Author: joannawriting_3o8z6x

The Absence in Art History: A Glaring Gap

A while back, I watched Robert Hughes’ 1980s The Shock of the New on YouTube. I didn’t have a TV when it first came out and it had been on my list for 40 years. I was struck by the dearth of women artists. I counted only four or five through the whole eight episodes, plus the 25-years later follow up. And one of these, Sonia Delaunay, though a noted artist and designer, was mentioned only regarding a piece her artist husband made for her.

Checking contemporary criticism, I found questions over which (male) artists and their movements Hughes chose to highlight. But apparently the omission of women failed to register, was taken for granted. This reflected the assumption that there were not and could not be any important (read powerful, groundbreaking) women artists. That women simply couldn’t make the cut, meet the “rigorous” standard.

Breaking Down Biases: Linda Nochlin’s Questioning

In 1971, Linda Nochlin wrote her article Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? Ten years before Hughes, she used the same criteria and pointed out that making art could not be viewed as a political act in feminist terms. But then she questioned the criteria themselves, most notably in an ironic retelling of the story of the artist Giotto, discovered as a young shepherd boy drawing on rocks and immediately recognized as innately gifted with divinely, blessed-by-God, talent. It’s a classic hero tale, with demi-god overtones. Think Jesus, Achilles, King Arthur, Superman, Marvel Comics heroes. And, of course, no women need apply, because women can’t be heroes or demigods.

Anonymous Was a Woman: Trivialization of Female Work

When I shared with a friend, she described a course she took in the 1980s called Anonymous Was a Woman on how female work has been trivialized, cast as merely decorative, and often appropriated and coopted. Around the same time, I was taking a history of modern architecture course with the great Reyner Banham. His sense of how influence moves has continued to shape my view of the world. Who studied with whom, who worked for whom, who borrowed/stole from whom? Now, I apply this to women artists, though all examples at that time were men. Not because women couldn’t, but because until recently, many were not even allowed to try or leave home on their own, let alone enter schools and professions.

The Bauhaus Dilemma: Co-Ed Aspects and Gender Biases

Now, I wonder how much has changed and if bias has only become more subtle. I offer quotes from opposite ends of the socio-political spectrum. Mao said, “Women hold up half the sky.” The Dalai Lama said, “The world will be saved by the western women.” And getting there will take continuing to throw off millennia of conditioning inculcated in both women and men. And there’s a double bind: noticing and bringing this stuff up can be seen as shrill and unreasonable and lead to pushback. However, saying nothing allows damaging patterns to continue unchallenged. The actress Geena Davis noticed and spoke up and started her Institute on Gender in Media, which tracks, documents and works to reduce unconscious and insidious bias in films and TV that impact opinions and actions.

Double Bind: The Struggle to Be Heard

Both Hughes and Banham devoted considerable time to the Bauhaus, that iconic font of early 20th century architecture and industrial design. But neither touched on the co-ed aspects, still unusual at the time. Walter Gropius, the director, claimed, “No difference between the beautiful and the strong sex.” But his choice of words clearly says otherwise and that was carried out in practice. I believe only one woman ever became a master teacher. Women could enroll, and they did, outnumbering men in the first class. But early on they had to pay higher tuition and could only take “feminine subjects,” like weaving and textiles. Nevertheless, Anni Albers (textile artist, print maker) and the multi-talented Sophie Tauber-Arp (artist, painter, sculptor, textile designer, furniture and interior designer, and dancer) managed to stand out. This despite often being hampered by the common pattern of having their work being subsumed into their husbands’, with themselves treated as “assistants,” though in fact they were co-creators and often independent creators. And all the while, they juggled maintaining households. A la Ginger Rogers dancing backward and in heels.

The Geena Davis Institute: Challenging Media Bias

Davis said she started her institute to help open more space for her daughter and other young girls. I recall my mother’s participation in a study on women’s roles conducted by nearby Cornell University. The data apparently went unused at the time. Was that due to lack of interest? Though it was the 1950s, a few years before Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique, when many “housewives” were going quietly and sometimes not so quietly mad in their constricted lives. This was before they were called “stay at home moms.” As with women artists, definitions and shifts of emphasis are often applied from outside, rather than discovered from inside. My mother herself took a refresher course in bookkeeping and found a job as soon as my younger sister started school. Years later, when a researcher wanted to follow up with daughters, my mother sent her my way. Things had changed—more divorces, some traces of domestic violence, hints of self-discovery as gay. I myself married relatively late but was then early in relationship with the man who would become my husband.

Renewed Interest: Reclaiming Women’s Artistic Energy

By the time Hughes recapped his series around 2005, he walked with a cane. Though he devoted significant time to a single woman artist Paula Rego, he bemoaned modernism’s loss of energy. Was this a stunning feat of illogic and/or blindness? Was it a reaction to his own loss of physical power? Whatever, one of his talking-head commentators read from the same page, saying we’d only need one or two key male artists to get things going again. Nonetheless, almost another 20 years on, we’ve seen renewed interest and major exhibits of artists like Albers and Tauber-Arp. Women of Bauhaus is a prominent Instagram channel, rubbing virtual shoulders with the iconic Patty Smith, who presents herself in still active old woman mode, as well as equally iconic throwback images of Debbie Harry from her hottest period. And reconditioning continues to be a hit-and-miss, stop-and-start slog, with perhaps an inkling that at least some movers might just be women? And that opening the door just a tad might help restore some of the lost energy?

The Puzzling Landscape

Day 20 of Putin’s war, headlines mix attacks on Ukrainian civilians with sanctions on Russia, and we can watch it unfold almost real-time on smartphone videos shot by civilians and journalists. Peace and cease-fire talks drag along, but so far get nowhere. Putin claims this isn’t a war and Ukraine isn’t a country. He calls the world uniting to pull the economic plug on Russia an act of war. Whatever possessed this man, previously viewed as a crafty strategist, accommodated by Western political classes and media, even admired as a strong leader in some quarters?

Lessons from History

As citizens who have to share this world, we just want to live our lives and ease out of the pandemic toward something resembling normal. But how can we, when an oppressive dictator imposes his self-aggrandizing agendas? No qualms about dragging in his own people and the rest of the world, without forethought about what might happen if he doesn’t succeed. Hitler, at the end, blamed not himself, but the German people for failing in the world-domination task he’d set them and thought they deserved to self-destruct in a Wagnerian Gotterdammerung.

White and Eurocentric Privilege in Conflict

George Santayana famously said those who fail to learn from the past will be condemned to repeat it. And so much of this seems to be like a trope/cliché quoting past bloody, catastrophic, haunted history and very déjà vu all over again, a’ la Yogi Berra. Combat’s happening on the same ground fought over in WWII. That includes Babi Yar near Kyiv, where thousands of Jews were murdered. And now, Russian troops are reportedly looting and shooting civilians. Putin threatens to deploy nuclear weapons while Chernobyl, site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, lies a little north of the city and its safeguard system is at risk. Bombing of cities, with civilians sheltering in subway tunnels dug extra deep during the Cold War, resonates with the London blitz and retaliatory bombing of German cities during WWII. Nuclear saber-rattling reverberates with the Cuban missile crisis (1962), an earlier time we almost went over that unthinkable edge. And, though I’ve seen no other mentions, and with no disrespect to the Ukrainians, but do I detect a certain white and Eurocentric privilege a la the Bosnia ethnic conflicts of the 1990s? That has been this country’s preferred, though not all that accurate origin story. Would we see such a groundswell of global support if the conflict was happening in Africa and targeting non-white populations, like say the Rwandan genocide? Kenya’s ambassador to the UN gave a speech comparing Russia’s actions to past colonial aggression on his continent. All justified by “the white man’s burden.”

Putin’s Calculations and Unintended Consequences

Putin’s scenario anticipated a quick walkover to jumpstart restoring the “Russian Imperium” and himself, of course, as a major player on the world stage. But the Ukrainians and now the world haven’t cooperated. Even so, he has kind of gotten his wish. We are paying attention, if not in the way he wanted. And he is right about economic warfare. Dry up all his sources of cash, the reasoning goes, and he’ll run out of funds to keep financing this war he doesn’t want anybody calling one. An NPR commentator described him as using 19th century land-grab tactics in a 21st century world where everyone’s connected. But a friend suggests he’s probably 21st century enough to resort of crypto currencies and he has armies of internet trolls no longer busy messing with our elections to facilitate. And he probably provided for such eventualities by dispatching oligarch cronies to set up super-secret piggy banks hidden too deep in the dark web for sanctions to reach.

