ASU Emeritus Voices Journal, Vol. 29

THE ART OF

EMERITUS VOICES

The Emeritus College A place and a purpose

Editorial Board

Editor Richard J. Jacob Assistant Editor Joann Tongret

Editorial Assistants Megan Joyce Erica Hervig

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

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emerituscollege@asu.edu

EMERITUS VOICES

The Journal of the Emeritus College at Arizona State University

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 creativi ty, scholarship and life experience.

Instructions for submitters can be found at emerituscollege.asu.edu/emeritus-voices/submission-guidelines

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. 138).

Arizona State University Tempe, AZ 85281

Printed in the United States of America ISSN 1942-3039

From the Lectern

Understanding and Maintaining Memory | Billie Enz 5

Ironies and Epiphanies

Live Speeches with Unplanned Humor | M. Scott Norton 22 Mystery Man | Harold C. White 23

An Extraordinary Talent can be a Handicap | Harvey A. Smith 24

A Final French History Examination | Aleksandra Gruzinska 26

Reinventing Retirement

Bill Verdini: A Retirement of, Not from, Service 54

Commentary and Analysis

Divided We Stood | Doris Marie Provine 28

Eugenics and Its Aftermath | Linda Stryker 39

Our Blood, Our Proof | David Kader 62

The Evolution of Primary Care Medicine in the United States: From General Practice to Family Medicine | Zach Sitton and Eric VanSonnenberg 85

The Choreographic Art of Ann Ludwig 64

Essay

The Beep Generation | JoAnn Yeoman Tongret 82 Catherine A. Steele: Apache Educator and Arizona Living Legacy | Christine Marin 97

Graphic Art

Golden Days of Hollywood I & II | Paul Jackson 100

The Lively Arts

The Mice Will Play | JoAnn Yeoman Tongret 102

Poetry and Prose

Sickness Is a Place | Shannon E. Perry 53

The River Derwent | Charles Brownson 77

Mother-kill | Beatrice Gordon 111

Three Poems | Charles Brownson 112

A Small Romance | Gus Edwards 114

Books and Review

Déjà vu: Homeless or Houseless? | Richard J. Jacob 120

All Quiet on the Western Front, My Father and Me | Revisiting the Classics, Review by Ernie Stech 126

Unitum Mandamus

It seems that Americans, at least those who need one, have found a new enemy: mandates. Having lived their lives under a myriad of man dates, from federal, state and local governments, school boards, employers and private associa tions, it is deemed repulsive to have to adhere to obligations for the benefit of members, employ ees, students and the body politic generally.

There has, of course, always been in the in dependent American spirit a rebellious reaction to being told to do or not to do something. “You’re not the boss of me!” is a declaration that any parent has heard and that, perhaps in more mature language, most of us repeat into adulthood. And sometimes rightly so. We should oppose constraints that are not from proper authority — that which we democratically have a hand in selecting or from which we have the freedom to separate ourselves. The child quickly learns that her parent really is her boss. The employee knows who his boss is by corporate definition. The child often threatens to “run away.” The employee has the right to quit at the end of his contractual period, if not abruptly.

As citizens, we do have input in the selection of those who mandate, but in our democracy, our personal choice is rejected about half the time. But the mandates still come (or fail to leave.) Quitting, or running away, is a measure taken by a few, opting for other systems and collections of mandates. The costs and risks of doing so keep most of us, however, in our place, disgruntled as we may be.

The new current wrinkle, that raises concern, is that such large numbers have chosen to take the “You’re not the boss of me!” stance against mandates from legally constituted authorities regarding fairly inoffensive measures de signed for the extreme benefit of everyone. Ignoring seat belt requirements, no-smoking rules, minimum driving and drinking ages, education expecta tions, and yes, inoculation requirements of long standing, and being fed false representations from politicians, media and some spiritual leaders, a signif icant portion—enough to make difference—of our co-patriots have chosen to draw the line at the simple act of wearing a protective mask and getting a science-proven vaccine that, if applied to a sufficient percentage of the popu lation, would stave off a pandemic that has already taken the lives of almost 1,000,000 of us.

Who is “the boss of us” in an ICU?

Undemocratic mandates and civil liberties are key themes in articles in this issue by Doris Marie Provine and Linda Stryker. In an autobiographical com mentary on Jim Crowism and a career in civil rights law, Provine describes her intellectual and idealistic progression from an early life in segregated so ciety. Stryker reviews the history of the Eugenics movement and its attempts to thwart personal liberties for a presumed but misguided societal benefit. The theme of social justice is visited more viscerally in David Kader’s poem.

Billie Enz favors us with a written version of her public lecture on memory health and physiology. In their article on primary medical care, Eric vanSon nenberg and his associate, Zach Sitton, provide a history of General Practice in America and its evolution into Family Medicine. Eric recalls for us the role his father played as a GP in their community.

Bill Verdini’s leadership contributions to the Emeritus College and sever al other organizations paint the portrait of a retirement devoted to service. Christine Marin recognizes another who served: Apache educator, Catherine Steele.

Ann Ludwig reviews her career as a dancer and choreographer in our first art feature to highlight the performing arts. But you can have a performance of your own by reading with a friend JoAnn Tongret’s one act play about a burglar and a not very watchful neighbor.

Tongret also brings smiles of recognition in her essay about the beeps in our lives, and you will continue to be amused by this issue’s offering of Ironies and Epiphanies.

We feature our inaugural “Revisiting the Classics” review with Ernie Stech’s impressions of Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front.” Readers are encouraged to supply reflective re views of their own favorites. Also re viewed in Déjà vu is the book/movie pairing, “Nomadland.”

Thought provoking poetry and prose are provided by Shannon Per ry, Charles Brownson, Babs Gordon and Gus Edwards.

Our hope is that you find this is sue to be enjoyable and inspiration al. These are emeritus voices. You are invited to contribute your own.

Understanding and Maintaining Memory

Billie Enz

Making a memory is a multi-step process that we engage in constant ly. From taking in sensory information to interpret your environment, to learning new information such as ever-changing technologies, to recalling the name of an old classmate requires multiple systems in our brain to work together seamlessly. This chapter is designed to provide readers with a greater understanding of the brains intertwined organization and functions, a deeper appreciation of the brains’ memory systems, and finally a discussion of sci ence-based strategies for maintaining memory and brain health.

I. Interconnected Brain Organization and Functions

We are living in an exciting age of neurological discovery. New technologies have allowed researchers to observe the living brain’s function. These data provide researchers with a better way to understand the organization and functional operations of the brain. They have revealed that the brain is a highly organized, complex, multi-functional organ, and nearly all components play a role in sensory intake, memory storage and retrieval. To understand how our memory systems work, it is important for the reader to have a basic grasp of terminology and architecture of the brain.

The Hemisperes and Corpus Callosum: At the most basic structural level, the brain is divided into two hemispheres (italicized words are illustrated in the Figures) that are connected by the corpus callosum, a band of nerve fibers which carries messages between the hemispheres integrating information to process motor, sensory, and cognitive signals simultaneously. The brain’s right hemisphere controls the muscles on the left side of the body, while the left hemisphere controls the muscles on the right side of the body. Each hemi sphere performs a fairly distinct set of operations. In general, the left hemi sphere is dominant in language: processing what we hear and handling most of the duties of speaking. The right hemisphere is mainly in charge of spatial abilities, facial recognition and processing music. (1)

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The right and left hemispheres are connected by the corpus collosum.

The Lobes and Cerebellum: Each hemisphere is divided into four dis tinct regions called lobes. It is important to remember that no part of the brain is an isolated component that can function without information from other parts of the brain and body. While each lobe has been associated with specific tasks, they are subdivided into interlocking networks of neurons that coordinate overlapping and complex tasks, such as talking, which concur rently requires memory, forethought, and motor coordination of tongue and lips. (Box - Neurons and Neural Networks). All four lobes comprise what is referred to as the cerebral cortex. (2) The following describes the major func tions of each lobe. Notice that each lobe plays a role in learning and memory creation, storage, and recall.

The Lobes and Cerebellum: the lobes extend and cross over both hemispheres.

• Frontal lobes manage higher level executive functions, which include a collection of cognitive skills such as working memory,

attention span, capacity to plan, organize, initiate, self-monitor and control one’s actions to achieve a goal. Towards the back of the frontal lobe is the motor cortex, which is responsible for planning and enacting voluntary movement including speech production in the Broca’s Area. (3)

• Parietal lobes contain the primary sensory cortex, which interprets and remembers sensation such as touch, pain, pressure. Behind the primary sensory cortex is a large association area that interprets fine sensation such as texture, weight, size, and shape. The parietal lobe is also responsible for sensory integration, integrating visual, audito ry, somatosensory, olfactory and taste, which enables us to encoun ter our world as a unified experience. In other words, when we have our morning coffee, we can simultaneously taste and smell the rich flavor, see and hear the coffee pouring into our cup, and feel the warmth as we swallow. The parietal lobe also plays a significant role in allowing us to recall these sensations. (4)

• Temporal lobes: The left side of the temporal lobe contains Wernicke’s Area which is concerned with interpreting/processing/ comprehending auditory stimuli. As we hear the myriad of sounds in our environment, the Wernicke’s area sorts, recognizes, and interprets the meaningful units of our native language. (5) Inter estingly, the temporal lobe is also associated with supporting visual recognition of objects, places, and faces. Finally, the temporal lobe is home to the limbic system, which is responsible for our ability to pay attention, make and recall memories, feel emotions, and respond appropriately.

• Occipital lobes are the seat of the brain’s visual cortex, which allows us to see and process stimuli from the external world, and assign meaning and remember visual perceptions. The occipital lobes gather information from the eyes; this occurs when light proceeds through the pupil. As the light progresses through the pupil, it strikes different types of photo-receptor cells, called rods and cones on the retina. Light stimulates these photoreceptors, which then fire an impulse through the optic nerve, which carries the information instantaneously to the occipital lobe at the back of the brain, where it’s processed and perceived as a visible image. (6)

• The Cerebellum is located at the base of the brain and receives information from the balance system in the inner ear, spinal cord, sensory strip, and the auditory and visual systems. The cerebellum

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integrates information to coordinate and fine-tune motor activity and predicts and corrects errors in timing. It is also involved in motor memory and learning, from simple motor coordination such as managing food utensils to complex ballet or basketball maneuvers, to autonomic skills such as word processing and bike riding. (7)

The Limbic System lies deep within our brain between the two hemi spheres of the temporal lobe. The limbic system is responsible for memory and emotion, motivation, behavior, and various autonomic functions, such as the sensation of hunger and thirst and the ability to detect odor through the olfactory bulbs. The last four decades of research have provided a wealth of detailed information on the connectivity and functions of the limbic system, and this knowledge continues to evolve. (8)

The Limbic System: This simple diagram of the limbic system gives emphasis to the main structures known to make up this brain region.

• The thalamus continuously monitors the external environment for input. As massive amounts of sensory information flood the waking brain, the thalamus functions as a relay station, determining what sensory information will receive further focused attention and po tential action, and as important, what sensory input will be ignored. As a regulator of sensory information, the thalamus also controls sleep and plays a major role in regulating arousal, level of awareness, and activity. (9)

• The amygdala may be best known as the part of the brain that drives the so-called “fight, flight or freeze” response. While it is often associated with the body’s fear and stress responses, it also plays a

pivotal role in memory, particularly the storage of memories associ ated with emotional events. (10) Both the thalamus and amygdala are constantly monitoring the external environment for any threat to our survival.

• The hippocampus is critical to the storage of memory. The hippo campus evaluates information, determining if something is worth remembering (long-term memory) and then where to file it so that this memory can be retrieved. The hippocampus is essential in form ing new memories and connecting emotions and senses. The hippocampus also plays a role in consolidating memories during sleep. In addition, the hippocampus appears to serve as a navigator that helps with spatial orientation—in other words, helping us know where we are and how to get from here to there. (11)

• Olfactory bulbs work as odors enter through the nostrils and are absorbed by the nasal mucosa. Information about the scent is pro cessed by the neurons in the olfactory cortex which identifies it. The olfactory sense is the only sense to bypass the thalamus and register information directly with the hippocampus. For example, just the smell of spoiled food can trigger actual nausea and vivid memories of what happened the last time we consumed something that smelled like that. This suggests that the olfactory system once played a vital role in human survival. (12)

• The hypothalamus is constantly monitoring the body’s internal environment for input. The hypothalamus produces hormones that control thirst, hunger, body temperature, sleep, moods, sex drive, and the release of hormones from various glands, primarily the pituitary gland. The hypothalamus regulates homeostasis in the human body, making sure that everything in our bodies is always in balance. For example, if you have had too many salty foods, the hypothalamus gives you a thirst sensation—therefore causing you to drink water to put your system back in balance. (13)

A review of the main components of the brain reveals the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It is important to remember that no part of the brain is an isolated element that can function without information from other parts of the brain/body. While each component has been associated with specific tasks, they are subdivided into interlocking networks of neurons (brain cells) that coordinate overlapping and complex tasks. Likewise, the same can be said about memory. Nearly all the brain components discussed work together to form a multi-layered system of memory.

II. Interconnecting Memory Systems

Memory refers to the processes that are used to encode, store, and later retrieve information. Memory can be broadly divided into three interconnected systems: sensory memory, working memory and long-term memory.

Memory Systems. Memory can be broadly divided into three interconnected systems: Sensory memory, Working memory and Long-term memory.

• Sensory Memory During every waking moment of our life, sensory information is being perceived by sensory organs (eyes, ears, skin, taste buds, olfactory bulbs). Sensory memory is brief, just a few seconds, allowing vast amounts of information to be processed from potentially all sensory organs, simultaneously. Though brief, sensory memory allows us to retain impressions of sensory information after the original stimulus has ceased. For example, think of a firework display, while the experience is brief, we can easily recall the boom ing and whizzing sounds, the beautifully multi-colored explosions of light of various sizes and shapes, and the lingering smell of gun powder in the air. As the sensory information comes in, the thal amus (in the limbic system) plays a critical role in scanning and categorizing the sensory data to help determine what information is important and should receive attention and what information is immediately forgotten. At the same time, the amygdala is evaluating the incoming sensory information, in the context it is occurring, for risk. If these sensory inputs are coming at a celebratory event, it is expected and viewed as safe and exciting; however, should these same fireworks occur unexpectedly (while you are shopping at the grocery store) then they might be considered a danger. (14)

• Working memory is often referred to as short-term memory. Work ing memory is a temporary store for a subset of sensory information to which attention has been applied. Working memory allow for temporary storage and manipulation of information such as doing mathematical calculations or reading a sentence. Working memory has a limited capacity, typically described as seven bits of informa tion (plus or minus two), for a short duration of approximately 20 to 30 seconds. The capacity of working memory can, however, be extended by the process of chunking, in which several items are grouped together into a single cognitive unit, for example, a phone number. The duration of working memory can also be extended by the process of rehearsal in which items are repeated to keep them in working memory for longer than 30 seconds. (15)

• Long-term memory is unlimited in capacity and potentially perma nent in duration. Long-term memory can be divided into explicit memory sometimes called conscious or declared, and implicit memo ry sometimes called unconscious or non-declarative. (16)

Long-term memory can be subdivided into two broad categories Explicit and Implicit.

• Explicit memories are conscious memories that can be recalled and described (declared). They include episodic memory. These memories create the autobiographical story of one’s life such as a first kiss, graduating from school, weddings, first job, etc. Since episodic memories are often laden with emotions they are easily recalled. (17) Semantic memory includes general knowledge that one learns in school or on the job. People tend to store new information more readily on subjects that they already have prior knowledge about, since the new information has personal relevance and can be men tally connected to related information that is already stored in their long-term memory.

• Implicit memories are outside conscious awareness and include procedural memories, such as how to ride a bicycle, type, drive a car, or play an instrument. While initially learning these skills requires a great deal of attention and effort, once learned, these actions are done routinely without much cognitive energy. Implicit memories also include emotional conditioning, often referred to as bias. We have a bias when, rather than being neutral, we have a preference or aversion to people, places, and things. For example, most humans have negative feelings towards spiders, insects, and snakes. However, humans can form bias towards individuals of a different color or culture without conscious knowledge. (18)

Each type of memory is important and serves different purposes. Sensory memory allows us to perceive the world. Short-term memory allows us to process and understand information in an instant. Our most treasured and important memories are held in long-term memory. Our integrated memo ries systems make us who we are as individuals.

III. Making Memories: Encoding, Storage and Retrieval

Memories are made in three distinct stages. It starts with encoding. En coding is the way external stimuli and information make their way into your brain. The next stage is storage, either momentarily or permanently. The final stage is recall. Recall is our ability to retrieve the memory we’ve made from where it is stored.

Encoding is the first step in creating a memory. It’s a biological phenome non beginning with sensory perception. Consider, for example, the memory of your first romantic kiss. When you met that person, your eyes/occipital lobe registered their physical features, such as the color of their eyes and hair. Your ears/temporal lobe heard their voice. You noticed the scent of their skin via your nose/olfactory system. You felt the touch and warmth of their lips through your skin/sensory strip in your parietal lobe. Each of these separate sensations first travel to your thalamus which evaluates and prioritizes the sensory information. Next, if the experience is deemed important, the separate sensory perceptions are integrated into one single experience in the parietal lobe. (19) Although a memory begins with perception, it is encoded and stored using a vast neural network communication system via electrical and neural chemical signals.

Neurons (brain cells) are the fundamental units of the brain and nervous system. The cells are responsible for receiving sensory input from the external world, for send ing motor commands to muscles, and for transforming and relaying the electri cal and neuro-chemical signals. The electrical signals are carried though the axon, a thin fiber that extends from a neuron Each axon is surrounded by a myelin sheath, a fatty layer that insu lates the axon and helps it transmit signals over long distances between cells.

The electrical firing of a pulse down the axon and to the syn aptic gap triggers the release of chemical messengers called neurotransmitters. These neurotransmitters diffuse across the spaces between cells, attaching themselves to neighboring cells dendrites. Dendrites are designed to receive the electrochemical communications from neighboring neurons. Dendrites resemble a tree-like structure, forming projections that become stimulated by linking other neurons. Each brain cell can form thousands of links, giving a typical brain about 100 trillion fluid synaptic connections. (40)

Networks organize themselves into groups that specialize in different kinds of information processing. As one brain cell sends signals to another, the synapse between the two become stronger and faster. Thus, with each new experience, your brain slightly rewires its physical structure. It is this flexibility, which scientists call plasticity, that can help your brain rewire even if it is damaged. (41)

To properly encode a memory, you must first be paying attention. Let’s consider the “first kiss” example, while the kiss occurred there were dozens of sensory stimuli occurring concurrently; the light, cool breeze, the smell of pizza in the background, the sound and sight of people walking by, etc. Since you cannot pay attention to everything all the time, most of what you en-

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Neural Networks: Neurons are the fundamental units of the brain.

counter every day is simply filtered out, and only a few stimuli pass into your conscious awareness. What scientists aren’t sure about is whether stimuli are screened out during the sensory input stage or only after the brain processes its significance. What we do know is that how you pay attention to informa tion may be the most important factor in how much of it you remember. (20)

Storage. Once a memory is created, it must be stored (no matter how briefly). There is a progression: first in the sensory stage; then in short-term memory; and ultimately, for some memories, in long-term memory. Since there is no need for us to maintain everything in our brain, the different stages of human memory function as a filter that helps to protect us from the flood of information that we’re confronted with daily. Hence, most sensory and short-term memory are forgotten and decay rapidly. (21)

The hippocampus is responsible for analyzing the experience (and all contributing sensory inputs) to determine if it is important enough to become part of long-term memory. The various bits of sensory information are then stored in different parts of the brain, for example visual information in stored in the occipital lobe while auditory information is stored in the temporal lobe. How these bits and pieces are later identified and retrieved to form a cohesive memory is still being studied. (22)

Important information is gradually transferred from short-term memory into long-term memory. Information is most likely to be retained if it has emotional force (joy, fear, sadness, disgust, and anger). Another way a mem ory is retained is through repetition. The more the information is repeated, used, or practiced, the more likely it is to eventually be retained in long-term memory. (23) When long-term memories form, the hippocampus retrieves information from the working memory and begins to change the brain’s phys ical neural wiring to consolidate the new long-term memory. Consolidation occurs during sleep, particularly during REM (rapid eye movement). Longterm memory can store unlimited amounts of information indefinitely. (24)

Retrieval. Once information has been encoded and stored in memory, it must be retrieved to be used. Memory retrieval is the process of accessing stored memories. There are many factors that can influence how memories are retrieved from long-term memory. For example, a memory may be initiated through a sensory stimulus:

Walking through the shopping mall the aroma of warm buttery, cinnamon bread lingers in the air. Immediately you are transferred back to your grandmother’s kitchen and for a moment you are in her presence, you can hear and visualize her, in her kitchen in 1958.

The sensory experience that triggers a rush of episodic memories, is called the Proustian moment (named after the French author, Marcel Proust). This is an example of the power of olfactory memory recall. The sense of smell, un like other senses, by-passes the thalamus and immediately triggers the amyg dala and hippocampus and instantaneously a whole orchestra of memories flood to the conscious mind. This type of memory is usually associated with emotional content when it was encoded, and these same emotions will often arise when the memory is prompted by the sensory stimulus. (25)

Explicit memory retrieval, where episodic and/or semantic memories are recalled, usually occurs when you want to consciously remember something, such as the name of someone or answers to questions posed to you. Longterm memory retrieval requires revisiting the nerve pathways formed during the encoding and storage of the memory. How quickly a memory is retrieved usually depends upon the strength of neural pathways formed during its en coding, for example if the event or learning experience provoked some type of emotion, there is a strong probability memory will be easily recalled. (26)

However, “all” of us have experienced challenges with memory recall, for instance the “key” conundrum, or tip-of-the-tongue moments. Forgetfulness is a normal part of aging as shrinkage in the frontal lobe and hippocampus, which are areas involved in higher cognitive function and encoding new memories. However, for most people overall memory remains strong throughout their 70s. In fact, research shows that the average 70-year-old performs as well on certain cognitive recall tests as do many 20-year-olds, and many people in their 60s and 70s score significantly better in verbal intelligence than do younger people. (27) A great deal of memory variability in older individuals depends on brain/body health.

