On sister rochelle

I read The Red Pony in eighth grade, and I instantly became a fan of the author, John Steinbeck.
I’m sure I identified with Steinbeck’s Jody character mostly because he was young, my age. Unlike him, I didn’t live on a ranch and my father didn’t give me a pony to take care of. But my parents were big on child chores and expecting responsible behavior.
And who could not appreciate an author who created the character Billy Buck, who was played by Robert Mitchum in the movie version of The Red Pony? Billy Buck is the classic loner and sage whose dark past begs interest and sympathy.
After that, I read Travels with Charley, Cannery Row and Tortilla Flat on my own. In high school, I read other required Steinbeck readings. More than any other author, except for William Shakespeare, we read Steinbeck: Grapes of Wrath, of course, The Pearl, Of Mice and Men, and East of Eden.
I know the comparison isn’t apples and oranges, but Steinbeck’s characters, like Shakespeare’s, were troubled and tormented, usually poor, “no-goods and blots,” and they faced appalling predicaments or choices. But then, that’s what makes good drama, an impossible quandary, a petrifying crisis.
Steinbeck was great at drama and why many critics were harsh on Steinbeck. When Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize in 1962 – I was 10 then – he was called a tenth-rate philosopher and his writing was described as childish. The critics seemed to believe if a novel could easily be turned into a popular movie, then it didn’t qualify as literature.
In 1968, my junior year in high school, a television version Of Mice and Men with George Segal and Nicol Williamson in the roles of George and Lennie aired. My English teacher encouraged students to watch the movie. We hadn’t read the book yet, but would soon. I watched the movie, then read the book, and I believe that story troubled me more than any other I read or saw depicted in film.
Of Mice and Menis not The Grapes of Wrath, where the bigger social issue eventually dominates the plight of the novel’s characters. Rather, Of Mice and Men intensely focuses on the choice an individual makes when faced with social injustice or human cruelty. It’s a deeply personal novel. It asks what would you do if you faced a decision that only had bad consequences. I once earned a part in a community production of To Kill a Mockingbird by reciting at an audition George’s lines in his final scene with Lennie.
Steinbeck may not have been the greatest writer who ever lived, but he deserved a Nobel Prize. He was read and is still read in American schools because he wrote honestly about life in a world bigger than America, and he wrote with compassion for the unfortunate and oppressed. Steinbeck disturbed the trickle-down economists of his day, and unfortunately, the ugly economic world and misguided values he called attention to haven’t gone away.

Galileo is my favorite among great Renaissance figures.
Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Rafael are immortals with their wild creativity and extraordinary artistic skills. Copernicus is a supermagician, pulling a heliocentric universe out of a bag of astronomic observations and thin ethereal air.
But Galileo, he’s human through and through.
Galileo was talented and beyond intelligent. He was no slouch when it came to art or ideas, but he was a struggling, suffering figure that I identify with.
First, he wanted to be a priest. Of course, in the Sixteenth Century, most young men because of the persuasion and pervasion of the Catholic Church were pulled toward a religious vocation. But Galileo changed his mind and told his father he wanted to be a doctor. He went to medical school, then something else happened. He told his father he wanted to be a mathematician.
I imagine his father saying, “Come on, son, make up your mind.”
And off he went to mathematics school, out of money, still an extremely religious person, and got a woman pregnant, not once, but thrice.
He was no deadbeat though. He had exceptional observational skills and created great things from simple things. He created the compass, not the thing that points north, but a device for solving mathematical calculations, the precursor to the slide rule. Others worked on the same thing, but his was the best, and he usually is given credit for being its creator.
He invented the thermometer, and by simply watching a hanging lamp swing in a church nave, he laid out the law of the pendulum, leading to the invention of clocks.
And then he did something even more stupendous and crazy. He hauled balls of different sizes up the leaning Tower of Pisa, dropped them off, and disproved the notion of the greatest scientist of antiquity, Aristotle, wrong about the rate of falling bodies, that they fall at different rates.
No, Galileo said, everything falls at the same rate, and he said it so smugly he was fired from the University of Pisa.
Galileo’s career was not over though. Inventors were playing with a new creation, a spyglass, that had a power of magnification of three. In six months, Galileo created a telescope with thirty power of magnification. He pointed the device at the night sky, determined the Catholic Church erroneously held the Earth was the center of the universe, and the people who once loved and supported him, now turned on him. He was hauled to the Inquisition, and he ended his life imprisoned in his own house, where he continued correspondence with his living daughter who had spent her life in a nunnery and encouraged her father in his work.
What a great tragedy, only Galileo’s life wasn’t a tragedy.
He changed the way we view the world – well, for most of us.
Somehow, some people today, like those idiotic Catholic leaders of long ago, refute Galileo’s insights and scientific advances, and claim the world is flat and still. 

