Laughing at the End Times

The story of Rev. Camping's deadline for the end of the world and the rapture of the faithful just barely crossed my consciousness at first. Others had predicted the end of the world and had lived to see the deadline come and go, to see the sun rise the following morning and set the following evening. I had seen a billboard announcing the end and made some passing comment to the other passenger in the car I was in. Then I pretty much thought of other things. But then news organizations began focusing on the predicted event, on the man who made the prediction, on the followers who were preparing to leave this earth, and on the millions of dollars of donations that Family Radio has received.

On Thursday, NPR posted a request on Facebook that people choose the song or musical composition they thought was most appropriate to be listening to as the end approached. Thousands of Facebook friends complied, and, for fun, I created a Countdown to the End of Time play list of my own, and when I told my adult children what I was doing, they started creating their own play lists. I first scrolled through the responses of NPR's FB friends and chose from those suggestions songs that I liked. Then I added my own pensive suggestions. When I finished, I had 30 songs on my End of Time playlist, and I posted the list in my notes on Facebook, along with YouTube links to performances. Some of the songs I chose were melancholy (Eliza Gilkyson's "When You Walk On"), others comforting and hopeful (Modest Mouse's "Float On"), and some downright silly (Monty Python's "Galaxy Song: Remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving and revolving...").

My family shared our songs, we noted the next day the times that Reverend Camping said the Rapture would begin, and also noted that the Rapture could be happening and the four of us would not know it because, well, we expected to be left behind if such an event really occurred--though there was a time when I, a child of the Southern Baptist Church, would have expected to be in the number of those rising into the clouds.

As Saturday evening waned, I expressed some sympathy for Reverend Camping and his followers, who were discovering what they so longed for was not going to happen as predicted. We wondered what these disappointed folks would do now. And then we passed the evening in playing a game of Scrabble.

Then, this morning I began some selected reading online and came across Tiffany Stanley's finger-wagging article "The Media's Shameful Obsession" on The New Republic's website. Stanley takes to task those in the media who have expressed smugness or superiority in their coverage of Harold Camping and his followers. She labels the coverage "a media circus."

There's a cruelty underlying our desire to laugh at this story [Stanley writes]--a desire to see people humiliated and to revel in our own superiority and rationality--even though the people in question are pretty tragic characters, who either have serious problems themselves or perhaps are being taken advantage of, or both.

Well, maybe that's so in many cases, but as a survivor of The Rapture--or, rather, of obsession with The Rapture--I think that I need to feel no shame at creating my playful play list for the end of times and for shaking my head at the hubris or senility or insanity of a man who thinks he can predict the end of the world.

In the Southern Baptist church in which I grew up, I was immersed in the literature of the End Times. We read Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth, studied it in evening services, pored over its confident charts outlining the ages of man and world events that all inevitably led to the world's ending....maybe in the 1980s. In any event, we were convinced that the end was near. My sisters and I, a performing trio in our church, sang a song "I Wish We'd All Been Ready," which not only scared the hell out of me (literally, I decided to be baptized a second time, just in case the first baptism didn't take) but also gave me nightmares (Christ came in the clouds, and my feet couldn't quite get off the ground). 

I was a smug, self-righteous twerp who also agonized too intensely over the state of her own soul. But because I was also a studious child, really interested in the world and in the viewpoints of other people, and also, of course, sinful beyond my own childish imaginings, I outgrew that  insular religious phase. The world didn't come to an end. And when, in 1978, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed the Camp David Accords, my love affair with The Rapture and the teachings of the end times in the Southern Baptist Church pretty much ended. I watched the news with great expectation. The 70s had been full of violence, and the thought of two enemies trying to make peace between their nations filled me with hope. Yet many people in our churches did not welcome this event; it was viewed through the distorted lenses of a particular interpretation of the most controversial book in the New Testament, The Revelation. The predictions were that instead of ushering in peace, the agreements heralded the approaching end of the world.

I began to note that every movement toward peace was viewed with suspicion, as evidence that some crazy Anti-Christ was going to take over the world. How mixed up is that, I thought. It's almost as if the those who revel in the chaos of some End Time are working toward a self-fulfilling prophecy--reacting with suspicion and even outright hostility to any person or world event that suggests peaceful solutions are possible. Any charismatic leader with a message of hope was a possible Anti-Christ.

That world view has consequences today. Hal Lindsey can suggest that Barack Obama, with a campaign message of hope and change, may be the Anti-Christ, the Beast described in The Revelation, and thousands, perhaps millions, of people take his comment seriously. Michelle Bachmann, a possible Republican candidate for President, can negatively twist Obama's speech on the Middle East, and thousands of Christians will believe her distorted version, especially when she purses her lips into the dog whistle that those who reject Israel (in whatever way she defines "rejection") will be "cursed." 

In 2010, the Pew Research Center, in conjunction with The Smithsonian, polled Americans to discover what they thought about the future of the world and the United States. Forty-one percent of those polled believed that Jesus Christ will return within the next 50 years. If you're expected to be taken out of the world in an instant, in a flash of lightning, you're not going to get too torqued about world peace or global climate change or Medicare or Medicaid--or in making the world a better place in any number of ways. In fact, you might be pretty hostile to any organization or group of people who would attempt to make the world a better place or the lives of others less fraught with peril. A peaceful world--or even a somewhat peaceful world--would undermine your whole world view, that only you and other selected good people will be saved while the world erupts in flames.

I hear and understand the dog whistles. My ears were once atuned to those high-pitched tones. I've lived in Oz; I believed in Oz. But I've been behind the curtain, and I didn't like one bit what I saw. Unfortunately, those who would laugh at that forty-one percent also might not recognize the serious consequences of a belief that absolves one of responsibility toward a world one expects to be providentially destroyed in one's lifetime.

So, here's to Reverend Camping and all those who would divert us from trying to solve the problems that we have here on this one world: John Lennon--"Imagine."

Book Review: John Barry's "Rising Tide"

John Barry, Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America

As the Mississippi River began to pass previous flood records, I re-read John Barry's history of the 1927 Mississippi River flood. We bought the book in 1999, if I remember correctly, when my husband and I were in New Orleans for several days. During the day, my husband was attending a conference, and I was wandering the streets of the French Quarter and spent some leisurely time in Faulkner House Books on Pirate Alley. The second time through this book was as interesting to me as the first time I read it. I highly recommend this telling of that historic flood that most people had never heard of until news organizations began mentioning it again in light of the flood that is still making its way down the Mississippi River as I type these words. Barry weaves together the stories of nineteenth century engineers whose personalities had a profound effect on decisions made in trying to tame the Mississippi; of the personalities of the Percy family of Greenville, Mississippi, whose authority as planters and politicians had profound effects on the lives of the descendants of former slaves, blacks who labored on the plantations made fertile by thousands of years of flood deposits of the Mississippi; of the racism of the South and of the flight of African-Americans after the flood to the north, carrying with them the birth of the blues that came out of their horrendous experiences in that flood; of the venality of the rich and powerful in New Orleans.

And just a few minutes ago, while looking up and reading reviews of Barry's book, I came across a review by one of the Percy family, William Armstrong Percy, a character if there ever was one--and an academic.