IV. Maintaining Brain Health and Memory Systems

Brain health refers to how well a person’s brain functions across several areas. Including:

• Cognitive health: how well you think, learn, and remember

• Motor function: how well you control physical movements, includ ing balance

• Emotional function: how well you interpret and appropriately respond to others

• Tactile function: how well you respond to sensations of touch

Though brain health can be affected by injuries like stroke or traumatic brain injury, depression, and dementia diseases, there are many lifestyle

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changes that make significant difference for maintaining brain and body health. (28) These include:

Annual Medical Exams. Your physical health impacts your cognitive health. Schedule annual health screenings to proactivity detect problems such as diabetes, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure which contributes to cognitive decline. Recent clinical research revealed lowering blood pressure reduces the risk for mild cognitive impairment, which is a risk factor for dementia. (29) During your exam you should also consult with your doctor about your medications (including over the counter drugs) as they may have possible side effects on memory, sleep, and brain function.

Sleep is critical factor for brain/body health. Your brain stays remarkably active while you sleep. (30) Recent findings suggest that sleep plays a house keeping role that removes toxins in your brain that build up while you are awake. In addition to repairing damage caused by our busy metabolism, sleep replenishes dwindling energy stores and even grows new neurons. (31)

Nutrition. A healthy diet reduces the risk of many chronic diseases such as heart disease or diabetes and plays a significant factor in brain health. Recent studies have focused on fruit and vegetable intake and its impact on cognitive function. Research findings have revealed that adequate consumption can prevent cognitive decline, while low intake is associated with increased cognitive decline. (32)

Physical Activity. Studies consistently link ongoing physical activity with benefits for the body, brain, and cognition. Research has revealed exercise stimulates the brain’s ability to maintain old network connections and make new ones that are vital to cognitive health (33) Other studies have shown that exercise increases the size of the hippocampus which is important to memory and learning. Research also reveals that aerobic exercise, such as brisk walk ing or social dance, is more beneficial to cognitive health than nonaerobic exercise. (34, 35) In addition, studies reveal that the more time spent doing a moderate level of physical activity, the greater the increase in brain glucose metabolism—or how quickly the brain turns glucose into fuel—which may reduce the risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease. (36)

Social interactions. Our brains need socialization. We need interactions and engagement with others to stay mentally active and emotionally con nected throughout our lives. From the day we were born social interaction has been a major part of cognitive development. We learn how to speak, in terpret, and express emotions, and expand our knowledge from relationships and interactions with parents, siblings, friends, and teachers. As we grow older, socialization is just as important. Building social networks and participat

ing in social activities keeps your mind agile and improves cognitive function. Consistent socialization can even help prevent mental decline and lower the risk of dementia. (37)

Learning Challenges. Continually learning something new has been found to stimulate greater neuron generation and neural network connections in the brain. Neurons are responsible for sending information through out the brain and when this is improved, it positively effects memory, atten tion, thinking and reasoning skills. (38) Fortunately, the concept of “learning something new” is extremely broad, for example academic coursework, learn ing a second language, acquiring skill to optimize the use of technology, new hobbies such as playing an instrument, singing in a choir/chorus, playing chess, or quilting, to more physical skills such as social dance, yoga, or golf. Numerous studies also revealed that when the brain is learning something new, the body is also benefitting, for example reducing stress levels, slowing heart rates, and easing tension in their muscles. And lower stress has wide ranging benefits for seniors’ cardiovascular health, decreasing blood pressure and reducing the risk of a stroke or heart attack, boosting immunity, and lowering levels of depression. Clearly, humans are meant to be learning and socializing throughout their lives. (39)

The brain is the most complex part of the human body and yet our brain relies on the health of the whole body for optimal wellness. This three-pound organ is the seat of intelligence, interpreter of the senses, initiator of body movement, and controller of behavior. The brain is the source of all the qualities that define our humanity. Knowledge of how the human brain is or ganized and how is components function as a complex system is critical to understanding memory systems. Hopefully this new information provides motivation to the reader to maintain a healthy brain and body throughout their lives.

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14. Besle, J., Caclin, A., Mayet, R., Delpuech, C., Lecaignard, F., Giard, M. H., & Morlet, D., “Audiovisual events in sensory memory,” Jour nal of Psychophysiology, 21(3-4), 231-238 (2007).

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17. Phelps, E.A., “Human emotion and memory: Interactions of the amygdala and hippocampal complex,” Current Opinion in Neurobiol ogy, 14(2), 198–202 (2004).

18. Prera, A, “Implicit and explicit memory,” Simply Psychology (2020, Oct 26). https://www.simplypsychology.org/implicit-versus-explicit-memory.html

19. Akrami, A., Kopec, C. D., Diamond, M. E., & Brody, C. D., “Posterior parietal cortex represents sensory history and mediates its effects on behavior,” Nature (2018). doi:10.1038/nature25510

20. Uncapher, M. R., Hutchinson, J. B., & Wagner, A. D., “Dissociable effects of top-down and bottom-up attention during episodic encoding,” Journal of Neuroscience, 31(35), 12613-12628 (2011).

21. Norris, D., “Short-term memory and long-term memory are still different,” Psychological Bulletin, 143(9), 992 (2017).

22. Clewett, D., DuBrow, S., & Davachi, L., “Transcending time in the brain: How event memories are constructed from experience,” Hippo campus, 29(3), 162-183 (2019).

23. Bristol, A., & Viskontas, I., “Dynamic processes within associative memory stores,” Creativity and reason in cognitive development, 60-80 (2006).

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the Lectern

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Lectern

I think that intelligence is such a narrow branch of the tree of life - this branch of primates we call humans. No other animal, by our definition, can be considered intelligent. So intelligence can’t be all that important for survival, because there are so many animals that don’t have what we call intelligence, and they’re surviving just fine.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Live Speeches with Unplanned Humor

M. Scott Norton

Gone with the Wind

Most everyone has been present when humor was used by the speaker to make a point or gain the ‘favor’ of the audience. However, some of the most humorous presentations have not been planned in advance. For example, I recall a presenter who was speaking in a school classroom to a small audience of math teachers at a national conference. The speaker stood in front of the room with his notes on a rostrum. As he greeted the audience, a gust of wind came through a nearby window and blew all of his notes from the rostrum to various parts of the classroom floor. Without hesitation, the speaker calmly said, “I would like to open my presentation with a few scattered remarks.” The laughter continued as the speaker moved around the floor to pick up the several pages of notes that had flown around the room.

Lacking Contact

In an administrative conference I attended at the University of Nebraska, a major program presentation was being held at the university conference center. Approximately 150 attendees were seated to hear presentations by four well-known educators including the president of the local newspaper publication. However, they were having difficulties in setting up the microphone and audio system. The audience waited for over fifteen minutes before the microphone/audio were fixed. Somewhat amazing was the fact that no one in the audience became so impatient that they left the conference auditorium while the problem was being fixed.

After fifteen minutes or so the moderator opened the session by thanking the attendees for their patience but then stated that the technology of the various audio systems in use today has proven to be somewhat troublesome from time to time. In fact, he quipped that using these microphone/audio systems in conferences today is like “Courting a girl through a picket fence. “You can see alright, and you can talk alright, but the contact is not so good!” Laughter from the audience served to set the atmosphere for a highly success ful program session.

Mystery Man

Harold C. White

During my career at Arizona State University I had heard of Kathryn Gammage, the widow of long time ASU President Grady Gammage, I was told she was a very positive person and one of ASU’s strongest supporters. After the death of her husband, she held positions at ASU, both formal and informal.

I met Kay Gammage in 1993, shortly after my retirement from the College of Business. It was at a social function. We had a comfortable visit and, at the end, to my surprise, she invited me to invite her to lunch. For whatever reason, I took the comment as a simple expression of friendship from a good lady. However, during the next six months, we met two more times, and each time she repeated her invitation. Acknowledging myself as a slow learner, I finally called her and we set a date. I drove to her apartment at Friendship Village in Tempe. At her apartment, I met Sally Y who was a personal assistant and friend of Kay.

As Kay and I drove off, I asked her choice of restaurant, suggesting the upscale Boulders, T.G.I. Friday or McDonalds. She chose T.G.I. Friday as a “fun” place.

The conversation was as easy as it had been in our previous contacts. She was enthusiastic when speaking of her husband and ASU. A major topic was of the 1959 campaign to designate Arizona State College a university. The state legislature, politically dominated by politicians from southern Arizona, refused to approve a name change. The story she told was one I had heard from others, so she must have repeated it often. She and others travelled the state seeking signatures to put the university issue on the ballot. In Gila Bend she asked permission of a pharmacist to place a campaign poster in his shop window. Her request was refused, as he was a University of Arizona supporter. The story was worth repeating, as the campaign was successful and the daugh ter of the pharmacists later became an ASU cheer leader. It was one of the times during lunch when she used her trademark expression, “It was magic.”

Perhaps her favorite topic over lunch was her family. She sparkled when she spoke of her grandsons. She had the same sparkle each time she told the

Ironies

Epiphanies

Kathryn Gammage.

Ironies and Epiphanies

same stories about them. It was then I appreciated the seriousness of Kay’s declining memory. My empathy for her condition became more personal a few years later when my wife Lucy was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. Not many months after the lunch, I received an invitation to a book sign ing at the ASU University Club. The title of the book was “It Was Magic. The Kathryn Gammage Stories.” The author was Sally Y. There was a crowd and Kay was placed at the second-floor landing at the top of the stair way. When my turn came to purchase the small volume, I obtained Kay’s signature and then turned to Sally, who was standing nearby. As I handed her the book, she pulled me aside, signed her own name, with the addition “Enjoy the Magic,” and opened to page 36, which was headed “Mystery Man.” In part:

Friday lunch date...

It’s in my calendar I wrote it down.... Maybe I made it up. I’ve done it before....

Oh, he’s here, My Mystery Man.

I’ll say, “It’s so good to see you.

I’ve been looking forward to this all week.”

Handing back the book, Sally said, as if sharing a special secret, that I was the Mystery Man!

While Kay Gammage was waiting for me in her apartment for our lunch appointment, Sally said Kay knew she had a lunch date, but did not know with whom. However, she determined it must be with a man because she had a headache.

An Extraordinary Talent Can be a Handicap

Harvey A. Smith

Harold—just out of high school—enrolled as a math major at a college with no graduate math department. When they found Harold already knew the most advanced math offered there, they called Penn and asked that some thing be done, and Penn’s department invented a research position for him. I was in the first graduate class he took there. We had common interests in

music as well as math and became friends.

Harold earned a bachelor’s degree, taking mostly graduate courses for his math major, and was admitted to the Ivy League’s most prestigious math PhD program. He often returned to Philadelphia and explained the latest mathe matical developments at his new school to Penn professors.

I invited Harold to a musical soirée at a Penn professor’s home, where our hostess served separate refreshments for vegetarians. As I drove him home, he asked, “Why would someone be a vegetarian?” I explained it as well as I could. He thought for a few minutes and announced, “That’s reasonable. I think I’ll do that!” For years, when Harold was our dinner guest, we accommodated his vegetarian commitment. Suddenly, he announced he was no longer a vegetarian. A student he met in the cafeteria had told him it was unhealthy.

Harold passed his preliminary PhD exam and sought a thesis advisor. A while later he asked me, “Harvey, you solve problems; how do you do it?”

“What do you mean? You must have solved lots of problems in your cours es!”

“Oh no! I have an eidetic memory. I remember everything I read; I even remember what page something was on. I always dropped the course if I couldn’t find the method for solving a problem. Now my advisor has given me a dissertation problem and, of course, there’s nowhere to look that up!”

A dissertation must be an original contribution. If a method for solving it was known, the problem wouldn’t qualify. Harold described his assigned problem. It was out of my field. I was working on my own dissertation and couldn’t offer to help him. (Later, I saw that problem was solved by another of the advisor’s students.) After few months, Harold told me he had given up on the PhD and settled for a master’s degree. Could I help him find a teaching job?

I was teaching at a technical institute that, like his first college, also didn’t have a math major, and they hired Harold. He taught well and was liked by students and faculty. Unfortunately, toward the end of his first year, he sat down at a table in the faculty cafeteria with the President and the Director of Admissions. The latter introduced himself, and Harold unwisely advised him that if any highly talented students applied, they should be rejected so they would go to a good school instead. He was fired at the end of the year. Harold appeared on the verge of nervous collapse, sure that he would never get another job.

Harold visited a friend who taught math at a minor university that, at least, had a graduate math department. An administrator there had just an

Ironies and Epiphanies

nounced a new policy: To avoid choosing majors immediately, all students would take the same courses for their first year. Since not taking calculus would preclude majoring in math or physics later, all must take that course. At lunch, Harold and his friend sat at a table with the math department chairman, and the friend introduced them. The chairman was desperate. As soon as he heard Harold was a mathematician, he asked, “Can you teach calculus? Do you want a job?” When Harold answered affirmatively, he said, “You’re hired!” Harold retired from there in his seventies, having led a happy life, teaching undergraduate courses while pursuing his interests in music and literature. I try to see him whenever we return to Philadelphia.

A Final French History Examination

Aleksandra Gruzinska

The month was June and the year 1951, time to graduate after five years at the Lycée français in Barcelona, Spain, with a degree in commerce (business.) I was scheduled to take the final oral examination in French History worth twenty points. Anything from sixteen points on could only be awarded to a professor. There was plenty of room between one and fifteen for the student to shine or fail, with ten points representing a modest but passing grade. The goal was to pass with or without glory, but pass with no less than the required minimum ten points.

I entered the examination room where three imposing intellectuals sat at a table ready to question one of my classmates. Mr. Deffontaines, a wellknown geographer, a world traveler and explorer, was an invited examiner. I approached the table, picked one of the slips containing a mysterious French history question. I then sat next to a window, opened the little paper and read it. I had ten minutes to prepare and ten minutes to present the 1870 War in France. My first impression was that the august body of three distinguished professors made a mistake and that no such war existed. I was ready to tell them so but decided to politely wait until they finished questioning another classmate. By not interrupting, I hoped not to increase his state of nervousness.

I had just lived through WWII and all its violence. For me, French history ended with Waterloo and the defeat of my preferred Romantic hero, Napo leon. Any violence that followed was too close for comfort and registered only superficially in my memory. Nonetheless, I retrieved the name of Napoleon

III, his relationship with Bismarck, the Depêche d’Ems with its declaration of war by France, and Napoleon III’s defeat in 1870. I desperately searched for other details. When my turn came to sit before the distinguished examination panel I had enough material to keep me going for three or four minutes at the most. The panel seemed satisfied. Unfortunately, it had at least six minutes, far too many, for questions. To the first one I responded “Je ne sais pas,” (I don’t know,) and “j’ai oublié,” (I forgot,) to the next one. They finally asked question number three, “Where was Napoleon III taken prisoner?” I tried to avoid repeating my first two answers, so I closed my eyes, bent my head in a meditative position and made an honest effort by uttering the first three elements of a sentence in French in the making, “C’est dans . . .,” it is in . . ., and I hoped for the name of the place to miraculously appear. I went on repeating “C’est dans…” several times, explored my memory without success. Finally, I opened my eyes and looked in despair at the distinguished examination members. They were all smiles. What encouragement on their part! What a magnificent panel I had! Closing my eyes again, I searched my memory in vain, concluding with several more c’est dans . . . . As I next opened my eyes, the panelists said “Merci, Mademoiselle, vous le dites, c’est assez, vous pouvez partir,” (Thank you Miss, you already said it, it’s enough, you may leave.) And they continued to smile.

What did I exactly say that satisfied the panelists? I refused to leave. I had to know and insisted on closing my eyes, searched my memory for the answer and continued to repeat a few extra “c’est dans.” This time, when I opened my eyes, the panelists seemed puzzled and I was politely escorted out of the room very unhappy and greatly puzzled myself.

I wasted no time to locate a Robert Dictionnaire Universel des Noms Pro pres, and looked up in the French dictionary the name of Napoleon III in the cultural section. He was taken prisoner in a city called Sedan which, spelled differently, is nonetheless pronounced exactly as C’est dans. The word remains imbedded in my memory forever. The panelists, however, were left with the impression that I had provided the correct answer, Sedan.

The next day, the surveillant, or supervisor, passing by me in the hall, said, “Quel mauvais examen d’histoire,” what a bad history exam! Nonetheless I met the goal: I passed, of course, without glory.

If there is a lesson to take away from this incident, my best advice to any one, who is given ten minutes to discuss an examination topic, do your best to use the entire ten minutes in presenting your ideas, and leave no time for questions by the panelists.

Ironies and Epiphanies

Divided We Stood

Doris Marie Provine

This is a narrative about growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, when high racial and gender walls were formidable parts of everyday life. It begins with the nearly all-white, highly gendered context in which I grew up. There were moments of clarity about racism, many of which I owe to my mother, an anti-racist who came from a different mold than most of the parents in my community. Sexism and misogyny challenged me directly after childhood, as I sought an adult relationship with the world. I will unpack some of those experiences. It’s strange and wonderful to be alive in a period when the strug gle for equality has gone mainstream with the Me-Too movement and Black Lives Matter. But I think my focus on what came before will demonstrate that both of these movements are built on a foundation that was growing stronger in the 1960s and 1970s, even in the nearly all-white precincts where I lived.

My Jim Crow Youth

I grew up in the 1950s, in the post-war haze of stay-at-home moms and unacknowledged racism. In my neighborhood, middle-class moms stayed home with their kids unless they endured the shame of divorce and had to find a job and live in an apartment. Grade school and high school were segregated by race— – Ohio law provided that if no one from outside your dis trict wanted in, then your school could keep anyone out. The school district borders were carefully drawn to exclude a nearby Black neighborhood within walking distance of my high school. I was the only black-haired child in my acquaintance, which supported my childhood theory that I was part Native American. I spent a lot of time roaming the woods, making moccasins and bows and arrows, collecting acorns with neighborhood boys for imagined wars, swimming in the summers, and impatiently enduring the confinement of school and church.

I have noticed that mothers figure prominently into many of the lives of academics who come from under-represented groups. In the 1970s, white women also definitely fell into that category. My mother was also an im portant influence, most relevantly here, in her views about race. She married a gentle, loving man stuck in crude southern racism. He grew up poor in a small town in Alabama, in a downwardly mobile family; his father died when he was five years old. His mother took in boarders, and he went to work to help support her before finishing high school. I came to think that he clung

to racism to preserve some vestige of a past in which his family had a se cure place in his tiny hometown. His attitude was general, not specific –ironically, he relied with confidence on a Black colleague in the railroad business, a fact my mother remind ed him of constantly. He was also a sweet and generous father, and he loved my mother. He helped to put her through the University of Chica go when she was 25. He was an avid reader and student of the economy. Nevertheless, I was convinced that if I came home with a Black friend, he would lock the door against me. My mother’s roots were in working-class Toledo. A Democrat, what we would today call a Progressive, she flirted with socialism, and fought my father’s racial bigotry and Republican ideology with evidence and sometimes bitter, ironic humor. These conflicts were never resolved. Their marriage survived for reasons that I didn’t really understand as a kid, probably a shared expe rience of near poverty growing up in the Depression, a cheerless childhood, love of golf and the outdoors, and joy after seven years of marriage, having a daughter, me.

When I was in fifth grade, my mother began teaching social studies in the Cincinnati city schools, soon landing at an inner-city school where most of her students were Black and all were poor. Going to work with a gainfully employed husband in the house was unusual in my tight-knit suburb. Teaching in an inner-city school was unheard of. My mother loved her work and used her position to push for justice in small ways. She took particular pride in helping her “general” track outshine the higher tracks. She taught students how to figure compound interest rates to help them recognize the exploitation that their families faced from discount furniture stores and other businesses that preyed on the poor.

As a kid, I lived a kind of double life, admiring my mother’s work and visiting her school from time to time, but attending an all-white school. She helped me see white obliviousness to racism. One summer, for example, she informed me, on a pledge of secrecy, that several of her faculty colleagues

Marie Provine and her parents.

Commentary and Analysis/Memoir

Provine

worked as waiters at the local golf course. They were better educated than most of the golfers, who called them by their first names as they ordered drinks and dinner. She made sure that the Black woman who cleaned our house entered by the front door and I was taught to call her by her full name; back doors and first names were the rule elsewhere in my town. When I was a teenager, my mother took me to hear Reverend Martin Luther King address a virtually all-Black congregation in Cincinnati; that was a big deal for me— –I don’t recall that my father knew about it.

My mom taught me to see racism as a personal failing of whites, my father included. How to address this failing was unclear. Segregation was everywhere, even at my summer job as a carhop at Frisch’s Big Boy. The kitchen staff was almost entirely Black except for a white supervisor. The carhops were all white and female. There was a lot of curiosity on both sides of this racial divide, but I knew to keep my budding race-crossing relationships from work secret from my parents. I left for college in 1964 convinced that I knew of a serious injustice that my white classmates did not recognize, but I had little sense of the tools needed to do much about it or the structural foundations that kept us separate by race.

Intellectual Blind-Spots

The venerable University of Chicago was located in the poorer part of the South Side, a long-standing African American neighborhood. Both the student body and the faculty were virtually all white. The university had an inconsistent and incomplete approach to the racial disadvantage and the segregation that surrounded it. Social scientists studied area neighborhoods as a distinct cultural milieu and debated the merits of gentrification, while uni versity officials sought earnestly to achieve a more middle-class environment. The goal was to be regarded as a safe integrated island in this deteriorated part of the city. The student body confronted an uneasy racial quasi-peace in the neighborhood and avoided going out alone at night. One of my classmates died in a daytime drive-by shooting. Despite all this, racism was treated intel lectually, in keeping with the hyper-intellectual traditions of the University.

In my first few weeks at Chicago, I landed a half-time job at the Univer sity’s conference center. My boss was a flamboyantly gay Black man named Thurston Moore. We had many adventures exploring the neighborhood in a little conference center cart. We tooled around neighborhoods that my friends considered unsafe, but Thurston seemed to know a lot of the folks we saw, so I was never afraid. Thurston and an array of non-university colleagues at work helped me feel comfortable in my first year away from home. My grades probably suffered from working half-time throughout the academic

year, but the job helped me stay grounded in Chicago’s intellectual milieu.

