Turbulent times

The American Civil Liberties Union, that wonderful institution that manages sooner or later to offend every faction, was founded on this date in 1917.

Three people were involved – Crystal Eastman, William Fuller and Roger Baldwin, good lefties all. Eastman was married to British anti-war activist Fuller;  they and Baldwin were members of the American Union Against Militarism – Eastman was, in fact, Executive Director of the AUAM.

Baldwin urged the group to create a legal arm to defend conscientious objectors, so the National Civil Liberties Bureau was created, with Baldwin as director and Eastman as legal counsel. In 1920, the NCLB changed its name to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Crystal Eastman had graduated from Vassar in 1903, got her master’s from Columbia in 1904 and graduated  second in her class from New York University Law School in 1907.

She was also Max Eastman’s sister.  Max, as you may recall from Reds, was a friend of John Reed’s and a socialist, pacifist and editor of The Masses, which railed against war in general and WWI in particular.

And now we’re about to become lost in the thicket of political life in New York during and after WWI – we’re talking women’s suffrage, socialism, labor history, the IWW, John Reed, communism, the Red Scare, pacifism, Palmer Raids, birth control, Eugene V. Debs. . .

So let us just note that Max Eastman eventually renounced socialism and became editor of Reader’s Digest.  Roger Baldwin ran the ACLU until 1950 and got a Medal of Freedom from President Carter.

Crystal Eastman did not live to see her brother’s repudiation of all that she held dear – she died in 1928.  She did see the passing of the women’s suffrage amendment, but not of the legislation she and three others wrote, the Equal Rights Amendment.

To find out what the ACLU is currently involved in, you can check here.

Star-crossed

Another cosmic birth date – among those celebrating:

Robert E. Lee,  Edgar Allan Poe,  Paul Cézanne, Alexander Woollcott, “Minnesota Fats”, Lester Flatt, Patricia Highsmith, Jean Stapleton, Tippi Hedren, Robert MacNeil,  Janis Joplin, Desi Arnaz Jr, Katey Sagal and Shawn Wayans…among others.

If you don’t know Tippi Hedren. she starred in Hitchcock’s The Birds and she’s Melanie Griffith’s mother.

Hard to say who’s the biggest name on that list – depends where your interests lie.  But here’s a Cezanne to brighten your day  and a clip of Janis on the Dick Cavett Show  - sorry, couldn’t find a good clip of Lord Won’t You Buy Me a Mercedes Benz.

Bound for Botany Bay

Sir Arthur Phillip, Admiral of the Fleet

When William Brice was 14 years old, he yielded to temptation and stole a looking glass.  He was caught and tried and sentenced to seven years penal servitude and transportation.

Thus did William become one of 778 convicts who were part of the First Fleet, the 11 ships that set out from Portsmouth in May and arrived at Botany Bay in New South Wales in 1788 – bringing convicts for a penal colony yet to be established.  The very first of the ships was the armed tender Supply, which arrived on this date.  William was aboard the Friendship, which landed the next day.  The last ships arrived on January 26, now officially Australia Day.

William’s story can be found in the First Fleet database, set up by the University of Wollongong.  It’s hard to stop yourself going from name to name:

Edward Perkins – He was tried at Plymouth, Devon on 26 January 1785 for stealing livestock (a rooster) with a value of 1 shilling. He was sentenced to transportation for 7 years and left England on the Friendship aged about 57 at that time (May 1787). His occupation was listed as labourer or brickmaker.

Elizabeth Pulley/Powley/Pooley – She was tried at Thetford, Norfolk on 14 March 1783 for burglary with a value of 8 shillings. She was sentenced to transportation for 7 years having been originally sentenced to death, and left England on the Friendship aged about 24 at that time (May 1787). She had no occupation recorded. She died in 1837.  [Notes: She had a previous conviction for theft. Married Anthony Rope on 19 May 1788. Frances Williams lent her clothes for the wedding which was celebrated with seapye that caused a furore in the community, containing goat’s flesh believed to have been stolen. They had 6 children.]