When I lived in Louisiana before--all those years ago, from 1983-1987--when Tom was working on his Ph.D., and I was teaching in the English Department at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, I became interested in the writings of Walker Percy, grand-nephew of Leroy Percy, the Mississippi planter and senator who figures so largely in Barry's history. One of my friends recommended to me Walker Percy's Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book," and I was hooked. I read much of Walker Percy's fiction and a couple of his novels. I was a serious Walker Percy fan for a while. Now that I'm living again in Louisiana, near the town where Percy spent his adult life, I've been thinking of him. Maybe I'll pick up Lost in the Cosmos and re-read it. I seem to be in a re-reading phase, returning to books I read years ago. Maybe that's a sign of approaching old age--reviewing what one once knew and now remembers rather hazily!

Meanwhile, pick up Barry's book Rising Tide, immerse yourself in another time, and ask yourself just how much has changed in how money and power work in this country.

Lessons Learned about Self-Monitoring?

On Saturday of this past weekend, my husband, son, and I traveled to Franklin, Louisiana, to attend the Franklin Black Bear and Birding Festival. On the banks of Bayou Teche,venders had set up booths of local products and crafts, various conservation groups had prepared displays and games for children in a nearby warehouse, and musicians were scheduled to play for a street dance. We took a pontoon ride into the Bayou Teche Wildlife Refuge managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It was a beautiful day, clear and cool, and on the trip up a canal dug over one hundred years ago for logging, we saw several alligators sunning on the banks as well as several species of egrets. The particular area of the refuge near Franklin that we boated into is closed to motorized vehicles from September 1st to April 15th. That area had just been opened for motorized vehicles, and the gate was open, as the picture at left illustrates.

As we motored slowly down the canal, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife employee steering the boat and directing the tour mentioned that there were no old-growth trees here because the area had been intensively logged at the turn of the last century--that is, from the nineteenth century to the twentieth century. Historical records indicate that from 1890 to 1935, timber companies removed virtually all of the cypress from Louisiana; any old growth remaining was few and far between. The trees one sees now are ones that have regenerated since then. The canal we were traveling on was also left over from the timber industry's work. Canals were dug in the swamps in order to get to the trees and then to drag the trees to waterways where they could be then be floated to timber mills. If you pull up a Google Earth map of Lake Maurepas and Lake Pontchartrain, you can still see straight canals radiating out from the places where cypress had been harvested, dragged into the canals by pullboats, and "cribbed up into booms and pushed like barges" to mills.  [Frank B. Williams: Cypress Lumber King, by Anna C. Burns]

Timber industry supporters today complain about the restrictions on harvesting the cypress that has regenerated since 1935 when Louisiana was just about completely stripped of cypress. But the past history of just about any industry that pulled its resources from the natural world--or just about any industry, for that matter--indicates that industries are unable to monitor themselves. It doesn't matter if it's an industry that harvests the resources of the natural world or the banking conglomerates that sell derivatives.  Management and employees live high on the proceeds until they have exhausted the resources that provide those proceeds--or until the financial enterprise threatens to go bankrupt and take the country down with it and is bailed out by the government. Frank Williams "celebrated his fiftieth year in the lumber business by distributing $100,000 in bonuses among his employees" [Burns]. A few short years later, the cypress industry had exhausted its resources. Other timber industries began liquidating their assets in the 1910s, but the company that Frank Williams established managed to branch out into oil and real estate and thus operates to this day.

In 2006, Goldman Sachs paid "its employees a total of $16.5 billion in compensation," bonuses that, if distributed evenly, would mean "$623,418 for every" one of its 26,467 employees. ["The Goldman Sachs Premium," by DealBook, 18 December 2006] By 2008, it was clear that Goldman Sachs and other financial industries had almost brought the U.S.--and the world--to financial disaster. Millions of Americans have yet to recover. But taxpayers bailed out the financial industry, and those "titans" got to keep their bonuses.

But have we learned this lesson: that industries must be vigilantly regulated for the health,  safety, and welfare of not only ordinary people but the planet? It seems that a lot of us haven't. More on that in another post.

More on the logging of cypress in Louisiana:
Jacobs, David. "Logging Off." Baton Rouge Business Report. BusinessReport.com. 10 September 2007. http://www.businessreport.com/news/2007/sep/10/logging

Cypress Logging in Louisiana, circa 1925 (Part 1 of 2)   YouTube. Archival footage provided by Krantz Recovered Woods, Austin, TX. http://youtu.be/HF3-0NISvs4

Cypress Logging in Louisiana, circa 1925 (Part 2 of 2). YouTube. Archival footage provided by Krantz Recovered Woods, Austin, TX. http://youtu.be/FxSP08zJ5tE

Pruning

As I try to shelve my books here in our 120-year old cottage, with its sloping wooden floors and lack of storage, I discover that I still have way too many books for the available space.  It's time once again to prune back the overabundance of reading material that still remains from previous thinning. I did some serious pruning in 2007, when my family and I moved from Texas to Georgia, then again before packing up for another move to Louisiana, and now, soon after, another attempt to corral my books to fit the available space.

It's a difficult task, for even the books that I know I will probably never read again provide a service for me: they remind me of the different interests I cultivated during certain times of my life--hence the volumes of Walker Percy non-fiction. Some remind me of particular people, for there are inscriptions inside that reveal relationships, expectations, promises. On the inside cover of a slim volume of Nikki Giovanni's poems--Happy birthday, Anita. I love you. Always, Marie, written by a once-close college friend from whom I am now separated by years of sporadic--and then failing-- communication. On the inside cover of Michael Shaara's novel of the civil war, Killer Angels, a student from my first years of teaching at Louisiana State University thanks me for providing him with a better insight into reading. He tells me that he enjoyed the class very much. How unappreciative I am in not having yet read this novel. I'm putting it on my bedside table right now. (I've done this before, but because this yellowing paperback novel has survived several "thinnings," it seems that I continue to believe that someday I will follow through with my resolution.)

Then there are the necessary kind words of the poetry workshop leader. To Anita, Margaret Gibson salutes me on the title page of Earth Elegy: New and Selected Poems; with warm wishes and respect for your work. On the title page of Recovered Body, my poems go from achieving "respect" to "beauty." For Anita, Scott Cairns has written, well-met at the Glen. Here's wishing you the best as you continue with your beautiful poems. Barbara Crooker's volume of poetry, Radiance, reminds me of a workshop I had attended the year previous to the date of this note: For Anita, In the pleasure of your company (missed you this year) & in the great pleasure of your work. Well, I must keep these books to cheer me in the dark hours of the night when the muse is MIA, and I am afraid I'll never write another poem again.