I received a top-notch education at Chicago. The faculty seemed to en joy undergraduate teaching. I found a valued mentor in Gilbert White, a world-famous geographer who started a new major in public affairs. There were just four of us in this major, which opened up opportunities to have dinner with famous visitors to the university, including Thurgood Marshall, who was then Solicitor General of the United States. I was shocked to learn from another helpful mentor, law professor Harry Kalven, that the law students had little respect for Marshall, assuming he had gotten his high posi tion through favoritism. This was a moment of clarity for me, having been overwhelmed with Marshall’s brave stories, deep knowledge of our history, and kindness to us students. John Hope Franklin was another influence then because he generously ate dorm food with undergraduate students, in the process teaching us how remembrance and forgiveness can enable a scholar to write about race.

I did my senior thesis on the stark contrast between the pristine and wellstocked Jewell grocery stores in white Chicago neighborhoods and their taw dry, unappetizing counterparts in poorer Black neighborhoods. My advisor, Julian Levi, headed the Southeast Chicago Commission, which concerned itself with protecting the University’s investment in the neighborhood. From the Commission’s perspective, there were no easy answers to the University’s race/class/safety dilemma, but it was striking how disengaged most faculty seemed to be from these concerns.

Educating Women to be…. Mothers and Wives?

The faculty also seemed unconcerned with its stark gender skew toward married white men. Almost every one of the few females on the faculty had forsaken marriage and children. In my third year, I was delighted, finally to find an exception, a biology professor married to a banker, and she had children. By this time, I was in love with a graduate student; we married the summer before my senior year. My parents responded by cutting off my tuition, but University officials, appalled at their decision, somehow bailed me out and I graduated on time in 1968. Marriage finally allowed access to birth control; unmarried female students were usually denied a prescription. I was at a loss as to what to do next, with few available role models and no advice, even from a dean who angrily told me that intellectuals don’t worry about such practical matters. I was devastated that a man I knew and trusted had absolutely no advice for me as I faced an unwelcoming job market for women. I feared going into high-school teaching in the Chicago schools, the one profession my mother had warned me against, despite her own apparent

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Provine

ly happy experience. Then, like many college grads unsure of their next steps, I thought of law school. I was shocked to learn that I would have trouble getting into most law schools because of my gender. This was a long-deferred wake-up call to address gender discrimination, a subject that had never been raised in any of my social-sciences courses at Chicago.

I was admitted to the University of Michigan Law School, thanks to affir mative action or at least a decision to reject discrimination. Our entering class had more than a tiny sprinkling of traditionally absent groups: people of color and white women like me. The faculty were egalitarian and encouraging to a fault, but not all the students. One of the guys I walked to classes with politely asked why I was taking a seat that could have been occupied by a man.

Michigan offered me a counterpoint to what I encountered when I trans ferred after my first year to Cornell Law School. My husband had taken a position in the history department there. Cornell was laissez faire in its approach to race and gender. There was one Black man in the graduating class on law review and a second in my class. The dean of admissions referred to them as “colored.” There were three other women in my own year. No woman had ever been on the faculty. When I would be called upon in class was completely predictable—if the issue involved an incompetent woman. The school’s squash court had a shower—for men. Most pernicious were the job ads that openly asked for male applicants. I nevertheless got a couple of interviews, which concluded when the interviewers said that they couldn’t possibly hire a woman because their clients would never accept it.

It’s hard to explain my feelings at the time. I was a faculty wife with limited prospects for employment outside Ithaca, New York. Some of the faculty had become friends. In class, I grew accustomed to my role as spokesperson for women in legal trouble. My budding legal knowledge was recognized outside the law school through invitations to give talks on the equal rights amendment. But it hurt that none of these friendly people had any concern for my chances at actually becoming a practicing lawyer or were concerned that their placement service was in direct violation of the law. I tore down discriminato ry job ads and integrated the squash-court shower, but why didn’t I do more and why weren’t the law-school faculty concerned with violating the 1964 Civil Rights law??

The women’s movement in my small Cornell world focused then on issues like the Equal Rights Amendment, abortion, and lack of women on the facul ty and even in some undergraduate programs at the university. The veterinary school, for example, accepted only two women per year on the theory that women weren’t suited for large-animal practice. The faculty club did not ad

mit female faculty. There was no weight-room open to women—I was kicked out of the one I tried to integrate. Sadly, the fight for change was more like hand-to-hand combat than an organized campaign that reached across race and class to confront discrimination more inclusively and powerfully. I sensed broad agreement with Erich Fromm’s characterization of women in The Art of Loving, as the emotional center of the family, with the male as the intellectual leader. Higher education, in this line of thought, should be open to women, but it operated on the assumption that the goal was to produce well-educated wives and mothers, like the wives and mothers of many of the white male fac ulty. The possibility that the university could do more to encourage minority students by rethinking its recruitment and admissions processes remained largely off the table.

Being on the receiving end of sexism and misogyny of that era has relatively little in common with the racism of the present. For example, in my insulated white world, interactions with law enforcement were a non-issue. But at another level, some of the confidence-robbing characteristics of an environment that seemed blind to the intelligence and ambition of people who looked like me was dispiriting. The white men with PhDs who ran the university seemed unmoved by the tremendous gender and racial skew in their favor. The idea that more diversity might improve the quality of our lives together had few adherents.

A lot of this changed, sometimes quickly in the late 1970s. Cornell invest ed in a weight room for women and introduced a women’s studies major that brought in a few female faculty members on appointments shared with other departments, though this gave them service requirements in two departments and made them doubly vulnerable to a denial of tenure. In law-school class es after mine, the number of women began to grow significantly. But there was a general lack of appreciation for the way structures kept the status quo intact. The law school, for example, hired its first female faculty member a couple of years after my 1971 graduation, a bright, but naïve, recent graduate in her mid-twenties. During her first year of teaching, she fell in love with a divorced law student ten years older than herself and was promptly fired.

Becoming Professor Provine

After graduation, I took one of the few attractive options available to me: I became a lecturer and research associate at Cornell. I was the first woman in my department and of a status lower than the regular faculty, but it was fulfilling work for a couple of years. I realized that to ever go further, I would need a doctorate. My husband was on tenure track, and we were thinking about having children. I chose a PhD in political science at Cornell. I decided that

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graduate school was the optimum time to have children, having heard terrible stories about inflexible ten ure clocks for women faculty. Both my wonderful sons were born during my four years of graduate school. My mentors, of course, were men – both the political science faculty and the law school faculty were all male and all white in this period. These men, David Danelski, Ted Lowi, and Rog er Cramton, were wonderfully sup portive.

The gender-inflected dynamics of this period came home to me when I went on the job market with my JD-Ph/D combo and received four tenure-track offers. (Perhaps once again, I was a beneficiary of affirmative action as universities were beginning to realize that they needed women on their faculties.) My dilemma was that my otherwise supportive husband wanted badly to stay at Cornell. He made a perfunctory effort to find a position at the two schools I preferred, Ohio State and University of Texas at Austin, but nothing emerged. As a compromise, I took the offer from Syracuse University, a 50-mile commute from the rundown house we bought between Syracuse and Ithaca.

This was a busy time—the house needed a ton of work, the kids were 2 and 4, and I had a one-year deadline to put the finishing touches on my dissertation and graduate. I had a full teaching load. I soon discovered that I was being paid 13% less than a colleague hired at the same time and rank. My department chair refused to budge, and I could think of no way to appeal his decision. I was new at Syracuse University, which had no obvious office or procedure for addressing discrimination. And I was stung by the casual rejection of my complaint by my department chair. I also wonder if I did not actually feel accepted as a full-fledged member of the faculty. I don’t recall even discussing the matter with the one other woman in the department, hired a year before me.

Syracuse University was good to me. I published my dissertation on how the Supreme Court selects its caseload, (1) and then a book comparing lay and lawyer judges while serving as a local judge in my spare time, which grew

Marie and her sons

Professor Marie Provine teaching Law at Cornell Law School.

out of my election as a town justice. (2) The director of women’s studies and I were given a two-year leave to develop a university-wide policy on sexual harassment, which, much to our relief, was adopted and aggres sively implemented. The University allowed me to spend time teaching abroad, first in Strasbourg, France, then in Madrid, Spain, with an additional summer in Geneva, Switzer land. I was also permitted to take a year off twice for having received two NSF grants. I took two year-long leaves in Washington, DC. I received a huge salary boost on one of these Washington years – apparently the result of a salary study on gender discrimination at Syracuse University.

I rose through the ranks and became department chair. One of my main goals in that role was to get the department to hire at least two African -Amer ican faculty. Helped by my brilliant, resourceful Black graduate student, Susan Gooden, we did succeed in finding two young men willing to be our first Black faculty. Their tenure was short, however. One of our hires was immediately recruited by the administration, and the other decided to move on. This was a bitter lesson in how inadequately prepared our department and University were for change. Ours was a naïve integrationist vision of welcome on the same terms as new white faculty, without regard to the nearly all-white university environment and the location in a declining industrial city sharply divided by race and class. I was more successful in moving an African-American colleague into our department on a half-time basis; he was tenured and already knew the score.

Law Is Raced

Ironically, research, rather than personal experience, helped me see how structurally embedded racial stereotypes are, and how resistant to change, even in the face of strong evidence of the injustices involved. In 1984 I be came a Judicial Fellow, a one-year post in Washington DC to research issues involving the federal courts. Toward the end of my tenure there, I was alerted by a contact at the Federal Sentencing Commission to an unusual number of judicial retirements and requests for reassignments based on unwillingness to impose the harsh mandatory sentences that Congress had designed for offens

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es involving crack cocaine. A few district judges had sought to evade them on the grounds that the large racial disparities these mandatory sentences pro duced violated the Constitution’s equal-protection clause, but the appellate courts uniformly rejected this reasoning. The situation inspired me to leave my intellectual comfort zone, judicial politics, to determine how Congress came up with these penalties. Nothing in the legislation or its official de scription was helpful, but crude racial stereotypes were evident in much of the testimony and reports that Congress had examined. Concern about the vulnerability of white youth to drugs peddled by inner-city Blacks figured prominently in the congressional debate. The rhetoric about these drug sellers was dehumanizing — they were often characterized as rats or vermin. I struggled to find the right intellectual mooring for this research. Racist intent was an elusive framing, so I lay the project aside for more than a decade as life intervened, including divorce.

A few years later, I was invited to Washington to direct the Law & Social Sciences Program at the National Science Foundation. The law and society field, with its attention to social norms, economic injustice and societal struc tures, had long been a refuge for me from political science’s tight focus on the official organs of state power. I had taken leadership roles in the Law & Society Association and I was anxious to “give back,” but very unskilled in the ways of the NSF. Dr. Patricia (Pat) White, director of the Sociology program, in the cubicle next to mine, became my guide, mentor and friend. She edu cated me about the micro and macro aggressions prevalent at the agency and pushed me to use my power to challenge our biggest, most powerful grantee, The National Consortium on Violence Research. The Consortium had been accorded the unusual privilege of awarding NSF research funds to a group of criminologists according to its own criteria. My goal was to stop that passthrough relationship, which involved challenging the Consortium’s powerful director, Alfred Blumstein, a man with deep ties at NSF. This was unpleasant work, but it came with the enormous benefit of getting to know and love a handful of Black criminologists.

I was finally ready to return to the project on race and the war on drugs. I knew that I needed to draw attention to the animus toward Black citizens that Congress had displayed in adopting the penalties for crack, and to its long-standing indifference to the impact of these sentencing policies. The draconian drug penalties were still in place more than a decade after their enactment, still ruining young lives and creating massive misery. The outra geous indifference to the lives of its citizens propelled me to finally finish and publish Unequal Under Law: Race and the War on Drugs. (3)

The last stop on my academic journey was my 2001 appointment to lead Arizona State University’s School of Justice Studies. I felt fortunate to have a new husband willing to move, and to join an interdisciplinary faculty who were serious students of racial and gender injustice at both a global and local level. Arizona was then and remains, a state in transition with a racist legacy as bare as its rocky terrain. Our justice-studies majors were a mix of future social-justice warriors and future law-enforcement officers, a challenging mix. In my time there, ASU underwent a major transformation from being a rather laid-back refuge from academic elitism to an entrepreneurial powerhouse. The transformation of resources, space, and expectations for faculty included attention to the local social and racial environment, in contrast to other universities with which I had been associated. I found ready col laborators for my proposal to study the role of local police in enforcing federal immigration law, a research project inspired by the “attrition through enforcement” politics that dominated the state. The result was Policing Immigrants: Local Law En

forcement on the Front Lines. (4) My last major research leave was a Fulbright grant to study policies toward unauthorized immigrants in our northern and southern neighbors. My husband and I spent half the academic year in Cana da and half in Mexico. That experience reinforced my interest in helping Arizona to finally welcome its proximity to the southern border and to embrace its racial and ethnic diversity. I left ASU in 2012 to pursue some decidedly non-academic interests, including painting and rescuing injured owls.

Academic life gives us a vocabulary to describe how society changes over time. But I find it surprisingly hard to draw conclusions. The obvious sexism during my youth is so old now that it isn’t even old-school. The race-segre gated restrooms and drinking fountains that I saw in visiting Alabama, and closer to home in segregated settings, are history. My experiences abroad were lengthy enough to give me a firm sense that the United States is not the most sexist or racist nation on the planet, but possibly we worry more about it than most places. The flip side, of course, is the obvious unfinished work, and how embedded it is - in police work, anti-abortion hysteria, military in terventions, etc. The country seems divided into those who want to shoulder the responsibility to do more, and those who fear or despise such efforts. But

Marie Provine

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there is joy in this struggle. Taking the long view helps me to overlook the inevitable hiccups and uncertainties along the way and to remain optimistic about the outcome of the journey.

References

1. DMP, University of Chicago Press, 1980

2. DMP, “Judging Credentials: Nonlawyer judges and the Politics of Professionalism,” University of Chicago Press, 1986.

3. DMP, University of Chicago Press, available in cloth and paper, 2007.

4. DMP, University of Chicago Press, 2016.

The requirements for our evolution have changed. Survival is no longer sufficient. Our evolution now requires us to develop spiritually - to become emotionally aware and make responsible choices. It requires us to align ourselves with the values of the soul - harmony, cooperation, sharing, and reverence for life.

Gary Zukav

and Analysis

Eugenics and Its Aftermath

Linda Stryker

I. Introduction

The term “Eugenics” was coined by the English genius Francis Galton (1822-1911), a half-cousin of Darwin, in 1883. The word means “well-born” or “good genes”. But the ideas behind eugenics were known for many centuries before Galton.

Animal domestication and husbandry began around 13,000 BCE with the inclusion of the dog into society. Then, soon, selective breeding of dogs, pigs, cattle, sheep, and goats for desired traits began. Around 400 BCE, Plato suggested that this sort of breeding be applied to humans. He believed that human reproduction should be monitored and controlled by the state. However, he did acknowledge that “gold soul” persons could still produce “bronze soul” children.

With animals, this type of breeding seems justified. We do it today. Good traits include hardiness, prolificness, mothering abilities, fast growth rates, low feed consumption per unit of growth, better body proportions, high er yields, better fiber qualities and other characteristics. Undesirable traits such as having health defects, low production, and aggressiveness are selected against.

Selective breeding has been responsible for large increases in productivity. For example, in only thirty years, the typical eight-week-old broiler chicken became almost five times heavier. The average milk yield of a dairy cow nearly doubled.

Because of such “success” with animals, stereotypical thinking grew. The belief was that if you reinforce the “good genes,” you can improve humans, and hence, the human race. The idea that “prominent men have prominent sons” took hold. The intent was to populate the Earth with more people of the higher socioeconomic and biological kind––and less, or none, of everyone else. At best, the ideas were utopian, that is: improve lives, help eradicate disease and disability, foster productivity, all of which would lead to a happier, healthier future for everyone.

Sounds great. But let’s examine where these ideas lead.

Francis Galton

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II. American eugenics (early 1900s onward)

Early in the 20th century, eugenics and its ideas became American nation al policy. There were laws enacted, both nationally and in states, that forced sterilization; there arose laws concerning segregation and exclusions, marriage restrictions against racial mixing, secret experimentation, and certain laws concerning women. Eugenicists noted that poor, uneducated people, and minorities produced more offspring than did the wealthy and/or highly educat ed Europeans and Americans. This led to a Problem, as they calculated that Society would go downhill within 400 years.

During the Progressive Era (late 19th and early 20th century), eugenics was considered a method of preserving and improving the dominant groups in the population. Now, it is generally associated with racism and white supremacy, rather than being based on scientific genetics.

American eugenicists tended to believe in the genetic superiority of Nor dic, Germanic, and Anglo-Saxon peoples, and they supported strict immigration and anti-miscegenation laws; and supported the forcible sterilization of the “feebleminded” (catchword of the day), the “immoral” and the “inferior”, which included the insane, criminals, epileptics, alcoholics, blind people, deaf people, deformed people, and indigent people.

Eugenics was widely accepted in the U.S. academic community. By 1928, there were 376 separate university courses in eugenics in many leading schools.

Laws supporting eugenics were enacted in 27 states, including Arizona. In

Handmade Eugenics poster

1928, the Human Betterment Foundation was formed “to foster and aid con structive and educational forces for the protection and betterment of the hu man family in body, mind, character, and citizenship”. Among its roles were to systemize and distribute legal information about compulsory sterilization.

In the U.S., about 62,000 people were coercively sterilized between the 1920s to 1970s, hundreds were barred from marriage, many people were segregated into “colonies” and “ghettoes,” and there were numerous perse

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Newspaper clipping.

Handmade Eugenics poster

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cutions, which included beatings, lynchings, and murders. We see echoes of this today. California boasted 80% of the national sterilizations leading up to WWII, with 20,000 forced sterilizations. Arizona had 30.

In the 1910s and 1920s, about 75,000 immigrants poured into the U.S. each month. Mexicans, Indians (native American), Asians (Chinese), Blacks, Jews, eastern/southern Europeans were deemed undesirable and unfit, so that, by the mid-1920s, restrictions were placed on the numbers being al lowed to enter. Also, to “save money” on welfare, rejected from entering were the feebleminded, infirm, old, and poor.

Laws concerning women were established, with or without their consent: if on welfare, limit the number of children; if on drugs, sterilize them; if on probation, force contraception; if mentally feeble, force sterilization.

II-A. The Case of Carrie Buck

Although on record as being an average student, Carrie Buck (1906–1983) was taken out of school to help with housework when she was put in the fos ter home of the Dobbs family. She was raped at age 17 and became pregnant. The Dobbs committed her to the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded, for reasons of imbecility, incorrigibility, promiscuity, that they claimed. This was all sham! The Dobbs’ nephew was the rapist; so, they adopted the baby, Vivian. Vivian had As, Bs, and Cs, and even made honor roll, far from imbecility. Unfortunately, she died at age eight. Carrie was ordered to be sterilized for her purported feeble-mindedness.

Poster c. 1926.

The surgery took place under the authority of the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, as part of Virginia’s eugenics program.

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Racial Integrity Act of 1924.

Even the U.S. Supreme Court endorsed aspects of eugenics. In its infa mous 1927 decision regarding Carrie Buck, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote,

“It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind . . . Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

But, there wasn’t any actual evidence! There was only biased word-ofmouth testimony by eugenicists who were seeking the backing of the Supreme Court. It was a major victory for them. The decision, based on manufactured evidence, opened the floodgates for thousands to be coercively sterilized or otherwise persecuted as subhuman. States began enacting similar laws, and the number of steriliza tions rose to more than 12,000 by 1947. At the Nuremberg trials, for their defense, Nazis quoted Holmes’ statement.

To make sure the family didn’t reproduce, Carrie Buck’s sister was also sterilized when she was hospital

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.

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ized for appendicitis. She was never told about the sterilization. In later years, she married and she and her husband attempted to raise a family. She did not discover the reason for their failure until 1980.

Newspapermen and those researchers who visited Carrie over the years stated clearly that Carrie Buck was a woman of normal intelligence.

II–B. Leading proponents of eugenics

Francis Galton was knighted in 1909. His book Hereditary Genius (1869) was the first social-scientific attempt to study genius and greatness. He found ed the science of measuring mental faculties (psychometrics), also differential psychology and studied personality. He even developed a way to classify fin gerprints.

Galton wrote about many of his observations and conclusions about eu genics in his book, Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development (1883) He pointed out the tendencies of late marriages of eminent people, and the low numbers of children, all of which he termed “dysgenic”. He proposed that ‘marks for family merit’ should be instituted, and early marriages be tween high-ranking families should be encouraged by financial reward. The Eugenics Review, the journal of the Eugenics Education Society, began in 1909, with Galton as Honorary President.

Charles Davenport (1866–1944), a renown American biologist, had met with Galton in 1904 in London, and brought back Galton’s ideas to the U.S. Also in 1904, Davenport became director of Cold Spring Harbor Lab

Carrie and her mother, Emma Buck, 1924

Charles Davenport.

oratory, where he founded the Eugenics Record Office (ERO, 1910-1939), funded by billionaires Mary Averell Harriman and Andrew Carnegie. Davenport began investigations into aspects of inheritances of personality and mental traits. Over the years he published hundreds of papers and several books on the genetics of alcoholism, pellagra (actually, a vitamin deficiency), criminality, feeblemindedness, seafaring-ness, bad temper, intelligence, manic depression, and the biological effects of mixing races. He also co-founded the Race Betterment Foundation (1906).

The American Breeder’s Association (ABA) was the first eugenics body in the U.S., also established in 1906 by Davenport. The ABA was formed specif ically to “investigate and report on heredity in the human race and emphasize the value of superior blood and the menace to society of inferior blood.”

Davenport’s 1911 book, Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, was used as a college textbook for many years. The year after it was published, Davenport was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Davenport’s work did cause a lot of controversy. Although his writings were about eugenics, his findings were basic and simplistic and did not incorporate findings from the science of genetics. This bolstered the racial and class prejudices already present in society.

The First International Eugenics Congress took place in London in 1912. Winston Churchill was there. Davenport attended. The Second Congress (New York, 1921) and the Third Congress (New York, 1932) continued with their bold eugenical suggestions of sterilization and “eliminating the unfit”. The ABA exhibited their findings on hereditary defects.

In the 1920s, the ERO collected a huge amount of data on family pedi grees and concluded that those who were unfit came from economically and socially poor backgrounds. Eugenicists such as Davenport and others (all well respected at the time) began to influence finding various solutions to the problem of the “unfit.” Davenport favored sterilizing and the restriction of immigration; others favored segregation; another favored all of these and even suggested extermination.

