Thursday, July 31, 2008

Winky Dink and You

There remains in my aging brain a neural connection that holds the memory of using a crayon to write on the screen of my television set as a pre-schooler.

What was I doing?

Using the Winky Dink and You TV Kit.

Click here to see an interesting description of this program including a clip of host Jack Barry's shameless pitch to incite young children to buy the kit. Among various fifties television sales to young children, this was among the most innovative with a relative long "playtime" use.

www.tvparty.com/requested2.html

Even more shameless was Ding Dong School marm Miss Francis's pitch for Wheaties.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Reinhardt Calluses

With some free time on my hands, I can ponder changes to my body as I age. One that comes to mind is that during the first 30 or so years of my life, beginning in the first grade or so, I developed a large callus in the area of the middle finger where I grasped a pencil or pen. At Reinhardt, pencils were our primary tool; we stood in line at the pencil sharpener at the front of the room. On occasion, we stood at the blackboard with a piece of chalk doing our letters and numbers. The school janitor would cart off those chalk-filled erasers and clean them using a special machine down in his workroom.


Summertime was barefoot time for me. My heel calluses today are tiny remnants of those I developed as a child.



During the last 25 years or so, I have lost my middle finger callus and developed a new one at the bottom left of my right hand.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Lovely Ladies of the Auditorium: Why Some of Us Became So Artsy

From A Century of Class: Public Education in Dallas 1884-1984, by Rose-Mary Rumbley. Austin, TX: Eakin Press, 1984.

The Dallas Times Herald columnist, William Rogers, pointed out in his book, The Lusty Texans of Dallas, that “There had been a pioneering spirit in the Dallas public Schools which had made a number of contributions to education in Texas. In 1921 they introduced into the Southwest the platoon system for elementary schools - an organization of classes which allowed the homeroom teachers to spend their entire time on fundamental subjects such as reading, writing, language arts and number work, with special teachers provided for music, art,and physical education."

But there was another special kind of teacher introduced that year not mentioned by Mr. Rogers. Not only was Dallas a pioneer in introducing the platoon system, but the Dallas educators introduced a whole new course of study to the elementary schools of Texas. This course was called Auditorium Activities. Today if one were to mention Auditorium Activities, only the Dallas natives would react to the words and know what one was talking about. Dallas was unique in offering this novel course to the children. Actually it was successfully taught in only a few school systems across the nation.



Lela Lee Williams was sent to Gary, Indiana, to study and report on Auditorium Activities, a course which had been initiated in the Indiana school districts but nowhere else in the nation up to that time. Miss Williams discovered that, "the purpose of the auditorium period is to furnish opportunities and situations for the exercise and development of abilities for which the usual classroom does not provide."

The child would learn in the classroom and use the learning in the auditorium. If a child studied an event in history in the homeroom period, in the auditorium he would enact the event. He'd recite a poem about the event. He'd read more aloud about the event. He'd write an essay about the event. History came alive in the auditorium. One teacher put it this way, "The dry bones of the past became the flesh and blood of the present in the auditorium activities class."



The same types of activities could reinforce a math lesson. The numbers became alive. Example: In a dramatic skit (visually) Mr. Number could be torn apart into fractions. The creativity that was used by the teachers, and the creativity that was squeezed from students was limitless. There is a leather bound curriculum guide - several copies of which are still on file at the school administration building - that explains the whole unusual program. It was compiled by auditorium teachers handpicked by E.B. Cauthorn to launch this creative endeavor: Blanche Smith, Minnie Bizzell, Mary Capes, Myrtle Smith, Ethel Walter, Bertha Bizzell, Florence Buryear, Callie Moffett, Annie Lee Alexander, Ethel Thomas, Blanche Brandon, Baulah Keeton, Uleta Wilhouse, Alma Diekson, Louis Paulus, and Jewell York. These teachers were paid more than the other elementary teachers, and a report plainly stated that jealously reigned among the other teachers in the schools over this so-called merit pay.

These "lovely ladies of the auditorium" really did have a little kingdom in the school auditorium. On special holidays, they were responsible for programs that would give the history of the day observed. Jewel York boasted in a piece of writing about the program. "The auditorium classes gave the meat and bread of life to the school." Alma Dickson noted in an essay that the teachers taught poise and brought about concentration. There was intense visualization of any event or episode. There was a socialization of the work done in the classroom, for all the subjects were correlated in the auditorium. There was a strengthening of the work done by the classroom teachers.

Helen Rogers taught auditorium for twenty-five years in the Dallas system. She stated that she always enjoyed her work at Edwin Kiest, because this was a strong middle class school. This pleased her. She said that so often people did things for the poor and the needy, but they neglected the strong middle class. These students needed attention, and too, they needed material rewards. Therefore, she made certain that in a tangible way, her students were rewarded for good programs. Mrs. Rogers never neglected any chance of obtaining any free materials that the children might enjoy getting as handouts in class. She sent off for any free advertisement brochures of different companies and institutions. She tried to get as much material into the hands of the students as possible so that they could keep their own scrapbooks of programs and information.

A favorite play that Mrs. Rogers enjoyed giving was "Who's Who At The Zoo." Each child portrayed his favorite animal at the zoo. The stage setting was quite unusual in that ". . . each child was in his own little cage." This really was a great play to give, because obviously there could be no disorder during the production since the cast was securely behind bars.

Miss Leta Parks, who taught for thirty years in the system, was the auditorium teacher at Alex Sanger School. She decided when she entered the program that she would always approach her undertakings from an artistic angle. Each year she vowed that she would invent a new way of using good literature and would create a new approach to teaching. Doing the same things year after year in the auditorium was not her way of being an effective teacher. Miss Parks wrote many children's plays. In fact, she said that the only way to provide the proper experiences for every child in the class was to create a specific program just for that class of particular children. These auditorium teachers were called upon to present many PTA programs. They were united into one massive effort in 1948 by Dr. White when he asked auditorium teacher Pauline James to write, produce, and direct a program on Texas which would be a city-wide effort presented at the Fair Park Music Hall. Every elementary child in the city of Dallas was in this memorable program.

The children were taught both citizenship and parliamentary procedure in the auditorium. Also, debate was not forgotten. The students selected the topics.

Resolved: that it is as dishonest to give help on the test as it is to receive it.
Resolved: that it is better to tell the truth regarding knowledge of the guilt of a friend than to shield him.
Resolved: that it is proper for girls to wear blue jeans in school.
Resolved: that it is better to discuss our problems with our parents than to take orders from them.
Resolved: that it is better for parents to give their children an allowance than to give them money when they need it.
Resolved: that science has done more harm than good.
Resolved: that TV viewing time should be limited.

The schools in Dallas were so often named for outstanding people who had served the Dallas community. The children in the school need to know about the person for whom their school was named.

Bonnie Harford, auditorium teacher, wrote a biographical sketch on each of the women for whom a school was named, and she put this material into book form. She used much of this information from her study to make these ladies come alive for the children in her auditorium classes. This produced more school spirit.

These teachers were artists in adapting their activities to the school situation. Those that taught auditorium in poor areas of town made certain that all the scenery was made by the children themselves. This would provide a feeling of self-worth. The children accomplished something, and they had pride in that accomplishment. Developing this pride was a major concern of teachers who were teaching in the poorer neighborhoods.

