials and placed them as I had imagined. Not a mesa. A mess. The lengths were about right, but they did not fit in a neat stack. There were large gaps. The mesa did not emerge as planned. Recognizing failure, I put the sticks aside and went on with my life.

It did occur to me that I could shave and sand my sticks to make them fit. That did not appear reasonable. Then I remembered something I had read years before in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Robert Pirsig wrote about muscle traps in mechanical work. The specific example was a nut rusted on a bolt. There was a great temptation to get a bigger wrench and apply more force. Unfortunately, that probably would result in shearing the bolt. The solution was not to apply more force but to apply more thought. The result? Squirt some oil on the nut and bolt. Then tap the nut to allow the oil to penetrate the

threads. It took some patience. But eventually the nut rotated off the bolt.

The principle, I learned years after reading the book, is from Taoism. In the Tao Te Ching it is labelled wu wei. The naïve translation is “doing nothing.” A deeper assessment shows that the intent is to avoid forced action. Tao is conceived of as a flow in the universe. Any action that goes against the flow is potentially ineffective or even dangerous. Wu wei implies unforced action.

Shaping my sticks to fit the mesa would be forced action. The alternative was to take the elements and play. Try different combinations. See which of them naturally fit into another. I did this. Within half an hour I had an arrangement of five pieces of natural wood that nested together. The result was not a representation of a mesa but a natural design produced from five randomly collected natural elements. They required no modification.

There was an additional lesson. An important value in Taoism is

Wu Wei

humility. A design that is inherent in materials develops from facilitation and not from the brain or soul of the creator. It is difficult to take great pride in a form that essentially created itself.

The wood sculpture design is not beautiful by western standards. More likely described as awkward. Awkward beauty. The very definition of the Japanese design style known as wabi sabi. Objects and settings in the natural world are imperfect, random, rough, asymmetrical, and unique. Nothing in nature is perfect, orderly, new, smooth, symmetrical, and standard. Those are the human traits imposed by designers and makers and what we want to buy in a store.

I was and am quite satisfied my wood sculpture. Beautiful or not.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I do not wonder at a snowflake, a shell, a summer landscape, or the glory of the stars; but at the necessity of beauty under which the universe lies.

From Stones to Stars

Reinventing Retirement with Paul Knauth

Emeritus Voices is pleased to welcome Paul Knauth back to its pages, this time as the subject of its Reinventing Retirement series. Among the happier hours of our overlapping department chair terms were those sharing our affection for Wagner and discussing our chances of winning the Bayreuth Wagner Festival ticket lottery (he had played the game longer and smarter and has been twice; I have not at all.) Paul’s love of great music (he hastens with the caveat that he is not himself a trained musician) is equally matched by his love for science in general, geology in particular, and astronomy. Paul earned his BA and PhD from the University of Chicago and Cal Tech, respectively, and came to ASU as Associate Professor in 1979 from Louisiana State University. Prolific in publications and graduate degrees directed, he has also won several “Best Teacher” awards, including “Best Field Trip.” Paul’s research and teaching interests span almost the whole of terrestrial geology, with an emphasis on geochemistry and geo-isotope analysis. He has also been an active researcher in planetary geological issues beyond Earth. He still pursues one of his favorite activities: guiding geological excursions into the wilder, rockier regions of North America. Paul Knauth has been Professor Emeritus at ASU since 2016. He lives in Gilbert, Arizona with his wife Nancy and several telescopes. R. Jacob

Emeritus Voices: Thank you, Paul, for letting us have a glimpse inside your retirement. Anyone who is familiar with you or follows you on social media knows that you are a man of many interests, any one of which would make for a full retirement. Had you planned on your principal retirement activities beforehand?

Paul Knauth: Never thought about it but realized it might be a great time to plunge more deeply into other things I love to do and think about. I loved my job at ASU and looked forward to going in every day. However, when I retired, I unexpectedly felt like I had awakened from a coma. These are the best years of my life.

EV: Before we get to the other things, let’s focus on your discipline of Geology. Did you continue work in your field?

PK: Yes, but no formal teaching, grant writing, or writing technical papers for refereed journals. I work part of every day on a monster book project that is allowing me to pull together everything I know and everything I am still learning regarding the forensic nature of science and what it all means. It does look like I may get roped into being co-author of another technical paper with a colleague I really respect. We have unpublished data, and the colleague has agreed to do the heavy lifting. I think.

EV: So, your book is intended for the non-specialist. What are the main ideas you want to lay out?

PK: Ha! It is weird. I had an emotionally overwhelming experience one night out observing the core of the Milky Way Galaxy with my giant 25” reflecting telescope. I felt like I had been to the summit of amateur astronomy—maybe even of human existence. On the drive home I envisioned a book that would be written in the similitude of a scientific Pilgrim’s Progress. It would involve an odyssey going from the east end of the Grand Canyon all the way to and across the Mojave Desert to Death Valley. Then up the entire length of that region the size of Connecticut and out the northwest end to the crest of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Yosemite National Park. I had already done the journey

Paul Knauth in his study zoning in on Brahms

in many segments as part of teaching and research over the years and experienced many emotional summits. So, as the journey progresses, I relate the grand themes of geology and the history of life as expressed in these places with a clarity and magnificence like nowhere else. I vent my prejudices about how science works, what it all means, its triumphs and failures, and how the grand themes have affected the collective human psyche. It is richly illustrated with photos from the thousands I have taken in those places. It climaxes on a mountain peak in the Sierras with the Milky Way slowly appearing in the deepening twilight. It thus ends on how it begins. Alas, it will require three volumes—only the one involving the Grand Canyon is almost done. I’m racing the clock.

EV: I suppose it makes sense for a geologist to have an interest in astronomy as well. Has this been a long-term affair?

PK: I’ve been exploring the universe with a succession of ever larger telescopes since I was twelve. Only visual observing for its own sake; no photography or amateur science. I want photons from those distant objects to absorb in the cells of my retina. They become part of me. It is my way of connecting with the universe. I don’t care much for pho-

Paul Knauth viewing in the desert

tographs with all their exaggerated colors and blobs for stars instead of those piercing mathematical points I see visually. I’m not interested in black holes, dark matter, cosmology, or astrophysics except insofar as it might clarify what I am seeing. There is nothing so overwhelming as the universe as seen from a dark sky site with a large telescope. It is my heaven.

EV: I would like to hear about your telescope.

PK: These days I observe mostly with a 25” reflector.

EV: For our readers who are not familiar with the technology of telescopes, what is a “reflector”?

PK: A precisely curved mirror reflects a cone of light back toward a

point. A small flat mirror redirects it off to one side where an eyepiece magnifier focuses an image onto an observer’s retina or some kind of detector. The bigger the mirror, the brighter the magnified object. All big telescopes nowadays are “reflectors.” The Hubble Space Telescope mirror is 94 inches. Mine is 25.

EV: Did you build it yourself?

PK: I assembled it from parts. It has an $8,000 mirror made in Colorado, a mounting made in Wisconsin, computer driven motors, controllers, mount modifications from Sierra Vista, Arizona and an on-

Simple side-viewed reflector telescope

board navigation computer made in Australia. Of course, I have modified it a great deal in my shop. Making the hoist systems and a huge ladder I can move around like a wheelbarrow required some difficult engineering. I also have an 1100 lb. 12.5” Newtonian reflector in its own trailer, also with a hoist system to take it out. That one is unsurpassed for high magnification views.

Anyway, I transport it with a trailer and assemble it in the field far away from city lights. It is a monster undertaking. Thought I couldn’t handle it beyond age 75, but now I’ve built a more elaborate hoist setup to reduce the physical effort. Seeing the universe with a 25” from a dark sky site is not a trivial undertaking.

EV: Where do you go to observe?

PK: At least 100 miles from Phoenix lights. Western desert in the cooler months, and mountains east of Globe when warmer. Occasionally I’ll go to just south of the Grand Canyon or to the North Rim. Summer observing is tough because you only get about 4 hours of truly dark night.

25” telescope setup in the desert

EV: What can you see from there with your telescope?

PK: Things you would not think could be seen with human eyes. Galaxies with their arms and peculiar shapes, no two the same. Sometimes clusters of galaxies as many as fifteen in the same view. Interacting galaxies where you can viscerally feel them tugging and distorting each other. Glowing clouds of gas in our own galaxy—some so large I literally drive around in them. Planetary nebula with their greenish halos, hazes, jets, filaments, and glows. Intricately shaped dark clouds and stringers silhouetted against background stars of the Milky Way. Star

Paul and his 25” reflector telescope

clusters which look like baskets of jewels. Star clusters so concentrated and dense there may be thousands merged into a glow. I can resolve most of them on a good night. Then there are comets, planets, glowing supernovae remnants—it goes on and on. I will often just sit in deepest night and stare upward with that big telescope silhouetted against a star-filled sky. Computer controlled motors hold it fixed in space while the Earth rotates under it. Deep thoughts then. Really deep.

EV: That sounds fabulous. I really envy you your viewing experiences. But I gather you don’t take photographs of what you observe.

PK: No, I don’t. I prefer just to look. Photographs don’t convey the same mystery and pleasure, and I am being totally self-indulgent here.

EV: Paul, speaking of indulgences, I know from our time together as cross-department colleagues in the Physics-Geology building that you have a deep love for music. Are you a musician?

PK: No, but I am a virtuoso when it comes to playing compact disks.

EV: At least you’re not into scratching vinyl. But to what or whom do you credit your love of music?

PK: I was walking past the open door of a dorm room after dinner while attending a 1961 NSF summer science institute for high school students at Texas A&M. Lawson Taitte (subsequently theater and music critic for the Dallas Morning News) was playing the last movement of the Beethoven 9th. I was blown away and asked if I could hear the whole thing on his portable record player instead of going to the evening session. I didn’t know music like that existed. It changed my life.

EV: What do you prefer listening to?

PK: I now have thousands of CDs of classical music of all types and actually still do scratch vinyl (in the traditional way) from time to time. I like pieces and performances that have great beauty, profundity, and power. Music I can get lost in—music that opens the gates of heaven. Beethoven, Bruckner, Brahms, Mahler, Wagner, Bach, Monteverdi, Mozart, Vaughn-Williams, Verdi, Dvorak…it goes on and on. Mein Gott,

there is such great music out there! I listen all the time. I try to experience at least one major work in the dark every night. Been to the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth twice, but I actually prefer recordings where I can explore different interpretations in comfort. I have a great sound system in my study.

EV: Aside from these, your major interests, what else do you like to do for fun and relaxation?

PK: I have a large library and a packed Kindle; I read all the time. Reading with your morning brain is retirement glory. I had planned to systematically walk every isle in the ASU Libraries, but they are moving all the books out. Browsing on a computer file is not the same thing. I also have a small boat I can row, sail, or motor around Tempe Town Lake. I want to teach my grandkids how to sail, but I need to first learn how myself.

EV: Where do you live now?

PK: After 17 years in Tempe and 17 in Mesa, my wife Nancy and I now live in southeast Gilbert for the past 6 years. Love it out here.

The separate RV-size garage at the Knauth home

EV: I presume you have room for your telescope and all else. Have you expanded your footprint?

PK: Enormously. Instead of downsizing, we bought a 3-year-old place on an acre in a very nice neighborhood. The back half was all dirt. Now it is a paradise with a giant RV-size garage, workshop, pool with jacuzzi, ramada, waterfall over a grotto, elevated observation decks for watching sunset and stars. My wife has many gardens, mostly flowers. Best years for sure.

EV: Are you still active in teaching about geology?

PK: I just recently ended my public outreach geology field trips. Did thirty-two public raft trips down the Grand Canyon. Ran public field excursions for the Death Valley Natural History Association until we suspended for COVID reasons. Nowadays, I do a lot of long geology posts on my FB page using photos from the thousands I took over the years. I’m pretty much done with public presentations but never say no to an astronomy club.

EV: How about family?

PK: My Wife and I are a year away from our 50th wedding anniversary. Two daughters, three grandchildren, and one great grandchild. I am happiest with family. It’s when I feel like I got washed ashore.

Now let’s do one of these where I ask you questions, Dick. Retirement for me has been self-indulgent; you are someone who really did reinvent retirement!

EV: Thank you for the invitation. But it will have to wait until I’m no longer editing this journal and someone else can judge the value of content.

And thank you as well, Paul, for allowing us a glimpse into your full, varied and fascinating retirement. From what I’ve seen, it would easily keep six professors emeritae fully occupied.

Minorities in Arizona: The Battle for Voting Rights

David R. Berman

As Arizona came into the union, major segments of the adult population were excluded from voting. This included white women, a problem which was resolved shortly after statehood through an initiative measure. Suffrage for white woman came after a long and intense battle which developed in the territorial years. Problems regarding the voting rights of men and women who happened to be Hispanic, African American, or Native American also developed in territorial times but have continued on to the present day. The following covers some major problems in the history of the minority struggle: the nature and effects of a literacy test, problems of physical and legal suppression, and the special problems faced by Native Americans. (1)

Minorities and the Literacy Test

In 1909, toward the end of Arizona’s status as a territory of the United States, the Democrat-controlled territorial legislature passed

a measure over the Republican governor’s veto that required an “educational test” in English for voter registration. Under the law, a man whose literacy was challenged by a registrar had to “read a section from the Constitution of the United States…in such a manner as to show that he is not being prompted or reciting from memory.” (2) Democrats aimed the legislation at the Mexican population who, they assumed, had generally voted Republican. Republican leaders, who concurred in this assessment of the propensity of Mexican voters, saw the legislation as an attempt by Democrats to perpetuate their power in Arizona. The Republican territorial governor in 1909 called the act “plainly partisan, unjust, discriminatory…so drawn as to be a ready instrument of fraud in the hands of corrupt and unfair election officers and boards.” (3)

In 1912, after gaining statehood, the first state legislature, controlled by Democrats, adopted an educational restriction much like the law passed by the territorial legislature in 1909. Democratic Senator A.A. Worsley of Tucson was one of the few legislators to speak against the literacy provision. He contended that suffrage was a right not a privilege and asked: “In a government where all must obey the laws, why should not all participate in the making of those laws?” (4) There was, in his view, no valid reason why those who did not speak English or were not well educated should be excluded from the electorate. To Worsley, knowing English was not essential for active and effective citizenship and those with little or no formal education were often and perhaps usually better citizens than educated people.

Unmoved by these arguments, legislators and Democratic Governor Hunt gave their approval of the law, which denied the franchise to those unable to “read the Constitution of the United States in the English language in such manner as to show he is neither prompted nor reciting from memory, and to write his name.” As indicated by this language, voter registrars had considerable discretion in applying the law. This measure, like its predecessor under the territorial legislature, was aimed primarily at Hispanic voters. A prominent newspaper editor and Democratic leader happily confided to another well-known Democrat that the literacy measure meant the end of “the ignorant Mexican vote”

in his county.

(5)

In 1912, registrars used the discretion granted to them by the literacy test to deny registration to Hispanics in several counties around the state. In Cochise and Pima Counties the resulting decline in Hispanic voters meant that nearly half of the precincts lacked enough voters to justify holding primary elections in 1912. In Apache County Democrats began recall campaigns against two Republican office holders, in the belief that enough Hispanic voters had been purged from the voting rolls to defeat the incumbents. (6) In the next several decades registrars use the law to systematically exclude not only Hispanics, but African American, and Native Americans from voting.

Relief did not come until 1965 when implementation of provisions of the Federal Voting Rights Act led to the suspension of the literacy test in Apache, Navajo, and Coconino counties—places where a sizeable number of the potential voters were Native Americans and where there was a corresponding history of low voter turnout and use of the literacy test. Congress banned the use of the test in 1970 through an amendment to the Voting Rights Act which applied to all of Arizona. The United States Supreme Court upheld the ban later that year. Justice Hugo Black writing for the majority declared that the application of the literacy test had significantly lowered the participation rates of minorities in Arizona. In an earlier action against Arizona for its refusal to comply with the Voting Rights Act as amended in 1970, the U.S. Department of Justice estimated that over 73,000 people in the state could not vote because of the literacy test requirement.

Problems of Voter Suppression

During the 1960s, it was clear that more than the elimination of the literacy test was going to be needed to protect minorities. Intimidation of minority-group members—Hispanics, African Americans, as well as Native Americans—who wished to vote became a fact of life in Arizona. By this time, the minorities had shown a tendency to vote for Democrats, and Republicans led the effort to prevent them from voting.

Republican activists challenged minorities at the polls and asked them to read and explain “literacy” cards containing quotations from the U.S. Constitution. They hoped to frighten or embarrass minorities and discourage them from standing in line to vote. In 1962 Republican workers undertook vote challenges of this nature in South Phoenix, a largely minority Hispanic and African American area. (7) Two years later Arizona Republicans undertook similar activity statewide as part of a national effort by the Republican Party called “Operation Eagle Eye.” According to one account: “The approach was simple: to challenge voters, especially voters of color, at the polls throughout the country on a variety of specious pretexts. If the challenge did not work outright— that is, if the voter was not prevented from casting a ballot (provisional ballots were not in widespread use at this time)—the challenge would still slow down the voting process, create long lines at the polls, and likely discourage some voters who could not wait or did not want to go through the hassle they were seeing other voters endure.” (8)

Art Hamilton, long-time Democratic leader in the state legislature, later testified during US Senate hearings on the nomination of William Rehnquist for the US Supreme Court that Rehnquist, as a lawyer with a private practice in Phoenix, had joined others in the 1992 harassment of Black voters in the south part of the city. As Hamilton later noted: “The Chief Justice has a fading memory on this, but he was a Republican operative doing his best to suppress the heavy Democratic and minority vote in the precinct. Rehnquist carried a card with parts of the U.S. Constitution printed on it. He would pick out Black or Hispanic voters and ask them to read from the card, and if they couldn’t, he told them, ‘You have no business being in this line trying to vote. I ask you to leave.’ We convinced him it was healthier to ply his trade elsewhere. He found it wasn’t the most efficacious use of his time in the Harrison precinct.” (9) A similar charge was made at the same hearing by another Democratic legislator, Manuel “Lito” Pena, regarding Rehnquist’s involvement in Operation Eagle Eye. He later was quoted as saying that Rehnquist “was strictly after Blacks and Hispanics. At least that’s the way it looked to me.” (10) Rehnquist denied the charges.

