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Marra, the Movies, American History, and Irony

The history of the United States is filled with contradictions and ironies. I am reminded of them often. The latest reminder comes from a novel, Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra, also author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena and The Tsar of Love and Techno.

Mercury Pictures, a minor Hollywood film studio, is struggling to survive in the summer 1941. Art Feldman, its head, is making a movie about the propaganda successes of fascism, but censors want to gut the work because the film, still in the days of America First isolationism, is encouraging the country to get involved in the European war. Riots ensue when it is shown on December 6, but, of course, the picture is a hit the next day. Not much subaudition is necessary to grasp the irony–seeing the need to thwart Hitler was deemed un-American before the Pearl Harbor bombs, and Marra reminds us that the epithet “a premature antifascist” would be uttered without apparent irony for decades after the war’s conclusion. (And, of course, the term antifascist has not disappeared as an epithet.)

          Mercury Pictures also presents a sample of the fraught world of Chinese Americans during that time. Henry Lu, a native Los Angeleno, is an actor who can only get movie work playing Japanese villains, and, even though Japan had brutally invaded China in the 1930s, Lu, like others of Chinese descent in America, was in constant danger from “real” Americans who might mistake him for a Japanese national once we entered the war. (I remember a newsreel I saw as a kid that was shot shortly after Pearl Harbor. An Asian man had pinned to his shirt a sign that said, “I am Chinese and a loyal American.” It made me feel sad and reminded me of a different newsreel from Germany where people stood being mocked and abused with placards hanging from their necks reading, “I am a dirty Jew.”)

          Marra does mention the irony of the United States rounding up citizens to put them in places that had more than a whiff of concentration camps, and that many other Americans benefited from the internments by taking the well-tended farms and other lands of the Japanese Americans. But long before the removals of the Japanese Americans, many American states made no distinction between the Chinese and Japanese in forbidding Asian non-citizens from owning land. While many may know that the Supreme Court upheld the internment of Japanese Americans, two decades before Korematsu v. United States, the Supreme Court upheld Washington state’s Alien Land Law, which prohibited Asians from owning property. Only after World War II, perhaps as a result of fighting the Nazis but perhaps also because our Cold War enemy struck propaganda gold in pointing out our racial hypocrisies, did property restrictions start to fade, although I have read that the Washington Alien Land Law was in effect until 1966.

          Mercury Pictures Presents shows America getting into its own propaganda business after it entered the war, but at least at the beginning, the war mongers had their standards and proclaimed that only real combat footage would be used. They quickly learned that the results often seemed to lack verisimilitude and soon began to weave together combat films with reenactments to produce a result that seemed real for the audiences. And, of course, the flag raising at Iwo Jima came to mind.

          Through the character of Maria Lagana, Marra presents another irony of American history. Lagana was born in Rome where her father was a leftist lawyer opposing the emerging fascist government. He is convicted of subversive crimes and sentenced to confino. He is sent to a remote town where he is not imprisoned behind bars but is confined to a small geographic space. He can move around this limited area, but he cannot leave it, much like a dog in a yard with an invisible fence. While he is confined, Maria and her mother escape from Italy and settle in Los Angeles where Maria eventually becomes an important figure in Mercury Pictures. Although by the time America enters the war Maria has spent most of her life in California and is a loyal American, she is classified as an enemy alien. I had not known that one of the consequences of such a designation was that Maria could not travel beyond five miles from her residence. She, who had fled Mussolini, was confined just as her father was for opposing Mussolini.

          While Lagana may have been a fictional character, she represents a major irony of the Hollywood studios of the era. While the films they produced helped define America and Americanism to America and the world, many of the major studio figures were refugees from the tyrannies of Europe who would become “enemy aliens” when we entered the war. One of them in the novel was a Berlin-born woman who built miniatures for the movies. She is sent to the Utah desert to help with a project I had not heard of before but was real. [While often I do not know whether to trust the history depicted in a work of historical fiction, I trust Marra in Mercury Pictures Presents. Besides the usual acknowledgements, Marra also presents a bibliography of three or four dozen history books, as well as other material, he used to form his narrative.] On the Dugway Proving Grounds, the Army built a simulation of a Berlin neighborhood as accurately as it could in order to test out the best way to start a firestorm in the German city. According to us, we were fighting a moral war against evil, but we sometimes used morally questionable methods to fight the war, and that included firebombing civilians. The proposed bombing of Berlin had additional ironies; the plan was to decimate a working-class neighborhood because the buildings were closer together there than in middle- and upper-class sections of the city even though the targeted neighborhood had been one of leftists who had opposed the rise of Hitler. I don’t think we ever did firebomb the Prussian capital, but we did firebomb Dresden, as Kurt Vonnegut described in Slaughterhouse Five. And before the atomic bombs, we had firebombed Tokyo, with its highly flammable structures, killing an estimated 100,000 civilians. (Malcom Gladwell in The Bomber Mafia presents some of the World War II debates about the morality of different bombing strategies.)