May Day was a challenge. Many maypole dances were held on the lawns of the schools with each class dressed in a particular costume. The first grade mushrooms gathered. The wind would blow. The wind so often was the second grade class. The daisies would sway in the breeze. Daisies were third graders. Everyone took part and everyone had to remain in perfect order for such a gigantic theatrical production to be carried off. Nothing was too big for the auditorium teacher.

Most principals approved of and thought highly of the ac¬tivities in the auditorium. One cited, “The auditorium was to the school what a well apportioned living room is to the home. It is here that the visitor gets a general impression of the school. The stage is set in a special manner. The bulletin boards speak of the seasons or of the school activities.”

The auditorium activities program has been gone for fifteen years. Several former auditorium teachers, however, are still teaching in the Dallas schools. They are now teaching language arts, but many of them would like to see auditorium ac¬tivities brought back into the system. Anita Elliott, former auditorium teacher who now teaches language arts at Adelle Turner, feels that the reading ability of the students would be strengthened were the program reinstated. "I taught more reading in the auditorium than a reading teacher could." The reading skills were taught in the reading classes, but practice in the reading came in the auditorium.

In 1966, the speech arts teachers met for their forty-fifth anniversary. They had been organized into a club which met for idea sharing and social purposes. However, this meeting in the spring of 1966 turned out to be the final meeting of the club itself. Dr. Herman Benthul and Mrs. Wilma Stewart, who served as superintendents over the speech arts program spoke on the projected activities. However, the changes were on their way, and the speech arts teacher, considered a frill, was to be no more. However, for forty-five years, auditorium activities in the elementary schools strengthened the learning experiences of the children.

Sputnik and W.T. White: Why Some of Us Became So Brainy

From A Century of Class: Public Education in Dallas 1884-1984, by Rose-Mary Rumbley. Austin, TX. Eakin Press, 1984.

The next month, October 5 [1957], the Russians launched the first artificial earth satellite and a month later followed it with a second, heavier and more impressive "Sputnik." Americans knew Russia was ahead in scientific technology. They also knew that America would have to catch up and surpass the Soviets. On December 6, a United States rocket carrying a grapefruit-size satellite exploded on the launching pad at Cape Canaveral. What was to restore our prestige in the scientific world didn't get off the ground. It all looked pretty grim.

What happened to the United States? No longer Number One? The first thing that President Eisenhower did was to announce an extensive program to upgrade America's rocket technology. The citizen tax payers gave an affirmative nod to this, but science still had to find a scapegoat. They finally decided that the whole problem stemmed from the educational system. It was the schools! Those kids weren't learning anything. That's why we were behind! The children were just playing around. The school system needed reorganization, and, of course, the reorganization began.
. . .
Dr. W.T. White came up with the High Academic Aptitude Group Plan. This plan would extend the learning span and give more challenge to the high academic students. These students would be in an honors group and would be taught by teachers that were carefully and thoughtfully selected. The junior highs were included in the program. Now, these high academic students would only be in honors classes for the basic subjects, English, science, math, history, but for the other subjects, they would be scheduled into the regular program. Dr. White assured all parents that calling attention to the high academic group would in no way lessen the effort of the school system to give every educable child the best possible opportunity for his complete growth and development. Dr. White promised a tightening up of all classes.

The fine thing about the honors program was its flexibility. When a student qualified to enter the program, he could. Always, it was the grades and the industrious and energetic attitudes that remained the key factors that got a student into or out of the high academic group.

In the elementary schools, the top twenty percent of the pupils were grouped in certain honors classes. Their teachers were selected especially to deal with these classes whose members ranked higher than average academically.

Dr. White said that this was not a crash program. It had been under consideration for a number of years. But, the sudden realization that the Soviet Union was surpassing the country would make any good educational plan come to the foreground quickly. Superintendent White noted, “This plan challenges the pupil by putting him on his own merits, abilities, and industry. It should go far in relieving the reported boredom of students, because their courses were slowed down by slow learners. It will spotlight the bright youngster who is not, for some reason, achieving to the top of his ability. It permits the school system to work with greater efficiency.”

The new plan first touched the science department. Since 1951, science had been taught in all twelve grades. It was required in the first eight grades, and then two years of science in high school were required in order to graduate. That would stay the same, except the course of study for the elementary grades changed to include an elementary approach to astronomy, geology, biology, electronics, physics, and chemistry. There were more courses offered in the senior highs, so that actually a student could take thirteen years of science in twelve years of schooling.



Then, of course, the science fair came into existence. Every year students from all over the city of Dallas entered scientific projects. Prizes for the most technical experiments were awarded. Scholarships were given to the students who actually made scientific discoveries. Our nation was planning to top Russia right there from the Dallas Convention Center where all the winning entries from the various schools were assembled and shown to the public.
. . .
The mathematics curriculum was stepped up. The little ones in the first grade learned to court, learned to make figures, and learned to identify figures with objects. This had always been the course of study for the first grade. However, the first grade course was the only one that stayed the same. All through the other grades the program was expanded to include more problem solving. Added math courses were offered in the high school, so actually, a senior (if he wished) could take college freshman math. Usually the high school curriculum stopped with trigonometry. Now, calculus was offered.
. . .

Under Dr. White's high achievement plan, the library was to become a learning nerve center at all levels of education. It had been predicted that with the advent of television, children might stop reading. This was not true according to the report of 1957. This was the year the question was asked, "Why can't Johnny read?" According to the library report Johnny could read and was reading more than ever in the DISD. Book fairs were celebrated that year, and this was a much easier fair for parents than the science fair. This fair was conducted by the li¬brarian, and she did all the work. The children just came and examined all the new books and learned about them and their authors. In the elementary schools, the children would dress up like their favorite fictional characters. Nevertheless, the children were reading.

Reinhardt History Corner

From A Century of Class: Public Education in Dallas 1884-1984, by Rose-Mary Rumbley. Austin, TX. Eakin Press, 1984.

A couple of years before World War I a railroad was built northeast from Dallas to connect Garland (and other points east) with rail transportation. About halfway between the two cities the railway passed through a farm owned by Mr. L. Rein­hardt. Fortunately for Mr. Reinhardt, a whistle-stop was ar­ranged, a station built, a post office established, and a general store was also opened. The little town, Reinhardt, was located in the middle of rich farm land where the finest corn, cotton and small grains grew.

These farmers had children, so the Reinhardt Common School District was organized and a small wooden structure was built, a schoolhouse not too far from the railroad station. During the twenties, the community outgrew the wooden schoolhouse and so a two-story brick building was erected at the present site of the modern Reinhardt School. This first brick school built in the twenties served children through the seventh grade. For high school the students went to Garland.

In the thirties, the landowners no longer wished to farm, so they platted their acres into estate lots, and the Casa Linda Addition came into being. There had already been some resi­dential growth in the Forest Hills Addition, for the city of Dallas was bound and determined to cross White Rock Lake and spread eastward.

In 1939 a group of enterprising Reinhardt citizens decided that their school needed modernizing and enlarging, so with a WPA grant of $66,000 they got more than they ever dreamed they'd have - a new school.