Other charges of voter suppression disproportionally affecting minorities have been aimed at something the voters, the state legislature or governor have done. Charges of discrimination, for example, followed voter adoption of Proposition 200 in 2004 which requires that individuals present proof of citizenship when registering to vote. Arizona was the first state to make proof of citizenship a requirement for voting. Backers of the proposition declared this was needed to block undocumented immigrants from voting. Election officials, however, stated that cases of voter fraud involving undocumented immigrants were rare in large part because most people in this category are fearful of exposing their status and risking deportation by attempting to vote. (11)

In addition to cracking down on something that does not seem to be much of a problem, the law made it more difficult for many who are actually citizens to vote. This requirement was (and is) particularly burdensome for many Hispanic, Native American, and African American voters who do not have the required forms of identification and face sometimes insurmountable burdens in obtaining them. Between 2005 and 2007, approximately 31,000 people in Arizona had their registration forms rejected because they could not provide sufficient documentation of citizenship. (12)

In 2016, Republican legislators and the Republican governor took another step they claimed was necessary to prevent fraud and protect the integrity of the ballot by passing a measure that restricted the practice of people going from door-to-door collecting ballots and offering to turn them in, a practice Republicans call “ballot harvesting” but which Hispanics and Democrats defended as an effective way of increasing minority participation. The law makes it a felony for someone other than a family member, household member, or caregiver to turn a signed and sealed ballot into the county registrar on behalf of another voter. Legislators passed this measure over the protests of Arizona’s Hispanic, Native American, and African American leaders speaking for minority communities in which voters had relied heavily on community members, organizers, and friends to deliver ballots to registrars’ offices in

past elections. In practice Republicans also collected ballots mailed to people looked upon as supporters but were not as efficient in doing it as those who collected them from minorities. The U.S Supreme Court in 2021, however, upheld the ballot collection law. In the same case it upheld a system regarding provisional voting, which, it was claimed resulted in an unusual number of rejected ballots, disproportionately, those of minority voters.

Currently at issue are legal challenges to two other state laws, passed with all Republicans supporting and all Democrats opposing, which plaintiffs charge will disproportionately disenfranchise Native American, African American, and Latino voters. One of the laws challenged makes it easier to remove voters from the Permanent Early Voting List by stipulating that this will happen by 2024 if they fail to vote in two consecutive election cycles and fail to respond to a notice. As one observer has noted: The measure “turns the fourteen-year-old permanent early voting list into the active early voting list and is expected to lead to as many as 150,000 voters being purged from the list after a four-year cycle.” (13) The second is a law that shortens the time someone has to correct a mail-in ballot missing a required signature. This must be done under the law by seven P.M on election day or the ballots will be thrown out. Previous law allowed five business days after an election to clear up signatures that failed to match what is on file with the state.

Special Problems of Native Americans

Ronnie Lupe, who chaired the White Mountain Apache Tribe for thirty-six years, remarked in 1996: “I’ve always considered it ironic that we Indians, who were the first inhabitants of this country, were the last to be included in America’s political process.” (14) Indeed, for much of the State’s history, Native Americans have faced special barriers to voting. At the time of statehood, federal law did not regard Native Americans on reservations as citizens of the United States. They were, thus, ineligible to participate in federal, state, or local elections. Congress changed the law in 1924 to acknowledge Native Americans as citizens.

Nevertheless, in a 1928 case the Arizona Supreme Court decided that Native Americans still could not vote in Arizona because they were under federal guardianship. Specifically, the state constitution denied the right to vote to “people under guardianship.” The court held that because of the relationship between the tribes and the federal government, Native Americans fell into this category. State officials also used the federal guardianship rationale to deny Native Americans other benefits such as Old Age Assistance programs giving aid to poor elderly people.

In 1948, in a more liberal environment shaped partly by the contributions of Native Americans to the World War II effort, the Arizona Supreme Court expressly overruled the earlier decision. Thus, nearly twenty-four years after the federal government gave Native Americans the right to vote, they were finally able to access the franchise in Arizona. This decision, however, did not bring about a large influx of new Native American voters. In particular, the English literacy test became a major obstacle to involvement. In 1948, only an estimated twenty percent of Native Americans spoke English. (15) Perhaps even more important at that time was the fact that many Native Americans were uncertain about what to do with their voting rights. Many had little identification with the non-Native American world. They did not see themselves as participants in the state and national process, and some, as a direct result of intimidation from Anglos, feared involvement. People in the non-Native American community, hoping to keep Native

Navajo voters cast their ballots in 1955

Americans away from the polls, told them that involvement could lead to something detrimental, such as increased taxation, a loss of reservation lands, and an end to their special relationship with the federal government. (16)

When it comes to registration and voting, Native Americans continue to be more likely than others to have trouble with ID requirements and the lack of internet connections, home mail delivery, and transportation services. Voting on reservations has been especially difficult because physical barriers and geographical isolation have required Native Americans to travel long distances to the polls. Participation has been further hampered by frequent changes in the number and location of polling places, which seem to some purposely designed to frustrate participation and the lack of language assistance to Native Americans.

Summing up the progress and obstacles that Native Americans have faced, one authority has concluded:

“Arizona Indians have fought not only for the rights to maintain and protect their respective cultures and traditions, they have also fought to protect the freedoms embodied through our representative democracy. Despite their sacrifices, Arizona Indians were denied the right to vote for half a century after they received citizenship. The road to full participation in the electoral process has been long, with roadblocks, detours, and speedbumps. There is still work to be done to ensure equal access for Indian voters.” (17)

Endnotes

1. The author was an expert witness in a case originating in Arizona that was decided in the summer of 2021 in the US Supreme Court involving ballot harvesting and other election/voting practices in the state. This article draws in part upon the author’s expert witness report which was a historical account of voting discrimination against Native Americans, Hispanics, and African Americans.

2. See David R. Berman, Reformers, Corporations, and the Electorate: An Analysis of Arizona’s Age of Reform (Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 1992.

3. Letter from Governor Richard E. Sloan to Hon. Mike Burns, chair Democratic Campaign Committee on February 18, 1910, found in Republican Candidates for Delegates to the Constitutional Convention, Gila County (Tucson: AZ: Citizen Print, 1910.

4. Speech in the Arizona Democrat, June 1912.

5. Letter from W.B. Kelly, editor and manager of The Copper Era (Bisbee) to Reese Ling, a Democratic activist in Coconino County (August 3, 1912) (on file with the Reese Ling Collection, Box 1, Special Collections, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona

6. See: “The Recall Movement,” Weekly Journal-Miner, September 25, 1912: 2. The outcome of the recall effort is unclear.

7. See: Venita Hawthorne James, “Arizona’s Legacy of Prejudice,” Arizona Republic, Jan. 12, 1991; Ed Foster, “Harassing Voters Rare In Arizona,” Arizona Republic, Nov. 27, 1993; Richard Nilsen, “A Struggle Not Forgotten,” Arizona Republic, Jan. 15, 2005.

8. Tova Andrea Wang, The Politics of Voter Suppression 44-45 (Cornell University Press, 2012.

9. Richard Nilsen, “A Struggle not forgotten,” Arizona Republic, January 15, 2005: E1, E6.

10. Alia Beard Rau, “Manuel ‘Lito’ Pena Jr., 88, ex-legislator,” Arizona Republic, October 15, 2013: B4.

11. Daniel Gonzalez, “Election Officials Uncover Little Voter Fraud in State,” Arizona Republic, Oct. 26, 2004.

12. Denise Lieberman, “Barriers to the Ballot Box, 39” Human Rights Magazine 1 (2012) http://www.americanbar.org/publications/ human rights magazine home/2012.

13. Mary Jo Pitzl, “Republicans campaign for tighter voter ID rules,” Arizona Republic, August 17, 2021.

14. Ronnie, Lupe, “Chairman’s Corner: Our recent activism has given

Indians clout in the political arena,” Fort Apache Scout (Whiteriver, AZ) September 27, 1996:2)

15. Patty Ferguson-Bohnee, “The History of Indian Voting Rights in Arizona: Overcoming Decades of Voter Suppression,” 47, Arizona State Law Journal 1099, 1112 (2015)

16. “The History of Arizona Indian Voting Rights,” Intertribal Council of Arizona, reprinted in the Congressional Record, (May 14, 1986, E1676-7.)

17. Ferguson-Bohnee, The History of Indian Voting Rights.”

If a man will comprehend the richness and variety of the universe, and inspire his mind with a due measure of wonder and awe, he must contemplate the human intellect not only on its heights of genius but in its abysses of ineptitude ...

A.E. Housman

Mittersill

Aleksandra Gruzinska

When during the war, the time came for me and other Polish girls to leave the Achern Baden Heimschule, where we had been interned, I prepared for the trip by hiding a piece of paper with my mother’s name and address, and my Polish name, in my shoe so that no one would take it away from me. During the trip toward Salzburg, Austria, we visited the key cultural tourist sights of Hellbrunn, Schönbrunn, and Salzburg, before boarding a train, or perhaps a bus, that would drop us off, one by one, in different cities, to different German and Austrian families, and further isolate each one of us from all contact with the roots of the past. First Renate left us, then Wilhelmine. I finally arrived at my assigned destination in Mittersill, where a tall, slim and handsome redhead with a bike at her side was waiting for me. Her name, I soon found out, was Elisabeth Ronacher and together we set out on a five-kilometer walk from the station to the farm of the Ronacher family, deep in the valley of one of the fast-flowing tributaries of the Salzach river. When later I tried to retrieve the little scrap of paper with my mother’s name and address from my shoe, it was reduced to pulp and unreadable. But its message was also deeply engraved in my memory.

One could write a novel about life on a farm deep in the valley near a tributary of the Salzach, a river that flows through Zell am See and further north, through Salzburg. I was a city girl and remembered living, not so long before the war, in a new apartment building with electricity, in Poznań, a city with an Opera house, the Adam Mickiewicz University, and a superb city hall. Life on the Ronacher family farm was a totally new experience that required getting used to.

Once Elisabeth and I left the main road, we took a short but fairly steep pathway that led uphill to the farm, which included the farm house or living quarters. Facing it was a barn, somewhat shabby in appearance, where all the farm work was done, and where hay was kept, together with some farm machines and a chicken shed. A small enclosed garden adjoined the farmhouse and supplied fresh vegetables and flowers. Vast fields, meadows and hills, and woods extended all around the farm. Tall mountains nearby raised their majestic peaks to the sky, as part of the glorious Kitzbuhel Alps in the north, and the Hohe Tauern in the south. One couldn’t wish for a more glorious and splendid natural setting.

When we arrived, Frau Ronacher or “Mütti,” as everyone called her, was waiting for us. She was a middle-sized woman, with black hair except for a few streaks of silver grey. She seemed kind, gentle, and serious. I was immediately offered some freshly brewed coffee with raw milk and a very generous fat, thick milk skin, korzuch, on top. I was being treated to the finest cup of coffee that hospitality afforded during the war.

I remembered that, when I was a little girl, my mother had taught

me one rule of politeness and good behavior: “When you are invited,” she would say, “you always accept and never refuse whatever food you are offered as a welcome gesture of hospitality.” But at home, back in Poland, I never drank milk, and refused it even when my mother stood next to me, with my father’s military leather belt ready to swing into action, but only as a threat. As for the fat thick milk skin, the korzuch, swallowing it was unthinkable. And now, the token of a warm and gracious welcome was in front of me. I could not refuse it; I heard my mother’s famous admonition about hospitality and food. So, I proceeded to drink the coffee, diluting it with bitter and profuse tears. I was in a state of utmost misery, almost sick inside, something Mütti and Elizabeth never suspected.

Mittersill became my home for the next three years and there was much to learn. Every morning I would walk the five kilometers from the farm to the school in town. Late in the afternoon, I walked back home the same distance, rain or sunshine, snow, hail, thunder and lightning. There was no excuse for missing school, not even when avalanches blocked the road in winter. I simply learned how to climb over the pile of snow. I do not remember ever being sick or missing school and did my homework while it was still daylight because there was no electricity until shortly before the end of the war. The absence of electricity did not matter very much. It was a question of going to bed early and rising with the first rays of light. In the worst-case scenario, there was always candlelight. Of course, during the war years, candles were expensive.

Children living on the farm learned to work and help with the various chores. I was no exception. In the summer I worked in the field with the adults, took care of kid goats and sheep while they were grazing, or gathered eggs the chickens had laid in the shed. In winter, the chickens lived in an enclosed space under a long bench in the Stube or living room. I churned the butter, gathered mushrooms and blueberries and wild raspberries in the woods, picked frogs to be cleaned and fried, a really delicious treat, although I disliked catching them in the muddied waters and touching their slimy bodies. I loved climbing high into the Alps with Beutel, the Ronacher son, and his friend Peter, to check

on the cattle, goats and sheep, taking some salt to them and checking to make sure that they were safe. Coming down the tall splendid Alps was another matter. The boys would run ahead, leaving me alone in unexplored territory, and they enjoyed seeing how scared I was, begging, whining and imploring them to wait for me.

Shortly after my arrival, the family and friends were working in a vast meadow behind the Ronacher farmhouse. In the first row, men with scythes were cutting grass. Behind each man, two persons followed with rakes; they gathered the freshly cut grass into rows with one person on each side of the row. Moving forward and keeping up with the men with scythes required frequent small repetitive movements and steps by those who followed them. If a person was not careful or a novice, like I was, one could accidentally hit an anthill with the rake. They would be tossed into the air, and sometimes they landed on the closest human body.

That night, in my sleep, like in a nightmare, I continued to perform the same repetitive gestures, forming the grass into a row, advancing forward, hitting the ants. I was sleeping on a mattress filled with fresh straw and as I moved forward in my dream I reached the edge of the high bed, fell out, landed on the floor and woke up Mütti, with whom I was sharing the room. Not a glorious performance on my part.

I remember the cat who one winter night climbed through the window (always open at night, even in zero-degree temperature), and brought one kitten after another, hiding them in my bed to keep them warm. I remember Frika, the German shepherd dog. One day she paid less attention to her farm duties because she had little puppies to worry about. She was severely punished for it. Beutel Senior’s wife found the puppies and threw them into the river. I felt so sad for poor Frika. The punishment seemed much too severe. The poor dog was so unhappy.

Frau Ronacher, Mütti, was a widow. She had given birth to ten boys. Eight died on the battlefront, Beutel Senior, her oldest son died of natural causes while I was in Mittersill, and Siegfried (Sigi) was married to Elizabeth, but they had no children. Accepting a little “orphan,” an Ostkind without parents, was almost natural for a woman who had earned

many awards for the sacrifices she made and losses she endured as a mother in the name of the Vaterland.

I soon became a member of the family. At night I shared Mutti’s room with a lovely wooden floor, two twin beds, walls painted white and decorated with the horns of the wild animals that were hunted and killed every fall; they supplied us with meat and their furry pelt. Adjoining Mutti’s room was the Stube, an ample family room with a big round table, surrounded against the walls by benches. The Stube was heated in the winter by a giant oven where fresh bread was baked. In this room, the family consumed most of its meals. In the hall some stairs led to the second floor. Facing the Stube, on the other side of the hall was the kitchen, furnished with a big iron coal stove, table and benches and many utensils used for cooking and running a farm house.

On the second floor were bedrooms and an open outhouse toilet attached to the house and used mostly during the day. While attending to nature’s needs, one could admire the splendid Alps, and at the same time hear the poo drop from the second floor. It made a resounding splash in a vast enclosed space below that would periodically be emptied of its contents, which were used to fertilize the meadows and fields. In the wintertime, at night, we used chamber-pots. In zero temperatures no one ventured to go outside at night.

During the more than two years that I spent in Mittersill until the end of WWII, I do not remember taking a shower. There was none. The house had no bathroom. And yet body cleanliness and cleanliness of clothes remained important. I remember private hygiene sessions in Mutti’s room or in the Stube, when no one was present, using a stand and a washbowl. I have no recollection of washing my clothes, or of anyone washing them, and yet they were always clean. Lice were a major problem. No harmful liquid treatments were used to get rid of them. Instead I recall frequent long Sunday sessions, rather pleasant, with my head anchored in Mutti’s ample and warm bosom, as she searched for the lice and I could clearly hear frequent “clicks” whenever she squeezed one between her nails. Many years later, when I created and taught a Nineteenth Century French Poetry course, Arthur Rimbaud’s

poem “Les Chercheuses de poux” (The Lice Pickers) remained among my favored poems to share with the students. I was particularly sensitive to its dream-like sensuality and I always included it in the syllabus. “The Lice Pickers” was not just poetry; the poem was a living experience deeply and intensely relived at each rereading.

There was an incident with the bees. A farm always has bee-hives for plenty of delicious honey, a treasure during war time. An experienced person in handling bees attended to them, dressed in special protective clothes and armed with a container that produced a great deal of smoke to ward off the defensive insects. I once ventured too close without any protection or smoke in order to observe the removal of honey. The excited and unhappy bees immediately attacked the innocent and inexperienced intruder and found their way into my long hair and attacked my head with a vengeance. My screams seemed to resound over the entire range of mountain peaks and all the near and distant farms and the entire range of the glorious Austrian Alps.

I once accompanied Sigi taking a cow to a nearby farmer. He had a bull, for mating purposes, and I witnessed, at ten or eleven, the entire mating process leading to the final mounting of the bull on a somewhat resistant but finally subdued cow. I felt uneasy when Sigi and the farmer, by some more or less discreet utterances, hinted at this mating performance as a rudimentary introduction to sex. To be truthful, I would have preferred to be spared the entire episode.