Truth as the First Casualty

It’s said that truth is war’s first casualty. And that’s especially applicable on the home front, where what Putin and his minions probably fear most is a popular uprising. So, their fake news blames the Ukrainians and they cut off social media outlets that might offer contradictory platforms. “Bye, Bye, Instagram!” one Russian user posted in a final message. But it’s reported western friends and colleagues are finding ways to text more accurate information. Tech flows like water, not that easy to control; cell phone texts, photos, videos fueled Arab Spring demonstrations. Meanwhile, Russian soldiers at the front are prohibited from having smart phones, lest they call or text home to let their mothers know they’re ok an escribe what’s happening. Many weren’t even told they were invading. And anxious, desperate, mothers wait, fear, hope, in a repeat from Chechen conflicts and the Afghanistan invasion that contributed to toppling the USSR. Mothers in Argentina walked, silently, carrying photos of sons and daughters “disappeared” by the repressive regime, and eventually catalyzed a national reckoning. But anything like that seems highly unlikely, especially with laws threatening any Russian who even dares use the word “war” with a 15-year prison term.

Nostalgia, Assassination Calls, and Cold War Fantasies

Senator Lindsey Graham’s call for Putin’s assassination is not just imprudent. It also reflects counter nostalgia for seemingly simpler Cold War days and covert CIA actions. And it perpetuates Putin’s strong man myth, that removing him could make all this disappear. Another version of the “great man” theory of history, that leaves out regular citizens of the country and world who have to live with the consequences and can take action, as so many Ukrainians have.

In fact, this all reflects nostalgia for the supposed tense certainties of the Cold War, as well as serious uncoupling from reality. Peter Pomerantsev of the London School of Economics, studies “21st century information manipulation and how to fix it.” In This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality (c2019), he quoted the late Russian-American scholar Svetlana Boym. “The 20th century began with Utopia and ended with nostalgia. The 21st century is not characterized by the search for new-ness, but by the proliferation of nostalgia.” And now, Pomerantsev himself noted, “…both the old Cold War superpowers [take] a sort of adolescent joy in throwing off the weight of grim reality, with facts viewed as increasingly irrelevant.” Yet now, now the very real, grim, ugly, deadly, war keeps grinding on. Will it provide a cold-water bath of to wake the world up, as we confront an even more uncertain future? Pomerantsev again: “…though facts can be unpleasant, they are useful. You need them, especially if you are constructing something in the real world. There are no post-truth moments if you are building a bridge, for example.” Ukrainians have shown the way, putting their bodies, lives, stories on the line and online. Ukraine’s President Zelensky will give a virtual address to the US Congress.

Lost Years and Unbearable Anxieties

Most of 2020 and all of 2021 were, of course, almost unbearable lost years, full of weird anxiety, lethargy, isolation, claustrophobia, ennui, nervous overeating, weight gain, and mental health challenges. Even as the pandemic washed over us, pandemic denial, mask and vaccine resistance joined climate-change refusal/denial. Then “Stop the Steal” election narratives ramped up to the shocking Capitol riot.

Dueling Narratives: The Clash of Election Stories

Sad, but not surprising that we found ourselves snagged on opposing election stories. On one side, the popular vote created dancing-in-the-street elation over “taking the country back.” But the other side insisted the very same popular vote had been manipulated by the corrupt, invisible, hidden, “deep state” that really runs the country for its own purposes. And that story never wavered, though legal challenges and ballot recounts failed to find significant election fraud. And that brought us the Capitol riot, with more than 800 breaking into the building. Who were they? Some fit the stereotype, young, unemployed, into extremist groups and anonymous online channels known for conspiracy, racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, denigration of women, pornography. But others were older, employed, without known extremist ties, but equally distrusting of “the system.” Mark Fenster, in Conspiracy Theories (1999, second edition c2008), described parallel worlds, with conspiracies hiding and then being unmasked by those who recognize the “truth.” And so, while some rioters took selfies and some tore things up, others rifled through lawmakers’ desks and papers, searching for “evidence.” A cop tried to reason, suggesting that the rioters were treading on sacred ground. But could they see the Capitol as both sacred ground and the seat of corrupt power at the same time?

Capitol Riot: Breaking Windows and Shattering Confidence

Trying to understand whys and wherefores does not excuse. These folks broke things—windows, doors, cops’ heads and bones, potentially our fragile confidence in the rule of law, and in the implied social contract that holds us gingerly together. For me, a video captured the spirit of the day, showing a single Capitol police officer, Eugene Goodman, who stands alone, facing the advancing mob. He is Black and the image of a man of color menaced, followed, chased by a white mob in the halls of the national Capitol is a graphic and chilling reminder of our darker history. Yet I also detect a more positive storyline. Goodman turned the tale around, smartly using his Black/cop body to distract and lure the mob away from the door to the Senate chamber. By delaying the mob till lawmakers could be led to safety, he saved the country from a far worse outcome. Like Goodman, we may not change minds and hearts, since conspiracy theories seem to be self-feeding and cannot be disproved for those who believe. And yet I hope, if some of us are willing to keep our minds open even a little, we may discover opportunities to turn the national story a little and keep exploring and moving toward whatever light we can make out.

A Chilling Reminder and a Glimmer of Hope

Update: I wrote this piece in the months following the riot. Since then, we’ve seen reframing of the story to recast the rioters as “tourists,” non-violent visitors, not a threat at all. We’ve also seen hundreds of rioters identified, with indictments handed down. Many identifications have been made by regular citizens tracking videos and images online. Rioters made this easy, exerting little or no effort to disguise themselves, being anti-mask after all. They apparently expected to suffer no consequences and, when called to court, have often claimed they didn’t mean it, were caught up in the moment. This is in sharp contrast to triumphant messages they sent on the day itself. Sentences and fines have generally been fairly light. Perhaps that reflects limitations of existing law or it may indicate desire and hope to move toward healing wounds and in the general direction of the light.

A Blast from the Past

A few weeks back, someone asked if Putin’s nuclear threats over Ukraine scare me. No, I said, it feels like a throwback. I grew up in the Cold War 1950s, hid under school desks in bomb drills. One National Civil Defense Day, my younger sister, sick at home and watching on TV, hid under her favorite blanket, made by my mother and printed with tiny black-and-white pandas. Later, during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, I walked down a high school corridor, lights dimmed, but still just bright enough to glint a little off the buffed linoleum floor. And I wondered, could we actually be closing in on the end of the human story. Now you see us, now you don’t? And how crazy was that? Pile up enough such incidents and the only viable option is to stop worrying and just live.

Lessons Unlearned

I emphasize human and physical memory details as anchors. The idea we might have to worry about “the bomb” again feels like something from another, more primitive, age. And it is. I’m exasperated. Not this again! Haven’t we learned anything? Could it be we never “got over” the shocking flash that dropped us unawares into the nuclear age? No one likes to think about what happened to the people under the mushroom clouds. But even back then it was known hiding under desks wouldn’t protect from fallout, burns, radiation sickness. And then there were the attempts to dial back and normalize. Yes, it’s a weapon we mostly don’t ever want to use. But it can also be a source of unlimited power, all the power we’ll ever need. What good news! As if we’d found the alchemists’ philosopher’s stone. As my dad used to say, everything has its plusses and minuses.

Science, Sin, and Secrecy

The 1981 documentary Day After Trinity featured interviews with scientists on the team that developed the bomb. They worried the first test might catch the whole atmosphere on fire. And they went ahead anyway. J. Robert Oppenheimer, who ran the team, famously said, “Science has known sin.” Knowledge may be power but knowing “too much” can be dangerous. Oppenheimer tried to restrain nuclear fervor, but had his security clearance yanked, based on suspicions he was too left leaning, maybe even a covert Communist, and therefore a security risk. He died in his mid-50s and looks haunted in last photos. Andrei Sakharov, a leader in developing the USSR’s thermonuclear bomb, lived longer and turned dissident and activist for disarmament. Awarded the Nobel Prize, but not allowed to travel to collect it, he spent his final years under virtual house arrest.