After World War II, the area, White Rock East, doubled and redoubled in population, and so in 1946 the Reinhardt School District - which included about four hundred children - was swallowed up into the Dallas system.

There was another little farming community not too far from Reinhardt. This was Bayles. The school for this little city started in a converted barn and eventually moved into a more stable building. The Bayles School by 1946, when it came into the Dallas district, had grown to a three-room school that was located just off Ferguson Road not too far from where the pres­ent Bayles School was built in 1961.

These two schools, Bayles and Reinhardt, have spawned quite a number of others in the White Rock area: Casa View, Victor H. Hexter, Edwin J. Keist, M.T. Reilly, Alex Sanger, Charles A. Gill, George W. Truett, W.H. Gaston Junior High, Robert T. Hill Junior High, and the high school, Bryan Adams.

Monday, March 10, 2008

Jack Ruby and the Shit-Filled River


And the city got Jack Ruby who speaks of a time when he was recently in town from Chicago, "I was running the concessions at the Longhorn Ballroom for Dewey Grooms, selling beer and setups to all those thirsty Country music fans from dry Oak Cliff come pouring from their homes over the river to drink, to listen to Bob Wills, Ernest Tubb, Hank Thompson. Down in Trinity River Bottoms they'd come to the Longhorn and to the Big D to hear Groovy Joe Poovy, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis. They'd come to the neon honkytonks. You could just about always smell the shit-filled river down there. Man, if there was a big rain you could feel it swelling like it might burst out of its banks, up and over the levee to rage down Industial Boulevard. If it kept raining on a Saturday night and the waters got over the levee half the working men in Dallas could be swept away. Down here was the real cultural life of the city and I wanted to be a part of it."

http://www.dallasinstitute.org/Programs/Previous/Spring%202001/talktext/riverconferencertrammell.htm

http://www.watermelon-kid.com/dallas-sights/vintage/pcards/pcards.htm

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Heralds of Spring on the Ranch

MARCH comes in like a lion, and goes out like a lamb
The weather is traditionally wild at the beginning of March, but fair by the end.

1625 J. Fletcher Wife for Month (1717) II . i. ‘I would chuse March, for I would come in like a Lion.’‥‘But you'd go out like a Lamb when you went to hanging.’

1670 J. Ray English Proverbs 41 March hack ham [hackande = annoying ] comes in like a lion, goes out like a lamb.

1849 C. Brontë Shirley II. iv. Charming and fascinating he resolved to be. ... http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1O90-MARCHcomesnlklnndgstlklmb.html


Lambs, smallest born three days ago


Flowering Quince


Jonquils


Plum blooms burst out this morning



Fresh eggs a-laying


Warm weather will push this fertile rot to the roots


Twin too weak to survive will be a boon to the uppushing bluebonnets

One of my daily emotional concerns (source of nightmares) is that my sheep won’t have good quality forage in winter. These warm days have lit the green fuse.

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
by Dylan Thomas

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.
The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.
The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.
And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm. http://radio.upei.ca/node/4920


Friday, February 29, 2008

Living With Eggheads

One doesn’t have to look too far to see that public schools are very damaging to many, if not most kids.


Given the populations they deal with, many schools today are skilled at providing good care for children with special needs.


One category of need is for the “gifted” child.


During my public school days, nobody knew much about giftedness, but the Dallas mega-public school system did a pretty good job of separating out high achievers and pushing them through an excellent college prep curriculum.



Positive and negative characteristics of gifted children



Positive
Learns rapidly and easily.

Is highly imaginative.

Is less inclined to follow the organization and ideas of others.

Has a high degree of curiosity.

Asks many questions. Is interested in a wide range of things.

Has keen powers of observation and is alert.

Reasons things out, thinks clearly, recognizes relationships, comprehends meanings.

Has longer attention and interest span.

Can often form generalizations and use them in new situations.

Has greater than average ability to grasp abstract concepts and see abstract relationships.

Has a large vocabulary which is used easily and accurately.

Retains what has been heard or read without much rote drill.

Enjoys reading, usually at a mature level.

Follows directions easily.

Has a good sense of humor.

Can use material, words, or ideas in new ways.

Has a strong desire to excel.

Uses a great deal of common sense and practical knowledge.

Is a leader in several kinds of activities. Is often asked ideas and suggestions. Is looked to by others when something must be decided.


Negative
Can easily become bored with routine assignments.

May want to do things his/her own way--why not?

Can become a real pest.

May notice too much in the classroom.

May see relationships others do not see and want to spend large amounts of class time discussing all this.

Sometimes doesn't want to stop one project and start the next.

May notice the teacher's lack of inconsistency with "But you said we should always..."

Can get lost in pursuing own thoughts. Can appear to be daydreaming or not paying attention. Can lose other students or "turn them off."

Often gets bored by repetitious assignments.

Always has nose in a book and maybe the book doesn't seem terribly appropriate.

May not always pay close attention to those directions.

Can make jokes at adults' expense. Not everyone appreciates this.

Sometimes too innovative.

Can be easily or too deeply upset by perceived "failure."

Can be too authoritative.

Can become too bossy and be unwilling to listen to the opinions of others.


http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/2746/rwclub/gifted.html

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Reinhardt Dreamwork

When I was a child, I had a recurring dream that I was in the hallways and classrooms, with only my underwear on, and nobody noticed.


Today, I have recurring dreams that I am enrolled in college, and attending classes, but have basically dropped out and don't know a thing about what I'm supposed to be doing. I also recently dreamed that I socked my boss in the mouth.

One of my classmates reports that he has a daydream of moving back into Reinhardt, converted into an old folks home:

Hey, maybe the DISD would just turn Reinhardt into an old folks home for alumni!!!!!
Another classmate reveals a weird dream:

[The] idea of Reinhardt as a retirement community for alumni . . . really struck home, because when I was a student at Reinhardt, I had a semi-recurring dream about LIVING in the school, not as a transient, but having the school retro-fitted as my house. What if we DID end up there after all? Would that finally be a dream come true? Or terminal detention?
My best waking dream would be to be sitting again as a child at my kitchen table (it was yellow formica with chrome legs and with matching yellow vinyl-covered chairs—would be worth a fortune today) and having my mother offer to mash up my potatoes and mix with the ground hamburger.



So goes our pitiful lives and desire to return to the Reinhardt womb.

Here’s some recent explanations:

Freud’s theory [dreams are wish fulfillment] has real difficulties explaining why people so often have anxiety dreams. Dreams also involve being angry a lot of the time. Freud said dreams were for fulfilling wishes. But who would want nightmares? Who would want to get beaten up or sexually assaulted in their dreams? So Freud’s theory just didn’t explain in any coherent fashion the fact that dreams involve far more than wishes and that only a minority of them can be characterised as wishes. And his claim that all dreams are sexually motivated is no longer given any credence. Freud claimed that we dream to protect sleep, to prevent us being awakened by threatening, sub-conscious wishes. However, the REM state, in which most dreams occur, is a regularly occurring biological programme in humans and other mammals, and not something which arises to protect sleep.

