By Edwin Cooney
Dated July 20th, 2007
I don’t know about you, but I’ll guess: this Iraqi war makes you just as tired as
it does me. Even more, this war seems to have brought out the worst in all of
us -- supporters and opponents, Congress, the media, and the Bush administration.
We who oppose the war want to judge the outcome of the “surge” before General David Petraeus does. To us, a surge is only an escalation in a hopeless struggle.
Supporters of the administration and its Iraqi policy look to any improvement on the proverbial battlefield for encouraging results. They try to ignore what the government is not doing and what the various dissident groups are doing to one another.
In Congress, House Democrats appear to be deliberately out of touch with much of their liberal constituency which very much wants both President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard B. Cheney impeached. As for their Senate colleagues, there seems to be a pre-occupation with a proposed timetable for withdrawal from Iraq which a combination of minority Republicans and conservative Democrats have the votes to prevent.
President Bush continues to stay the coarse — of course. While waiting for a glowing report from General Petraeus on the success of the recent surge, the President, speaking as usual before a handpicked audience, informed us that he was sending Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the Middle East for the purpose of opening up talks which will lead to a two state solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Real success in this area, the President knows, would be a great achievement for his administration. Even better, it would silence a lot of smug, self-righteous, noisy people.
Meanwhile, on the campaign trail, all of the Democratic Presidential candidates and Libertarian GOP candidate Ron Paul of Texas oppose the Bush administration’s Iraqi policy. Most of their efforts are designed to demonstrate to the public how they — individually as President -- would be more effective than their opponents in bringing about an advantageous result out of the seemingly endless and hopeless Iraqi conflict.
As for GOP candidates, most of them, while generally supportive of the President, want us to understand (without directly saying so of course) that they individually could fight the war on terror, which they see as the legitimate reason for our being in Iraq, better than President George Bush has.
So the question is: where does this leave you and me — that is — “we the people of the United States” to whom all of our leaders and potential leaders say they look to for their wisdom?
Speaking for myself, drawing--as I do--a distinction between our struggle with Radical Islam and the evil Saddam Hussein, I opposed President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003. I also draw a distinction between our legitimate concerns as to the ambitions of Radical Islam and their strategy of “terrorism.” Terrorism is after all a strategic tactic as was poison gas in World War I and our use of the atomic bomb to end World War II. As I’ve stated before, the British demonstrated that Irish terrorists could be negotiated with when Sinn Féin settled in 1998 following twenty-nine years of domestic terror in England which snuffed out the lives of “commoners,” members of Parliament, and even Royalty in the person of Lord Mountbatten.
Thus, I’ll go on record asserting that, while there is a violent conflict with Radical Islam, there is no such thing as a War on Terror. Terror is a tactic. In every conflict, one side seeks to have an advantage over the other which is designed to demoralize the enemy. I also insist that our invasion of Iraq was actually a step backward. Before March 19th, 2003, there was in Iraq a cruel but effective deterrent to Al-Qaida as well as to Iranian expansion. His name was Saddam Hussein. Throughout the 1980s, our President (I believe his name was Ronald Wilson Reagan) treated Saddam Hussein if not like an ally than certainly like a most useful and valued helpmate despite Hussein’s treatment of his people. Nor was President Reagan the first to misjudge a foreign leader. The practice of such misjudgments goes back to FDR who believed he could manipulate “Uncle Joe Stalin” with his charm. Even further back, Woodrow Wilson treated his European colleagues during the 1919 World War I Peace conference with detached contempt.
It seems to me, therefore, that the solution to the Iraqi conflict is one for a concerted worldwide effort with Americans playing a supporting rather than a lead role. There is merit to President Bush’s decision to pursue a two state solution to the political Gordian knot in the Middle East. There is also merit in the policy of forcefully responding to the violence of militant Islam.
As for you and me, our job is to take it all in. Watch and listen to the political pundits whether they come from Fox News or CNN. We must endure it when Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff predicts a possible terrorist attack on us sometime this summer. At the same time we, the American people whose wisdom is so relied on by the President and Vice President, must listen as Mr. Cheney insists that Al-Qaida is on the run. Never mind if one or all are seriously confused. For the next eighteen months, these men have responsibility for our safety.
.
As for impeachment, skip it. Vermont Senator Bernard Sanders, an independent liberal who votes with the Democrats in the Senate, made the observation that if we can’t get 60 votes in the Senate to establish a timetable for withdrawing our troops from Iraq, how can we expect to get sixty-seven votes to convict President Bush were he impeached by the House?
Hence the liberals will continue to fill the airwaves and cyberspace with complaints that the Democrats have broken faith with the worthy voters of the Fall of 2006 and threaten to permanently abandon the world’s oldest political party forever. Republicans will continue to justify the Iraqi conflict as a necessary evil while asserting that Democrats have always been for appeasement—even though conservative-oriented folks cheered the loudest when Neville Chamberlain made his bargain with Adolf Hitler at Munich in 1938. (Back in the thirties, conservatives called themselves “Isolationists”!)
Many years ago, comedian Jim Gordon, who played the character Fiber McGee on radio, used to say of his antagonist Dr. Gamble: “He makes me tired.”
As I said at the outset, this war makes me tired, but its outcome is so important, I really and truly do not dare to yawn.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Friday, July 13, 2007
FROM OUT OF THE BLUE -- A Much Needed Reminder
BY EDWIN COONEY
It was on the afternoon of Monday, June 18th, 2007 that I arrived at the Amtrak train station in Washington D.C. aboard Train #125 out of Penn Station in Newark, New Jersey.
I was on my way home to Alameda, California after a full three weeks of happy reunions with old friends and first time meetings with new ones. I felt content for the most part. I was even reasonably satisfied with my own behavior in the way I’d handled one or two touchy situations that are a part of daily relationships and circumstances.
My train was only about 30 minutes or so late, but that was all to the good. It meant that I would only have to wait 20 or 25 minutes for Amtrak Train #29 scheduled out of the station at 4:05 p.m. It would be especially pleasant if Train #29 was nicely air conditioned against the 85 to 90 degree east coast heat and 85 plus percent humidity, but that matter would take care of itself.
Then came the word that Train #29 to Chicago, due to an equipment failure, would not be able to meet its 4:05 p.m. departure schedule and that there was no estimated time when it would depart. A trainload of Amtrak passengers waited patiently in the station hoping that the mechanics would be able to remedy Train #29’s ills quickly enough for all to be on their way in time to make all necessary connections.
As I waited, I found myself seated between two gentlemen. One, from Chicago, told me that he spends a lot of his time on board his houseboat. The other, Archie from Rhode Island, said he also likes to travel but prefers solid terra firma. At one point in our conversation, Archie, in his delightful New England accent, informed me that a blind man without hands was seated a short distance away and was “fumbling” with his suitcase and obviously could use help. Archie was gone for only a very short time before he returned to report that the “blind man without hands” was all right and needed no help.
“Where is he going?” I asked, wondering if he’d be on Train #29 once it got rolling.
“I don’t know,” replied Archie, “but he’s here with the rest of us.
“Wow,” I thought to myself. “Here we are in Washington D.C. and not too far from me is a blind man without hands. It’s got to be Iraq,” I told myself.
Then I began to create a whole set of assumptions about this man’s background:
He has to be a veteran; He’s in Washington for treatment and rehabilitation at Walter Reed hospital; He’s an Iraq War veteran; His injury is recent.
Next came my assumptions regarding his state of mind:
He’s gotta be angry and bitter about his recent war injury; He’s gotta be apprehensive and even frightened as he struggles to adjust to his deficiencies; He’ll be lost or easily disoriented; He’ll need lots of help; He’ll be sad and perhaps even clingy.
Next, I went to the root of my assumptions -- my own fears, needs, comforts and ideas of convenience:
What would I do without hands? I’d be totally lost without a sense of touch. How could I function as I do today using a cane? What’ll I do if he’s in my car? I’ll have to help him, because, after all, he’s one of “us”.
Then came my final hope:
“Maybe he’ll be in another car if not on another train.”
Alas, such was -- most fortunately -- not to be.
Shortly after six-thirty p.m., I was assisted onto Train #29 and into the lower portion of a car which is where passengers who are senior and/or with disabilities may ride.
The car was reasonably cool and my seat was next to an electrical outlet so that I could conveniently listen to taped books and recharge my cell phone. The train had started to move, but the conductor hadn’t come to collect our tickets. I mumbled to myself out loud wondering whether the act of eating my lunch would automatically bring the conductor around to take my ticket.
Suddenly, from one seat behind me and across the aisle to my left, I heard the chime of a talking watch. Then a very cheery voice said:
“Who’s this blind guy who talks to himself?”
Next came introductions. His name was Dan and I, of course, introduced myself as Ed. My introduction to him confirmed his assumption as to who I was, thus I didn’t have to say anything to him about my disability. What’s strange is that although he rather quickly explained his condition to me, I don’t recall precisely how he confirmed to me that he was “the blind man without hands”.
Almost instantly, even before Dan told me much about himself, my fear-laden presumptions and perceptions melted away. Dan, after all, was Dan. Dan was not a set of my presumptive fears.
Within minutes of the outset of our conversation, the conductor had come around taking tickets and Dan was making plans to go to the dining car for supper. Since I’d had my lunch, I didn’t need the dining car. I’d join him in the lounge car for Happy Hour. Thus it was clear that Dan got around as well as I did.
During Happy Hour, Dan and I easily conversed on a number of topics. He was easy-going, he flirted with the ladies much more easily and with seemingly much greater confidence and resourcefulness than I. Even more, Dan was funny.
Once we were back in our car, Dan told me that at the age of 15, which was back in 1955, he’d injured himself while constructing a hand grenade. He went on to explain that as a youngster he’d learned to make such incendiaries in order to protect himself from possible harassment or harm from Chicago’s youth gangs. One day, he explained, he’d accidentally installed the wrong type of trigger on his latest grenade and his life had been changed forever.
He went on to talk of his daughters, one of whom served in the Balkan conflict in the late 1990s. He spoke of his life’s work as a rehabilitation counselor for the Department of Mental Health in Decatur, Illinois.
Dan is now retired and doesn’t have to work for monetary reasons. He just likes to keep busy. The reason he was on the train was because he was returning home from a job interview in Alexandria, Virginia.
The only assistance I provided him was to let him use my cell phone to call his daughter who was meeting him in Chicago, so that he could let her know that the train was running late.
When Dan and I parted in Chicago, I knew that I’d met a very extraordinary person. Certainly, my vacation—and, if I allow it, perhaps my life -- had been enriched by that man named Dan. However, I was also aware that I’d been guilty of one of humankind’s most subtle but devastating injustices.
I was guilty of the act of “preconceived negative personal perception”. What is even more incredible to me is that I am acutely sensitive to the fact that I am a lifelong victim of such preconceived negative personal perceptions.
How many times have I been denied opportunities for work, friendship, even love because of a person’s negative perceptions and ultimate inability to imagine interacting comfortably with me in a working or loving relationship? How many times have I answered the inquiry people often make as to what is hardest about living with disability by saying, with some intensity, that the most difficult aspect of living with disability (which in my case is total blindness) is dealing with the public’s perception of it.
The answer to both the above questions is — too many times.
Preconceived negative personal perception often is devastating to persons who live with disability. Unfortunately, its practice -- which I’ll define here as preconceived negative conclusions about others based on poor knowledge of the conditions under which another person lives -- is widely practiced and affects far more than the disabled.
Thus, persons with disabilities, persons of different races, of different religions, of different classes and economic stature are all too often ready-made victims of our preconceived ideas as to how they live, what they believe, what they can do and what they will be like. What is more, one shouldn’t assume that the poor and disadvantaged are the sole victims of negative personal perception. The rich and powerful can also be victimized – and often are. Their ability to more easily protect themselves from negative personal perception doesn’t in the least justify the practice.