I can think of only one type of farm work that I disliked. In the summer, during the grass harvest, the hay had to be tossed into the air with a giant wooden fork for it to land inside a long horse-drawn wagon. A person on top of the wagon treaded the hay to distribute it evenly, to keep it down and compress it. One of the more responsible children, instructed on how to keep the horse calm, made sure that the wagon did not move abruptly, otherwise the person on top of the wagon could fall and hurt himself. One summer it was my turn to make the horse behave. When thick swarms of big black flies landed on the horse, I used some soft branches, as a swatter, to get rid of them. They in turn landed on me, biting ferociously. I used the improvised swatter to rid myself of

them, and again, they mercilessly attacked the horse, making the wagon jerk, and everybody angrily screamed with orders to keep the horse calm. There was no end to the misery. It was the horse or me, taking turns with one exception, the horse was never blamed or screamed at.

An experience of a different type concerned French culture, to which I became introduced by the blond, pale-looking Henri from northern France and the dark haired and more hot-blooded François from the South. They worked on the Ronacher farm as prisoners of war. They ate in the Stube alone, and I do not recall where they slept, probably in the barn. François was definitely the sexy type and even made passes at Beutel Senior’s wife, who one day entered the kitchen extremely flustered, indignant and outraged by François’s advances and explicit proposals, to which she presumably did not respond!

My task was to serve dinner to the prisoners in the Stube, also a new learning experience for me. As I entered the Stube for the first time carrying two heavy plates loaded with food, each in one hand, I unexpectedly, without any warning, sneezed right on the plates in front of me and swiftly proceeded to serve the food to Henri and François. Back in the kitchen, I was severely reprimanded and admonished that sneezing on food was very bad manners and showed a lack of politeness, something I did not need to be told twice, ever again. But to tell the truth, how could I have avoided it, with both my hands full of heavy plates loaded with food! I had no choice and certainly no way of avoiding the unexpected exploding sneeze.

I no longer recall how I renewed contact with my mother. Was it I who wrote to her first? Or was it she who discovered where I was? One day, the mailman delivered an envelope. It was addressed to me. Before giving it to me, Mütti sought advice and called a teacher at the school in Mittersill, who was one of my instructors. When this young and charming Austrian Fraulein came to our house, she asked many questions, looked intensely at me as if she wanted to know me deep inside. It must have come as a shock to Mütti and the entire Ronacher family to discover that the little girl, the Ostkind (whose assumed German father possibly died on the battlefront and whose German mother died per-

haps when her child was born), had a Polish mother still alive in Lódź. The positive decision after this interrogation resulted in allowing me to keep in touch with my mother throughout the war years, in German of course, as I no longer spoke Polish. My mother also wrote to me in German. I still have a photograph with the words “Der lieben Mütti,” to my dear mother, inscribed on it. It was meant as a Mother’s-day gift, the only remembrance that my mother had kept from the Mittersill years. From the time that my mother’s first letter arrived, my relationship with the Ronacher family slowly changed. I was no longer an Ostkind or German orphan. I was a Polish girl who had a Polish mother in Lódź. In the agricultural world of Mittersill, reading and the enhancing and enriching imaginary world offered by books did not exist. There were no books at the farm. But my mother had introduced me to the world of books very early by reading with me, or to me. Her many simple questions always led to a wonderful conversation.

During WWII, Germanization meant acquisition of German language, history and culture. But it also meant dispossession. It required separation from family, country and mother tongue. It required the learning of a new culture, the adoption of another identity and language, and the acquisition of a new way of thinking. At the age of nine or ten, I was introduced to Wagner, Tanhäuser, Parzifal, the Nibelungen Ring, Brunhilde, Krimhilde and Siegfried, the fire ring surrounding sleeping Krimhilde and her dreams of a handsome young chevalier on a white horse coming to rescue her from the scheming, dark Brunhilde. Both the music and the mythologies became part of my new world. In Achern, and later in Mittersill, I was Krimhilde awaiting rescue but without a forthcoming rescue chapter. I was left suspended in a void, an emptiness filled with a vague longing for some miracle. At Christmas time, Santa Claus would bring perhaps that hoped-for rescue. Under the Christmas tree one year, in spite of the war, everyone found a gift. Santa left a pair of beautiful gloves for me that I had knitted myself. The gift stifled within me the myth of Santa. All hope for a miracle vanished forever.

I have no memory of brushing my teeth. I don’t remember brushing

them regularly during my stay with the Ronacher family. Ultimately, a visit to the dentist became inevitable. A tooth was badly infected and had to be pulled. All anesthetics were at the battlefront, so the dentist had none. As I screamed from pain, he vigorously slapped my face, like Frau Ackerman once did. It worked: I bore the excruciating pain in silence.

One morning when I awoke, Mütti was still in bed. She seemed in pain and greatly distressed. I got up and quietly dressed. I was ready to have breakfast but as I opened the door to the Stube (living room), I saw a body dressed in Sunday best clothes lying on the dining table. Mütti’s oldest son, Beutel, had died during the night. His widow, young son, Elisabeth and her husband Sigi, and Mütti had prepared the body for the funeral. It was placed on the only piece of furniture, large enough for family and friends to see him and to say a last good bye before a church funeral and burial. I closed the door and refused to leave the room. Mütti, immersed in grief, got up and walked me through the Stube, into the hall and to the kitchen.

I soon found out that, as a member of the family, I was awakened during the night and repeatedly invited to help in the preparations and arrangement of Beutel’s body. Each time I promised to get up but went back to sleep. In the morning, I remembered absolutely nothing of what had transpired during the night. No one believed me. With time, I was forgiven.

I remembered that in the town of Jordanów, in southern Poland, the husband of my mother’s friend Hania had died and his body lay for a day or two in one of the rooms of Hania’s house where my mother and I lived. I was four or five years old. My mother brought me into the room, took me in her arms, raised me close to the body, suggested that I say goodbye, and invited me to kiss the dead man’s face. I started to cry, screamed, kicked and refused to do it, to the consternation of all those present. I was scared, even petrified. Perhaps it was this memory that made me so reticent to participate in the Ronacher family’s mourning. Many years later, in America, whenever I received an announcement of the passing of a friend, it took me a long, long time before I actually

ventured to appear at a wake. The American custom of celebrating a person’s life, with the body absent, but family and friends present, became, and still is, a much kinder final goodbye.

Life at Mütti’s farmhouse was a challenging learning adventure, but somehow everyone lived in relative harmony. When the war finally came to an end, it was time for me to say goodbye to the Ronacher family, to leave Mittersill and reconnect with my mother in Poland by way of another challenging life adventure.

Editor’s note: This is a chapter in Professor Gruzinska’s autobiographical account of her experiences behind German lines during the Second World War. See also A. Gruzinska, Emeritus Voices Vol. 20, pp. 83-84.

The more we learn about the wonders of our universe, the more clearly we are going to perceive the hand of God.

Frank Borman

Brief Intimacy

I was awakened by two owls this morning,

Or maybe I had been awake

In the gray slit-light of dawn

Listening to their soft, staccato calls

Imitating middle C.

I heard the tandem hoots

No manufactured, earthly instrument could duplicate.

Perhaps the human voice can Cry so plaintively, So softly.

It broke my heart.

At the zoo

Once,

I stood next to a Great Horned Owl

Held to his perch by chains. He swiveled his head

To acknowledge me.

I looked into his eyes; he stared back—

Unblinking.

He fluttered against restraints, His wings brushed lightly against my face.

He fanned them back and forth

Then opened them

As if to embrace me, Not once but twice, Deliberately. For me? I think so. The draft they made— A flitting, pft, pft sound—

Smelled

Warm, dusty, Like ancient books In hot old libraries.

This brief intimacy

Will never come again.

Beatrice Gordon

Academic Leadership in a Time of Change

Gretchen M. Bataille

The Emeritus College is a wonderful source of information on the ongoing work of our colleagues, and I marvel at the accomplishments that are communicated to the rest of us. When I saw the invitation to contribute to Emeritus Voices, my first thought was that I don’t have a recent major publication and certainly don’t have a witty anecdote to contribute. But I realized that I have had a window into the changes in higher education during the past nine years that provided observations about how college and university leaders have had to change their approach to leadership. These changes accelerated with the recent pandemic and have been exacerbated by the ongoing politicization of higher education.

Since I retired from the American Council on Education in 2013, I have consulted with presidents and chancellors as they transitioned into new positions, desired to make mid-course corrections or were establishing new leadership teams. I established GMB Consulting Group, LLC and also joined ROI Consulting Group, LLC. as a strategic partner. Since that time, I have worked with both public and private institutions as well as multiple state systems. In every case, leaders addressed the most recent crisis or responded to political, financial or personnel changes, and they were looking to the outside for insights, guidance and support. Initially, the issues were those that would be familiar to anyone with experience in higher education, but almost everything changed two years ago. Today, leaders are confronting crises that are not of their own making and sometimes create new crises when they

try to respond to change.

Today, responses to COVID dominate conversations on campus, even as student support, teaching, research, fundraising and maintaining facilities still have to be addressed. At the same time, politics has become even more intrusive on campuses, whether the issues are vaccination mandates, racial conflict, attacks on the curriculum or issues of identity and inclusion. Until the past two years, leaders had the luxury of taking time to address campus issues, to consult widely and to engage in meaningful conversations with the campus community and external constituents. But in the past two years, leaders needed to ramp up quickly in environments where often no one was on campus and only Zoom could connect them visually with their colleagues.

What I have learned over these years is that higher education continues to evolve and change, but that some basic principles undergirding our institutions remain constant. There is certainly more change and turbulence today than in those halcyon days of the past. Peter Drucker was ahead of all of us when he said, “A time of turbulence is a dangerous time, but its greatest danger is a temptation to deny reality,” There are unprecedented challenges facing university leaders today and the successful leaders have recognized that yesterday’s logic and, in fact, yesterday’s policies, practices and assumptions simply don’t fit today’s social, political or technology environment.

This has been obvious in responses to COVID-19. Campuses quickly pivoted to delivering courses online, commencements have become virtual, and administrators work remotely and use Zoom effectively to communicate, despite burgeoning “Zoom fatigue.” The higher education press is full of stories of heroism in the face of epidemic-size outbreaks, political challenges to mask mandates and the realities of the costs of addressing a changing environment. Most university leaders expected that 2022 would bring some relief, but instead all are facing new challenges, and campuses now see more exhaustion and uncertainty.

Academic leaders are pondering if they can be creative enough to reframe leadership in ways that will guide their institutions into the

next “normal.” Can they address current-day issues and at the same time insist that their leadership teams focus on strategic growth opportunities in this disruptive environment? What new or underutilized leadership skills will be required? What “sacred cows” will be sacrificed on the altar of COVID-19? How will leaders address diversity, inclusion and equity to ensure faculty, staff and students all have the same opportunities for success?

Leaders and their teams now define leadership differently, using terms such as “agility,” “adaptability,” and “system thinking.” Campuses are considering what the physical space means in this environment. Campus planners are considering the benefits of an alternative model to working in office structures, and instead are incorporating working remotely with repurposing of office space. Leaders are asking what the new model of philanthropy and development will be without the hugs, skyboxes and perks that donors have come to expect. Leadership teams must also role-model skills and behaviors that signal that the next normal will not be the last new normal, but a journey towards challenges barely discernable on the horizon.

What must stay the same amidst these changes? Every campus has

Campuses react to the COVID-19 pandemic

experienced the influence of technology, and that isn’t about to change. Movement to action is much quicker, however, because there is not time to weigh all the pros and cons of a new LMS system or to ponder whether or not to deliver a town hall on Zoom. In fact, using technology to mentor new faculty and to support students is becoming even more critical as the face-to-face opportunities diminish.

Relationships must be maintained even though stopping by an office for coffee is often no longer possible for a new president’s or a new administrator’s “meet and greet” and tours become virtual. Prospective students tour campuses online rather than visiting the Union, classrooms and residence halls. Staff are less likely to speak up about their distress on Zoom calls. Understanding who is worried about testing positive and which faculty and staff are reluctant to come onto campuses that have moved to in-person modes has become a part of every leader’s new knowledge base.

What I have observed is that new presidents, as well as those who have successfully navigated their institutional environments for many years, now will need to see the opportunities rather than the threats in the current situation. They will need to be all right with what they don’t know, and they will have to rely on others for many key decisions about technology, health risks, diversity initiatives and process improvement. They will also need to be effective at both building a strong team, now often remotely, and developing team skills for collaboration and cross-divisional tasks. What is happening on campuses now is a reframing and reimagining of leadership styles, structures, and practices.

The new year must be one of overcoming pandemic fatigue and rebuilding within universities and colleges. Academic leaders must figure out where the campus is on the journey from heroic to disillusioned and must be able to recognize the ongoing signs of stress among faculty, staff and students. Work boundaries need to be determined. Work from home is often 24/7, leading to more frustration, fatigue and domestic problems. Campuses need to establish a realistic framework for the future and determine which organizational structures need to change in order to accommodate a workspace that changes from week

to week. Reimagining faculty and staff work is critical, and events need to include spontaneous happenings rather than always being transactional. Employee and student groups will always need to be engaged, but that engagement is changing and decisions often need to be made without the consultation that representative groups would prefer, so all groups need to be empowered as much as possible. Overall, university leaders need to rethink every aspect of campus life, determining the hybrid model that is needed to carry on the work of the university. In response to the current environment and the challenges it produces, leaders have new pressures to respond within a compressed timeframe for change. In an almost static environment of the past, leaders had to push to initiate action. Today, these leaders have been pushed into a highly reactive mode.

What I see for the future is that all leaders must continue to model best practices, to learn from one another and to always demonstrate a focus on care and well-being for everyone in the university community. Universities have to move from ten-year strategic plans to 90-day planning. To do any less is to shortchange the students who depend on our colleges and universities and our faculty and staff to create an environment for the academic, social and emotional growth we have come to expect from our universities.

My sense of god is my sense of wonder about the universe.

Albert Einstein

No is a Sentence #1

“No.” is a sentence, complete and unequivocal. A distinct and emphatic voice when asked to do more.

I am retired which gives me room to voice my objection

When told my free time should be used to (fill in the blank).

There are grandchildren, from birth to now

I see them and I watch them breathe and bloom and grow. There is daughter, experiencing life, climbing high, And flying on a trapeze to celebrate her fiftieth year

The son-in-law keeps me online and rescues things from the top shelf While husband continues to climb to peaks from the valley floor

And walks in new shoes when the old wear out.

I relinquish those books, edited for thirty years

And hand them over to the younger with energy to spare.

My time is my own! I write of fond memories

And nurses who made a difference.

I read, I rest, I walk, and I long to travel

To places far and near.

I still have things to do and goals to fulfill. My time is limited; I do grow old.

I weigh options and feel free to say “No!”

Shannon E. Perry

No is a Sentence #2

When I say “No,” I am committed to a time and place. Where I am or where I will go remains to be seen.

My sentence can be served, commuted, or forgiven. What I do with my time served, used, squandered is my own responsibility not to be shared.

I can choose to say “Yes” but only when the sentence leads to something higher and further than that “No” committed me.

A sentence provides choices for a decision of “yes” or “no.”

There is no “maybe” in between when a sentence is chosen.

Which shall I choose?

What would you do when confronted with a sentence that demands a yes or no?

Shannon E. Perry

Duplicity

I knew about the grade inflation, It advanced by baby steps for decades, facilitated by a regime that defined students as customers. But what could I do? It was going on everywhere. I had to go along to get along.

I knew about the athletics violations, the most in over 50 years. There were scandals that gained notoriety, followed by promised reforms, and then more sophisticated ways to game the system. But what could I do? It was going on everywhere. I had to go along to get along.

I knew about obscene salaries for the President and administrators, the political payoffs to gain revenue streams and police the system. But what could I do? It was going on everywhere. I had to go along to get along.

I knew what happened in the fraternities, even served a year as a faculty advisor, seeing how rent-a-cops collaborated with official lackeys to cool out the marks, and keep evidence of the rape culture off the media radar. But what could I do? It was going on everywhere. I had to go along to get along.

I knew about promiscuous revenue hustling, like Good Neighbor programs, a shake-down racket to fleece local merchants, hidden

behind the veil of respectability.

But what could I do? It was going on everywhere. I had to go along to get along.

I knew about the inexorable development of a National Security University, the glorification of military symbols and the war or terror, the dirty little secrets of classified research dollars that purchased souls for market value. But what could I do? It was going on everywhere. I had to go along to get along.

I knew about the exploitation of adjuncts, Who taught many more classes, so the tenured professors could enjoy their privilege. Parents would be scandalized to learn about the dark side of the educated class, and what is compromised to gain legitimacy for the new order. But what could I do? It was going on everywhere. I had to go along to get along.

I knew about the destruction of faculty governance, as apparatchiks sought dominance in the struggles for more and more power. I saw it first-hand in my two stints as Faculty Senator. But what could I do? It was going on everywhere. I had to go along to get along.

For two decades I taught the Holocaust as an ethics course, stressing the evil of being a bystander, when high and low crimes are everyday fare. But I didn’t follow my own teaching. I am a hypocrite.

John M. Johnson

Golden Days of Hollywood #1

Paul Jackson

Science with Paul Scowen: Gaining Insight

into Star Formation Using Images of Nebulae

Paul Scowen

Editor's Note: It is astonishing to me to reflect that we human beings had no idea of the extent of our universe before about one hundred years ago. Not until the early 1920’s, less than twenty years before I was born, was it known that many of the fuzzy little patches between stars in the night sky, called nebulae and catalogued by Charles Messier in 1781, are themselves collections of hundreds of millions of stars: galaxies, much like the Milky Way that we have named our own galaxy. Now we know that there are at least as many galaxies in the observable universe as there are stars in a single average galaxy. This awareness grew from Edwin Hubble’s initial findings in 1919 based on observations through the then revolutionary 100-inch Hooker telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory, through increasing observational powers in observatories around the world, to the knowledge of the universe we now have, thanks to telescopes of many varieties and capabilities surrounding us in space, most especially the Hubble telescope, launched in 1990 and still in use today.

In addition to the cloud-like objects that are recognized as galaxies in and of themselves, the Messier catalog also includes nebulae that actually exist within the Milky Way. These are primarily local accumulations of gas in the process of new star formation.