Other books recall the ghosts of emotions I felt when I first read them, like the recollection of passion long past spent. This morning as I was sitting in the old recliner in my study, looking at the piles of books on the floor, I spied the tattered cover of John Graves' narrative of his canoe trip down the Brazos River in Texas, Goodbye to a River. For a fleeting moment, I was in my mid-twenties once again, newly aroused to the fecundity of meaning in the natural world that a poet could delve and develop. That much younger me bracketed the first sentences of chapter seven with these words: read in English 103 class. I suspect I was teaching descriptive writing to English freshmen at Texas A&M University at the time and thought of using Graves' words to coax my students toward specificity. And an asterisk beside the following words suggest that I identified with the author's sentiments:

Origin being as it is an accident outside the scope of one's will, I tend not to seek much credit for being a Texan. Often (breathes there a man/) I can work up some proud warmth about the fact that I indubitably am one. A lot of the time, though, I'd as soon be forty other kinds of men I've known....If a man couldn't escape what he came from, we would most of us still be peasants in Old World hovels. But, if, having escaped or not, he wants in some way to know himself, define himself, and tries to do it without taking into account the thing he came from, he is writing without any ink in his pen. The provincial who cultivates only his roots is in peril, potato-like, of becoming more root than plant. The man who cuts his roots away and denies that they were ever connected with him withers into half a man.

In these books I see the roots of what I once was, the evidence of how and why I have become who I am. To subvert a line from Tennyson, "I am a part of all that I have read." But there is just not enough room in this house for all our stuff and the stuff we've been dragging around from previous generations of my husband's family. Time again to prune. Maybe someday soon I'll get the courage to do the same with my journals and letters--only instead of pruning, I'll build a bonfire to my vanity.

The Old Recliner

If anything represents how we cannot seem to divest ourselves of stuff, this old recliner does. The first time I met it, it was at my in-laws' house, with the stuffing pooching out. The recliner had belonged to my husband's grandfather, who was a lawyer in Houston, Texas, and I guess Sam Tom's (first and middle name--Samuel Thomas) daughter kept it not only for sentimental reasons but for practical reasons as well. Eventually, my mother-in-law had the chair recovered; what you see is her choice of fabric, circa 1980s.

My husband loves this chair. I have stuffed it away in sad corners, but it always manages to make its way to a more public and useful place. I have threatened to sell it or to give it to Goodwill, but I have decided that I value my marriage more. This time I made a place for it right away, in my study, where my husband can read, rest, watch, or comment while I blog or work on my latest craft project. And so I celebrate compromise, resilience, and a long marriage by allowing this chair in my own space! Now if I can only convince Tom to have it recovered!

Maybe we hang on to these things because life itself is so unpredictable. We thought that our move to Atlanta would be our last move until retirement, that we would have a cool, urban place for our college-age children to return to and to call home. But our married life of almost 33 years has been one move after another, moves which we have decided to take upon ourselves, seeking better prospects or more amenable accommodations and surroundings or moves that have been forced on us by circumstances, such as layoffs, budget crises, and uncertain economic times. However, there is no exceptionalism in these experiences; American society has been a mobile one since its inception. My husband often reminds me of an article he read the year he finished his Ph.d. at Louisiana State University. The author predicted that college graduates of that year would move an average of seven times over the course of their working lives. We have met that average. Our experience is not uncommon, particularly in these unsettling times. Though the unemployment rate has recently dropped below 9%, millions of Americans are still seeking jobs, and college students can't find jobs comparable to their skills and education. Again and again, I read of college students who graduate with huge debts, who expect to spend the rest of their lives paying off the debt they incurred in order to achieve that degree. Is it worth it?

We face this question--is it worth it?--as our oldest child heads off to graduate school and our youngest child begins her second year as an undergraduate in the fall. Our son was admitted to all four aerospace engineering schools to which he applied, but it looks like the choice he will make will be the one that's less expensive. The school he has chosen--the one he attended as an undergraduate--is a great school, ranked in the top 20 aerospace programs; at least one of the other, more expensive schools is ranked in the top 10. Does that difference matter? Is it worth it to shackle one's future to a huge debt? We think not, but only the future will determine whether or not our son has made the right decision. And isn't that the case for every decision that we make? We just do the best we can with the cards we've drawn from the stack.

What I do know is that we're not ready to make that recliner our permanent seat in our new home. For our generation and generations to come, retirement will be pushed further and further away unless one belongs to that lucky 1% of Americans who own 40% of the nation's wealth. The recliner will just be a respite from life's difficulties, not a permanent refuge. 

But today I read an article in which a doctor describes research that suggests resiliency is the characteristic we most need in order to achieve a healthy old age. He has patients who are over 100 who have full mental capacity. What characteristics seem to have served them well? The ability to overcome serious setbacks without whining, to face those difficulties with a deprecating sense of humor, and to move on. These we can all practice to achieve. And life does seem to be providing us with plenty of opportunities to practice!

And so I welcome this change even though it was not one of my making or choosing.

New Year, a Little Late

A new year suggests new beginnings to many of us, and this year, despite our country's economic woes and our own family's geographic woes (husband working in one state, myself remaining behind in another state to help daughter adjust to university and change on top of change, son now graduated and in-between states as he applies to graduate schools), the new year is still freshly minted, shiny, and promising. After the holidays, my husband returned to Louisiana, my daughter returned to the University of Georgia, and my son remains here for a short while longer with me. We just give thanks that a tough year is over and a new year offers new beginnings.

Here in Metro-Atlanta, we ended the year with snow on Christmas Day, and we have begun the new year--the second week into the new year--with more snow, ice, and freezing rain. The city is practically in lock-down due to the weather, but at least I'm not alone, and my husband left behind lots of firewood for our fine fireplace insert. There's nothing that will warm the heart more on a cold, gray day than some radiant heat--and perhaps a couple of cups of hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps.

Yesterday, my son and I took a long walk in the neighborhood. The neighborhood roads and sidewalks were covered with ice-crusted snow and slick in places, but there were a few folks out enjoying the winter. Some folks had managed to build snowmen before the snow became too icy, and other folks had roped off steep streets where kids and their parents were sledding down the smooth, icy surfaces. In one yard, two men had built a fire and were inviting passersby and neighborhood friends over for cookies and hot chocolate. The walk reminded me of how much I love this town just east of Atlanta. It's been designated the most walkable town in Georgia. Although it's also one of the most densely populated towns in the state, it's also one of the most green urban areas I've ever seen. People care about the environment, community gardens, dog parks, recycling and neighborhood block parties. It's very hard for me to leave. But I've lived in many places, and I know that I will create a space for me and my family to live and to thrive.

Neighbors provide a warm spot from the cold

Neighborhood street roped off for sledding

Another street in the neighborhood full of winter activity

Snowman in our neighborhood

It's a new year. I gotta believe.

What Doesn't Change

I have recently been reflecting on being in my early fifties and confronting change once again when I had hoped life to be more settled, not knowing, really, any better than I did at the age of twenty-five or thirty-five, the best course to take. It seems that one just muddles through, no matter what the age. One of my Facebook friends recently posted a cartoon of two chickens celebrating a birthday.  The cartoon is one of Doug Savage's "Savage Chickens." Standing over a birthday cake with candles, the first chicken assures the second chicken: "You're not getting older, you're getting wiser."

The second chicken testily responds: "That's bull@*!#!"

In the next frame the first chicken chortles: "See? You're wiser already!'"

Whenever I think of the "wisdom that comes with age," I remember a conversation I had with my grandmother Margaret Cole Dugat when she was in her eighties (she lived to be ninety-six). I guess I had asked my grandmother how it felt to be as old as she was. She was a very stoic woman, a faithful member of the Southern Baptist church, a non-smoker, non-drinker, a lifetime gardener, and for many years a middle-school English teacher.