Hence, the victim of racism can also be a racist, the offended can indeed offend, the sinned against can -- and do -- sin…as I learned once again on Monday, June 18th, 2007:
Just because I’m aware of others’ capacity for preconceived negative personal perception does not immunize me from practicing it myself.
Furthermore, negative personal perception may not be the only path to our individual and societal failings, but it’s surely one of the most well-taken paths. Next to the path of least resistance, the path of negative personal perception is the easiest to take…and it’s taken too often by far too many -- including this observer.
Thanks, Dan. Because you’re you, I couldn’t get away with it -- this time anyway!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
It was on the afternoon of Monday, June 18th, 2007 that I arrived at the Amtrak train station in Washington D.C. aboard Train #125 out of Penn Station in Newark, New Jersey.
I was on my way home to Alameda, California after a full three weeks of happy reunions with old friends and first time meetings with new ones. I felt content for the most part. I was even reasonably satisfied with my own behavior in the way I’d handled one or two touchy situations that are a part of daily relationships and circumstances.
My train was only about 30 minutes or so late, but that was all to the good. It meant that I would only have to wait 20 or 25 minutes for Amtrak Train #29 scheduled out of the station at 4:05 p.m. It would be especially pleasant if Train #29 was nicely air conditioned against the 85 to 90 degree east coast heat and 85 plus percent humidity, but that matter would take care of itself.
Then came the word that Train #29 to Chicago, due to an equipment failure, would not be able to meet its 4:05 p.m. departure schedule and that there was no estimated time when it would depart. A trainload of Amtrak passengers waited patiently in the station hoping that the mechanics would be able to remedy Train #29’s ills quickly enough for all to be on their way in time to make all necessary connections.
As I waited, I found myself seated between two gentlemen. One, from Chicago, told me that he spends a lot of his time on board his houseboat. The other, Archie from Rhode Island, said he also likes to travel but prefers solid terra firma. At one point in our conversation, Archie, in his delightful New England accent, informed me that a blind man without hands was seated a short distance away and was “fumbling” with his suitcase and obviously could use help. Archie was gone for only a very short time before he returned to report that the “blind man without hands” was all right and needed no help.
“Where is he going?” I asked, wondering if he’d be on Train #29 once it got rolling.
“I don’t know,” replied Archie, “but he’s here with the rest of us.
“Wow,” I thought to myself. “Here we are in Washington D.C. and not too far from me is a blind man without hands. It’s got to be Iraq,” I told myself.
Then I began to create a whole set of assumptions about this man’s background:
He has to be a veteran; He’s in Washington for treatment and rehabilitation at Walter Reed hospital; He’s an Iraq War veteran; His injury is recent.
Next came my assumptions regarding his state of mind:
He’s gotta be angry and bitter about his recent war injury; He’s gotta be apprehensive and even frightened as he struggles to adjust to his deficiencies; He’ll be lost or easily disoriented; He’ll need lots of help; He’ll be sad and perhaps even clingy.
Next, I went to the root of my assumptions -- my own fears, needs, comforts and ideas of convenience:
What would I do without hands? I’d be totally lost without a sense of touch. How could I function as I do today using a cane? What’ll I do if he’s in my car? I’ll have to help him, because, after all, he’s one of “us”.
Then came my final hope:
“Maybe he’ll be in another car if not on another train.”
Alas, such was -- most fortunately -- not to be.
Shortly after six-thirty p.m., I was assisted onto Train #29 and into the lower portion of a car which is where passengers who are senior and/or with disabilities may ride.
The car was reasonably cool and my seat was next to an electrical outlet so that I could conveniently listen to taped books and recharge my cell phone. The train had started to move, but the conductor hadn’t come to collect our tickets. I mumbled to myself out loud wondering whether the act of eating my lunch would automatically bring the conductor around to take my ticket.
Suddenly, from one seat behind me and across the aisle to my left, I heard the chime of a talking watch. Then a very cheery voice said:
“Who’s this blind guy who talks to himself?”
Next came introductions. His name was Dan and I, of course, introduced myself as Ed. My introduction to him confirmed his assumption as to who I was, thus I didn’t have to say anything to him about my disability. What’s strange is that although he rather quickly explained his condition to me, I don’t recall precisely how he confirmed to me that he was “the blind man without hands”.
Almost instantly, even before Dan told me much about himself, my fear-laden presumptions and perceptions melted away. Dan, after all, was Dan. Dan was not a set of my presumptive fears.
Within minutes of the outset of our conversation, the conductor had come around taking tickets and Dan was making plans to go to the dining car for supper. Since I’d had my lunch, I didn’t need the dining car. I’d join him in the lounge car for Happy Hour. Thus it was clear that Dan got around as well as I did.
During Happy Hour, Dan and I easily conversed on a number of topics. He was easy-going, he flirted with the ladies much more easily and with seemingly much greater confidence and resourcefulness than I. Even more, Dan was funny.
Once we were back in our car, Dan told me that at the age of 15, which was back in 1955, he’d injured himself while constructing a hand grenade. He went on to explain that as a youngster he’d learned to make such incendiaries in order to protect himself from possible harassment or harm from Chicago’s youth gangs. One day, he explained, he’d accidentally installed the wrong type of trigger on his latest grenade and his life had been changed forever.
He went on to talk of his daughters, one of whom served in the Balkan conflict in the late 1990s. He spoke of his life’s work as a rehabilitation counselor for the Department of Mental Health in Decatur, Illinois.
Dan is now retired and doesn’t have to work for monetary reasons. He just likes to keep busy. The reason he was on the train was because he was returning home from a job interview in Alexandria, Virginia.
The only assistance I provided him was to let him use my cell phone to call his daughter who was meeting him in Chicago, so that he could let her know that the train was running late.
When Dan and I parted in Chicago, I knew that I’d met a very extraordinary person. Certainly, my vacation—and, if I allow it, perhaps my life -- had been enriched by that man named Dan. However, I was also aware that I’d been guilty of one of humankind’s most subtle but devastating injustices.
I was guilty of the act of “preconceived negative personal perception”. What is even more incredible to me is that I am acutely sensitive to the fact that I am a lifelong victim of such preconceived negative personal perceptions.
How many times have I been denied opportunities for work, friendship, even love because of a person’s negative perceptions and ultimate inability to imagine interacting comfortably with me in a working or loving relationship? How many times have I answered the inquiry people often make as to what is hardest about living with disability by saying, with some intensity, that the most difficult aspect of living with disability (which in my case is total blindness) is dealing with the public’s perception of it.
The answer to both the above questions is — too many times.
Preconceived negative personal perception often is devastating to persons who live with disability. Unfortunately, its practice -- which I’ll define here as preconceived negative conclusions about others based on poor knowledge of the conditions under which another person lives -- is widely practiced and affects far more than the disabled.
Thus, persons with disabilities, persons of different races, of different religions, of different classes and economic stature are all too often ready-made victims of our preconceived ideas as to how they live, what they believe, what they can do and what they will be like. What is more, one shouldn’t assume that the poor and disadvantaged are the sole victims of negative personal perception. The rich and powerful can also be victimized – and often are. Their ability to more easily protect themselves from negative personal perception doesn’t in the least justify the practice.
Hence, the victim of racism can also be a racist, the offended can indeed offend, the sinned against can -- and do -- sin…as I learned once again on Monday, June 18th, 2007:
Just because I’m aware of others’ capacity for preconceived negative personal perception does not immunize me from practicing it myself.
Furthermore, negative personal perception may not be the only path to our individual and societal failings, but it’s surely one of the most well-taken paths. Next to the path of least resistance, the path of negative personal perception is the easiest to take…and it’s taken too often by far too many -- including this observer.
Thanks, Dan. Because you’re you, I couldn’t get away with it -- this time anyway!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Friday, July 6, 2007
VACATION—AS MUCH A REMINDER AS A REST
BY EDWIN COONEY
My recent vacation began smoothly and pleasantly on the morning of Monday, May 28th largely due to the considerate and most helpful efforts of four men named Chris, Don, Peter and Dennis.
Wearing new clothes, carrying a new cane, toting a new cell phone along with a full suitcase, I arrived shortly after eight thirty a.m. at the Emeryville, California train station on Monday, May 28th to begin a three-and-a-half day venture across America. The following Thursday, the Lakeshore Limited out of Chicago would deposit me in Depew, New York, a suburb of Buffalo.
Between Sacramento, California and Denver, Colorado, I had the pleasant company of a lady named Nancy. Nancy has a son living in Seattle, Washington, a daughter and
granddaughter living north of Denver, Colorado and family residing all over the West. Her experience riding the roads and rails is extensive and her adventures are varied in the moods their memories invoke. Thus, as train Number Six, the California Zephyr, worked its way - ponderously at times - across the western mountains, deserts and the great salt flats, Nancy shared some of her stories with me.
She told of the time recently when a passenger aboard the Greyhound bus she was riding reported to the driver that another passenger was carrying a gun. The bus was held up for two hours while authorities thoroughly searched the bus. She shivered in the cold and waited with her fellow travelers only to discover that the gun was merely a beebe gun intended as no threat to anyone. Yes, indeed, travel does have its travails--especially on Amtrak.
While waiting in Chicago for the Lakeshore Limited to Buffalo, I encountered one of the most resourceful and purposeful ladies I’ve met in some time. Her name is Charlene and she and her daughter Eva were traveling back to their home near New York from a family reunion in Minnesota. The Amtrak station in Chicago is underground and thus makes it hard for passengers waiting between trains to use radios to listen to local baseball games or other broadcasts. Even worse, the television in the station wasn’t showing the Cubs game then in progress. Charlene, a lady possessed of both charm and persistence, sought assistance from the technical staff and made the request to let us hear the Cubs rather than the boring movie being broadcast. Although we didn’t get to hear the Cubs, I like to think that the reason for that was simply because we ran out of time between trains. The daughter of a Canadian father and an Icelandic mother, Charlene was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and has traveled widely. For many years, Charlene has been involved in caring for and supporting people with disabilities as well as people who suffer from the depravities of a low income existence. Charlene and her remarkable daughter Eva, who has sufficiently mastered disability to become the Program Director at the Westchester, New York Independent Living Center, were the kind of traveling companions who made me want to know them even when I wasn’t traveling.
Then, too, there was Jerry, a Learning Consultant at the Center for Advanced Learning in Concord, Ohio. Jerry is the kind of person who makes his companion feel like he or she is the center of his attention — even in the most crowded room.
The train was a mere twenty-five minutes late getting into Buffalo and I was met there by my friend Bob. For the last thirty-two years, Bob has been most considerate and kind to me as both a friend and even a landlord. Bob, who constantly reminds me that he “tumbled out of the hills of Pennsylvania,” and therefore is “just a country boy,” insists on being not only helpful, but even generous. He makes it easy for me to minimize our political differences.
Attica, New York has been known to the world primarily as a prison town since the Attica Prison Riot in September 1971. Tiny in size, its other-worldliness is emphasized for me by three distinct sounds. The first sounds are the hymns which are heard throughout the village twice daily -- at noon and at 6 p.m. -- from the chimes of St. Vincent’s Roman Catholic Church. The second is the sound of the crunch of automobile tires on a gravel driveway instead of the usual concrete driveway found in most other places. That sound takes me back as far as I can remember. The third sound is more subtle but ultimately more significant: in the village of Attica, the sound of traffic is present, but it doesn’t dominate one’s senses. The most constant sound in Attica is that of barking dogs, the chirping of birds, and the wind in the trees. That sound, powerful and even primitive, leaves one with the impression that Attica could very easily be swallowed up by Mother Nature—-prison and all.