(continued November 30)

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The Unifying Turkey

Jokes are made about the difficult family interactions on Thanksgiving. The stock character is the uncle with politically incorrect views. I am sure that many versions of this person exist, but I have also known many people with crazy leftist conspiratorial views. Don’t uncles with such baseless opinions also go to Thanksgiving dinners? 

However, even though there may be arguments over the table, Thanksgiving is truly one of our most unifying days. Not everyone likes it, but almost every American, no matter their politics, their religion, their ethnic origins, or their age, eats, or in some way deals, with turkey on the fourth Thursday in November. Over 45 million turkeys are consumed then, which must mean that the majority of the country has the bird. Some French cook said something about you are what you eat. You are an American when you eat turkey on Thanksgiving.

Of course, not everyone does. It may surprise you, but sometimes vegans or vegetarians are regarded as Americans, and they still celebrate the holiday. Asked what they eat, they might reply, “Instead of turkey, I am making a mushroom Wellington.” Small families might find that a turkey is too large and say that instead of turkey they will have a roast duck or a roast chicken. I have known some people who say that they can’t abide turkey and say that they will have salmon or roast pork instead of turkey. (The two examples that come readily to mind, however, were a Mexican American who planned to return to his birthplace after saving some money and a single man born in Germany.) The point is that even the minority who don’t eat turkey say what they will eat instead of turkey. Just as others deal with turkey by considering wet brining, dry brining, no brining, frozen, heritage, low heat, high heat, dark meat, white meat, wings, and drumsticks, the minority who do not eat it, deal with turkey on Thanksgiving. Can you give any other explanation for a tofu turkey?

We should give thanks for the unifying turkey, just as we should give thanks for anything that helps unify America. After all, Thanksgiving should not only be a day of feasting but also a time for giving thanks. After the onslaught of Covid, we give thanks for what the Puritans gave thanks for: that they (with the help of the original Americans) survived. In addition, I am going to give thanks that America has mostly, or at least partially, survived the Puritans.

I expect to be recovering on Friday and will take time off. The blog will be back next Monday.

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Snippets

Many modern editions of classic novels have an introduction before the text written by a critic or scholar. I don’t read these introductions until completing the book. I recently read Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig in a New York Review of Books edition. It had a thirteen-page introduction by Joan Acocella. Half her introduction gave me biographical information about Zweig and useful context for the novel. All of that might have been helpful before reading Beware the Pity, but the other half of the introduction summarized the novel with quotations of key paragraphs from the book. If I had read this introduction before reading the novel, I would have known much of what I was later to read, which would have undermined the power of Zweig’s creation. I don’t understand these prefatory essays It’s why I only read them after I finish the book.

Does sleeping under a weighted blanket make you taller in the morning?

Is there a difference between a “price point” and a “price”?

The stakes are high in the Georgia Senatorial runoff election. Many in the House and Senate from Lauren Boebert to Tommy Tuberville are desperate for Herschel Walker to win. If he does, then they can finally be confident that they are not the most ignorant politicians in Congress.

A wise person said: “Remain silent and others suspect that you are ignorant; talk and you remove all doubt of it.”

Elizabeth Holmes was just sentenced. As a young woman, she claimed to have developed a revolutionary medical test where one drop of blood would be enough for a wide range of diagnostics. Using family connections, an imitation of Steve Jobs, and a wonderful publicity machine, she was able to get many famous and important people to be on the board of and investors in her company Theranos. She became a rich person and a feminist icon until it became clear that she and her company were frauds. She then dropped the strong woman persona and adopted the little girl one. She was not responsible for the blatant lies and cheating, she said, since she was suffering from the emotional and sexual abuse from her decade-long partner who also was a head of Theranos. Even so, a jury convicted her. What most struck me about her sentencing last week was that she quoted Rumi. It may (perhaps) not always be gag worthy to quote the mystic thirteenth century Sufi poet, scholar, and mystic, but it should be natural for the sentencing judge to add a few months onto the planned sentence for such a performance.