A eugenics poster of 1926 advocated the removal of genetic “defectives” such as the insane, the feebleminded, and criminals, and supported the selec tive breeding of “high-grade” individuals. Contests were held to find “fitter families” and to hold them up for society to emulate. Prizes included loans,

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tax breaks, and childcare. To those considered a drain on society, “prizes” were quarantine, sterilization, and euthanasia.

Admirers and Promotors of Eugenics

David Starr Jordan Founding president of Stanford; Chair of American Eugenics Commission; Vice President of American Society for Social Hygiene; Vice President of Eugenics Education Society of London

John H. Kellogg (Corn Flakes); Race Betterment Foundation and Exhibit at Pan Pacific Exposition (San Francisco, 1915)

Lewis Terman

Robert Millikan

U. S. Webb

Rufus von KleinSmid

Developed IQ test; Human Betterment Foundation

Nobel in Physics; Human Betterment Foundation; Professor at Cal Tech

California Attorney General for 37 years; promoted forced sterilizations

President UA, USC; co-founder of Human Betterment Foundation

Madison Grant (1865–1937) wrote one of the most notorious works of “scientific” racism, The Passing of the Great Race (1916) and he was prominent in drafting strong restrictions on immigration and worked on anti-miscege nation laws.

Grant’s work was noticed and embraced by people in the National Socialist (Nazi) movement in Germany and his book was the first non-German book reprinted by the Nazis when they took power. This book was lauded by Adolf Hitler, who in the early 1930s wrote a ’fan letter’ to Grant in which he called

Teddy Roosevelt Julian Huxley

George Bernard Shaw Alexander Graham Bell

Luther Burbank

the book “his Bible.” At the Nuremberg Trials, Grant’s book was introduced as evidence by the defense team of Karl Brandt, Hitler’s personal physician and head of the Nazi euthanasia program, in order to justify the population policies of the Third Reich, and to indicate that they were not unique to Nazi Germany and not so different from similar policies in America.

T. H. Morgan (1866-1945) studied fruit flies. Awarded the Nobel Prize in 1933, he recognized that inheritance and genetics were complex, and were not the simple idea of A’s genes + B’s genes = C’s genes that eugenicists were pushing. He quit his membership in the ERO and left the eugenicists.

Financial support came from the Carnegie Institution; the Rockefeller Foundation; John Kellogg; and Mary Averell Harriman, daughter of the rail road magnate E.H. Harriman (and sister of Averell Harriman, Governor of New York). Supporting Universities included Stanford, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and many others.

Writers of novels in the 1880s – 1940s began to include dystopic visions of degeneration and how these led to the end of culture and the world as we knew it.

II–C. Lending “scientific” weight to American societal prejudices

How to “scientifically” determine that a person was feebleminded? give an exam during a time when the person is distracted by pain; ask questions that few normal people could answer; obtain a mark for their lack of success on the exam; rate the person as feebleminded if the score was lower than an established cutoff.

Sixty-one percent of sterilizations were performed on women. North Carolina was the most aggressive state (between 1933-1977). Their laws stated that if the person’s I.Q. was below 70, then sterilization was justified. Men were sterilized to treat aggression and to eliminate criminal behavior, while women were sterilized to control “the results of their sexuality”. Since women bore children, eugenicists held women more accountable for the reproduction of the less “desirable” members of society. Eugenicists therefore predom inantly targeted women in their efforts to regulate the birth rate, to “protect” white racial health, and to weed out “defectives” of society. As mentioned above, about 62,000 sterilizations were carried out in the U.S.

The Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 cut entry of immigrants by 80% to 97%, so that work toward an American, white/Nordic, “super-race” could begin. Its Mission Statement read: “Society must protect itself; … Here is where appropriate legislation will aid in eugenics and creating a healthier, saner society in the future”.

Canada and the U.S. passed laws to create a rating of nationalities from

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the “most desirable Anglo-Saxon/Nordic peoples, down to Chinese and Jap anese immigrants,” who were almost completely barred from entering the country. Also virtually stopped was the influx of Italians, Greeks, Eastern European Jews, Poles, Slavs, and Russians. All this “to preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity.”

Bans on immigration were actually based on racist fear and hatred dis guised as being of benefit to our national society and to build a “healthier” nation. Harriman money was also directed to local charities, to find and target specific immigrants to deport, confine, or forcibly sterilize them.

II–D. Human experimentation in the United States

A 1911 Carnegie Institute report explored eighteen methods for removing defective genetic attributes. Method number eight was euthanasia. Some other methods included: exposing people to chemical and biological weapons (including infecting people with deadly or at least, highly debilitating, diseases), human radiation experiments, injection of people with toxic and radioactive chemicals––like KX-338 testing of soldiers with mustard gas and agent orange––surgical experiments, interrogation and torture experiments, tests involving mind-altering substances, and a wide variety of others. Many of these tests were performed on children, the sick, and mentally disabled individuals, often under the guise of “medical treatment.” In many of the studies, a large portion of the subjects were poor, racial minorities, or prisoners, for example, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study 1932-1972, when 600 poor sharecroppers were lied to about their “health care” and not given treatment, even though the antibiotic penicillin became available in 1944. It wasn’t until 1972 that laws were changed to protect study participants.

As another example, a mental institution in Lincoln, Illinois fed incoming patients milk infected with tuberculosis, after reasoning that genetically healthy individuals would be resistant. This resulted in 30–40% annual death rates, compared with their usual number. Elsewhere, doctors practiced eutha nasia through various forms of lethal neglect. In the 1930s, there was a wave of portrayals of eugenic “mercy killings” in American film, newspapers, and magazines. In 1931, the Illinois Homeopathic Medicine Association began lobbying for the right to euthanize “imbeciles” and other defectives. In 1938, the Euthanasia Society of America was founded. Originally formed to allevi ate the suffering of dying patients, many members saw the Society as being a eugenics issue. (In England in 1936, King George V was euthanized by his doctor to avert his suffering from heart/lung failures; this was kept secret for 50 years.) In Germany, euthanasia took on a much ghastlier definition, as we shall see.

III. Outcomes / Germany

In 1920s-1930s, Hitler had read papers and books by American eugeni cists. He wrote to Madison Grant and others that he planned to base Ger many’s purification plan on what he had read. More than just providing a roadmap, America actually funded Germany’s eugenics institutions.

By 1926, Rockefeller had donated some $410,000––about $4 million in today’s money–– to hundreds of German researchers. In May 1926, Rocke feller awarded $250,000 (about 2 million) toward creation of the Kaiser Wil helm Institute for Psychiatry. Among the leading German psychiatrists was Ernst Rüdin, who became director and eventually an architect of Hitler’s systematic medical cruelties. The Rockefeller Foundation helped develop and fund various German eugenics programs and institutes, including the one that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz.

Also within the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute’s complex of eugenics institutions was the Institute for Brain Research. Rockefeller’s grant of $317,000 (about 3 million) allowed the institute to take center stage in Germany’s race biology research. The institute received additional grants from the Rockefeller Foundation over the next several years. Leading the institute was Rüdin, who instituted murderous experimentation and research to be conducted on Jews, Gypsies, homosexual people, disabled people, the aged, poor, and infirm.

Upon returning from Germany in 1934, after learning that more than 5,000 people each month were being forcibly sterilized, one California eugenics leader bragged to a colleague (probably Laughlin): “your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program.”

American eugenics researcher Harry H. Laughlin (superintendent of the ERO) often boasted that his Model Eugenical Sterilization Law (1922) had been implemented in Hitler’s 1935 racist Nuremberg Laws on hygiene. Be tween 35,000 and 80,000 sterilizations took place during the first year in Germany, leading to a total around 400,000.

When American newspapers began reporting on the massive abuses in Germany, American eugenics was exposed for its poor science and now began to be linked with Nazism, such that previously abundant funding was now drying up and federal and state laws began to change.

Laughlin was highly rewarded and received honorary degrees from Hitler’s Germany. After Hitler’s rise to power, Laughlin maintained connections with various Nazi institutions and publications, both before and during World War II. He held editorial positions at two influential German journals, founded in 1935, and in 1939 he wrote a contribution to the Festschrift for Otto Reche,

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who was prominent in removing those populations considered “inferior” in eastern Germany. Laughlin’s biographer wrote: he was “among the most racist and anti-Semitic of early twentieth-century eugenicists.”

III–A. Nazi Eugenics

Those who were labelled under the term “unworthy of life” (Lebensun wertes Leben) included prisoners, “degenerates”, dissident people with congenital cognitive and physical disabilities (including people who were feeble minded, epileptic, schizophrenic, manic-depressive, who had cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, or were deaf and/or blind), homosexual, the insane, the weak, and the idle, for removal from the gene pool.

Of the steps Nazis took to carry out the principle of “life unworthy of life,” coercive sterilization was the first step, following America’s example. Following that, they first euthanized impaired/deformed children in hospitals and then impaired adults, found mostly in mental institutions and centers, where carbon monoxide gas was readily available. This killing project soon included impaired inmates in concentration camps and, finally, to the wholesale mass killings in extermination camps.

The Holocaust of Occupied Poland.

The Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring was enacted in 1933. This law was meant to ensure a pure Aryan race by sterilizing or eu-

thanizing people who were categorized as being “genetically defective”. This law legalized the involuntary sterilization of people with “hereditary” diseases: weak-mindedness, schizophrenia, alcoholism, insanity, blindness, deafness, and/or physical deformity. Four hundred thousand people were sterilized against their will within the first four years, and more than 70,000 were killed under their a euthanasia program.

After the Nazis passed the antisemitic Nuremberg Laws, both marriage partners had to be tested for possible hereditary diseases. No marriages between Aryan Germans and non-Germans were permitted. Citizenship and all rights were taken from non-Germans––Jews, Romani, and Black people––all classified as “enemies of the race-based state”. Beginning in 1940, between 50,000 to 100,000 Germans were taken from old age homes, mental institu tions and other facilities and systematically murdered. This genocide had its roots in the misguided, wrong beliefs in eugenics. Nazis justified their enor mous human rights abuses by claiming there was little difference between the Nazi eugenics programs and those programs in the U.S.

All of this has been ignored by American generations who refused to link themselves to the horrendous Nazi criminal abuses and by succeeding generations that do not know the truth about what led up to and transpired during WWII. Very recently, names of prominent eugenicists including Millikan and von KleinSmid are being removed from campus buildings, because of their affiliation with the Human Betterment Foundation. Governors of five states, including California, have issued public apologies for sterilizations, unethical medical studies, and other abuses of the not-so-distant past.

IV. HUMAN GENOME PROJECT

In the later 20th century, human genetics has become a more enlightened endeavor. Scientists have further explored the human genetic code with the Human Genome Project. Now, any individual can be biologically identified and classified by traits and ancestries. Yet there are still some leading voices in the genetic world who call for a “cleansing of the unwanted”, and even for a master human species.

There are understandable fears about the more ordinary forms of abuse, for example, in whether to deny insurance coverage or work hires, based on genetic results. In 1996, the United States passed the Health Insurance Por tability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) which “protects people against the unauthorized and non-consensual release of individually identifiable health information to any entity not actively engaged in the provision of healthcare services to a patient”. This was the United States’ first genetic anti-discrimi

Stryker

Commentary and Analysis

Commentary and Analysis

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Stryker

nation legislation and was passed unanimously by the Senate.

Now, in the age of a more detailed mapped genome, embryos can be tested for susceptibility to disease and genetic defects, as well as determining gender. Therefore, genetics is no longer just a discovery and regulation of a person’s genome but can discover and carry out changes to the genes of embryos.

Resources Books:

1. Philippa Levine, Eugenics: A very short introduction

2. GK Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils

3. Adam Cohen, Im-be-ciles

4. Carl Zimmer, She has her Mother’s Laugh

5. Theodore M. Porter, Genetics in the Madhouse

6. NYT Opinion: Disability (13 Sept 2017)

7. Kenny Fries, “The Nazi’s First Victims were the Disabled”

Video:

8. PBS “The Eugenics Crusade: What’s Wrong with Perfect?”, Ameri can Experience Internet:

9. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/study-human-heredity-got-itsstart-insane-asylums

There are no Libertarians in a hurricane.

Anonymous

Sickness is a Place

“Sickness is a place,” said Flannery O’Connor

Before she died at the age of 39.

A nurse, I worked in places of sickness

From the age of 21.

Before she died at the age of 39

She lived long with pain and distress

From the age of 21

I mourned for those who suffered and died.

She lived long with pain and distress

And wrote of things usually left unsaid.

I mourned for those who suffered and died

And said the things that must be said.

She wrote of things usually left unsaid

And published them in stories and books

I say the things that must be said And write of them in records stored.

She published them in stories and books

Which are read in places of sickness

I write of them in records stored

For others to learn from written word.

Which are read in places of sickness

A nurse, I worked in places of sickness

That others may learn from written word Flannery was right, “Sickness is a place.”

Shannon E. Perry

Reinventing Retirement

A Retirement of, Not from, Service

Bill Verdini

Bill Verdini has been a teacher, researcher and administrator in several of ASU’s colleges and cen ters. His work in Supply-Chain Management has taken him and his expertise far and wide, and his administrative skills have opened a wide variety of opportunities. As we see in this interview, his retirement was a smooth transition into more of the same. Since he left the “active” faculty as Chair of the Sup ply Chain Management Department in the W. P. Carey School of Business in 2011, he has provided essential assistance in establishing business degree programs in India, served as Dean of the Emeritus College and President of the Association of Retirement Organizations in Higher Education (AROHE) and on several community boards and committees. Bill went through college in Ohio, where he got his Doctor of Business Administration from Kent State University in 1976. He came immediately to ASU, where he rapidly became an influence in Management and Quantitative Systems programs. On a personal note, I first met Bill upon his arrival in Tempe, when he stayed with my next-door neighbors while getting his feet on the ground. We have enjoyed a warm friendship ever since, which is easy to do with the personable Bill Verdini.

Emeritus Voices: Thank you, Bill, for being the subject of this is sue’s “Reinventing Retirement.” As our readers will see, your notion of retirement is more of the same hard work. You actually took what most people would say is early retirement. Was there any special reason why you retired when you did?

Bill Verdini: I had not planned to retire when I did in 2011. In fact, after the W. P. Carey School of Business offered a retirement package, I

End of the Trail.

recall having a conversation with Dr. Amy Hillman, Dean of the School, when I agreed to stay on as chair of the Department of Supply Chain Man agement. Not long after, though, my father’s health and living situation dete riorated. He was living near Pittsburgh, PA. Then ASU offered a retirement package with the caveat that no similar offers would be made for at least three years. Those conditions changed my mind about retiring. I spoke with Dean Hillman, and she encouraged me to do what was best for me and my family.

EV: You were then focused on your family and not on post-retirement professional or avocational activities?

BV: I thought that I would relocate to Pennsylvania to look after my fa ther. After about a 4-week stay, enjoyable, but not my lifestyle, I realized that I could not “live” at home. Instead, I made a trip back to Pennsylvania every four weeks or so and stayed for a week to take care of my father’s needs. He was very appreciative, and I was enjoying our interaction and helping. My father died a year later.

EV: We’re sorry for your loss, Bill. Did you have something waiting for your attention at that point?

BV: I thought about returning to ASU or seeking other opportunities, but I was still busy with several not-for-profit organizations and was enjoying hiking around Arizona. I think I have been on every trail in South Mountain, North Mountain, and the McDowell Mountains.

Reinventing Retirement

EV: That sounds like an ideal itinerary. But finding yourself free of normal faculty obligations, perhaps a bit sooner than you had expected, what was the first new opportunity that came your way?

BV: Soon after, I was asked if I would be interested in teaching a class at a new graduate school of business in Mysore, India. An interesting prospect to me. I had taught a course at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and visited the National University of Singapore. When my ASU colleague Rajiv Sinha, who was involved in the Mysore project, learned that I was retired, he asked me if I would be interested in getting the Mysore Royal Academy (MYRA) up and running. They needed help in recruiting faculty and stu dents. I had been to India in 2010 to give a keynote address at a conference in Chennai. While there I stayed in an Ashram for a week. I was fascinated with

Reinventing Retirement

India, so this opportunity sounded very interesting. Besides, what else would I do? The result was three extended trips to India over the next year and a half.

EV: Would you describe the nature of MYRA and some of the innovations you introduced?

BV: Business education in India is very important. India has 4500 grad uate schools of business; the U.S. has about 1500. With nearly five times the population, 4500 schools seems reasonable. Unfortunately, relatively few of those 4500 institutions are considered top schools. The top schools in India have space for fewer than 30,000 students so many of the hundreds of thousands of students taking graduate admission tests opt to attend graduate schools in other countries.

MYRA’s vision was to be a desirable in-country choice for students through its campus, curriculum, and reputation. To become “top” quickly, MYRA recruited faculty from across the world to offer a global curriculum and a unique international learning experience. MYRA’s mission was to offer a curriculum international in scope yet focused on the business opportunities and challenges in India, and to retain entrepreneurial talent.

EV: What did you most enjoy about your ser vice in India?

BV: I was fascinated with the people and the culture. I kept a sporadic blog with some of my discoveries. The link to my blog is catchthewav. wordpress.com/. It is a land of contrasts – eco nomic, cultural, geographic. India is more like Europe in that each state has its own language, customs, and food. I loved the food. The people were very friendly. The most common greeting was “Have you had your breakfast yet?”

The people were very friendly.

EV: That’s certainly engaging! Were there any notable downsides?

BV: Of course, getting there and back was arduous. Two ten-hour flights with a 2-hour layover in London. Exhausting for someone who has a hard time sitting still for very long. Also, I was disappointed that I didn’t get to explore more. I traveled a lot, but most of my time was in airports and hotels

giving recruiting talks and interviewing students and faculty. There are few places to walk, though many do. If there was a sidewalk, it was not unusual to see a motorized vehicle use the sidewalk to get around a traffic jam. Fortu nately, I did not have to drive!

EV: If the only negatives were in the logistics of getting around, it must have been a very enjoyable experience. Now, I believe it was shortly after your return from India that I, as chair of the dean search committee, approached you about taking the helm of the Emeritus College. We know you accepted the appointment by the Provost upon our recommendation, but I would like to know something of your initial reaction when you were asked.

BV: I was surprised to be recruited. I had been a contributing member of the College since retirement but had not actively participated in college events and activities. I was reluctant to accept the nomination at first. I was very busy with several nonprofit boards (I have been told that I am not re tired, just not paid), and I do not like to take on a responsibility for which I cannot give the attention needed.

Reinventing Retirement

EV: I can assure you that you were approached because of your reputation as being an organizer and administrator who can get things done. Your four years of excellent service as EC Dean is familiar to most of our members, who are grateful for it. Could you reflect a bit on that experience?

BV: I enjoyed getting to know my colleagues better. I knew many of them from work together on university committees but working with the College Council provided a wonderful opportunity to get to know them better outside of their academic disciplines. We had fun, and the staff was very supportive. One of my goals in accepting the appointment was to leverage the ex tensive talent, experience, and connections that our members possess to reach out to the university and wider community. We certainly do that with several of our initiatives, but I was a little disappointed that we did not accomplish more. However, our members have many commitments, not just the Emeri

Emeritus College Council (2016).

EV: The deanship led more or less directly to a position of national weight, namely the current presidency of AROHE, the Association of Retirement Organizations in Higher Education. How actually did that happen?

Reinventing Retirement tus College. Plus, they are all volunteers and retired! We did very well. We do very well, despite being hampered by the pandemic.

BV: Déjà vu! You, Dick, encouraged me as Emeritus College Dean to attend the AROHE conference at the University of Washington in Seattle. ASU had a very good reputation because of the previous work you and Len Gordon had done in the organization. I was approached by Carl Huether, University of Cincinnati, who knew you both, to accept a nomination to the Board of Directors. I accepted and was elected. At the next Biennial meeting at Emory University in Atlanta, Carl asked if I would consider a nomination for president-elect of AROHE. I recall expressing my reservation because of my commitments to the Emeritus College and a few other organizations. Carl and others assured me that being president-elect was a two-year apprentice ship with little responsibility. Considering that my second term as dean of the Emeritus College would end before I would become president of AROHE, I accepted the nomination. I was elected, served as president-elect for two years and am now ending my first of two years as president of AROHE. I will serve as past president for an additional year. Maybe I’ll really retire after that!

EV: Would you like to tell us more about AROHE’s aspirations and your involvement?

BV: AROHE will celebrate its 20th Anniversary in 2022. Since 2002, AROHE has encouraged the formation and ongoing development of campus-based retiree organizations because we know that retirement organiza tions increase retirees’ value to their schools, communities, and professions. A priority initiative is to work with higher education institutions that do not already have retirement organizations. We particularly want to reach current faculty/staff and retirees from colleges and universities that primarily serve traditionally under-represented populations or first-generation college stu dents, including historically Black colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, Native American colleges, community colleges, and small or ru ral campuses.

We would like to create a sustainable business model for the organization. With just one part-time employee, our consistent revenue sources still

account for only 40% of our expenses. As a result, annually we seek sup porters and sponsors to fund our programs. I would like to recruit a group of sustaining partners with core values like those of AROHE so that we are able to plan more than one year at a time. Our biggest revenue stream comes from our biennial conference. The Emeritus College at ASU was planning to host the AROHE Biennial Conference in 2020, but that was postponed and eventually cancelled due to the pandemic. As an historical note, Dick, you were instrumental in ASU’s hosting the 3rd AROHE Biennial Conference in 2006. Our 2022 Conference will be hosted by and held at the University of Southern California (USC), the sight of our founding.

In October 2021 we “boldly” ventured into cyberspace with our first ever virtual conference, “Re-Imagining Retirement: Let Us Boldly Go.” We were determined to reconnect with our members and were hoping to generate much needed revenue. Both objectives were met. We had the highest atten dance ever for a conference and we attracted generous sponsors interested in AROHE’s mission. More importantly, we learned that many of our con stituents enjoyed the virtual experience and look forward to having similar opportunities in the future.

EV: Your retirement is remarkable in that it’s chock-a-block full of leadership responsibilities. We’ve covered three of the major ones, but would you like to tell us some of the other? Were any of them continuations of pre-re tirement commitments?