Of the elect astronomers and astrophysicists who have been privileged to pursue their research with the aid of modern instruments, including the Hubble telescope, one is our own Paul Scowen. A member of the Emeritus College, Paul is Emeritus Research Professor, ASU School of Earth & Space Exploration, and is now Senior Research Astrophysicist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. He lives in Maryland with his wife, Linda, long a staff member of the Department of Physics. In this pictorial of Milky Way nebulae, Paul Scowen introduces us to his science: the birth of stars. R. J.

When we look out at the night sky, from a sufficiently dark location, the majesty of the heavens can be awe inspiring, especially for those of us who grew up under the lights of a major city—in my case, London. Scattered across the sky there are patches of “fuzz” that are termed nebulae. Astronomers are interested in these objects for a variety of reasons that go beyond their photogenic nature—many representing a region of recent star formation. It is only star formation events of sufficient size that produce massive stars, and it is these massive stars that light up the nebulae we see on a clear night from Earth. The emission we see from such nebulae is a suite of radiation emitted when ionized elements such as hydrogen, oxygen, sulfur and other materials recombine with electrons in a gaseous phase to emit the discrete colors of light we see as the structure of the nebulae.

Since only the most massive stars are capable of generating enough ionizing radiation to be seen, and because these massive stars live only a few million years before exploding in a supernova event, we can use the existence of visible nebulae to mark the locations of recent star formation. As such a map of nebulae is a map of recent star formation. This

Paul Scowen

Pictorial — Scowen

is a very useful tool and has allowed me to study some of these objects to gain further insight into the star formation process itself. Here, I will present some images of nebulae that I have been involved in acquiring and presenting, with some discussion about what we are learning in each case. I hope you will enjoy this journey.

Ironically, we start our journey with an example of the aftermath of a supernova explosion: a supernova remnant, in this case the famous Crab Nebula, the first object in Messier’s catalogue, M1. This object formed very recently, being observed as a bright star for a short period by Chinese astronomers in the year 1054, after which it dimmed. A supernova is the explosive end to a massive star’s life that happens only 10-20 million years after it forms, as massive stars burn their available fuel far faster than smaller stars, such as the Sun. When such a star explodes, outer layers of gas—oxygen, carbon and nitrogen formed during their life cycle—are then driven away at great speed.

At the heart of the nebula is the remnant of the star, generally a compressed neutron star, whose material is so dense that just a teaspoonful of material weighs over 5.5×1012 kg, but it is small—only about ten km

The Crab Nebula. (left) Emission from ionized gas at the very edge of the supernova remnant: Hydrogen-alpha (green), Oxygen-III (blue) and Sulfur-II (red). (right) Emission from the central volume of the nebula from radiation emitted by electrons orbiting the nebula magnetic fields (called synchrotron radiation.)

across (about the size of Tempe, AZ.) And such stars spin quickly—in the case of the Crab neutron star, thirty-two times a second. Such an object can be hard to imagine within our Earth frame of reference. The Crab neutron star is actually called a pulsar since it has a strong magnetic field that is not aligned with its rotation axis, and it beams pulses of energetic radiation towards the Earth as it spins—when first observed, this was initially thought to be evidence of extraterrestrials because it was so precise and regular.

The images of the nebula presented here were originally taken back in the late 1980s by ASU Emeritus Professor Jeff Hester at the Palomar 60-inch telescope using a focal reducer camera—a device that shortens the focal length of the telescope, thereby increasing its field of view and yielding a brighter image for short exposure times. Using this device, images were taken both in narrow-band emission lines from ionized hydrogen, oxygen and sulfur, as well as broad-band continuum emission. Each tells a very different story.

The first image is the narrow-band image. It needs to be realized that colors you see in this image are not true color; this is not how the nebula would appear if you were floating in space nearby. The science is in the color separation as it indicates areas where one element is denser and thereby emitting brighter than others. What you see here is radiation from the outer layers of the original massive star stimulated by strong radiation from the central pulsar. You can clearly see the filament structure of the outer layers of the nebula formed by instabilities in the gas as it expands and is pushed on by the magnetic field of the pulsar.

The second image is a broad-band image that captures radiation directly from the interior of the nebula, which is dominated by synchrotron radiation from electrons orbiting around the pulsar’s strong magnetic fields.

Structure

in the emission reflects structure in the magnetic fields as they are wound so very tightly by the rapid spinning of the central star from which they originate. This emission is highly polarized and it is possible to generate maps showing variation of the polarization variation with position.

structure

columns

poking into

to capture differences in gas recombination energies as testified by different atomic species: green is ionized hydrogen, blue is doubly ionized oxygen, and red is ionized sulfur.

used representory color, as

Two views of the Eagle Nebula. (Top) Ground based image of the Eagle using the Palomar 60” telescope. (Bottom) the original Hubble Space Telescope image of the Eagle Nebula taken in 1994 that details the

of the

of gas and dust seen

the nebula interior. In both cases we have

with the Crab image

The Crab Nebula is a special object because it is so close and is relatively isolated. When many supernovae explode, their remnant is driven into the nearby interstellar medium, but in this case the Crab resides in a void and so all the light you see originates with the progenitor star itself. One unique feature from the very deep color images we obtained is the so-called “chimney”—the tube-like structure that sticks vertically up from the nebula. Few images of the Crab are deep enough to capture this wispy structure. Its origin has been debated and theories have been offered, but a full self-consistent explanation has not been settled upon.

The Eagle Nebula is the 16th object in Charles Messier’s catalogue and is a cloud of ionized gas surrounding a cluster of stars. In that regard it is unremarkable, but it became the object of some interest because of the columnar structure that poke out into the ionized volume of the nebula. Most nebula are hollowed out cavities, and the study of the walls of those cavities is complicated because you have to look through the material at the interface to see the details and this can make interpretation difficult. The Eagle, as seen above, has three columns of darker gas and dust that noticeably protrude into the interior, effectively inverting the problem—now we can look at the details of the nebula wall structure in section as we look at the edges of those columns. What we found when Jeff Hester and I made the observations with Hubble was that the interface between the tenuous interior of the nebula and the denser walls was very narrow indeed—only about the width of our solar system—which placed very tight constraints on how radiative energy could be transported through that interface. Why did we care? Exterior to these boundaries the gas is piled up, compressed by the expansion of the nebula—it is not a static structure—the radiation and strong stellar winds from the massive stars actively erode the walls and grow the size of the nebula—that force of erosion compresses the gas behind the wall and triggers the formation of new, second-generation stars. Our observations confirmed, for the first time, that this process is happening, and allowed us to constrain models of how the expansion works. You can see the erosion at the top of the left-hand pil-

lar in the Hubble image—the blue streamers of material are gas being radiatively heated and then stripped by the stellar winds.

There is a need for some clarity on the nature of the columns we see in these images. They are big—the left-hand column is three light years long—it takes light three years to go from the top to the bottom. They look solid, but this is the effect of integrated line-of-sight absorption by interstellar dust—they are still so tenuous that the space densities of material are more akin to the best vacuums we can pull in laboratories here on the Earth. The dark columns are there because the gas at the top is denser than the surroundings and the ionizing stars, off the top of the image are in the plane of the page and those caps shadow the gas and dust below them leaving them unaffected by the erosion of the stellar winds, so while the gas between the columns was swept away, the columns remain.

As with the Crab, a lot of the science in these images is captured by the color separation we can see in the images—the fact that each of the ionized species portrayed have very different ionization energies means that color maps to energy (and density) levels in the nebula and this tells us a lot about the dynamics of such structures. As an aside, we can use this as an excellent example of how we create such images, computationally. Hubble does not take color pictures as you and I would term them—they are black-and-white images taken through a particular transmission filter, or colored piece of glass, that isolate the light in a particular narrow wavelength or color band. We then use the RGB color channels on a computer to represent 3 images together to

Producing color image with Hubble data: each image starts as a black and white image taken with a colored piece of glass on the observatory. Then in post processing those images are assigned to the red, green and blue channels of a computer screen to produce the 3-color image we use for press releases. But it’s more than just aesthetics, the color separation in the final image captures the science that drove the images being taken in the first place.

produce the color image we are familiar with. This process is captured in the image sequence above.

Arrayed around the Milky Way Galaxy we call home are a set of smaller galaxies—two of them are known as the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds after the explorer who noted them on his travels into the southern hemisphere and around Cape Horn. These smaller galaxies are excellent nearby microcosms of star formation and allow astronomers a remote view of the processes that govern and shape galaxies—the Milky Way is tough to use for this since we are so deeply embedded in that galaxy ourselves. The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is host to a particularly large region of star formation, by our local standards, named 30 Doradus (after the bright “star” at its center) or the Tarantula Nebula. This complex of star formation is so large when compared so say the Orion or Eagle Nebulae that if placed at the same distance from the Earth as those objects, the Tarantula would cover more than 30% of the night sky. At the heart of this nebula is a complex of stars that are so tightly packed that there were originally thought to be a single object, but the advent of the Hubble Space Telescope, as well as optical interferometric techniques, revealed the heart of the nebulae to be a cluster of many hundreds of massive stars. The Eagle by comparison has 6.

30 Doradus as seen with the Hubble Space Telescope. The larger nebula has a whole range of astronomically interesting objects such as high proper motion stars, standalone stars blowing ionized bubbles, but two sets of physical analogs to the Eagle Nebula structures, proving this phenomenon occurs commonly in massive star forming regions.

In the wake of our work on the Eagle, we decided to go after the Tarantula with Hubble to see what was going on there, not in the stars, but

in the gas and dust surrounding those stars. The structure around the central cluster is riddled with a menagerie of astronomical objects such as supernova remnants, individual stellar clusters in their own right, and stars in the process of forming, as well as those well along into their middle age blowing extended bubbles from their stellar winds. What we did find, though, was a physical analog to the columns we saw in the Eagle, proving that these kinds of structures, and the mechanisms that form them, are universal and are therefore part of the equation to be used when considering how stars and planets form in the nebula environment around massive stars.

Another nearby galaxy to our own is the Pinwheel Galaxy – visibly large enough to be named as a Messier object (M101) in the night sky, but in reality, more than ten times farther away than the LMC and several times larger than our own Milky Way. This object is classified as a

across all radii. The large regions of star formation in the outer disk are large enough and bright enough to have their own classification number separate from

The Pinwheel Galaxy, M101, seen in two different ways. (left) a conventional ground-based wide-angle color image of the galaxy showing all the stars, gas and dust that comprise the grand design spiral (right) M101 seen in the light of ionized hydrogen gas alone, taken at the Palomar 60” telescope. All the bright emission regions you see here are from regions of massive star formation in the last 10-20 million years. Note that star formation is actively proceeding

the galaxy as a whole! These are an order of magnitude larger than the Tarantula Nebula

now adding

hydrogen colored in yellowthe “J” shaped pattern is visible in the image of the entire galaxy above directly south of the nucleus. (lower left) the same field with the stars removed and the light of ionized oxygen and sulfur added—the color scheme here is the same as that used in the Eagle nebula pictures. (lower right) the lower right part of the previous panel enlarged for greater detail—note the arc-like structures typical of supernova remnants, as well as adjacent bright structures that appear to support the idea of triggered star formation where age and size map to physical location and translation from site to site.

“grand design spiral” as it has very well-defined spiral arms threaded by active star formation from the interior all the way out to the outer reaches. It is also seen face-on making analysis and exploration much less complicated. This object is personally special to me as it was the subject of my PhD thesis work at Rice University back in the late 80s.

The excellent viewing angles and uncluttered and uncompromised

Hubble Space Telescope images of the southern disk of M101. (upper left) the field showing just the stars and dust. (upper right) the same field

the light from ionized

aspect to this galaxy make it very attractive for star formation studies. We took images with the Hubble Space Telescope of a region in the southern disk to “look around” and look for evidence of triggered star formation: the idea that star formation occurs in a particular place because of either existing star formation nearby—the macroscopic embodiment of the principle we saw in the Eagle—or because of cloud-cloud collisions or a supernova event. Star formation as a process requires some kind of energetic trigger to overcome the balance in interstellar clouds between gravity and heat to cause collapse to make stars. The images we acquired are below.

What we see in these images is a comprehensive sampling of the types of structures associated with star formation and the propagation of star formation in a typical example of a spiral galactic disk. The emission from ionized hydrogen is pervasive and shows a large number of ongoing sites of star formation coupled with older structures that are more related to the later stages of stellar evolution and development. The addition of emission from ionized oxygen and sulfur in the third panel provides additional morphological and radiation information and allows us to see where some structures are more likely to be supernova remnants or planetary nebulae. The fourth panel shows enlarged detail from the third panel providing some clear and very

The Bubble Nebula as imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. This image captures the wind-blown bubble of material ejected by the central star as it runs into a gradient of background material and a pre-existing ridge of gas and dust to the right of the star. This explains the fact the star is not at the center of the bubble.

well-defined examples of potential triggered star formation in addition to the types of structures mentioned above.

Our final example is from our own backyard, back in the Milky Way Galaxy. This is not a region of new star formation, but instead a windblown bubble around a single star, well into its middle age. The bubble is visible because the wind from the star has run into a pre-existing gradient of interstellar gas and dust, which is more concentrated to one side than the other, which is why the central star is not at the center of the bubble. The Hubble image shows a bright ridge of material seen to one side of the star coupled with a set of illuminated structures well outside the bubble. The former is a pre-existing interstellar cloud that the expanding bubble has run into and has now wrapped around. The latter are a similar set of pre-existing structures that the bubble has yet to reach. Wispy structure in the walls of the bubble itself can be seen in blue indicating the non-smooth nature of the medium into which the bubble is expanding. Measuring the brightness of the gas emission in this image allows us to estimate the specific luminosity of the star and any variance in transparency of the medium inside the bubble with position angle around the star.

Ray Bradbury

We are all ... children of this universe. Not just Earth, or Mars, or this system, but the whole grand fireworks. And if we are interested in Mars at all, it is only because we wonder over our past and worry terribly about our possible future.

Sin

Señora guitarra sin dientes,

¿No quieres bailar?

Sin canto, sin joya, sin admirador

¿No quieres bailar?

“No, ni caminar,” me dice.

“Apenas me importa masticar las notas del largo.”

Pobre guitarra asfixiada bajo un mástil de madera.

El tiempo ha secado tus jugos y tu color.

Pues, recuerdas de tus reyes y los días de la fiesta.

¿Las Mañanitas o el tango?

Quizás entonces puedes bailar una vez más.

JoAnn Yeoman Tongret

My Hollywood Guru

Jean R. Brink

Bikram Yoga takes its name from its founder, Bikram Choudhury, who was born in Calcutta, India, in 1944. This yoga, now renamed hot yoga, very likely in the interest of avoiding Bikram’s name, is practiced in a heated environment (104 degrees F +), hence the name, hot yoga. Netflix is now playing a documentary made in 2019 and enigmatically entitled, “Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator.” The documentary film with its contradictions, “Yogi” and “Guru,” and then the antithetical “Predator” epitomizes Bikram but does not do justice to his success. He managed to attract literally thousands of would-be teachers and studio owners to his teacher training sessions. In my 2003 session of Teacher Training, there were over a thousand participants including a barrister from London as well as participants from all over the United States. I was pals with a woman who went by the epithet “Rainbow Child” and slept on the beach while attending the University of Hawaii and with businesswomen from New Hampshire and Arizona who wanted to open their own studios.

I grew up in the Midwest—Indianapolis, Indiana—where animals

Bikram Choudhury

sweat, men perspire, and women glow; women never did anything like weightlifting. I received an A in physical education because I made a sufficient, albeit very modest, effort. Women surely never sweated. By the time I grew up, times had changed, and there were more options for women. None of those options suited me: I never liked aerobics or step classes because of the loud music. I was hopelessly bewildered by “exercise” based on steps for dances which I had never learned. Loud music distracted me; my challenge was always to figure out what I was supposed to do—despite the noise generated by the music or tapes. My experience with yoga classes was more positive because there was less loud music. I liked the emphasis upon flexibility, but I was put off by pop psychology masquerading as spirituality. I don’t go to an exercise class to listen to someone preach inspirational aphorisms at me or encourage me to “love myself.” When the nurturing talk starts, I want to be somewhere else.

I began by taking yoga classes at Caltech in order to get exercise into my daily routine. I grew to enjoy Bikram yoga more than other kinds of yoga because the class took exactly ninety minutes and content-wise was always the same series of poses so that I could track my improvement. The heat was okay because I used to jog the canals in Tempe, AZ. I also liked the uniformity in the classes of Bikram yoga; Chicago classes were just like those in Scottsdale and Pasadena.

I do not recall when I decided to apply for teacher training or why some kind soul did not warn me that teacher training wasn’t a good choice for me. In my application, I wrote that I wanted to be able to manage my own workouts. I said something to the effect that I had purchased an assortment of exercise and yoga tapes, but never succeeded in watching a tape more than once. Without teacher training, I am not sure that I could profitably practice Bikram yoga on my own. In short, I wrote that teacher training would give me autonomy.

Probably no one read my successful, as it were, application for Bikram’s Yoga Teacher Training program; a merciful person would have cautioned me that I was being delusional. On the application I wrote the truth, that I expected to learn many of the things in teacher training

that I probably would have learned had I ever been trained as an athlete. I even wrote that earning certification would “seal” something for me in the form of commitment to disciplining the body as well as the mind. When it comes right down to it, I probably did not want to miss the opportunity to study with a guru—even if I knew that Bikram Choudhury was a Hollywood guru.

At teacher training, the room was filled with acolytes who introduced themselves. When it was my turn, I said that I had started practicing at 58—and was now 60. Bikram paid me the compliment of saying that I looked 43 and then took back his compliment and said that I would look 43—in nine weeks. I replied in kind— “stating that my goal was to have his waist size” (in fact, my waist was smaller than Bikram’s, but he had talked a lot about his waist size before the introductions began) and “to grow two inches taller.” The very next person started crying and announced that she had been cured of lupus by Bikram yoga—she had a sunburn and other indications of SoCal beach-life, that made her recovery seem especially extraordinary. Anyway, her tearful testimonial successfully undermined my attempt at wit.