Anthony Rope – He was tried at Chelmsford, Essex on 10 March 1785 for stealing clothing with a value of 35 shillings. He was sentenced to transportation for 7 years and left England on the Alexander aged about 28 at that time (May 1787). His occupation was listed as labourer. He died in 1843.  [Notes:Actual value of stolen goods was 100 shillings.Received 25 lashes on 11 February and 11 March 1789 for neglect of work.Married Elizabeth Pulley  on 19 May 1788 and had 6 children.]

Sydney, where the convicts settled. Photo by Rodney Haywood.

Although the First Fleet landed at Botany Bay – and that was indeed the name that became synonymous with transportation – Admiral Phillip realized immediately that the land was too low and sandy for agriculture.  He spent the next few days exploring and after anchoring in what is now Sydney Harbour, chose that location for settlement.

The First Fleet Online also includes contemporary accounts of the colony’s settlement, though very little exists.  Ship’s surgeon Arthur Bowes Smyth describes the day the women were allowed off the ships (a month after the men):

“At five o’clock this morning, all things were got in order for landing the whole of the women, and 3 of the ships longboats came alongside us to receive them; previous to their quitting the ship, a strict search was made to try if any of the many things which they had stolen on board could be found, but their artifice eluded the most strict search, and at six o’clock p.m. we had the long wished for pleasure of seeing the last of them leave the ship…”

 

Celebrating

It’s Martin Luther King Day, although his actual birthday was Saturday.  Three-day weekends are nice, but it’s hard not to feel that a person’s actual birthday is more important.  In honor of Dr. King, you can read his Letter from Birmingham Jail in its entirety.

It is, in fact, the actual birthday of our incomparable First Lady, Michelle Obama.  She celebrates her 47th today – many happy returns.

Drying out

WCTU icon Carrie Nation. She used the hatchet on bottles and bars.

There are 27 amendments to the Constitution, but there is one that cancels out another – the 21st repeals the 18th, thus ending that Noble Experiment, Prohibition.

The Volstead Act of 1919, which went into effect on this day in 1920, prohibited the manufacture, transport and sale of ‘intoxicating liquors,’ and it not only failed to achieve its purpose, it had a lot of unpleasant, unintended consequences. (Woodrow Wilson vetoed it,  but Congress overrode his veto.)

Temperance had been a goal of many Americans from the very start of the country – the first organized temperance group was started in Connecticut in 1789, the Prohibition Party was founded in 1869 and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) got going in 1873.

The fact that the U.S. had a drinking problem is indisputable – in 1830, the average American was chugging 1.7 bottles of hard liquor a week, about three times the average now.  Given that most women and children weren’t drinking, averaging suggests that a lot of men were drinking more than three bottles a week.

Al Capone's mug shot

The Volstead Act not only did not put an end to drinking, but probably increased it – there was almost no enforcement initially and by 1925 there were more than 30,000 speakeasies in New York City. Going to a speakeasy was chic.

Speakeasies were supplied by organized crime for the most part and the smuggling of liquor became a growth industry for people like Al Capone, a small-time thug who got very, very rich from it.  The money that could be made from bootlegging made it possible to buy off politicians and law enforcement and thus contribute to the breakdown of significant institutions.  All in all, the virtue at the heart of the Volstead Act led to the corruption of the culture.  Curious how often that happens.

Franklin Roosevelt issued an Executive Order that weakened the Eighteenth Amendment in 1933 and the Twenty-first Amendment was passed soon after.

The WCTU, btw, continues to fight the good fight from its headquarters in Evanston, Illinois.

Playing politics

Paderewski, probably about WWI.

On 16 January, 1919, Ignacy Paderewski became Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the newly independent Poland, his native country. It was a bit like writer Vaclav Havel becoming president of Czechoslovakia – being an artist and politician is not as unusual in Europe as here.

Except that Paderewski was at the height of his fame in 1919, an international celebrity – it was more along the lines of Paul McCartney becoming British Prime Minister.

