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Snippets

The sign was for a holiday event that I have never seen but would like to: “A drive-thru living Nativity.” Do you think there are camels???

A few years back I asked a political scientist what a democratic socialist was. She replied that they used to be called “liberal.” Today’s democratic socialists seem to want to remind Democrats of their roots with concerns for housing and food costs, wages, and childcare with the belief that such issues should not just be left to untrammeled free markets. But now such concerns that led to social security, public housing, Medicare, and Medicaid are considered so left wing as to be out of the mainstream.

For those looking for a holiday gift, a new calendar featuring Vladimir Putin in many poses has been released. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has not announced whether Trump has already obtained his embossed, autographed copy.

It was easy for me to spot the error. Maxwell King in The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers was debunking and ridiculing rumors about Mr. Rogers. Those silly rumors included that he was a convicted child molester and that he wore long sleeve shirts to hide tattoos. Another one was that he had been a sniper in Vietnam with many “kills” to his credit. The author reported that Rogers was never in the military and continued, “Fred Rogers was also much too old to have been drafted, given that the draft started in 1969, when his show was just getting established.” Of course, he could have been in the armed forces without being drafted, but what leapt out to me was the confident assertion that the draft started in 1969. I, along with many, many others, got a draft notice in 1968. The Selective Service Act of 1948 authorized conscription of young men, and many, including many I knew, were drafted into the army between 1948 and 1968. In 1969, the Act was changed to institute the draft lottery (you can look it up), but there was a draft long before that. But back to Mr. Rogers. I learned many fascinating things about him in the book, but I wondered, having spotted the error, whether I should doubt other things I had read in The Good Neighbor. I decided that I should not. The error was not about the life of Fred Rogers but about an extraneous fact. There was no reason to doubt the biographical research.

Fashion is dangerous. According to David Reynolds in Mirrors of Greatness: Churchill and the Leaders Who Shaped Him, Winston’s mother died at 67 while still lively. She “died suddenly from a haemorrhage. This followed a fall in the high heels to which she was addicted, which had caused a broken ankle, followed by gangrene and the amputation of her foot.”

I grew up a few blocks from the western shores of Lake Michigan, where I spent much time playing, walking a dog, and just gazing out, often seeing long, thin ships carrying ore on the horizon. Even so, I have read little about the Great Lakes partly because, unlike the oceans, rivers, and swamps, little has been written about them. These important bodies of water are largely ignored by most Americans. However, John U. Bacon’s The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald taught me a lot about the commercial importance of the Lakes and the dangers of their waters. Frightening waves are often steeper and come closer together on the Great Lakes than on the oceans. And, of course, there is a good deal to learn about the Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank on November 10,1975, a sad and disturbing event that many of us only know about from the Gordon Lightfoot song. The book is a page turner. Highly recommended.

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To Swim. Perchance to Breathe

This year I am not even going to make the promise to myself that I have broken many times in the past.

I am not a great swimmer. I blame Lake Michigan partially for that. I learned to take my first strokes in Lake Michigan off the beach of my Wisconsin birthplace. I am no expert on the currents of Lake Michigan, but I gather the lake’s water moves in several circular flows. As a result, the water temperature near the 1,600 miles of shorelines varies considerably. I know there are many places along the Lake where people swim comfortably and happily. However, while many people used the soft sand Lake Michigan beach of my hometown for games and sunbathing, not many people ventured into the water, or at least not for long. The water was almost always cold. At least in my memory, even in the hottest summers, the lake’s waters did not get above the low sixties.

It did not much matter that Lake Michigan was not a swimmer’s paradise. Wisconsin is filled with lakes of all sorts—big ones, small ones, ones with mucky bottoms, ones with rocky bottoms, ones with sandy bottoms, and like that. A half dozen or more “inland” lakes are within a thirty- or forty-minute drive from my boyhood home. There were plenty of places to go summer swimming.

Perhaps because there were many nearby opportunities to swim, my town did not have a municipal swimming pool, although the “Y” and the country club had pools. The family finances meant I was not a member of either. The parents, however, thought that I should learn to swim. They signed me up for lessons given by the Parks Department. And those lessons were in those Lake Michigan waters, which in my memory were in the fifties early in the summer when I learned to put my head in the water and take a few strokes. It was not much fun.

If family funds were not enough for a “Y” membership, you can be rest assured that we did not have a second home on a lake. I did little swimming as a boy. When I did, I found out that my strokes were marginally adequate but that I had not learned to breathe properly while swimming. I could swim 25 yards, sometimes fifty, while holding my breath. I had learned to take breaths by turning my head and gulping in air, but I somehow never got the knack of letting it out properly. I was really just holding my breath. And that is still my swimming technique, although I am no longer fit enough to swim 25 yards holding my breath. Our Pennsylvania community has a beautiful pool. For many years, I have told myself that I will go regularly to the pool and learn how to breathe while swimming. And in each of those years, I have lied to myself.