Things were less commercial at Bikram training than I had expected. No Tee-shirts for sale as we moved in and out of the locker rooms. Ninety minutes of yoga occurred twice a day, which meant three hours of intense exercise daily in 110-degree heat; Saturday was half day. We had forty-five minutes for lunch and dinner, which I usually ate alone in my car. Leisure activity took place in a parking lot, where we also hung up our rinsed-out yoga apparel on a clothesline. I had relocated from Pasadena to the west side for the nine weeks of yoga training, and the bright side was that I spent very little time in my rooming house, which seemed like a zoo. The landlady said “no drama” in her ad, and, by the end of nine weeks, I heartily agreed. She should create less drama; she evicted two people in two months and two people left on their own. She awakened me once to have me help her put one of the tenant’s clothes outside.

During the day there were interminable lectures by Bikram. We were treated to “Bikramite” discussions of western culture. We learned

that one of the things Bikram likes about western culture is a Big Mac. He hates Tofu and adores automobiles and knows the names of numerous makes and models. He is also thinking about embarking on a career as a singer since he has survived three operations for tumors on his vocal cords. During most of these “lectures,” Bikram sat on a huge white throne-like cushion and had his hair—what remains of it—combed or massaged; people also brought him “new” or “fresh” tea when whatever he was sipping got stale.

Midway through training, Bikram went to India; he returned in good spirits. His mother’s operation had gone well. Bikram “knew” that the class was thrilled to have him back. We lined up so that we could express our appreciation by kissing him—or he could kiss us.

Most of the class probably thought that his lectures were preferable to posture clinic. Posture clinics were not really about the physical postures; they were supposed to be about learning the dialogue that every teacher recites in every Bikram yoga studio everywhere, but they weren’t really about that. The posture clinics were in fact a ritual form of humiliation. It was decided, for example, that I was shy and reserved and so I was forced to repeat things and yelled at for not being more commanding. I was told to let out the “bitch within.” I didn’t cry and resisted losing my temper, and so I wasn’t subjected to personal or “confessional” analysis; it just went on and on. It must be painful to

Not your grandmother’s Yoga

watch public humiliation. Fortunately, my blanking out was probably attributed to my age and overall reticence, and so I was not subjected to the psychoanalytic/pop psychology interrogations that many people were. One of my fellow trainees helpfully told me that the brain was a muscle and that it improved with exercise. I resisted saying that the analogy should have been with electricity. A studio owner from San Francisco named Jeff told me that I was too boring to teach anything and that he would never hire me. That relationship was to have a bizarre conclusion.

The dialogue itself was not a dialogue but a monologue, and it was written in broken English—a kind of ungrammatical Indian-English patois. Many of my fellow trainees were massage therapists who wanted to upgrade their careers and become yoga instructors. Most of them seemed to me to be speaking a foreign language; “like” appeared to be used every other word and everything was “like—awesome.” No wonder the US State Dept used the word “awe” in the Iraq military plan; awesome is an adjective of choice for much of this new generation.

Near the conclusion of training, Bikram gave a lecture on the parallels between garbage collection and digestion. That particular lecture left me wondering if I would ever eat—let alone overeat—again. About that time, the “detox” myth was exploded. Supposedly trainees go through a “detoxification” process because they are in heated rooms, and toxins pour out of them. There was a terrible flu accompanied by sore throats and lung congestion that spread like wildfire in the heated rooms. Even the experienced teachers, however, caught this flu. One was even allowed to leave and go to the doctor. Overall, we were kept closeted from the rest of the world.

Maybe if it had not been for the ever-vigilant Jeff Renfro, I could have just slipped through the cracks as an average trainee. Renfro is involved with yoga because of injuries to his back but seems to be an extremely successful manager and owns five studios in San Francisco. Who knows what was going on? He was married. Maybe it seemed to him that I had untapped potential that he was going to bring out. I do know that my classmates thought he singled me out—I was repeatedly

asked if it did not make me angry. It really didn’t. (Exercising intensely at extreme heats may have benefits—maybe self-control is one of those benefits). I also found that I was able to do with much less sleep. Of course, I wasn’t trying to write or to think through or code lots of material—just get through the day.

If I had any notion of what I was getting into, I would not have signed up; however, once I was in, I didn’t want to give up or quit. My husband had recently passed away, and so it is likely that I needed increased physical activity. The tuition money amounted to a handsome $5000, but it was probably irretrievable after being paid. I did conclude that Bikram knew things about yoga. I was genuinely impressed by his knowledge of how to correct postures and to adjust people who had unusual proportions or disabilities. He knew things about the body almost intuitively. When he talked about what he knew, he was sensible. For the most part, his lectures were incredible. One that he gave during the last week could be summarized as follows:

The yoga expo scheduled for fall 2003 is not on track. Of course, he could raise money—millions in fact. He raised millions for Bill Clinton. All of this would take only an afternoon of phone calls, but he doesn’t have the time. Even so, Bikram was able to cheer himself up by reflecting on the women who killed themselves because he wouldn’t sleep with them—three left suicide notes to that effect. Also, everyone must be loyal to him because the gods love him. Much as he regrets it, people who are disloyal or who oppose Bikram are punished by the gods. Probably as many as eighty or ninety people are now dead.

Anything is an anti-climax after listening to that. During the last week, I was put in the “Final” on Tuesday along with seventeen other poor souls. Of course, we were only told on Monday evening at 11 p.m. that we would be taking a “Final Exam”; alternatively, we could retake the entire nine weeks with no prejudice. If we opted for the final and

did not pass it, we would fail period. About a third opted out. I didn’t sleep, not because I was studying—just general helpless anxiety. The next day I did pay extra attention to what I wore, and half-way blowdried my hair in the parking garage—niceties of grooming that tend to go by the wayside when a woman knows that she will be soaking wet with perspiration every few hours. I also chose a difficult posture and made a concerted effort to be charming. Of course, no one gave us a score or anything—for a day or so we didn’t know the results.

Jeff, my erstwhile mentor, finally said to me after regular yoga practice: “Gee your face does get red. Any chance of your coming to San Francisco? I would hire you to teach in one of my studios in a New York second.” I deduced that I had passed!

At the graduation ceremony, Bikram launched into one of his incoherent diatribes: “You were born at the wrong place and at the wrong time….” My brother, who, along with my two sons came to see me graduate, thought that Bikram was a jerk. For me, the telling part was that my classmates and I could complete his sentences when he paused—

we had heard so many of these tirades, peppered with insults. On the public stage, however, it made for awkward public relations. Maybe he needs more sleep than he thinks he does—maybe Bikram needs more yoga.

I never became a true believer, but I think that must frequently happen. Either my fellow trainees were going to open studios, and so regarded certification as essential to their future livelihoods, or they intended to become teachers. The entire business troubled me. Not least because I felt that I had not learned enough to be really qualified to teach Bikram yoga. Even though I had received A’s on anatomy exams, I should have learned more physiology; I knew just enough to sense my limited knowledge and to perceive instances when the patter or dialogue was wrong. Maybe no one ever taught me to teach English Renaissance literature, but I never felt ignorant about my subject matter.

I freely admit that lack of financial incentive was also a factor in my deciding not to be a yoga teacher—even after being certified. After taxes, beginning teachers make $10 per hour for sitting in rooms heated to 110 degrees. No benefits. Now, if I had relocated to San Francisco to teach for Jeff, I suspect that everything would have been run on the up and up. Jeff had a successful plumbing business prior to opening

The happy graduate.

his yoga studios. He wouldn’t have wanted to risk the IRS stepping in. Somehow, though, the thought of being forceful and energetic with a huge room filled with scantily clad people in San Francisco was even less appealing than working at my local South Pasadena studio where thirty is a large crowd. At least massage therapists, who seem to be roughly equivalent to yoga teachers, work on one person at a time.

Tempting as the continuing contact with my inimitable Hollywood guru might be, just after I completed Bikram’s Teacher Training program, I wrote to my financial advisor to confirm that I wouldn’t be withdrawing my retirement money and opening a Bikram Yoga Studio. Also, I didn’t practice yoga for two or three months. Why, I don’t know.

All in all, it could have been worse, I suppose. I could have become so intrigued by one of the L. Ron Hubbard displays that I joined a scientology group.

Sometimes I wonder about the Creator of the Universe.

Kurt Vonnegut

SEPSIS: Diary of a Bad Few Months

Paul and Jane Jackson

Sep-sis /’sepsis/ n. A serious condition resulting from the presence of harmful microorganisms in the blood or other tissues and the body’s response to their presence, potentially leading to the malfunctioning of various organs, shock, and death.

Paul’s story

In September 2020 I was worried about two possible disasters: the first being the possibility of the re-election of Donald Trump as President, and second, catching COVID-19. Aside from those, I was feeling pretty good about my life at eighty-three years of age; my wife Jane and our kids and grandkids were healthy, and I seemed to be. I was walking two and a half miles every morning and a mile in the afternoon, up and down steep hills as I was quick to point out to anyone who would listen. I think I was pretty full of myself. Some little things started bothering me. I couldn’t write legibly in cursive anymore, so when I wrote checks, I printed everything except my signature. Also, my left hip was becoming chronically sore, especially when I took my walks. Worst of all was a recurrent weakness in my leg that caused me to take a couple of hard falls. All signs of my old age, I told myself, until the morning when I could not complete a sentence when I talked. I would try to say something, but the words weren’t there. When I tried to read, I had trouble understanding most of it. Jane sug-

gested that I was having small strokes. We went to the emergency room where I was examined and where no evidence of strokes was found, but it was decided that I should be admitted for further examination.

Or something like that. Sepsis affects the brain and so I was disappearing down the rabbit hole, and what I remember from there were things that never happened. I can remember the hallucinations very clearly, but hardly anything else. I had developed sepsis of the lumbar spine, but it was months before I understood what had happened. I kept asking Jane what was wrong with me, but I could not remember what she told me. From mid-October of 2020 until mid-January 2021, I was a patient at Honor Healthcare-Thompson Peak, Honor Healthcare-Shea, and Scottsdale Advanced Healthcare, and semi-conscious most of the time.

Throughout, it was mostly hallucinations that I still remember clearly. For example, although I was out during the presidential election, I learned the results as I hallucinated that Jane and I were each sitting in broadcast control booths of the type that were used at KTVK, Channel 3 in the early 1960s when I worked there as a film editor. I asked her if Trump or the “other guy” won. I could not remember Biden’s name, and it mattered to me only that it was anyone but Trump.

Sometime in that period I awoke during the night thinking that I must be dying. I knew I was very sick, and it was reasonable to conclude that at eighty-three I was on my way out. I wasn’t afraid, but I regretted that I would have to leave Jane, my beloved companion for fifty-seven years, and my precious daughter and son, Carla and Dan.

I’m actually not sure if this happened after I was conscious or not, but whatever the case I had one more extended period of irrationality during which I was convinced that Jane was being held prisoner at Scottsdale Advanced Healthcare and I planned to slip out of the hospital that night to rescue her. But I woke up; the room was crowded with people (a hallucination according to Jane) and Jane was standing by my bed smiling at me (real) and I was so glad to see her I almost cried.

When I was stable enough, they sent me back to Advanced Healthcare where I stayed until four days before Christmas. I had discovered

Memoir — Jackson and Jackson

at the hospital that I was no longer able to walk and that upset me, but I was assured that the physical therapists at Advanced Healthcare would have me walking again in no time. SPOILER ALERT! They didn’t come close. Because of COVID all the patients at Advanced Health were confined to their rooms with no visitors allowed. To visit me, Jane would come to my window (which we couldn’t open) and we could shout to be heard through the glass or talk on our cellphones. It was a long drive through traffic for Jane to visit, so we communicated mostly by phone, as I did also with Carla and Dan who cheered me and in Dan’s case furnished me with shipments of organic protein drinks.

I tried to read but could not concentrate very well, so I watched football and MSNBC, and stared out the window. Even though the physical therapists showed up often to teach me leg exercises, I was stuck in a wheelchair even to get around the room and into the bathroom. But I was also dull. It was hard to think and to remember things. I often had to ask Jane what was wrong with me. I couldn’t remember or understand what the term “sepsis of the lumbar spine” meant. I just wanted to go home. I had learned by early December to use a walker and that was good enough for me. When I found out that I was to be released a few days before Christmas, I assumed I was cured.

At home Jane had put the tree up, and I shaved off my two-month growth of beard. Christmas arrived, but I didn’t feel right. I went to bed angry because I thought that Jane wasn’t following my “simple” instructions for watching movies on DVD. Sometime during the night, I tried to get up out of bed and fell down. Jane couldn’t lift me up, and I couldn’t even raise myself off the floor. She called 911 and when the medics arrived, I joked that the especially burly one would be able to get me up. And that was it; I went back down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass and stayed there for days.

Unlike the first time, I was terrified, hallucinating that I was in a hospital in a strange city and that Jane would not know where to find me, although through most of this time I was completely out. I was slipping away and wouldn’t be around to write this if it had not been for the efforts of my doctor, the hero of this story, who pulled me back

so that I woke up in Honor Healthcare-Shea where a few years before I had been a volunteer in the emergency department. I was conscious and stayed that way.

That’s my story. I was sent back to Advanced Healthcare for two boring weeks under observation and frequent blood tests. I got home on January 17, still in a wheelchair. The next few months I practiced walking, first from the dining room to the living room, then up and down the driveway, the street, the park, and finally the hills, no cane needed. I had made it, thanks to all those who helped me along.

Jane’s account

For three months I was a full-time worker on behalf of Paul. I learned about sepsis, and about antibiotics for staph aureus. It takes much time to read articles on the web, and download research studies from PubMed, but I find it satisfying to understand – and share.

Paul was in the hospital four times since mid-October 2020: twenty-eight days. He had sepsis, the body’s immune system over-response to a blood infection (i.e., septicemia). Staphylococcus aureus bacteria invaded his lumbar spine facet joint between two vertebrae. Inflammation blocked the nerve to his left leg, and his leg suddenly gave out on him twice in early October, so he fell hard, injuring his right shoulder severely—rupturing a biceps tendon and the tendon on the top of the shoulder.

I kept a daily journal. Here’s the story.

Paul was increasingly unhappy by August, due to the pandemic isolation and politics, which scared and depressed him. I suppose that’s why he made the poor choice in September to walk down a steep dirtand-rock path that he had previously avoided; he fell and bloodied his

Staphylococcus Aureus

Memoir — Jackson and Jackson

knee, with no way to clean it. Staph lives in dirt. The immune system kills staph within 15 minutes, if it’s a small amount, but this was too much. The next day he jogged down a steep hill. That’s likely when staph entered his lumbar facet joint, due to pounding on the joint.

In early October, after Paul fell hard and injured his shoulder, he called our primary care physician, who put him on steroids for six days and ordered outpatient magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the lumbar spine (which couldn’t be done until Oct. 20 due to heavy workload caused by the pandemic). His hip pain increased and his ability to walk worsened.

On October 17, he suddenly became aphasic—couldn’t find words— so I drove him to the emergency room at Honor Health—Shea. They put him in the stroke ward for two nights. Their tests revealed nothing and he was discharged with a slight fever.

At home, he could hardly walk. I called our primary care physician, who arranged admittance to Honor Health - Thompson Peak, an orthopedic hospital (no COVID-19 units). As I was making final preparations to drive him there, he fell again in his study; he couldn’t get up but somehow dragged himself onto the bed, and he shook uncontrollably.

I called 911. He was taken to Honor Health - Thompson Peak with a temperature of 104 degrees

The next morning, Paul called me. He said, “Do you know how I could have gotten a blood infection? That drew four doctors into my room.” We were all surprised—a blood infection was the cause of his fever: specifically, staphylococcus aureus. He was given an intravenous (IV) antibiotic for six days. Few diagnostic tests were done; only the symptoms were addressed, not the locus of infection. The young orthopedic surgeon showed me the MRI and explained why he thought Paul’s problem was arthritis in his lumbar vertebrae, blocking the nerve to his left leg. The plan was for Paul to see an orthopedic surgeon after healing from the blood infection.

The staph culture on the sixth day was negative, so a central catheter was inserted into his arm and he was transported to Advanced Healthcare, a skilled nursing facility in north Scottsdale.

Ten days later, on November fifth, an ambulance took Paul to the ER at Honor Health – Shea; his IV antibiotic had failed and he was incoherent and incontinent. (Bacteria can influence the brain via the vagus nerve, which causes brain cells to produce inflammatory cytokines, resulting in “altered brain signaling”, which can manifest as confusion, memory impairment, depression, and loss of control of bodily functions.) While we waited in the ER for a room to be ready, he thrashed around. His most coherent statement was, “This is killing me!” I piled warmed blankets on him, for it was cold. The hospital was full. A COVID-19 unit was opened that week and each nurse had an extra patient to care for.

That hospitalization was Paul’s low point. The infectious disease doctor on his team put him on intravenous (IV) vancomycin, the antibiotic of last resort because of its bad side effects and toxicity to kidneys. (Whereas most other antibiotics only prevent growth of bacteria, vancomycin kills by preventing gram-positive bacteria from building cell walls). That specialist ordered many diagnostic tests. The only revealing one was the lumbar spine MRI with intravenous contrast. It showed septic arthritis (i.e., infected joint) of the facet joint between the lowest lumbar vertebra, and a small abscess in the muscle in his lumbar vertebra. Finding where the bacteria were hidden was empowering—It explained why he fell: inflammation blocking the nerve to his leg. Interestingly, no blood culture after the first two days at Thompson Peak ever showed any bacteria; it hid in his facet joint.

Paul was eleven days in the hospital. The first three days he was barely conscious but extremely restless; the fourth day aphasic but glad to be alive, the fifth day very verbal and upset, with vivid hallucinations and anger. “Why did you invite so many people here?” he said, irritated. “There’s no one here but me”, I replied. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight”, he said, pointing all around me, up high in the room. His heart rate, breathing rate, and blood pressure were much too high, each day. His serum potassium was so low that he was given it intravenously. On the seventh day, his systolic blood pressure plummeted from 170 to 100, and his kidney function decreased to one-fifth its nor-

mal level, signs of impending septic shock -- so he was given albumin intravenously twice to prevent that. Each day, the kind nurses helped and cheered him. Physical and occupational therapists strapped him to their bodies and took him for short walks around the unit, and they taught him exercises in bed. They taught him to use a walker (which made his right shoulder hurt) and a wheelchair.