Political Opportunism and Layers of Punishment

In this country, after the scientists came politicians, who knew much less but applied a boosterish zeal to the US having a power the rest of the world didn’t. Then the USSR set off its own bomb, which prompted a search for people to blame and punish. Who gave them our secrets? Were we harboring subversives? And the times became hugely punishing—House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC), Army-McCarthy hearings, blacklists, loyalty oaths. Too young to be aware, but I did once see Senator McCarthy on TV. We didn’t yet have one and I’d stopped next door to walk to school with the McCarthy girls (no relation). And there he was, arm in a sling. I only put his identity together later and realized the arm was the result of hepatitis, due to his alcoholism, which caused liver cirrhosis and eventually killed him at age 48. So political opportunism is only the most visible of multiple layers. It’s important to remember that in these days of internet trolling.

Kubrick’s Satirical Reflection

Stanley Kubrick caught the spirit of the age when he attached a subtitle to his film Dr. Strangelove (1964).  How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb captures paranoia, hysteria, anxiety and surreal yet weirdly optimistic qualities of those times, when love was often in short supply. Not surprising, when you consider we’d recently come through the biggest war ever, then learned of the horrific holocaust genocide that brutalized and then murdered millions just for being who they were, and of this brand-new technology, capable of destroying everything. It was as if the world had been torn off its axis. But people didn’t talk much about trauma back then. Perhaps Slim Pickens enacted a weird kind of self-destructive love at the end of Kubrick’s film, when he leapt onto the warhead just as it was released from the bomb bay, wrapped himself around it and rode it down toward earth.

From MAD to Putin’s Taboos

Eventually, after the raw wore off, the world calmed down some and went back to old geopolitical “balance of power” and “spheres of influence.” And the confrontation devolved into the Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) policy, recognizing that full-scale use of nuclear weapons by the opposing sides would cause complete annihilation of both. And how crazy is that? But it allowed us to walk along the edge and make do the best we can, to live. Now, Putin has reintroduced what had been treated as taboo. A New York Times story described a new generation of nukes that is “smaller, less destructive, and less unthinkable.” And Russian troops are trained to transition from conventional to nuclear, to regain the upper hand when they may be losing. Now, that does scare me. Cross a taboo once and it’s too easy to do it again. We are human, prone to losing humility, to overreaching. Oppenheimer, at that first test, quoted the Bhagavad Gita, “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Let’s hope we can find another way yet again before this goes too far.

A Parallel Journey

As the country witnesses/undergoes/suffers through yet another contentious Supreme Court confirmation hearing, I recognize parallels with another era and arena, going back 75 years. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has become the first Black woman who will serve on the US Supreme Court. Jackie Robinson was the first Black player allowed into major league baseball, breaking in with the old Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. That happens to be the year I was born, after which I grew up in baseball. Later, my dad managed Black players in the South in the 1950s, when non-white fans still had to sit in separate, but definitely not equal, unroofed bleachers rather than the whites-only roofed grandstands.

The Symbolic Role of Sports

Some scoff at taking sports seriously. No more than modern bread and circuses, they say. But I have another view, based on personal experience and observation. Sports often play a symbolic role. International too, forcing us to behave better than we would at home, knowing the rest of the world is watching. Consider Jesse Owens showing up Hitler’s “Master Race” at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. And sports offer us a leading, less risky, cultural edge. They serve up multi-ethnic test cases, enacting/acting out/modeling what will later become central to our shared national life and identity, as in the progression from baseball to the Supreme Court. And yet, all these years later, it still takes a lot of fighting and to-and-froing to grudgingly take next inclusive steps.

The Courageous Pioneers

Consider two courageous pioneers, both highly talented and qualified, eminently worthy to belong, except for resistance to the color of their skins. There’s an interesting semi-convergence with the names. Reaching the “eye on the prize” goal requires willingly offering themselves up to brutal hazing, all the while maintaining their own poise and cool. A line from a Malvina Reynolds’ tune comes to mind: “It isn’t nice, it isn’t nice. You’ve told us once, you’ve told us twice, but if that is freedom’s price, we don’t mind.” And of course, even what Robinson went through represented a vast improvement over earlier, more perilous times, when attracting attention and/or acting “uppity” were so often matters of life and death. Details differ, of course. Judge Jackson, operating in a highly verbal world, has been subjected to verbal attacks. Though chosen because she’s a centrist, some Senators on the Judiciary Committee sought to portray her as super-liberal. This included inaccurate claims that she’s been soft on pornographers, when in fact Congress established the sentencing guidelines. There’s the old saying “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Not exactly, especially considering aspersions were cast in the presence of her husband and young daughters. It had to come as a huge relief—one of the few times she teared up—when Senator Corey Booker addressed her to say she deserved and earned the appointment.

Denying and Admitting Racism

Robinson also earned his place, a star in the Negro Leagues and the first to cross over from them. He’d been handpicked as a man who could handle the pressure. He heard all the ugly words, back when tongues were far less restrained. And, as an athlete, he faced actual threats of bodily harm. Baseball players come with weapons if they choose to use them that way. Metal spikes on their feet at that time. Bats and hard balls in their hands. Roger Kahn in The Boys of Summer (1971) described “bean balls” that in the Robinson years opposing pitchers often intentionally threw at Dodgers’ heads for playing with him. Robinson’s own head was the target even more frequently, with potential to maim or even kill. This is no theory; a friend of my dad’s, hit in the head with a ball, spent months recovering speech and coordination. Not safe on the base paths either, where some opposing players tried to spike Robinson’s Achilles’ Tendons, potentially crippling him and wrecking his career. But he was too quick, known for blazing speed. It must have been a great comfort for him that he had the unwavering support and friendship of Peewee Reese, Dodger shortstop and team captain.

Polarization in American Society

Three-quarters of a century on, we do seem to have arrived at a time when racial animus can no longer be overtly expressed on a political stage. As Isabel Wilkerson wrote in Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (2020), “Defensiveness about anti-black sentiment in particular, makes it literally unspeakable to many in the dominant caste.” But she noted a downside: “You cannot solve anything that you do not admit exists, which could be why some people may not want to talk about it: it might get solved.” And, of course, denying and not talking about it doesn’t mean that different, encoded versions cease to exist and operate and, when revealed, are often denied. Wilkerson described “Caste [as] the granting or withholding of respect, status, honor, attention, privileges, resources, benefit of the doubt, and human kindness to someone on the basis of their perceived rank of standing in the hierarchy.” So, questions of belonging and competence persist.

Ezra Klein, in Why We’re Polarized (c2020), cited other thinkers who had addressed related topics. Shanto Iyengar of Stanford University’s Political Communication Laboratory found that “partisan animosity is one of the few forms of discrimination that contemporary American society not only permits but actively encourages.” And so, Democrats and Republicans simmer in mutual mistrust, each considering the other an existential threat to the country’s future. And we’ve built “a world in which we’re not going to listen to politicians on the other side of emotional and controversial issues, even if they are making good arguments that are backed by facts.” Henri Tajfel, in his 1970 paper Experiments in Intergroup Discrimination, noted “classification of groups as ‘we’ and ‘they’ and once someone has become a ‘they,’ we are used to dismissing them, competing against them, discriminating against them, even if there is no reason for it in terms of our [own] interests.” No surprise then, that the Judiciary Committee tied on Judge Jackson’s nomination along party lines, which threw confirmation to the full Senate. No surprise either that Senator Lindsey Graham threatened to block any future Supreme Court nominations during Biden’s term.

Identity, Contradictions, and Pushback

Breaking down barriers takes revising our sense of national identity and working through our contradictions. Knowing not everybody’s going to be happy about it but going ahead anyway and understanding there will be pushback. As Klein stated, there’s “nothing that makes us identify with our groups as the feeling that the power we took for granted may soon be lost or the injustices we’ve long borne may soon be rectified.” The Supreme Court Judge Jackson aspires to join is part of a “white city” of buildings often constructed using slave labor. Many viewed Robinson’s presence on the field as defiling the pure, pristine white temple of “the American Pastime,” with its fairytale origin story that Civil War General Abner Doubleday invented the game during his boyhood in pastoral Cooperstown, NY. Thus, it made silly sense to further extend the fantasy and choose that little town as the location for the Baseball Hall of Fame. There’s a Negro Leagues display, but it’s only a footnote. Wilkerson features a vignette on Satchell Paige, recognized as one of the greatest pitchers ever, who only made it to the majors at age 40, his best years behind him.

