Nelson Mandela

This sculpture of Nelson Mandela is in Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, which is on the eastern slopes of Cape Town’s Table Mountain in South Africa. Mandela is considered a national treasure and is featured in art and sculpture throughout South Africa. Kirstenbosch, established in 1913, was the first botanic garden in the world to be devoted to a country’s indigenous flora.

Nelson Mandela is celebrated in sculpture and art throughout South Africa, where he is known as the “Father of the Nation.” I photographed a few pieces of this art on a recent trip.  

Mandela was President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, the first to be elected in a fully representative, multiracial election.

This print of Nelson Mandela was for sale in an art gallery in Camps Bay, South Africa. Sorry abut the glare.

Internationally acclaimed for his anti-colonial and anti-apartheid stance, Mandela has received more than 250 awards, including the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize and the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom.  A political activist against apartheid,  Mandela was imprisoned for twenty-seven years, including eighteen years on Robben Island, which is just off of the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront of Cape Town. Boat trips from the Nelson Mandela Gateway on the waterfront take visitors to the prison on Robben Island, which is now a museum.

About Nelson Mandela.

About Robben Island.

The Apartheid Museum.

Nobel Square in the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town, South Africa, features statues of South Africa’s four Nobel Peace Prize winners – Albert Luthuli, Desmond Tutu, F. W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela (shown left to right here.)

Here’s a popular photo stop at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town, which features statues in Nobel Square of South Africa’s four Nobel Peace Prize winners – Albert Luthuli, Desmond Tutu, F. W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela. I’m not sure what the red sculpture is behind the Nobel statues. I think it has something to do with Olympic Medals that South Africa won in 2012. Does anyone know? I saw photos of the red sculpture under construction from 2010, so it’s relatively new. In the distance is the iconic Table Mountain.

From Signal Hill, you can see Robben Island near the horizon, in Table Bay off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa. Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for eighteen years on Robben Island.

A sculpture of Nelson Mandela dominates the square named after him in Sandton City, an upscale shopping center in Johannesburg, South Africa.

A sculpture of Nelson Mandela is a backdrop to a newscast in Nelson Mandela Square. The square anchors Sandton City, a popular upscale shopping center in Johannesburg, South Africa.

This blue cow advertises the Peacemakers Museum, which celebrates the Nobel Peace Laureates but in particular South Africa’s Albert Luthuli, Desmond Tutu, FW de Klerk and Nelson Mandela. The museum is in Nelson Mandela Square, Johannesburg. http://www.peacemakersmuseum.co.za/

This sculpture of Nelson Mandela, created from tens of thousands of tiny beads, is popular with tourists traveling through the Johannesburg, South Africa airport. There are often lines as people wait their turn to get their photos taken. Bead sculpture in all sizes is a popular art form in South Africa.

The Bridge to Nowhere

I took this photograph from my bus window as we passed the the airport serving Ketchican, Alaska, which is across a narrow bay. This is where the proposed "Bridge to Nowhere" would have been built to replace the ferry that takes people to and from the airport, which is on a separate island. Sorry for the poor quality, but what can you do, the bus driver is not going to stop! Plus it was raining. Click on the photograph to get a better look.

This summer, I finally visited Alaska, a state I’ve wanted to visit since my aunt lived there many decades ago. What took me so long? It’s incredibly beautiful! While in Alaska, my husband and I toured part of lovely Revillagigedo Island, which is the 12th largest island in the United States and about the same size as the state of Rhode Island. Revilla, as its known by the locals, is known more for its city of Ketchican, Alaska’s fifth most populous city at 7,368 according to the 2010 census. The island population is 13,950. The temporary population swells enormously in the summer with tourists and outdoor enthusiasts. The entire state of Alaska has only 710,231 people.

A sculpture featuring the various professions and residents of Ketchican, Alaska, greets people on the dock. Tourism and fishing are two of the main industries in the Ketchican area. The logging business was shut down during the Clinton Administration.

As we were ending our tour by bus, our bus driver casually pointed to the airport that serves the island. The airport is on nearby Gravina Island, because there isn’t enough flat land on Revilla. “That’s where the bridge to nowhere was to be built,” he said. Now, airline passengers take a ferry, which costs $5. But, the bus driver noted — the parking lot for the ferry is free! The bridge would have eliminated the need for the ferry. I don’t know whether it would have been a toll-free bridge, not that the fees could have come close to paying for the bridge.

Funding for the ulra-expensive bridge was to come from the federal government, which has already funded the road leading to the as-yet-unbuilt bridge. As our country battles over who should pay for what and how many more trillions we should borrow to pay current obligations, saddling our children and their progeny with huge debt, this bridge has been used as a symbol of federal largesse. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was a big advocate of federal funding this bridge. Why not grab some of the federal money? It’s not real money is it? It’s thrown around like confetti. I’m glad there’s a movement to stop the unsustainable federal spending party, although it’s not making much headway because we have real and important obligations to pay for. Who gets cut? Even this Bridge to Nowhere is not really a bridge to nowhere, but is there money to fund such efforts that benefit a relative few?