BV: All Saints’ Episcopal Day School is a pre-kindergarten through eighth grade outreach mission of All Saints’ Episcopal Church. The school was founded in 1955 and has an enrollment of approximately 500 students. I currently serve as a member of the Board of Trustees and on the Governance and Finance Committees of the Board. I had served as a trustee from 20042008 too. ASEDS combines academic excellence with spiritual and moral formation to prepare students to lead fruitful lives and to serve a world in need. In 2013, ASEDS partnered with the Challenge Foundation to provide opportunities for bright, ambitious, and hard-working students to break the cycle of poverty through educational opportunities. Today 24 scholars attend ASEDS. The Challenge Foundation continues to support these students and their families throughout their high school years and collegiate careers at uni versities across the country. I have been a mentor for Challenge Foundation scholars since 2015.

The Arizona Bach Festival presents performances of, lectures on, and mas

Reinventing Retirement

Reinventing Retirement

terclasses about, the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. The Festival has fea tured performers from around the globe and talented musicians from our own community to present works using instruments of Bach’s time, contem porary instruments, and works in transcription. In 2012 I was asked to join the ABF Board of Directors to provide a business perspective to operation. In 2018 I was elected Secretary and continue to serve in that role. I still cannot read music!

National model time standards for state trial courts were approved in August 2011. In October 2012, the Arizona Supreme Court established the Committee on Arizona Case Processing Standards. I was asked to represent the community along with judicial and legal representatives on the Commit tee. As written on the Committee’s web site, “The Committee reviewed the national model time standards, statutory requirements, court rules, and business processes of Arizona courts and, based on this review, recommended case processing standards for all case types in the justice, municipal, and superior courts. The Committee also developed recommendations on how the Arizona Judiciary should proceed with implementing the case processing time stan dards in Arizona’s courts.” Our work was completed in 2020!

Any Day is a Good Day on Lake Nipissing

EV: Assuming you have any time left that you could call “spare”, what do you do with it?

BV: I enjoy being outdoors. I like to hike and had a habit of doing two fishing trips a year until the pandemic interfered. I enjoy traveling too.

EV: Where do you like to fish?

BV: When I first arrived in Arizona, I found the fishing to be very enjoy able. Since our dry spell that began 20 years ago, I have fished only occasionally in Arizona. The two out of state fishing trips that I annually took were to Lake Nipissing, Ontario, and to various rivers in Washington, Oregon, Cali fornia, Idaho, and Montana. My favorite river is Rock Creek near Missoula, Montana. The stream flows north from the Continental Divide near Philips burg into the Clark Fork River. I should write an essay for Emeritus Voices on the evolution over twenty plus years of my fishing Rock Creek.

EV: Thank you again, Bill, for the interview, but even more for your service to the University and to the Emeritus College.

Reinventing Retirement

The materialism of modern civilization is paradoxically founded on a hatred of materiality, a goal-oriented desire to obliterate all natural limits through technology, imposing an abstract grid over nature.

Alan Watts

Our Blood, Our Proof

David Kader

As I approach the 50th anniversary of my graduation from law school and now past 5 years since receiving Emeritus status from the law school at Arizona State University I wish to share a poem I wrote in 1972. It was a poem that appeared on my law school graduation program and sought to capture the celebration of that day by commemorating the events of the prior few tumultuous years during my law study class.

In an effort to provide historical context for the poems text here is a sample of just a few of the events from the Fall of 1969 until the summer of 1972. Events that informed me and thus the poem I here wish to share.

FALL/WINTER 1969: Members of the Manson Family slaughter Sharon Tate and others. The Woodstock Music Festival takes place. Lt. William Cal ley charged for the 1968 My Lai Massacre of over 100 Vietnamese civilians. The Chicago Eight trial begins. The Zodiac Killer kills once more. Anti-Viet Nam War demonstrations take place throughout the U.S. American Indians take Alcatraz Island and begin a long occupation. The second Apollo mission to the moon occurs. Draft military lottery instituted, first since W.W.II.

1970: Chicago Seven found not guilty of major charges. First Earth Day takes place. Beatles break up. Apollo 13 heads to the moon, but is forced to abort mission and return to Earth. U.S. invades Cambodia as apart of the Viet Nam War, provoking large anti-war movement protests. Four Kent State University students are killed and others wounded, by the Ohio State Na tional Guard, during protests against bombing of Cambodia. Two students at Jackson State University in Mississippi are killed and others wounded by law enforcement in response to demonstrations. Commercial aircraft are hijacked by terrorists for the Liberation of Palestine. Jimi Hendrix dies. PBS begins broadcasting. Janis Joplin dies. Trudeau’s comic strip Doonesbury debuts. Environmental Protection Agency begins, as does the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

1971: Apollo 14 and the third lunar landing mission heads to the moon and returns safely to Earth. Lt. Calley found guilty of 22 murders. Marches continue against the Viet Nam war. The Pentagon Papers are published by the N.Y.Times. Jim Morrison of The Doors dies. Voting age lowered to 18 by the 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Apollo 15 to the moon and back to Earth.

First half of 1972: The space shuttle program was inaugurated early that year and Shirley Chisholm became the first African American member of Congress to seek the presidency of the country. President Nixon visited Chi na, as peace talks in Viet Nam stalled. The Equal Rights Amendment succeed ed in the Congress and began the ratification process in the states. Governor Wallace of Alabama was shot and paralyzed in an assassination attempt. The Watergate break-in occurs. The first U.S. female rabbi is ordained. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty is unconstitutional. Bobby Fischer defeats Boris Spassky to become the first U.S. world chess champion.

Kader

Commentary and Analysis

THE ART OF Ann Ludwig

It is with great pleasure that Emeritus Voices presents this small but diverse portfolio of scenes from the choreographic art of Ann Ludwig. Ann’s work has been seen around the world. Before coming to ASU in 1979, she was on the faculties at the University of Iowa, San Diego State University and the University of Kansas, where she received her master’s degree in dance, music, and physiology. She had already, in 1977, formed her dance company, A Ludwig Dance Theater, which she brought with her to Tempe. During her tenure at ASU, she taught choreography, dance criticism, pedagogy, philosophy and technique, and served as Graduate Program Director of the Department of Dance. In 2011 she received the Gover nor’s Award for Arts in Education from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, Arizona Citizens for the Arts, and the Governor’s Office. Ann retired from ASU in 2003, but continued choreographing and directing, as well as dancing, A Ludwig Dance Theater through 2012. She has, over her career, re ceived numerous artistic awards. The New York Times dance critic, Jennifer Dunning, said the “Ludwig’s pieces careen through a wide assortment of female responses in theater-dance that has all the ragged, irrational reasonableness of life lived slightly below the polite formalities.” We hope this will be ev ident in the following sampling from more than 200 works in her productive career.

Opposite: A Woman I Know (Sculpture by John Henry Waddell) (2004).

Ann Ludwig in Dialogue with Isabel.

A Woman I Know

A Woman I Know was choreographed in collaboration with sculptor John Henry Waddell, videographers Nancy Happel and Tom Eldridge and the dancers who are always part of the creative component in the work. It reflected the strength I received, marveled at, from three women no longer alive: my daughter, my mother, and a friend. Each, in her own way, embodied the ability to persevere with strength and intelligence, with kindness and humor, through many good times and horrific bad times. They personified the beau ty and the stature of John Waddell’s sculptures and seemed the solidarity of existence. In thinking of these three women, many images came to mind at the core of their vulnerabilities as human beings. I started with the sense of

(Sculpture by John Henry Waddell, 2004)

three sections, one for the family; one for the lives; one for the memories. Eight dancers drew from varied experiences and enhanced solo, duet, trio and whole group movement collections. Music selected, usually after the ini tial direction took hold, included Vivaldi, Wynton Marsalis, Tammy Wynette, Conlan Nancarrow, and music written by one of the three women, my daughter. A Woman I Know should not have needed choreography. Three strong women lost battles: murder; Alzheimer’s; cancer. All wars that should not have been.

The Cheese Stands Alone (2009)

The Cheese Stands Alone was an under the tent kind of production…I was ringmaster for the dancers who played partners in assorted unconnected scenes. Hanging it all together was former dancer and current Tempe chef, Mark Vanek, in the regalia denoting the art and craft of fine cuisine. To add to the fun, my eight-year-old granddaughter flawlessly recorded a remake of The Farmer in the Dell:

Once upon a time in the land of vegetables, a farmer raised and traded them for warm sweet milk and creamy blocks of cheese. Tired of working in the fields and coming home to a kitchen full of dirty dishes, the farmer took a wife. At farmers.com he made his selection carefully, a woman who could cook with cheese, clean, and was mathematician enough to balance the budget and manipulate the cost according to the direction of the commodity market.

It was fun; it was an argument in motion; it was a piece that smelled good. The only one not affected by how the world turned was the cheese…a rich full-bodied entity with a green future. The Cheese Stands Alone.

The Rooming House (1990)

The Rooming House was a multi-phase project taking the work into non-typical spaces. The first used the thrust and tier of balconies in the Herberger Theater Center that provided a vantage point surrounding the dance for some, looking down on the work for others. The second series was at the Chandler Center for the Arts where audiences sat with the dancers on stage. The Experimental Dance Laboratory at ASU with viewing from all sides re quired the most extensive reshaping. An evening length work, its thread centered around a rooming house, with seven dancers, each with the stretched personas one might find in your slightly run down, run-astray place in the far suburbs. Each had his or her hypothetical space giving license to the antics that happened within. As landlord, I found a way to trill out my favorite Mo zart on the upright in the corner. The real music was the Haffner Serenade no. 7 by Mozart. In staging this work, I felt the pressure to orchestrate very care fully the first domino fall, knowing it would catapult the flow of the others.

In 1984, A Ludwig Dance Theatre had the opportunity to be hosted by the US Embassy in Lisbon, Portugal. For five months we journeyed around the country doing ten performances and giving three-a -day workshops. Our sergeant in arms was Teresa, Portuguese staff at the embassy, whose role was to organize and facilitate our moves from place to place. She became a friend still remembered. On one of the journeys we stopped for lunch at the home of her Aunt Tinita, who smiled at Teresa’s belated birthday wishes and proceeded to share with us such celebrations past. With lace tablecloth neatly spread, she carefully arranged pictures of her passed family around the rim. And then she ate. That warm image brought so clearly the inspiration for Tinita’s Birthday…always danced by Beth Lessard. Scratchy Caruso was the music first used; there were several versions, and it evolved into several pieces through subsequent years. I never knew what Tinita ate, but vegetarian Beth always had an open can of Campbells vegetable soup. The movement progressed from spreading the cloth in somewhat distorted fashion to gently placing the aging photographs, to taking a silver spoon from a velvet pouch, to claiming the can of soup…as it all faded delicately away, just the images surviving.

Tinita’s Birthday (1984) Danced by Beth Lessard

Bandstand (1998)

There is always a magic that hap pens when dancers are able to join with live music in performance. We collaborated with the Arizona Wind Symphony under the direction of Bill Richardson on two such occasions. Once with a forties swing era vibe, as in this picture (taken in 1998 during a dress rehearsal,) and again for a full evening performance in 2006, On the Beating Path, which also included narrative by Gus Edwards, actor and playwright. Such collaborations make for exciting and challenging moments when everyone is doing their notes, the words, and the steps, all at the van ishing point.

Five Poems was one of the first works I did in my ASU journey; it was submitted by judges for the American College Dance Festival to the Kennedy Center Gala (the concert was then sadly canceled that year). Moved to A Ludwig Dance Theatre, its longevity—four casts until its final performance in 2012, and five readers, Bathtub was one I kept coming back to because there seemed a brief whiff of mystery that could always be pushed around. Three dancers in otherworldly black antiquated and swashbuckling dress cavorted around the clawfoot tub from which came the sounds of David Gregory’s music punctuated by the poetry of William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Carl Sandburg: “swinging their butts.” The darting looks and leaping, to me, opened a window into a stranger world, one to be explored.

Five Poems for Computer, Narrator, Dancers, and Bathtub (1982)

‘Til Death Do Us Part (1999)

The longest running piece, and most time spent in producing, was a col laboration that intimately wove the composer, the lyricist, the dancers, the videographer, and the choreographer into a fine cloth stitched together, stan za by stanza, on marriage vows, fifteen scenes of them. Billed as a series of vignettes about people who choose to say “I do”, the magnitude of the parts, each individual in structure, found a way into a greater whole after two years of collaboration. Initially lyricist Candace St Jacques, composer Brian Kunnari and I spent some time together roaming an exhibit of surrealistic paint ings and playing with toys in a children’s museum, an outside the box game. Videographer Tom Eldridge found that taping toasters, many toasters, in Sears was useful as an image behind the bride unwrapping tons of the same.

Maybe the part often remembered was the six dancer brides with full regalia as the video backdrop honed in to six gigantic horses draped in white gowns and people riding the carousel at Encanto Park. Eventually the merrygo-round ride ended in a wedding. As the walk down the aisle concluded a faint breeze caught one of the filmy veils lifting it to the sight of a skeleton face. Lights faded to out.

Scene 12, In Sickness and In Health, produced lyrics lamenting the raw reality Alzheimer’s has on a couple. I walked across the stage, gently guiding, real life and well, my husband Tom. Only several years later did we find he was beginning his own journey of a neurodegenerative disease.

Comfort Zone (1998)

With approximately two hundred choreographies ranging from ten to sev enty minutes, it was always a respite to bring past dance theatre pieces to the front for an update. One such work was Comfort Zone, first done with two MFA students in 1998. One, after graduating, permanently joined A Ludwig Dance Theatre and was part of that work again ten years later. As a fan of pair ing unlikelies, the space sharing of Martha Stewart, jellyfish, and “comfort women” from the WWII era seemed to have a common denominator. With text from all three, tunes from Streisand and Garland, and assisted by Bizet and Weil, the visuals, which included scrim size video, satisfied my sense of putting together a 1000-piece puzzle. Once the edges are in place…

Ain’t Over ‘Til the Fat Lady Sings (1984)

An early piece that had a long life, Ain’t Over started as a solo I performed to a couple of county pieces plus the Iowa farm report. Titled It’s So Pink It Must Be a Ballet, the sequence of arm strengthening body poses, a three-min ute circular run and a full load of pink net furled and swirled to the tune of Tennessee Waltz, encased what had become stereotypes of women in our society. It was soon the precursor of the longer work. Two women and one man dove into the roles dictated by how we live until finally, to the voice of Kate Smith, we were left with the image of two women, each facing upstage in front of ironing boards, the blue and red striped slips pulled up over their heads, hands clenched behind bare backs as Kate finished America. Addition al music for this section was from Nancarrow and Chopin. Completed in New York and given a great New York Times review, it took a firm place in our touring repertoire. It was last performed in 2012.

The Constitution (2012)

I contribute this to the assortment selected for Emeritus Voices because it was the new work in the last full concert I produced with A Ludwig Dance Theatre. The first section of that concert was a ‘looking back’…with past works; the second part included four guest choreographers, each fulfilling their sense of what we named The Constitution. Five parts made up the whole: first: The Candidates, a duet I choreographed on two of the contributing choreographers; second, in four separate sections, The People. An added challenge was the intention of letting the audience arrange the order of the middle three dances. Part one and five remained the same; sections two, three, four were interchangeable. At intermission the audience, earlier shown movement phrases of those three sections, texted a sequence, the tabulation of which prompted the sound person to pull the right order of music for that particular performance. In addition to the challenge of the music, the choreographers of those sections had to be able to place their dancers where the other two sections could be started. The six dancers were apprised of the order just be fore the first section began. This gave an added twist to the making of dance: audience participation.

The River Derwent

She’d heard the old mission had been restored, put back into place so to speak, its grubby old age wiped off like a fogged mirror she might say, and had come to see for herself.

From the front it was no whiter than before. Unless you are a mission Indian your approach is coy. Circling down from a rise some miles away where the road falls out of the underside of the city, you see it off to the right, white in the morning sun. Plaster, of course. Not a big building, but as noticeable as an exposed shoulder among brown suits. Country roads lead around to the face.

There’s no mission square. Just a dusty parking lot, and an arched gate with a small bell under which you pass. A low wall, whitewashed. Some Indian girls, children that is, were selling guidebooks there as usual.

Poetry

You pay what you like. On a Thursday morning, October, no cars but hers, she gave a dollar. From the front the central bell tower, the white wings, seemed unchanged.

A shop had once been there, fitted under the dark lintels. She found it now on the plaza in back, bought water there and signed the guest book only Derwent. Outside she sat on a bench in mesquite shade.

They who had made this place, the mission Indians who were the people who owned this place, whose girls now stood out front in the dust with coffee cans.

They built it for themselves. In seventeen fifty something. She drank their water, warm water, under the mesquite and didn’t want to be more precise.

In the mercado a bodega was serving good bean burros in the hot white air but she didn’t want any of that either. A breeze rattled the tree overhead. It was their church

Some foundation’s money rebuilt this, bought the research and the skills, but not the burros or the Guatemalan rugs in the mercado.

Had the first old friar kept a pariah dog? Once, territorial jails were built by the men

themselves because there was no prison yet for them. Did those men feel the lash of creation?

But this new work was good. She saw it was good, knowing nothing. Why then had she come? Past times worry us, worried to make a shrine but that someone was here before, polishing and tidying up, putting to rights some stuff. She knew that. She was that kind of historian. Inside their mission now the intricate decorations had been cleaned, repainted in the original heavy red and green garish to the protestant eye.

Scary reliquaries, gaunt carvings painted blood and gold with big dark eyes. Masses of wavering candle flames and stiffened lace concealing dwarves in glass coffins, pulpits and dark crooked lintels grow from the narrow walls. You feel you could reach right across.

She wasn’t much for church architecture. Didn’t know how the parts were—apse, crossing— was there a rood screen? Or was that Byzantine. Best to keep such things screened off. She was the kind of historian who would want to know how they had lived, what changes the missionaries had made, why they needed a church when there was a perfectly good religion already. She would want to know about dogs and games, and if they also made rugs for tourists at train stops without a purpose but only to sell their things: Rugs using the new aniline dyes, heavy greens and reds made from coal tar in factories.

Poetry

Poetry

The sort of historian she was is one who wants to taste the daily life. Maybe she should go for one of those burros after all. Beans and chilis were not the friar’s food alone.

She drank the water which might have gone for their beans and squash. Maybe the friar thought he was helping to make adobe for something more than just another church, already here.

She didn’t understand these things, really. She was a woman from somewhere in England, presumably—or time was, given her name. Derwent. One of that old tribe, perhaps.

She herself was only from the place where she was last. The academic life takes you everywhere. An itinerant life like the early printers setting up wherever there was no press, needing only a few tools to build one

as did the people whose church it was. Who built this place out of their own adobe. Whose dogs left their paw prints on it. Now restored, and all the clay of generations since wiped off.

They hadn’t neglected a cemetery of course. Would leave no one unburied. And a school which was in the opposite wing. Years of teaching here she might have worked, carrying children from one side to the other.

The River Derwent as the English call it, always putting the particular last,

is about forty-five miles long. It comes down from the Howden Moors in the Pennines between Manchester and Sheffield where they make good steel, to Derby and Burton, from whence it provides the salts, that is minerals, which brewers use who have only bad water. To bear a river’s name is to bear a kinship With a passage washing her from birth to death, a flow, an infusion, a dispersion which is the meaning of religious experience. One stands at the confluence, waiting, and somehow there is always more water coming.

Charles Brownson

The Beep Generation

JoAnn Yeoman Tongret

I’m at the ShopRite trying to grab a few things I need for dinner. It’s been a long day made even worse by a massive traffic jam, and I’m making a genuine effort to forget the cacophony of auto horns that competed during the rush hour backup on I-95. (Did you know that the average car horn emits between 100 and 110 decibels?)

Deep inside my purse my phone beeps while I’m in the bakery section and I ignore it. I’m on a chocolate mission and I can’t stop now. It beeps again and I pretend I’m in the shower. Again, a beep, but it’s someone else’s phone or text or e-mail. I ignore all this and manage to make it to the check-out.

I’m relieved to have the exit sign in view and I give my discount card to the cashier. She scans it; it chirps. Suddenly I hear what seems like a hundred different devices going off. It’s a symphony worthy of Schoenberg or Yma Sumac or both. Just as quickly my hallucination disappears in time for me to pay the cashier and get out to the parking lot. Of course, I’ve forgotten where I parked my car and am forced to give my key ring a squeeze so that the Honda can whimper its approximate location to me. Will I be able to drive home in this condition?

I start to recuperate in the kitchen, but it’s hopeless since the doorbell rings with a package from Amazon; my refrigerator whines because I’m leaving the door open too long while I decide what to defrost; my cell moans three more times to indicate a text; and my dryer drones a tiresome arpeggio, demanding my presence at a folding fest. After that I can look forward to my iron pinging when it’s hot enough for me to flatten everything that isn’t permanent press.

Based on a purely unscientific survey I’ve discovered that most “beeps” are pitched to sound on the B-natural above middle C (give or take an eighth of a pitch). Don’t ask how I conducted the experiment. It involves random humming in public places and searching for a tuning fork.

Instead of deciding who to blame for this avalanche of unnecessary coer cion, I start to think about mankind’s attraction to audible reproach. How and when did we get this way? We probably surrendered our individual re sponsibility to organize a long time ago, but the whistling tea kettle might be a good place to start.

The first mention of a whistling device goes to Charles E. Coats in 1890. “Though, in this case it appears he was primarily concerned with the level of

the water growing too low,” as noted in an article about his patent: “…the object of my invention is to construct a tea-kettle into which water may be in troduced at any time without danger of burning hands, and which shall also be provided with an automatic signal to indicate when the water is getting low.” But for a kettle whose patent specifically mentions a whistling capacity we need to go to 1915 and Jorgen Madsens for the “combined tea-kettle and signal,” which we would now recognize.

A possible predecessor of the alarm clock or watch beeper might be the repeater alarm (around 1892), but even earlier and more familiar to us is the grandfather clock which was created around 1680 by a British clockmaker, William Clement. “Clement disputed credit for an anchor escapement with another early clockmaker, Robert Hooke, and they were soon joined by Thomas Tompion, the most prominent of British clockmakers … In the early 20th century quarter-hour chime sequences were added to longcase clocks.” This quarter hour potential became especially memorable for me when I unexpectedly had to spend the night on a friend’s sofa directly next to said quarter-chimer.