Attica always will mean the most to me as the home of a woman who has nurtured me since she was a “house mother” and I was a student at the New York State School for the Blind in nearby Batavia, New York. Edith has meant more to my values (spiritual and otherwise) than any other single person. She was born in Buffalo back in 1910 when children were mostly born at home and were expected to be “seen and not heard”. Now, at age ninety-seven, Edith, with considerable dignity, lives in a very different world from the one into which she was born. She doesn’t quarrel with today’s world, different as it is from the world she once knew, for she has always championed young people. Now she spends her time in her home from which she offers love and gentle wisdom in support of those she cherishes—including this observer.
Her daughter Sharon, who came to Attica from her Watertown home approximately 150 miles to the northeast of Attica to be with us, although somewhat different from Edith in style and manner, nevertheless possesses a sweet and generous nature. Marvelously feminine, Sharon’s personality is such that sunny laughter inevitably bubbles just below the surface of her daily existence and thus seems to fuel her ongoing thoughtfulness of other people.
While staying in Attica, I had lunch at the Attica Hotel with Dr. Wayne Mahood, a retired professor but still an actively prolific author of history texts. Between 1969 and 1994, Wayne was an instructor of education at the State University College at Geneseo. A professor and friend of mine since 1971, Wayne has grown gracefully senior encouraging and advising me as well as far more successful students. My shortcomings in these pages are not of his doing: Wayne really does encourage me to do better.
Batavia, which sits well established atop the flatland of Western New York, thirty-five miles northeast of Buffalo and thirty miles almost due west of Rochester, is a pretty thriving place for such a small city of approximately 18,000 citizens. It is the home of the New York State School for the Blind which opened in 1868 and which I attended from the fall of 1950 until June of 1966. These days the school serves a different and more severely disabled group of those who live with blindness. Its future as an institution is uncertain, but its past was celebrated by its Alumni Association early in June at its annual alumni reunion which was held at the Batavia Holiday Inn.
For nearly three days, I shared a cascade of school memories with approximately fifty others ranging in age from their early forties to the upper eighties. Many at the reunion attended that little school as early as 1924 and as recently as the late 1970s. Their common bond is their love for the school. Their common discomfort is coping with what their alma mater has become. I knew most of those who attended the reunion although I was not really a contemporary of many of them.
For hours and hours we exchanged stories. One man named Michael remembered my having protected him from a dog when he was about ten years old. To him I still am a hero although he realizes that all the dog was doing was barking, but he was deathly afraid of dogs. Then there is Nick who still blames me for an accident he had once while we were both in the school infirmary. “It wasn’t my fault,” Nick insists, “you had me laughing so hard that I couldn’t help it.” I thought the nurse understood the situation pretty well, but Nick isn’t so sure she did.
Between Sunday, June 10th and Friday, June 15th, I went home. I was born in Binghamton, New York and lived in what they still call “The Triple Cities” -- Binghamton, Johnson City and Endicott -- during school vacations throughout most of my childhood. My friends Barb and Dick were not only wonderfully generous and kind to me this year, but have been so since I was a teenager. They have lived in the same house since 1961 and are the proud parents of two children and two grandchildren. Steve is a new and somewhat struggling businessman who lives by his principles no matter how difficult for him they may be. He believes in hard work and conscientious behavior. His sister Kathy works contentedly as a secretary and computer whiz and raises their granddaughter Jenny. Sweet and petite, Barbara is intensely passionate about people and the principles that matter to her. Dick is quiet and easy-going but very passionate about Bobbie—as he usually refers to his wife. Their grandson Nick, Steve’s son, is very precious to them.
Barb and her sister Joanie treated me to a night of baseball at Nyseg Stadium where the Binghamton B-Mets lost to the Redding Phillies 7 to 1. When I was growing up, the team was called the Binghamton Triplets and they were a Yankee farm team. Yes, Binghamton really does possess a most glorious past.
Okay, it’s true. I won’t deny it. My best friend is a woman. Her name is Rhoda but I always call her Roe. We were in graduate school together and have been friends ever since. While I was majoring in history, Roe was a Library Science major. Second only to Edith, Roe has watched over me since August 29th, 1973 when we first talked at SUNY Geneseo.
Small, round-faced, and curly-haired, Roe believes in living by rules and standards, but she has a considerable amount of understanding and respect for the “underdog”. Intensely proud of her Jewish heritage, she is also intensely interested in helping other people learn about their own heritage. Her strongest characteristics are loyalty and thoughtfulness especially for those she cares about most, which of course include her husband and two daughters.
Mark, her husband of twenty-five years, is an imposing looking but very generous man. Primarily because he has a strong sense of his own worth, Mark extends himself to be kind and helpful to others. I was permitted to share his Father’s Day weekend. How much more generous than that can one possibly be?
Yes, this vacation was indeed a reminder of the past and the present, the happy, the sad and the uncertain. It was a reminder of the vastness of America, of the variety of its people’s experiences and perceptions. Even more, near its close, I got a reminder I didn’t realize I needed. I’ll share it with you next week.
Meanwhile, please accept this as…
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
My recent vacation began smoothly and pleasantly on the morning of Monday, May 28th largely due to the considerate and most helpful efforts of four men named Chris, Don, Peter and Dennis.
Wearing new clothes, carrying a new cane, toting a new cell phone along with a full suitcase, I arrived shortly after eight thirty a.m. at the Emeryville, California train station on Monday, May 28th to begin a three-and-a-half day venture across America. The following Thursday, the Lakeshore Limited out of Chicago would deposit me in Depew, New York, a suburb of Buffalo.
Between Sacramento, California and Denver, Colorado, I had the pleasant company of a lady named Nancy. Nancy has a son living in Seattle, Washington, a daughter and
granddaughter living north of Denver, Colorado and family residing all over the West. Her experience riding the roads and rails is extensive and her adventures are varied in the moods their memories invoke. Thus, as train Number Six, the California Zephyr, worked its way - ponderously at times - across the western mountains, deserts and the great salt flats, Nancy shared some of her stories with me.
She told of the time recently when a passenger aboard the Greyhound bus she was riding reported to the driver that another passenger was carrying a gun. The bus was held up for two hours while authorities thoroughly searched the bus. She shivered in the cold and waited with her fellow travelers only to discover that the gun was merely a beebe gun intended as no threat to anyone. Yes, indeed, travel does have its travails--especially on Amtrak.
While waiting in Chicago for the Lakeshore Limited to Buffalo, I encountered one of the most resourceful and purposeful ladies I’ve met in some time. Her name is Charlene and she and her daughter Eva were traveling back to their home near New York from a family reunion in Minnesota. The Amtrak station in Chicago is underground and thus makes it hard for passengers waiting between trains to use radios to listen to local baseball games or other broadcasts. Even worse, the television in the station wasn’t showing the Cubs game then in progress. Charlene, a lady possessed of both charm and persistence, sought assistance from the technical staff and made the request to let us hear the Cubs rather than the boring movie being broadcast. Although we didn’t get to hear the Cubs, I like to think that the reason for that was simply because we ran out of time between trains. The daughter of a Canadian father and an Icelandic mother, Charlene was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and has traveled widely. For many years, Charlene has been involved in caring for and supporting people with disabilities as well as people who suffer from the depravities of a low income existence. Charlene and her remarkable daughter Eva, who has sufficiently mastered disability to become the Program Director at the Westchester, New York Independent Living Center, were the kind of traveling companions who made me want to know them even when I wasn’t traveling.
Then, too, there was Jerry, a Learning Consultant at the Center for Advanced Learning in Concord, Ohio. Jerry is the kind of person who makes his companion feel like he or she is the center of his attention — even in the most crowded room.
The train was a mere twenty-five minutes late getting into Buffalo and I was met there by my friend Bob. For the last thirty-two years, Bob has been most considerate and kind to me as both a friend and even a landlord. Bob, who constantly reminds me that he “tumbled out of the hills of Pennsylvania,” and therefore is “just a country boy,” insists on being not only helpful, but even generous. He makes it easy for me to minimize our political differences.
Attica, New York has been known to the world primarily as a prison town since the Attica Prison Riot in September 1971. Tiny in size, its other-worldliness is emphasized for me by three distinct sounds. The first sounds are the hymns which are heard throughout the village twice daily -- at noon and at 6 p.m. -- from the chimes of St. Vincent’s Roman Catholic Church. The second is the sound of the crunch of automobile tires on a gravel driveway instead of the usual concrete driveway found in most other places. That sound takes me back as far as I can remember. The third sound is more subtle but ultimately more significant: in the village of Attica, the sound of traffic is present, but it doesn’t dominate one’s senses. The most constant sound in Attica is that of barking dogs, the chirping of birds, and the wind in the trees. That sound, powerful and even primitive, leaves one with the impression that Attica could very easily be swallowed up by Mother Nature—-prison and all.
Attica always will mean the most to me as the home of a woman who has nurtured me since she was a “house mother” and I was a student at the New York State School for the Blind in nearby Batavia, New York. Edith has meant more to my values (spiritual and otherwise) than any other single person. She was born in Buffalo back in 1910 when children were mostly born at home and were expected to be “seen and not heard”. Now, at age ninety-seven, Edith, with considerable dignity, lives in a very different world from the one into which she was born. She doesn’t quarrel with today’s world, different as it is from the world she once knew, for she has always championed young people. Now she spends her time in her home from which she offers love and gentle wisdom in support of those she cherishes—including this observer.
Her daughter Sharon, who came to Attica from her Watertown home approximately 150 miles to the northeast of Attica to be with us, although somewhat different from Edith in style and manner, nevertheless possesses a sweet and generous nature. Marvelously feminine, Sharon’s personality is such that sunny laughter inevitably bubbles just below the surface of her daily existence and thus seems to fuel her ongoing thoughtfulness of other people.
While staying in Attica, I had lunch at the Attica Hotel with Dr. Wayne Mahood, a retired professor but still an actively prolific author of history texts. Between 1969 and 1994, Wayne was an instructor of education at the State University College at Geneseo. A professor and friend of mine since 1971, Wayne has grown gracefully senior encouraging and advising me as well as far more successful students. My shortcomings in these pages are not of his doing: Wayne really does encourage me to do better.
Batavia, which sits well established atop the flatland of Western New York, thirty-five miles northeast of Buffalo and thirty miles almost due west of Rochester, is a pretty thriving place for such a small city of approximately 18,000 citizens. It is the home of the New York State School for the Blind which opened in 1868 and which I attended from the fall of 1950 until June of 1966. These days the school serves a different and more severely disabled group of those who live with blindness. Its future as an institution is uncertain, but its past was celebrated by its Alumni Association early in June at its annual alumni reunion which was held at the Batavia Holiday Inn.
For nearly three days, I shared a cascade of school memories with approximately fifty others ranging in age from their early forties to the upper eighties. Many at the reunion attended that little school as early as 1924 and as recently as the late 1970s. Their common bond is their love for the school. Their common discomfort is coping with what their alma mater has become. I knew most of those who attended the reunion although I was not really a contemporary of many of them.
For hours and hours we exchanged stories. One man named Michael remembered my having protected him from a dog when he was about ten years old. To him I still am a hero although he realizes that all the dog was doing was barking, but he was deathly afraid of dogs. Then there is Nick who still blames me for an accident he had once while we were both in the school infirmary. “It wasn’t my fault,” Nick insists, “you had me laughing so hard that I couldn’t help it.” I thought the nurse understood the situation pretty well, but Nick isn’t so sure she did.
Between Sunday, June 10th and Friday, June 15th, I went home. I was born in Binghamton, New York and lived in what they still call “The Triple Cities” -- Binghamton, Johnson City and Endicott -- during school vacations throughout most of my childhood. My friends Barb and Dick were not only wonderfully generous and kind to me this year, but have been so since I was a teenager. They have lived in the same house since 1961 and are the proud parents of two children and two grandchildren. Steve is a new and somewhat struggling businessman who lives by his principles no matter how difficult for him they may be. He believes in hard work and conscientious behavior. His sister Kathy works contentedly as a secretary and computer whiz and raises their granddaughter Jenny. Sweet and petite, Barbara is intensely passionate about people and the principles that matter to her. Dick is quiet and easy-going but very passionate about Bobbie—as he usually refers to his wife. Their grandson Nick, Steve’s son, is very precious to them.