To recap, expectation pathways activate conscious, not subconscious, experience. There is no evidence at all that dreams are sexually motivated and Freud can’t plausibly explain why we would wish for anxiety dreams. The REM state occurs in all mammals, so it is not just a human activity, protecting sleep, as Freud suggested. A cat is unlikely to be dreaming about its Oedipus complex. So the attempt to revive Freud’s theory seems to be based more on wishful thinking than on realistic
considerations of its defects.

. . .
It was the first time in scientific dream research, I believe, that someone set out to predict their own dreams, with the hypothesis that dreams relate to emotional experiences of the day before – a hypothesis that has since been well validated. Dreams do involve waking emotional material. I set up an experiment using my own dreams, waking myself up every two hours, and, for a period of a week, predicted the emotional concerns that would feature in the dreams. I found that the dreams always reflected my waking emotional concerns of the previous day, but not necessarily the most important of these. By analysing the data, I was able to show that dreams dealt not with emotional concerns per se but with those emotional concerns that had not been dealt with satisfactorily. No matter how important the emotional concern, if it got dealt with while awake, it was over and did not reappear in a dream. The only emotional concerns that became dreams were those that I was still aroused about, for which I still had expectations that I couldn’t complete. Dreams are the fulfilment of those emotional expectations that have not been met prior to waking. They always act out the fulfilment in metaphor – ie a matching sensory pattern to the original expectation. For example, if a man feels like hitting his boss but restrains the impulse, that night he might dream of attacking another authority figure. The hypothesis was derived from a scientific experiment, which anyone can replicate, should they wish.

http://www.why-we-dream.com/
And so we old folks should wish for many and sweet dreams, but the bad ones are good too--helping us to deal with emotional concerns that had not been dealt with satisfactorily during the day.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

I Must Have Been There, Because I Don't Remember a Thing

Labor Day Weekend 1969

Another Dark Story from the Early 60s

From Columbia Magazine:

Copland’s Party Music

By Samuel Adler

Music for the Common Man: Aaron Copland during the Depression and War
By Elizabeth B. Crist (Oxford University Pres, 253 pages, $35)

In the spring of 1960, Aaron Copland came to Dallas to conduct the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in an all-Copland concert. In connection with the event, I asked him to spend some time with the composition students at the University of North Texas, where I was teaching. He accepted, and his visit was so successful that I invited him to come back the next year. “I appreciate your invitation, Sam,” he told me, “but I will never return to this part of Texas again.”

I wasn’t completely surprised. The John Birch Society, headquartered in Dallas, had contacted the Dallas Symphony Orchestra management and threatened to place a bomb beneath the conductor’s podium if they permitted Copland to conduct the concert.

Aaron Copland! Was there a more American classical musician than the Brooklyn-born composer of Appalachian Spring, Old American Songs, and Billy the Kid?


Copland receives his honorary degree at the 1971 commencement. Victor Kraft/ Aaron Copland Fund for Music


But what the Birchers well knew — for it was no secret — was that in the 1930s and ’40s, Copland had been affiliated with numerous progressive and left-wing causes, including, to some extent, the Communist Party. Elizabeth B. Crist, the author of the excellent Music for the Common Man: Aaron Copland During the Depression and War, calls him “a communist with a lowercase c.”

The 1960 Dallas visit came a generation after his fellow-traveling, but his communist past haunted Copland for the rest of his life. The House Un-American Activities Committee, the FBI, and various conservative organizations constantly made Copland a whipping boy. His Lincoln Portrait (1942) was pulled from Dwight D. Eisenhower’s inaugural program after complaints from Illinois congressman Fred Busbey that Copland stood less for the spirit of Lincoln than for “alien ideology.”

It is therefore welcome to have a book that isolates these early years in Copland’s intellectual and creative life. The great ferment that prevailed among artists and art critics of that time brought the desire to tailor the arts for “the people.” How different from the blasé attitude we find among the artistic establishment today. Crist writes in depth about the collaboration and close relationship between the creators and critics of diverse arts and their efforts at reaching a wider audience, even as they sought an aesthetic to embody a difficult historical period.

Copland was instrumental in organizing the Young Composers Group, made up of composers such as Henry Brant, Israel Citkowitz, Lehman Engel, Vivian Fine, Bernard Herrmann, Jerome Moross, and Elie Siegmeister. According to Copland biographer Howard Pollack, they “leaned heavily in the direction of Marx, and [were] fashioned in some degree on the Russian group, The Five, or the French, Les Six. Yet though these composers practiced much greater stylistic diversity than their Russian and French counterparts, they were brought together by Copland.”

Copland’s love of the Americas, in particular Mexico, and his endeavor to expand our understanding of “America” leads Crist to an excellent discussion of the origins of El Salón México, and the Danzón Cubano. Crist looks closely at the relationship between Copland and Carlos Chávez and the influence the Mexican composer had on his American colleague: She does a fine job analyzing Copland’s major compositions from this period, especially such accessible works as An Outdoor Overture (1938), written for the New York High School of Music and Art Orchestra, and the children’s opera The Second Hurricane (1937). Seldom performed today, The Second Hurricane is an important work, for it again “reflects an awareness of the contemporary American political, social, and cultural context and influence of the Popular Front.”

Crist comments that Copland was “slightly disappointed in the European attempt to write Gebrauchsmusik (music for use, or utilitarian music), especially the works of Kurt Weill and Paul Hindemith.” Copland seemed to agree with the assessment of Marc Blitzstein, who, in a 1934 article in Modern Music magazine, calls it “music which abjectly copied what the mob already learned to like. Instead of educating, it panders.”

I remember an interview that appeared when I was a student of Copland in the late 1940s. Copland was asked to comment on the fact that his music seems to perfectly evoke the feeling and ethos of America’s West. “That is very strange,” he answered rather sarcastically, “since I have never been west of Albany.” It was an offhand remark, of course, and Crist poignantly discusses the origins of Billy the Kid and Rodeo. These ballets, both about the West, have sociological and liberal political ramificiations. Rodeo, Crist explains, “envisions frontier democracy as a negotiation of individual and civic welfare, of personal expression and public good.” This is an “egalitarian, democratic West . . . entirely fit to serve as a usable past for present reform.”

With the sudden alliance between Hitler and Stalin in 1939 and the United States’ joining the war in 1941, America’s Left, and with it Copland, were shocked into a new reality. Though they did not give up their social and political ideals, their concerns turned toward a distinct Americanism. Copland had already made use of American folk songs, but he now fused folk elements and gestures in a new way to create an American sound — a Copland signature — that we all recognize as his. Fanfare for the Common Man from 1942, which became the basis of the final movement of his Third Symphony, possibly his masterpiece, presents this sound at its majestic best.

Crist speculates on the reasons Copland’s output slowed after the war. “His musical philosophy was repudiated by the cultural politics and aesthetic ideology of 1950s liberalism, and the progressive ideals that had proved so motivating in the era of Depression and war were, within the tenets of anticommunist ideology, considered at best naïve and at worst seditious.”

Although Copland’s popularity receded in the 1950s and ’60s beause of the prevailing preoccupation with more complex musical styles, his is today probably the most performed American music in the concert hall. The reason is simple: Audiences love it and orchestras and choruses are eager to perform it.