Kurt Vonnegut’s novels are not for the faint-hearted. He was a troubled man, troubled by an incomprehensible, cruel world, and troubled by his own identity struggles. But Vonnegut always was a dedicated humanitarian, concerned that selfish behavior could eventually be turned to alleviate suffering and initiate justice.
We grew up with dystopian novels in the 1960s. Common required secondary readings included Brave New World, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Animal Farm, and A Canticle for Leibowitz, among others.
So Kurt Vonnegut’s novels naturally attracted many people to them, including me. I didn’t know who Vonnegut was until nearly twenty years after he began writing. My older brother introduced me to Vonnegut’s novels, giving me a copy of Slaughterhouse-Five.It was easy to identify with Billy Pilgrim, Vonnegut’s protagonist in that work, his most popular. Pilgrim was a man who walked into a maelstrom, which was somewhat akin to being a young person in the 1960s with its civil rights struggles, assassinations, and political and social turmoil.
Vonnegut’s Billy Pilgrim is a World War II American soldier captured by the Germans near the end of the conflict. Pilgrim survives his capture and the Allied firebombing of Dresden to be forced into digging the bodies of civilians out of the rubble. The inhumanity and senselessness of the bombing, and the world war, weighs heavily on Pilgrim, who is a fragile character to begin with.
From that brief summary, it is easy to see the appeal Slaughterhouse-Five made on a generation struggling with the Vietnam conflict, which spread to two other countries and included inhumane bombings. More than 7 million tons of bombs, three and a half times what the US dropped during World War II, were dropped during the Vietnam conflict, leading to the deaths of 3 million people.
Of course, it is easy to say, “Well, they were the enemy.”
It’s harder to say, “Still, they were people, people whose lives were just as important as ours,” and that is, in part, Vonnegut’s point.
Following his writing success with Slaughterhouse -Five, Vonnegut became a leading humanitarian spokesman, a task he accepted even though he probably was not the “most qualified.” Vonnegut could be very pessimistic, which is found in his novels. He accepted an inevitably of depravity among humans reflected in one of his most popular, and oft-repeated, sayings, “So it goes.”
At the same time, Vonnegut promoted kindness and humility, values that softened the blows of the dark humor in his books. That was hard for some people to see. They said Vonnegut was crude and anti-American. Several school districts in the United States banned his books, which eventually led to a Supreme Court decision that books cannot be removed from a library just because a school board does not like their ideas. The court also stated that boards could not prescribe orthodoxy.
Unorthodox probably best describes Vonnegut and his writings. His plots and characters were some of the most bewildering and disoriented plots and characters invented, definitely not for the faint-hearted. 

We called him Uncle Walter. His associates called him Iron Pants. But no contradiction exists between the two terms describing the life of Walter Cronkite.
My family called him Uncle Walter because he came into our household every evening. We trusted him. His associates called him Iron Pants because of his reluctance to leave his newscaster’s chair during a big story, outlasting the most dedicated of his fellow journalists.
Cronkite was born in the same city that I was born in, St. Joseph, MO. But when I was born, he was 36 years old, had worked for United Press International for 14 years, and worked with CBS for a year.
Cronkite hadn’t lived long in St. Joseph. His parents moved to Kansas City when he was a year old and then to Houston when he was ten. So his childhood influences had little to do with our shared hometown. But St. Joseph residents claimed him for their own because he was a character worth claiming. He was honest, hard-working and smart. He didn’t necessarily make sense of the world every evening, but he brought the world into perspective.
He was the first to tell us about most everything that happened in our time. Of course, the most notable and infamous thing that happened was the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The shock and disappointment in his face and voice mirrored the pain we felt.Cronkite’s other painful job was informing America that the Vietnam War was a mess and a mistake. A World War II correspondent, Cronkite reportedly agreed early on with the necessity of the conflict in southeast Asia. But after a visit there, he recognized the futility and brutality of the conflict. When Uncle Walter broke the news that Vietnam was a lost cause, we knew for certain it was.
I especially remember “The Twentieth Century,” one of Cronkite’s innovations. It was a documentary television program that Cronkite hosted about recent political and cultural events. At that time, there was nothing like it on television and he set the standard for the evening news programs that would follow.
Cronkite was big on technology too, especially the space program. He devoted himself to explaining it to Americans, and NASA recognized the effort. The space agency gave him an Ambassador of Exploration Award in 2006. He was the only non-astronaut or non-NASA employee to receive the award.
I often wonder how Uncle Walter would rate in today’s skeptical-of-the-media climate. In his time, he was repeatedly named the most trusted man in America. Once he was fired because he refused to report a story that had not been verified.
But nothing about Uncle Walter was fake. He earned the loyalty of honest people, and the political career of Johnson ended when Cronkite reported on the Vietnam War and Nixon’s career was doomed when Cronkite wouldn’t let Woodward and Bernstein’s undercover journalism die. If Cronkite said it, it was true because he was devoted to the truth.