When I was young, whenever we had a crisis at our house, which was located just across the country lane from my grandparents' house, Grandma Dugat was often the first person we turned to (though this statement fails to convey the complexities of family dynamics and secrets). When my sister Cynthia fainted in the bathroom one day, with the door locked, and she wouldn't respond when we called, my sister Nancy crawled through the window while my mother frantically directed me to call our grandmother. Calm came into the room with my grandmother.

But years later, when I asked my grandmother what it felt like to age, her answer surprised me: "Inside I still feel like I'm fifteen years old," my grandmother said. "And I look in the mirror and don't recognize the person there."

My grandmother had always been old to me. When she was the age I am now, two months short of fifty-three, I was almost five. My grandmother's seemingly unwavering view of the world, of her place in it and that of God's above it, had prepared me to expect a more weighty answer. And then--to say she still felt as if she were fifteen! I remembered what it was like to be fifteen--full of questions, bursting with hormones, head full of dreams--a vulnerable age. How could my grandmother, former middle-school teacher and Sunday School teacher, daily Bible reader, experienced gardener, woman of sorrows, feel like a vulnerable fifteen-year-old? Couldn't she at least feel like she was twenty-five or thirty? What hope did I have of becoming wiser as I aged if my own venerable grandmother still had a vulnerable fifteen-year-old peering out of her faded green eyes?

Now that I am on the cusp of old age, I understand, at least a little, my grandmother's answer. The accreted knowledge of age forms like layers of plaster of Paris, like those masks my children and I made years ago, taking strips of plaster of Paris, soaking them in water, then molding the strips to our faces and removing the resultant form when it began to harden. We all have a "mask" of experiences that help us determine what roles to take in a new stage of our lives, what choices might be appropriate. But, sometimes, the eyes staring out of that oh-so-carefully molded mask are those of a fifteen-year-old, who suspects that the choices are capricious, multitudinous, with unpredictable consequences.

Last week, as we curled against one another in bed, facing together another challenge in our 32-years of marriage, my husband murmured, "I keep thinking about how two-thirds of our lives is already over."

That fifteen-year-old in me gazed wildly into the darkness of the bedroom. "But I've only just begun to live!" she whispered.

photos above: my first-grade photo; my grandmother, picking butterbeans, in her eighties (click on the photo for a larger version)

Reflecting on Links to the Past

I have been going through the hundreds of letters that my husband's family kept over the years, letters that go back to the 1850s. The work is tedious because each letter must be opened carefully, quickly read, and then filed. As I read, I store ideas for posts on my Left for Texas blog, which I am using to create a narrative of the family, to establish connections in the family genealogy, and to help organize the overwhelming material that we have. I also perform online research and have made interesting discoveries about the history of the South before and after the Civil War as well as discoveries about distant relatives of my husband's, all descended from the same great-great-great grandparents. (I plan more extended research--in university libraries and on locale--after I have organized this material.) I have also made other discoveries: that human nature hasn't changed, that people can paradoxically hold progressive and abhorrent ideas, and that much of the daily experiences of our ancestors weren't much different than our experiences today. We may have better technology, access to faster transportation, better nutrition (perhaps), and multiple conveniences, but much remains the same.

One idea that many people have about the past is that people remained in one place for generations. This might be true in old civilizations, but it's less true in America, where folks seem to be in continual flux. News articles make a great deal of spouses living in separate cities or states, but these family letters reveal that spousal mobility and separation is not all that new. My husband's great-grandfather, Baker White Armstrong, moved to Texas from Virginia, where he was first employed with a drugstore/pharmacy in Bryan, Texas. Then it seems he began representing a large drugstore retail business based in New Orleans, and he traveled all over Texas from town to town promoting products for that company. His traveling meant that he was often separated from his wife and young family in the last decade of the 19th century. His wife, Mary Ophelia Nugent Armstrong, would also take the family back to visit relatives in Virginia, staying for weeks. The couple communicated by writing two or more letters a week to one another. As the family grew and Baker became more prosperous (by speculating in oil in Houston), Mary followed her young brood to boarding schools, staying nearby for weeks, and to sanitariums, where the couple sought medical help for their daughter Helen, who was epileptic. Also, the family bought a second home in Boulder, Colorado. Mary and the family would precede Baker in moving to the home in the summer. Of course, Baker and Mary were among those better-off individuals, but Baker was not only supporting his immediate family; he was sending money back to Virginia to his un-married sisters as well as to his wife's un-married sisters (two of Mary's sisters lived with the Armstrongs in Houston for a time in the early twentieth century), and the occasional handout to various other relatives, including Baker's youngest brother, who never seemed to succeed in anything he undertook.

Reading these letters provides some comfort to me, as in this current economic climate, our family has its own separations with which to cope: one spouse working in one state, the other spouse working in another and remaining there until the youngest child can be successfully situated, and a second young adult child in yet another state. Our concerns for our young adult children are really no different than the concerns that Baker White Armstrong's parents reveal in their letters. The worries may be slightly different--yellow fever, the lure of strong drink, the "wildness" of Texas in the 1800s--but the underlying parental concern is much the same.

The letters also provide cautionary tales. In 1879, Perry Nugent's family was doing well. The girls were being educated at female academies, and the boys were soon to be sent away to well-respected institutions of higher education. They had recently moved from New Orleans to a fine old home, called Longwood, in Salem, Virginia. Perry still had his business concerns in New Orleans, and he was able to wonderfully furnish the family's new abode. Two of the oldest girls, Lizzie and Helen, were enjoying the waters, body rubs, and meals at Clifton Spa, probably located near Clifton Springs, New York. Helen writes a very diverting letter to her younger sister Mary, describing the clientele. She bemoans the changes in dress and style of the current clientele, and she makes mild fun of a woman from New Orleans with a heavy drawl who knocks on Helen's and Lizzie's door to inquire whether or not the girls might be acquainted with her own friends in New Orleans. As I read the not-very-flattering description of the young woman that Helen Nugent provides for her sister Mary, I couldn't help thinking of Helen's own future as well as the future of Perry Nugent's family. In December of 1888, less than ten years after Helen and Lizzie were enjoying the good life at Clifton Spa, Longwood and most of its lovely furnishings were to go up in smoke. Shortly after the fire, Perry Nugent was to experience a number of financial set-backs (the house was inadequately insured), and the family was to be scattered. Helen was to end up in a boarding house, carefully counting every penny, and becoming more and more obsessive and manic. Eventually, she was to find some safe haven in the Armstrong house (with her sister Mary and family) in Houston, Texas, but the intervening years were to take a terrible toll on her.

These letters remind me to count the blessings I have today, as small and insignificant as they may seem, and to judge carefully the actions and appearances of others, trying not to let diverting vindictiveness rule my judgments.

The past is not so different from the present.

Image above: Perry Nugent Family in better days at Longwood, near Salem, Virginia--Click on the image for a larger version of the photo.

The Press Should be the "Friend" of Political Candidates?