Barb and her sister Joanie treated me to a night of baseball at Nyseg Stadium where the Binghamton B-Mets lost to the Redding Phillies 7 to 1. When I was growing up, the team was called the Binghamton Triplets and they were a Yankee farm team. Yes, Binghamton really does possess a most glorious past.
Okay, it’s true. I won’t deny it. My best friend is a woman. Her name is Rhoda but I always call her Roe. We were in graduate school together and have been friends ever since. While I was majoring in history, Roe was a Library Science major. Second only to Edith, Roe has watched over me since August 29th, 1973 when we first talked at SUNY Geneseo.
Small, round-faced, and curly-haired, Roe believes in living by rules and standards, but she has a considerable amount of understanding and respect for the “underdog”. Intensely proud of her Jewish heritage, she is also intensely interested in helping other people learn about their own heritage. Her strongest characteristics are loyalty and thoughtfulness especially for those she cares about most, which of course include her husband and two daughters.
Mark, her husband of twenty-five years, is an imposing looking but very generous man. Primarily because he has a strong sense of his own worth, Mark extends himself to be kind and helpful to others. I was permitted to share his Father’s Day weekend. How much more generous than that can one possibly be?
Yes, this vacation was indeed a reminder of the past and the present, the happy, the sad and the uncertain. It was a reminder of the vastness of America, of the variety of its people’s experiences and perceptions. Even more, near its close, I got a reminder I didn’t realize I needed. I’ll share it with you next week.
Meanwhile, please accept this as…
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Monday, May 28, 2007
HARSH PRESIDENTIAL JUDGMENT OF PRESIDENTS -- Almost an American Institution
BY EDWIN COONEY
Written Friday, May 25th, 2007
As I’ve stated on numerous occasions—privately as well as in my columns—I’m a Jimmy Carter Democrat and have remained so, through thick and thin, since 1976.
Last weekend, my political hero startled some pretty impressionable people by asserting that the Bush administration was the worst in history in-so-far as our effect on the world was concerned.
The former president’s assertions in the Democratic Gazette of Little Rock, Arkansas as well as over the BBC were considered by many to have been exceedingly harsh and even unprecedented. Douglas Brinkley, one of Mr. Carter’s biographers, called his remarks “fighting words,” suggesting that Jimmy Carter’s words were unusually abusive to President George W. Bush.
It’s hard to understand how Mr. Brinkley could reach that conclusion had he bothered to do just a little research. Former presidents have often been every bit as harsh on their successors.
One of the richest sources for what former presidents have said about each other is William A. DeGregorio’s Complete Book of U.S. Presidents. The following presidential observations are from the fourth edition of Mr. DeGregorio’s work.
President Washington had no predecessor to criticize him. However, criticism by Thomas Paine -- whom many consider to be the Father of the American Revolution through publication of his famous pamphlet “Common Sense”, which swore enmity to all tyrannies -- was pretty powerful stuff by the end of President Washington’s second term of office. Paine, who gained the admiration and friendship of George Washington during and after the American Revolution, felt abandoned by Washington when Paine became a prisoner during the French revolution. In an angry open letter to President Washington from France in 1796, Thomas Paine excoriated George Washington thusly:
“AND AS TO YOU, SIR, TREACHEROUS TO PRIVATE FRIENDSHIP (FOR SO YOU HAVE BEEN TO ME, AND THAT IN THE DAY OF DANGER) AND A HYPOCRITE IN PUBLIC LIFE, THE WORLD WILL BE PUZZLED TO DECIDE, WHETHER YOU ARE AN APOSTATE OR IMPOSTER, WHETHER YOU ABANDONED GOOD PRINCIPLES OR WHETHER YOU EVER HAD ANY.”
President Washington more than survived Thomas Paine’s attack, but many, especially Jeffersonian Republicans, deeply believed that Washington’s tendency to lean toward Britain was elitist and potentially damaging to Thomas Paine’s perpetual goal—freedom.
Thomas Jefferson didn’t live to see Andrew Jackson become President, but he witnessed Jackson’s frequent rages on the floor of the United States Senate. Jackson was a young Senator from Tennessee and Jefferson, Vice President under John Adams, was Senate President when he asserted that Jackson was “…A DANGEROUS MAN.”
John Quincy Adams as Secretary of State under James Monroe had supported Andrew Jackson when Secretary of War John C. Calhoun wanted Jackson arrested following his 1820 invasion of Spanish Florida. He was defeated for re-election as President by Old Hickory in 1828. Of Jackson John Quincy Adams later wrote:
“A BARBARIAN WHO COULD NOT WRITE A SENTENCE OF GRAMMAR AND WHO COULD HARDLY SPELL HIS OWN NAME.”
Whether it was pure anger over his defeat by Jackson or jealousy of Jackson’s popularity that led John Quincy Adams to attack Jackson isn’t clear. What is clear however is that Adams saw Andrew Jackson, with all of his popularity, to be an inferior individual and leader.
President James Knox Polk was conducting a war with Mexico in 1848 which many -- including Illinois Representative Abraham Lincoln -- considered to be an immoral war despite America’s triumph. Said Lincoln of President Polk:
“I MORE THAN SUSPECT THAT HE IS DEEPLY CONSCIOUS OF BEING IN THE WRONG—THAT HE FEELS THE BLOOD OF THIS WAR, LIKE THE BLOOD OF ABEL, CRYING IN HEAVEN AGAINST HIM…HE IS A DEEPLY BEWILDERED, CONFOUNDED, AND A MISERABLY PERPLEXED MAN.”
Whatever President Polk might or might not have felt about his presidency in general or the war in particular, his weakened physique enabled him to live only three months and eleven days after his term. He died on June 15th, 1849.
Former president Franklin Pierce, whose own personal tragedies and failings led up to the Civil War, said of President Lincoln:
“LINCOLN IS, FOR ALL HIS LIMITED ABILITY AND NARROW INTELLIGENCE, THE ABOLITIONISTS’ WILLING INSTURMENT FOR ALL THE WOE WHICH, THUS FAR, HAS BEEN BROUGHT UPON THE COUNTRY FOR ALL THE DEGRADATION, ALL THE ATROCITY, AND ALL THE DESOLATION AND RUIN.”
Like President Washington, Abraham Lincoln easily survived the attacks on him made by “handsome Frank” Pierce, primarily because Pierce by the mid 1860s was seen even by his New Hampshire neighbors as having been a political and personal failure due to personal tragedy and perhaps even heavy drinking.
Then, of course, there was Teddy Roosevelt’s assessment of Woodrow Wilson. TR was never happy; it seems, with any president who served after he did:
“FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE, NEVER ALLUDE TO WILSON AS AN IDEALIST, MILITAIRE, OR AN ALTRUIST. HE IS A DOCTRINAIRE WHEN HE CAN BE SO WITH SAFETY TO HIS PERSONAL AMBITION….HE HASN’T A TOUCH OF IDEALISM IN HIM. HIS ADVOCACY OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS NO MORE REPRESENTS IDEALISM ON HIS PART THAN DID HIS ADVOCACY OF PEACE WITHOUT VICTORY….HE IS A SILLY DOCTRINAIRE AT TIMES, AND A COLD-BLOODED POLITICIAN ALWAYS.”
TR’s criticism of Wilson came in 1919 just days before his January 6th death while President Wilson traveled triumphantly through Europe following the November 11th, 1918 armistice that ended “The Great War” and “saved the world for democracy,”--a sentiment expressed by Wilson and millions of others.
Former President Truman’s assessments of Republicans were seldom if ever gentle. In the volume the late Stephen Ambrose wrote about Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency, he quoted Truman as saying of Ike:
“HE DOESN’T KNOW ANY MORE ABOUT BEING PRESIDENT THAN A PIG KNOWS ABOUT SUNDAY.”
Truman’s assessment of General Eisenhower in Mr. DeGregorio’s book doesn’t represent an improvement of President Truman’s evaluation of President Eisenhower in Professor Ambrose’s book:
“IKE DIDN’T KNOW ANYTHING AND ALL THE TIME HE WAS IN OFFICE, HE DIDN’T LEARN A THING. IN 1959, WHEN CASTRO CAME TO POWER DOWN IN CUBA, IKE JUST SAT ON HIS ASS AND ACTED AS IF HE DIDN’T NOTICE WHAT WAS GOING ON DOWN THERE. WHY, MAYBE CASTRO WOULD JUST GO AWAY OR SOMETHING.”
One of Mr. Truman’s least favorite politicians in any party was future President Richard M. Nixon. What President Truman said about Richard Nixon may have been said long before RMN was elected. It goes as follows:
“RICHARD NIXON IS A NO-GOOD LYING BASTARD. HE CAN LIE OUT OF BOTH SIDES OF HIS MOUTH AT THE SAME TIME AND IF HE EVER CAUGHT HIMSELF TELLING THE TRUTH, HE’D LIE, JUST TO KEEP HIS HAND IN.”
As harsh as it sounded last weekend, by comparison with the above, Jimmy Carter’s assessment of George W. Bush as “AS THE WORST PRESIDENT IN OUR HISTORY IN-SO-FAR AS OUR PLACE IN THE WORLD IS CONCERNED,” is reasonably mild. However, it brought down on Mr. Carter the force of all of the Conservative dogma attacks which those of us sympathetic to Jimmy Carter have heard since he was President. Accordingly, President Carter is far more affective when he addresses himself to issues than he is when he addresses himself to personalities or persons.
Every former president has an official right that President Carter knows about and actually spoke of some years ago in an interview. That right is to address the United States Senate at any time.
Suppose President Carter, feeling as he did about President Bush’s pending invasion of Iraq in March of 2003, had availed himself of this prerogative and had appeared before the U.S. Senate to say something like this:
“I STAND BEFORE YOU TODAY, NOT IN OPPOSITION TO OUR PRESIDENT, FOR I KNOW WHAT IT IS TO SERVE AS PRESIDENT AND THUS TO SUFFER ALL OF THE FRUSTRATIONS WHICH THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF THAT OFFICE OFTEN BRING TO ITS OCCUPANT. NOR, DO I COME AS AN OPPONENT OF ALL WAR BECAUSE, TERRIBLE AS IT IS, WAR CAN BE ESSENTIAL TO HUMAN FREEDOM AND INDIVIDUAL SECURITY.
“I STAND BEFORE YOU TODAY RATHER IN SAD OPPOSITION TO PRESIDENT BUSH’S PROPOSED INVASION OF IRAQ BECAUSE I SEE WITHIN THE VERY CIRCUMSTANCE OF THAT INVASION THE GATEWAY, NOT TO VICTORY OVER TERRORISM, BUT RATHER TO AN UNINTENDED INVITATION TO THE INCREASE OF DEADLIER AND MORE WIDESPREAD TERRORISM…”
I think it might have been a hell of a speech and might well have increased Jimmy Carter’s status as a statesman even if it had brought him temporary criticism.
I’d have been delighted to help him write the speech. Late as it is—I just did.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Written Friday, May 25th, 2007
As I’ve stated on numerous occasions—privately as well as in my columns—I’m a Jimmy Carter Democrat and have remained so, through thick and thin, since 1976.
Last weekend, my political hero startled some pretty impressionable people by asserting that the Bush administration was the worst in history in-so-far as our effect on the world was concerned.
The former president’s assertions in the Democratic Gazette of Little Rock, Arkansas as well as over the BBC were considered by many to have been exceedingly harsh and even unprecedented. Douglas Brinkley, one of Mr. Carter’s biographers, called his remarks “fighting words,” suggesting that Jimmy Carter’s words were unusually abusive to President George W. Bush.