I go back and read Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. That image of “Mute inglorious Miltons,” prevented by their circumstances from adding their voices. What do we lose as a country by not including? And what does it cost the pioneers who go up against the system? Judge Jackson apologized to her daughters for time spent away from them. Wilkerson noted the toll of the enormous stress on pioneers who directly confront the system. Robinson suffered heart attacks and diabetes, went blind near the end of his life. I recall a moment from A League of Their Own, about women playing baseball during WWII. Another marginalized group kept out, which has also merited a footnote display at Cooperstown. The ball gets away from the catcher, Geena Davis, and lands in a Black churchyard. A woman dressed in Sunday best picks up the ball. Davis calls to throw it to her. And, as he makes the catch, we see in her eyes that she realizes this woman could do what she was doing and maybe even do it better, if given the chance.

Out of the Ashes

My love of stories goes way back. Sunday afternoons, age 3 and not reading yet, I’d herd my mother to the sofa, lean against her and insist she read to me. Pregnant with my younger sister, she’d often drowse off before finishing. But she never explained. And I wanted the rest of the story. So, I’d punch her in the side to wake her. Still getting a handle on pronouncing “R’s,” I’d shout, “Wead, wead, wead” at her. Tiny hands, so I probably didn’t hit very hard. But children can be relentless, and my determination also goes way back. When my mother died, over 60 years later, my brother and I schlepped her ashes in rental cars across western and central New York State. Last family road trip, we called it. Growing up, we spent a lot of time in cars, getting from Point A to Point B and not dawdling to sightsee. These were never vacations. Summers were my dad’s primary baseball work time. And I started making up stories around what I spied out the car window.

The Burned Over District’s Unconventional Flame

Much of the territory we traversed was in what’s known as “the Burned Over District,” between the Finger Lakes and Lake Erie. Sounds like it goes back to a catastrophic fire. Right? Wrong. This refers to a different kind of heat, intense evangelizing fervor that washed over the area in the 1830s and 1840s. Frances Fitzgerald, in Cities on a Hill(c1982,1983) compared what happened in that small corner of the very new nation (Constitution only adopted in 1789) to the 1960s, when people/folks in my generation stripped away previous identities, reinvented ourselves, experimented to varying degrees with “sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll” and took the culture along for the ride. Fitting then that we’d have the maternal ashes strapped in the backseat.

The Tapestry of Reform Movements

I know that area well, grew up on the threshold, later lived in various communities there before moving south. And I still can’t fathom how a region that now appears bland, white-bread, and economically left behind could once have flamed that incandescently. Even more surprising that it could erupt into an astonishing array of religious/spiritual/social/sexual improvisations, adventures, experimentation and creativity. If Buzz Feed put together one of its lists ranking most fertile locales for generating new religions, the deserts of the Middle East would have to be on top, with three world faiths—Judaism, Christianity, Islam. But the rolling green hills of Western New York State wouldn’t be far behind, as shown by the lengthy roster below, along with their non-standard permutations: Mormons(polygamy); Millerites/Adventists (awaiting Second Coming in 1844, which failed to come off); the Spiritualist Fox Sisters (table knocking seances); Shakers (celibacy) who ran a communal farm and workshop-based small manufacturing; the Utopian Oneida Movement (free love, group marriage) who ran workshop-based small manufacturing; the Ebenezer Colonies, another Utopian group, that later moved to Iowa and became the Amana Colony, with workshop-based manufacturing. And, as if those weren’t enough, the area also gave rise to all the major reform movements of the 19th century: Abolition, Temperance, Feminism (the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention), Missionary Bible Societies (domestic and eventually reaching as far as China).

The Art of Storytelling and Collective Imagination

Starting a religion in the desert makes sense, plenty of space to go off to into the void to contemplate timeless mysteries. But was there an equivalent in pastoral New York State? And where did all the energy come from back then and how, where, and when did it go? Was it like a switch flipped? I’ve worked in economic development and given lots of thought to community motivation, will and morale. In his book Sapiens (c2015), Yuval Noah Harari described how “Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths…that exist only in people’s collective imagination….” My mother’s small city addressed contentious labor relations by developing a collective-bargaining method that became a national best-practice model, but then the issue turned moot as manufacturing jobs moved offshore. And because there weren’t many well-paid jobs, we had access to good, affordable, assisted living in her final year. Cascade effects ripple through local economies and change communities and the people in them.

Anthropological Perspectives on Cultural Distortions

Harari says the trick is to tell a compelling story people can believe and commit to. The founding fathers believed a new country into being, and infused it with visionary, utopian elements—something new and special in the world. Fitzgerald took her title from Pilgrim leader John Winthrop’s words to his community on their way to Plymouth Rock. And the founding prophets continued in that vein, believing whole new faiths into being and convincing others to join. They often favored isolating and keeping separate from the rest of the world, saved versus unsaved. These days, we lack such common/shared language. So, is there anything to learn from the district, as we strive to understand and navigate our own unsettled times?

The Dynamics of Transition in the 1830s and 1840s

The 1830s and 1840s were transitional times for the new country. It was the Age of [President Andrew] Jackson, as universal male suffrage toppled eastern elites from national leadership, and of the Second Great Awakening of ecstatic and emotional evangelical revivals and camp meetings swept across the almost entirely white and Protestant nation. The Burned Over District, still at the trailing edge of the frontier, had gone from self-sufficient family farms to boom economy as the new Erie Canal (Albany to Buffalo) connected and made it a breadbasket for coastal cities. That left a population of young men, displaced when farms specialized, often prone to drinking and “ruffianly” behavior. Local leaders, seeking to assert social control, brought in revival preachers to reach out to young people. New Light Theology proclaimed the reformed/reborn could attain godliness in this world, then join together to save others. With demand high and ordained, professional clergy still scarce, self-taught, lay evangelists like the prophets stepped forward.

Reimagining Beginnings in Contemporary Times

Fitzgerald applied anthropologists’ theories on social change that still resonate 40 years later. Anthony F.C. Wallace recognized the stress placed on individuals and communities by “disruption or disintegration of a more or less stable cultural system.” And he found “cultural distortions” arising when people’s mental images of society and culture also fall apart. Victor Turner coined the term “liminal or threshold states,” for times when existing systems may seem unworkable, broken, and individuals living within them consequently lose a strong sense of identity. Call it a kind of vertigo and consider those young men who lost their places on family farms. Important to remember too that the district had recently been a frontier area. And frontiers represent borders between known and unknown. Robert J. Kaiser described borderlands as performative “spaces of becoming” through which “socio-spatial categories or signifiers (e.g., identity, place, scale) materialize as things in the world, as essences ‘out there.’“ I picture the new prophets, beginning to find their voices, converting family members first, gathering other followers, materializing their creations in the world. And being a prophet could be risky. Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet, was murdered on the way west. The Millerite founder was excommunicated, the Oneida founder prevented from preaching.

Fitzgerald questioned “why certain ideas that now seem bizarre or eccentric might have had equal weight with ideas that now seem to be truly prophetic or mainstream.” By prophetic and mainstream, she meant those serious reforms that started in the district and changed the country forever and for better. But 40 years later, it strikes me that bizarre and eccentric are in the eyes of the beholder and the times. So, much once considered outlandish has become mainstream, like vegetarianism, yoga, Buddhist practices. And to tell the truth, I find many of the details far less interesting than the district’s remarkable energy and confidence, that intrepid spirit of exploration, invention, beginner mind. We could use some of that in these times when so many of our existing systems are tired and dysfunctional. And perhaps we might begin with something like a “buzz session” approach, just letting ideas flow from anyone who wants to join in. Some might stick, others may not. And, judging by what happened in the district, who knows where new beginnings might take us?

Introduction: A Nation on the Brink

Over the past few weeks, the country has seemed poised on a steep precipice and about to step off. The Supreme Court has seldom taken away a right once granted. But now, after 50 years, based on Justice Alito’s leaked draft Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization opinion, it seems likely Roe v. Wade will soon be history. And, if and when that happens, some 26 states, including mine, have trigger laws ready to declare abortion illegal within their borders. Perspectives vary. For some Americans, abortion has been a national sin, murder, slaughter of innocents. Others eagerly seize on the issue for political advantage. Count me in the group worried about erosion of women’s freedom, autonomy, and agency if such a fundamental and very personal decision is taken out of their/our hands.