Every political candidate and elected politician would love to be questioned by "friendly" reporters, of course, but more and more far-right candidates refuse to speak to any reporters other than those they believe will shill for them. Sharron Angle, the far-right candidate running against Henry Reid in Nevada, has avoided all press questions from any but the friendliest news outlets--and friendliest for conservatives and the far-right is Fox News. On Fox News yesterday (h/t to Matt DeLong, Washington Post) Sharron Angle said that she wanted the press to be the "friend" of her campaign. That would mean asking no difficult (or serious) questions and allowing her to advertise her campaign for free in any interview or press session:

We wanted them to ask the questions we want to answer, so that they report the news the way we want it reported.

Voting for Sharron Angle is voting for someone with a warped view of the responsibility of the press. Her view, however, is becoming less and less radical and more and more mainstream, as the propaganda of the right that the press cannot be trusted gains more and more ground. Without a free and robust press, we're sunk. Of course, Fox News is just the kind of press the Sharron Angles, Sarah Palins, and Rand Pauls of the world want, a press that will not report on their truly radical ideas and that will ask only softball questions, as Angle herself described in an interview with David Brody:

Well, in that audience will they let me say I need $25 dollars from a million people go to Sharron Angle.com send money? Will they let me say that? Will I get a bump on my website and you can watch whenever I go on to a show like that ["Fox News or more conservative outlets"] we get an immediate bump. You can see the little spinners.

Additional note: This kind of use of the press is the wave of the future, Kevin Drum points out. Conservatives and right-wingers have led the way, but liberals will follow suit--so he thinks.

"The Liars Win" when Propaganda is Conflated with News

E. J. Dionne's editorial in The Washington Post today accurately describes what is happening in the media today as propaganda and outright lies are being treated as "news." (hat tip to Steven Bennen for the link) There has long been a tradition in the media (if imperfectly executed) to provide "both sides" to the story. This approach works if both sides act, at least relatively, in good faith. But people with an agenda can take advantage of this approach by promoting lies and propaganda as news. As long as citizens can recognize the difference, the republic stands. However, in recent years, the liars seem to be winning.

The first step, it seems to me, was to fuel people's fears that journalists could not be fair if their personal views leaned in one political direction. This, of course, meant completely denying the professionalism of journalism. So the meme has become "the liberal media"--and in spite of all evidence, the public at large believes that this "liberal" media is bent on promoting only its "side." Yet as many analysts have pointed out, the talk shows on radio, the guests invited to speak on those Sunday shows, the folks interviewed on the major networks are most often conservatives. Just look at how often John McCain, a twice-failed candidate for president, gets a slot on those shows. Mike Huckabee gets his own talk show. Did John Kerry get his own talk show? Or Howard Dean? But if you can convince the public that "the media" is "liberal," then you have convinced the public not to trust journalists' pursuit of truth--and then you can take advantage of that mistrust by promoting your own "truth."

The firestorm over the Journolist (a listserv for journalists) is the latest attempt at totally annihilating trust in journalists. "Journolist scandal proves media bias" screams a headline--and people fall for it without reading any more of the details. Tucker Carlson, a conservative pundit, has been milking this "scandal" for all its worth--but he refuses to release the full e-mails on which he is basing his claims of a liberal conspiracy among the members of that listserv, a listserv that included one of his own conservative reporters (so how conspiratorial could the listserv be?!). Ezra Klein, the creator of Journolist, explains why he created the listserv here: on his blog for The American Prospect. Most of the members on that list lean center-left, but their participation was not conspiratorial but empirical: they needed a place to discuss their ideas and to access experts who might be less willing to answer questions elsewhere. (The thing is, most of the public probably doesn't even know what a listserv is--and how many there are for every subject and interest.) Sure, ideas were raised that others in the listserv shot down--but Tucker Carlson and his ilk don't reveal the shooting down, the consequences of debate. Of course, right-wingers love conspiracy theories (uh huh, and left-wingers do, too, but for some reason, the left-wing doesn't carry the day, does it? Does anyone with any sense REALLY believe the Bush administration orchestrated 9/11? Oh, but how many on the right believe that Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States--and that he's a commie pinko?) To further support their view of the leftist conspiracy of Journolist, radicals claim that liberal pundits such as Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann were on the list. Not so, says Klein. But who's listening?

And that's the point, isn't it: to get people to stop listening, to stop thinking. When the majority of the public believes that journalists cannot be trusted, then the power-hungry win. The liars win.

This trend to conflate propaganda with news is evident in the recent Andrew Breitbart/ Shirley Sherrod episode. And here, the purpose was not only to conflate propaganda and legitimate news but to push the idea of the equivalency of white racism and black racism in this country. The NAACP had called on the Tea Party to repudiate racist elements in its ranks. Now, anyone who has listened to Tea Party participants in interviews and who have watched videos know that there are racists in the party. That's not to say that every person involved in the Tea Party is a racist. A radical group is going to attract un-desirable elements. But wouldn't it be best for the country if a group such as this said, "We're in opposition to the government led by a black man, but we're not against a black man being president. Racist literature, signs, and statements are totally out of character in our movement." But instead of doing that, radicals such as Andrew Breitbart go about trying to prove that white racism can't be so bad because there are black racists, too: the stupid (yes! stupid!) argument of equivalency. It's the childish argument that what I'm doing isn't so bad because others--especially those who claim some kind of moral superiority--are doing it, too. Only in this case, Breitbart chose a woman who was communicating exactly the opposite of what he purported that she was communicating. Here was a woman who had experienced racism of the worst sort--the kind that led to a miscarriage of justice. Yet here she was, telling her audience of how she rose above hate and how she believed that they should all work together to create a society where people of all ethnicities could live in better communities. And her audience demonstrated their understanding of her message with "uh huhs" and "alrights" and "amens" and their sympathy with her feelings and experience, likewise.

Here, again, the purpose is to call into question any sense of fairness and justice on "the other side"--and to use race to do that. The far-right has the media and the government so scared of being accused of unfairness, that they bend over backwards to avoid the appearance of unfairness and thus give credence to lies. Breitbart got what he wanted: a larger audience, a national presence in the media, and more white followers who believe that they are just as discriminated against as blacks in this country--contrary to evidence. Because, guess what, they've been gradually led not to believe in evidence, to conflate propaganda with news.

Without journalists being able to ask hard questions, without people having some trust in the professionalism of journalism, a country's citizens are at the mercy of the powerful. Just look at dictatorships such as Burma, which routinely arrests journalists and passes jail sentences of twenty years on those who speak truth to power. The rodeo clowns win; the man (or woman) in the saddle loses.

More Conflation, Propaganda vs. News, black racism vs. white racism

• "Fox News, the DOJ Pseudo-Scandal, and White Racial Hysteria," Jonathan Chait, at The New Republic
  
  
• And now the back-tracking to find SOMETHING to hang around Shirley Sherrod's neck: "Defining Lynching Down," Adam Serwer, on Jeffrey Lord's claiming that Shirley Sherrod lied when she described Bobby Hall's being beaten to death by Sheriff Screws and his colleagues as a "lynching." Disgusting. Having been called out for lying about Sherrod's hopeful message, the right now is looking for any mud to sling on the woman.

Taking Away the Limelight from Scumbags

Michelle Cottle says it best: "The End of Andrew Breitbart," on The New Republic website. And here's a quote:

Increasingly no one cares about (or recognizes) the difference between marshalling facts to make your argument and just completely making shit up.