Crist has written an excellent book, full of insight into the times and Copland’s musical aesthetics. And while occasionally her concern with the political overwhelms the musical, this volume is, after all, not only for musicians or even for music lovers, but for all those who are interested in the struggles of the artists during one of the most trying and critical times of our national existence.

Samuel Adler is the composer of more than 400 published works and is a faculty member of The Juilliard School. In 2003 he was awarded ASCAP’s Aaron Copland Prize for lifetime achievement in composition and composition teaching.

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/alumni/Magazine/Fall2006/copland.html

Friday, February 22, 2008

Texas Cowboys and Cowgirls Shoot from the Hip


It’s gratifying to see our two Democrat candidates for President greeted so warmly in Dallas this week.

In 1963, many Dallasites likely would have spit on them.


Many of us have seen tv footage of one of Dallas's radical right moms beating Adlai Stevenson on the head with a sign in 1963


Everyone who lived in Dallas in 1963 was traumatized by the JFK assassination.

I’m reading Dallas Public and Private by Warren Leslie, which was written 1964 and analyzes pre-assassination and post-assassination Dallas.



And Casa Linda's own U.S. Senator Bruce Alger led a group of radical right hens to jostle poor Lady Bird and her husband during another Dallas visit during that time period.




Here are some interesting observations about post-assassination Dallas:


The world has indeed treated Dallas and Texas harshly. “Do not bring your children to this city” was the lead paragraph of a news story in Lord Beaverbrook’s London Evening Standard, written by his granddaughter. “Giants 27, Assassins 21,” somebody said, and it was a shock to understand that the “Assassins” were the Cowboys, Dallas’ professional football team.

“Where you living now?” a bartender at the St. Regis in New York asked an old customer, a former New Yorker.

“Still in Dallas.”

“I’d have thought you’d been coming home by now,” the bartender said. “Or going somewhere.”

In Los Angeles, shortly after the assassination, a fashion writer for the Dallas News, covering the California market, found it impossible to get room service. “Seems to take a little longer for the people from Dallas,” a waiter explained.

In New York, a returning visitor to Europe spent less time than usual in customs. “Dallas,” the customs official said, looking at her declaration. “Hell, don’t stick around here. Just go home.” He walked away.

After studying the city for a short time, a visiting journalist said, “If I were a liberal living in Dallas, I might try to shoot a President just to get attention.”

And a familiar remark now, among the thousands that have been made about the Dallas police: “I don’t think the Dallas police force is so bad—look how quickly they
caught Ruby.”

Tomboys and Sissies, Prissies and Studs


When I was growing up in the fifties, we had two types of kids who were sometimes bullied--tomboys and sissies.


At school I had a friend named Betty who walked like an Amazon among her classmates. Always bigger and stronger than both the boys and girls, she used her strength to get her way.


I liked her alot and expressed my affection by kidding her (verbally). I think she liked me alot, too, and expressed her affection by kicking me very hard (physically) on my shins.


If my mother had been as protective of me as other mothers, she would have called Betty's mom and told her to make Betty stop making those big bruises on her sonny's legs.


Kids can be so cruel.


We know more today about why we had all these gender differences. And observing our cohorts' progress through life, we can see that those with a certain level of androgyny have fared well--perhaps even better--than the prissies and studs.





Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Whodunit? Who Killed JFK and Lindsey Rose Mitchell?

In 1963, Dallas was the site of the biggest and most complex murder case in U.S. history.

From Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Vincent Bugliosi. WW Norton, 2007.

Political author Thomas Powers cannot be accused of hyperbole when he observes that Kennedy’s assassination “was probably the greatest single traumatic event in American history.” Years later, it remains a festering wound on the nation’s psyche. Though Powers made his remark several years ago, its truth continues to this day. . . .

Throughout the years, national polls have consistently shown that the percentage of Americans who believe that there was a conspiracy in the assassination usually fluctuates from 70 to 80 percent, down to 10 to 20 percent for those who believe only one person was involved, with about 5 to 15 percent having no opinion. The most recent Gallup Poll, conducted on November 10–12, 2003, shows that a remarkable 75 percent of the American public reject the findings of the Warren Commission and believe there was a conspiracy in the assassination. Only 19 percent believe the assassin acted alone, with 6 percent having no opinion.

It is believed that more words have been written about the assassination than any other single, one-day event in world history. Close to one thousand books have been written. So why the need for this book, which can only add to an already overwhelming surfeit of literature on the case? The answer is that over 95 percent of the books on the case happen to be pro-conspiracy and anti–Warren Commission, so certainly there is a need for far more books on the other side to give a much better balance to the debate. But more importantly, although there have been hundreds of books on the assassination, no book has even attempted to be a comprehensive and fair evaluation of the entire case, including all of the major conspiracy theories. .
. .

I have spent many hours over the last month surveying what’s on the web about 1963 Dallas and JFK assassination theories. The Internet contains an enormous amount of conflicting and mis- information. On no other topic is the web likely to be such an inaccurate source for information. In 2008, a researcher studying the subject with a fresh eye is likely to be impressed with how many experts, having been “around the barn,” are convinced that both Oswald and Ruby acted alone.

http://www.reclaiminghistory.com/

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/oswald/more/fr.html

On a lighter note, fictional mystery is much neater than true crime, and 1961 BA grad Mary Elizabeth Goldman has recently published a mystery novel rich with nostalgia about teenage years in the White Rock Lake area.

To Love and Die in Dallas by Mary Elizabeth Goldman. Forge Books, 2007.


Here’s a lengthy excerpt that captures some of the late 1950s Casa Linda nostalgia.

http://www.tor-forge.com/Excerpt.aspx?isbn=9780765309341#Excerpt

In her Author’s Note, Goldman recounts how she came to write the book:


Years went by quickly and one day in the early spring I received a notice of my upcoming high school class reunion. Early on I had resolved, and up until then had managed, to avoid such events but apparently time had softened me and now I was curious to discover what had become of my classmates at the school “near the city’s eastern borders underneath the Texas sky.”

Were the football players still popular? Did the ROTC cadets continue to stand at attention, did the class personalities become as successful as I imagined? Did the cheerleaders continue to exude bubbly encouragement? Did the preacher’s daughter ever learn to behave, and was homecoming queen still the most enviable girl alive? Sadly, there were several, too many, missing from this one time hopeful group of wide-eyed wonders, but Vietnam, the drug culture, and the sexual revolution had that effect on many graduating classes in the sixtieth decade of the twentieth century. I wanted to bring them back, to remember them in an imaginary world, and as a result, I created a handful of eager young people found here in the pages of To Love and Die in Dallas. I hope you enjoy reading the mystery, perhaps solving it as you go, and almost recognizing the characters portrayed.

And, the answers to the above questions are absolutely yes, in every case!

http://www.maryelizabethgoldman.com/

Monday, February 4, 2008

Jews, Negroes and Mexicans in the City—Part 1


In the early 1950s, my parents waged battle at their new Casa View suburban home against Johnson grass and nut grass as they worked to cultivate their St. Augustine and Bermuda.


Other battles were being waged in the city.




From White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in Dallas, 1841-2001, by Michael Phillips, Univ. of TX Press, 2006.