Personal Perspective: A Staunch Defender of Women’s Autonomy

In high school, I wrote my senior paper on Chief Justice John Marshall and Supreme Court judicial review. So, I have an interest in the process. In my 30s, people kept telling me I ought to be a lawyer. I finally took the LSAT to explore the possibility. Always thought I have a fairly logical mind, so I went in without much prep, just took a few pre-tests. When I didn’t score well, I wondered if the law used a different kind of logic. So perhaps I’m missing something, but reading Alito’s draft, I kept thinking of the old saying about statistics, that you can bend them to “prove” whatever answer you prefer. And, though I never became a lawyer, I recall my mother’s response, when I asked about her continued adherence to the troubled Catholic Church, “I have as much right as the Pope to decide what’s right and wrong.” And I have as much right as a Supreme Court Justice. And I read Alito in the context of my gender’s ongoing marginal status. Despite repeatedly focusing on national “history and traditions,” he fails to acknowledge that, for much of this country’s history, women had no say, because we couldn’t vote (suffrage only achieved 100 years back, by Constitutional amendment in 1920). And in earlier days, some of us were burned as witches, often for reputedly having sex with the devil. Bodily functions and our attitudes to them can get very messy.

Judicial Dynamics: The Tension of Originalism vs. Living Document

Before starting my high school research, I naively assumed the justices made decisions solely on principles of law. Then I learned Marshall and President Jefferson were cousins, in opposing political parties, and loathed each other. And judicial review was about carving out a big role for the previously puny Court as the nation’s final arbiter. Mission accomplished! And so here we are, with Alito writing that the Court, “must exercise the utmost care whenever we are asked to break new ground in this field, lest the liberty protected by the due process clause [of the 14th Amendment] be subtly transformed into the policy preferences of the members of this Court.” But we’re human, so the personal always creeps in one way or another. And Alito certainly displays his originalist bias, seeing the Constitution, as amended, not as a living document, subject to reinterpretation as social norms shift, but to be taken as written. That the founding fathers meant exactly what they said/wrote and what they didn’t state explicitly isn’t covered. And since they made no mention of abortion…. But I have to wonder what room/space that judicial philosophy/ideology leaves us to improve, to learn, to grow, to expand and adjust our vision to attain a truly more perfect, inclusive and just union? Think of all the many elements of current reality the founders couldn’t have imagined.

Ordered Liberty: Alito’s Perspective on Constitutional Rights

In his draft, Alito prioritizes “ordered liberty,” which according to Merriam-Webster is “freedom limited by the need for order in society.” M-W adds a note: the concept “was the initial standard for determining what provisions of the Bill of Rights were to be upheld by the states through the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. Today the 14th Amendment is generally seen as encompassing all of the guarantees bearing on fundamental fairness that are included in or that arose from the Bill of Rights rather than a small class of provisions essential to ordered liberty.” Alito does admit that the due process clause guarantees some rights not mentioned in the Constitution, but only if those rights are “deeply rooted in our history and traditions.” He insists abortion never was, that it has consistently been viewed as morally different, even repugnant. He glides over contradictions with English common law: “The fetus has no legal right of its own until it is born alive and separated from its mother. The right to life of the unborn fetus is restricted or limited subject to the right to life of the mother.”

Legal Philosophy: Challenging the Foundations of Roe v. Wade

Even at the extremes, no one would argue that abortion is a best-case scenario, but then neither is 9 to 10 months of unwanted pregnancy. We’ve known that Roe has been vulnerable to challenge, because it anchored in women’s right to privacy, rather than to equal protection under the 14th Amendment’s due process clause. Apparently, in 1973, that was the only way to convince enough Justices to sign on. Not surprising, when you remember that this country has never managed to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, which I worked for with my League of Women Voters chapter back in the 1970s. Roe and the later Casey decision identified a right to privacy, described as freedom to make “intimate and personal choices” that are “central to personal dignity and autonomy.” Casey elaborated: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” Alito counters that while individuals may have the right to define, they are not always free to act on those thoughts. He asserts that license to act on such beliefs may correspond to one of the many understandings of “liberty,” but it is certainly not “ordered liberty.”

Roe v. Wade: A Questionable Foundation?

Alito describes Roe as “muddled and wrong” from the beginning, an error by the Court that it’s time to correct. “When one of our constitutional decisions goes astray, the country is usually stuck with the bad decision unless we correct our own mistake…. Therefore, in appropriate circumstances we must be willing to reconsider and if necessary overrule constitutional decisions.” He cites the “infamous” Plessy vs. Ferguson ruling. But then, he seems to apply similar hair-splitting arguments, asserting that State regulation of abortion is “not a sex-based classification.” That “the regulation of a medical procedure that only one sex can undergo does not trigger heightened constitutional scrutiny” unless the regulation is a “mere pretext designed to effect an invidious discrimination against members of one sex or the other.” Now really. I am not a lawyer, but I am a woman. And I am not convinced.

Alito’s Call for Correction: Reconsidering Constitutional Decisions

And so here we are. And I hope the anticipated majority opinion will be ringed by resounding dissents from other Justices. And that those will help establish a baseline of counter arguments to make it clear this story is not finished. I recently learned of Justice John Marshall Harlan, lone dissenter in the 7 to 1 Plessy decision (1896), which installed the shameful “separate but equal” doctrine for the next 70 years. The majority in that case held that, although the 14th Amendment established the legal equality of whites and blacks, it did not and could not require the elimination of all “distinctions based upon color.” But Harlan rose above his times and fellow Justices. Known thereafter as “the Great Dissenter,” he wrote that, “In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful.” He referred to black citizens, but we can extrapolate to women as full citizens.

Hope Amidst Uncertainty: Shifting Public Opinion

Harlan also correctly predicted that Plessy would eventually become as infamous as the Dred Scott decision (1857), in which the Court ruled that black Americans could not be citizens under the U.S. Constitution, and that its legal protections and privileges could never apply to them, and so they could continue to be enslaved. I envision a future in which the current case will be recognized as another Court error.

Looking Ahead: A Potential Turning Point

And I do find reason for hope. Attitudes among younger citizens have been shifting, as shown by a recent Pew Research Center survey (Hannah Hartig. Wide partisan gaps in abortion attitudes, but opinions in both parties are complicated. May 6, 2022). Some 74% of Americans under 30 now say abortion should be legal in all or most cases (up from 67% in 2021). This includes nearly half (47%) of Republicans under 30. Those numbers suggest that, even as it’s happening, the move to overturn Roe may already be out of step with American hearts and minds. I think of the Abolitionist and Women’s Suffrage movements, struggling for years in the wilderness. And I hope this too will be another narrative that circles back for the Court and lawmakers to revisit. Alito claims the Court and the rule of law should be above the influence of public opinion. But, as with Plessy, historically and traditionally they seldom have been.

Introduction: The Endless Cycle of Tragedy

So here we are back on the continuous American hamster wheel of mass shootings. And lip-service platitudes about loss of innocent lives immediately segue into claims there’s no way to stop “crazy people.” And then denials follow, that guns and easy access to them aren’t the problem, that mental health is, though without providing sufficient resources to make such services at least as accessible.

Personal Reflections: A Small Town’s Nightmare (1974)

For me, every event throws up a twist/twinge of memory. Nearly 50 years ago, I lived in a small town shocked, appalled, trying to make sense after a school shooting. That was 1974, years before the term was even coined. I was an elementary-school librarian in Olean, NY. The job wasn’t a good fit for me, so Christmas holidays came as a relief, till a 17-year-old honor student walked into the high school with a rifle equipped with a telescopic site. Before police got to him, he shot and killed a janitor inside and then sniped at passing traffic, killing another man and a pregnant woman and her unborn. Townsfolk considered this a one-off—a disturbed kid gone off the rails. Lucky, everyone agreed, that he didn’t wait till the following week, when, with school back in session, he’d have had so many more targets.