Against my better judgment, I watched a few minutes of a Green Bay Packer game, and I wondered if there are studies confirming that a vaccinated quarterback is more capable of throwing a ball to a receiver than an unvaccinated one.

A student of human nature said: “It seems perfectly natural to attribute our failures to luck, our success to good judgment.”

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First Sentences

“There was a time when the world’s largest airport sat in the middle of western Pacific, around 1,500 miles from the coast of Japan, on one of a cluster of small tropical islands known as the Marianas.” Malcolm Gladwell, The Bomber Mafia.

“In those days, I was the one who came down from Nazareth to be baptized by John in the River Jordan.” Norman Mailer, The Gospel According to the Son.

“In the U.S. elections of 1834, the balance of power in Congress was up for grabs, and the tide was turning against President Andrew Jackson.” Mark Clague, O Say Can You Hear? A Cultural Biography of The Star-Spangled Banner.

“Have you ever seen a town fall?” Fredrik Backman, Us Against You.

“To understand a civilization, consider its heroes.” David Gelles, The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America—and How to Undo His Legacy.

“Otto Burke, the Wizard of Schmoose, raised his game another level.” Harlan Coben, Deal Breaker.

“Of the many times John C.Frémont visited St. Louis, the most auspicious came in 1845.” Steve Inskeep, Imperfect Union: How Jessie and John Frémont Mapped the West, Invented Celebrity, and Helped Cause the Civil War.

“Money, Mississippi, looks exactly like it sounds.” Percival Everett, The Trees.

“Throughout the spring morning of April 14, 1876, a huge crowd, largely African American began to assemble in the vicinity of Seventh and K Streets in Washington, D.C.” David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.

“Mike always teased me about my memory, about how I could go back years and years to what people were wearing on a given occasion, right down to their jewelry or shoes.” Ann Packer, The Dive From Clausen’s Pier.

“In the winter of 1921, Knud Rasmussen invited about one hundred of Copenhagen’s eminent citizens—politicians, artists, journalists and business leaders—to join him at the city’s prestigious Palace hotel for a special dinner.” Stephen R. Brown, White Eskimo: Knud Rasmussen’s Fearless Journey into the Heart of Arctic.

“Like a beast, the net came steaming up the ramp and into the sodium lamps of the trawl deck.” Martin Cruz Smith, Polar Star.

“The first thing I need to do is convince you something has changed.” Ezra Klein, Why We’re Polarized.

“That winter was the warmest in a hundred years.” Robert Stone, Outerbridge Reach.

“Legend tells us that the gerrymander originated in early nineteenth-century Massachusetts.” Nick Seabrook, One Person, One Vote: A Surprising History of Gerrymandering in America.

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Lessons in Life and Calculus

(Guest Post from the Spouse)

I was always good at math…well, in high school. As you know from my previous guest blogs (ajsdad.blog, June 17, 2020, and March 5, 2021), I like puzzles of all kinds, and math is a particularly elegant aspect of the genre. Puzzles are intellectually satisfying because when you have the right answer, when you fit the right piece, when the down word fits comfortably with the across word, you KNOW it’s correct. There’s a shot of dopamine that gives you a small moment of satisfaction. In high school I was particularly fond of and adept at trigonometry.

So imagine my chagrin when I got to college and Calculus overwhelmed me. I must have passed it, but I don’t see how I did. As an adult, I might have been able to muddle through a quadratic equation, but couldn’t find a derivative if my life depended on it.

Things got even worse as my career in neuroscience proceeded. I became aware of “computational neuroscience” sometime in the early aughts of the 21st century. One of my colleagues was a founder of the field. I was pleased to congratulate him on his many well-received publications, but could not understand a single concept that was in them. At one point I said to him, “Maybe I should take a first-year course in Calculus.” “Why?” he countered. “It’s so easy.” (!!!).