It’s hard to understand how Mr. Brinkley could reach that conclusion had he bothered to do just a little research. Former presidents have often been every bit as harsh on their successors.
One of the richest sources for what former presidents have said about each other is William A. DeGregorio’s Complete Book of U.S. Presidents. The following presidential observations are from the fourth edition of Mr. DeGregorio’s work.
President Washington had no predecessor to criticize him. However, criticism by Thomas Paine -- whom many consider to be the Father of the American Revolution through publication of his famous pamphlet “Common Sense”, which swore enmity to all tyrannies -- was pretty powerful stuff by the end of President Washington’s second term of office. Paine, who gained the admiration and friendship of George Washington during and after the American Revolution, felt abandoned by Washington when Paine became a prisoner during the French revolution. In an angry open letter to President Washington from France in 1796, Thomas Paine excoriated George Washington thusly:
“AND AS TO YOU, SIR, TREACHEROUS TO PRIVATE FRIENDSHIP (FOR SO YOU HAVE BEEN TO ME, AND THAT IN THE DAY OF DANGER) AND A HYPOCRITE IN PUBLIC LIFE, THE WORLD WILL BE PUZZLED TO DECIDE, WHETHER YOU ARE AN APOSTATE OR IMPOSTER, WHETHER YOU ABANDONED GOOD PRINCIPLES OR WHETHER YOU EVER HAD ANY.”
President Washington more than survived Thomas Paine’s attack, but many, especially Jeffersonian Republicans, deeply believed that Washington’s tendency to lean toward Britain was elitist and potentially damaging to Thomas Paine’s perpetual goal—freedom.
Thomas Jefferson didn’t live to see Andrew Jackson become President, but he witnessed Jackson’s frequent rages on the floor of the United States Senate. Jackson was a young Senator from Tennessee and Jefferson, Vice President under John Adams, was Senate President when he asserted that Jackson was “…A DANGEROUS MAN.”
John Quincy Adams as Secretary of State under James Monroe had supported Andrew Jackson when Secretary of War John C. Calhoun wanted Jackson arrested following his 1820 invasion of Spanish Florida. He was defeated for re-election as President by Old Hickory in 1828. Of Jackson John Quincy Adams later wrote:
“A BARBARIAN WHO COULD NOT WRITE A SENTENCE OF GRAMMAR AND WHO COULD HARDLY SPELL HIS OWN NAME.”
Whether it was pure anger over his defeat by Jackson or jealousy of Jackson’s popularity that led John Quincy Adams to attack Jackson isn’t clear. What is clear however is that Adams saw Andrew Jackson, with all of his popularity, to be an inferior individual and leader.
President James Knox Polk was conducting a war with Mexico in 1848 which many -- including Illinois Representative Abraham Lincoln -- considered to be an immoral war despite America’s triumph. Said Lincoln of President Polk:
“I MORE THAN SUSPECT THAT HE IS DEEPLY CONSCIOUS OF BEING IN THE WRONG—THAT HE FEELS THE BLOOD OF THIS WAR, LIKE THE BLOOD OF ABEL, CRYING IN HEAVEN AGAINST HIM…HE IS A DEEPLY BEWILDERED, CONFOUNDED, AND A MISERABLY PERPLEXED MAN.”
Whatever President Polk might or might not have felt about his presidency in general or the war in particular, his weakened physique enabled him to live only three months and eleven days after his term. He died on June 15th, 1849.
Former president Franklin Pierce, whose own personal tragedies and failings led up to the Civil War, said of President Lincoln:
“LINCOLN IS, FOR ALL HIS LIMITED ABILITY AND NARROW INTELLIGENCE, THE ABOLITIONISTS’ WILLING INSTURMENT FOR ALL THE WOE WHICH, THUS FAR, HAS BEEN BROUGHT UPON THE COUNTRY FOR ALL THE DEGRADATION, ALL THE ATROCITY, AND ALL THE DESOLATION AND RUIN.”
Like President Washington, Abraham Lincoln easily survived the attacks on him made by “handsome Frank” Pierce, primarily because Pierce by the mid 1860s was seen even by his New Hampshire neighbors as having been a political and personal failure due to personal tragedy and perhaps even heavy drinking.
Then, of course, there was Teddy Roosevelt’s assessment of Woodrow Wilson. TR was never happy; it seems, with any president who served after he did:
“FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE, NEVER ALLUDE TO WILSON AS AN IDEALIST, MILITAIRE, OR AN ALTRUIST. HE IS A DOCTRINAIRE WHEN HE CAN BE SO WITH SAFETY TO HIS PERSONAL AMBITION….HE HASN’T A TOUCH OF IDEALISM IN HIM. HIS ADVOCACY OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS NO MORE REPRESENTS IDEALISM ON HIS PART THAN DID HIS ADVOCACY OF PEACE WITHOUT VICTORY….HE IS A SILLY DOCTRINAIRE AT TIMES, AND A COLD-BLOODED POLITICIAN ALWAYS.”
TR’s criticism of Wilson came in 1919 just days before his January 6th death while President Wilson traveled triumphantly through Europe following the November 11th, 1918 armistice that ended “The Great War” and “saved the world for democracy,”--a sentiment expressed by Wilson and millions of others.
Former President Truman’s assessments of Republicans were seldom if ever gentle. In the volume the late Stephen Ambrose wrote about Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency, he quoted Truman as saying of Ike:
“HE DOESN’T KNOW ANY MORE ABOUT BEING PRESIDENT THAN A PIG KNOWS ABOUT SUNDAY.”
Truman’s assessment of General Eisenhower in Mr. DeGregorio’s book doesn’t represent an improvement of President Truman’s evaluation of President Eisenhower in Professor Ambrose’s book:
“IKE DIDN’T KNOW ANYTHING AND ALL THE TIME HE WAS IN OFFICE, HE DIDN’T LEARN A THING. IN 1959, WHEN CASTRO CAME TO POWER DOWN IN CUBA, IKE JUST SAT ON HIS ASS AND ACTED AS IF HE DIDN’T NOTICE WHAT WAS GOING ON DOWN THERE. WHY, MAYBE CASTRO WOULD JUST GO AWAY OR SOMETHING.”
One of Mr. Truman’s least favorite politicians in any party was future President Richard M. Nixon. What President Truman said about Richard Nixon may have been said long before RMN was elected. It goes as follows:
“RICHARD NIXON IS A NO-GOOD LYING BASTARD. HE CAN LIE OUT OF BOTH SIDES OF HIS MOUTH AT THE SAME TIME AND IF HE EVER CAUGHT HIMSELF TELLING THE TRUTH, HE’D LIE, JUST TO KEEP HIS HAND IN.”
As harsh as it sounded last weekend, by comparison with the above, Jimmy Carter’s assessment of George W. Bush as “AS THE WORST PRESIDENT IN OUR HISTORY IN-SO-FAR AS OUR PLACE IN THE WORLD IS CONCERNED,” is reasonably mild. However, it brought down on Mr. Carter the force of all of the Conservative dogma attacks which those of us sympathetic to Jimmy Carter have heard since he was President. Accordingly, President Carter is far more affective when he addresses himself to issues than he is when he addresses himself to personalities or persons.
Every former president has an official right that President Carter knows about and actually spoke of some years ago in an interview. That right is to address the United States Senate at any time.
Suppose President Carter, feeling as he did about President Bush’s pending invasion of Iraq in March of 2003, had availed himself of this prerogative and had appeared before the U.S. Senate to say something like this:
“I STAND BEFORE YOU TODAY, NOT IN OPPOSITION TO OUR PRESIDENT, FOR I KNOW WHAT IT IS TO SERVE AS PRESIDENT AND THUS TO SUFFER ALL OF THE FRUSTRATIONS WHICH THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF THAT OFFICE OFTEN BRING TO ITS OCCUPANT. NOR, DO I COME AS AN OPPONENT OF ALL WAR BECAUSE, TERRIBLE AS IT IS, WAR CAN BE ESSENTIAL TO HUMAN FREEDOM AND INDIVIDUAL SECURITY.
“I STAND BEFORE YOU TODAY RATHER IN SAD OPPOSITION TO PRESIDENT BUSH’S PROPOSED INVASION OF IRAQ BECAUSE I SEE WITHIN THE VERY CIRCUMSTANCE OF THAT INVASION THE GATEWAY, NOT TO VICTORY OVER TERRORISM, BUT RATHER TO AN UNINTENDED INVITATION TO THE INCREASE OF DEADLIER AND MORE WIDESPREAD TERRORISM…”
I think it might have been a hell of a speech and might well have increased Jimmy Carter’s status as a statesman even if it had brought him temporary criticism.
I’d have been delighted to help him write the speech. Late as it is—I just did.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Saturday, May 19, 2007
EVERY DAY MATTERS -- This One Perhaps Most of All
BY EDWIN COONEY
Written Friday, May 18th, 2007
Yah, I know, my ex-wife -- a lady of uncommon judgment and uncanny foresight -- IS right—I must have way too much time on my hands when I do what I did today.
The problem is that I have an ingrained obsession about the significance of historic events and the dates on which they occurred. Thus, I hit the internet to learn what important or significant events had taken place on May the 18ths of the past. As usual, I was fascinated. Not only that, I almost decided for myself what I believe to be the most significant event that occurred in history on this date. However, since I couldn’t quite make up my mind, I did what I always do in such instances.
I went to my local watering hole to find my buddies Lunkhead and Dunderhead—and there they were. Lunkhead was looking a little grim leaning on his left elbow, the fingers of his left hand spread through what little hair he has, a dead cigar poking out of the left side of his mouth, and his scotch glass about a third empty. Dunderhead was leaning on his right elbow looking to his left along the bar at Lunkhead with a self-satisfied smirk on his thin face as though he’d just said something very clever to Lunkhead. There was a nearly full glass of beer in front of him.
“What’s up?” I asked, as I took the stool between them and ordered a beer.
“Oh,” said Dunderhead, “Lunkhead is in mourning for both the San Jose Sharks and the Golden State Warriors.”
“I’d be lucky if that’s all it was,” muttered Lunkhead. “My wife didn’t care about the hockey playoffs but, as you’ll recall, she’s from Salt Lake City and I was dumb enough to bet her that the Golden State Warriors would beat the Utah Jazz in the recent basketball playoff series. Unfortunately for me, they didn’t. Now, I have to do anything she tells me to do for a week beginning tomorrow. She generously gave me a few days to get ready and tomorrow -- on a Saturday, of all days -- it starts,” Lunkhead moaned.
“Well, perhaps this’ll take your mind off your troubles for at least awhile, Lunkhead,” I said, handing both fellows printed copies of the historic events I had printed from the website. The lists are broken into three major categories: significant May 18th births, deaths, and historic events both here and abroad.
“So,” I suggested, “what do you say if we first decide on the most significant May 18th birth?” and they both nodded.
Suddenly, Lunkhead sat up straight and laid his cigar on the bar and Dunderhead lowered his exotic beer. They both began running their forefingers along the first column of names.
“Good God!” said Lunkhead, “Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia, was born on May 18th, 1868, and Bertrand Russell, the British mathematician, Nobel Prize winner, and pacifist philosopher was born on the same day in 1872—hmmmm.”
“Neither one of those guys,” said Dunderhead (having obviously started from the opposite end of the list) can hold a candle to Jennifer Streblow, Miss Wisconsin of 1997. And Lunkhead, look -- here’s a Golden State Warrior for you -- Donyell Marshall was born May 18th, 1973. How about that?”
“He’s long gone to the Cleveland Cavaliers, and what’s worse, his team is still in the playoffs,” said Lunkhead hanging his head again.