Septicemia in a spinal facet joint is called septic arthritis. It is uncommon. People of all ages get it, typically from impulsive forces, i.e., pounding on the joint. A fifteen-year-old boy got it playing football, as did a twenty-five-year-old man. Two research articles reported on obese women who got it from housework—lifting heavy objects. I think Paul got it from jogging down a steep hill in mid-September. In contrast, ordinary types of sepsis occur primarily in the elderly. As with former President Clinton, sepsis can result from a urinary tract infection. Lung infections are common causes, too. The web has much information.

After four weeks at Advanced Healthcare, on Saturday, December 12, Paul called me to say that he was dismayed that “someone tested positive for COVID-19, so everyone is confined to their room.” That day, Carla, Dan, and I noticed he had trouble speaking, was agitated, and said things that didn’t make sense. He looked gaunt and weak. He seemed unsettled, disoriented, irrational. He was unsteady and had a fever, his nurses reported; and they said that he wandered out of his room on Saturday night—not allowed. By Sunday evening his blood pressure and heart rate had skyrocketed; an ambulance was called to take him to the ER. Luckily, a kind nurse intervened and had a medic phone me. I pleaded to the medic to let Paul get a good night’s sleep where he was; I said that the ER was no place for healing, especially with the huge number of COVID-19 cases and thus overworked staff. The medic obliged. Paul remained in his room.

The next day, he was better physically, and calm and lucid enough to satisfy the staff, but not me. I called Paul and asked him why he walked into the hall on Saturday night. He replied, “I thought I was supposed to…. I don’t know, Jane—I was cold. I wasn’t unsteady—I was just walking into the hallway—I was confused because—I got confused.

I didn’t think I was confined to my room. What is sepsis?”

Paul was discharged from Advanced Healthcare nine days later, on Tuesday, December twenty-second, and given an oral antibiotic. He had vitality and was articulate. Most of his blood markers had improved to normal. He pushed himself around the house in a wheelchair. But I was uneasy; I thought it was too soon to stop the IV antibiotic.

Three days later, on Christmas night, he deteriorated fast. The oral antibiotic failed. I was up with him eight times that night. By the next morning, December twenty-sixth, his brain could no longer control/ communicate with his body. He slipped out of the bed onto the floor and could not turn over and lift himself up to a crawling position. I had to call 911 and have paramedics take him to the hospital. I cried. I thought he might die.

Visitors were not allowed; it was the worst few weeks of the pandemic locally. I got his medical record later. The critical care specialist wrote: “This patient is critically ill and has a high probability of sudden and clinically significant deterioration, which requires direct intervention and supervision …to avert/mitigate active and imminent decline.” Paul was in the intensive care unit for a day. He was semi-conscious for 2 days, and then had trouble finding words for 3 more days. They gave him three different types of antibiotics intravenously, including that which he had been given before. They repeated a nuclear medicine test for bacteria in the heart’s lining and they dripped potassium into his veins again. Nothing seemed to help his brain fog. Paul called on the fifth day, discouraged; he said, “I’m eighty-three; am I worth saving? This is expensive!” That evening, they gave him an extra- large dose of IV vancomycin and by the next morning he was articulate and focused. That day, they stopped IV antibiotics and started him on an oral broad-spectrum antibiotic. The next day Paul was told “We can’t find any evidence of infection in any test.”

On Monday, Jan. 4, he was discharged to Advanced Healthcare for physical therapy, occupational therapy, and oral antibiotic. He said, “I feel stronger than I have in months!”

Two weeks later, he was discharged to home, exactly three months

since his first hospital admittance. He slept fourteen hours a day. He had physical therapy to improve his balance and mobility, but it didn’t take; he couldn’t remember the moves; he still had some brain fog. Three times he lost his balance and fell; the last time was in May, when he bloodied himself so badly that I drove him to the ER. They taped him up and gave him several tests. All were normal. After that, his progress was steady. By October 2021, a year after his first hospitalization, he declared himself “95% back to normal”, and 100% normal by January 2022. Thank goodness! His desire to live got him through—with skilled medical help and loving actions from family, neighbors, friends, and many medical personnel.

We are indebted to Christopher Crowe, D.O. and Maria Raquel Saldivar, M.D. for their skill, wisdom, and caring.

Jane and Paul Jackson – returned to health

In these days of horror and terror in Ukraine, with the days ahead unknown and maybe unknowable, I share some of the story of my parents (and my own), mostly of my father — who lived under Nazi Germany and Soviet Communism and came to live as a patriot in the United States. Too familiar tales of horror and terror from some 75 years ago in the same Badlands of Europe that is now being resurrected. I write this now at the time of Purim, in my tradition, when we remember salvation against genocide, and we remember to forget the name of the murderer. I call these remembrances:

Fragments

from and by, David Kader

The only whole heart is a broken heart. *

My father was a dancer. Waltz, polka, foxtrot, even jitterEssay — Kader

“…that you smashed, and you shall deposit them… ”teaches us that both the tables and the fragments were deposited in the Ark.” *

bug, but most happily the rumba. He loved a woman’s hand in his, to see her shoulder, hold her waist.

He ate everything “but nails and wood,” he reminded me often. Food was taken seriously, a meal cherished. I once asked him how he survived the Second World War in his Siberian imprisonment. “Garlic. Garlic saved my life.”

They called him “Monjak” in Warsaw. “Jake” at the Pinedale factory in the Great San Joaquin Valley when a refugee. “Jack” on the streets of Fresno, California. “Moshe” in his home. The century renamed him again and again in its image.

My father Moshe the dancer spoke Polish, Yiddish, German, Russian, English, some Czech and some Rumanian, and read and sang Hebrew, but mostly the language of silence in the years of the tyrants.

A postcard from the Warsaw ghetto to his Siberian prison camp, telling of the end. The message alone escaped.

My father Moshe the dancer once said: “Tyrants take away your future. They take away your past. Only now they leave you.”

Once so hungry he recalls imagining the taste of his own heart.

Shallow graves in the frozen mother earth of Poland to hold the murdered children the living chose to bury to save from the crow and rat.

I, David Jacob, am his third child; in his second family. A boy twin, I am, to a girl. My elder siblings, a girl and a boy stand and sit by a tree next to their mother before they were burned with wood under a blind sky.

The world may stand on mitzvot, prayer, and acts of kindness; but it trembles in the threat of human cruelty and the fact of human indifference to the tears and fears of others.

After six years …. six long and hollow years, he thinks: “Go home.” By Mongolia’s edge he treks, through Kazakhstan his legs carry him, finding a brother jumping trains, another in Tashkent, through Uzbekistan…to the “Welcome” mat at the door of his house on his street in his Polish town, now with strangers at the window. Fist to the temple, another to the heart, with a hearty: “Go home, Jew. Do not return if you wish to keep your life.”

Stuttgart DP Camp. Chocolates. Cigarettes. Meat. Nylons. Bananas. Deal in the black market. Love Lola. Twins - the story of Job! Palestine? Canada? New York City? The North Pole? Fresno! Full stop.

Nightmares. Curses. I want them all back! The thief, the whore, the awful and those full of awe. Take a pomegranate. Bite hard into its crust and flesh. Chew just once or twice and spit the pit out against some wall. Now put the pomegranate back.

I once asked: “Where was the frontline?” He answered:

“Wherever a tear.”

I once asked: “What did you read before they burned books?” He answered: “Kant, Marx, Tolstoy. In Yiddish, I met them.”

I once asked: “Where was God?”

He answered: “Where was man?”

I once asked: “Why didn’t you flee?”

He answered: “Why? Were they going to kill us all? And to where?”

I once asked: “Why do you pray?”

He answered: “When I pray I see the face of my mother and the face of my father. Like yesterday.”

I once asked: “Shall we travel to Poland sometime, us together?”

He answered: “Poland is for me a cemetery.”

I once asked: “What about memory?”

He answered: “Remember the future.”

I once asked: “To think the world’s beginnings have come to this debris?”

He answered: “Breathe the breath given to you.”

I once asked: “Is life good?”

He answered: “Life today is good.”

I once asked: “Would you want your life to live again, as it went?”

He answered: “One life is enough, Dovidel.”

I once asked: “Why is the way not straight?”

He answered: “If you want freedom, the way is not direct. Think of Sinai.”

I once asked: “Shall we rest?”

He answered: “Of walking of talking of singing, I am never tired. We will have sleep, forever, later.”

I once asked: “Such a life as yours and so long, now into your 80s. What is most remarkable to you - the inventions of the century, the discoveries? What?”

He answered: “Freedom.”

I once asked: “Tell me of Death?”

He answered: “Death is nothing. Life! Life is something. Ask me about Life.”

I once asked: “What is Life?”

He answered: “Life is with people.”

I once asked: “Why be happy?”

He answered: “To be happy is a mitzvah to the world. Anyone can despair. Ah, but to be happy!”

I once asked: “Is there Paradise?”

He answered: “The smell of your Patele’s challah is Paradise. When Shabbos becomes Shabbos that is Paradise. To see

your Sarahala dancing, and boychick Aaron davening, that has Paradise.”

I once asked: “Do you answer all questions!?” He answered.

In the second half of his life, he took long daily walks, the dancer, did. “For the heart and the legs,” he said. Of course, for the heart — embedded with shards of glass and knitted together by the muscles and tendons of memories, that need exercise. Of course, for the legs that outraces the tyrants’ whirl wind and can’t stop, even with a USA passport.

1986. He wept before the Bill of Rights at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. “Why are you crying,” I ask. “I am here. With you. Free.”

My father Moshe the dancer was a patriot of no place, but the place called Freedom and sang all his life: Sim Shalom— Grant Peace to All the World.

The miracle of his life outlasts him in us; for him, the miracles are over. Adon Olom. “I shall not fear, body and spirit in His keep.”

*

Keep the fragments near and dear; for the only Whole Heart is a Broken Heart.

Mormons and Lamanites*

W. Dirk Raat

One long-standing popular belief among Franciscans in New Spain was that Indians were descendants of one of the ten lost tribes of Israel. (1)

[It was] manifestly more economical, and less expensive to feed and clothe, than to fight them [the Shoshone in particular, Indians in general].

Brigham Young, May 30, 1852 (2)

In 1863, the same year that the Mormons or Latter-Day Saints (LDS) were confronting the Shoshone at the Bear River in southern Idaho and the Kaibab Paiutes in southern Utah and northern Arizona, “prophet, seer, and revelator,” and President of the LDS Church, Brigham Young, received a writ from a federal judge for violating the Suppression of Polygamy Act or the “Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act” (July 8, 1862). The writ alleged that Young had disregarded at least one of the “twin sins of barbarism in the territories—slavery and polygamy,” and that sin, of course was polygamy (more correctly, polygyny; known by the Mormons as “plural marriage”). (3) Arrested by the U.S. Marshal, Young posted a bail bond while waiting for a Mormon grand jury to act. The grand jury refused an indictment.

* This essay previously appeared in W. Dirk Raat, Lost Worlds of 1863: Relocation and Removal of American Indians in the Central Rockies and the Greater Southwest (Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley Blackwell, 2022), pp. 183-188.

Commentary and Analysis — Raat

As for the other sin of “slavery,” Young knew that the intent of the law was to abolish African slavery, not Indian slavery. Young and his followers were ambivalent in their attitude and treatment of the Indians, but by 1852 Young allowed Mormons to purchase Indian minors and keep them “indentured” for up to twenty years. He instructed his brethren to “Buy up the Lamanite [Indian] children . . . so that many generations would not pass ere they should become a white and delightsome people.” (4)

In 1863 the Saints, who usually distrusted the federal army, did view with favor the Bear River massacre of Shoshone Indians by Colonel Patrick Edward Connor’s California Volunteers “as an intervention of the Almighty”. Yet earlier, Brigham Young, who had led his expedition of followers over the Mormon trail to the Great Basin in 1846-1847, did not hesitate to speak out against the mistreatment of the Indians.

He admonished his followers to treat American Indians fairly with the purpose of converting them when possible. Some of his fellow Mormons even encouraged intermarriage with Native Americans so that the two groups might “unite” against a common enemy, the U.S. government for instance. Young’s instructions to Mormon men to marry “the Indian maidens” led several Mormons to wed Indian women in addition to their non-Indian wives. (5)

In 1857, when the Utah War with the federal government was brewing, the Mormons formed an alliance with the Utes and Paiutes, and many of the latter were converted to Mormonism. Young also encouraged southern Paiutes to seize “all the cattle” of emigrants that travelled the “south route” (through southern Utah) to California, an event

that unfortunately eventually led to the Mountain Meadows Massacre where several Missouri men, women, and children were killed. (6)

Yet the ideas of friendship and conciliation with Native Americans that developed over the trail and were revived in times of outside threats to Zion (that place in the Great Basin were the Saints were gathered), were gradually dropped as the Mormons began to compete with their lost Indian brothers and sisters for the limited resources of the high desert country. From the Bear River in Idaho to southern Arizona and from Moab, Utah to the Mormon Station in western Nevada, the Mormons first settled the Great Basin and then spread out to establish colonies in their separate state of “Deseret.” In every instance they encroached upon the indigenous population.

Mormon pioneers and farmers soon appropriated water from rivers, streams, and springs, and took over infertile lands that at least produced pine nut bearing trees. The Indians who resisted these Mor-

Brigham Young at Great Salt Lake Engraving by Bettman

mon incursions were simply, from the Saints point-of-view, rejecting Christ’s message and retribution was justified. From most Indian perspectives (the exception being Indian converts), the Saints were no different than the Gentiles, those non-Mormon Whites who were moving into the homeland. (7)

From and to these colonies, missionaries were sent to convert the Indians and pave the way for colonization. The Indians in northeastern Nevada, in particular the Western Shoshone, and the Northern Paiute, because of their apparent poverty and lack of military knowledge, were quite passive and for these reasons there were few Mormon settlements and no significant Indian resistance. The prospects for conversion were best among the seemingly peaceful and “more civilized” Hopi, Zuni, and Pima-Papago of Arizona. Those groups that were more organized and reacted in a hostile manner were usually the horse-riding societies of the Eastern Shoshone, Eastern Ute, Navajo, and Apache of the Southwest.

Conversion of the Indian was facilitated by the message of the LDS holy text, the Book of Mormon, a work that purports to be a history of early inhabitants of this American continent and is treated, along with the Bible, as the word of God. It was Mormon belief that the ancestors of the American Indian were members of a group of Israelites who left Jerusalem in about 600 B.C., just before the Babylonian captivity of Jerusalem. (8)

As the story continues, the prophet Lehi led his followers from Jerusalem across the Pacific to the New World. In the Americas, Lehi’s sons, Laman and Nephi, broke with each other and Laman’s followers, the Lamanites, went to war against the other brother’s group, the Nephites. Eventually the Lamanites destroyed the Nephites in a great conflagration that took place near the Hill Cumorah in upstate New York. The Lamanites, who survived the wars between the two groups, became American Indians. Because of these actions, and for rejecting Christ’s teachings when He appeared on this continent after the insurrection, God cursed the Lamanites with a dark skin. For their transgressions “God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them” (2 Nephi

5:21). Thus, the Lamanites were punished for their sins by being turned “dark and loathsome.” However, “in the last days” the Indians will be converted to the true church by Mormon emissaries and eventually become a “white and delightsome people” (2 Nephi 30:5-6). (9)

As a smitten people, the Natives would have their lands taken from them by the Gentiles. Yet, if they converted to Mormonism and accepted Christ’s teachings, they would regain their fair skin and a civilized way of life. In the last days, the converted would occupy a special place in God’s plan and would become the builders of the temple of the New Jerusalem, a holy city of God that would be resurrected in the Zion of the Americas! In this respect, the Book of Mormon story reflected the long-standing popular belief that the American Indian was a descendent of one of the ten lost tribes of Israel. Like the Franciscans of colonial Latin America who believed that “perfidious Jews” would be converted at the end of the world, the Mormons knew that they too were doing missionary work that was in fact apocalyptic. (10)

This too was the special message that the Mormons brought to their Indian brothers and sisters. With a limited resource base in the Great Basin, the notion of a Zion in the Wilderness was expanded to include vast areas north and south of the Great Basin. The Gathering to Zion would become a major colonization program in which Mormons and their message would extend through the Indian country from the Bannocks to the north to the Tarahumaras in the south. Once the Utes were defeated and restricted to the Unita Basin reservation, and the Shoshone had been pushed into Idaho and Nevada, the Saints could afford to initiate a more benevolent policy. (11)

Once again Brigham Young taught that it was better to deliver rations rather than death to the Indians. Jacob Hamblin, the so-called “apostle to the Lamanites,” was one of the first to pick up the call for action. He carried the missionary program southward into the lands of the Paiutes, Navajos, and Hopis. Although the Navajos proved to be particularly aggressive and resistive, the Saints did succeed in converting Chief Tuba (Woo Pah) of the Hopis and his wife in 1871. Chief Tuba’s baptism meant that the first Hopi convert to the true word of God

had occurred. (12)

In 1873 Brigham Young called 250 Mormons to establish missions and colonies in the Little Colorado River Valley in north-central Arizona south of the Hopi mesas. The trail had already been established through the region by Lieutenant Amiel W. Whipple in 1853 when his military expedition, looking for a potential east-west railway route, recommended that a wagon road be built along the Little Colorado River area. (13) His activity led to the establishment of the Edward F. Beale Wagon Road that went from Zuni Pueblo to Sunset Crossing (Winslow, Arizona). In 1876 the Mormon Wagon trail (also known as the Mormon Honeymoon trail), went from Salt Lake City, through Lee’s Ferrry, to Sunset Crossing, and was followed by two hundred men, women, and children who established Brigham City (one mile north of today’s Winslow). Here they were literally in the midst of the Lamanites. Four settlements were established but by 1886 they had all failed as agricultural communities. Their communal form of social organization, known as the United Order, also collapsed. Their efforts at making Mormons out of Lamanites also failed, with many baptisms but very few active members. (15)