Another view of the Ketchican Airport from my bus window. The Bridge to Nowhere would have been built here.

Almost all federal money comes from taxing the people in the states. The federal government takes a cut in the form of bureaucracy and upkeep (and many would say massive waste and fraud) and then returns some of the money to the states. Much of this federal funding is the so-called pork. Democrat Senator Robert Byrd was known for his ability to bring home the federal bacon to his state of West Virginia, one of the country’s poorest states.

Here are a few of the totem poles in Totem Bight State Historical Park, a 33-acre state park north of Ketchikan, Alaska. In 1938, the United States Forest Service used Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) funds to hire skilled carvers from among the older Native Alaskans to repair or duplicate totem poles that were abandoned when the natives moved to communities where work was available. The CCC project put the community house and 15 totem poles in place. At statehood in 1959, title to the land passed from the federal government to the State of Alaska. The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 27, 1970.

From Wikipedia: Byrd was called the “King of Pork” by Citizens Against Government Waste. After becoming chair of the Appropriations Committee in 1989, Byrd set a goal securing a total of $1 billion for public works in the state. He passed that mark in 1991, and funds for highways, dams, educational institutions and federal agency offices flowed unabated over the course of his membership. More than 30 existing or pending federal projects bear his name. He commented on his reputation for attaining funds for projects in West Virginia in August 2006, when he called himself “Big Daddy” at the dedication for the Robert C. Byrd Biotechnology Science Center. Examples of this ability to claim funds and projects for his state include the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s repository for computerized fingerprint records as well as several United States Coast Guard computing and office facilities.

Some states don’t get back as much as they send in, and feel cheated. Other states like West Virginia fatten up. We could spill lots of digital ink discussing the fairness of this system. Why should the rest of the country pay for the bridge to Gravina so that a relatively small number of people wouldn’t have to take a ferry but could drive over a bridge that was said would be as long as the Golden Gate Bridge? Another federally funded project in Alaska in the 1930s was restoring and replicating totem poles, which can be seen in Totem Bight Park. In this case, the federal funding saved the totem poles that were sure to be lost with no other funding in sight.

Ketchican, Alaska, is the Salmon Capital of the World.

From Wikipedia: According to USA Today, the bridge was to have been nearly as long as the Golden Gate Bridge and taller than the Brooklyn Bridge. The bridge would cross the Tongass Narrows, part of Alaska’s Inside Passage, so the bridge was designed to be tall enough to accommodate ship traffic, including the Alaska Marine Highway and the cruise ships which frequent Alaskan waters during the summer.
Ketchikan’s airport is the second largest in Southeast Alaska, after Juneau International Airport, handles over 200,000 passengers a year, while the ferry shuttled 350,000 people in the same time period (as of December 2006).In comparison, the Golden Gate Bridge carried more than 43,000,000 vehicles in 2006, or about 118,000 vehicles each day.

End of lecture! Now for some more facts about Ketchican:

Ketchican is the Rain Capital of Alaska. In 1949, the city experienced a record rainfall of 202.55 inches.

— Ketchikan’s secondary post office zip code, 99950, is the highest ZIP code ever assigned in the United States.

—  Ketchikan has the world’s largest collection of standing totem poles.

—  Ketchican is known as the Salmon Capital of the World.

— Ketchican is the Rain Capital of Alaska.

About Ketchican, Alaska.

About the “Bridge to Nowhere”

Bald Eagles in Totem Bight Park near Ketchican, Alaska.

Happy Birthday, Thomas Jefferson

   

  

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  ~ Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence.  

I’m sure I’ve been smitten with Thomas Jefferson ever since my parents first took me as an infant to the Jefferson Memorial, where the great man’s statue towered over me the way he does over United States history.   We also visited Mount Rushmore many times in the Black Hills, where my father’s family lived, and Jefferson’s sculpture there loomed even larger.  

After an introduction by my parents, Tom and I meet! It would have been love at first sight if I could have kept my eyes open.

Jefferson’s birthday on April 13th is a holiday for me.  Happy Birthday, Tom!  Thomas Jefferson wouldn’t have welcomed any attention to his birthday, however.  

“In 1803, citizens of Boston wrote a letter to President Thomas Jefferson asking to make April 13, his birthday, a holiday.  Jefferson courteously turned them down, saying he disapproved of ‘transferring the honors and veneration for the great birthday or our Republic to any individual.’  For the rest of his life, he refused to reveal to the public the day he was born,” wrote Peter Gibbon in an article published in the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2007.   

Among his many political offices, Jefferson was the third U.S. President, second vice president, first Secretary of State, Ambassador to France and Virginia’s second governor. Jefferson was cofounder and leader of the Democratic-Republican party, which favored states’ rights, while the Federalists  favored a strong national government. These differences continue in some form in the U.S. political parties today.  