His star at Hollywood and Vine. Photo by Mariusz Paździora

It only lasted for three months, although he did stay on as Foreign Minister long enough to sign the Treaty of Versailles. He resigned that post to become ambassador to the League of Nations, a job he held until 1922.  Then he resumed his musical career, beginning with a concert at Carnegie Hall.

He died in 1941, age 81. In 1960, he got his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  Here, Paderewski playing Chopin in 1917 (not remastered) and, as a bonus, Rachmaninoff playing Paderewski.

The pause that refreshes

The Coca-Cola Company was incorporated on this date in 1889, one year after John Pemberton’s death.  Pemberton was the chemist who’d created Coke and he’d put his son Charles in charge.

Pops Restaurant on Route 66 in Arcadia, OK. Photo by Carol Highsmith, LoC

Part of the Coke legend is that the syrup for the drink was created by ‘a druggist,’ but John Pemberton was more than that.  He was a serious chemist who manufactured all kinds of  home and commercial chemicals – the labs he set up at the Georgia Department of Agriculture to test chemicals are still in use.

He went to the Medical College of Georgia in Macon and studied medicine and pharmacy.  When he graduated in 1850 he was licensed to practice Thomsonian medicine, a system based on botanical or herbal remedies to rid the body of toxins. He started J.S. Pemberton and Co. to manufacture ‘all the pharmaceutical and chemical preparations used in the arts and sciences.’

John Stith Pemberton

Eventually he began producing a drink called French Wine Coca, a concoction that consisted of extract of Peruvian coca leaf, ‘the purest wine, and the Kola nut.’  In fact, it was based on a French formula called Vin Mariani.

When Atlanta went dry in 1886, Pemberton took out the wine and substituted sugar syrup and changed the name to Coca-Cola, advertising it as the perfect temperance drink.

Pemberton had allowed Asa Candler and others to use the formula; in 1888, Candler bought exclusive rights to the formula and incorporated the company.  In 1914, a court found that signatures on the document of sale were forged.  In the meantime, Candler had incorporated a new company – the current one – in 1892 and in 1910 he burned all the company’s early records.

* * *

 

Andy Rooney in New York. Photo by Stephenson Brown, 2008.

 

It’s Andy Rooney’s birthday today and he is celebrating 91 years.

Born in Albany NY in 1919, he started at CBS in 1949 and has been on 60 Minutes since 1978.  He is certainly proof that retirement isn’t right for everybody.

 

A modest proposal

Jonathan Swift was the son of an Irishman who died seven months before he was born and whose English mother returned to England, leaving him with his father’s family when he was quite small.  A rough start, it goes without saying. And btw, his uncle was the vicar of Frisby-on-the-Wreake – he was clearly destined for a life of irony.

Dean Swift by Charles Jarvas, 1739.

Dr. Swift – ordained an Anglican priest on this date in 1695 – made his satirical debut with The Tale of a Tub, an allegory on unChristian behavior; many essays followed, most of them in response to events in his time. (A Drapier’s Letters actually changed government policy, a rare feat for a satirist.)

His masterpiece – Gulliver’s Travels – was published in 1726, like most of his work under a pseudonym, in this case that of Lemuel Gulliver.  It was not intended to be, nor should it be construed as, a children’s book, but a treatise on human nature.

But his single most memorable work has to be A Modest Proposal.  Critics tend to dwell on what a rhetorical tour de force it is, modeled brilliantly on the works of the Roman satirist Juvenal, or to focus on his criticism of English policy regarding Ireland.  No one seems to talk about how truly shocking it is.

Its full title is A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public. In sum, it recommends that the poor sell their children for food.  Not to buy food, you understand, but as food.

A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter…

I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children.

He goes on in graphic and relentless detail about the raising and marketing of children.  It is an absolutely horrific metaphor and is still deeply disturbing 300 years later.

I think the message of A Modest Proposal is not just its criticism of England vis-a-vis Ireland, but something about language itself.  I.e., that the most indecent and inhumane behavior can be condoned when it is made mundane by the skillful use of language.