Further upstream the Mormon colonies were more successful, not as mission centers but as farms and ranches. On Silver Creek, a tributary of the Little Colorado River, William Flake and Apostle Erastus Snow founded the community of Snowflake in 1878. The Silver Creek towns of Show Low and Taylor soon followed. About the same time other colonies were established up the Little Colorado including Alpine, Nutrioso, Eager, and Greer. (16)

In 1877 the Saints streamed into the eastern Salt River Valley, removing the mesquite and digging irrigation ditches. The new site was called Camp Utah (Lehi). There, missionary Daniel Jones joined the group and, believing he had a special mission to work among Native Americans, he attempted to enlist the aid of several Akimel O’odham, Tohono O’odham, and Pee Posh (Maricopa) in building Camp Utah. Many of the Saints were offended by Jones and his “dirty Indians” and so they left for the San Pedro River where they founded the community

of St. David. Evidently missionary zeal could not overcome racial prejudice on the frontier. (17)

Meanwhile, many of the Saints pushed further down the Salt River, establishing Tempe and creating the Papago Ward north of town that contained several hundred O’odham converts. The largest Arizona community was Mesa, established by a group of Saints from Idaho and Utah in 1878. They cleaned out an old Hohokam canal and planted their crops. Mesa was incorporated in 1883. (18)

Around the same time, between 1875 and 1876, Brigham Young sponsored an exploratory and proselytizing journey to Mexico. Their mission was to look for places to colonize and to teach the gospel to the Indians. A small group of Mormons travelled on horseback through Tucson and El Paso del Norte to Chihuahua City. They were not well received in either El Paso or Chihuahua. Unhappy with their lack of success in the cities, they turned west and travelled to the rural community of Guerrero in the Sierra Madre foothills. It was here, on the edge of the Sierra Tarahumara, that the group met with its first success. There was no clerical opposition, the people were not devout Catholics, and the municipal authorities granted them permission to preach. (19)

From Guerrero they took their message to the Tarahumaras (Rarámuri), first in Arisiachi and later in Temósachi in the Papigochi Valley. These Tarahumaras were very friendly to the missionaries and were impressed by the Mormon promise that the Rarámuri, as Lamanites, would have a special role to perform at the end of the millennial era as builders of the temple at New Jerusalem. When the Mormons left the Sierra Tarahumara, the Rarámuri provided them with so much corn and beans that their pack animals were overloaded. Leaving the Tarahumara country behind, the party travelled north along the Casas Grandes River and eventually returned to the United States. Their explorations in Mexico soon led to the establishment of several Mormon colonies in the Casas Grandes area, including Colonia Juárez (1887) and Colonia Dublán (1888). (20)

By the end of the century, facing competition by other faiths on the reservation and a ruling by the Bureau of Indian Affairs that only one

denomination could serve on the reservation (and usually that religious group was not the Latter-Day Saints), the Mormon Indian missionary program was mostly terminated. Very few Indians were converted during the first four decades of the twentieth century. The Mormons did develop a strong adoption program in which Indian children would live with Mormon families so that they could be, first “civilized,” and second, “converted.” (21)

The heritage of a half century of contact had reduced the Indians in number. When the Mormons first entered what became the territory of Utah in 1847, the estimated number of Native Americans was around 20,000. By 1900 the number had plunged to 2,623, or about a decline of eighty-six percent from the Natives of a half century earlier. Most of the decline was due to disease, mistreatment, and slavery. (22)

Today Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah has the largest enrollment of Indians in any American university, and many western reservations have established a Mormon Indian ward (akin to a parish). Nearly a hundred Indians were sent out on missions by the Church in the late 1980s. (23) As in the past, while many of the Mormon brethren have no more love for their Indian kindred than that of the average “Gentile” (non-Mormon), the religious message of a special role to play in the last days is an attractive one to many Lamanites.

References

1. Quoted from William B. Carter, Indian Alliances and the Spanish in the Southwest, 750-1750 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009), p. 93.

2. Quoted by Brigham D. Madsen in The Shoshoni Frontier and the Bear River Massacre (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1985), p. 29 from Young’s “Manuscript History,” May 30, 1852, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Historian’s Office, Salt Lake City.

3. “Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia (// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrill_Anti-Bigamy_Act).

4. As quoted by Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America (Boston & New York:

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), p. 3.

5. John A. Price, “Mormon Missions to the Indians,” in William C. Sturtevant, gen. ed., Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 4, History of Indian-White Relations, vol. ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1988), pp. 461-462.

6. Douglas O. Linder, “The Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857 and the Trials of John D. Lee: An Account,” (//law2.umkc.edu/ faculty/projects/ftrails/mountainmeadows/leeaccount.html, 2006). In September 1857, at least 120 members of the Missouri emigrant party were killed near Mountain Meadows north of St. George, Utah. Although the Saints attributed the killings to the Paiute Indians, later investigations proved that John D. Lee and the Mormons were mainly responsible for the Mountain Meadows Massacre. It was thought by some that the action against the Missouri party was at least in part retribution for similar actions taken against Mormons when they were living in Missouri. See also Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley Jr., and Glen M. Leonard, Massacre at Mountain Meadows (N.Y. & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

7. This is a conclusion shared by Howard A. Christy, “Open Hand and Mailed Fist: Mormon-Indian Relations in Utah, 1847-52,” Utah Historical Quarterly 46 (Summer 1978): 216-235, & Sandy Cosgrove, “Mormons and Native Americans: A Historical Overview,” (// www.onlinenevada.org/articles/mormons-and-native-americanshistorical-overview).

8. Scientific proof today does not support the theory of a Hebrew origin or connection with the American Indian. DNA tests, linguistic evidence, and dental morphology all point to East and North Asia as the homeland of the American Indian. The Mormon Church today has revised the traditional view in an essay entitled “Book of Mormon and DNA Studies.” The author(s) argue, after surveying several aspects of DNA research (including genetic drift, population bottlenecks, the founder effect, and post-Columbian immigration), that “DNA studies cannot be used decisively to either affirm or reject the historical authenticity of the Book of Mormon.” See https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ manual/gospel-topics-essays/book-of-mormon-and-dna-studies?/ lang=eng. One interesting if puzzling bit of evidence links the

Zuni Indians with the Japanese. See the controversial work by Nancy Yaw Davis, The Zuni Enigma (N.Y.: W.W. Norton & Co., 2001).

9. Quotes from Nephi in Book of Mormon by John A. Price, “Mormon Missions,” p. 459. “Dark and loathsome” quote from Robert Gottlieb & Peter Wiley, America’s Saints: The Rise of Mormon Power (N.Y.: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1984), p. 174. The current LDS authorized version is “…pure and delightsome...”

10. Carter, Indian Alliances, p. 93.

11. Gottlieb & Wiley, America’s Saints, p. 160.

12. Ibid., p. 161.

13. Thomas E. Sheridan, Arizona: A History (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2012), pp. 119-121.

14. The Honeymoon Trail was a wagon trail taken by betrothed couples on their way from Arizona colonies to a Mormon temple in St. George, Utah, for their covenant marriage, called “sealing.” See Garrett, H. Dean, “The Honeymoon Trail”, Ensign 23 (July 1989).

15. Ibid., pp. 201-203.

16. Ibid., pp. 203-204.

17. Ibid, p. 203.

18. Ibid, p. 204.

19. W. Dirk Raat and George R. Janeček, Mexico’s Sierra Tarahumara: A Photohistory of the People of the Edge (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996), pp. 82-83.

20. Ibid.

21. Price, “Mormon Missions to the Indians,” pp. 462-463.

22. Reséndez, The Other Slavery, p. 273.

23. Ibid., p. 463.

The Ball

Like a ball full of heavy sand I roll around the room.  Sometimes leaning toward, sometimes away, But rarely pausing long enough to see where I might be.

It seems I used to roll much faster, also stop more often. Although I can’t with good authority say which is best Or which is the more pleasant.

Of course, en route, I lost my pinze nez.  Where? When? Unknown. I cannot bring to mind the day or time of that great loss. Such details are most difficult to carry in such a smallish bag.

It seems I used to own a steamer trunk quite full of faces. The trunk, long since donated to a thrift shop;  Plus a face or ten as well that went into said bargain.

And so the noses and the names join stockpiles of ephemera    Which I meant to keep; or at least acknowledge their departure. I have been most careless.

Like a ball full of heavy sand I roll around the room. No space to journey far, the no-parking zones abound. I see an exit ramp that offers unknown choices.

I’ll lean that way and see what happens.

JoAnn Tongret

Alex’s 10th Birthday Present

Shannon E. Perry

Several years ago, while in India, I met an American woman who was accompanied by her ten-year-old granddaughter. She told me that when any of her grandchildren reached ten years of age, she would take them anywhere in the world they wanted to go. I thought that was a brilliant idea and decided to do the same.

When my grandson, Alex, turned ten in 2018, he selected London as his destination. With the help of his mother, Alex and I started planning for the nine-day trip. A big draw to London for Alex was his love of the Harry Potter series. Alex at that time was on book five; I read and enjoyed book one in preparation for the trip.

Alex and I began our great adventure with an overnight flight to London. When we arrived, Alex was invited into the cockpit and the pilot took our picture. As we were exiting, I realized I didn’t have my phone. I had left it in the pocket of my seat. The flight attendant was unable to locate it and I was not allowed to look for it. (I realized afterward that I gave her the wrong seat number). Apparently, I was more nervous about this adventure that I had anticipated.

When we went to immigration I had quite a fright. I had a paper from Alex’s parents giving me permission to seek medical care, if necessary, but the immigration official wanted to see written permission to take Alex out of the country. I had no idea I needed such a document, but apparently if someone is taking a child out of the country, a signed consent from a parent is necessary. Alex did verify that I am his Nana, and that proved to be enough, thankfully. After a lecture from the official about human trafficking, we were permitted to go through.

Our hotel was next to Tower Bridge and the Tower of London. Alex loved looking out the window at the River Thames, watching tug boats, and seeing the Tower Bridge which was lighted at night. We went for a walk, and I discovered that I didn’t have my camera; apparently, I had left it in a restroom, and it was gone when I went back to look for it. Fortunately, Alex had brought his, so we have a photo record of our trip. After the stress of losing my phone and my camera subsided, I began to relax.

Our first adventure was a Hop On, Hop Off bus tour of the city. Alex kept his nose to the window the whole three-hour trip. I was afraid he would be bored but he said he was enjoying the sights and didn’t want to “Hop Off.” Alex’s only disappointment was learning that Big Ben is being refurbished and would be covered for the next few years.

After the ride, we toured Tower Bridge and climbed the 206 steps to the top. The upper bridge and two glass sections offered a view below of people, the river, and boats. Alex had seen pictures of women doing yoga on those sections and it “freaked him out.” He walked around the glass sections but not on them. We went into the engine room that powers the raising of the bascules (sections raised and lowered using counterweights) to let ships go through. Alex stopped at one of the many kiosks near Tower Bridge and bought a souvenir hat for his father. Later he found a stuffed animal for his sister. Thoughtful gifts with no coaching from Nana.

We cruised on the Thames from the Tower Quay to Westminster and back. I worried about Alex remembering to look “right left right” when crossing streets, but he mastered the different traffic patterns

Alex at Tower Bridge

quickly.

One of the challenges of travelling with a 10-year-old is finding food that he liked or, at least, would eat. We ate a lot of pizza and pasta. There was no fine dining on the schedule.

Buckingham Palace was high on Alex’s list of places to visit. Our timing was good as the palace was open for tours in August because the Queen was in Scotland at Balmoral Castle. We toured the State Rooms and saw elegant furniture and the priceless art collection. Alex wanted to sit on some of the lovely chairs, but no one is allowed near the furniture. On another day, we visited Windsor Castle. Alex thought Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle were about the same, but he supposed that was because the same people lived in both. A good insight for a 10-year-old!

Our next stop was the British Museum’s amazing historical collections. Alex’s favorite class in school is history and he enjoyed seeing the actual Rosetta Stone, Parthenon friezes, mummies and sarcophagi, Greek and Roman statues, and a Moi from Easter Island. With our limited time, we had to be selective and skipped many other important exhibits.

In Lacock, a picturesque village in the Cotswolds, Alex was happy to see the Abbey that was used in the Harry Potter films. We visited a chocolate shop in Bath that Alex said had the best chocolate he’d ever eaten in his life. After buying some to take home to his mother, we went on to the last destination on our tour: Stonehenge.

When Alex was little, his grandfather told him about Stonehenge

Alex at Buckingham Palace

and showed him pictures. Over the next few years, Alex built many little Stonehenges out of rocks and Legos. This was his favorite stop of the day. The stones are surrounded by a fence so one cannot get close to them. Stonehenge was smaller than Alex expected but he still enjoyed the visit on a windy day. At the Visitors Center, there were three small Neolithic huts with thatched roofs constructed to demonstrate the homes of the workers of Stonehenge. Alex went inside and commented that he liked to think about living in them.

On the way back to London, we stopped near an Underground Station and Alex experienced his first ride on the “tube.”

The next morning, we had planned to walk to the Tower of London and take the tour. However, it rained all morning, so the Beefeaters,ceremonial guards at the Tower, were not guiding. We saw the Crown Jewels, which are spectacular, but we didn’t see any of the famous ravens; they were smart enough to stay out of the rain.

The Underground took us to King’s Cross Station and Platform 9 ¾, which Harry Potter and the Weasleys went through to board the Hogwarts Express. Alex bought a beautiful stuffed white owl (Hedwig)

Alex and Nana at Stonehenge

and a Ron Weasley wand. I bought a golden snitch necklace. Back in Westminster, we rode the London Eye and enjoyed the great views of London. Alex thought the Eye was amazing and said, “Where else do you see a Ferris wheel right next to the water?”

On our last day, we took a Warner Brothers Studio Tour, where all of the Harry Potter movies were filmed. It was a small place, so it was hard to believe that the movies were filmed there. We saw the Knight Bus, which Alex said he never dreamed he could get inside of. In the studio we saw props and costumes used in the films. We walked down Diagon Alley, through the Forbidden Forest, into Hagrid’s house with Fang inside. The home of the Dursleys at #4 Privet Drive, Harry’s cupboard under the stairs, and the room with all the letters flying around were delightful. We continued to the Great Hall, Dumbledore’s office, the magic stairs, the Triwizard Cup, and an impressive model of Hogwarts. Alex posed in front of the Hogwarts Express and sat in one of the seventeen flying cars used in the films. We tried the Butterbeer but didn’t care for it (think of Root beer with melted butter). Videos of training the animals were interesting. Apparently, owls are very hard to train but we saw the trainers working with Hedwig, who flew to the right place on command. This tour was the highlight of Alex’s trip.

It was a memorable trip with time for Alex and his grandmother to spend some quality time together. Alex said it was the most awesome week of his life. Nana is looking forward to a tenth birthday present for Alex’s sister, Zoe, who wants to visit the Roman Colosseum and Pompeii.

Alex at Platform 9 3/4

Golden Days of Hollywood #2

Paul Jackson

Foiled—Again and Again

Movie Review by JoAnn Yeoman Tongret

Editor’s note: ASU Professor Emerita of music, theater and dance, JoAnn Tongret, has become a regular in our pages with her reviews and commentary on movies, musical theater and drama, always bolstered by her own professional experience on and behind the stage. She is Emeritus Voices’ Assistant Editor for the Lively Arts.

While searching for an entirely different classic film I ran into an old swashbuckler called The Mark of Zorro (20th Century Fox, 1940. Rouben Mamoulian, Director). I’d heard of it and I know it was re-imagined as the The Mask of Zorro in 1998. But the oldie seemed very much worth a look. It starred Tyrone Power (Diego), Linda Darnell (Lolita), and Basil Rathbone (Captain Pasquale).

A colleague of mine, who was an extremely successful stage fight choreographer, told me that Rathbone was the best fencer of his day in Hollywood. I confirmed that from several sources and in addition found that he was twice honored as the British Army fencing Champion. The irony is that in each film he loses to leading men like Tyrone Power and Errol Flynn because he almost always plays the villain and is doomed to die at their hands. I think he won only two matches on film in over seventy movies.

I found The Mark of Zorro to be an engaging and well-plotted adventure film. It begins in Spain where Diego is graduating from an academy

that turns out the finest swordsmen in the country. He is called home suddenly by his father and returns to his family hacienda in California. He feels cheated having to withdraw from the risks, rewards, and camaraderie of his classmates and tells them that he is going to California where the only thing to do there is “raise fat children” and watch his crops grow.

But when Diego gets to California he discovers that a greedy and corrupt alcalde [mayor] has taken over the town, raising taxes, killing the poor, stealing the land, and is hated and feared by one and all.

In a plot twist that echoes The Scarlet Pimpernel (as well as an assemblage of superheroes like Superman and Batman,) Diego plays the useless fop in public and then nightly turns into the Robin Hood of the Southwest as Zorro, protecting the poor. Pasquale (Rathbone) is the power behind the Alcalde and it is he who is the mastermind behind every evil in town.

In the end (spoiler alert) Zorro is of course triumphant—he kills Pasquale and marries his love, Lolita, vowing that now he is ready at last to raise fat children and watch his crops grow.

Although it is derivative (and predictable,) the film still plays pretty well. We enjoy the ride even though we know where we’re going. The minor roles are handled with skill. Eugene Paullette, playing a rotund monk, Father Felipe, was a veteran character actor who brings a few light moments to the plot. Gale Sondergaard is cast as Inez, an easily-charmed dupe who plays into Diego’s hands as he tries to juggle both sides and stay alive. Linda Darnell doesn’t have a lot to do except look lovely, but there is one flamenco-styled dance sequence where she and Power do a surprisingly good job. There were several long shots and I was watching their feet. The two of them did most of their own work. There were very few close-ups used only for the fancier heel work.

Tyrone Power and Basil Rathbone

The anticipated sword fight between Diego and Pasquale is worth the wait. Fast and furious, it was choreographed by fencing master Fred Cavens. The fastest shots were undercranked to 18 or 20 frames per second (as opposed to the standard movie house 24 fps) which made it look even more impressive. Rathbone did all his own fighting while Power had a stand-in (Caven’s son) whenever his back was to the camera.