Years after our first meeting, here are Tom and I on another date. I should have worn heels. My friend Anita captured this moment.

Accomplished in many fields, Jefferson was a horticulturist, political leader, diplomat, attorney, architect, archaeologist, paleontologist, inventor, and founder of the University of Virginia.  He played the violin and was a dedicated diarist of his daily life.  He was a brilliant writer.  He invented many conveniences and devices, such as the swivel chair. The entry hall of Monticello contained a natural history display of items collected by Lewis and Clark on their expedition, and which are now re-created in a display for visitors to see.   

In 1962, when President John F. Kennedy welcomed 49 Nobel Prize winners to the White House, Kennedy said, “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent and of human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House — with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”  

Thomas Jefferson by Charles Willson Peale, 1791.

Scholars rank Jefferson as one of the greatest of U.S. presidents.  

How did Jefferson view his own accomplishments? It was Jefferson’s wish that his tomb stone reflect the things that he had given the people, not the things that the people had given to him, so his epitaph at his burial place at Monticello reads: HERE WAS BURIED THOMAS JEFFERSON, AUTHOR OF THE DECLARATION OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE, OF THE STATUTE OF VIRGINIA FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND FATHER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINA.  

However, not everyone appreciated Jefferson’s many gifts, talents and contributions.  In his own time, members of the rival Federalist Party called Jefferson the Antichrist.  Though he was a brilliant writer, he was a poor public speaker and had a lisp.   His estate at Monticello never earned enough to pay his expenses, and he was forced to pay the debts of others, as well.  At his death, his estate and its belongings were sold.  Jefferson liked to live well, introducing exotic foods such as olives and capers and serving French wine nearly every night.   He introduced many new crops and tried to grow grapes for wine, but they didn’t prosper.  There were plenty of political guests to be entertained, which caused him to go deeper and deeper into debt each year because his salary didn’t cover the bills. He agonized over both personal and public debt.  These days, our top leaders jet around and entertain at public expense.  

My husband surprised me with a trip to Monticello for the 250th anniversary celebration of Thomas Jefferson's birthday in 1993. (The trip just happened to coincide with a Grateful Dead concert in Washington , D.C., that we also went to.) Years earlier, we'd driven to Monticello as part of our honeymoon, made it to the parking lot, but both were so stricken with colds that we lacked the strength to even go inside. He knew I'd always wanted to go back.

His beloved home Monticello was designed on neoclassical principles.  Jefferson constantly worked to improve it over the more than forty years he lived there.  After his return from France, he added the dome. It looks much larger than it actually is, perhaps because of its stately lines.  A private non-profit organization, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, operates the houses as a museum.  Monticello is the only private home in the United States that is designated as World Heritage Site.  

Even today, Jefferson catches flak even from people who might otherwise admire his devotion to the Constitution.  According to the New York Times,  in a recent fight over what would be included in Texas textbooks, “Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond (Texas) who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term “separation between church and state.”)  

“The Enlightenment was not the only philosophy on which these revolutions were based,” Ms. Dunbar said.

Jefferson loved books. After the British burned Washington, D.C. and the Library of Congress in August 1814, Jefferson offered his own fifty-year collection of books to the nation to rebuild the Library of Congress. Congress accepted his offer, appropriating $23,950 for his 6, 487 books.  After watching the carts haul away the books, Jefferson wrote to his old friend and one-time adversary John Adams, “I cannot live without books.”  He immediately began to buy more. I know how he feels.  I can’t imagine life without them and am now sure that I’d feel the same way about books on electronic devices. I need the smell, the feel, the bulk of them lined up on my shelves. Jefferson was widely knowledgeable about a great deal of topics and liked to expound on them.  A recent book has even suggested that Jefferson had Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of autism.  I doubt it, but the author, who lived in my area, made an interesting case for it. 

 “I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend,” Jefferson wrote, but he had his differences and fallings out with friends over politics, including John Adams.   

 Years later, mellowed with age, Jefferson and Adams resumed their friendship by letter.  On July 4, 1826, at about the time Jefferson died, Adams whispered, “Thomas Jefferson survives.”  Adams died later that same day, the Fourth of July.  The spirit of Jefferson does survive. 

Here in 1993, researchers dig and sift the dirt around Monticello to look for household goods and other items from Jefferson's time.

Some of Jefferson’s opponents accused him in print of being an alcoholic and of other moral weakness, which may explain Jefferson’s ambivalence about newspapers.  He also used them against others, as well.  

 “The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers,” he said.   Another famous quote of  his:  “Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper. ” 

This time, Tom brought along some of his stellar presidential friends. I've been making this pilgrimage to Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota since I was a toddler. (I'm not sure it's such as good idea to blast giant sculptures in a mountain, but it was a great childhood memory.) UPDATE: On the April 16, 2010, episode of Jeopardy (my favorite show) there was a question about Jefferson's position on Mount Rushmore.