By 1948 a nine-square-mile community of 25,000 blacks, Mexican Americans, and poor whites lived on a low flood plain in West Dallas. Created by the earlier construction of levees along the Trinity River, West Dallas consisted of “flimsy shacks, abandoned gravel pits, garbage dumps, open toilets, and shallow wells.” Fewer than 10 percent of those dwellings had indoor toilets, and only 15 percent had running water. Tenants drank from wells located near human waste disposals. West Dallas accounted for 50 percent of the city’s typhus cases, 60 percent of tuberculosis, and 30 percent of polio.

Desperation forced relatively prosperous blacks to again venture in the early 1950s into the Exline Park neighborhood, scene of the 1940-41 bombings. Twelve bombs in the next year and a half targeted homes sold to blacks in formerly all-white neighborhoods in a two-square-mile area of South Dallas. Not expecting white protection, African Americans armed themselves. Juanita Craft noted in a letter to Walter White, the executive director of NAACP, that bombing stopped on Crozier Street when “the widow Sharpe” ran from her home firing a gun at a speeding getaway car after one explosion.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/021008dnmetcraft.316526e.html


1946 State Fair of Texas

http://dallaslibrary.org/CTX/photogallery/marionbutts/places.htm

Friday, February 1, 2008

The Conquest of Cool

In the late fifties, boys and girls tuned in to coolness. Boys like me were groomed by older siblings. What were the fashions? Ducktail hairdo, Lee jeans, white t-shirts, Marlboros, black leather jackets and shoes with taps—all modeled from the now dominant media, television and movies. Think Marlon, Elvis and James Dean.













From Lead Us into Temptation: The Triumph of American Materialism, by James B. Twitchell, Columbia University Press, 1999.
What separates the way we live now from earlier times is that the style leaders tend to be younger than the style followers. Once kids were the only ones with sufficient disposable time and money to consume, once advertisers realized that you sell to those who have not made brand choices, and once television became the primary medium of learning, trickle down reversed directions and became bubble up. As you gradually captured the machinery of consumption and the delivery of entertainment, groundswells passed through commercial culture. What started in the 1920s, chronicled by Fitzgerald as the defining aspect of the Jazz Age, has become the norm: upper and lower crusts sprung unpluggable leaks.

Never underestimate television. In print/magazine culture you show a picture of a debutante or royal beauty puffing on your cigarette, or washing with your soap, and social aspiration does the job of inflating the diffusion bubble. With movies, so much the better, simply insert a movie star. But television is different. It is programmed by those who don’t care about diffusion theory, and this audience doesn’t know top from bottom. As Seinfeld, showed, the changes now jump all over the place, George is not the usual avatar of fashion.

To be sure, modern fashion has always been willing to absorb sideways influence, the look of the street. Where would high fashion be without prostitutes and perverts? Think only of how successfully the cosmetic industry adopted facepaint and lipstick of streetwalkers. Where do you think short skirts and four-inch stilettos come from if not from the red light district? Over the last thirty years, fashion designers have also spent many hours in the fetishist’s closet. How else to account for all the corsets, pointy bras, rubber macintoshes, frilly underwear, leather and latex gear, body rings, and tattoos? These appropriations have been so masterly that most trendy dressers who have adopted them have no idea about the fetishistic roots of their fashion. Meanwhile, there are doubtless fetishists running around fretting that their magical objects have been drained of the magical power.



The height of chic is cool, and nothing is more cool than to look poor, downtrodden, and beyond style.

Body piercing, scarification, nose rings, lip rings, unmentionable rings, plus that old standby, tattooing, are not so much the signs of rebellion as of the colonization of the personal space left. Quick! Brand yourself before the worldwide conglomerated package goods company headquartered somewhere out in the American Midwest does it for you.

This kind of self-customizing is stunning, literally. It is on the edge. The epidermis, which the ancient Romans branded as punishment for disobedience (a stigma, literally a brand), has come full circle with self-stigmatization. In a world where second-hand smoke, sugar, saccharin, and asbestos are the hobgoblins, in a culture that spends part of its energy telling kids how great they are and the rest saying there is no room for them at the inn, in a commercial world in which adolescents can drive the car, but only to the clotted mall, it is not unreasonable that youngsters should turn to such rites of self-imposed initiation. Where is the risk of danger in a world of air bags, training wheels, and curbs on sidewalks? Such self-branding seems to say, “been there, done nothing, don’t care, on my own.”

Thursday, January 31, 2008

White Flight from Reinhardt

Originally, Martin Luther King Jr. Learning Center was named Colonial Hill. It was built in 1902 and was named after the affluent Anglo-American community it served. In the mid-fifties, the neighborhood experienced a transition as the population became increasingly African-American. The transition in the community led to African-American students being assigned to the school which was renamed Colonial Elementary School in 1957. Colonial Elementary served grades 1 - 8.

The Colonial attendance zone has experienced many changes under several court orders. From 1964 until the 1976 court order, Colonial served grades 1 - 6. In 1976, students in grades 4-6 were reassigned to Reinhardt Elementary.
http://www.dallasisd.org/SCHOOLS/es/i_l/mlk/history.htm


Perhaps the most significant problem was the flight of whites to the suburbs: in 1970 the Dallas school district was 58% white, 34% black and 8% Mexican American. Seven years later whites numbered only 35%.

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,919609,00.html

The Year BA Desegregated

Learning from the Past
By Christopher Dill


I attended Bryan Adams High School in Dallas, Texas from 1971 to 74. Court ordered busing was instigated my first year with about 600 inner city blacks bused in to a predominantly white school of about 3,000.

Everything was fine for the first few months Then there was the first fight between a black and white student at lunch time. The brothers of both fighters jumped in and it quickly spread but was stopped minutes later.

However, the line had been crossed and at lunch the next day, two groups of white and black students faced each other across the tennis court, which was basically our quad. Security, coaches and some teachers kept the two groups apart. You could slice the tension it was so thick.

Suddenly, two senior hippies (yeah, this was back in the days) walked out onto the center of the tennis court and began circling each other, like WWF wrestlers.

Nobody, including the staff knew what they were doing until they began 'wrestling', including, head locks, begging for mercy, etc. Both groups of whites and black were roaring with laughter, cheering these two clowns on. Totally broke the ice.

There were no more problems the rest of the year, until the last week of school. Then some trouble maker put up racist flyers and we had our first full on riot the last day of school involving upwards of 200 students. Kids got hurt, but school was over for the summer.

Unfortunately, the black students took it on the chin that day, so the first day of school the following year, a large group of black students, about 80 -100, attacked a group of about a dozen white students. Ironically, the white students were hippies and I was one of them.

They backed us up into the lunch room where the majority of students were still eating lunch. The fighting spread into the cafeteria, then throughout the school. The papers said 500-700 students were involved. I thought that was conservative considering the scope o f the riot. This was the worst rioting ever at a US high school, before or since. Worse than South Boston, worse than Central High in Arkansas.

Ambulances pulled up to the back of the school and I carried a buddy down to the clinic. We played on the soccer team and his face was cut open by a belt buckle. I then snuck out to the parking lot with some other friends to get away. We saw students getting jumped by roving gangs of other students as we drove off, an unforgettable image and memory.