Unreconstructed Lying

When the Shirley Sherrod story broke, I was in the middle of attending freshman orientation with my daughter at a state university in Georgia, and so I came in on what seemed to be at the time the tail-end of the story: a tape of Ms. Sherrod's speaking at an NAACP dinner had been edited to suggest that she was a racist; it had been published on Andrew Breitbart's website; after Breitbart and his ilk created a firestorm, administrative officials panicked and fired Ms. Sherrod without researching the truth. It was finally revealed that the tape had been edited to grossly mislead (and that Brietbart had had it in his possession for several weeks before posting it).

I learned that, at first, Breitbart and other far-right bloggers yelled foul over Ms. Sherrod's words, claiming that here was a prime example of an African-American woman in a position of power (USDA's Georgia state director for rural development) who admitted to failing to help a white farmer. It was a nice story to use to claim the equivalency of black racism and white racism in this country, that there was no foundation for criticizing all those white Tea Party people showing up with racist signs. Only that was a lie. Now Breitbart is claiming that he posted the video not because it reveals Ms. Sherrod's racism (racism which the unedited tape clearly refutes) but because it reveals the racism of the NAACP members listening to Ms. Sherrod and clapping at times in her speech when she is describing her previous attitudes. Only that's a lie, too, now that I have listened to the whole damn tape, to five sections that Breitbart has now posted on his website, probably believing that most people won't take the time to listen to it. And as there are only 8 comments on that site (as of 2:00 p.m. today), I think it's safe to say that most of Breitbart's loyal listeners and readers will not view the entire tape and will accept Breitbart's continued unreconstructed lying.

What Ms. Sherrod does in her speech is put one of her past actions in context. First, she tells the crowd about her father being murdered by a white man and the family never receiving justice. Anyone who knows anything about the African-American experience, especially in the South, will know that it was not unusual for a white man to murder a black man and not suffer any legal consequences. In addition, Ms. Sherrod describes a time when a bunch of white men showed up at her home and burned a cross on the front yard. Her mother--then a widow--was home alone with the baby boy born just weeks after his father's murder--and a couple of other children. The family was in danger, but several neighbors--all African-American men--showed up with their shotguns. They didn't fire a shot, and they allowed the white men to leave, but their show of unity prevented further violence. This background puts everything else into context.

Ms. Sherrod describes how she had wanted to leave the South, with its terrible memories, but that she finally decided to stay to help create change, and so, long before her tenure as a government official with the USDA, she worked for a non-profit to help farmers. But she said that when she "made that commitment [to stay in the South and to create change], [she] was making it to black people, and to black people only...But you know," she went on to say, "God will show you things and he'll put things in your path so that you realize that the struggle is really about poor people." [Here the silence is broken by affirmative responses: "all right, all right."] And that's her preface to the story of when her attitude changed. In the edited tape, these words are missing--Ms. Sherrod's indicating to her listeners that she was to change her mind about helping "her own" alone. The audience did not clap when she said that her first intentions were to help black people alone. There were no "amens" there. So Ms. Sherrod tells the story that most people have heard totally out of context, of how a white farmer came to Ms. Sherrod for help and how when he had spent a great deal of time showing he was superior to her, she wasn't inclined to help him as much as she should have, so she referred him to a white lawyer because she figured he could get help from "his own." When the white farmer came back to her and told her that the lawyer had not helped him, she realized that she had been wrong. Sherrod then helped the white farmer get what he needed, and she goes on to say some really inspiring words:

I've come a long way. I knew that I couldn't live with hate.... I've come to realize that we have to work together. And it's sad that we don't have a room full of whites and blacks here tonight 'cause we have to overcome the divisions that we have. We have to get to the point where, as Toni Morrison says, 'Race exists, but it doesn't matter.' We have to work just as hard. I know it's, you know, that the vision is still here, but our communities are not going to thrive, you know, our children won't have the communities that they need to stay in, to live in and have a good life if we can't figure this out, you all. White people, black people, Hispanic people--we all have to do our part to make our communities a safe place, a healthy place, a good environment.

After viewing this entire tape, it's clear to me that the folks in that room were receptive to Ms. Sherrod's message. They weren't applauding her racism; they were applauding her altruistic ideals to overcome racism and to make the world a better place. As Ms. Sherrod says, the problem is poverty; the problem is the haves and have-nots; the problem is that those in power want to keep power, and they keep that power by dividing us. In posting the edited video and in continuing to spew lies, Andrew Breitbart and others like him are counting on perpetuating those divisions.

[After writing that last sentence, I came across this video of Anderson Cooper's interview with Ms. Sherrod. Breitbart himself might not be racist, but he is using racism to make a political point (albeit, unfairly, and with lies), and he certainly doesn't care one iota about who gets hurt. His cynical manipulations, however, are no better than racism. And he needs to be called out on this!]

More Here:

• "Some Find Irony in Shirley Sherrod's USDA Incident," by Krissah Thompson, Washington Post, 23 July 2010.
  
  
• "Amen Canard," by William Saletan, Slate, 23 July 2010.

Pet Peeves I: The Teaching of Writing

For about twenty-five years, I taught writing at the university/college level. I was a good teacher, consistently receiving positive evaluations from my students as well as from colleagues who visited my classes and evaluated my teaching. To prepare for that teaching, I took graduate classes in rhetoric and composition and taught a total of eight freshman composition classes in graduate school. Later, I learned from experienced colleagues, in the inevitable exchange of ideas with office mates, in workshops and in reading research. And I learned from my students. One of the most important things I learned as a teacher was not to underestimate my students. I treated them as practicing writers, and they became practicing writers. Oh, there were certainly failures--but the successes far outnumbered the failures.

And so it is with a sinking heart when I hear from students that their college writing teachers are telling them to write paragraphs with 7 sentences (or 11 or 10) in each paragraph, and to write essays with five paragraphs that develop three points. I tutor these confused students, who think the form is the rule rather than a (suspect-at-the-college-level) teaching tool.  The college instructor who tells her students that every paragraph should have so many sentences, no less and no more, is condescending to those students. She is assuming that adults cannot understand that writing is a messy process that involves discovery and experimentation. She is so concerned about whether or not that student is going to pass the state writing test that she has abdicated her role as a teacher, someone with experience in the craft who passes on to students the best of what she has learned.

Of course, I understand the frustrations the writing teacher encounters, especially at open enrollment colleges such as the one where I now tutor part-time. Because of the poor economy, colleges are filling classes to the maximum and beyond; full-time writing instructors teach at least five classes.  Students in those classes are variously prepared for those classes: some learned English as a second language, others don't quite meet the expectations of the proponents of academic English after twelve years of secondary education, and others are returning to writing after years in the work force where they weren't required to write academically. The easy way for the writing instructor to tame the unruly is to demand adherence to rules, no matter how arbitrary those rules might be in the apprenticeship of real writing:

• An essay is composed of five paragraphs: an introductory paragraph, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion.
• Each body paragraph has a topic sentence that states the focus of that paragraph. 
• Each body paragraph should have ____# sentences (7 sentences, 11 sentences, 12 sentences--number depends upon the teacher).
• Never begin a sentence with "because."
• Never begin a sentence with "and" or "but."
  