Yet he also said, “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” 

He was a strong advocate of educating the public, saying “Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” and  “Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.”  I wonder what he would make of today’s endless noise on the internet.  

According to Willard Stern Randall, “No presidential election since 1800 has taken place without an attempt to damage at least one candidate’s reputation by innuendo, rumor, and ridicule in order to make him appear unworthy of the nation’s highest office, but none has more brutally combined these tactics than the 1800 campaign, which left Jefferson stunned and the country deeply divided for years.”  

This is my ticket to Monticello for the 250th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's birth, when many of his belongings and furniture were returned. A few years later, I painted a mural of Monticello and its grounds in my kitchen in a house inspired (in a modest fashion) by Monticello. (Okay, it was a rectangle and had red brick and white pillars on the front porch.)

The political parties were bitter foes, and violence wasn’t unusual.  While Jefferson’s vice president, Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton, a Federalist, in a duel. (See link below.)  

Accusations against Jefferson about his alleged sexual liaisons were widely publicized as a way to discredit him.  He denied them or ignored them, but some, such as his relationship with his slave, Sally Hemings, were very likely true.  DNA analysis of Sally’s descendants show that they are related to at least some member of Jefferson’s family. Jefferson’s granddaughter pointed the finger at another family member as the father of Sally’s children.  Even if the rumors had not been true, Jefferson, the fervent writer of documents on freedom, was a slave owner. He was troubled by slavery but only freed seven of his slaves, two during his lifetime, all probably related to him.  Although Jefferson was an outspoken abolitionist, biographers have pointed out that his slaves were encumbered by debt and mortgages, which Jefferson never overcame.

Tom and I enjoy some quiet time together after a busy day on the slopes at Beaver Creek, Colorado. Tom finally got to see the great West that fascinated him so much. Of course, he's writing about it here.

Further ickiness:  Sally Hemings was the half-sister of Jefferson’s wife Martha.  Three-quarters white, Sally was said to look very much like Martha, who was long dead before Sally entered the Jefferson household.  While a Virginia legislator, Jefferson succeeded in passing an act prohibiting the importation of slaves but not slavery itself.  On March 3, 1807, Jefferson as president signed a bill making slave importation illegal in the United States.  

Here is a Thomas Jefferson First Day of Issue Stamp. I think I bought it in the Monticello gift shop. Jefferson and Monticello have been featured on several stamps. Jefferson is portrayed on the U.S. nickel and the two-dollar bill.

Jefferson favored states’ rights and a strictly limited federal government, yet one of his most significant acts as president was the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 of 828,800 square miles of territory from Napoleon Bonaparte.   This purchase now comprises 23 percent of the current United States.  Many Americans opposed the purchase as being possibly unconstitutional.   Jefferson himself thought that the U.S. Constitution did not contain any provisions for acquiring territory, but he decided to purchase Louisiana to prevent France and Spain from having the power to block American trade access to the port of New Orleans.   Jefferson believed that a U.S. President did not have the Constitutional authority to make such a deal.  He also thought that to do so would erode states’ rights by increasing federal executive power.  But the potential French threat outweighed his constitutional queasiness.  Additionally, Jefferson had always been fascinated by the west and its people and animals and began drafting plans for a western exploration as early as 1793.  Immediately after his election, he began to plan for an expedition to explore as far as the Pacific, so the prospect of buying the land from the French must have been irresistable.   In 1803, Jefferson sponsored the  Lewis and Clark expedition to explore this newly purchased land.

Thomas Jefferson founded and designed the buildings of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Along with Monticello, the University of Virginia is one of only three modern U.S. sites designated as a World Heritage Site. Of this University, Jefferson explained, "This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it." The University also followed the direction that higher education should be completely separated from religious doctrines.

It’s probably obvious that I have a crush on Thomas Jefferson.  I’m a Tom Girl.   Though very cerebral and devoted to reason, Jefferson was also passionate.  While in France, he became smitten with Maria Cosway, an Italian artist married to a much older man, a celebrated miniature artist.  William Sterne Randall writes in his biography of Jefferson: ” Thomas Jefferson fell in love with Maria Cosway the moment he met her.  For four years he had been faithful to the vow he had made to his wife on her deathbed.  There is no hint that he had made even the briefest liaison with any of the many Frenchwomen he had met in Paris. But no sooner was Jefferson introduced to the Cosways than he began to devise how he could spend every possible moment with this lively, languid, beautiful Maria, with her musical, slightly Italian accent.”  

Maria and Jefferson spent almost every day together for weeks in Paris, which could partly explain Jefferson’s love of that country, if not its government.  Once while dashing to his carriage to meet Maria, Jefferson fell and broke his right wrist, which made playing the violin very difficult after that. He wrapped his wrist and went ahead to meet her, despite the agony.  Later, struggling to write with his left hand, he penned his now famous “My Head and My Heart” letter to Maria in which reason battled emotion.   