Even if I had been a better swimmer, I would still have been uncomfortable in the water because of my eyes. I was terribly nearsighted. I was told back then my eyesight was 20/400 or 20/500, but a cataract doctor recently laughed at that and said it was much worse. I was told as a kid that I was functionally blind, which meant that without my glasses I could not function. But I did have glasses, and my disability seldom impeded me. In some ways, it stood me in good stead. I learned to navigate rooms without my glasses, which was a bit like being in the dark. Even now, at least in familiar places, I often don’t need to turn on lights to get around a darkened room. However, sometimes when I had to operate without glasses it was a problem. I tried playing high school football glassless. That was impossible. When I did go swimming, my “blindness” made things difficult.

I was about 14 when I first went water skiing. My sister’s college roommate had a home near the Wisconsin Dells, which our family visited. The roommate’s father wanted me to water ski. I couldn’t chicken out, but my fear was not of falling but whether I would know where to let go of the rope in front of their cottage. I thought that I might not be able to distinguish it from the giant blur of other ones, and I was embarrassed to tell them how bad my eyesight was. Since I was not a strong swimmer, having to swim a long distance to the starting dock — even if I could find it — was scary. However, I could see blobs of color, and luckily the cottages were differently hued. I memorized the colors of their cottage and the two next to theirs, and I let go of the tow rope somewhat in the vicinity of where I was supposed to. Later I would go water skiing on Elkhart Lake, where the grandparents of my high school friend had a cottage. I learned the color schemes of the houses there, too, and did not have the same fear of having to swim halfway across the lake to get back to the right cottage. However, often when we did get back, Steve and his brothers would talk about all the good-looking girls they had seen on the lake while towing me. Sadly, I saw none of them.

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I Weep for Wisconsin

I had only been outside its borders once before I went to college. And yet I already knew that Wisconsin did not take up much space in the national consciousness. The coasts seemed more important—the glamor of New York, the sunny promise of California. It did not have the fables of Texas, the loyalties of New England, the energy of Chicago or the bluesy fascination of New Orleans. Even so, I was proud of being from Wisconsin.

The topography did not have the drama of the Rocky Mountains or the Southwestern Desert, but the kettles and moraines of Wisconsin had visual interest that softened the landscape. The state did not have an ocean coast, but it had the Great Lakes with a grandeur that non-midwesterners did not grasp. Lake Michigan is like the ocean, but oh no, it’s not. It’s Lake Michigan with its own majesty. (A friend has just returned from golf at a course on the Lake Michigan shore. He was surprised that the water was blue and clear. He assumed, based on no knowledge, that it was brown. I could see that ignorance about Wisconsin abounds, but since few think about Wisconsin in the first place, the abounding is limited.) Unlike other places, Wisconsin had smaller lakes everywhere—no one in Wisconsin was more than ten or fifteen minutes from several—that afforded fishing, boating, swimming, mists, and soothing, primordial sounds. Perhaps the landscape was not as awe-inspiring as some locations, but it was pleasant and welcoming. And it had walleyes.

The climate, however, while interesting was not always pleasant, but even that could afford some pride. People whose only opinion about the state seemed to come from televised playoff games at Lambeau Field (aka, the frozen tundra) would ask me about the cold (and yes, okay, it was cold). However, I would rather haughtily reply that it was just winter in Wisconsin implying that unlike the questioners, Wisconsinites were tough.

The human institutions, however, were the real cause for my pride. They had led to a better state and society than elsewhere in the country. The public education system was excellent starting, at least for me, with two years of kindergarten culminating in an affordable, flagship university that was considered one of the best in the nation.

Politics, while not totally free of rancor, did not have the bosses or the machines of other places. Local elections were nonpartisan, which helped to reduce blind partisanship. Although rich people were elected to office, money was not necessary to hold office. In the 1980s, William Proxmire spent less than two hundred dollars to get reelected to the Senate.

Wisconsin had a tradition of reform and innovation that others in the country copied to make their states better. It had created the first unemployment insurance program, for example, which acted as a model for other governments, and people from this Wisconsin tradition helped create Medicare. As a recent magazine article stated, “The state’s home-grown social-democratic tradition, which fused support for open government, public institutions, and economic equality, remained largely bipartisan.”

Of course, not everything was wonderful. I was dismayed when I learned that Milwaukee was one of the most segregated cities in the United States. And, of course, Wisconsin produced Joe McCarthy, leader of a movement that took his name and did so much damage to the country. Still, Wisconsin was a place to be proud of. It was a place of clear skies, clear water, and clean, transparent, and sensible politics.

Then something happened. The news that seeps out of Wisconsin now makes it seem as the state has become nearly as corrupt and crazy as many other places. Legislators have been indicted for various acts of corruption, something I do not remember happening in my youth. Money, as elsewhere, has become central to politics. Five million dollars were spent on a state Supreme Court race to defeat an incumbent. Seven hundred million–seven hundred million!!!–is expected to be spent on the 2022 elections. Wisconsin has undermined its educational system. State funding for the University and K-12 education has decreased. A Dean at the University of Wisconsin told me that the school was no longer a public university but a university with some public assistance. Wisconsin has become a leader in attacking and denigrating teachers as well as a leader in corporate giveaways, both in money and in permitting pollution. The state also has become a poster child for partisanship adopting one of the most gerrymandered legislatures in the country. The state has also made it harder to vote, but the gerrymandering means that votes don’t matter that much anyway.