Twice. Twice! I ordered Calculus courses from The Teaching Company. To get an idea of the eras of these efforts, one course is on VCR tapes, the other on CDs. I would start a lecture, realize I didn’t know what a radian was and abandon the effort.

Time passed. Retirement came. And I looked around for things to make myself useful. I can read, so I thought maybe I could teach young people to read. That’s an essay for another day. But I also decided that I could probably manage to tutor 6th or 7th graders in math, so I connected with a volunteer tutor group and found myself tutoring a young man in beginning algebra.

Having never TAUGHT math, I sought advice on what to teach and what order to teach it in. That’s how I discovered Khan Academy. This wonderful — free! — online service, founded by Salman Khan, is a treasure trove of 6500 teaching videos in math, science, reading, statistics, economics, history and I don’t know what all. It’s an extraordinary resource for teachers and students alike. Sal seems to have prepared the bulk of the math videos, and he is indeed a gifted teacher. Each video is no more than 10-12 minutes long — usually shorter — and covers a single concept. After 3-4 videos, there is a short quiz to check a student’s progress.  At the end of each unit there’s a slightly longer test to check progress. If one answers all questions correctly, confetti is thrown and trumpets sound. But even if the performance is less than perfect, there are encouraging words (“You’ve made progress” or “Keep practicing”). You can take the quizzes as many times as you need to (they change with each attempt).

So, I thought, I’ll have Sal teach me Calculus.

I started with Pre-calculus, a review of algebra and trigonometry concepts. Sal actually taught me what a radian was so that was exceedingly helpful. After 3-4 months of prep, I felt I was ready for THE CALCULUS. I’m 2-3 months in now and can actually perform derivatives on all types of mathematical situations, she says proudly. Would I say “Easy”? Not so much, but certainly not insurmountable. I have started reviewing the CDs from The Teaching Company. I can understand them now!

Any number of people ask me why in heaven’s name am I taking Calculus? Good question.  A) It’s a great puzzle, but B) I want ultimately to learn what Calculus is good for besides determining velocity and acceleration. So I’m eager to move into the “applications” part of the course which is coming up soon. And, of course, I haven’t even begun to study integral calculus. I haven’t the first clue of what that’s good for. I’ll let you know next semester. Stay tuned.

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Snippets

It was only after the midterms that I learned the Urban Dictionary definition of “Red Wave”: “When a close group of girls sync their periods, which can be quite dangerous for everyone else.”

Another year where I was passed over for the title of sexiest man alive. And again I wondered how sexy someone is if they are dead.

Why is it I have never called any of my doctors by a first name?

You can praise a child after a completed task by saying, as many do, “You are so smart.” But then the child may see intelligence as fixed and feel stupid when they cannot do something. You can also praise the child by saying “You did a good job figuring that out.” Isn’t the message then that knowledge and intelligence are expandable with hard work?

“Don’t limit a child to your learning, for he was born in another time.” Rabbinic saying.

“I pay the schoolmaster, but ‘tis the schoolboys who educate my son.” Ralph Waldo Emerson.

On a recent walk, I passed within a few blocks of each other The Den of Splendor and The Gospel Den. I wondered if there was a correct order to visit these places.

When I first came to New York, before bagel shops or at least places selling Bagel Shaped Objects were ubiquitous, the owner of my local deli was offended if a customer asked for a toasted bagel. A bagel was only toasted if it was stale, but in a good shop, of course, no stale bagel was sold. Instead, they were warm from the water bath and oven so that butter or cream cheese would melt into the chewy interior without toasting. Since then, I never have a toasted bagel in a shop, but the other day, I bought a bagel at a place where I had not been before. I should have had it toasted.

Invariably after I watch what I was looking for on YouTube, I spend too much time on the accompanying recommendations. The other day I went looking for Josephine Baker dancing and ended up with the top thirty songs of 1965. But I was happy that I had. I knew the music, almost all of which was great, and I felt that my life had not been entirely wasted.

In a football game, sometimes after a penalty flag has been thrown and the play concludes, the referee announces, as happened the other day, “There was no penalty on the play for offensive holding.” That phrasing seems to imply that there might, however, been an infraction for offensive pass interference or some of the other myriad football possibilities. I think the official should click off the microphone and say, “There was no penalty on the play.” Full stop.