Jefferson, at 29,  married the 23-year-old widow Martha Wayles Skelton. During their ten years of marriage, they had six children, but only two survived to adulthood, including the oldest, Martha Jefferson Randolph.  Jefferson’s wife Martha died on September 6, 1782, after the birth of her last child. Jefferson never remarried, honoring his wife’s deathbed wish. He destroyed all correspondence between them.   After his wife’s funeral, Jefferson refused to leave his room for three weeks. Then he spent endless hours riding horseback alone around Monticello. He didn’t resume a normal life until mid-October, but suffered from depression for years afterward.  

 Martha Randolph, who had twelve children, was considered the third First Lady, acting as hostess to her father, because her father was a widower.  

It’s impossible to do Jefferson’s life justice in this post.  I recommend reading Willard Sterne Randall’s “Thomas Jefferson – A Life.”  I also read Fawn M. Brodie’s  “Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History.”  

For more information here are some Wikipedia links are Thomas Jefferson  Monticello  Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party   The Federalist Party  Aaron Burr-Alexander Hamilton Duel  The University of Virginia

A great website is Monticello — The Thomas Jefferson Foundation.  

Additionally, I’ve selected many of Jefferson’s quotes, all of which I think ring true today.  

• It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.
• We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.
  

  On my most recent visit to Washington, D.C., with my friend Anita, I finally visited the Jefferson Memorial -- the first since I lived in Alexandria, Virginia, as a baby. The dome of the Jefferson Memorial suggests the one topping Jefferson's home, Monticello.

• It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
• To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
• A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
• A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned-this is the sum of good government.
• All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
• Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.
• Delay is preferable to error.
• He who knows best knows how little he knows.
• I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.
• I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
• I have come to a resolution myself, as I hope every good citizen will, never again to purchase any article of foreign manufacture which can be had of American make, be the difference of price what it may.
• I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
• General Washington set the example of voluntary retirement after eight years. I shall follow it. And a few more precedents will oppose the obstacle of habit to any one who after a while shall endeavor to extend his term.
• I never told my own religion, nor scrutinized that of another. I never attempted to make a convert, nor wished to change another’s creed. I have ever judged of others’ religion by their lives…for it is from our lives and not from our words, that our religion must be read.
• The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.
• Were it made a question whether no law, as among the savage Americans, or too much law, as among the civilized Europeans, submits man to the greatest evil, one who has seen both conditions of existence would pronounce it to be the last; and that the sheep are happier of themselves, than under the care of wolves.
• Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government. I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the later.
• When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.
• I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe. Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours…They are nations of eternal war. All their energies are expended in the destruction of the labor, property and lives of their people.
• We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a feather bed.
• I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.
• I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.
• No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms.
• My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.
• No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.
• No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden
• None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important.
• Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.
• Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
• Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.
• One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them.
• Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.
• Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.
• Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it.
• Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.
• Speeches that are measured by the hour will die with the hour.
• Taste cannot be controlled by law.
• That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.
• The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper
• The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave
• When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.
• When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.
• Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

We’re Not in Kansas Anymore

 

Original Wizard of Oz book.

Actually, I am in Kansas right now, but I couldn’t resist that statement, and I’m not alone.  It’s a very popular phrase to explain wonderment when entering a fantastic new environment.  Recently I saw a version of the phrase in the New York Times Coming-of-Age Filmgoers: You’re Not in Kansas Anymore, which had nothing to do with the movie or the book.

(Judy Garland’s line as Dorothy Gale in the film The Wizard of Oz was “Toto, I have the feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”)

Growing up in Kansas, I was always fascinated by The Wizard of Oz movie, even though it didn’t show our state in a very favorable light.  However, as black and white, dusty and tornado-prone as Kansas was shown in the movie,  Dorothy couldn’t wait to get home!  L. Frank Baum, the author, never visited Kansas but fashioned the Kansas in his book, published in 1900, after the drought years  he experienced when he lived in Aberdeen, South Dakota.

I didn’t interpret the movie (I hadn’t read the book) as anything more than a fantasy, until I got to college.  There, I learned that like most fairy tales, there is a deeper interpretation, usually something sinister or despotic.

L. Frank Baum, 1901.

In these times of great economic uncertainty, I thought it might be helpful to take you back to the good old days of the 1890s, depicted as allegory in “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.”   The “Gay Nineties” period was really a time of widespread economic depression in the United States, set off by the Panic of 1893.  The depression lasted until 1896, when the Republican Party took control of the White House. Full prosperity didn’t return until 1899, which didn’t last, of course.  Boom and bust times continue, most notably The Great Depression.

Henry M. Littlefield wrote an essay in 1964 called “The Wizard of Oz: Parable on Populism,” which showed that the people and events in the book were metaphors for actual people and events in the 1890s. 

Dorothy meets the Cowardly Lion in an illustration from the first edition.