Students were taught no other American president came close to the moral and egalitarian stature of Abraham Lincoln when I attended elementary school in the 1960s.

Today someone claims to be as good as and even a better president than Lincoln. 

Don’t worry, the claim is obviously bogus.

But it’s worth noting that Lincoln was just a man, not the demigod he was made out to be after his assassination and during the next 100 years. Lincoln had his faults.

He did not consider the welfare of Native Americans to be of great importance, and Lincoln advocated at one time sending black Americans to Africa to live. He seems to have believed that blacks and whites belonged on separate continents.

Another fault of Lincoln was that he was a tried-and-true Republican. As an attorney, he worked for railroad corporations, defending their interests in land and money grabs and against employee and citizen injury lawsuits. 

And finally, Lincoln didn’t always stick to his principles. As a congressman, Lincoln called President Polk a liar when Polk lied about the start of the Mexican War. Lincoln said he could not support the war. But when it came time to vote, Lincoln voted for war funding, afraid to appear non-supportive of American soldiers. Lincoln forgot if you’re going to be against a war, you vote against it and vote to bring soldiers home.

Still, even in today’s cynicism, most Americans would agree Lincoln was a great man and our greatest president.

Most will say Lincoln was great because he rose above his dismal and impoverished upbringing. Or they will say he was great because he held the union together, which he did, but he did that with the help of many other strong leaders at the time.

But Lincoln’s real greatness is in his humility. He rose to a position of power at a time when character was intensely challenged. Yet Lincoln remained the good-natured, honest, open-minded and sympathetic person he had been before he became president.

And though the Civil War shaped his presidency, he did not allow the war’s ferocity and cruelty to drag him into savage name-calling and calls for revenge. 

He also was willing to admit his mistakes. After being rebuked by Frederick Douglass and others for proposing to send black Americans to Africa, Lincoln accepted the folly and injustice of the proposal and dropped it.

Finally, Lincoln was a manipulator. He knew how to get what he wanted out of people, which is what Doris Kearns Goodwin’s recent best-seller, Team of Rivals, reveals. Even one of Lincoln’s greatest accomplishments, the Emancipation Proclamation, which only freed slaves in the Confederacy, was a play to appease residents of non-seceding states and the Northerners who favored abolition, as well as disrupt Southern war efforts.

Yet despite being manipulative, Lincoln was an extremely honest person throughout his life. He even earned the handle “Honest Abe,” which despite repeated scrutiny over the years, has endured. You can’t say that about many politicians. 

I have been guilty, like many men, of objectifying women.

I admit years ago, as a budding, hormone-seething teenager of the 1960s, I looked upon Raquel Welch as only an object of sex.

In 1966, when I was 13 years old, Raquel made an appearance in One Million B.C. — giving only three lines in a nearly two-hour movie. 

My thoughts about sex were a little ill-defined and nebulous then, but there was nothing ill-defined or nebulous about Raquel’s physical appeal. She was all well-defined curves, sharp facial features, and dark skin that spoke directly and unmistakably to my male curiosity and budding libido. Her curvaceous and well-endowed frame covered by a negligible skin-of-an-animal bikini spurred an already active imagination and drive.

After her big breakthrough, Raquel began receiving more roles and leading roles, usually as a sex symbol, until the 1980s when older, but still beautiful, she began to flag in popularity and she was cast in a made-for-television movie that attempted to portray her in a new role as a smart, inquisitive reporter/investigator/writer. Despite being clad in pantsuit, suit jacket, and blouse buttoned to the top of her neck, Raquel provoked in me memories of the gorgeous woman in a bikini made from the skin of an animal.

Some today will say it’s a shame, and it is, that she was treated mainly as a symbol of sexual appeal. And it is a shame that she made her way to stardom predominantly on her shape even though she had enough acting ability to be more than a body; otherwise, she would have been relegated to low-budget movies with limited exposure. 

What I grew to appreciate about Raquel, however, is that she never submitted herself to gratuitous sex scenes or puerile nudity. She was discreet about the roles she took, and I would wager she was as tough in the movie industry standing up to men as the roles she played on screen.