• Never use the second person ("you") in an essay.
  
• Never use the first-person ("I") in an essay.
  
• Never write sentence fragments.

The conscientious student, especially, takes these rules to heart. And so [woot! woot! here I am breaking a "rule" that is not a rule!] that is why today I had a student who was worried about which way was the "right" way to write an essay. The teacher in her first learning support class told her that she should have three points in every essay and that those three points should be developed in five paragraphs. The teacher in her second learning support class told her that it was okay to have two points in an essay and that if those points needed to be developed in six paragraphs, that was okay, too. "Which is right?" she asked me. That is also why I tutor students who have the most wonderful experiences that relate to the topic they are trying to develop but are frustrated because their instructor told them never to use first-person in their writing. And students who have a great, approachable "tone" in their writing but have been told by their writing teacher never to use the second person. [Woot! woot! the previous sentence is a sentence fragment AND begins with a coordinating conjunction!]

I was recently asked by a writing instructor how many sentences I suggest students include in paragraphs that they write for the state writing exam. I tried to give a nuanced answer, but it was clear that this instructor thought his students too stupid for nuance. "At this level [the freshman level of English composition]," the teacher said, "students need a number."

Take a number. That's education today. And that's my number one pet peeve.

Returning

I've moved many times in my adult life, but those moves have doubled back on themselves so that I often feel as if I'm in some kind of reincarnation cycle, that I'm being sent back to a place I've been before in order to work something out or rectify some grievance or succeed in some task I've failed before. But the cycle is just shy of the mark in a couple of ways, perhaps the most important way being that my returns have yet to result in any clarification or illumination. I've returned to Texas twice in my adult life, after living in other states of the union, but not exactly to the same locale. In 1983, my husband and I left our birth state of Texas to live in Louisiana for four years; then we returned to Texas, to Bryan/College Station, where we lived and worked for six years. Then we left for Minnesota, where we lived for 2 1/2 years before heading to Columbus, Georgia (and a town nearby) for a seven-year stint before returning to Texas once again, to Belton, a small town an hour's drive north of Austin. Staying there for 3 1/2 years, we were lured back to Georgia by expectations that ultimately didn't materialize, and here we've been--except now my husband has taken a job in Louisiana, just north of New Orleans. Shall I follow? Will we have lived twice in every state in which we've made a home in our adult lives? I don't know yet. I really like the town where I'm living now, and my husband is hesitant to cut the cord, too. We remain in a kind of limbo before our next geographical reincarnation.

But the one state to which we have yet to return to live--though we have vacationed there several times--is Minnesota. When will I return to live there, I wonder, as I sequester myself from the heat wave that is washing across Georgia. Today, the temperature in Ely, Minnesota, rose to 73 degrees Fahrenheit. Here where I am in Georgia, the temperature hit the mid-nineties and is predicted to hover near 100 degrees tomorrow. Perhaps because I haven't returned to live in Minnesota as I have in Texas, Georgia, and (perhaps) Louisiana, Minnesota still has the lure of a young love never consummated. It remains in memory not just as a "what was" but as a "what could have been," a "could have been" more poignant because of the opportunities that were opening up to me there just as I was packing to leave.

If the history of my doubling back stops in south Louisiana, perhaps the northwoods of Minnesota will be there for me just past my last breath. Perhaps I will be reincarnated in some other form, as Heart-flower (Pale Pink Corydalis), clinging tenaciously on a rocky outcrop above the Kawishiwi River; or maybe as a loon (more likely) calling wildly on Lark Lake. Or maybe I'll just be content with this last request: scatter my ashes on some quiet lake in northern Minnesota, my last return, my final resting place.

BP, Bad Bosses, and the Rest of Us

As oil and gas continue to gush out of BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, and as the CEO of BP Group has made one public relations gaffe after another, I have been thinking of how people end up in management positions for which they are experientially or temperamentally unprepared or ill-suited. Tony Hayward seems to have risen steadily through the ranks, from his blue collar background to his appointment as CEO of BP Group. Along the way, did Hayward reveal any of the hubris and public relations cluelessness that he has displayed so well since the oil rig explosion? Or is he so embedded in a culture in which disdain of "ordinary" people is a given that his behavior was not interpreted as unusual or contemptible as the public would assess his later words and actions to be? More talented and smarter people than I concluded long ago that money and power corrupt. Too little of either, and one is crushed, diminished, hopeless--too much, and one becomes superior, assuming that one is better than others, blessed not because of caprice or luck or circumstance but because of some entitlement that gives one permission to discount the worth of others.

Like many managers promoted to levels for which they are, nevertheless, ill-suited or unprepared, Tony Hayward seems to have known the right people and said the right things in the past. Hayward's stepping into the role of CEO followed an earlier tragedy, the explosion of BP's oil refinery plant in Texas City in 2005, in which 15 workers were killed and 170 others were injured. An investigation of BP's safety record revealed serious problems, and OSHA imposed a huge fine on the company. The CEO at the time, Lord John Browne (the man who had been impressed by Hayward and who had promoted him to the position as his executive assistant in 1990), retired early and Hayward took his place. Before that final promotion, Hayward said these words at a townhall meeting in Houston: "We have a leadership style that is probably too directive and doesn't listen sufficiently well. The top of the organization doesn't listen hard enough to what the bottom of the organization is saying." He told his audience that "we need to be part and parcel of the society in which we operate."

Has BP's safety record improved since Hayward spoke those words and since he became the public face of BP? Has the top of the organization listened to the bottom? The record certainly suggests not, as information has emerged indicating that employees raised many concerns about safety even months before the explosion. And in his testimony before Congress, Hayward repeatedly claimed that he was not aware of decisions made concerning Deepwater Horizon, so he must not have been following his own advice to "listen...to what the bottom of the organization is saying." His own words and actions--saying he wanted to get his life back, suggesting that the oil spill would be minimal, and attending a tony yacht race while shrimpers and fishermen in the Gulf were losing their livelihoods--suggest that he also was not "part and parcel of the society in which [BP] operates."

How often have workers heard such high-minded promises from management, only to be disappointed by the lack of consequent action? Not only are organizations difficult to change. Something happens to many people when they reach the top of their professions, are promoted to positions where they have power over other people, or achieve their dreams of wealth. There are exceptions, but too often people begin to believe that they deserve their rewards more than any other, that luck, caprice, or circumstances had little to do with their achievements. Or if they think that luck and circumstances had too great a hand in their success, they do everything they can to conceal that fact, their lack of confidence in their own worth translating into bullying behavior. (See the research reported in "The Making of Toxic Boss" for a discussion of how the combination of power and incompetence leads to abusive behavior in the workplace.)

Over the years, most of us have encountered these "Mini-Me's" of management. Anyone who Googles "bad habits of bosses" will find numerous articles that list behavior he or she will recognize:

• The boss who gives staff an assignment that is "high priority" and that must be completed immediately--and then reverses his demands. The staff spend hours on the assignment, only to be told that the work isn't important, after all. Priorities change overnight, sometimes within the hours of a single workday. Or reports that the boss insisted were high priority are completed, handed in, and disappear into a black hole. The boss does not provide feedback, fails to follow through with the recommendations, and then acts as if the report never existed.
  