Also enjoyable are the aforementioned dance sequence and Power’s costumes. They were designed for the several “fop” scenes by Travis Banton, and each one was more wonderful than the next. And it didn’t hurt that Power looked comfortable, masculine, and like a star in all of them.

I was not impressed with the shamble of dialects throughout the film. The American and British actors had terrible accents while the extras (many of whom were Hispanic) sounded just as they should. The director needed to make a choice and stick with it. Additionally, the dialogue is often lackluster and threatens to slow the pace of the longer

Linda Darnell and Tyrone Power

scenes while we wait for “the verb.” It is, perhaps, in that sense dated and unable to compete with the other 1940’s films such as The Grapes of Wrath, His Girl Friday, Pride and the Prejudice, Waterloo Bridge, and Rebecca. But it is still a classic of its genre and never strays from its style. I believe that if a film or a play remains faithful to the world it has initially created, then it has treated its audience with respect and deserves some praise.

And now briefly back to Rathbone (1892-1967), who is my main interest in the film. Born in Johannesburg, he first became well known as a Shakespearean stage actor in the UK with the New Shakespeare Co. at Stratford Upon Avon. He moved on to the West End playing leading roles opposite Katherine Cornell, Ethel Barrymore, and Eva Le Gallienne. He made his name in his more than seventy films, mainly playing suave villains and swashbuckling swordsmen. His athleticism stood him in good stead during World War I when he was awarded the Military Cross.

Although he wished to be remembered more for his stage roles, his

Power and Rathbone get it on

most memorable films saw him playing the title role in a series of Sherlock Holmes movies. The first two were based on Conan-Doyle’s books, but his talent was wasted (I believe) in later episodes written poorly to take place (uncomfortably) around 1945 in an effort to bolster public acceptance of our participation in World War II. I also feel that the casting of Nigel Bruce as Watson left them each in two separate plays due to acting styles. Bruce’s bumbling Watson was not the right foil for Rathbone’s Holmes. Rathbone was an A-level actor stuck mostly in B-level films. It has certainly happened to others.

So—now I’m going to order The Mask of Zorro, mostly because of my interest in Anthony Hopkins. I admire him greatly and by happy coincidence I had lunch with him at Sardi’s. But, that’s another story. For this one, “it’s a wrap!”

I have long thought that anyone who does not regularly - or ever - gaze up and see the wonder and glory of a dark night sky filled with countless stars loses a sense of their fundamental connectedness to the universe.

Brian Greene

Husbands and Wives

Richard Jacob

Our two book/movie combos this issue concern husbands, wives and death. In the first, a wife risks her husband’s life as well as her own on a principle. In the second, she just has her husband shot.

The Book: The Last Duel, Eric Jager. Crown Penguin Random House, New York, NY, 2004 (EJ).

The Movie: The Last Duel, Ridley Scott, Director; Matt Damon, Adam Driver, Ben Affleck; Jodie Comer; Scott Free Productions (20th Century Studios), 2021.

In medieval France, rape was a capital crime (though against the husband, not the woman, his property):

Defined as forceable sexual intercourse outside of wedlock, [rape] was punishable by death. Philip de Beaumanoir, a thirteenth century authority on French law, states that the punishment for rape is the same as that for murder or treason— namely, “to be dragged through the streets and hanged.” (EJ, pp. 69 – 70)

As well, at that age, “under French law, a nobleman appealing a case to the king had the right to challenge his opponent to a judicial duel, or trial by combat.” (EJ, p. 81)

Eric Jager, Professor of English at UCLA, was attracted from his

reading to the well-known (at least to history-of-duels buffs) 1386 duel to the death between Normandy noblemen Jean de Carrouges (Damon in the movie) and Jacques Le Gris (Driver) in the Paris Abbey of Saint-Martindes-Champs, before the French king Charles VI. Carrouges had accused his erstwhile friend Le Gris of raping his wife, Marguerite (Comer), when he, Carrouges, was away from his Normandy home on an errand in Paris. Le Gris denied the charges and Carrouges was unsuccessful in getting judicial justice; a challenge and the duel ensued.

Jager’s book is well researched, there being a good deal of source material, including detailed accounts by medieval historian Jean Froissart, Le Gris’ lawyer, Jon Le Coq, and others. The book and movie’s title comes from the technical fact that the duel was the last parliamentary sanctioned trial to death by combat in France; there were later less-sanctioned duels, but the practice had died out due to skepticism, even by the Pope, of the efficacy of fighting to the death to prove one’s innocence or guilt. Of 200 plus pages, the narrative progresses like a novel, but also includes a great deal of material of interest to the avid history reader. When necessary to advance the narrative, the author speculates, but is careful to delineate fact from speculation.

Eric Jager

Without revealing spoilers, some of the particulars of the tale are as follows.

Jean de Carrouges and Jacques Le Gris were écuyers (squires), serving, in the French feudal system of the time, Count Pierre of Alençon (Affleck), a close cousin of the King. (The rank of squire (écuyer) did not necessarily indicate a young man, but rather the feudal step below that of knight (chevalier.) Carrouges was knighted for battle service before the alleged rape and Le Gris was knighted before the duel in order to satisfy the requirement that duels be held between equals.) They had as young men developed a strong friendship and Le Gris had even stood in as Godfather to Carrouge’s son by his first wife. Both the child and mother died soon afterwards of an unspecified illness and Carrouge married the winsome Marguerite de Thibouville, for economic reasons—a hefty dowry—as much or more as for physical attraction and the desire to obtain an heir to his estate. Sadly, Marguerite remained barren for the five years until the rape charge. But the pair seemed to settle in as an affectionate and loyal couple. The movie, however, portrays several incidents of discord between a heavy-handed Carrouge and a sexually unsatisfied wife. The book hints at none of this.

During this period, Count Pierre had shown favoritism to Le Gris (both being shown in the movie to share enjoyment of certain hedonis-

Carrouge (right) confronts Le Gris in the presence of Count Pierre (left)

Déjà

tic activities) over Carrouge in several instances, the most egregious being related to Marguerite’s dowry and Jean’s inheritance of his father’s title. By the time of the rape incident, the relationship between the two had cooled and Carrouge had developed a jealous obsession.

The rape, which Jager reports as authentic, occurred when Marguerite was left alone while Jean went to Paris to collect some wages (the circumstances differ slightly between book and movie, as does the rape sequence itself.) Unlike most women of the age who swallowed the pain and humility of rape and stifled their objections, Marguerite reported the incident to Jean. He charged Le Gris before their liege lord, Count Pierre, without success, and a subsequent appeal to the King was undermined by the Count’s influence. Marguerite continued to swear in court to the truth of her story and the two determined to pursue the case to trial by combat, even though, by French law, the death of Jean, thereby “proving”

Le Gris’ innocence, would result in the penalty of perjury for Marguerite, which was to be burnt at the stake. (In the movie, she is portrayed as being surprised by learning of this possible outcome when it was too late. It’s difficult to believe that she was so innocent of the consequences.)

Marguerite was pregnant while testifying at the Parliament’s hearing, having conceived at about the time of the assault. Although Jean had arrived home from war to the welcoming arms of his wife shortly

Marguerite assures Carrouge that she’s telling the truth.

The handshake before the duel

before then, this muddied the water and generally worked against her. (The child, a boy, was born some weeks before the duel took place on December 29.) Her testimony was met by abhorrent attitudes of the day (and still extant now, so thin is the veneer of civilization) regarding rape, women’s sexuality and conception. But she held firm in the face of a horrible death. She had been brutally raped. Both the book and the movie portray the actual duel dramatically, the book in some greater detail. But the movie does stray into areas where the book’s author limits and carefully delineates speculation. Jager’s book is a recommended good read. The movie, which received good critical reviews but bombed at the box office, is worth an evening’s diversion, if at least for its excellent visual rendition of medieval France and its customs. But read the book first, including its Appendix.

The Book: House of Gucci, A True Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour and Greed. Sara Gay Forden. HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NY, 2000 (SGF)

The Movie: House of Gucci, Ridley Scott, Director; Adam Driver, Jared Leto, Jeremy Irons, Al Pacino; Lady Gaga; Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 2021.

Sara Gay Forden with her book

Déjà Vu — Jacob

The headline on page A4 of the New York Times, November 4, 1998, reads Former Wife Given 29 Years for Ordering Gucci Slaying.

Three and a half years earlier, on Monday, March 27, 1985, as he was entering his modest office building in Milan, Italy, Maurizio Gucci, scion of the Gucci family (Driver in the movie), was shot in the back and killed by a hired assassin. The House of Gucci—meaning the Gucci family at the time—was not the only notorious fashion dynasty, and books could be written, and probably have, about any of their histories. But they would not have attracted such attention from the reading public. Neither would have Forden’s House of Gucci, were it not for the murder of the fashion giant’s face, if no longer its director. And the book would not have spawned the eponymous movie.

And we, the reading and viewing public, would not have had both an enjoyable and informative read and a well-crafted and acted film. Which would have been a shame as far as the book is concerned, because it is a three-generational family saga deserving of an account even without the murder, which after all, was just another violent end to a tawdry husband-wife feud.

If the $10,000 cost of a leather handbag and $1,000 sneakers do not give you a sense of titillated wonder, the rise to riches in two generations of a Florentine leather craftsman’s family will still provide interest. Forden captures this as she chronicles the birth and growth of the Gucci company and fortune. The ins and outs of the fashion industry, both in the United States (i.e., New York,) Italy and elsewhere abroad are explored in fascinating detail. But Forden, a fashion industry journalist, reports, but does not delve. One might appreciate a more reflective, incisive commentary on the Gucci successes and failures, but she does cover the facts, at least one thinks so; there are no endnotes, just a bibliography. Forden lays considerable emphasis on the importance of their Florence background to the family’s success:

To understand Maurizio Gucci and the family he came from, it’s necessary to understand the Tuscan character. … Tuscans tend to be individualistic and haughty. They feel

they represent the wellspring of culture and art in Italy, and they are especially proud of their role in originating the modern Italian language, thanks in large part to Dante Alighieri. Some call them the “French of Italy”—arrogant, self-sufficient, and closed to outsiders. … The rich history of the centuries-old Florentine merchant class pulsed in the Gucci veins. (SGF, pp. 10 – 11)

There is little antecedent worth mentioning to the Gucci story. Mauricio’s grandfather and the company founder, Guccio Gucci, left his father’s bankrupt hat-making business while still young and went out into the world to seek his own fortune, as it were. After an instructive several years, he returned to Florence in 1902, married Aida Calvelli and took a job with a leather firm, learning the leather craft and business that became the Gucci forté.

Aida brought a son, Ugo, to the marriage, and gave Guccio four surviving children of his own, daughter Grimalda, and sons Aldo (Pacino), Vasco and Rodolfo (Irons). “Of Guccio’s three biological sons, Aldo became the driving force behind the business.” (SGF, p. 40.) Vasco was a dutiful but mostly silent partner, and Rodolfo, although a participant and beneficiary, preferred pursuing his own mildly successful career in Hollywood as a movie actor. Grimalda is not a major player in the story.

“Uncle” Aldo had three sons by his first wife: Giorgio, Paolo (Leto) and Roberto. All three played important roles in the Gucci empire, but only Paolo is featured in the movie, his maverick actions being key to much of the third-generation hysterics.

The ill-fated Maurizio was an academic by nature, studied law and showed little interest in the family firm, but was nevertheless pressed into service in lieu of his star-struck father. He met the glamorous Patri-

Maurizio (Adam Driver) meets Patrizia (Lady Gaga) at a party

Déjà Vu — Jacob

zia Reggiani (Lady Gaga) when he was twenty-two and she twenty-one, and immediately determined to marry her. His father was aghast:

“Be careful, Maurizio…I have received information about the girl. … I am told she is vulgar and ambitious, a social climber who has nothing in mind but money. Maurizio, she is not the girl for you.” (SGF,p. 57)

Maurizio ignored his father’s prescient advice and married Patrizia.

Rather than taking a well-cushioned back seat like the other Gucci women, Patrizia injected herself, through Maurizio, more and more into the Gucci business affairs. As their lives progressed, their relationship became increasingly strained as Patrizia imposed her will on the pliant Maurizio, until the struggle predictably ends up in his “putting on his big-boy pants,” rejecting her and taking full control of affairs himself. (By this time, he has emerged as a principal partner in the Gucci concern.) Patrizia, in exasperation, finally resorts to the ultimate solution.

The Maurizio-Patrizia soap opera consumes most of the film, but not of the book, where a great deal of space is given to the historical record of the company, the fashion world and Gucci’s international development. Aldo is in most chapters the principal personage but is only a well-acted prop in the movie. The book is worth reading if you like the genre (recent histories of the Vanderbilts and the Morgans come to mind.) And the film is in fact enjoyable and well-produced. In contrast to the Last Duel duo, reading the book is not essential to understanding the movie’s plot; it’s pretty straight-forward.

Maurizio Gucci and Patrizia Reggiani Gucci

Contributor bios

Terrence Ball

Terence Ball holds a 1973 PhD in Political Science from UC Berkeley. His scholarly specialty is political theory, “from Plato to NATO.” He is the author or editor of fourteen books, including an academic mystery novel, Rousseau's Ghost (1998). He has held visiting academic appointments at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and UC San Diego.

Gretchen M. Bataille

Gretchen was chair of English and CLAS Associate Dean at ASU before serving as provost at UC Santa Barbara and at Washington State U. She served as senior vice president for the U of North Carolina system and the American Council on Education and as president of the University of North Texas. She founded GMB Consulting Group and is a partner with ROI Consulting Group, helping universities build strategic leadership teams. Her publications include books and articles on internationalization, diversity, faculty career paths and crisis management.

David R. Berman

David R. Berman came to ASU in 1969. He is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Senior Research Fellow, Morrison Institute for Public Policy Arizona State University. He holds a doctorate from the American University in Washington, D.C. His work includes several

books and articles on the populist/ progressive period in Mountain West and in Arizona in particular. His work for the Morrison includes reports on direct democracy, clean elections, top-two primaries, redistricting, and dark money.

Jean R. Brink

Jean is a Research Scholar at the Huntington Library and Professor Emerita of English at Arizona State University, where she founded and directed the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Brink recently completed a biography entitled, The Early Spenser (15541580): “Minde on Honour Fixed,” published by Manchester University Press. (2019). She is at work on The Later Spenser (1580-99). Her edition of Rivall Friendship is forthcoming from ACMRS Press (2021).

Lee B. Croft

Lee received a B.S. in Mathematics at ASU (1968) but switched gears and earned his Ph.D. in Slavic Languages from Cornell in 1973, returning to the Foreign Languages faculty at ASU. He retired as Professor Emeritus in 2011. Croft was awarded the V. I. Vernadsky silver medal for collaborative research by the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. He remains active as an International Advisory Board member of ASU’s Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies, having co-founded and first directed its Critical Languages Institute, the Russian offering of which is now being named after him as the “Lee B. Croft Russian Program.”

Beatrice Gordon

Beatrice (Babs) Gordon grew up in Chicago but began her long journey through higher education at Vassar College. Returning home, she became a certified Medical Technologist (ASCP) at Augustana Hospital. Babs attended Northwestern University and then moved to California with her husband, who was stationed there with the Navy. The family came to the Phoenix area in 1962. She returned to her education after the last child started to college. She received a Bachelor of Arts and two Master of Art degrees at Arizona State University (English Literature; Applied Ethics and the Professions). She taught in the English Department for sixteen years. She is Instructor Emerita and an active member of the Emeritus College.

Alexandra Gruzinska

Aleksandra grew up in Poznan, Poland, and studied in Barcelona, Spain, before immigrating to the United States in 1951. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in French from the State University of New York at Buffalo, and her PhD from Pennsylvania State University in 1973. She joined ASU that year as an assistant professor of French, served intermittently as director of the graduate program in French and as head of French before retiring in 2016.

Jane Jackson

Jane Jackson earned the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. (1970) in physics from ASU. Before returning to ASU in 1994 as Co-Director of the Modeling Instruction Program, she was Professor of Physics at Scottsdale Community College, prior to which she was Assistant Professor of Physics at South Dakota State University.

Contribtor Bios

Paul Jackson

Paul grew up in Phoenix, when his family moved there after World War II. He graduated from ASU in 1959 with a degree in journalism. After five years of working in that field, he returned to ASU to earn a PhD in English. He taught in South Dakota before returning to Arizona, where he enjoys landscape painting, especially in the desert.

John

John received his PhD from the University of California, San Diego. He taught at ASU 1972–2012. In retirement he has been an active member of the local chapter of Veterans for Peace.

David Kader

David Kader taught in the areas of criminal procedure, torts, state constitutional law and religion and the Constitution. He obtained his LL.M. from University College London in England, and served as Associate Dean of ASU’s law school from 1980-83. He also taught in the Arizona Center of Medieval and Renaissance Studies Summer Abroad Program at Cambridge University and was a Visiting Fellow at the University of London Institute for Advanced Legal Studies. He became emeritus in the summer of 2015, after completing 36 years on the law faculty of ASU and 41 years as a law professor.

Shannon

Shannon Perry, RN, PhD, FAAN, retired from San Francisco State University as Professor Emerita where she taught nursing and child development for almost 17

M. Johnson

E. Perry

years. She is spending her retirement writing, doing historical research in nursing, and traveling both for fun and for medical and other missions.

William Dirk Raat

William Dirk Raat, Professor Emeritus of History, began his college career at Weber College in his native city of Ogden, Utah and received his PhD at the University of Utah. He taught Mexican history, Latin American history and indigenous peoples history at ASU and several other institutions. Last Worlds of 1863 is his latest book. He and his wife live in Surprise, Arizona. They have several children and grandchildren in San Francisco, Seattle and Lisbon, Portugal.

Harvey A. Smith

Harvey A. Smith, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, holds degrees in engineering, physics and mathematics from Lehigh University and the University of Pennsylvania. He has served as a staff member or consultant to many industrial concerns and government and quasi-governmental agencies.

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Revised October, 2021

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Look

up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.

— Stephen Hawking