Both men continued to run their fingers along the May 18th births:
Baseball slugger Reggie Jackson, 1947; Albert Hammond of “It Never Rains In Southern California” fame, 1942; Frank Capra,1894, producer of “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Arsenic and Old Lace”; the late Senator Jacob K. Javits of New York, 1904; and Brooks Robinson, 1937, the Baltimore Orioles “vacuum cleaner” at third base for almost twenty-two years now in the Baseball Hall of Fame (along with Jackson); former Senator Warren Rudman of New Hampshire, co-author of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings balanced budget act of the 1980’s GOP-controlled U.S. Senate.
Suddenly, the silence was interrupted and, for the next ten or twelve minutes, I had to listen to both Lunkhead and Dunderhead singing songs like:
“Catch a Falling Star”, “Tom Boy”, and “Hot-Diggity, Dog-Diggity, Boom What You Do To Me!”
Long before they got to “The Bluest Skies You’ve Ever Seen Are in Seattle”, I knew that Perry (Pierino) Como (May 18th, 1912) -- the singing barber -- was their choice for the most significant birth I was just grateful that they stayed away from “Ave Maria,” not because I dislike it, mind you, but rather because it’s a beautiful hymn.
It took less time than I possibly could have imagined for them to decide on the most significant May 18th death. At least they didn’t settle for Jacques Marquette, the Jesuit Missionary. (Dunderhead made the derisive comment that he’d been turned down at Marquette when he’d applied for admission to the university back in the 1960s.) Indeed, Mary McLeod Bethune of education and civil rights fame who died May 18th 1955, and Jeannette Rankin, the maverick GOP Congresswoman from Montana who had been elected to two terms in the House of Representatives in 1916 and 1940 so she could vote to keep us out of both World War I and II before being denied re-election both times, got no reaction at all. Not even Wilbur J. Cohen, the first employee of the Social Security Administration who died on May 18th, 1977 got the slightest sniffle.
Then, suddenly, it came.
“Oh, no,” Lunkhead and Dunderhead cried together, as if it had happened on May 18th, 2007 rather than on May 18th, 1988. They were talking about the death of Daws Butler, the voice of Yogi Bear and Huckelberry Hound.
“But,” I cried, “Why not Lawrence Welk who died of pneumonia on May 18th, 1992 at the age of 89?”
“Naah,” said Lunkhead, “I couldn’t vote for anyone who had lemons for sisters. The Oak Ridge Boys are more my type of music anyway.
“Lunkhead,” said Dunderhead, “They were the Lennon Sisters, not the Lemon sisters! Open your ears and your mind might follow!”
“Yah, but they were lemons just the same as far as I’m concerned,” Lunkhead growled, retrieving his dead cigar from the bar and putting it back into his face.
The pick for the most historic event was, of course, going to be the toughest and probably the most significant choice. The possibilities included:
The 1631 election of John Winthrop as the first governor of Massachusetts; the 1652 decision by Rhode Island to make slavery illegal; the May 18th 1804 crowning of Napoleon Bonaparte as emperor of France; the infamous decision of the people of Massachusetts on May 18th 1852 requiring all children of age within the state to attend school; the beginning of the siege of Vicksburg by General Grant during the Civil War in 1863; the panic by many in 1910 when the earth passed through the tail of Halley’s Comet; the 1934 reference to the Academy Award Statue as “Oscar” for the first time in print by Sidney Skolsky — none of which got any reaction from either man.
The 1953 breaking of the sound barrier by Jacqueline Cochrane, the first woman pilot to do so, did get a reaction from Lunkhead who said that his wife had broken the sound barrier many times without thinking anything of it. Both men thought it was remarkable that Catholic Italy had approved the legalization of abortion as early as 1977—and both thought it was quite “manly” that Chung Kwung Ying had performed 2,750 “atomic” hand-stand push-ups on Sunday, May 18th, 1986. The amazing thing is that they missed it -- both of them.
There was dead silence. They couldn’t make up their minds. Perhaps it was the unfamiliar name that had caused their attention to skip over it. I pronounced it—Edwin Budding. Then I pronounced the year—eighteen thirty.
I thought Lunkhead was going to pass out. Suddenly he saw it: in 1830, an English engineer named Edwin Budding from Stroud, Gloucestershire had invented the lawn mower -- the bane of every husband nearly every Saturday of his life between May and October. Yes, indeed, that was it. I hadn’t known about Lunkhead’s pickle before presenting my lists, but what can one say or even do when history proves so real and relevant?
Suddenly, there we were, me on one side and Dunderhead on the other, leading Lunkhead home to face the first chore Bertha Lunkhead would surely demand of her groggy husband tomorrow morning.
“I can just hear her now,” Lunkhead cried. “Before you do anything else, mow the lawn dear!!!”
“Lunkhead,” I asked sweetly, “what price would Bertha have had to pay had the Warriors and not the Jazz won the recent series?”
Oh, that’s easy,” shot back Lunkhead, “she’d have had to do anything I wanted her to do for a week beginning tomorrow, of course. After all, I’d have given her prep time, I’m not a brutish man you know,” he insisted.
“Okay,” I said “then what would you have asked her to do first that she never does?” I inquired as I snickered at Dunderhead over Lunkhead’s bent head.”
“Oh, hell, that’s easy, too. Mow the lawn, dear,” he said with just the slightest tremor in his voice.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Written Friday, May 18th, 2007
Yah, I know, my ex-wife -- a lady of uncommon judgment and uncanny foresight -- IS right—I must have way too much time on my hands when I do what I did today.
The problem is that I have an ingrained obsession about the significance of historic events and the dates on which they occurred. Thus, I hit the internet to learn what important or significant events had taken place on May the 18ths of the past. As usual, I was fascinated. Not only that, I almost decided for myself what I believe to be the most significant event that occurred in history on this date. However, since I couldn’t quite make up my mind, I did what I always do in such instances.
I went to my local watering hole to find my buddies Lunkhead and Dunderhead—and there they were. Lunkhead was looking a little grim leaning on his left elbow, the fingers of his left hand spread through what little hair he has, a dead cigar poking out of the left side of his mouth, and his scotch glass about a third empty. Dunderhead was leaning on his right elbow looking to his left along the bar at Lunkhead with a self-satisfied smirk on his thin face as though he’d just said something very clever to Lunkhead. There was a nearly full glass of beer in front of him.
“What’s up?” I asked, as I took the stool between them and ordered a beer.
“Oh,” said Dunderhead, “Lunkhead is in mourning for both the San Jose Sharks and the Golden State Warriors.”
“I’d be lucky if that’s all it was,” muttered Lunkhead. “My wife didn’t care about the hockey playoffs but, as you’ll recall, she’s from Salt Lake City and I was dumb enough to bet her that the Golden State Warriors would beat the Utah Jazz in the recent basketball playoff series. Unfortunately for me, they didn’t. Now, I have to do anything she tells me to do for a week beginning tomorrow. She generously gave me a few days to get ready and tomorrow -- on a Saturday, of all days -- it starts,” Lunkhead moaned.
“Well, perhaps this’ll take your mind off your troubles for at least awhile, Lunkhead,” I said, handing both fellows printed copies of the historic events I had printed from the website. The lists are broken into three major categories: significant May 18th births, deaths, and historic events both here and abroad.
“So,” I suggested, “what do you say if we first decide on the most significant May 18th birth?” and they both nodded.
Suddenly, Lunkhead sat up straight and laid his cigar on the bar and Dunderhead lowered his exotic beer. They both began running their forefingers along the first column of names.
“Good God!” said Lunkhead, “Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia, was born on May 18th, 1868, and Bertrand Russell, the British mathematician, Nobel Prize winner, and pacifist philosopher was born on the same day in 1872—hmmmm.”
“Neither one of those guys,” said Dunderhead (having obviously started from the opposite end of the list) can hold a candle to Jennifer Streblow, Miss Wisconsin of 1997. And Lunkhead, look -- here’s a Golden State Warrior for you -- Donyell Marshall was born May 18th, 1973. How about that?”
“He’s long gone to the Cleveland Cavaliers, and what’s worse, his team is still in the playoffs,” said Lunkhead hanging his head again.
Both men continued to run their fingers along the May 18th births:
Baseball slugger Reggie Jackson, 1947; Albert Hammond of “It Never Rains In Southern California” fame, 1942; Frank Capra,1894, producer of “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Arsenic and Old Lace”; the late Senator Jacob K. Javits of New York, 1904; and Brooks Robinson, 1937, the Baltimore Orioles “vacuum cleaner” at third base for almost twenty-two years now in the Baseball Hall of Fame (along with Jackson); former Senator Warren Rudman of New Hampshire, co-author of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings balanced budget act of the 1980’s GOP-controlled U.S. Senate.
Suddenly, the silence was interrupted and, for the next ten or twelve minutes, I had to listen to both Lunkhead and Dunderhead singing songs like:
“Catch a Falling Star”, “Tom Boy”, and “Hot-Diggity, Dog-Diggity, Boom What You Do To Me!”
Long before they got to “The Bluest Skies You’ve Ever Seen Are in Seattle”, I knew that Perry (Pierino) Como (May 18th, 1912) -- the singing barber -- was their choice for the most significant birth I was just grateful that they stayed away from “Ave Maria,” not because I dislike it, mind you, but rather because it’s a beautiful hymn.
It took less time than I possibly could have imagined for them to decide on the most significant May 18th death. At least they didn’t settle for Jacques Marquette, the Jesuit Missionary. (Dunderhead made the derisive comment that he’d been turned down at Marquette when he’d applied for admission to the university back in the 1960s.) Indeed, Mary McLeod Bethune of education and civil rights fame who died May 18th 1955, and Jeannette Rankin, the maverick GOP Congresswoman from Montana who had been elected to two terms in the House of Representatives in 1916 and 1940 so she could vote to keep us out of both World War I and II before being denied re-election both times, got no reaction at all. Not even Wilbur J. Cohen, the first employee of the Social Security Administration who died on May 18th, 1977 got the slightest sniffle.
Then, suddenly, it came.
“Oh, no,” Lunkhead and Dunderhead cried together, as if it had happened on May 18th, 2007 rather than on May 18th, 1988. They were talking about the death of Daws Butler, the voice of Yogi Bear and Huckelberry Hound.
“But,” I cried, “Why not Lawrence Welk who died of pneumonia on May 18th, 1992 at the age of 89?”
“Naah,” said Lunkhead, “I couldn’t vote for anyone who had lemons for sisters. The Oak Ridge Boys are more my type of music anyway.
“Lunkhead,” said Dunderhead, “They were the Lennon Sisters, not the Lemon sisters! Open your ears and your mind might follow!”
“Yah, but they were lemons just the same as far as I’m concerned,” Lunkhead growled, retrieving his dead cigar from the bar and putting it back into his face.
The pick for the most historic event was, of course, going to be the toughest and probably the most significant choice. The possibilities included:
The 1631 election of John Winthrop as the first governor of Massachusetts; the 1652 decision by Rhode Island to make slavery illegal; the May 18th 1804 crowning of Napoleon Bonaparte as emperor of France; the infamous decision of the people of Massachusetts on May 18th 1852 requiring all children of age within the state to attend school; the beginning of the siege of Vicksburg by General Grant during the Civil War in 1863; the panic by many in 1910 when the earth passed through the tail of Halley’s Comet; the 1934 reference to the Academy Award Statue as “Oscar” for the first time in print by Sidney Skolsky — none of which got any reaction from either man.
The 1953 breaking of the sound barrier by Jacqueline Cochrane, the first woman pilot to do so, did get a reaction from Lunkhead who said that his wife had broken the sound barrier many times without thinking anything of it. Both men thought it was remarkable that Catholic Italy had approved the legalization of abortion as early as 1977—and both thought it was quite “manly” that Chung Kwung Ying had performed 2,750 “atomic” hand-stand push-ups on Sunday, May 18th, 1986. The amazing thing is that they missed it -- both of them.