The next day, the riot squad, or swat team, was stationed at our school. There were at least twenty police cars parked around the perimeter and every hallway had at least two, sometimes four uniformed and plains-clothes policemen. This level of security remained pretty much in place for the first semester, then was scaled back for the second semester. Suffice to say, there was no fighting the rest of the year.

When I returned my senior year, everyone pretty much thought the problems were over. Security was greatly reduced and things remained calm...until the last week of school when tensions began to mount.

There were a couple of incidents, then the last day got real ugly. A large group of white students from other schools and white non- students from outlying areas showed up with bats, clubs, etc., to confront the blacks getting on the buses. These same buses had been stoned a year earlier in an 'ambush' of sorts.

The police were there this day, but not nearly enough to contain the situation. Fighting broke out, debris was thrown, but the black students got onto their buses and escaped this mob. I will never forget the look on some of their faces. Fear mainly, which no doubt later turned to anger.

I graduated, there were a few incidents the next year and not long after court ordered busing ceased in Dallas at any rate. All in all, it was a disaster for most of the white students I talked with years later (I never ran into any black students). People were embittered by the experience and only had their prejudices reinforced, certainly not healed.

It took me quite awhile to get over it and I now realized just how much my high school years were affected by the turmoil, especially academically and socially. The atmosphere was poisoned by the violence.

The administration carted out the usual standard ineffective solutions such as forming endless committees and discussion groups to improve race relations and “move forward.”

The same people who participated in these charades had absolutely no influence or credibility amongst the student population who probably viewed these students -- as I did – as opportunists simply padding their resumes for college. You never saw these kids out trying to break up fights or stave off potential fights, like me and my hippie friends did later, once we were seniors.

By the way, I spoke with some blacks after we hippies were attacked and asked them why we hippies WERE attacked -- since we were the ones who were actually cool with blacks being bused into the school, compared with the redneck types who were typical southern racists and against it.

I was told it was because we had long hair and "looked like girls." I was baffled then. Now, I think it was a merely a lack of REAL communication and interaction between the two cultures. In other words, I think if we had parties with these same blacks... there would be no problems.

How could this be done now? Don't get me started, but you can't simply get a small diverse group of smart students together in a classroom to come up with simplistic solutions to very complicated problems, and the problem of race relations in greater Los Angeles is much more complicated and evolving.

There has to be an active change in the culture of the school. You have to get very large groups of students, say the entire grade together, in Barnum Hall and get the students up on stage who are causing the problems and let them answer to their peers. Most likely, it would be a humbling experience.

Also, the administration has to be clever. The two seniors who staged the mock wrestling match probably had a greater effect at diffusing tension than all the security, committees, and endless discussions combined.

The administration might want to consider a similar tactic though I doubt they will, but keep in mind, as Mark Twain said, nothing stands against the onslaught of humor. Get students laughing together and they may Not take themselves and their conflicts so seriously.

Another idea is to play classical music at lunch time. Police departments are starting to do this in major cities in the US and Europe and it has proven to be effective in reducing crime and cleaning up crime ridden areas. It has a soothing effect on people. Some don't like it, but it will definitely set a particular tone that may be conducive to non-violence.

At any rate, do not play rap on campus, or any other popular music for that matter. The students can and will listen to that stuff all they want outside of school. Introduce a little mainstream culture, I say.

Another suggestion... recently my son went to the SAMOHI Alumni Awards and spoke with a '65 alum. She told him that back then, they got 1 hour and 15 minutes for lunch and most kids would go down to the beach and hang out, swim, surf, just generally have a good respite at the beach.

My own personal suggestion -- a big beach party for the entire school, well supervised and organized with food, games, music (reggae), etc. In fact, the SAMOHI Surf Club put on such a party last summer at the end of school. Hardly anybody from the school showed up but we had a blast anyway.

But what do I know...I'm just a surfer. I can't even get my calls returned by the administration or district concerning the surf program at SAMOHI. I doubt they would be interested in what I have to say about the current problems on campus. I'm sure they don't need my help.

Do I think these problems will get worse? I have no idea. Did I see it coming? I did indeed. My kids tell me about every fight and altercation because they know what their dad went through.

I do know one thing... each time my kids tell me about a fight or altercation, the incidents seem to get worse and worse...and this DOES remind me of my high school years. So, if anybody does has a line in with the district or administration, feel free to forward my opinion... for what it's worth.

Christopher Dill has two children at Samohi and is a volunteer surf coach.

http://www.surfsantamonica.com/ssm_site/the_lookout/letters/Letters-2005/April-2005/04_21_05_Learning_fron_the_Past.htm



http://www.flickr.com/photos/therefore/18636595/

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Oilmen, Policemen and Nightclub Owners in the Suburbs

One aspect of growing up is making sense of your place in the world based on what your parents do for a living. In the suburban neighborhood where I grew up in the fifties, my daddy was a businessman who went to a downtown office building every day. He often worked late into the night and through the weekend. By late teens, I had categorized him as a computerdooter—he managed the accounting and tax records for bigtime oil men like Clint Murchison and Jake L. Hamon.


IBM programmer and machine operator with IBM motto circa 1950s

Many southwest daddies made their livings connected somehow to the oil industry. On the street where I grew up, we had two other types of daddies who seemed strange and alien to me. Two families had daddies who were policemen and one family had a dad who owned a bar with pool tables down on East Grand.

In the last week or so I’ve found much info on the web about the lives of Dallas oilmen, policemen and nightclub owners in 1963. Why? Because the President was assassinated here. Not only have numerous governmental agencies investigated the city, but thousands of conspiracy theorists and even Hollywood continue to spend much time obsessed with this time in U.S. history.

I was too young to have had a chance to visit Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club, but here’s a clip of a Hollywood rendition of what went on. The dancer is a fantasy combination of Candy Barr, Judith Campbell Exner, and Marilyn Monroe. In the last scene, Ruby defends working gals and the American Guild of Variety Artists.



Click below for photos from Carousel:

http://s194.photobucket.com/albums/z214/diocynic/Carousel/

Here's more on Candy Barr:

http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/celebrity/candy_barr/1_index.html

By 1966 or so, I was old enough to go from Dallas to Ft. Worth with a carload of high school friends to visit the Cellar. The dancers removed their bottoms as well as tops. They had lights and buzzers to warn if a police raid was occurring.

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/TT/xdt1.html

If you misbehaved bad enough, the bouncers would throw you down the stairs just like Jack Ruby had done at the Carousel. [Here’s a link to descriptions of Ruby’s abilities as a bouncer of drunks from his club:

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ruby5.htm

] Supposedly the Cellar didn’t have a liquor license at the time I visited, so you could buy whiskey-flavored drinks for $4 each. By 1 am or so, I was becoming a bit sleepy from the drinks and endless naked bodies. Sitting Indian-style of the floor , I laid back on a cushion. One of the barmaids kicked me in the head—they were much rougher that Reinhardt teachers—notifying me that I had better sit up and behave.

In the early 70s, I had a friend who took me to the Busy Bee on South Industrial and the Fare on Greenville. Busy Bee was a traditional burlesque joint. The dancers were older and obviously skilled dancers who could do amazing things with their breasts. The Fare had skinny, young go-go dancers.