The Evolving Weaponry: From Telescopic Sights to Assault Rifles

Back then, we had no idea such assaults would become a recurrent national trope. Still, the town fell into what’s now become a familiar pattern of focusing more on the shooter than on the victims. He was the subject/actor, while they were the objects/acted upon, props in his drama. They’d done nothing to attract the violence, just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And so, we only learned their names and single-sentence bios, and they quickly faded from view, except in memories of grieving loved ones. Weapons of choice, on the other hand, have morphed from telescopic sites to high-caliber assault rifles that liquify organs and create large cavities in bodily tissues (Emma Bowman, Ayana Archer. This is how handguns and assault weapons affect the human body. NPR. June 6, 2022). The Uvalde shooter bought his gun, a Daniel Defense model featured in a single-shooter online game, just after his 18th birthday. How horrific that injuries to children, like the 4th graders he shot and killed, are even more severe, because their organs and arteries are so much smaller.

The Significance of Social Dynamics: Peer Profiling

Now, I only remember details about the Olean shooter. He was on the school gun team, which had a practice firing range in the high-school basement. Considering what had just happened, I wondered if those were the best choices. He was a loner, known for wearing a camouflage jacket and called “GI Joe” by other kids. Similarly, even before, peers had already nicknamed the young man in Texas “School Shooter.” I find social/police profiling problematic and understand how cruel kids can be to each other. But shouldn’t someone in authority pay more attention to such interactions?

Personal Connections: A Mother’s Hope Shattered

In Olean, a woman I knew had become friends with the shooter’s mother when their sons were born the same day, and they shared a hospital room. I didn’t notice then that she never said what she thought of the son. She pitied the mother for clinging to the illusion he could somehow be rehabilitated back to regular life. In the end, it all became moot, because he hanged himself in jail without going to trial. For the best, a mercy, everyone agreed. Researching to write this, I actually found a Wikipedia page. Should I have been surprised? Not really, given the fascination with shooters’ whys and wherefores. I read text from one of his three (?!) suicide notes. “ ‘Why?’ I don’t know — no one will. What has been, can’t be changed. I’m sorry. It ends like it began….someone might think it selfish or cowardly to take one’s own life. Maybe so, but it’s the only free choice I have. The way I figure, I lose either way. If I’m found not guilty, I won’t survive the pain I’ve caused — my guilt. If I’m convicted, I won’t survive the mental and physical punishment of my life in prison.”

Understanding Motives: From Compulsion to Crisis

Almost 50 years later, we’ve sadly learned much more about motives, if you can call them that. They seem much closer to compulsions. Jillian Peterson and James Densley have identified “a consistent pathway” (Melanie Warner. Politico interview Two Professors Found What Creates a Mass Shooter. Will Politicians Pay Attention? May 27, 2022). “Early childhood trauma seems to be the foundation, whether violence in the home, sexual assault, parental suicides, extreme bullying. Then you see the build toward hopelessness, despair, isolation, self-loathing, oftentimes rejection from peers. That turns into a really identifiable crisis point where they’re acting differently. Sometimes they have previous suicide attempts.” I have no additional details on the Olean shooter, but what I do know suggests he was likely alienated and bullied. On his way to the high school, he told his brother he was going out to shoot at targets.

Suicide as a Final Act: The Dark Intentions of Mass Shooters

Suicide is the whole point, according to Patterson and Densley. “Mass shooters design these to be their final acts. When you realize this, it completely flips the idea that someone with a gun on the scene is going to deter this. If anything, that’s an incentive for these individuals. They are going in to be killed…. What’s different from traditional suicide is that the self-hate turns against a group. They start asking themselves, ‘Whose fault is this?’ Is it a racial group or women or a religious group, or is it my classmates? The hate turns outward. There’s also this quest for fame and notoriety.” The Buffalo shooter posted a racist, anti-Semitic, manifesto online, tried to kill himself but failed. Charged with hate crimes, he’s plead not guilty. No idea what defense he can mount since he also streamed live video of the shootings online.

The Diversity of Faces: White Shooters and Mental Health

In photos, the Olean, Buffalo and Texas shooters are all white. They appear boyish, because they were/are only 17 or 18. Can these be the “faces of pure evil” a’ la Texas Governor Abbot? This as Mental Health America ranks his state last in the nation for access to mental care. As Densley stated, “these individuals have done horrific, monstrous things. But three days earlier, that school shooter was somebody’s son, grandson, neighbor, colleague or classmate. We have to recognize them as the troubled human being earlier if we want to intervene before they become the monster.” Peterson added, “The Buffalo shooter told his teacher that he was going to commit a murder-suicide after he graduated.” But, “People aren’t used to thinking that this kind of thing could be real because the people who do mass shootings are evil, psychopathic monsters and this is a kid in my class. There’s a disconnect.” In 2019, Texas did take positive action, starting a program to identify and provide counseling and guidance to at risk youth, but sadly, with limited staff and funding, the program hadn’t reached Uvalde yet. Now, of course, that previously underserved community has jumped to the top of the list, though too little, too late (Texas was building a program to find troubled students and prevent school shootings. It hadn’t reached Uvalde yet. Karen Brooks Harper. Texas Tribune. June 2, 2022).

Community Responses: From Inaction to Legal Battles

The recent cacophony of mass shootings indicates that a relatively high percentage of young(ish) white men with fault lines in their psyches can easily get hold of assault rifles. On the other side of the equation, actual and potential victims are no longer remaining passive, voiceless. Since their elders seem incapable of taking effective action, school children are again walking out and staging demonstrations to save their own lives. Sandy Hook parents have won lawsuits against Remington Arms, maker of the gun used there, for marketing in violation of state law, and against a promoter of “false flag” claims they faked the brutal murder of their own children. Buffalo and Uvalde survivors and families will testify before Congress and some among them appear ready to take legal action against Daniel Defense for marketing practices that target adolescents and children. Admittedly, that will be harder in Texas than in Connecticut.

Hope for Change: Listening to Survivors and Learning

I think of Warren Zevon’s line “Send Lawyers, Guns and Money” and hope we might finally be nearing a tipping point, where at least a degree of reason and sanity could actually prevail. After all, survivors and families are the only ones among us who’ve gone through the fire, can report on “near death” experiences. Ghislane Boulanger, in The Continuing and Unfinished Present (in Listening on the Edge: Oral History in the Aftermath of Crisis. edited by Mark Cave and Stephen M. Sloan. c2014), referenced French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. He described survivors of massive trauma as living “between two deaths.” Although the biological end has not happened, “they are outsiders; intimate knowledge of mortality has robbed them of their citizenship within the ranks of the living.” Speaking from that in-between space, they have much to teach us, if we’re willing to learn. But Lacan issued a warning too. If we continue to let “biological death occur without symbolic closure for the dead, without the proper settling of accounts…then the dead will haunt the living.” Trauma always has consequences, prices to pay, even for those who try to deny.

Introduction to Money and Influence

On my public radio station, a law firm’s underwriting pitch offers “help in all matters where money exerts an influence.” I can’t think of any matters where it doesn’t. Experience is our lens for seeing the world and ourselves in it. And I’ve spent most of my working life around political arenas where money and power go hand in hand—how to spend, where to spend, and who gets to decide. Who wins? Who loses? The effects grow even more intense when budgets are tight.

City Hall Chronicles

I started down this career path because someone at the state employment office remembered I had a library degree. So, I was hired to organize documents for the staff of Buffalo’s governing Common Council. I can’t talk about that job without describing the setting. City Hall was and is a gorgeous, art deco, marvel. Tan sandstone topped off with decorative tiles outside, it faces the obelisk of the McKinley Monument, commemorating the president assassinated in the city. It opened in 1929, just in time for the great Depression. The city always has been plagued by poor timing. Inside, the lobby had shades of dark marble, stone, gilding, carvings, murals. On my way to the elevators, I admired the alliterative “Frontiers Unfettered by Frowning Fortresses,” recognizing friendly relations with Canada. The elevator doors were “golden,” embossed metal. Upstairs offices were a let-down, unremarkable. The room I was meant to whip into shape held reports, plans, and other random materials stacked, piled up, scattered across the floor. There was information here Council staff could use, but not without sifting through the stacks and piles. No shelves, I noticed. A carpenter would build, I was told.

Political Dynamics in Buffalo

This was the 1980s tech dark ages, and the few desktop computers were reserved for key staff working on the budget and other critical issues. My job was useful, but peripheral. Except for the carpenter, no one offered any help or direction. Standing in the middle of the room, I felt like a character out of Rumpelstiltskin, tasked with, if not spinning straw into gold, at least imposing some degree of order. A challenge, since I’m not, by nature, all that organized. I had no choice but to improvise, using rudimentary tools. Appropriating an old typewriter, I got started: reorganizing piles into broad categories, coming up with a basic alpha-numeric coding system, entering it in a big looseleaf binder, labelling documents and shelves.

