Land of Easy Living

This osprey appeared on our neighbor's dock one fine morning looking like the conductor of an all-gull orchestra. Eventually the gulls left, but he stayed for seven and a half hours. He didn't leave until, as we walked toward him in the late afternoon to see if he had been wounded, he peacefully went home to the green light at the end of the dock.

The Moon is Written

In the much-too-long time since last I reported, I have not only finished the first draft of the novel, but completed three major revisions, some of them with the help of very perceptive readers. Was it necessary to abandon the blog to finish the novel? It seems that, for me at least, it was. In any event, that is the way it worked, and I don’t believe I could have done it otherwise. My apologies to those who hoped for more regular postings, but there’s good news. Now that the manuscript is finished there’s time to blog, and blog I will—about what happened in the intervening time (was it really two years?) and what’s happening now.

Stay tuned. More to come. 

Santorum's Choice

It was an odd place, historically speaking, for Rick Santorum to make this particular speech. If his campaign did not know the history of it, they are incompetent. If they did know and chose Herrin, Illinois, anyway they should explain.

Herrin was the site of a brutal massacre of strikebreakers in 1922, an event in which 23 men died and which President Harding called a "shocking crime" that "shamed and horrified the country."

Santorum, who has grown fond of presenting his candidacy as one of historic necessity, cites the Constitution and the Civil War as comparable moments of urgency. Yesterday without mentioning Herrin’s bloody history he issued there a ringing call to action.

 Exhorting his crowd to remember the Constitution writers’ pledge of “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor,” he told his audience that “your honor is on the line.” The torch of freedom the patriots passed down could go out, he warned, “if we are not successful in this election...if you walk out of here and not just vote for me, but you actually do the duty of freedom: actually work hard, call your friends, post this up on Facebook, tweet about it, write about it....”

Herrin and Williamson County are not like the rest of Illinois. Paul Angle, in his 1992 book Bloody Williamson, wrote that in this county murder "was no novelty" but an indigenous condition. Historically, dating to before the Civil War, it was a place of blood vendettas, vigilante lawlessness, quick tempers, sudden violence, racist lynching, Klan rule, massacres, kangaroo courts, and corrupt government. 

Here is an account of the massacre, excerpted from my unpublished memoir Murder He Wrote:

On the morning of June 22, 1922, just outside of Herrin an army of 500 striking miners and their sympathizers surrounded the Southern Illinois Coal Company compound on the edge of a new strip mine whose owner had broken a strike agreement.

All night there was shooting as company guards and strikebreakers took cover behind railroad ties and empty coal cars. Two union miners and one of the guards died, and explosions destroyed the mine's water supply. At dawn the besieged strikebreakers sent out a guard with a cook's apron tied to a broomstick offering surrender if they would be allowed to leave safely. A voice replied, "Come on out and we'll get you out of the county." As they were marched down the road toward Herrin's rail station the pro-union mob grew angrier and began shooting prisoners one at a time, starting with the mine superintendent. Someone who arrived in a car at that moment, later identified as a union officer named Hugh Willis, told the mob leaders not to shoot prisoners on the road but to take them into the woods and "kill all you can."

When the mass of prisoners approached a barbed wire fence and tried to climb over one got hung up, someone fired a pistol unleashing a wild volley of more gunfire. In the resulting slaughter nineteen men died. Some were hanged from trees. Some were pursued and executed. Wounded men crying for mercy or water were kicked and shot in the head. Several had their throats cut. Others were urinated upon as they lay dying. A Chicago newspaperman who tried to give water to one victim was threatened with a cocked rifle and a warning: "Keep away, God damn you!"

The horror of the Herrin Massacre galvanized the nation. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch called it "the most brutal and horrifying crime that has ever stained the garments of organized labor." In the U.S. Senate it was compared with German atrocities in the recent war. President Harding called it a "shocking crime" that "shamed and horrified the country" and asked for legislation to allow punishment of such "barbarity" in federal instead of state courts.

Thirteen men were indicted and divided into two groups for trial. Eight of them in the Williamson County jail were given fans against the heat, a Victrola and phonograph records for entertainment, and home-cooked dinners. After all thirteen of them were found not guilty in spite of positive identification of the killers, State's Attorney Delos Duty announced he would pursue it no further.

"I tried to convince two juries . . .," he said. "I'm not complaining, but it's a hopeless proposition."

To paraphrase another Rick: Of all the towns, in all the counties, in all the states to make that speech, Santorum chose Herrin, Illinois.

Will No One Step Up?

Mitt Romney, given the opportunity to reject Rush Limbaugh's vulgarity (see previous post), has declined to do so.