Back to the automobile horn. One of the first trailblazers of car horn manufacturing was Miller Reese Hutchinson. “In the early 1900’s the inventor became inspired to create an improved horn after nearly hitting a pedestrian while driving. Car horns were important features on early automobiles.” (Think of Harpo Marx’s bulb honker). “In fact, the biggest change in the car horn since its inception isn’t the feature itself, but how it is used.” Matt Anderson (curator at the Henry Ford Museum) says that “You were expected to honk your horn if you were coming up on pedestrians to let them know you were bounding down the street. You’d be thought rude if you weren’t using your horn, which is the exact opposite of where we are today.”

And sometimes we’re held hostage by devices outside of our control. For example, having paid $250 for a Hamilton ticket, you find the first act ru ined by a lady in the row ahead of you answering a call or taking a photo. Or perhaps in the middle of Beethoven’s Seventh, a hearing aid battery goes off. Soon we may need a beeper to remind us to turn off our innumerable beepers. Or, in extreme cases, perhaps an electric shock if we don’t respond promptly.

But, like the Hutchinson horn, there are a few noisy gizmos that have been successful in assisting the public: The Amber Alert or Hurricane warning on your cell. The smoke alarms. The ambulance siren that asks you to make way for an emergency. The school bell that offers relief from your most boring class. The Mack Truck that warns you when it’s backing up and can’t see

Tongret

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Essay

Tongret

you. Of course, this is often neutralized because the pedestrian in question is wearing ear-buds.

In a quick, casual count I have been able to identify 32 alerting devices that are well within my daily routine or experience. I invite you to make your own list. I’d give you mine, but my cell just went off to remind me of a call I need to make right now. I know you’ll understand.

All the fingerprint paintings are done without a grid.

Chuck Close

and Analysis/Memoir

The Evolution of Primary Care Medicine in the United States: From General Practice to Family Medicine

Zach Sitton MD* Eric vanSonnenberg MD*

Introduction

Patients’ lifelines to medical care typically begin with their primary care physician. General Practitioners (GPs) originally served this role in the U.S. Nonetheless, the days of GPs have diminished, to almost obsolescence. How ever, there has been a positive evolution from General Practice into the medical specialty of Family Medicine. Currently, Family Medicine physicians sub sume the bulk of primary medical care in the U.S.

Herein, we present a two-part in depth delve into what ‘was’, i.e.—the General Practice of medicine, and the evolution into currently what ‘is’, the specialty of Family Medicine. The latter is represented by the junior author of the paper (ZS), who is about to embark on his Family Medicine residency. Conversely, the historical foundation for Family Medicine, General Practice, will be highlighted by anecdotes by the senior author (EV) of this paper, who grew up in a “Mom and Pop” shop/home of a semi-rural General Prac titioner. Thus, our intent is to provide insights into the origins and current practice of primary care medicine in America.

Part I: The Journey from General Practice to Family Medicine

“To have greatest significance, this close relationship also involves the physician with his patient’s environment and, most particularly, with his family,” declared the AMA in the late 1950s (1). Although the specialty of Family Medicine would not be established until a decade later, it was recognized early on for its role, both to increase access to healthcare during the growing physician shortage, and to help lower healthcare costs (2). Family Medicine physicians strive to provide comprehensive primary healthcare for everyone in an affordable, high quality, and individualized manner (2). In the face of rising healthcare costs today, Family Medicine plays a vital role in healthcare, as studies have shown better health outcomes and lower healthcare costs when populations have access to primary care physicians (3-5). The purpose of this segment of our article is to appreciate the origins of Family Medicine

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from General Practice, and to discuss the early, current, and future roles of Family Medicine physicians.

Development of Family Medicine

From the origins of the United States until the early 20th century, the medical profession was unorganized and had little regulation (2). During the 1700s and early 1800s, there was no standardized medical education or formal training to certify physicians (6). Only a fraction of physicians had received university-based medical education, from either a European medical school or one of the few US medical schools that was university-based (6). Most physicians during the 18th and early 19th centuries were either self-ed ucated, and/or learned the job as an “apprentice”, training under an older physician for a few years, and later leaving to practice on their own (6). Phy sicians of this era often traveled to the homes of their patients on horse and buggy, caring for whole families and attempting to treat all medical needs (2).

Without formalized medical education, there were no standards of care for physicians, and “quackery” was a growing problem (6). Many proprietary medical schools arose in the second half of the 1800s that were diploma mills, that offered lim ited, if any, clinical training (7). The formation of the American Medical Association (AMA) in the mid1800s helped shape the profession into the organized system we have today (2). The Flexner report of 1910 was the result of a project funded by the AMA

A 19th century physician making a house call via horse and buggy.

Abraham Flexner

that examined the nation’s medical schools; it led to key changes such as stan dardized medical curriculum and attaching medical schools to universities (2). Following this pivotal report, 4-year medical schools began to replace the proprietary schools (7).

By the 1920s, most physicians in the US were GPs who had com pleted medical school, followed by a one-year hospital-based internship (7). These generalists provided most of the medical care for the country during the first half of the 20th century (7). GPs had a broad scope of practice; they often set fractures, performed surgeries, delivered ba bies, and cared for most of the public’s medical needs (7). These GPs laid the groundwork for what Family Medicine would become (8). Some GPs typically performed house calls, while others treated patients out of their own homes. House calls con sisted of traveling and attending to patients in the patient’s home, and com prised 40% of all patient-physician interactions in 1930 (9).

Around the 1920s and 1930s, medical specialization became more formal, and residency training allowed new physicians to become “board certified” in a specific specialty, following completion of the residency (2). This schism of different tracks created tension between the older, aging GPs and the new er, residency-trained specialists, who felt that their additional training made them more fit for hospital privileges and procedural work (1). GPs, mean while, maintained that their experience and proven capability meant more than the newly created board requirements (1).

Some GPs, who had been performing surgeries prior to World War II, returned home from the War, and were told they no longer had hospital privileges, nor could they continue to operate (1). A growing feeling also began to arise in the medical community that one year of training following medical school was no longer sufficient to cover the breadth of knowledge required to provide comprehensive healthcare as a generalist (10). GPs began to advo cate for a residency of their own, in addition to the one-year internship, that would also allow them to become board certified and maintain hospital priv

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The 1910 Flexner Report.

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ileges (10). Attempting to retain their footing vis-a-vis the increasing number of powerful specialist societies, the American Academy of General Practice was formed in 1947. The Academy would later change its name to the Amer ican Academy of Family Physicians in 1971 (11).

The emphasis on specialization and the rapid increase in technology following World War II led to a decreased number of medical students choosing to become GPs (2). Over time, this led to a shortage of GPs that increased the cost, inaccessibility, and depersonalization of healthcare (2). This continued until the 1960s, when both the general public and public health lead ers strongly advocated for more physicians that were personal, longitudinal, comprehensive, and focused on prevention (12-14). Eventually this culmi nated in 1969 when Family Medicine was approved as a new specialty by both the AMA and the American Board of Medical Specialties (11).

Growth and Role of Family Medicine

Following the creation of Family Medicine, GPs gradually disappeared. Many became board certified in Family Medicine through continuing medical education and examination (11). While others chose to remain practicing as GPs, medical students largely abandoned pursuing this route, and primary care began to be provided by Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, and Family Med icine physicians (FMPs) (7,11). FMPs have continued to provide a larger portion of primary care, especially as fewer Internal Medicine residents pursue general internal medicine and instead decide to subspecialize (7). From 1961 to 1970, only 10% of Internal Medicine residents subspecialized, while 88% of residents from 2011 to 2015 chose to subspecialize within Internal Medicine, transferring a larger share of primary care to FMPs (7).

FMPs today now see more patients by volume than any other primary care specialty, accounting for approximately 23% of all physician visits in the US annually (2,15). While FMPs today work in an outpatient office rather than making house calls, they often still perform procedures and provide ob stetrics, emergency, and hospitalist care (16). This is especially prevalent in rural settings, where FMPs typically provide more comprehensive care and perform more procedures, due to the lack of surrounding specialists (16). In more urban areas, Family Medicine plays a key role in coordinating care when multiple specialists are consulted (16).

Currently, FMPs can subspecialize by completing a fellowship follow ing residency. Available fellowships in Family Medicine include: Adolescent Medicine, Geriatric Medicine, Hospice and Palliative Medicine, Maternal/ Women’s Health, Pain Medicine, Preventive Medicine, Rural Medicine, Sleep Medicine, and Sports Medicine (17).

As of 2020, there were 706 Family Medicine residency programs in the United States, and 4,355 medical students matched into these programs in 2020 (18). While this number of graduates represents the largest to enter the specialty in the history of Family Medicine, it is only 12.6% of all US grad uates who matched (18). The proportion of US MD seniors who match into Family Medicine has declined and was 8.6% in 2020, while the proportion of osteopathic (DO) seniors, US international graduates (IMGs), and foreign IMGs who matched into Family Medicine all increased in 2020 compared with the previous year (18). With a predicted primary care physician short age between 21,400 to 55,200 by the year 2033, the American Academy of Family Physicians initiated a goal in 2018 to increase the proportion of US medical graduates to 25% by the year 2030 (19,20).

Although some roles of Family Medicine have changed since the days of early GPs, the heart of Family Medicine is still the same–treating the whole patient, while developing long-term relationships and providing longitudinal care to the patients and their families (16). The focus of family physicians on wellness and prevention is a major reason why increased spending on primary care is expected to decrease overall healthcare spending on a per patient basis (21). As US healthcare continues to shift towards value-based care, the Family Medicine physician will play an integral role to improve patient and societal outcomes at lower costs (3).

Part II: Growing Up in a Mom and Pop General Practice

General Practice of medicine was the forerunner of today’s Family Medicine. General Practice, other than in rural America nowadays, is emblematic of an era gone by. However, in retrospect, for me (EV), it was a rich and pow erful experience growing up in it. Assuredly it has shaped me in infinite ways.

Let’s set the stage—semi-rural, late 1950s-1960s, small, sleepy town of 5000 in New York state (a cat, stuck up in a tree, was called the “town emergency”!), predominantly lower middle-class folks, with no hospital, no movie theater, nor shopping mall. On either side of our house were Italian immi grant families. Across the street was a pickle farm, and next door to the farm was the town’s mayor, also of Italian extraction (although at the time, ethnic ity never occurred to me, as we were all ‘just neighbors’). Behind our house was a small stream that my friends and I fished in. Behind the stream were woods that seem to go on for miles, and that we tromped through and picked sarsaparilla plants. Idyllic? Elysian? Paradise? In many ways, it was.

And now where our story is headed, and the protagonists: My Dad was the town doctor, and for much of my youth, the only doctor in the town. In the doctor’s office, Mom was the nurse, the receptionist, the operations man

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ager, the radiology technologist, and the chief financial officer. Oh yes, her relevant training for this multiplicity of jobs? None! She graduated college with an elementary school teaching degree.

Dad, who went straight from medical school to internship to become a practicing General Practitioner.

Mom, who despite no medical training, was the nurse, radiology technologist, operations manager, receptionist, and chief financial officer.

More of the setting—by today’s standards, our house was undoubtedly modest. My recollection is hearing my parents say that they bought the house for $12,000. The main floor had a living room, dining room, kitchen, 2 bath rooms, and 3 bedrooms. In the northeast, an attic and a basement were typical parts of these houses. The house was set on about 1.5 acres, enough land that my friends and I, when young, converted the backyard into a baseball field.

Now to the basement of the house where we find my Dad’s of fice. It consisted of a treatment room with an examination table, a glass cabinet with all kinds of medical and surgical instruments, a ster ilizer, a diathermy machine (never did know what that was for), a big lamp for reflection of light so my Dad could look into patients’ mouths, eyes, ears, and God knows what else. Rounding out the office was a waiting room with about 8 chairs, a bath

Sitton and vanSonnenberg

The side entrance to the doctor’s office in the basement of the house.

room, and my Dad’s personal office where he had discussions with pa tients and families. My recollection of the office was the abundance of medical books filling the bookshelves, his many awards from civic groups and the State Police. (He was the “Police Surgeon” for a portion of the State. He even had a police shield that the State Troopers mounted on the license plate on the back of his car that enabled him to rush to acci dent scenes.)

Completing the office was the ra diology room with an adjacent dark room with chemicals with which my Mom somehow magically made black x-ray film into real-life radiology im ages that my Dad “read”, and that he loved to show to his 8-year-old son. As a side note, my Dad had no formal radiology training; rather, after he graduated medical school, he did one year of internship, and then off to General Practice in our small town. So, what was the formal training for my Dad in radiology? None. As a relevant corollary, formal training for my Mom for the radiology machinations that she did—also none. Fast forward to their proge ny, who went to medical school, and became—you guessed it…a Radiologist! (Specifically, an Interventional Radiologist.)

Despite the lack of formal training, my Dad, quite careful by nature, apparently well appreciated the hazards of radiation. So, whenever Mom and Dad were taking an x-ray, my Dad rang, no kidding, a cowbell. This signaled to everyone, both upstairs and downstairs, to leave the house immediately, rain, snow, or shine, until the radiation dispersed. Going outside in the summer, albeit briefly, was no big deal. However, doing so during the cold of winter, often with snow on the ground, was much less pleasant. But when that cowbell rang, we all knew very well to drop everything and exit the house immediately.

Let’s now go upstairs and saunter around the main level of the house. Wait, is that a Catholic nun walking around in traditional nun’s garb? Is that not a State Trooper sitting in the living room? What month is it? Oh, it’s February, it’s New York state, and it’s snowing and 25° outside. Let’s check downstairs in the waiting room—oh, all 8 seats are filled with patients waiting to see the doctor. So, it’s the “overflow” of patients waiting to see the doctor who have

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Dad and granddaughter Emily, pointing to the shield on his car, mounted by the State Troopers.

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now migrated upstairs into the living quarters of the house. Why a nun? Well, Mom and Dad’s policy was that all clergy, from any religion, were treated gratis. In the next town from ours was a convent with nuns, hence a steady stream of nuns blessed our house, virtually whenever there were office hours. But why the State Troopers? In a similar vein, all firefighters and police were treated for free as well. As noted previously, Dad was the “Police Surgeon” for a portion of the State, although by training, he was not a surgeon (Nonethe less, GPs like him did perform minor surgery.)

And while he was not an obstetrician, GPs at that time also delivered ba bies. Reportedly, he delivered a wellknown male, whose good looks and acting eventually made him a “heartthrob” actor of the 1970s. (For HIPAA reasons, he must go unnamed.) Dad also occasionally brought me down to his office (also by ringing the cowbell) at different times to meet several famous baseball players and a very well-known actor, each of whom had been brought by the State Troopers for Dad to document that they were violating DUI laws. For me, as a young kid, I was in awe of all of them, although I vaguely remember that they smelled kind of funny and acted a little weird (undoubtedly the excessive alcohol effect!)

During my 17 years in the house, besides Mom and Dad and my younger sister, 2 other women lived with us. First was Ella from South Carolina, and then Priscilla from Honduras. Each was meaningful to my growing up. Ella was like an older sister, Priscilla like a wise aunt. They truly lived with us, in one of the three bedrooms in our relatively small house by today’s standards. Their reasons for being there were largely to care for the office downstairs, although they did some upstairs cleaning and cooking as well. My recollection is that they lived with us for 5 days a week, then were off with family and friends for the other two days. To me as a kid, they seemed part of the family (Ella more so, as I was younger). Anecdotally, Ella once helped me hide from my parents that New Year’s Day, when, at 13 years old, I was recovering from a drunken stupor having partied with my friends the prior evening. That awful alcohol feeling lasted over 10 years, and dissuaded me from drinking alcohol all throughout college, despite influences by my Colgate TKE fraternity brothers to the contrary.

Restored human bones that Dad kept in his office to help explain maladies to patients.

After Dad died, we got a startling revelation from Priscilla. Although our household growing up was largely agnostic with hardly any religious discus sion, Priscilla told us that early in the mornings (Dad and Priscilla were early risers), Priscilla, a devout Christian, would read verses from the Bible to Dad almost daily before the rest of us were awake. She even had specifics to relate to us—that Dad’s favorite passages were from John (especially 3:16) and Phi lippians. We were amazed, as he had never told us about this. I’ve wondered what influence that may have had, as he was so dedicated and unselfish of his time to his patients.

Now some further recollections—my Dad loved taking me on house calls with him when I was a youngster. It was not always at my request, as some times I had to wait for him in the car (As a physician myself now, I suppose that was because he was concerned about contagiousness of infection.) As he typically made house calls, I can vividly remember him carrying his medical bag in one hand and an EKG machine in the other hand as he entered patients’ homes. He typically had a wad of one-dollar bills in his back pocket, as apparently that was how patients paid, and probably not very much, given the preponderance of one-dollar bills! Some patients defrayed their bills by barter—for example, an elderly native Italian artisan, whose whole family was cared for by my Dad, built a columnated, concrete fence around our property. Handymen were common in the house, as they and Dad worked out their arrangements.

Another vivid memory I can recall as a 7 to 10-year-old included seeing bodies strewn on the road in a multicar accident on a highway about 15 miles from our house. In emergencies such as these, the State Troopers came to our house and took Dad (and occasionally me) to the scene of the accidents. EMTs, trauma centers, and the specialty of Emergency Medicine came into being later.

After I left my medical and radiology training in Boston, my family and I moved to San Diego, where I worked at the UCSD Medical Center. Mom and Dad came out from New York to California in a motorhome to visit us. (They actually stopped along the way in various states, as he made house calls to several patients across the country who had moved from our small town.) Lo and behold, Dad had a heart attack while in San Diego, and underwent triple cardiac bypass surgery. They stayed with us for three months while Dad recovered. Once people from our small town in New York state found out about Dad, we were bombarded with daily calls, wishing and praying for Dad’s recovery. Testimonials like, “Your Dad took care of my grandma, my husband, my children, and myself”, were so very common. I tell medical stu

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dents currently that, “If you want to be loved, appreciated, and esteemed by your patients long-term, it would be hard to beat being a small-town Family Medicine doctor.”

In retrospect, my upbringing was a blessing, although, at the time, I never realized how special it was—it was just our lives—but how fortunate for me. That last concept segues from my upbringing in a Mom and Pop General Practitioner home to today’s Family Medicine doctors. As I am proud of my co-author, Zach, as his mentor, so my Dad and Mom would be proud of him and today’s FMPs to carry on the dedication and exemplary doctor-patient relationship that is no more apparent in medicine than in the specialty of Family Medicine.

*University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix Corresponding Author and Contact Info: Zach Sitton MD Email: zachsitton2@gmail.com Phone: 4806957201 Address: 845 Brent St. Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27103

References

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2. Gutierrez C, Scheid P. The history of family medicine and its impact in US health care delivery. Leawood, KS: AAFP Foundation, 1-31 (2002).

3. Starfield B, Shi L, Macinko J. Contribution of primary care to health systems and health. Milbank Q., 83: 457–502(2005).

4. Macinko J, Starfield B, Shi L. Quantifying the health benefits of pri mary care physician supply in the United States. Int J Health Serv., 37(1): 111–126 (2007).

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6. Zervanos, N. J. Why the generalist became a specialist: a history of General Practice and Family Medicine. https://www.aafpfoundation.org/content/dam/foundation/documents/who-we-are/cfhm/ conductingresearch/Generalist_to_Specialist.pdf. Accessed May 21, (2020).

7. Dalen JE, Ryan KJ, Alpert JS. Where have the generalists gone? They became specialists, then subspecialists. Am J Med., 130: 766–768 (2017).

8. Canfield PR. Family medicine: an historical perspective. J Med Educ. 1976; 51(11): 904–11.

9. Meyer GS, Gibbons RV. House calls to the elderly--a vanishing prac tice among physicians. N Engl J Med., 337(25): 1815-1820 (1987).

10. Pisacano NJ. “History of the Specialty”. American Board of Family Medicine, https://www.theabfm.org/about/history.aspx (2001).

11. Phillips WR, Dai M, Frey III J, Peterson LE. General Practitioners in US medical practice compared with Family Physicians. Ann Fam Med., 18(2): 127-130 (2020).

12. Citizens Commission on Graduate Medical Education (Millis JS, chairman). The Graduate Education of Physicians. Chicago: Ameri can Medical Association, 179 (1966).

13. National Commission on Community Health Services. (Folsom MB, Chair). Health is a Community affair. Cambridge Mass: Har vard University Press, 26 (1966).

14. Ad Hoc Committee on Education for Family Practice (Willard Committee). Meeting the Challenge of Family Practice. Chicago: American Medical Association; 1966; 1.

15. Cherry DK, Woodwell DA, Rechtsteiner EA. National Ambula tory Medical Care Survey: 2005 summary. Adv Data., 387: 1–39 (2007).

16. American Academy of Family Physicians. Family Medicine: Com prehensive Care for the Whole Person. https://www.aafp.org/med ical-school-residency/choosing-fm/model.html. Accessed May 22, 2020.

17. Lindbloom, E. Fellowships in Family Medicine: Who? What? Where? When? Why? American Academy of Family Physicians.

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https://www.aafp.org/dam/AAFP/documents/events/nc/handouts/ nc17-fellowships-2.pdf. Accessed August 13, 2020.

18. American Academy of Family Physicians. 2019 Match Results for Family Medicine. https://www.aafp.org/students-residents/residency-program-directors/national-resident-matching-program-results. html. Accessed March 3, 2021.

19. Association of American Medical Colleges. The Complexities of Physician Supply and Demand: Projections from 2018 to 2033. June 2020. https://www.aamc.org/system/files/2020-06/strat comm-aamc-physician-workforce-projections-june-2020.pdf. Accessed March 3, 2021.

and vanSonnenberg

20. Prunuske, J. America Needs More Family Doctors: 25×2030 Col laborative Aims to Get More Medical Students into Family Medicine. Am Fam Physician., 101(2):82-83 (2020).

21. Phillips RL, Bazemore AW. Primary care and why it matters for U.S. health system reform. Health Aff., 29:806–10 (2010).

The world’s greatest thinkers have often been amateurs; for high thinking is the outcome of fine and independent living, and for that a professional chair offers no special opportunities

Havelock Ellis

Catherine A. Steele, Apache Educator and Arizona Living Legacy

Christine Marin (Editor’s note: This essay on Catherine Steele, Apache educator, is based on her nomination by Professor Marin to the Arizona Women’s Hall of Fame, to which she was inducted in 2020.)