This sort of news made me realize that Wisconsin was no longer a beacon for reasonable government but had become just like many other states.

Then came the aftermath of the 2020 election. The crazy comments and actions escalated—too many for me to summarize, but here’s one for you to consider: Imagine a government official saying that there is no evidence that you did not commit murder last year. Would you be shocked? Outraged? Would you laugh at such idiocy? Would you lose faith in the government official or the government itself? Now consider that one of the six officials on the Wisconsin Election Commission said about the 2020 election in Wisconsin: “There’s no evidence voter fraud did not occur.”

Oh, Wisconsin, grand old Badger State. What has happened to you? I wanted to think that Joe McCarthy was an aberration, but his insanity now seems to have taken hold.

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A Sausage Made It Famous

          Sheboygan is famous for one thing, at least in its eyes. No, it’s not me even though I was born and raised there.

          Sheboygan, Wisconsin, sits on the shores of Lake Michigan halfway between Milwaukee and Green Bay, about fifty miles from each. Growing up this location was a boon. We could get television stations from both places, but this was the days of over-the-air and required an antenna. The father installed a rotor that could shift the antenna’s direction south towards Milwaukee or north towards Green Bay. Most often, this did not matter much because each city had the three networks showing the same shows, and while Milwaukee had an independent station, the networks were where it was at.

Occasionally, the rotor would malfunction, and the father would get out a long ladder and climb onto the roof to make adjustments. This being snow country, the roof was steeply pitched. I should have been concerned that this job held some danger, but I had a child’s faith in his father. The repairs, however, were a three-person job. With him on the roof, one of us watched the TV and shouted when the rotor had the antenna in exactly the right position to get Milwaukee. Another of us would be outside the window and relayed the message to the roof man. Then the inside person would move the rotor through some sort of device towards Green Bay, and the same shouting ensued.

          This rotor business was essential for one very, very important reason—the Green Bay Packers. I can hardly overstate the obsession with the Lombardi-era team of my youth, although a similar obsession for each era of Packers has continued. Back then, Green Bay played half its home games in Green Bay and half in Milwaukee. The NFL then had a blackout policy that prevented hometown television stations from broadcasting games for a team’s home games. However, Green Bay was outside the blackout zone when the Packers played in Milwaukee, and the CBS station could carry Ray Scott announcing the game, and the Milwaukee station carried it when the game was in Green Bay. With that blessed rotor we could get all the games in the comfort of our home. (The Packers have played many famous games. Among them is the Ice Bowl when the Packers met the Dallas Cowboys for the NFL championship on the last day of 1967. On that morning, the father got a call from an acquaintance and was asked whether he wanted to go. Showing wisdom I did not always give him credit for, he declined and said that we would watch the game from the comfort of home. It was not that we were not experienced with cold. The average high for three winter months in Sheboygan was in the mid-twenties with the average low fifteen degrees colder. Whenever there was a cold snap, we would wake up to below-zero days, and I can regale you, as I have the NBP (nonbinary progeny) and the spouse many times, about how I walked to school in that cold, although I lied if I ever said that I had to do it without shoes. We knew cold, but we also had an understanding of cold, and December 31, 1967, was extraordinary. The temperature at kickoff was minus fifteen, but, of course, there was a wind, which plunged the wind chills into the minus forty ranges. I can go on about that game, but you can read about in the pioneering book by Jerry Kramer, who made the key block, and Dick Schaap, Instant Reply, but I don’t think that book contains this nugget. In those long-ago days, spectators could carry beer into the stadium. I was told that those who did found their six-packs frozen before the first quarter ended. For Wisconsites, that brought on real suffering. But I digress. Let me move onto my next digression.)

          For me, however, the defining aspect of Sheboygan was not that it was a half-way point between two other places but that it was on Lake Michigan. Those who consider a place like Wisconsin flyover country do not understand the beauty, power, and importance of the Great Lakes (or the Mississippi River.) I spent many hours on the shore and piers of Lake Michigan. (My bedroom has a series of pictures of the Sheboygan lighthouse.) My childhood would have been much different without Lake Michigan (and the myriad inland lakes, Elkhart Lake, Crystal Lake, Little Crystal Lake, Random Lake, and many others within a half-hour of the hometown.) Whenever I returned after leaving Sheboygan, I would first head to Lake Michigan and drive up the lakeshore starting at the Armory where the Sheboygan Redskins played in the first year of the National Basketball Association (you can look it up) past the beach and up the hill to Vollrath Bowl before heading home. (There is a lot of good literature about the oceans, seas, rivers, lakes, marshes, and swamps. I don’t know any about the Great Lakes. Give me suggestions if you know some.)

(continued June 3.)