Dorothy represents Everyman.  How wonderful that Everyman is a woman!  Here’s  an excerpt from the wikipedia version:

 “Many of the events and characters of the book resemble the actual political personalities, events and ideas of the 1890s.  The 1902 stage adaptation mentioned, by name, President Theodore Roosevelt, oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, and other political celebrities. (No real people are mentioned by name in the book.) Even the title has been interpreted as alluding to a political reality: “oz.” is an abbreviation for ounce, a unit familiar to those who fought for a 16 to 1 ounce ratio of silver to gold in the name of bimetallism In the play and in later books Baum mentions contemporary figures by name and takes blatantly political stances without the benefit of allegory including a condemnation in no uncertain terms of Standard Oil. The book opens not in an imaginary place but in real life Kansas, which, in the 1890s as well as today, was well known for the hardships of rural life, and for destructive tornadoes.  

The Panic of 1893 caused widespread distress in the rural United States. Dorothy is swept away to a colorful land of unlimited resources that nevertheless has serious political problems. This utopia is ruled in part by wicked witches. Dorothy and her house are swept up by the tornado and upon landing in Oz, thehouse falls on the Wicked Witch of the East, destroying the tyrant and freeing the ordinary people—little people or Munchkins. The Witch had previously controlled the all-powerful silver slippers (which were changed to ruby in the 1939 film to take advantage of the new technicolor film). The slippers will in the end liberate Dorothy but first she must walk in them down the golden yellow brick road, i.e. she must take silver down the path of gold, the path of free coinage (free silver). Following the road of gold leads eventually only to the Emerald City, which may symbolize the fraudulent world of greenback paper money that only pretends to have value, or may symbolize the greenback value that is placed on gold (and for silver, possibly).  Henry Littleton’s Essay about “The Wizard of Oz.”

Political Interpretations of “The Wizard of Oz.”   About L. Frank Baum, author of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.”    About the “Gay Nineties.”

About “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.” 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1903 poster of Dave Montgomery as the Tin Man in Hamlin's musical stage version.

A Year Ago…

On January 21, 2009, in Federation Square in Melbourne, Australia, people gather to watch a re-broadcast of Barack Obama taking the oath of office to become the President of the United States. Outside, another group is watching The Australian Open Tennis Tournament on a giant screen. The tournament was going on at nearby Rod Laver Arena.

Forty-Four Presidents — From George Washington to Barack Obama

From George Washington To Barack Obama – A Long Way – Original Video

John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy’s opening statement during the 1960 presidential debate.

 

My first airplane trip, my first (and, thankfully, only) airplane emergency landing and my “sighting” of John F. Kennedy all happened on the same day.  That day began my fascination with politics.  Fortunately, it didn’t dampen my enthusiasm for travel, either.

November 20, 1959.  I was seven years old. My father’s father had just died, and my mother, baby brother and I were on our way to the funeral in Sturgis, South Dakota.  My father and a sister and brother were already there.  I missed my grandpa, but I was excited about my first airplane ride.

A poster like this one greeted my mother and I at the Wichita, Kansas, airport, in November 1959. Kennedy had stopped by to speak to supporters.

Our trip began at the airport in Wichita, the air capital. My father was an engineer for Boeing in Wichita, and his enthusiasm for airplanes was infectious.  Airplanes roared overhead all day, every day.  I loved the noise.  It thrilled me. Now I was going to fly in one of “my father’s” airplanes.

As we walked to our gate, my mother paused at a poster of a man with a huge smile.

“John F. Kennedy is speaking here today,” she said.  “He’s running for president.”

Kennedy hadn’t officially announced — he’d do that in January 1960 — but he was gathering support across the country.  I’d heard his name during the last time we’d visited my grandfather as the relatives talked about current events.  Here was a Catholic candidate who had the first real chance to be president.  I wasn’t sure what the problem was.  Nearly everyone I knew was Catholic.  How could that be bad?

Even so, not all of my Catholic relatives voted for Kennedy, I later learned.  They didn’t let religious affiliation trump their political views, although they felt an affinity to Kennedy.

As Catholics, my relatives were also talking about the Third Secret of Fatima, which was supposed to be revealed in 1960.  What was the secret?  Would the Soviet Union be converted to Christianity? Would it be the end of the world?  I was fascinated and scared.

We settled into our seats on the TWA Boeing jet.  The first leg of our trip would take us to Denver. My mother held my nine-month-old brother as we buckled in and waited to take off.

“Do you see Kennedy?” my mother asked, looking out the window of our airplane. 

I saw a large crowd gathered on the pavement beyond our airplane. 

She pointed.  “There he is.  See?”

After Kennedy was assassinated, I mailed a drawing and a letter of condolence to Jackie Kennedy. Like the rest of the country, I was deeply shocked by his death. I received this photograph in return. I was eleven.

Everyone was so small, I couldn’t tell one person from the next.  I nodded anyway.  I wanted to think I saw him.  I definitely was going to tell all of my friends at school that I had. 