There was dead silence. They couldn’t make up their minds. Perhaps it was the unfamiliar name that had caused their attention to skip over it. I pronounced it—Edwin Budding. Then I pronounced the year—eighteen thirty.
I thought Lunkhead was going to pass out. Suddenly he saw it: in 1830, an English engineer named Edwin Budding from Stroud, Gloucestershire had invented the lawn mower -- the bane of every husband nearly every Saturday of his life between May and October. Yes, indeed, that was it. I hadn’t known about Lunkhead’s pickle before presenting my lists, but what can one say or even do when history proves so real and relevant?
Suddenly, there we were, me on one side and Dunderhead on the other, leading Lunkhead home to face the first chore Bertha Lunkhead would surely demand of her groggy husband tomorrow morning.
“I can just hear her now,” Lunkhead cried. “Before you do anything else, mow the lawn dear!!!”
“Lunkhead,” I asked sweetly, “what price would Bertha have had to pay had the Warriors and not the Jazz won the recent series?”
Oh, that’s easy,” shot back Lunkhead, “she’d have had to do anything I wanted her to do for a week beginning tomorrow, of course. After all, I’d have given her prep time, I’m not a brutish man you know,” he insisted.
“Okay,” I said “then what would you have asked her to do first that she never does?” I inquired as I snickered at Dunderhead over Lunkhead’s bent head.”
“Oh, hell, that’s easy, too. Mow the lawn, dear,” he said with just the slightest tremor in his voice.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Friday, May 11, 2007
She's Mom Because She's the Flower of God's Greatest Creation: You and Me.
BY EDWIN COONEY
Last week, I concluded my sketchy history of the celebration of Motherhood throughout history by saying that I wasn’t sure what it all meant. After all, my recitation concluded with the founder of Mother’s Day bringing suit and demonstrating for florists to stop using the holiday as a money-making vehicle.
Now, seven days later after hearing and reading countless ads for everyone to provide mother with candy, flowers, jewelry, household appliances, teddy bears, and so much more -- for the lowest reasonable price of course -- it’s not hard to be at least slightly sympathetic to the late Anna M. Jarvis’s anxiety as to what she had wrought. After all, Anna was under the erroneous illusion that one could adequately express one’s deepest feelings of respect, tenderness and love for Mama without spending a dime—or even a penny. Come to think of it though, what did Anna Jarvis know anyway: very few women worked for a dollar during most of her lifetime! How could she be expected to realize the value of a buck?
Various visions of Mom come to us amidst the advertisements and the heartfelt appeals to our sentiments regarding Mom.
The New York Lottery put out a radio ad that goes something like this:
Mom: “Oh, Son! Thank you for that card—-it was so lovely.”
Son: “It was a lottery card, Mom.”
Mom: “Yes, I know, dear, and there was a place on it that I was supposed to scratch, but I didn’t want to. But your father said that I should, so I did and I won $250,000.”
Son: “Mom, you won that much money? That’s wonderful.”
Mom: “Money has nothing to do with it because, in order to win any money, I’d have to turn the card in and I’d never turn a card sent by you in. Remember the first Mother’s Day card you ever sent me? It was made of macaroni and rubber bands. It was beautiful and I still have it. So is this one and I’m keeping it.”
Son: “But, Mom, this one has money in it.”
Mom: “Yes, Son, and it’s beautiful and that’s why I’m keeping it—yes, it’s just beautiful—so is the envelope!”
Thus, we have a vision of Mom as one whose maternal instinct is so dominant that despite her son’s (and, supposedly, her husband’s) incredulity, she’ll keep something given to her by her precious offspring rather than turn it in for a larger and more practical reward. Some would wonder if there might be a mom in America who could really be that stupid. It’s hard to imagine that anyone exists, Mom or not a Mom, who would be so wonderfully and dreamily principled. Yet there is a doubt in the corner of our minds --because of our experiences with some of the more saintly among us -- and that’s why an ad of this type works. Mom, after all, is so sainted around this time each year by the seriously poetic that such a mom as portrayed above and below might even exist.
A few days ago a friend sent me the following which she thinks is beautiful and it’s hard to argue the contrary.
The young mother set her foot on the path of life. "Is
this the long way?" she asked. And the guide said: "Yes and the way is hard.
And you will be old before you reach the end of it.. But
the end will be better than the beginning."
But the young mother was happy, and she would not
believe that anything could be better than these years. So she
played with her children, and gathered flowers for
them along the way, and bathed them in the clear streams; and
the sun shone on them, and the young Mother cried,
"Nothing will ever be lovelier than this."
Then the night came, and the storm, and the path was
dark, and the children shook with fear and cold, and the mother
drew them close and covered them with her mantle, and the children said,
"Mother, we are not afraid, for you are near, and no harm can come."
And the morning came, and there was a hill ahead, and
the children climbed and grew weary, and the mother was weary.
But at all times she said to the children," A little patience and we are there."
So the children climbed, and when they reached the top
they said, "Mother, we would not have done it without you."
And the mother, when she lay down at night looked up
at the stars and said, "This is a better day than the last, for my
children have learned fortitude in the face of hardness. Yesterday I gave them courage.
Today, I've given them strength."
And the next day came strange clouds which darkened
the earth, clouds of war and hate and evil, and the children groped
and stumbled, and the mother said: "Look up. Lift your eyes to the light.”
And the children looked and saw above the clouds
an everlasting glory, and it guided them beyond the
darkness. And that night the Mother said,
"This is the best day of all, for
I have shown my children God."
And the days went on, and the weeks and the months and
the years, and the mother grew old and she was little and bent.
But her children were tall and strong, and walked with
courage. And when the way was rough, they lifted her,
for she was as light as a feather; and at last they came to a hill,
and beyond they could see a shining road and golden gates flung wide. And
mother said, "I have reached the end of my journey. And now I know the end
is better than the beginning, for my children can
walk alone, and their children after them."
And the children said, "You will always walk with us,
Mother, even when you have gone through the gates."
And they stood and watched her as she went on alone, and the gates
closed after her. And they said: "We cannot see her
but she is with us still. A Mother like ours is more than a memory. She
is a living presence......."
Your Mother is always with you.... She's the whisper
of the leaves as you walk down the street; she's the smell of bleach
in your freshly laundered socks; she's the cool hand
on your brow when you're not well. Your Mother lives
inside your laughter. And she's crystallized in every teardrop.
She's the place you came from, your first home; and
she's the map you follow with every step you take. She's your first love
and your first heartbreak, and nothing on earth can
separate you.
Not time, not space... not even death!
That deeper view of Mom possesses powerful eloquence which places every mother on the purist and loftiest pedestal. Your experience may be very different from mine, but I don’t know many moms who would really identify with this last testimony, any more than those moms who could live up to the New York Lottery’s characterization of “dearest Mom.”
Moms are special, of course, because they’ve been granted a God given power—which no man possesses—that of both giving and nurturing life. A male doctor can sustain and even strengthen life, but only a Mom can give life. How able she is to sustain life once it’s given depends upon forces way beyond her control.
What the above tribute to Mom almost entirely ignores is Mom’s very humanity. Further, it assumes that all Moms are blessed with obedient children willing at all times to follow Mom. It takes no account of the tens of thousands of moms who, with broken hearts, find that their children have chosen unhappy paths of existence. Nor are all ends better than the beginning. Nevertheless, in its own perspective, the above homage to Motherhood is worthy because it does express the all-encompassing power that uninhibited mother love can bring when a mother’s children are willing to receive and value her love.
To me, Mom is a very special person for all that is stated above. However, it seems to me that the moms who are truly the best of all are the moms who grapple with and strive to overcome their own imperfections. Also, I can’t resist the following observation:
The loveliest Mom is the Mom who sets standards but, because she’s struggled through her own imperfections, still loves you despite yours.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Last week, I concluded my sketchy history of the celebration of Motherhood throughout history by saying that I wasn’t sure what it all meant. After all, my recitation concluded with the founder of Mother’s Day bringing suit and demonstrating for florists to stop using the holiday as a money-making vehicle.
Now, seven days later after hearing and reading countless ads for everyone to provide mother with candy, flowers, jewelry, household appliances, teddy bears, and so much more -- for the lowest reasonable price of course -- it’s not hard to be at least slightly sympathetic to the late Anna M. Jarvis’s anxiety as to what she had wrought. After all, Anna was under the erroneous illusion that one could adequately express one’s deepest feelings of respect, tenderness and love for Mama without spending a dime—or even a penny. Come to think of it though, what did Anna Jarvis know anyway: very few women worked for a dollar during most of her lifetime! How could she be expected to realize the value of a buck?
Various visions of Mom come to us amidst the advertisements and the heartfelt appeals to our sentiments regarding Mom.
The New York Lottery put out a radio ad that goes something like this:
Mom: “Oh, Son! Thank you for that card—-it was so lovely.”
Son: “It was a lottery card, Mom.”
Mom: “Yes, I know, dear, and there was a place on it that I was supposed to scratch, but I didn’t want to. But your father said that I should, so I did and I won $250,000.”
Son: “Mom, you won that much money? That’s wonderful.”
Mom: “Money has nothing to do with it because, in order to win any money, I’d have to turn the card in and I’d never turn a card sent by you in. Remember the first Mother’s Day card you ever sent me? It was made of macaroni and rubber bands. It was beautiful and I still have it. So is this one and I’m keeping it.”
Son: “But, Mom, this one has money in it.”
Mom: “Yes, Son, and it’s beautiful and that’s why I’m keeping it—yes, it’s just beautiful—so is the envelope!”
Thus, we have a vision of Mom as one whose maternal instinct is so dominant that despite her son’s (and, supposedly, her husband’s) incredulity, she’ll keep something given to her by her precious offspring rather than turn it in for a larger and more practical reward. Some would wonder if there might be a mom in America who could really be that stupid. It’s hard to imagine that anyone exists, Mom or not a Mom, who would be so wonderfully and dreamily principled. Yet there is a doubt in the corner of our minds --because of our experiences with some of the more saintly among us -- and that’s why an ad of this type works. Mom, after all, is so sainted around this time each year by the seriously poetic that such a mom as portrayed above and below might even exist.
A few days ago a friend sent me the following which she thinks is beautiful and it’s hard to argue the contrary.
The young mother set her foot on the path of life. "Is
this the long way?" she asked. And the guide said: "Yes and the way is hard.
And you will be old before you reach the end of it.. But
the end will be better than the beginning."
But the young mother was happy, and she would not
believe that anything could be better than these years. So she
played with her children, and gathered flowers for
them along the way, and bathed them in the clear streams; and
the sun shone on them, and the young Mother cried,
"Nothing will ever be lovelier than this."
Then the night came, and the storm, and the path was
dark, and the children shook with fear and cold, and the mother
drew them close and covered them with her mantle, and the children said,
"Mother, we are not afraid, for you are near, and no harm can come."
And the morning came, and there was a hill ahead, and
the children climbed and grew weary, and the mother was weary.
But at all times she said to the children," A little patience and we are there."
So the children climbed, and when they reached the top
they said, "Mother, we would not have done it without you."
And the mother, when she lay down at night looked up
at the stars and said, "This is a better day than the last, for my
children have learned fortitude in the face of hardness. Yesterday I gave them courage.
Today, I've given them strength."
And the next day came strange clouds which darkened
the earth, clouds of war and hate and evil, and the children groped
and stumbled, and the mother said: "Look up. Lift your eyes to the light.”
And the children looked and saw above the clouds
an everlasting glory, and it guided them beyond the
darkness. And that night the Mother said,
"This is the best day of all, for
I have shown my children God."
And the days went on, and the weeks and the months and
the years, and the mother grew old and she was little and bent.