"I'll just say this, which is, it's not the language I would have used," Romney said in Cleveland. "I'm focusing on the issues that I think are significant in the country today, and that's why I'm here talking about jobs and Ohio."

It’s not “the langauge” he would have used, but he did not challenge the idea. He too took refuge in the choice of “language.” Doesn’t he know that he’s saying public slander over a difference of opinion is acceptable? Another word for that is intolerance, the characteristic mark of a one-party system.

Will no Republican reject it?

words, words, words

In his effort to extract his foot from his mouth, the radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh has given us a perfect example of the nonapology apology fashionable among politicians when they get into mouth trouble. He blamed his choice of words when he chose to slander a Georgetown University law student named Sandra Fluke rather than rebut her opinion.  

The professional word user has blamed the tool of his trade, like a carpenter blaming his hammer. 

What he offered was not an apology, because it does not address the offense. It was not the words that were at fault. It was the idea they expressed. Words have meaning, and we select them to express ideas. The idea must exist in our heads first if the words are to follow. He carefully chose his words and they eloquently expressed his thought. There can be no confusion about that, for he said it several ways.

It’s the idea that was wrong. If there can be an acceptable apology it can only address his vulgar idea, not the words he chose to express it. 

At Last

The sugar cream pie mystery is solved.

Well, maybe not. I changed too many variables for scientific research. A scientist would change one at a time. I was impatient and changed ‘em all, but the result was perfection.

First, I used “heavy cream” instead of “whipping cream,” the difference being 36 percent butterfat versus 34 percent. Unfortunately the butterfat content does not appear on most cream containers, but those descriptions do. Except when they label it “heavy whipping cream.”

Second, I brought the cream to room temperature before making the filling. I suspect that the starting temperature was a crucial factor in the failure of the first filling to set properly. This is the one precaution I’ll always take in the future.

Third, on the theory that the filling cooks from the outside edges inward, I stirred it carefully with a wooden spoon during baking to make the temperature uniform throughout. This had the unwanted side effect of destroying the smooth and pretty finish on top.

Fourth, ovens are not perfect, and I baked this pie in a different oven that might have reached a higher baking temperature though the settings were the same. To be certain, I should test the two ovens with an oven thermometer. 

Fifth, as soon as the pie was cool enough to do so I put it in the refrigerator to set. In an hour or two I cut two pieces, and they held their shape perfectly. Tasted good, too!

So, Hungry on Tilghman, you are invited to test the next one. 

Get Over It

I was in New York City for the weekend. Early Saturday morning I walked over to the Rockefeller Center Starbucks for a coffee and a copy of the Times. Got the coffee. No Times.
     Where can I get one, I asked the barista. She didn’t know.
     Huh?
     Okay, so she doesn’t read the Times.
     I asked a uniformed security guy, classic New Yorker.

“Used to be a stand in the basement here, but they took it out. There was one over on the corner. It’s gone. There were three here. Did you try a drug store?”

By now I was so flummoxed I didn’t care whether the drug store had papers. I returned to the hotel—half a block away—and asked the desk clerk. Hotels have papers for their guests. Don’t they?

“There are some in the restaurant for browsing, but you can’t take it.”

I can’t buy a Times? In the middle of Manhattan? I thought, but did not say: Why the hell not?

“Well,” said the desk clerk, “maybe in the middle of Manhattan....”

And 51^st between Fifth and Sixth is not the middle?

Manhattan news stand in 2011, via iStockphoto.

That afternoon on a three-hour walk around the city I saw exactly one corner news stand. What happened and when did they disappear? Yesterday? Last week?

I was a newspaper man for forty-one years, and when I thought about it I knew perfectly well why there were no papers. The answer was simple. If there were a profit to be made selling them in Manhattan, people would sell them. If not, then not. News is available—often free—online. Many people don’t read newspapers, and the publishers are learning that they should be glad of that. For them, it’s a blessing.

Think about it. Transmitting information via ink on paper is a Fifteenth Century technology now hopelessly inefficient. We think paper is lightweight, but it’s not. If a Sunday Times weighs a pound, then the Sunday circulation of a million copies weighs a million pounds. Delivering them requires hundreds of big trucks, pay and benefits for hundreds of drivers not to mention the pressmen, and there’s ink, paper, dealers’ markup, et cetera. These costs can be eliminated, and not replaced, by transmitting content instantly via the Internet. Why would one do otherwise when advertising revenues are drying up, as they have been for two decades? Costs that can be eliminated must be eliminated for news companies to survive. The old business model no longer works.

I had known this would happen. I hadn’t expected to see it so dramatically and quickly.