She was not a fragile, mixed-up megastar who needed cajoling, preening, and extra attention. She didn’t make a mess of her life with drugs, alcohol or sex despite being subjected, most likely, to the sexual harassment and mistreatment of the day in the movie industry.

I last saw Raquel on a Seinfeld episode. The episode came out in 1997, but I wouldn’t have seen it then. I caught it on a rerun, probably five to ten years later. When the episode was made, Raquel would have been near 60 years old, but the curves were still there.

And not only the curves. All the sass and spitfire of her younger days were showcased too. She took the Seinfeld writers’ quirky, fun-poking characterization of her in stride and good humor.

Or maybe she helped to create the character she portrayed. 

If she did, I would appreciate her even more.

Elections in your locality and state are probably the same as those going on here in Tulsa and Oklahoma with some candidates proclaiming themselves exceptional candidates because they are persons of business.

The idea is that government is another business. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The ultimate object of business is not the ultimate object of government. Businesses are started by a person or a group of people to make money for those who own it; government is a contract among a group of people to look after the best collective interests of the group. Business is about expending the least amount of money to earn more for a select group of people; government is about collecting a reasonable and adequate amount of money to ensure the most benefits for society as a whole.

I am not trying to paint business as an evil ogre with no redeeming qualities. Business does attempt to improve society by offering new and better products and services and there are business people who have the interests of others in mind as they run their businesses.

But when a capitalistic society goes awry as it often does because of the profit and greed, business does not even aim to look after the best interests of its workers, let alone the broader group of people that business serves. History tells us that as workers have had to continually barter and fight over the centuries for fair wages, fair retirement benefits and safe working conditions. Even now business aims to reduce the cost of production of goods or provision of services even if it means cutting pay and benefits to its workers and cutting corners on safe working conditions.  

Look at what some government leaders are proposing in their latest emergency relief for the economic disaster caused by the coronavirus pandemic. They want to ensure businesses suffer no liability if their workers contract Covid19 while on the job. This means, if the bill passes, businesses will not be held responsible if they do not impose proper controls for reducing the spread of coronavirus. This proposal comes about from the pressure exerted by the business sector which hardly ever wants to accept the liability that comes from putting workers, and the public, at risk of injury and death. And the business sector is usually able to find accomplices in government in the business people voters approve for office.

Without question, some business skills can be found in the skill set of a good congressman, senator, governor or president. But it does not necessarily hold that a good business person makes for a good public servant. A public servant looks after the public, not the bottom line. 

by David Gerard

I read an interesting discussion this week between two Americans about American exceptionalism.

One held the view that American exceptionalism meant that Americans believed their country and people were and are superior to other countries and peoples.

The second said no, the idea only meant that the form of government set up at America’s founding is superior to all others. The second American did not believe Americans as a whole were so conceited as to believe they were superior than any other country or culture.

The second is sadly mistaken, which is very evident. 

All anyone has to do is listen to American political rhetoric to hear the promotion of US exceptionalism in everything from academics to sports and technology. We will be second to none.

This being an election year, the exceptional rhetoric will heat up as the November election grows closer. No candidate runs for office proposing to keep America average or a little better than average. Americans want to hear they are better off economically, socially, and intellectually than any other nation on earth. This is not just a goal, but an idea culturally and politically indoctrinated into citizens’ heads. 

And if there are dissenters, those who question America’s exceptional status, then those people will be called un-American, as politically conservative candidates have done through the years and continue to do now.

Donald Trump’s candidacy and presidency was birthed in extreme exceptionalism. Trump is so conceited personally and politically that he will not concede either he or country fails at anything even though his own slogan, Make America Great Again, implies something is wrong. But even his idea of what is wrong with America is exceptionalism at its core. 

Trump believes that un-American ideas – less superior ideas – have infiltrated our country, leading to a slide toward mediocrity. His presidency may survive another four years on the strength of that propaganda.

But exceptionalism is a dangerous idea. 

Feelings of superiority give a false sense of security, a denial that anything is wrong and nothing can be learned from others. 

Trump provided a dark example of this recently during a Chris Wallace interview when he vehemently denied that the US coronavirus mortality rate was not the lowest in the world. The US has, in fact, one of the highest. Trump would not accept the truth even when his own doctored mortality chart demonstrated it. 

Naturally, Trump had reason, a selfish reason, to deny the truth. He led the way in easing imposed social restrictions that would have prevented Covid19 infections and deaths. If there is blame for America’s high mortality rate, then he shares a huge part of the blame.

That’s the way of selfishness and conceit. They obscure reason, good sense, and the truth so much so that pride, not any other factor, leads to a fall.

by David Gerard

I strongly disagreed this past week with someone I thought I would strongly agree with on anything.