“I am just sitting here, wonder ing,” she asked herself. “What are we not doing with our students? They come to school every day wanting and willing to learn with an infectious eagerness.” From 1965, when she began working at the age of eighteen for the Rice School District #20, until 2016, when she retired at the age of sixty-nine as Superintendent of the San Carlos Unified School District # 20, Catherine A. Steele has been asking and answering her own question. Her goal has always been to find ways to change and improve the academic culture of children and high school students on the Apache Indian reservation in San Carlos and make them successful learners and leaders for her tribe.

As an Apache Indian woman born in San Carlos on October 13, 1947, Catherine A. Steele was the face of the San Carlos school district. She was the first Apache woman to hold the position of Superintendent. She always had a distinctive characteristic about her, defining her, shaping her—the charac teristic called drive. The drive to do better to help her tribe, to help her com munity, to help children. And the personal drive to improve her reservation through schooling and education. She became a change-agent by becoming an educated woman and using that education to help her Apache tribe.

Catherine began her career as an instructional aide in 1965 at the Rice Elementary School in San Carlos and became a teacher’s aide in 1967, one among a group of twenty-eight aides hired by the District with federal funds available through President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty program.

Catherine A. Steele

Marin | Essay

Catherine helped develop a strong link between the school district and her San Carlos tribe, the community and the parents, reassuring them that the district was committed to goals and standards to motivate their children to learn and become good students. As an Aide in the classroom and as assigned by the teacher, for example, Catherine helped children learn new reading, spelling, and English-speaking skills and helped them improve hand-andfinger dexterity by learning how to hold pencils when writing numbers and letters, important skills for children in grades kindergarten to third.

These were also important learning years for Catherine herself because they convinced her that teaching the children of San Carlos was what she was meant to do. During that time, Catherine took a personal leave from the classroom to marry and raise a family on the reservation. But she returned to the classroom to continue working for the District.

Catherine also began attending classes in education at Eastern Arizona College in Thatcher, earning her Associate degree, and returned to the San Carlos classroom, this time as a teacher. She learned new lessons on how to become a more efficient teacher, and went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts in Education degree from Arizona State University. She later earned her master’s degree in Educational Leadership at Northern Arizona University, receiving Principal and Superintendent Certifications.

By 1978, Catherine was working with the Rice and San Carlos schools to apply for funds under the Education of the Handicap Act. In 1994, she as sumed the duties as Director of Federal Programs for the San Carlos District. She rose in the administrative ranks and was selected in 2000 as Intermediate Principal of Rice School. She was later named its Principal, at a time when the San Carlos Reservation was depicted by a writer for the Eastern Arizona Courier as “one of the poorest Native American communities in the United States… [with] 60 percent of the people [living] under the poverty line, and 68 percent of the active labor force … unemployed.”

The education of reservation children was an urgency for Catherine. When tribal leaders took advantage of the 2008 Federal nutrition program, known as Nutrition Assistance in Arizona, Catherine saw to it that reserva tion children were provided healthy and nutritious food to help off-set poor diets that lead to risks of educational failure and impaired brain development in children. The breakfast and lunch meals did make a difference in school performances of children, and parents supported the District’s efforts.

Catherine became Associate Superintendent of San Carlos Unified School District in 2013 and Superintendent in 2014. She excelled in her new positions and gained new recognition for the District when it participated in

2013 and 2014 with other Arizona school districts in the Arizona Ready-forRigor Project, part of the U.S. Department of Education’s Teacher Incentive Fund, with its $43.9 million grant administered by ASU’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. The grant developed and rewarded teachers and adminis trative excellence. San Carlos’ Rice Elementary School earned the 2014 Educational Excellence Impact Award for its increase in testing scores from a “C” grade in 2012-13 to an “A” grade in 2013-14. More than 2,000 teachers and administrators from fifty-nine schools across ten Arizona school districts participated in the Ready for Rigor Project. Catherine Steele was among ten Su perintendents honored and was awarded the “Partner of Distinction Award.”

A “trail blazer”, they called her. “A role model our community can always look back on with pride,” they said. When the District announced the retire ment of Superintendent Catherine Steele at the end of the fiscal year, 2016, it noted that she had worked for the San Carlos schools for at least 40 years, and that “she touched the lives of every family within the San Carlos Apache community with her many years of service and the dedication to the education of every child…Her influence and vision will continue for many years to come.”

Catherine A. Steele, a living legacy of Arizona. An Apache Indian woman of substance and distinction and a drive to improve the education of reserva tion students.

Essay

I’m focusing on cultivating my land. I have vegetables and fruit trees; I want to get some chickens and solar and really get off the grid and focus on just, really, being a mother.

Angela Lindvall

Golden Days of Hollywood I

Paul Jackson

Golden Days of Hollywood II

Paul Jackson

Arts

The Mice Will Play

JoAnn Yeoman Tongret

Cast:

Spencer - 40-something. Starting to degenerate physically. A neighbor who is supposed to be protecting his vacationing friend’s home. He is introduced to us during a phone call voiceover, but soon enters the stage as one of the two characters. (If the phone-call voice-over is a problem technically, the director might choose to isolate each character in a split stage light for the phone call segment.)

Jinx - 20-something. Slender. A fledgling thief. Inept, vulnerable, and a bit mysterious. Lives in the moment.

Time: An afternoon in the 70’s.

Place: The living room of a home in a suburban neighborhood.

A living room in suburbia. There are a couple of chairs, a TV, a small table, maybe an easy chair, a lamp or two. There is a night light just visible on the floor in a corner, but otherwise most illumination is coming from a central win dow which can be a frame hung from the flies. Other exits are out of sight in the wings. After a moment we can see the figure of a man peeking into the window. After making sure that no one is there he begins to pry the sill open. He is successful and leans into the room. He drops his crowbar (or claw hammer) inside the room and swears. He carefully mimes lifting the window, and crawls in. Once in he tries to close the window but when the phone rings he drops his tool bag in fright and then panics at the noise both of these objects make. The phone stops ringing. He checks again that no one heard him and starts to look around. He is clearly disappointed at the lack of possible value in the room. He turns on one of the lamps. The phone rings again (land line). Without thinking (perhaps out of habit or just to stop the intrusion) he goes to answer it. (If the phone call voice-over is a problem technically, the director might choose to isolate each character in a split stage light for the phone call segment.)

JINX (Picking up the receiver on a land line) Hello.

SPENCER (Voice-over from his home next door.) Whaddaya’ mean hello?

JINX Who is this?

SPENCER (Voice-over continues) Well who the hell are you? Where’s Bob?

JINX Uh ... I’m Bob.

SPENCER (Voice-over continues) No you’re not! What are you doing in Bob’s house? Bob’s in St. Thomas with Mildred and the kids.

JINX I knew that—I’m—house-sitting.

SPENCER (Voice-over continues) No way! I’m supposed to be taking care of the place.

JINX (Pretense is useless.) Well you’re doing a crappy job of it! You don’t even know who’s here.

SPENCER (Voice-over continues) Cut that out! So what are you doing there? Have you broken in?

JINX Like I’m going to tell you.

SPENCER (Voice-over continues) Do you have a gun?

JINX Absolutely not! Are you crazy? Guns are dangerous.

SPENCER (Voice-over continues) Alright, then what are you doing there? Are you a thief?

JINX Honestly ... I had hopes, but there’s nothing here worth stealing. I was just about to leave when you called. (Pause.) Why did you call if you knew nobody was home? That’s no way to check up on security.

SPENCER (Voice-over continues) Well it worked, didn’t it? How’d you get in anyway?

Tongret

The Lively Arts

Tongret | The Lively Arts

JINX Jimmied the window.

SPENCER (Voice-over continues) You idiot, there’s a key under the fake frog by the door.

JINX Well, Bob didn’t leave me that memo.

SPENCER (Voice-over continues) Whaddaya’ mean there’s nothing worth stealing. Bob’s always talking about his Ming Dynasty “vaaahses” or his mondo inch screen or ...

JINX Boy, what a blow-hard. There’s nothing like that here.

SPENCER (Voice-over continues) Well take a look around and check the vase ... for me, OK?

JINX (Looks around and picks up the only vase in sight: a 6” dollar store product.) It doesn’t even say “made in China” much less have an artist’s signature. Jeeze I thought this was a neighborhood worth the trouble.

SPENCER (Voice-over continues) Don’t be a smart ass. We aren’t all like Bob, ya’ know. For your information you are in an upwardly mobile area.

JINX Deepest apologies. Listen, I gotta go.

SPENCER (Voice-over continues) Look, I’m not gonna’ call the cops. You sound like a stand-up guy. Let’s just trade favors. The wife is hosting a baby shower and I’m goin’ nuts! Is there anything more boring than a baby shower? There must be thirty women here all squealing at once. Can I just come over and chew the fat with you? Maybe watch the game. Come on, just until the dames are gone. (Pause.) I’ll help you fix the window. You following the Series?

JINX Sort of. I don’t know.

SPENCER (Voice-over continues) Sure you do. We’ll watch the game to gether. Is there anything in the fridge?

JINX I don’t know.

SPENCER (Voice-over continues) Well go look!

JINX Hang on. (Goes out the wings into the kitchen and returns.) There’s nothin’.

SPENCER OK. I’m bringing a six pack. Don’t go ‘way. (JINX replaces the receiver carefully and walks a few paces into the room, looking half-heartedly around. Suddenly has a thought and starts looking in his pockets for a hanky. Nothing there. Looks around the room and finds a lace doily under a lamp. Pulls it out almost knocking the lamp over. He runs to the phone and tries to wipe his fingerprints off the receiver. Same with the window sill and begins to tidy the mess under the window. The doorbells rings. He panics, drops everything and hides behind a chair. Bell rings again.)

SPENCER (from outside) Hey. Open up. It’s me.

JINX Who’s me?

SPENCER Spencer. Open up.

JINX I don’t know a Spencer.

SPENCER From next door. From the phone.

JINX Oh, right. Don’t you have a key? What about the frog?

SPENCER Holy smoke, forget the frog! My hands are full. Just ... just open the door.

JINX (Lets SPENCER in, they re-enter.) Sorry. I got nervous.

SPENCER (with tool box, a six pack, and a bottle of bourbon.) Listen, buddy, you are in the wrong business. You don’t have the smarts for this breaking in stuff. Look at you. Sit down

The Lively Arts

Tongret | The Lively Arts

before you fall down. (JINX sits. SPENCER puts the tools down and looks around.) This the kitchen? (Exits into wings.) Be right back. (He returns with a bottle opener and hands

JINX a beer.) This will settle your stomach. And (holding up the bourbon) I brought an appropriate chaser. So ... what’s your name?

JINX Jinx. Just Jinx.

SPENCER I won’t ask why you got named that. (Opens a beer for himself.) Cheers.

JINX (toasting) Thanks.

SPENCER (settling in) So, how long you been stealing junk? Make any money?

JINX About a month. No.

SPENCER Yeah. Figures. (pause) You’re not very good at this.

JINX Thanks a lot.

SPENCER I’m dying of hunger. Those little roll-up things that my wife made for the party didn’t make a dent. I’m gonna call for a pizza, OK?

JINX I don’t have any money.

SPENCER How did I know that? That’s OK. (flashes his wallet) it’s on me; pay day. Hang on, (goes to phone) this place has great pizza. Hi, yeah, I wanna order two large pizzas. One Hawaiian (nods OK? to JINX who agrees) and one peanut butter. How long? That’s OK. No rush. We’re gonna watch the game. I’m at 343, oops, sorry 347 Linden. Thanks. (Hangs up.) Where were we? (Opens the bourbon and takes a drink from the bottle.) Right, you need to look into a different profession. You are terrible at this. What did you used to do? (Hands bottle to Jinx who takes a drink and hands it back.)

JINX For a while I sold insurance. Then I worked at a drug store, a Chinese food restaurant, a hardware outlet, and a deli. (Pause.) Oh, yeah. And a traveling carnival.

SPENCER No way! What’d ya’ do there?

JINX I told fortunes, sort of.

SPENCER No wonder you decided to take up stealing. (Takes a swig.) Yeah, I can see you with a crystal ball.

JINX No, I was really good at that. I AM good at that. That’s why they fired me. See, I read tarot cards and ...

SPENCER (Offers the bottle to JINX, who shakes head “Na.”) Like at a casino or somethin’?

JINX No. I used to ... I can tell people their probable future or what to look out for.

SPENCER Yeah. I’m sure you’re great at that. (Silence) Make much money telling fortunes?

JINX You’re not taking me seriously. (He seems agitated and takes the cards from his jacket pocket.)

SPENCER Oh, don’t be sore. Come on, let’s get to the game and some serious drinking. (SPENCER grabs a chair, puts the bottle on a small table between them; he positions the TV set. He tries to turn it on, but it’s broken.) Can you believe this? The damn thing’s broken! (In frustration.) OK then, show me how good you are at this fortune thing.

JINX No, I just wanted to show you the cards so that you’d believe me.

Tongret

The Lively Arts

SPENCER No, can’t wiggle out now. Show me! (Takes a drink, puts the bottle on the floor; grabs JINX’s wrist and puts the card box on the table.) Show me.

Tongret | The Lively Arts

JINX I don’t want to do this. I don’t do it just for fun.

SPENCER Well do it for me. I’m your host, right? Besides I can still call the police.

JINX You might not like it.

SPENCER Well, make sure that I do. Conjure me up some fabulous future; and a new rich young wife while you’re at it.

JINX (Hands SPENCER the deck.) Shuffle the deck (SPENCER does so and starts to hand them back to JINX.) No, I can’t touch them yet. Now cut them. (SPENCER does so.)

SPENCER Now, Mr. Wizard, can you “touch” them now? (Takes another drink.)

JINX You won’t be able to understand them properly if you drink any more.

SPENCER I understand that you are a crazy bastard, con-man, a failure and I’m buying you lunch, so deal!

JINX OK. (Reluctantly) I’m going to put three cards down in a triangle facing you. (Does so.) Tarot interpretation is some what flexible based on the reader and the subject. My interpretation will ...

SPENCER Well, that’s a great “out” if nothing comes true.

JINX (Ignoring SPENCER) My interpretation can become positive or negative depending on your own decisions. You are a part of the equation.

SPENCER Get on with it. (One last big swallow.)

JINX There are four suits: Cups, Wands, ...

SPENCER Forget that. Read me what these do.

JINX But ...

SPENCER (slams fist on table) Now!

JINX This Moon card often implies a hidden meaning or a misunderstanding. It may be either in the past or in the near future. It warns that ...

SPENCER It don’t warn nothing, got it? Don’t you or your dopey cards warn me.

JINX Yes, fine. This next card is Justice and indicates the possibility of retribution or the opportunity to change current plans.

SPENCER (Starting to succumb to the efforts of the bourbon: slurred speech, lack of coordination.) Great. How ‘bout this one?

JINX This is the Tower and I’m afraid that it’s a rather dark card. Maybe conflict or ...

SPENCER Good. What’s next?

JINX Well, if there were other players they would put their cards down and they might interact with yours. That’s part of the flexible nature of interpretation.

SPENCER Good. You put your cards down.

JINX Well, I really shouldn’t ...

SPENCER Now!

JINX (Lays one down.) My first card is the Fool.

SPENCER Ha!

JINX Well, he can be a positive influence. Maybe new beginnings, taking some risks to move on. But because of the Tower, this might not be so positive ...

Tongret

The Lively Arts

The Lively Arts

Tongret

SPENCER This is stupid. (Gets up and wanders around the room.) I should a’ stayed at the baby shower. You are worse than no company at all.

JINX Sorry. (Starts to collect cards.) I’d better leave.

SPENCER (Grabs crow bar and blocks JINX.) No. You owe me some entertainment. (Stalks JINX slowly around the room.) No more cards. What else can we come up with?

JINX Look. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ... Just let me take my cards and go.

SPENCER (Starts to close in but kicks the bottle with his foot, trips and falls.) Oh oops. Oh, ouch ... (Moans a little and loses consciousness.)

JINX Gee, Spencer. (Leans over him.) Are you OK? I’m so sorry. You’ll be all right I think. (Grabs a pillow from the chair and puts it under SPENCER’S head.) That’s better. (Digs in SPENCER’S pocket and empties his wallet.) I’m sorry I have to do this. I’m leaving you enough for the pizza -- OK? (Tucks a few bills into SPENCER’S limp hand.) I’ve got to go. I’ll lock the door behind me. (Collects his cards, returns them to box and jacket. Retrieves bag and crow bar.) I hope your wife had a truly fine party. (Starts toward front door to exit and turns back for a moment.) I tried to tell you. You really can’t cheat the cards, you know. (Exits)

THE END

Mother-kill

What kind of man— Or woman

Can do the deed of mother-kill? Can the hands of those she birthed Thrust the sword of vengeance

Through her heart?

This mother bared her breast And fed them milk But blood as well While serpents coiled about her feet

Waiting for their time and place.

Her mother’s milk Unnourishing— She bred instead, Fury, Evil, And hands to thrust the sword For mother-kill.

Her children she marked for death

To warm her lover’s bed.

Their father’s feet Axed off. She did the deed While he bathed; His Trojan mistress Hacked to death.

Mother and her lover Must die as well.

Son and daughter Sought revenge

For their dead father. Have they forgotten He sacrificed their sister For fair winds To Troy?

“Peace, peace, To live out my life in peace,” The son calls out. The gods intrude, Athena most of all, Calls off the Furies Now Eumenides, Deems these children Innocent.

Can Aeropagus justice Erase the deed Of mother-kill?

Beatrice Gordon

Three Poems

Charles Brownson

Down In the River

Down in the river the fish are making a list of what to pack for the trip.

The authentic fish, the old ones in the mist, came this way.

The way goes up the river’s lift and into the secret trees where the once fish live, those old ones who can only teach the wisdom of the undrawn breath and knowledge of inchoate wish.

Cold coffee

Cold coffee in the microwave, half a once-frozen bagel. Five a.m. There are shrubs needing to go into the ground to hide their roots from the sun.

The finches are awake, breakfasting on thistle seeds. Five a.m. There are holes dug, holes pulled out of the dry ground, waiting, in which to bury the sun.

Five a.m. Feral cats wait, hoping to steal a bird, as I hope to steal the sun’s breakfast and hide myself as in that other story. I don’t know how it ends, but then nobody does. Meanwhile there are bushes unburied, birds unfed, a pot of coffee to make. Black, bitter, without sugar. Sugar poisonous as sunshine.

The Great Wheel turns, driving the engines which in their turn light a little sun in my kitchen at five a.m. With a cold bagel I wait, wondering what to do next.

A shopping list for my confinement, to deal with all of you

a blanket Ford Prefect an honest character Montaigne virtu Machiavelli a gate Wu Men’s on 48th obscurity R Chandler under cover of darkness Scarbo, on sale at Daedalus a burden Vishnu despair Kierkegaard’ 2 for one with coupon at Dalek’s new notebook widely available a chocolate confession

A small romance

- What can I get for you?

- I’ll tell you in a minute. But first I want to ask you a question.

- Yes?

- Will you go out with me? Excuse me?

I’m asking if I can take you out somewhere. Like on a date? Yes. Just like that?

Yes. That’s right.

Well the answer is no. Just like that. Why not? Do you have a boyfriend?

- No. No boyfriend. Not at the moment. I just recently got here.

- I know. Your English is good.

- Thank you.

- You still haven’t given me your answer. I told you no.

But you didn’t say why.

I don’t know you, that’s why.

You know me. I come in here all the time.

What, once or twice a week? To me you are a customer like every body else. You’re polite, I serve you and then you go.

- If I came in more often, told you my name would you then consider going out with me?

I don’t know. Now, are you ready to order or should I come back? Yes, yes, I’m ready. . . . . . . .

You are a persistent person, aren’t you?

I can’t help it. I’m attracted to you.

Why? Why me? Why not one of the other girls?

That should be obvious. I’m smitten by you. Smitten?

Captured by, taken with, enchanted by.

- And again I ask, why?

- I don’t know. What makes a person attracted to another, that’s one of the great mysteries of life, I suppose. What can I say, your looks, your smile, your bearing? I don’t know. I came in here, you came to the table, we talked and I was attracted.

- I’m not understanding any of this.

Then I don’t know how to explain it any better. I like you, I want to be with you, I might even be in love with you. Want?

To be with you the way a man wants to be with a woman.

- You mean sex.

- Yes, sex. But other things as well.

- Such as?

- Well, to talk to you. Watch you frown and smile. Look at your hair, the way you wear your clothes, everything.

But sex is a part of it, right?

Sex is always a part of it when men and women get together. But it might be love as well.

- You are crazy, you know that?

Then give me a chance, please? Go out with me. Just once, please. I have to go, we’re getting busy. Please?

I don’t know. We’ll see. Now excuse me.

. . . . . . .

This is nice. I’m glad you like it. You’re a crazy person. You know that don’t you? Why? What makes you say that? The way you talk. The way you come on. It’s very direct. Very per

Prose

Prose

sonal. Are you like that all the time?

No. In fact, I’m just the opposite. But with you I couldn’t help it. I looked at you and had to speak up right away.

- Why?

I didn’t want someone else, some other man talking to you first. This has happened before?

Unfortunately it has. Many times. But the one I remember most involved a waitress as well. This was a while ago. I went into this restaurant and was immediately attracted to the waitress who came over to serve me. She was attracted to me too. At least by the way she was acting I got the impression she was. I wanted to say something, do something. But something inside said “Take it slow. Don’t come on so fast. Let her get to know you a little then ask her out.” So I did. Know what happened?”

- No, what?

The next day when I went by the restaurant she was gone. I thought that maybe it was her day off. So I went the following day and the day after that. Finally I asked and was told that she was gone. Quit and moved on.

Did you try to find her?

No. It was no use. I didn’t know her name or anything about her. Plus I had no legitimate reason for asking anything about her. So I didn’t. She was gone and that was it.

That probably happens to other people all the time, don’t you think?

Sure. My problem is I think about her all then time. How she was, how she looked and what might have been if I had only said some thing.

So now you make it your business to be very direct.

No. I haven’t had that feeling about anyone since her except for you. But all I said was “Hello. What would you like?”

I know. And it wasn’t anything you did or said. It was me. All me. I got that same feeling and I didn’t want to make the same mistake again.

You know, you’re very interesting. You think so?

Yes. Crazy but interesting.

……..

I used to be married.

Yes?