I didn’t realize we were witnessing the beginning of a new age in campaigning.  Kennedy and his staff used all the modern tools of the day: air travel, television, advance men who arranged for huge, friendly crowds to meet him and then make sure these crowds were depicted in the news.  It was the first modern campaign, according to Gary A. Donaldson, who wrote a book by the same name.  

My mother, brother and I took a Frontier propeller airplane from Denver, headed for Rapid City. A stewardess came by, offering us water, milk or hot cocoa.  She also asked us in Spanish and French.  We hadn’t been in the air very long, when smoke started to fill the airplane. One of the engines was on fire.  The pilot made an emergency landing in Alliance, Nebraska, where we crammed into a tiny airport for twelve hours.  At first there was nothing to eat but glazed donuts brought in from a nearby shop.  Later, sandwiches were delivered, but I was already stuffed on donuts. (Homer Simpson would be proud.) I didn’t have anywhere to sit so I lay under my mother’s chair. She had my baby brother to tend to. Now that I’ve had my own children, I know how stressful the experience must have been.

I was so excited when I saw this envelope (cropped) in the mail. I wondered why there wasn't a stamp or a postmark, but my mother explained that the envelope was "franked" with Jacqueline Kennedy's signature. Jackie Kennedy was allowed to mail envelopes without a stamp to respond to all of the people who wrote to her with their condolences.

We finally made it to Rapid City on another airplane.  When we got there, we found out that the airline had told my father that we were spending the night in Nebraska, so he’d left.  Luckily, a family friend who’d been on our flight from Denver drove us to Sturgis, where we met my father and grandmother at my grandparents’ hotel.  It was one of the last times I’d ever stay at the Fruth Hotel, a scene of so many happy childhood memories.  We said good-bye to my grandfather, who had been an important figure in my life.

You don’t forget something like an engine fire, but even at my young age I realized that Kennedy was the most exciting part of the flight.  Everyone at St. Mary’s grade school was excited about Kennedy’s candidacy when he finally announced it.  Even though I was just a second-grader, I felt I was a part of history because I’d kind of, sort of, maybe saw Kennedy.

Students named Kennedy and Nixon attended our grade school, so we had informal mock elections.  Even though it was a Catholic school, we were in a Republican state, so it wasn’t entirely one-sided.   My parents had followed the career of Dwight Eisenhower when we lived in Alexandria, Virginia, where I was born. They had gone to the airport once to see him arrive with Mamie and get into a limousine.  And now we lived in Eisenhower’s state.

Jackie Kennedy: A Front Runner's Appealing Wife. Life Magazine, August 24, 1959.

The students in my school cheered when Kennedy was elected.  His words “Ask not what the country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” rang across the country and are still often repeated.

This was the time in my life when I began to look to the wider world.  It was an awakening, which was both engrossing and frightening. 

A couple of months after his inauguration, Kennedy established the the Peace Corps. The Bay of Pigs invasion disaster a few months later in April 1961 took the shine off of the new president’s glow.   More anxiety was created when the The Berlin Wall appeared on August 13, 1961 (my birthday).    

We trooped to the school cafeteria to watch rockets launched into space. We worried about the Soviet Union surpassing us in the space race.  John Glenn orbited the earth in 1962.  Also in 1962, The Cuban Missile Crisis was the first time I was really frightened and realized that the world could be a very dangerous place. There was a growing interest in fallout shelters.  Eighteen Titan II Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) complexes  were located in the farmland around Wichita, adding to our anxiety. (I later toured a silo with my Girl Scout troop during high school.) We knew that nearby McConnell Air Force Base and Boeing’s military airplane factory could be targets.  There were many who didn’t like Kennedy and much we didn’t learn about until later, but in my world, his presidency marked the first and last time I was enthusiastic about a president.  Perhaps, it was the naivete of youth. Cynicism creeps in as you realize how fallible our leaders are.  The Vietnam War darkened my outlook even more.

The launch of astronaut John Glenn's "Friendship 7."

The American people fell in love with Jacqueline Kennedy.  Her charm, beauty, sophistication and glamor was as appealing, if not more so, than her husband’s.  I was crazy about her, myself.

Jackie Kennedy seemed to be on the cover of every popular magazine.  She wanted to make sure the White House was a private home for her family but recognized that it as also a national institution.  She formed the White House Historical Association to help in restoring the building.  Her filmed tour of the redecorated White house was broadcast to 50 million people on television on Valentine’s Day 1962. I was one of those 50 million.  She received an honorary Emmy Award for her achievement. I remember her efforts towards the preservation of Egyptian antiquities from the flood waters of the new Aswan Dam in Egypt.   I became very enthusiastic about Egypt when I saw it featured in Life Magazine, a major source of my news about the world (along with National Geographic.)  I became enamored of Elizabeth Taylor and her role as Cleopatra.  She and Jackie seemed to alternate on the cover of popular magazines.

Jacqueline Kennedy requested the eternal flame for her husband's grave. Above is Arlington House, the home of Robert E. Lee, who left it at the onset of the Civil War. He and his family never returned, and now the land is the site of the national cemetery and the Pentagon. I visited Arlington for the first time as an adult this year.