Educational Turn in Local Government

For me, the high point of every day was walking into the building, a public temple way too beautiful and incongruous with what went on inside. But the sight lifted my spirits before I headed upstairs for another day of schlepping, shelving, and typing. My first experience with local government and a cash-strapped one at that. The place teemed with intriguing personalities and stories. And I listened and watched and sensed important stuff happening out of my sight and earshot, behind closed doors. A few times, I went down to watch Council meetings, in the gorgeous chamber topped by a half-sunburst stained-glass skylight. But the meetings were pro forma, the real decisions made in the Democratic caucus. The single Republican Councilman sued to be included and won. I wonder if that prompted an additional layer of secret meetings. Political animals are ingenious and, as Winston Churchill noted, “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”

There were bright spots. We held a not all that grand library opening once I got things organized, with punch and cookies and coverage and interviews by local news radio. Later, I was asked to coordinate a showing of the film Taking Back Detroit. The chief of the Council staff had seen it on public TV and thought we might pick up pointers from another beleaguered city. He was nicknamed “the 16th Councilman” (I believe there were 15 at the time), and later became one in his own right after redistricting. But even his urging couldn’t convince many of the actual elected ones to attend. Perhaps they thought Buffalo was fine as it was or too far gone to take back.

Campaigning for At-Large Seats

The job turned truly “educational” when the Council’s five at-large seats went on the chopping block. Good-government groups probably considered them superfluous legacies from more prosperous times the city could no longer afford. And if I didn’t have a front-row seat, I was positioned close enough. Where did the money to bankroll the campaign to defend the threatened seats come from? Part of it came from Council staff. I remember the moment I was informed that I too, like all the others, would have to contribute. My part was prorated based on my already puny, part-time, salary. We also had to help with campaign mailings after hours. I found the ethnic appeals in the flier problematic, a bit distasteful, as step backward. “Save our [name–Black, Polish, Irish] Councilman.” So much for being one city, but I suppose you go to your base and old-time politics in a crisis. The phrase “how the sausage gets made” comes to mind. As defined by the Free Dictionary, it refers to “The process by which something is created or conducted away from public view,” because the average person would find the reality “unpleasant or unsavory” And they likely “don’t really want to know.” Not the kind of thing, if you worked in these settings, that you were supposed to talk about outside, but it was long ago and mostly public record, except for what you might call the ambience.

Shifting Political Narratives

As I remember, our efforts failed, and all five at-large seats were eliminated. But Wikipedia tells a different story, that only two seats went at that time, while the other three and the elected Council President lasted till 2002. Perhaps that was a compromise. When I can’t find additional details or even the names of the five embattled Council members, I’m struck by how very short political memories can be and that only big events like major scandals leave significant traces. And a few years later, even those are very soon forgotten, unless someone writes a book.

Comparative Perspectives: Louisiana and Buffalo

I live in Louisiana now, which, of course, has a reputation expressed in sayings like, “the best politicians that money can buy.” But to tell the truth, I don’t see much difference. What I’ve witnessed in both locations could easily be interchangeable. In Buffalo, Wikipedia reports on a current move to further shrink the Council, with redistricting after the latest US Census to match the drop in population and, of course, tax revenues. I suspect it may happen by administrative adjustment this time, redrawing of lines without so much as a whimper. But years since I’ve been in the city, so I can’t know for sure.

Impact of Citizens United Decision

I do know that the Supreme Court’s Citizens United Decision has changed the rules around money in politics. The Brennan Center for Justice recently issued a report examining the influence on state and local elections of the unlimited outside spending that’s now allowed. The Justices narrowly defined political corruption as only direct giving and receiving of bribes, but, as I’ve described, there can be so many possible nuances, so many ways to fiddle around the edges. But perhaps the Justices didn’t want to know. Lawrence Norden, deputy director of the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, said, “When it comes to local contests, if you are just your run-of-the-mill millionaire, you could be the only person in a race that is contributing big dollars.” So, potentially, “You can fund the takeover of a state legislature.” Or a city’s Common Council, if the prize seems worth the investment? Norden added, “You would be crazy to think someone who entirely funded a campaign might not have more access or influence.” So, money is the constant, the given. Power, on the other hand, may be fleeting, but it’s so very tempting and with a kind of “cult of personality” around certain political figures while it lasts. And I find it worrisome that we could see new model money-bags political bosses not so very unlike the old time, “politics as usual,” variety.

Influence of Money in Legislative Processes

Moving to a national perspective, there are questions around input into the drafting of legislation. Amy McKay is a political scientist who studies ways companies and interest groups influence policymaking. Serving as an American Political Science Association Congressional Research Fellow on the Senate Finance Committee staff, she did want to know and was in perfect position to research the uniquely transparent bill-crafting process for the Affordable Care Act. (Maggie Koerth. Everyone Knows Money Influences Politics….Except Scientists: Why is it so hard to prove something that’s common knowledge? And why try to do it in the first place? FiveThirtyEight – ABC News Published Jun. 4, 2019). McKay applied plagiarism-detection software to trace how comments from big donors, corporations, and lobbyists “shaped proposed amendments to the bill.” Checking what she found against the non-profit Sunlight Foundation’s fundraising database, she discovered a trail from fundraising to fundraisers’ suggestions for the bill to amendments based on those suggestions. Senator Max Baucus, then chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, was not surprised to find that text from lobbyists ended up in the bill. “But so what? It’s not illegal.” Shouldn’t it, however, raise at least some concerns about the integrity of the process?

Challenges to Representative Democracy

And this leads me to wonder about ongoing erosion of representative democracy. Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law professor whose work focuses on campaign finance law, says the kind of information McKay presented won’t change things. “The problem is philosophical. It’s in the heart, not the head.” But “the value of evidence is in the way it helps craft new philosophical appeals.” This may happen, he continued, by demonstrating that money has a subtle influence, over the whole of government. “A world where you [the elected official] have to spend half your time raising money means there’s this small number of people on whom you’re dependent and they have a huge influence.…. While the evidence doesn’t win the argument over whether we need stricter campaign finance laws, it does help build a philosophical case that maybe we should be thinking about influence in a different way.” Based on my experience, that sounds like an excellent place to begin.

Unveiling Industrial Calamities

Big calamities like derailing of the Norfolk Southern train in East Palestine, OH create shock waves. They are spectacular—toxic spills, fires, explosions, billowing smoke, fish kills, community evacuations. But rather than unpredictable, they’re more what my dad used to call “accidents waiting to happen.” Yet government agencies wait to react till afterward. Department of Justice and EPA now sue NS. National Transportation Safety Board now investigates. The State of Ohio also now sues NS for projected years-long cleanup, health, and environmental monitoring costs. And I ponder the intersection of corporate decision making and risk tolerance. And why it always seems to take a stunning failure to finally spark action. And whether the impulse can last long enough to lead to meaningful change.

Childhood in the “Asbestos Capital”

My first experience of industrial risk came early, only age 8, and on the receiving end, though I didn’t know then. I mix memory with research here. Thetford Mines, QE, Canada, not even a city, but as per Wikipedia crowned with booster titles “Asbestos Capital of the World,” aka “City of White Gold.” A grainy old b & w photo depicts the reality of miserable work: miners chip away in an open pit. They blasted too. Back then, nobody mentioned the environment, let alone public health. I don’t remember air thick with floating fibers but do recall dust clogging mesh of screen doors. Not a long enough stay to damage family lungs, but I still carry embedded the French public-address spiel circulated to promote games. “Baseball, baseball ce soir. League Provincial.” And culture shock when volatile fans threw things if they disagreed with umpires. They probably needed relief and release. Language differences and neo-colonialism can sour labor relations: mining companies mostly American like Johns Manville, miners Francophone. A few years earlier, they’d struck for a modest raise and elimination of asbestos dust in mines and processing plants. So, they already understood the threats—asbestosis, chronic lung disease. They lost, stonewalled by companies with a vested interest in denying and delaying. Safety costs money, though this was after what had to be boom years, fire-retardant asbestos installed in every “Liberty Ship” the US built during WWII. Later came the pile on of lawsuits over mesothelioma and lung cancer among sailors and shipyard workers that forced JM into bankruptcy. So, there was a kind of limited justice after the fact, but not for the place now tagged by Canadian Mortgages, Inc. as the country’s worst place to live. Residents though live in denial common to areas reliant on extractive industries.