In a glance in the mirror, which are always kept brief, I thought I saw incipient jowls. On the one hand, I thought, jowls add gravitas to some men. On the other, they make Basset hounds look ridiculous.

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Sweet Dreams Aren’t Made of This

          I don’t ever remember being a sound sleeper, the kind who falls asleep (funny expression, falling asleep; It sounds sort of dangerous) and then wakes up eight hours later refreshed. Instead, from childhood to today, I wake up multiple times during the night with the hope each time that I will quickly return to slumberland, a wish that is not always fulfilled.

          I have read that in times past cultures had what was called a first and second sleep. After waking up after several hours sleep, a person would get up and do some non-strenuous activity—read, catch up on correspondence, knit a shawl, sharpen quills—and then go back to bed. This sounds appealing, and I have told myself many times I should try that, but I never have. I did not have projects to occupy me for an hour or so before the second sleep. I would probably have found it hard to resist going to an electronic device, and I have read many times that one should not do that before going to bed. (Although I have seen that admonition, I have never seen the data on it. Do the studies exist?) Instead, when I wake up that first time or any other time, I go to the bathroom, get back under the covers, and, on a good night, fall back to sleep quickly.

          Sometimes, however, sleep does not come easily again. Then my mind seems to go into overdrive, and that has been occasionally useful. Let’s say that I had been working on some mental activity–trying to write an article for the blog, for example– but had reached an impasse. As I lie sleepless in bed, a thought might pop up that breaks the logjam. Sleeplessness well spent, it then turns out.

          However, it is more often the case that I cannot fall asleep easily again because my mind seems caught in an endless loop about something I can do nothing about that has pissed me off. And because my mind won’t let go of the slight or absurdity, I then get angry at myself for allowing myself to work myself into such a state. And when the same thing merry-go-rounds in the middle of the night several times in the same week, I really get upset with myself and that makes it even harder to sleep. I would love suggestions on how to stop this behavior. “Just get over it,” doesn’t seem to do the trick.

          Sometimes I senselessly stay awake not from a past event but a future one over which I have little to no control. This has been the situation over the past fortnight. During a sleepless night, I often try to fall asleep again by listening to the radio set on a timer to a news station. But almost all the news recently was about the upcoming election and just the briefest mention of the midterms would set my mind racing with my concerns about the country’s future. And even if I did not listen to public radio programs as I tried to end the day, news that I had consumed earlier in the day would pop into my consciousness and set my mind racing. Even though I have been a news junkie for as long as I can remember, for the past few weeks I have tried to avoid the news, and that did help my sleep. On the other hand, I wondered how bizarre I had become. How many other people lie awake at 3 am tossing and turning and thinking about midterms when their only influence over them is their one vote?

          However, sometimes my mind races at night about a future event, and I am sure that others face the same problem in similar situations. I have had about two dozen medical “procedures” and even more tests leading up to them, and often my nervousness concerning the next day, keep me awake. For example, I needed a new heart valve, and I was part of a clinical trial, which meant that I had to undergo more than a few examinations and tests before the “procedure.” I wanted it over with, and I did not sleep well on the night before my last test. I had discomfort in my lower abdomen with an occasional sharp pain. As I lay–awake–in bed, I convinced myself that I had a kidney stone. My mind raced. I didn’t need to go to the emergency room, did I? Maybe the stone would pass naturally with a modicum of pain and blood. Did I know of a doctor to go to? Did the spouse? Could I postpone my stress test? Would this postpone my valve replacement? Surely, I had to deal with the kidney stone first. Finally, I fell asleep but fifty minutes later I was awake again with a racing mind. What should I do about the kidney stone? How do I cancel my heart appointment? Finally, back to sleep again but awake an hour later. So it went all night long until I finally got up to go to the hospital for the test, and the worries about the kidney stone dissipated. I came to the convincing, and loud, conclusion that it was only gas.