At this link, Joe Bob describes some of the later history of exotic dancing in Dallas:

http://www.joebobbriggs.com/misccolumns/newpuritanism.asp

Several years ago, the Dallas CVB suffered scandal in part because bed tax funds were used to take convention planners to Dallas strip clubs.

http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~clj5/Ethics/articles/Isbell31.pdf

A criteria for many meeting planners is if their conventioneers will find a good selection of strip clubs in the city where they hold their convention—same as in Jack Ruby’s days. And I’m sure there are some Dallas policemen who have complex relationships with the nightclub owners. The national association of gentlemen's club owners recognizes Dallas's important role in this trade group. http://www.acenational.org/default.aspx

Big oilmen in Dallas continue to run many things, just like H.L. Hunt and Clint Murchison used their power in Dallas 1963. Arkansas oilman Jerry Jones follows Bum Bright and Clint Murchison (both of whom helped pay for the DMN Kennedy Questions ad the morning of the assassination) and Lamar Hunt, son of H.L. Hunt, in their hobbies of prime time sports glamour. Check out conspiracy theorists' stories about Murchison, Hunt and Bright at

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmurchison.htm

And what LBJ’s "girlfriend" had to say about Dallas oilmen at


http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/august2006/300806jfk.htm

Monday, January 7, 2008

John Birchers and Bridge Ladies in the Suburbs and Phyllis Schafly Fighting ERA

In previous blogs about my experiences growing up in the suburban East Dallas in the fifties and sixties, I’ve examined blue collar workers, white collar workers, organization men, creeps, and bridge ladies in the suburbs.

I have not addressed another category—John Birchers in the suburbs—and a political connection that is old news to many but interesting to a straight white, oblivious boy like me.

Flyer anonymously printed and distributed in Dallas just before Kennedy's visit


We all remember Kennedy’s assassination and the worldwide incrimination of Dallas as a “city of hate” that somehow fostered the killing. When Kennedy began his morning at a Fort Worth hotel, he considered the hostile Dallas political environment, as shown in a Dallas Morning News advertisement published that morning.

In the aftermath, the Warren Commission found that both the DMN ad and the flyer were irrelevant; the ad was created and funded by Birchers and wealthy Dallas businessmen, including Bum Bright. The John Birch Society, which had a strong following in the fifties and sixties in the wealthy, white Dallas suburbs, claimed the assassination bolstered their conviction that a communist conspiracy existed in the U.S. http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/birch.htm

I’ve never had much interest in JFK assassination theories or the history of the Equal Rights Amendment, but reading Barbara Ehrenbach's The Hearts of Men [which though published in 1983, stands credible and current today] has drawn for me a connection between the conservative businessmen and their bridge-playing, stay-at-home wives, on the one hand, and the defeat of the ERA in the early eighties.

. . . Phyllis Schafly was not one of those housewives who, as Betty Friedan observed, let homemaking “expand to fill the time available” and crowd out all youthful ambitions. Sheltered by Fred Schlafly’s more than ample income and assisted by a part-time housekeeper, she developed a new career as a one-woman propagandist for far-right concerns, publishing (and in some cases self-publishing) eight books on the twin menace of the Soviet Union and its domestic dupes. Politically, she kept one foot in the right-wing of the Republican Party and the other in the nether world of paranoid, evangelical organizations which made up what was then known complacently as the “lunatic fringe” of American conservatism. She ran for Congress as a Republican and wrote a best-selling book (A Choice Not an Echo) endorsing Barry Goldwater as the Republican candidate in 1964. At the same time, she believed that the party had been taken over by a “small group of secret kingmakers using hidden persuaders and psychological warfare techniques” to advance the interests of the “Red Empire.” If this sounds like a highly imaginative view of the Republican Party, it was by no means unique to Phyllis Schlafly. The John Birch Society, a semi-secret, right-wing organization that gained a sizable rural and suburban middle-class following the early 1960s, had consistently warned that the United States was already “50%-70% Communist-controlled.” Like Schlafly [a St. Louis, not a Dallas housewife], the Birch Society saw evidence of Red manipulation in any statesman or politician whose military aspirations fell short of nuclear Armageddon. In 1960, for example, the society’s founder and director, Robert Welch, made the surprising announcement that President Dwight D. Eisenhower was himself a Communist operative.

. . .
In 1972, both the Birch Society and Schlafly’s newsletter flagged the ERA—which at the time was solidly backed by the Republican Party—as a major new political target, and within a few months, Phyllis Schlafly emerged as the leader of a national campaign to stop the ERA. The most obvious reason for this sudden surge of right-wing interest in a feminist issue was that, by the early seventies, the old issues were not selling as well as they once had. Charges of communism in high places sounded quaint in an America that had had its own highly visible and hardly conspiratorial New Left. Détente was in progress, anticommunism was on the decline, and sheer opportunism would have impelled the right to exploit the new issues arising from social changes of the sixties—school busing, affirmative action, abortion and equal rights for women. For Schlafly, in addition, as her chronicler Lisa Wohl suggests, the ERA presented an opportunity to “enter the mainstream,” that is, to gain national attention around an issue that had no apparent connection to the tired themes of far-right paranoia. Others on the pro-ERA side made the same assessment of the right-wingers who were beginning to appear reborn as antifeminists. Pointing to the connection between anti-ERA activism and the far-right American Independent Party (which ran George Wallace for President in 1968 and Birch-affiliated John Schmitz in 1972), Congresswoman Martha Griffiths charged that the anti-ERA effort was really “a means of building a right-wing political organization among women.” But if this was opportunism, it was hardly unprincipled: The major themes of the right-wing assault on feminism were latent in far-right anti-communist ideology before feminism became a force in America.

www.phyllisschlafly.com/
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/coulter071802.asp

These guilts by association--John Birch Society related to Phyllis Schaffly related to anti-ERA politics--have exact parallels in attacks against Betty Friedan, that in her early 20s in the late forties, she was a socialist. Both women had need to dissemble about their previous political associations as their new political careers developed. As we near the 2008 Presidential elections, one cannot ignore the vicious political divisions in our country--and as Hillary said this week, that politics and the nation may be on the edge of "spinning out of control." But in some ways, this is old news when one considers the hostile political environment I grew up in during the cold war fifties and early sixties. Let's elect a President who will work to put the ERA back on the table and/or encourage social programs for our distressed citizenship--hardly a frightful possibility compared to rocketing multimegaton nuclear warheads into North Korean or Russian cities.



YouTube has a couple of videos that focus on Dallas news footage of Birchers from the early sixties, including the exploits of Edwin A Walker:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKwalker.htm

Once I had a driver's license, in the late 1960s, I remember driving by the John Birch Society's headquarters, which I believe was at the intersection of Blackburn and Oak Lawn. Jack Ruby supposedly frequented Phil's Delicatessen down the street. After he was arrested, he was certain the Birchers were out to get him.
http://karws.gso.uri.edu/JFK/Issues_and_evidence/Jack_Ruby/Timeline_of_Ruby.html

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/ruby_j1.htm

More sixties Dallas trivia--about connections among right wingers, organized crime, and strippers such as Candy Barr and Chris Colt and her 45s can be found at

http://www.lotuseaters.net/jfkdad.shtml

http://www.jfklancerforum.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=3&topic_id=19378&mesg_id=19378&listing_type=