But her children were tall and strong, and walked with
courage. And when the way was rough, they lifted her,
for she was as light as a feather; and at last they came to a hill,
and beyond they could see a shining road and golden gates flung wide. And
mother said, "I have reached the end of my journey. And now I know the end
is better than the beginning, for my children can
walk alone, and their children after them."
And the children said, "You will always walk with us,
Mother, even when you have gone through the gates."
And they stood and watched her as she went on alone, and the gates
closed after her. And they said: "We cannot see her
but she is with us still. A Mother like ours is more than a memory. She
is a living presence......."
Your Mother is always with you.... She's the whisper
of the leaves as you walk down the street; she's the smell of bleach
in your freshly laundered socks; she's the cool hand
on your brow when you're not well. Your Mother lives
inside your laughter. And she's crystallized in every teardrop.
She's the place you came from, your first home; and
she's the map you follow with every step you take. She's your first love
and your first heartbreak, and nothing on earth can
separate you.
Not time, not space... not even death!
That deeper view of Mom possesses powerful eloquence which places every mother on the purist and loftiest pedestal. Your experience may be very different from mine, but I don’t know many moms who would really identify with this last testimony, any more than those moms who could live up to the New York Lottery’s characterization of “dearest Mom.”
Moms are special, of course, because they’ve been granted a God given power—which no man possesses—that of both giving and nurturing life. A male doctor can sustain and even strengthen life, but only a Mom can give life. How able she is to sustain life once it’s given depends upon forces way beyond her control.
What the above tribute to Mom almost entirely ignores is Mom’s very humanity. Further, it assumes that all Moms are blessed with obedient children willing at all times to follow Mom. It takes no account of the tens of thousands of moms who, with broken hearts, find that their children have chosen unhappy paths of existence. Nor are all ends better than the beginning. Nevertheless, in its own perspective, the above homage to Motherhood is worthy because it does express the all-encompassing power that uninhibited mother love can bring when a mother’s children are willing to receive and value her love.
To me, Mom is a very special person for all that is stated above. However, it seems to me that the moms who are truly the best of all are the moms who grapple with and strive to overcome their own imperfections. Also, I can’t resist the following observation:
The loveliest Mom is the Mom who sets standards but, because she’s struggled through her own imperfections, still loves you despite yours.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
Saturday, May 5, 2007
READY? SET? — CELEBRATE
Originally submitted Friday, May 4th, 2007
BY EDWIN COONEY
It’s only a few days away you know! No, I’m not talking about either an upcoming major league baseball game or even the Kentucky Derby — it’s Mother’s Day that’s front and center this week.
With almost any phenomenon I think or write about, my first curiosity is its history—even more than its significance. So, I went to the internet to research the history of Mother’s Day and discovered--not at all to my surprise—both its history and significance.
I knew before hitting the computer keys that Mother’s Day, as we know it, was the brainchild of Anna Jarvis of Grafton, West Virginia. It was celebrated there for the first time on Sunday, May 10th 1908 at Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church which was designated as a shrine to Mother’s Day in 1962. I believe I’d also read that it was widely celebrated across America by 1912 and that President Woodrow Wilson had made it official with a presidential proclamation by 1914.
The celebration of Mother’s Day goes back to ancient Egypt and was celebrated there in honor of Isis—goddess of the pharaohs. According to ancient Egyptian mythology, the goddess Isis’s brother-husband was slain by her other brother, the jealous Seth. After his body had been cut into thirteen pieces, the goddess reassembled him and was thus able to impregnate herself from his body. She gave birth to Horace whom she was forced to hide from his jealous and deadly uncle Seth. Once he was grown, Horace confronted and slew Seth and was able to reign, as a god, over a united Egypt. Thus, Isis was celebrated as the mother of the pharaohs.
In ancient Greece as well as throughout Asia Minor, Rhea is celebrated as the mother of the gods. In Rome, Cybele whose myth stems from the Greek goddess Rhea, according to one of my sources, was central to the celebration of “Magna Mater,” or Mother’s Day. However, another source asserts that “Matronalia,” celebrated the goddess Juno with mothers receiving gifts in honor of the day. What both sources do agree on is that in Rome, Mother’s Day was celebrated around the vernal equinox.
Britain began celebrating “Mothering Sunday” on the fourth Sunday of Lent—three weeks before Easter--as far back as the 16th century. Mothering Sunday was taken so seriously by the British that even those bound to apprentice servitude were permitted by their masters to go home to mama every year to celebrate Mothering Sunday. Strange as that may seem, supposedly even British apprentice masters had mothers too, but there may have been another motive for the celebration of motherhood during the darker days of British history. Celebrated as it was on the fourth Sunday of the Lenten season, it was a break in the season. Those who served mother, sharing flowers and cakes with her, could feast and drink all day to their heart’s content. Goodness! Even old Scrooge had to go for that chance. After all, as a good Englishman he surely enjoyed his pint!
In America, Mother’s Day had its origins in idealism. Anna Reeves Jarvis, the mother of Anna M. Jarvis (the actual founder of America’s modern Mother’s Day), began celebrating Mother’s Working Day from the Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church where she taught Sunday school. During the Civil War, Mrs. Jarvis worked not only to improve sanitary living conditions in what by then had become West Virginia, but also to reunite families whose affection had been injured or even severed due to that divisive conflict.
After the war, the author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, Julia Ward Howe, so despised war that she began working with Mrs. Jarvis for the celebration of a national Mother’s Day. The more prominent Mrs. Howe began using her influence and even money for the celebration of Mother’s Day in some of America’s larger cities such as Boston, New York and Philadelphia, as a day proclaiming peace among people and nations of the earth.
In 1870, with the memory and wounds of the Civil War so fresh and the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in Europe a stark reality, Julia Ward Howe issued the following declaration:
Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise all women who have hearts,
Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears
Say firmly:
We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of
charity, mercy and patience.
We women of one country
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says, "Disarm, Disarm!"
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice!
Blood does not wipe out dishonor
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have of ten forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war.
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions.
The great and general interests of peace.
As stated above, Mrs. Howe backed her words for some years with her money thus funding Mother’s Day in some of our larger cities. Eventually the funding was spent and thus Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day was history even in her adopted home city of Boston, Massachusetts.
By 1908, the daughter of Anna Reeves Jarvis, Anna M. Jarvis, got her mother’s old church to take up the celebration of Mother’s Day. Each congregant would be given two carnations—one white in commemoration of women by then dead and one red or pink for those living. The idea spread and by 1912, forty-five of the forty-eight states were celebrating Mother’s Day.
By the mid 1920’s however, Ms. Jarvis began to revolt against the increasing commercialization of Mother’s Day by America’s florists. She began to sue to stop such commercialization of what she considered to be a sacred celebration of love and idealism.
She lost, of course, and during the 1930’s she had to be arrested for disrupting a Mother’s Day celebration by the Mothers of World War I War Veterans. Ms. Jarvis died in 1948 in a nursing home -- bitter, blind and childless. America, however, almost in defiance of her, still celebrates.
Thus we have Mother’s Day which we celebrate in the way we have freely chosen to celebrate it. As to what I think about it all having gathered the above information, at this writing I’m not quite sure.
This week, I’ll leave the thinking to you!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
BY EDWIN COONEY
It’s only a few days away you know! No, I’m not talking about either an upcoming major league baseball game or even the Kentucky Derby — it’s Mother’s Day that’s front and center this week.
With almost any phenomenon I think or write about, my first curiosity is its history—even more than its significance. So, I went to the internet to research the history of Mother’s Day and discovered--not at all to my surprise—both its history and significance.
I knew before hitting the computer keys that Mother’s Day, as we know it, was the brainchild of Anna Jarvis of Grafton, West Virginia. It was celebrated there for the first time on Sunday, May 10th 1908 at Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church which was designated as a shrine to Mother’s Day in 1962. I believe I’d also read that it was widely celebrated across America by 1912 and that President Woodrow Wilson had made it official with a presidential proclamation by 1914.
The celebration of Mother’s Day goes back to ancient Egypt and was celebrated there in honor of Isis—goddess of the pharaohs. According to ancient Egyptian mythology, the goddess Isis’s brother-husband was slain by her other brother, the jealous Seth. After his body had been cut into thirteen pieces, the goddess reassembled him and was thus able to impregnate herself from his body. She gave birth to Horace whom she was forced to hide from his jealous and deadly uncle Seth. Once he was grown, Horace confronted and slew Seth and was able to reign, as a god, over a united Egypt. Thus, Isis was celebrated as the mother of the pharaohs.
In ancient Greece as well as throughout Asia Minor, Rhea is celebrated as the mother of the gods. In Rome, Cybele whose myth stems from the Greek goddess Rhea, according to one of my sources, was central to the celebration of “Magna Mater,” or Mother’s Day. However, another source asserts that “Matronalia,” celebrated the goddess Juno with mothers receiving gifts in honor of the day. What both sources do agree on is that in Rome, Mother’s Day was celebrated around the vernal equinox.
Britain began celebrating “Mothering Sunday” on the fourth Sunday of Lent—three weeks before Easter--as far back as the 16th century. Mothering Sunday was taken so seriously by the British that even those bound to apprentice servitude were permitted by their masters to go home to mama every year to celebrate Mothering Sunday. Strange as that may seem, supposedly even British apprentice masters had mothers too, but there may have been another motive for the celebration of motherhood during the darker days of British history. Celebrated as it was on the fourth Sunday of the Lenten season, it was a break in the season. Those who served mother, sharing flowers and cakes with her, could feast and drink all day to their heart’s content. Goodness! Even old Scrooge had to go for that chance. After all, as a good Englishman he surely enjoyed his pint!
In America, Mother’s Day had its origins in idealism. Anna Reeves Jarvis, the mother of Anna M. Jarvis (the actual founder of America’s modern Mother’s Day), began celebrating Mother’s Working Day from the Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church where she taught Sunday school. During the Civil War, Mrs. Jarvis worked not only to improve sanitary living conditions in what by then had become West Virginia, but also to reunite families whose affection had been injured or even severed due to that divisive conflict.
After the war, the author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, Julia Ward Howe, so despised war that she began working with Mrs. Jarvis for the celebration of a national Mother’s Day. The more prominent Mrs. Howe began using her influence and even money for the celebration of Mother’s Day in some of America’s larger cities such as Boston, New York and Philadelphia, as a day proclaiming peace among people and nations of the earth.
In 1870, with the memory and wounds of the Civil War so fresh and the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in Europe a stark reality, Julia Ward Howe issued the following declaration:
Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise all women who have hearts,
Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears
Say firmly:
We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of
charity, mercy and patience.
We women of one country
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says, "Disarm, Disarm!"
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice!
Blood does not wipe out dishonor
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have of ten forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war.
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions.
The great and general interests of peace.
As stated above, Mrs. Howe backed her words for some years with her money thus funding Mother’s Day in some of our larger cities. Eventually the funding was spent and thus Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day was history even in her adopted home city of Boston, Massachusetts.
By 1908, the daughter of Anna Reeves Jarvis, Anna M. Jarvis, got her mother’s old church to take up the celebration of Mother’s Day. Each congregant would be given two carnations—one white in commemoration of women by then dead and one red or pink for those living. The idea spread and by 1912, forty-five of the forty-eight states were celebrating Mother’s Day.
By the mid 1920’s however, Ms. Jarvis began to revolt against the increasing commercialization of Mother’s Day by America’s florists. She began to sue to stop such commercialization of what she considered to be a sacred celebration of love and idealism.
She lost, of course, and during the 1930’s she had to be arrested for disrupting a Mother’s Day celebration by the Mothers of World War I War Veterans. Ms. Jarvis died in 1948 in a nursing home -- bitter, blind and childless. America, however, almost in defiance of her, still celebrates.
Thus we have Mother’s Day which we celebrate in the way we have freely chosen to celebrate it. As to what I think about it all having gathered the above information, at this writing I’m not quite sure.
This week, I’ll leave the thinking to you!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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