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Snippets

Friends from Pennsylvania said that they do not like John Fetterman, the Lieutenant Governor who is running for the U.S. Senate. When I asked why, they only said that they just don’t like him. None of his positions was mentioned. When asked if they were going to vote for his opponent, Mehmet Oz, they were adamant that they would not. They abhor his political stances and said that he was a charlatan. I concluded (without solid evidence) that my friends’ visceral reaction against Fetterman had something to do with the way he looks. He does not appear to be the kind of refined person that they have worked and socialized with. Tattoo-covered, he is generally seen in a sweatshirt and shorts, neither of which could be described as designer wear. Supposedly, he owns but one suit, which he wears when he presides over the Pennsylvania Senate to satisfy its dress code. I thought my friends intolerant, thinking a bit about Martin Luther King, Jr., since they were judging a person not by his political positions and beliefs but by his appearance. I also, however, acknowledged to myself, that I was less likely to vote for someone if I knew that they wore Brooks Brothers suits. This isn’t because (or not just because) Brooks Brothers got started by ripping off the government and the soldiers during a war. (Is it an exaggeration to say that behind corporate success is a corporate crime?) Instead, it is because when I started in my professional career, Brooks Brothers suits, drab, boxy, and generally unstylish, were the hallmark of corporate conformity. They made young men all look alike. The clothes signified that the wearer was interested more at fitting into a corporate world and advancing in it than anything else. That feeling from years ago still lingers. Ok, you might think that this, too, is a prejudice based on appearances. I can only answer that some prejudices have a firm grounding.

Ted Cruz was born in Canada. A decade ago he was a Canadian citizen.

“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.” Abraham Lincoln

Does this scare you, too: 10% of U.S. children are Texans?

I had not noticed the Manhattan establishment before. It was named something like Chubby, and the window told me that I could get “Injectables and Cosmetics” there. I immediately thought of my clients from yore who went to jail for selling injectables, but I quickly realized that the store sold legal substances that would tighten my skin in some places and plump it up in others. I wondered, Why weren’t people afraid to inject such stuff into their bodies for such purposes? And I then thought that too many people have too much money. I looked through the window. Behind a counter where a couple of people stood was a board that apparently had a menu (without prices) of services. It offered “East Coast Lips” and right below it “West Coast Lips.” I was, and remain, mystified by the difference. And I wondered if Midwesterners don’t have lips. Once again, elite Easterners treating flyover country as if did not exist.

“It is only rarely that one can see in a little boy the promise of a man, but one can almost always see in a little girl the threat of a woman.” Alexandre Dumas fils.

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First Sentences

“I sometimes think of the Supreme Court oral arguments in Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt on March 2, 2016, as the last truly great day for women and the legal system in America.” Dahlia Lithwick, Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America.

“I hear the crack of his skull before the spattering of blood reaches me.” Colleen Hoover, Verity.

“No one knows where America’s Northern Border begins.” Porter Fox, Northland: A 4,000 Mile Journey Along America’s Forgotten Border.

“The coastal steamer attends faithfully to its course, slipping down the middle of the fjord between the mountains, taking its bearings from the stars and peaks and arriving on schedule at Óseyri in Axlarfjörður, its horn blasting through the blowing snow. In the first-class smokers’ lounge, two smartly dressed travelers from Reykjavík are discussing the village’s faint gleams of light.” Halldór Laxness, Salka Valka.


“In this soundless film, it is winter in Arkansas.” Sridhar Pappu, The Year of the Pitcher: Bob Gibson, Denny McLain, and the End of Baseball’s Golden Age.

“Mrs Palfrey first came to the Claremont Hotel on a Sunday afternoon in January.” Elizabeth Taylor, Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont.

“In the weeks following the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, a group of Chinese executives traveled to Los Angeles for a crash course in influence.” Erich Schwartzell, Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy.

“When Cal comes out of the house, the rooks have got hold of something.” Tana French, The Searcher.

“As a little boy, lying in his bed, my father would hear the planes overhead.” Malcolm Gladwell, The Bomber Mafia.

“It was an unmarked car, just some nondescript American sedan a few years old, but the blackwall tires and the three men inside gave it away for what it was.” Stephen King, The Outsider.

“The results of Wisconsin’s 2018 election had to be seen to be believed.” Nick Seabrook, One Person, One Vote: A Surprising History of Gerrymandering in America.

“Brown Dog drifted away thinking of the village in the forest where the red-haired girl lived.” Jim Harrison, Brown Dog Redux.

“The sun that rose for the rest of the world that morning was not the one that rose for Lanah Sawyer.” John Wood Sweet, The Sewing Girl’s Tale: A Story of Crime and Consequences in Revolutionary America.