I know people are complicated so that’s bound to happen, but still, it was disconcerting.

I have listened for years to Radiolab, a radio show on many NPR stations, and its host Jad Abumrad. I think he’s great.

He recently taped a TED talk, and I listened to it to find I disagree with him completely on his topic: Dolly Parton.

We both appreciate her music and generosity, but Jad believes Dolly’s music provides a platform that potentially bridges America’s great right-left, conservative-liberal divide.

Jad says that he started his career covering science, programs that ended in a sense of wonder at nature’s structure and beauty.

He tired of that and moved on to Radiolab, programs on touchy social and political issues that he says ended without resolution and despair.

And here is where Dolly comes in. Jad says her concerts support a fan base that doesn’t think or act alike, yet they come together to listen to and sing Dolly’s music. Jad says Dolly’s music can lead to resolutions healing America.

First, I still like Jad, even though he’s wrong. I think Radiolab does a great service highlighting important, even irresolute, issues.

And I love Dolly. She is talented, ebullient, and, like Oprah, generous. I am certain that she is not a racist or egotist.

That said, she is a capitalist. She built an entertainment empire offering mostly entry-level jobs to young people. Her pay and work environments may be better than similar empires, but its operations are no different from others. I went to her Pirate Voyage show in Myrtle Beach, SC. It was a great show with great food and wonderful service. I’d go again. 

But Dolly’s worth is $600 million dollars, built on the popularity of her name and the hard work of thousands of employees who deserve a greater share in her empire.

And Dolly’s music? Her early work is revered by feminists for its frank portrayal of male abuse towards women and feminine social inequality.

But Dolly admits she is no feminist. She also admits her dream was to become a popular entertainer, not a social activist. 

So her songs do not address social issues or divisions, as Bob Dylan’s have. Even though some are sad-ass songs, as Dolly calls them, her musicology is built on sentimentality and feel-good lyrics. 

In fact, Dolly’s music brings about what Jad said he got away from when he reported on science, an upbeat, nice feeling at the end.

Two people with radically opposing ideas on race, war, justice, or government will not resolve their differences singing “Butterfly” or “Islands in the Stream” at a Dolly Parton concert. They are not addressing any issues. They set them aside in order to feel elated for a short time, and leave the divisiveness for another time.

by David Gerard

I live in Tulsa, and several of my family members contacted me before Trump’s rally, saying, “Don’t go downtown and protest. It’s too dangerous.”

They were concerned about three things: me possibly contracting coronavirus, me getting involved in a fracas with Trump supporters, or me getting injured by police if police got rough with protestors.

My family did not have to worry for a couple of reasons. One, Saturday night my younger son and his family celebrated his youngest son’s fourth birthday (I would have been in trouble if I missed the event); and two, Trump’s rally was a pathetic bust. Trump and his campaign boasted a cast of hundreds of thousands of supporters, yet they could not fill a 19,000-seat arena two-thirds full.

That is an optimistic sign heading into the November presidential election. 

Trump support is waning – as it should. Trump is as pathetic as his June 20th turnout. His hour-and-a-half harangue was only more boastful baloney from a petty, self-centered, whining spinner of half-truths, out-and-out lies, and bizarre conspiracies.

But pessimism never falls far from optimism.

That anyone would show up to listen to a man who has shown little managerial or mental stability in the last three years – even his entire life – is unbelievable. 

But such is our scary world, the world of the folk hero, which is not an American invention, but one Americans have refined to an absurd level, so much so that an American folk hero’s life reflects little of who they were or what they really accomplished. Jesse James was a murderous outlaw, but he’s been proclaimed a Robinhood in many tales. John F. Kennedy is touted by some as the embodiment of a utopian leader when he actually had little time to accomplish much. Ronald Reagan is remembered as a hardline fiscal genius when he doubled the US deficit to a record-breaking level.

And Donald Trump in the mind of way too many people is seen as a development wizard when his only accomplishment is putting his name on what others have created. Trump in the mind of too many is seen as a tough negotiator when he has fawned over dictators and caved to tyrants. Trump in the mind of too many is seen as a man to restore America to greatness through isolation and enmity when America’s greatness over the years has been its willingness, though reluctantly at times, to accept people of all faiths and nationalities into its borders.

Trump’s notoriety has not been built on hard work, intelligence, character, and good judgment. Rather it has been built on his father’s fortune, the illusion created by a TV (un)reality show, and the constant repetition of lies and fables until they wear down the bedrock of truth.

Trump’s rise to the presidency was realized when a political party primed itself to be deceived and abandoned its moral compass for financial gain.

Trump’s political demise will be when Americans decide to opt for honesty and integrity.