Family and Railroad Memories

Thoughts of trains summon memories of my grandfather, a line crew foreman for the B&O Railroad. Two photos bracket his career. Early 20th century, young, in company uniform with cap at a jaunty angle, he and a partner ride a pump car to check track. In the 1940s, over 50 and in charge, in overalls and slouch hat, he stands with his team. I imagine him in the rail yard I observe across a chain link fence from the park where I walk, though it’s a late machine-age, rather than steam punk, scene. Engines darkened by diesel fumes hulk like panting beasts. Uncoupled tank cars marked with colorful, but undecipherable, graffiti skim along tracks, as if on their own power or by magic. But it’s gravity, choreographed by dwarfed humans like those inserted to give photos a sense of scale. Nonchalant pros, they hang off the sides, stand what strikes me as far too close. I wonder how long it takes to ease nerves. I spot some NS engines. Is it my imagination or are they dirtier, more neglected, than others? An electronic sign shows the number of days without incident. But no details, so not sure I feel reassured.

Statistics on Train Derailments and Hazardous Materials

Every era has dominant industries, with pop cultures, language, metaphors. Grandpa theme song: “I’ve been working on the railroad?” On a less sunny note, “train wreck” means a chaotic or disastrous situation. Data show real thing(s) are not uncommon. The Federal Railroad Administration reports an average 3 trains a day jump the tracks, a total of 1,164 in 2022. Most happen in rail yards and aren’t classed “serious.” I haven’t witnessed so far, but wonder what criteria apply. Neither is derailing while hauling hazardous materials rare. The industry’s American Association of Railroads reports “trains move about 2.2M cars of hazardous chemicals a year.” That’s around 6% of annual traffic. USA Today (February 23, 2023) reports release of “hazardous materials….in 172 train derailments over the last decade, or roughly 17 each year.”

Warren Buffet’s Involvement and Asbestos Legacy

Warren Buffet, who owns BNSF railroad, criticized NS’s handling of the situation. (Noah Sheidlower. Warren Buffett says Norfolk Southern handled train derailment ‘terribly.’ CNBC. April 12, 2023). But only the following month, two of “his” trains derailed, one with diesel fuel, the other with ethanol, on a “section of track with…a history of defects that led to employee complaints, million-dollar lawsuits, and federal safety violations.” Nearly 2,000 “red tag defects” (the most serious) were reported on that section from 2000 to 2011. (Ryan Raiche. ‘That’s a lot of defects’: BNSF safety record under scrutiny after derailment in Minnesota. ABC KTSB-TV. May 15, 2023). And in circular “follow the money” and “everything connects” logic, Buffet now also owns what’s left of JM. And Canada has banned new products containing asbestos, but still ships raw material out of country, including to the US. My state of Louisiana is a major user—in oil refineries, offshore rigs, power plants—with a legal industry actively recruiting mesothelioma and lung cancer plaintiffs.

Risk Perception and Decision Making

No life without risk, but I still feel a slight “what if” frisson hearing train whistles blow at night. “How, then, do people decide which risks to take and which to ignore?” And “Can we know the risks we face, now or in the future? No, we cannot; but yes, we must act as if we do.” Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky raised those questions way back in the 1980s. (Risk and Culture. University of California Press. c1982). Decision making in large corporations is typically “path dependent,” another kind of “follow the money” risk aversion that tends to “base expected outcomes on prior habits, decisions, and actions rather than current circumstances, even when better options are available.” So apt with rail lines that only allow for limited routes and options. OSHA defines accidents as “unplanned events that result in personal injury or property damage.” Consulting online legal dictionaries, I find “…calling something an ‘accident’ implies that it happened randomly, by chance and there’s nothing anyone could have done to prevent it.” And the action that causes “…is not typically deemed dangerous and is usually done without serious consequences.” The bolded words and phrases seem like weasel attempts to distance and separate outcomes from decisions that sometimes prove short-sighted. And that raises questions: Who decides? Who takes the risk?

Rail Reality: Worker Challenges and Advocacy

Managers operate in command-and-control fiction that it’s possible to “reduce…chaotic phenomena… to a system of essentials sufficiently few for an ordered mind to bend to its purpose….” (John Keegan. The Mask of Command. Viking. 1987). Big and messy failures like toxic train derailments and oil rig explosions (33 from 2007 to 2018) debunk myths of infallibility. But willingness to accept human limits often lags. Douglas and Wildavsky cited “A Harris survey [which] showed that “….In regard to danger from the chemicals in use….almost 3 times as many executives (38%) as the general public and the regulators (13%) think there is less risk today than 20 years before.” Another 40 years on, the gap has probably widened in this era of superhero/celebrity CEOs, given to very public, performative, risk taking and buying into their own PR. Can we call theirs “ordered minds?” Buffet, “sage of Omaha,” seems a closer approximation. But even he goes passive, rationalizes, treats train wrecks like disembodied “forces of nature.” Can’t guarantee no derailments, he says. And railroads would rather not carry hazmat, but as “common carriers,” they have no choice. So, is anybody responsible? Do “accidents just happen?”

Rail workers and their union live with physical reality, up close every day to huge machines and systems they barely tame. Any labor action would call down sanctions for threatening national supply chains. But they continuously raise concerns over practices like deferred rail maintenance and upkeep. Wonder if my grandfather had to splice together lines long past expected useful life? He wouldn’t have encountered “precision scheduled railroading,” only standard after his time. A long train makes in one trip what a short one would in two or more, and with fewer employees. So, trains keep growing longer and run on lines often in chancy condition. The one in East Palestine stretched 150 tankers, the fire “three or four city blocks!” (Jesse Marx and Nicolas Niarchos. Testing the Toxic Train. The Nation. May 29-June 5, 2023). Experts agree length increases risk of going off track on curves and/or losing control and brakes on downgrades. But till now, railroads and regulators claimed evidence was inconclusive. (Dan Schwartz, et al. The True Dangers of Long Trains. ProPublica. April 3, 2023). The current failure has stirred government action, so expect movement toward regulation, though what emerges will likely be watered down through industry lobbying, negotiating, lawsuits.

Proposed Solutions: Management Engagement and Union Action

A classic question asks, “Is this any way to run a railroad?” Updates: “Is this any way to keep running railroads?” Or to let railroads keep running? John Kay said irrationality “…lies in persisting with methods and actions that plainly do not work—including the methods and actions that commonly masquerade as rationality.” (Obliquity: Why our goals are best achieved indirectly. Penguin Books. C2010). And yet, old habits die hard. And any change seen as likely to reduce profits would be perceived as “going off the rails.” So, is there a way to move toward more truly reasonable decision making? Looking from outside and without direct experience, I offer options from the corporate and labor sides I’m thinking these might merit consideration—and might even meet somewhere in the middle.

1) “Management by walking [or riding] around:” Given their distance and mobility, railroads seem well suited to having managers “actively get out into the trenches [in yards like the one I observe, on trains] and listen to and engage with… employees…[as] a way of keeping [an] ear to the ground to understand what’s really going on.” Over three years ago (April 6, 2020), Joe McKendrick wrote a Forbes article titled Is ‘Management by Walking Around’ Still Possible When Everything Is Digital and Remote? He answered yes, with adjustments. But has anyone listened yet? Taken preventive measures? Like, say, fixing busted tracks, shortening tank trains?

2) Continued union action: The rail union, already leading on safety and public health, could keep pushing and borrow and adapt models from other sectors of the reenergizing labor movement. The Amalgamated Transit Union local in Louisville, KY recently used a new “open and transparent collective bargaining” framework “to fully involve rank-and-file members in negotiations.” (Jane McAlevey. Framing the Choice: A Win Against All Odds. The Nation. May 1-8, 2023).

My grandfather again comes to mind. Don’t know if he was a union man, but I know three of his sons were, one a shop steward. So, I’m suspect he’d be on board. And why shouldn’t workers have seats at decision tables? Don’t “They understand the job [and the risks] better than anyone?”