  
• The boss who constantly criticizes and rarely, if ever, praises. In 2002, National Public Radio's Workplace Correspondent David Molpus used a recent academic study on bad bosses to solicit stories from his listeners. One listener described two laboratories where he had worked. In one, the workers were proud of their work, competed in working overtime, and stayed with the company a long time. The boss of this laboratory listened to her employees, praised them publicly, and when one of them made a mistake, worked with the employee to rectify the error. At a second laboratory, however, the boss rarely ventured outside her office, was impatient when employees reported problems, never praised employees, and publicly criticized those who committed errors. At that place of employment, the turnover rate "was staggering."
  
  
• The boss who blames others for every error, mistake, or roadblock. People on the make are particularly prone to being abusive in this way. They are frantic to be seen by those above them as always competent, prepared, perfect, so they deflect any problems away from themselves. They are quick to blame mistakes and errors on others, even when the problems are part of the everyday experience of the job, unavoidable and eventually solvable. This abusive behavior can even become psychotic, for the person who fails to admit his own mistakes--or who refuses to accept that less-than-perfect outcomes may be the result of circumstances or multiple rather than individual error--may be so compelled to deflect blame from himself that he begins to view his employees as "enemies," as people determined to undermine his authority. He may direct blame for all problems--real or imagined--to one employee who becomes the scapegoat for the boss. Other employees may notice this behavior, but because they fear for their own jobs and because they feel they don't have the power to change the office dynamics, they can't help but be relieved that someone else is there to buffer them from their abusive boss.

These and other habits of bad bosses show up again and again in articles on management. Although in the long run bad management is bad business, bad bosses often have long tenures because senior management may only care for the bottom line. If the bad boss looks good on paper (often the result of the good work of cowed yet competent workers), the bad boss remains, no matter how many talented employees leave in response to bad management.

So what recourse do employees have? Robert Sutton, Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University and author of No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving one that Isn't, says that "[i]n normal organizational life, for people who have less power, the best thing is to get out. If you can't do that," he advises,"try to avoid contact with the person as much as possible." As a final recourse, he suggests that "[y]ou can learn not to care." [See Sutton's "Why I Wrote the No Asshole Rule," Harvard Business Review, March 16, 2007; also, "Prof has advice for tackling workplace jerks," at msnbc.com.]

In an economy where over 14 million people are currently unemployed and job competition is fierce, leaving a bad boss is not an option for many people. Also, avoiding the bad boss is useful advice only for those who do not answer directly to management. The best option might be learning not to care, especially if you're a cynic to begin with--but that's a poor option for those to whom other employees report, unless you're an asshole yourself. And there's the rub: evidently, assholeness is contagious. "Jerk poisoning," Professor Sutton says, "is a contagious disease. It's something you get and give to others."

Of course, we don't know how BP CEO Tony Hayward treats employees who answer directly to him, but his public behavior certainly reminds us that poor management skills can have devastating consequences, to individuals, to the organization, and even beyond. In this terrible economy, organizations need to re-assess their management techniques and do as Robert Sutton suggests, that companies "screen for jerks as they hire and purge the bullies already in their ranks because, in almost all cases, they cost more than they contribute."

Coming Back

I quit blogging before spring arrived, and now we're just past the summer solstice. In the meantime, I've been thinking, writing, creating, dreaming, plotting. Life has been a little difficult these past few months and continues to be not what we had hoped and planned, and yet here we are.

A lot has happened since March 5th, when I decided to take a break from blogging, and I'm working on a long reflective piece to post maybe by the end of this week. Meantime, here are photos of the second folk art quilt I made, this one for my daughter. (first quilt here)I finished it a couple of months ago and am now working on smaller projects. I mark my return here with this evidence of my busy hands before I plunge into deeper waters.

Holding the Space, Being Silent

As anyone who reads my blog can see, I haven't posted much lately. Right now I am concentrating on my own life and the lives of people I love, especially those who depend upon me. Anyone who cares knows how to reach me. If you have found something here over the past two years that you enjoyed reading, please check back periodically. I can't be silent forever. Happiness to all.

So Much for Miracles...or at least this one

It seems that the miraculous story of the man being "unlocked' from a vegetative state of more than twenty years is not so miraculous, after all. The Belgian man suffered serious brain injuries when he was twenty and has been unconscious for over twenty years. Last year, doctors discovered more brain activity than was previously supposed, and a speech therapist seemed to demonstrate that the man could communicate, using "facilitated communication," "in which the patient supposedly directs the hand of a speech therapist who type[s] out his thoughts." The results, however, seem to have been false: "Belgian coma 'writer'  can't communicate," BBC News, Saturday, February 20, 2010.

Irony?

On page 104 of the 18th edition of Barron's GRE study guide is the following test question:

There is some _______ the fact that President Barack Obama is viewed as representative of African American society, for he spent his childhood growing up in Indonesia and Hawaii, and did not live in the black community until he was an adult.
(A) gratification in
(B) irony in
(C) validity to
(D) uncertainty about
(E) apprehension about

According to the answer key, the answer is "(A) irony in." Now let's unpack the assumptions made in this question: first, that only a certain sort of black American--not defined, of course-- can represent, without irony, "the black community." What is "the black community"? Is it a physical location?  Well, of course not--but the question suggests that it is, that someone has to live there to be considered un-ironically black. So--if one is black, but grew up in a neighborhood that's majority white, is one precluded from being "African-American"? Is a certain percentage of "blackness" required in the neighborhood in which one grew up in order for one to be able to un-ironically represent African-Americans? The "black community" is taken as a whole to be representative of all African-Americans. And that "black community" is indeed diverse, is now, has been in the past. There are people who identify themselves as belonging to the "black community" who are poor, who are rich, who are middle-class, who grew up in the South, who grew up in the North, who grew up in the East or the West, and who live overseas on military bases or in foreign countries as government employees or even as citizens whose parents are employed by multi-national companies . So wouldn't it stand to reason--and not be "ironic"--that any African-American could represent this very diverse group? And does where one spent one's childhood somehow define whether or not one is truly "American" or "African-American"?

The second assumption? That growing up in Hawaii necessarily precludes someone from being seen as truly African-American? I thought that Hawii was one of the fifty states, as American as Alaska or Texas. Why is it "ironic" that an African-American born in Hawaii might represent the "black community"? Except for four years spent in Indonesia with his mother and step-father, Barack Obama lived in Hawaii as a child and adolescent.

This question--with its suspicious fill-in-the-blank answer--raises troubling questions about how African-Americans are viewed in our society. And it's very troubling that Barron's GRE Guide seems to perpetuate those narrow views.

By Their Leaders You Shall Know Them

So the National Tea Party Convention is underway in Nashville, Tennessee, and one of the touted speakers is former Congressman, Tom Tancredo (R-Colorado). In the speech he gave at the Convention yesterday, Tancredo claimed that Barack Obama was elected president because our country does not have a "civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country." Ummmm..... when and where in this country was a literacy test required for voting? And who was the target of that literacy test? Mr. Tancredo, standing in a city in the South, demands a literacy test for voters?

What century is he wishing he lived in? Or to what century does he wish to drag back the country?

Good. Lord.