It didn’t work out. We broke up. He came home one day and said “That’s it. I’m leaving.” I didn’t know what to say or do. I had no warning. I thought everything was good with us and then one day he comes and says this to me.

I find that hard to believe.

What?

- That anyone would want to leave you.

- Well you can believe it. Hans, my husband did. I’m not so perfect as you might think.

None of us are.

You say you are in love with me and I don’t understand why, but I believe you.

Good. Because it’s true.

-

- You know that I will probably hurt you.

- I’ll take that chance.

I wish I could say I love you but I can’t. I like you. I like you very much. But at the moment I don’t know what I want. I’m new here.

I left my country because I wanted to start fresh. Fresh at what, I don’t know. I’m not a child as you can see. I should know what I want but I don’t.

Look, I’m not asking for a commitment or anything like that. All I’m asking is that we see each other on a regular basis and see where things go from there.

And what if I decide that it’s someone else I’m interested in. Some one else I want to see.

- Then we’ll have tried and that’s the way it goes.

- And you’re willing to take that chance. Yes.

You are crazy.

I know. Give me your hand.

Prose

Edwards

Yes?

Will you come home with me and spend the night?

And if I say no, I won’t see you again, I suppose.

- Now who’s the one that’s talking crazy?

- I know men who make that a rule. The first-time bed. And if not then goodbye.

I’m not like that. Like I said before, I can be patient. And what if it’s never?

Then that would be something else again.

Yes. You would have wasted a lot of time. I’ll take that chance. I don’t care. But let me tell you something else.

- What?

- I want you to marry me.

- Now I know that you’re crazy. A minute ago you say you’re ready to be patient. Now you’re asking me this. What do you say?

This is moving much too fast. That’s what I say.

So you tell me. How fast should I go? Not this fast. That’s all I know.

. . . . . . . .

So you’ve been married. Twice.

Is that because you rushed the others the way you’re trying to rush me?

- No. In those other cases we had long courtships and time together. In both cases we were very careful and very sensible about every thing. And it still turned to crap. That’s how I found out none of that matters. You go with the impulse. That’s all that’s all that’s important. Going with the impulse and hoping for the best.

And your impulse, that tells you we should be married. Yes. But what about yours?

Mine tells me that I should run. Run very fast. But I’m not. I’m sitting here with you.

So what does that tell you?

That I am in a rocky boat that is about to turn over. But you’re willing to try it anyway.

- Somebody told me that Americans were crazy.. Now I know why.

- I don’t think we’re more crazy than anyone else.

- No, I suppose not.

- So what’s the answer? Is it yes or no? You want to be with me that badly. I want to be with you all the time. That’s nice. What?

To be chased. To be pursued. But you know what would be nicer? What?

To be romanced.

I thought that’s what I was doing. What do you want? Flowers, music, poetry?

I would like for it to be slow and not in such a hurry. And yes, I would like flowers and nice words. Is that stupid and silly at my age? No. Not at all.

Sex is nice . But romance should be a part of it, don’t you think?

- Absolutely. But just remember one thing.

- And what is that?

- Romance is a two-way street. Oh yes, I know. And I promise to be romantic as well.

The end.

Gus Edwards

Edwards

Prose

Homeless or Houseless?

Richard Jacob

The Book: Nomadland, Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, Jessica Bruder. W. W. Norton & Company, New York, NY, 2017 (JB)

The Movie: Nomadland, Chloé Zhao, Director; Frances McDormand, David Strathairn; Linda May, Bob Wells, Charlene Swankie; Searchlight Pictures, 2020.

Driving frequently between Phoenix and Los Angeles, one becomes famil iar with the oasis town of Quartzsite. Bisected by Interstate 10 and twenty miles east of the California border and Colorado River, it is a spread-out random collection of gas stations, fast food restaurants and miscellaneous shops. Perhaps one even stops there for lunch. But during the winter, it is also home to thousands of RV’s, mobile homes, trailers of all descriptions, vans, cars and tents, most of which are in desert campsites far beyond the view of those driv ing through. The residents of these “temporary” homes raise the Quartzsite population from the summer’s 3500 to more than 250,000. They gather in an annual migration from points throughout the United States, most sharing a common circumstance: they have been economically squeezed out of the American dream of owning a “sticks and bricks” house.

For most, many of whom are retirees or the “downsized” unemployed, a nomadic life is their new reality. Indeed, there is a common defiance. In the words of the wheeled nomads’ guru, Bob Wells, who organizes the massive

At one time there was a social contract that if you played by the rules (went to school, got a job, and worked hard) everything would be fine. That’s no longer true today. You can do everything right, just the way society wants you to do it, and still end up broke, alone, and homeless.

But by moving into mobile residences, however spartan, “people could become conscientious objectors to the system that had failed them. They could be reborn into lives of freedom and adventure.” (JB, p. 74).

Journalist Jessica Bruder began her investigative reporting of these modern American nomads in 2014 by visiting the Quartzsite camping grounds, meeting its residents and following them through their peregrinations over the next three years. Among the many she profiles in her book, one in particular is given top exposure: Linda May, a sixty-some thing widowed grandmother who, out-of-work and with no pension, chose not to impose longer on her financially struggling daughter and

Jacob | Déjà Vu

annual “Rubber Tramp Rendezvous” in the Quartzsite desert,

Jessica Bruder.

Crowded Quartzsite campground.

Vu her family, and in 2010 began her nomadic life, living out of a tiny plastic 1974 trailer, she called the “Squeeze Inn,” towed by a salvaged Jeep Grand Cherokee.

Jacob | Déjà

Bruder interviewed Linda May (and others) extensively, learning of the seasonal employment she and her fellow nomads took throughout the country. This included being camp hosts at national and state parks, agricultural harvesters, and “pickers” in the many enormous Amazon warehouses. Pay is minimal, benefits almost nonexistent and working conditions stressful and, especially for seniors, dangerous and unhealthy. Usually, communal camping space is provided for the workers.

[I scoured the media] for anything about the [“workamping”] subculture. Much of what I found made workamping sound like a sunny lifestyle, or even a quirky hobby, rather than a survival strategy in an era when Americans were getting priced out of traditional housing and struggling to make a living wage. (JB, p. 163)

Much of Bruder’s attention is paid to Amazon’s heavily criticized use of elderly nomad employees. Depending greatly on this source of labor, Amazon has organized it in the CamperForce Program, with an emphasis on the in tangibles of team and friendship. Bruder quotes a CamperForce recruitment brochure: “One benefit that’s worth its weight in gold is…building lasting friendships!” But the brochures also forecast the physical and psychological demands of the work: “We cannot stress enough the importance of arriving at Amazon physically prepared.” (JB, pp. 97-98) Walking ten to twenty miles a day on concrete floors while being monitored for productivity was often remarked in Bruder’s interviews. Foot, leg and other infirmities, common to this age group, were universally suffered as the Amazon Campers doggedly pursued financial sustenance for the off season—enough to pay for vehicle repairs, food, space rental and a few comforts.

Bruder drilled more deeply into the story of these modern American no mads during the second year spent with them by buying her own used van, that she named Halen, and tricking it out as a mobile residence, in which she followed, mostly with Linda May, the employment circuit and spent the off season at Quartzsite. She worked at Amazon and harvested sugar beets in North Dakota. She learned where to find free, safe overnight parking— Walmart was a staple—and how to make minor repairs and jerry-rigged conveniences.

Experiences like these were the background music to my reporting this

book. Without living in Halen, I don’t think I would have gotten close enough to people to really hear their stories.

Bruder quotes another workamper, Kat, an Army veteran who lost her job due to multiple sclerosis,

…So many of the folks I talk to in my various RV groups are going full-time because of financial hardship…The new freedom…able to live while reinventing oneself…Is this the evolution of the former middle class? Are we seeing the emergence of a modern hunter-gatherer class

In the Oscar-winnning movie based on Bruder’s book, Linda May appears in a fictionalized character ization of herself, as does the afore mentioned Bob Wells and another of Bruder’s principal interviewees, an elderly woman who went by the name of Swankie Wheels (Charlene Swankie.) (In the movie, Swankie sad ly dies of cancer; this clearly was not the case in reality, as she played her self.) There are several other cameo appearances by other real members of the workamping community. The main character, however, is the fictional Fern, who had been living the American dream in a model house in Empire, Neva da, where her husband was employed at the US Gypsum plant. But the plant shut down, the company town was abandoned, her husband died, and she found herself houseless and unemployed. Her track subsequently followed

Jacob

Déjà Vu

Bob Wells

McDormand, Zhao, Swankie, Linda May on set.

Vu the story of typical nomads. She buys a van, travels the employment circuit and joins the Quartzsite camping community.

Jacob | Déjà

For her outstanding portrayal of Fern, Frances McDormand won the Best Actress Oscar in 2021, her third (Fargo in 1997 and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri in 2018.)

She picked up a second statuette for the film itself as its producer. Chloé Zhao won as Best Director.

Just as Fern symbolizes the wom en, especially the single ones, among the Camper nomads, the fictional Dave (David Strathairn) embodies the men. The basic messages of the book and the movie are identical, except that the movie diverges into the personal relationship between Fern and Dave, involving as well as their families in the “real” sticks and bricks world. Only the three real personages shared with the book: Linda, Swankie Wheels and Bob, fully exemplify in the movie their nomadic ethic:

David Strathairn.

Along with many of the wayfarers he came to inspire, Bob saw things differently. He envisioned a future where economic and environmental upheavals had become the new American normal. For this reason, he didn’t package nomadic living as a quick fix, something to tide folks over until society had stabilized, at which point they could reintegrate with the mainstream. Rather he aspired to create a wandering tribe whose members could operate outside of—or even transcend—the fraying social order: a parallel world on wheels. (JB, p. 78)

It is a way of life that few had ever dreamed would be theirs, not while they lived in modern, comfortable houses pursuing professional careers or successful businesses. Foundering companies, outsourcing, recession layoffs, market reversals, health emergencies, coupled with vanishing health insurance and pensions, especially those with defined benefits, left the unprepared and unexpecting with, initially, the embarrassment of being “homeless,” and then the decision to try living on “the road.”

Among the people I met, some had their personal savings wiped out by bad investments or saw their 401(k)s evaporate in the 2008 market crash. Some hadn’t been able to create enough of a safety net to withstand oth

erwise survivable traumas: divorce, illness, injury. Others had been laid off or owned small businesses that folded in the recession…Many hoped life on the road would be an escape from an otherwise empty future. (JB, p.57)

But then they found another, supportive, community who had adopted different values altogether. As Bruder quotes one of her subjects, LaVonne, who lived in “LaVanne,”

I found my people: a ragtag bunch of misfits who surrounded me with love and acceptance. By misfits I don’t mean losers and dropouts. These were smart, compassionate, hardworking Americans whose scales had been lifted from their eye. After a lifetime of chasing the American Dream, they had come to the conclusion that is was all nothing but a big con. (JB, p. 150)

These modern nomads have all had to face the basic question, as posed by Bruder: “What parts of this life are you willing to give up so you can keep on living?” (JB, p. 247)

The book is a good read, and should be read before viewing the movie. Bruder’s participation in the culture, albeit with a safety net that others didn’t enjoy, adds credibility to what otherwise could have been just another screed. Her reporting in this book evolved out of the investigations upon which her article, “The End of Retirement: When You Can’t Afford to Stop Working,” was based (1). The movie, which won its Oscar in a down year for films, seems at times like a documentary, but with a focal confusion that could have been avoided by the presence of a Bruder-like character. Perhaps herself.

References

1. Harper’s Magazine, August 2014.

Déjà Vu

Revisiting the Classics

[Editor’s note: We introduce this new feature of Emeritus Voices. Readers are invited to submit their impressions of a literature classic that they have recently re-read an extended time after first reading it. Submissions may be up to 2,000 words in length and may include graphics. Please follow the Emeritus Voices submission guidelines as found on the EV website.]

All Quiet on the Western Front My Father, and Me

Eric Maria Remarque soldiered in the German army during World War I. In 1928, fourteen years af ter the armistice, he published Im Westen nichts Neues (In the West there is Nothing New), describing his experiences in the trench warfare against the French. The title was tak en from an Army communique. In 1929, it was translated into English and retitled All Quiet on the Western Front. Subsequently, twenty-two translations were published in var ious languages, and the book sold an estimated 40-60 thousand copies in the 1930s despite being about by then old history. It is in publication to this day including e-book editions with an estimated 2.5 million copies having been sold over ninety years.

My father fought against the French in that war. He served four years, was wounded twice, and taken prisoner. It was a different kind of war against the French in that prisoner exchanges were made. My father twice was sent to Switzerland, back to Germany, and returned to the front lines. After the armistice, he signed on as an ordinary seaman for various firms and toured the world, although not always with the best accommodations. In 1926, he jumped ship in Baltimore, got a job firing furnaces, and eventually moved to Cleveland, Ohio to join his sister and her husband. My father, Ernst Stech,

Ernie Stech

was engaged, at that time, to Christine Rambow in Hamburg, Germany. She joined him in the U.S. in 1928. I joined them in 1933 when my father was 42 and mother 36.

Ernst never talked about his military experiences. He did have a small wooden box in which he stored the two bullets taken from his body and some other mementos. Eventually, a set of medals awarded to WWI veterans by the Nazi Third Reich were added. Among them was the Iron Cross.

He never spoke to me of his war experiences. His silence was understandable. There was a 42-year difference in age. He could hardly take aside a sixyear-old son and describe the horrors of war.

We had a copy of All Quiet on the Western Front on a bookshelf through out my childhood. My first reading was when I was 18, the same age as the principal characters in the book. Somehow it had little impact. I was more interested in my own future that did not include military service.

In the many years since, I have read All Quiet five times, the latest just recently. With advancing age, I found the experiences of Paul Baumer, the narrator, more and more horrendous. I became aware over the years that it serves as a window into the life of the nice man I knew as a father. Somehow, he survived and was not psychologically scarred.

All Quiet on the Western Front is not easy reading. It follows four classmates who were trained for military service by their headmaster who was a corpo ral in the army reserve. The training consisted of continual belittlement and denigration. The intent was to produce men who would not rebel against authority or flee from combat. They would serve because there was nothing else to do. In war, it would be kill-or-be-killed.

In the trenches, the four youngsters suffered from hunger and fatigue. They were subjected to days of artillery bombardment. The German army provided poor rations, often consisting of potatoes.

In a telling scene, one of the four is wounded by artillery shell fragments and must have a lower leg amputated. A troubling injury because his pride and joy were a wonderful pair of boots. He suffered other injuries as well. Vis ited by his three friends, they understood he was dying. Paul Baumer stayed with him to his last breath. Then Paul had to write a letter to the dead comrade’s mother. Even worse, he had to decide whom among the friends the boots and other possessions should be given.

Reading about that sort of event is depressing. There are many of them. Why, then, go back five times? A major consideration is still the desire to understand what my father went through as a young man. I read All Quiet on the Western Front as a memorial to a father who could not, for various reasons,

Stetch

Revisiting the Classics

Stetch | Revisiting the Classics

talk about the exposure to horrors that are best left forgotten.

The book is a way to connect even many years after his death. Thus, it is a solemn obligation. I pay respect and honor to a 42-years-older-than-me father I hardly knew. Thus, the book is a memorial to a man who could not, for various reasons, talk about his exposure to the horrors that existed around him for several years.

Beyond the personal and familial connection, the book always serves as reminder that the people who fight a war are ordinary citizens, in many cases from lower socioeconomic classes. They are trained, organized, and ordered by an elite, the generals and colonels who reside beyond the reach of rifles, artillery, or bombs.

I will continue, each time taking a deep breath, to read this book out of a sense of obligation to my father and a remembrance to all those who serve or served on the front lines of any war, police action, or peacekeeping mission.

If going off the grid is meaningful, there has to be a grid.

Anonymous

Charles Brownson

Charles Brownson joined the Emeritus College in 2006 as Librarian Emeritus, having retired in 2005 as Director of the ASU Polytechnic Campus Library. He earned his B.A. degree at South Dakota State University, an MFA from the University of Oregon and an MLS from the University of California, Berkeley. At ASU he worked as an academic librarian in collection development and in special collections. Since retirement he has been a full-time writer and book artist, has taught creative writing, and has been active in the Emeritus College writing programs.

Gus Edwards

Gus Edwards, Professor Emeritus of Film and Theater, joined the ASU faculty in 1988 after having served as Playwright-in-Residence for two years. He taught Film Theory and Cultural Diversity in Theater & Film. His plays have been produced both in the U.S. and abroad. He retired in 2010 and continues to write in various styles and genres.

Billie Enz

Billie Enz is Professor Emerita at ASU, where she served as an administrator in the College of Education for over 25 years. She received her PhD in Elementary Education from ASU, and was a member of the Early Childhood teaching and research faculty. Dr. Enz is an expert in the areas of family literacy, emergent literacy and language acquisition, having coauthored three textbooks in this area. Since retiring Dr. Enz has taught brain health courses for senior citizens and, on the other end of the developmental continuum she teaches early language and literacy class to newborns and their first-time moms for First Things First.

Contributor Biographies

Contributor Biographies

Beatrice Gordon

Beatrice (Babs) Gordon grew up in Chicago and began her 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 from 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.

Aleksandra 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.

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.

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.

Christine Marin

Christine received her Ph.D. from Arizona State University. She served as the Archivist and Historian of the Chicano/a Research Collection and the Arizona Collection in the Department of Archives and Special Collections, Hayden Library at ASU, for over 35 years. She is currently researching the history and stories of African American women in Globe and Miami, Arizona.

M. Scott Norton

M. Scott Norton has served as a classroom teacher, coordinator of curriculum, associate superintendent and superintendent of schools. He served as a professor and vice chairman of the Department of Educational Administration at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and chairman of the Department of Administration and Policy Studies at Arizona State University where he is currently professor Emeritus.

Contributor Biographies

Contributor Biographies

Shannon E. Perry

After retiring as Professor Emerita from San Francisco State University School of Nursing, Shannon Perry has switched from publishing in professional journals and textbooks to writing memoir, travel, and anecdotal essays. Recently she has tried her hand at poetry and discovered pantoum. Pantoum originated in Malaysia in the fifteenth century. Written in quatrains, the poem can be any length, but each line must be repeated.

Doris Marie Provine

Doris Marie Provine is Professor Emerita of Justice Studies in the School of Social Transformation and continues to work and publish in her field. She is also a musician, a gardener, a lover of cats and all small animals and, is a gifted artist.

Zach Sitton

Zach Sitton, MD, was born and raised in Chandler, Arizona. He studied Exercise Science at Brigham Young University and received his MD at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix. He is an avid sports fan and loves both playing and watching football, basketball, and baseball. His favorite activity, however, is going to the park and playing with his three children.

Harvey A. Smith

Harvey Smith is Professor Emeritus of Mathematics and 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 or quasi-governmental agencies.

Ernest L. (Ernie) Stech

Ernest L. (Ernie) Stech received his Ph.D. from the University of Denver and taught for fifteen years at Western Michigan University. He is the author or co–author of five books and chapters in several other books. Ernie formerly taught in the OSHER Lifelong Learning programs in Sun City Grand and Sun City Festival as well as at ASU West Campus.

Linda Stryker

Linda Stryker’s creative writing has been published in Highlights for Children, New Millennium Writings, The Speculative Edge, Self–Realization Magazine, Emeritus Voices and other venues. In addition, she has published professional articles and chapters in astrophysical journals. She holds degrees in music, physics and astronomy.

Charles Tichy

Charles is an ASU alumnus, earning his BA and MA in German in 1963 and 1967, resp. His PhD was obtained from the University of Pittsburgh in 1988. He was Professor of Russian and German at Slippery Rock University, PA, for 45 years.

JoAnn Yeoman Tongret

JoAnn Yeoman Tongret, Professor Emerita of Music, is a recipient of the George C. Wolfe Fellowship from the Society of Directors and Choreographers. She is proud to be a contributor to Emeritus Voices as well as to the Actors Equity Magazine. JoAnn is a member of the Dramatists Guild and resides in Tucson with her husband, author/playwright Alan Tongret.

Contributor Biographies

Contributor Biographies

Eric VanSonnenberg

Eric vanSonnenberg, MD, is an Associate Member of the Emeritus College and an editor emeritus of Emeritus Voices. A diagnostic and interventional Radiologist who graduated from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, he is board certified in both Internal Medicine and Radiology. He holds or has held Professorships at UCSD, UCLA, University of Texas, University of Arizona, and Harvard medical schools. He has chaired the Department of Radiology at the University Texas Medical Branch, and been Chief of Radiology at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, where he also was the Harvard Medical School Student Research Mentor awardee. He is a former competitive hardball baseball player, and a basketball and tennis player and plays bluegrass banjo.

Harold B. White

Hal White joined the ASU Department of Management in 1966 and retired as Professor Emeritus in 1993. In addition to teaching and publications, he was a labor-management arbitrator. He served on numerous committees on campus and in the community and was President of both the Faculty Senate and the ASU Retirees Association and is a member of the Business Faculty Hall of Fame.

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Revised October, 2021

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Graphics Credits

p. 4 public domain

pp. 6 - 13 The author thanks Annie Foley for producing the graphics in this article.

p. 23 photo from “It Was Magic: the Kathryn Gammage Stories” by Sally, ASU Press pp. 29 - 37 photos courtesy of the author p. 39 public domain p. 40, 41 (top) courtesy of npr.org p. 41 (bottom) public domain pp. 42 - 45 public domain p. 50 Wikimedia Commons pp. 54 – 60 photos courtesy of Bill Verdini p. 63 scan of document by VisLab, ASU pp. 64 – 76 photos courtesy of Ann Ludwig p. 77 photo courtesy of jamesburgess.com p. 81 photo by Iordanis Pallikaras (courtesy of Fineartamerica com) p. 84 public domain pp. 86 – 87 public domain pp. 90 – 92 photos provided by Eric VanSonnenberg p. 97 photo courtesy of Catherine A. Steele p. 102 – 103 charcoal sketches by Paul Jackson p. 120 l. courtesy W. W. Norton & Company p. 120 r. courtesy of Searchlight Pictures p. 121 (top) courtesy of Vanholio.com p. 121 (bottom) courtesy of cinemadailyus.com pp. 123 - 124 photos courtesy of Searchlight Pictures p. 126 public domain

Back cover: Orestes and the Furies (cf. Mother-kill, p. 111) William Adolphe Bougereau (1925 – 1905)