Four years after that day at the Wichita airport, I was cutting out paper turkeys in my sixth grade art class for Thanksgiving decorations when an ashen-faced Sister Kathleen came into our classroom to tell us that President Kennedy had been shot.  It was November 22, 1963. Over the next few days, we were in shock as we watched the events unfold on television.  Lyndon Baines Johnson was sworn in, Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald, the funeral cortege with Jackie, Caroline and little John John saluting as his father’s casket passed, the horse with the backwards boots.   It was the first national mourning for a president on television.

For more about John F. Kennedy, including links to audio and video clips, go to John F. Kennedy.

Here’s a video about Jacqueline Kennedy, including her work on the restoration of the White House.  The next video is more of the Kennedy-Nixon presidential debates.

Study Shows That Narcissists Often Become Leaders, But Not Always Good Ones

Vote for Me! I'll fix everything! I know what to do! Barack Obama and John McCain look unusually happy during their second presidential campaign debate on October 7. What kind of personality does it take to think you've got the right stuff to be the President of the United States?

If you think you’ve got what it takes to be the President of the United States, you might be a narcissist, according to a new study (See link below.)  Wall Street traders and CEOs of financial companies might also score high on the narcissist chart.  Congressional leaders, too.  If only a big ego meant competence.  But it doesn’t, as we’ve so unfortunately seen lately. 

Narcissists like to be in charge, but the new study shows that narcissists don’t outperform others in leadership roles. Narcissists are egotistical types who exaggerate their talents and abilities and lack empathy for others.   Their egos tell them that they can’t be wrong, even if they are.   They don’t like to be questioned.  They don’t tell the truth if a lie would be better.  They need followers, known as “narcissistic supply.”  Worst of all, they think it’s all about them and nothing about you! 

Can we avoid them?  It might be hard.  They seem to gravitate toward leadership roles because that’s where the power and recognition is.  Narcissists can be so charming at first.  It’s not until they get into office that we find out the bitter truth.  The best thing is to have a realistic attitude.  These people are human, after all.  Don’t expect miracles.  Expect mistakes.  Take action for your own life.  And maybe we’ll get lucky and elect a president who really does want to serve the people.

I wrote about narcissism, particularly in politics, in I’m the Center of the Universe.  Here is an article about a study of narcissism in politics and business, which focuses on political and business leaders: Narcissists Tend to Become Leaders. For an explanation of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, click here.

Two blogs with incisive posts on Narcissistic Personality Disorder:

• Planetjan
• Elisse Stuart

MONEY, MONEY, MONEY

What economic meltdown?  What 700-billion-dollar bailout? Forget about it!   These music videos about money will make your worries disappear!

 Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey sing “Money” from “Cabaret.”

Here’s ABBA singing “Money, Money, Money.”

The Beatles sing “Money.”

Pink Floyd performs “Money.”

Weird Al covers Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing.”

All the News That Fit to Print

President Thomas Jefferson.

I’m a news junkie.  I can’t get enough, but it’s also a curse.  I don’t like being addicted and sometimes I get p.o.’d at what I read, but I can’t help myself.

Thomas Jefferson, one of my favorite presidents, had a love-hate relationship with newspapers, which were as full of scandal, calumny and innuendo in his day as they are in ours.  Nevertheless, he defended his firm beliefs in freedom of the press against attacks against the First Amendment of the Constitution.  He was often the object of a newspaper attacks, but he also knew how to use newspapers to advance his political career and that of his party, according to Willard Sterne Randall’s biography of Jefferson.

Here are some of Thomas Jefferson’s quotes, which show his mixed feelings about the “press.”

• Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
• Educate and inform the whole mass of the people…They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
• Information is the currency of democracy.
• The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.
• Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
• Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.
• Wherever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.
• The abuses of the freedom of the press here (Washington) have been carried to a length never before known or borne by civilized nations.
• I have been for some time used as the property of the newspapers, a fair mark for every man’s dirt. Some, too, have indulged themselves in this exercise who would not have done it, had they known me otherwise than through these impure and injurious channels.  It is hard treatment, and for a singular kind of offence, that of having obtained by the labors of a life the indulgent opinions of a part of one’s fellow citizens.  However, these moral evils must be submitted to, like the physical scourges of tempest, fire, &c.–
• Were I to undertake to answer the calumnies of the newspapers, it would be more than all my own time and that of twenty aids could effect.  For while I should be answering one, twenty new ones would be invented….But this is an injury to which duty requires every one to submit whom the public think proper to call into its councils —
• Our newspapers for the most part, present only the caricatures of disaffected minds.
• I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus, and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid, and I find myself much happier.

   Here are some bonus Jefferson quotes on the current economic situation:

• I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
• I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
• It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.
• Never spend your money before you have earned it.

And lastly, a Jeffersonian thought about political candidates:

• Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.