And the reverse is also true. Swift would be fascinated by the euphemisms of our time, as well as the indiscriminate use of hyperbole. (‘Collateral damage,’ ‘Department of Corrections’ on the one hand, ‘death panels’ on the other.)

In any case, you can read it here.

N.B. If you look closely at Jarvas’s portrait of Swift, you will see that it has suffered the worst restoration job ever – the National Gallery in London really should do something about it.

About Haiti

A year ago. a 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti.  The death toll was estimated at a quarter of a million people, but hundreds more died in the weeks that followed from injuries and disease.  Recently, another 3,000 or so died in the cholera epidemic and it’s not over yet.

After the quake.

Those numbers will be recorded along with the more than 100,000 that died in the revolt against the French before independence was proclaimed in 1804; the 3,000 or so killed when the US reinstituted virtual slavery between 1915 and 1934 (for the purpose of building roads and other infrastructure for the sugar, cotton and sisal planters); the 20,000 that Rafael Trujillo killed in 1937 along the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic and the unknown number killed by Francois Duvalier’s paramilitaries – the Tonton Macoutes – during the Duvalier reign of terror from 1956 to 1986.

Haiti, roughly 10,000 square miles, is about half the size of West Virginia.  It has a population of 8 million people. It is the poorest country in the Americas, with a per capita income of $1,255.  Most Haitians survive on about $2 a day.

Half of the country’s wealth is owned by 1% of the population.

During the Duvalier regimes (first ‘Papa Doc’ and then his son, ‘Baby Doc’), the great Haitian diaspora began – there are more than 2 million Haitians in the US and Canada and every year about 80% of college graduates leave as quickly as possible.  An excellent CBC report on the brain drain is here.

For a short brilliant personal account of the earthquake as experienced by Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat, go to this New Yorker essay.

The first country in Latin America to proclaim its independence, Haiti may be the last to be truly free.

Notables

Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni

Domenico Ghirlandaio died of a ‘pestilential fever’ on this date in 1494, in Florence, the city of his birth. He was a highly competent Renaissance painter whose works are well-known and very well-located:  Ghirlandaio frescoes are in the chapel of Santa Trinita, the Palazzo Vecchio and the Sistine Chapel.

His name was not really Ghirlandaio – it was Bigordi.  But his father sold silks and made jewelry, especially long necklaces with flower motifs and somehow his son got to be called Il Ghirlandaio – the garland-maker.

Ghirlandaio is almost never mentioned without it being noted that Michelangelo was his apprentice for a while  – that and the fact that he pales in comparison to his contemporary, Botticelli, leaves him a bit of a runner-up.

Ghirlandaio self-portrait

It is also Alexander Hamilton’s birthday and he was born in either 1755 or 1757.  They’re still trying to sort that one out.  Hamilton, in his short life of 49 (or 47) years, was our first Secretary of the Treasury, a founding father, an aide to George Washington during the Revolution and author of most of the Federalist Papers.  He was so influential that there is hardly room enough to list all his accomplishments, so go here.

Alexander Hamilton by John Trumbull

Although he and Thomas Jefferson disagreed on just about everything, we have him to thank for the  fact that Jefferson became president – he cast his vote for Jefferson when TJ and Aaron Burr wound up in an electoral college tie in 1800.

He had fingers in so many pies that as recently as 1962 the Navy was still using the intership communication protocols he had written for the Revenue Cutter Service in 1790.

(He had created the service to interdict smugglers and make sure tariffs were paid on imported goods.  The fledgling US really needed the money.  The service merged with the Life-saving Service in 1915 to become the US Coast Guard.)

The NY Historical Society had an excellent exhibit on Hamilton a couple of years ago and you can still see a virtual tour. They call him ‘The Man Who Made Modern America.’

Also, Hendrik Hertzberg at The New Yorker has a nice essay on just how much Hamilton disliked the idea of two senators per state here.

He was killed by Aaron Burr in a duel, the cause of which was just about as trivial as you would expect, but Burr was feeling very vicious after losing an election for governor of New York.  They met at dawn in Weehauken NJ, on a  dueling ground where Hamilton’s son Philip had died in a duel three years earlier.