1972 HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION

by William H. Benson

May 23, 2002

     In February of 1972 President Richard Nixon made his historic trip to China, and then in May he visited the Russians in Red Square.

     On March 30, 1972 the North Vietnamese attacked South Vietnam, marching through the DMZ and Cambodia.  U.S. air forces retaliated by heavily bombarding North Vietnamese cities.  The stalled Paris Peace Talks were resumed on April 27, and the last of the U.S. ground combat troops would come home in August.

     Running for the Democrats for President in the upcoming November 1972 election was George McGovern, a candidate who Nixon thought was abominably bad for the country and that he, as President, should do everything possible to stop this maniac from winning.  As a result, on June 17, 1972 police arrested five men in an attempted burglary of the Democratic Party headquarters in the Washington D.C. apartment complex called Watergate.

1. Edgar Hoover died on May 2, 1972 at the age of 77, and on May 15 Arthur Bremer shot George C. Wallace of Alabama who lived the rest of his life in a wheel chair.

     On March 14, 1972 Clifford Irving admitted that his Autobiography of Howard Hughes was a fraud, based on some one hundred talks with the reclusive billionaire that never happened.

     The Godfather and The French Connection, noted for their brutality, took the top prizes at the box office in 1972, and Jonathan Livingston Seagull became the runaway best seller.

     Apollo 16 splashed down on April 27, 1972 after another successful descent to the moon.

     Also, in late May of 1972 across the fifty states, high school graduates accepted their diplomas.  Wearing a black gown and a square cap with an orange and white tassel, I walked across a platform in the gym and the district’s Superintendent then, Roger Blake, handed me my high school diploma–thirty years ago this month, this week, on the 25th.

     A lot can happen in the space of thirty years.  Both World War I and II were fought to a finish in the space of thirty years.  A half dozen Presidents will serve and then retire in thirty years.  The personal computer is not quite thirty years old, and entire careers are worked out in thirty years.

     I would argue that these last thirty years has been the best time ever to live as an adult in the entire history of humanity.  Living in the United States of America during the last third of the twentieth century was the best deal offered any human being–better than what the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the British under Queen Elizabeth, or the French under King Louis XIV ever dreamed possible.

     For we are the posterity which our forefathers thought of and provided for and built their government and their communities for, and we are the benfactors of their right decisions.

     What of the future, the next thirty years?  I am convinced that honesty and integrity will still be rewarded and that talent and intelligence will command respect–the basic rules of humanity.

     But in thirty more years will we have suffered through World War III and IV, or will we have enjoyed a continuation of the Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush era of prosperity that we have come to expect as our right, our entitlement?  Either way, if still alive I will be approaching my eightieth birthday, a sobering thought, but younger than Paul Harvey or Mike Wallace are now.

     Mark Twain observed, “Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.”  Perhaps.  But to lose our experience and to gradually erase clean the slate of our memory would be bewildering, if not frightening.

     As it is in this life, the best of all possible worlds, the past is engraved, recorded in our memories, prone to misinterpretation and forgetfulness, but never to be relived nor altered by anyone, neither human nor divine.  The present is simply that moment of time when the future pauses for a short while before becoming the past.  And the future, that next thirty years, is a blank slate available for us to write upon it whatever we wish.

 REBEKAH BAINES JOHNSON

by William H. Benson

May 9, 2002

     Last month Master of the Senate, Robert Caro’s third volume in his series Years of Lyndon Johnson, arrived at bookstores, exactly twenty years after he published his first volume The Path to Power.  In that first biography Caro told of LBJ’s mother–Rebekah Baines Johnson.

     Rebekah adored her father, an attorney and farmer in Blanco, Texas, who taught her the importance of the cultured life: books, reading, and the beautiful things in life, and so she grew up a romantic and an idealist, perpetually dreaming of the better life.

     After graduating from Baylor College, she took a job teaching public speaking in Fredericksburg, and there she met a young Texas legislator, Sam Johnson.  After a whirlwind courtship, they married in 1907, and he moved her to his ranch on the Pedernales River deep in the Hill Country of central Texas.  Nothing in her prior life prepared her for life on that ranch, for suddenly she found herself transplanted into a world where women were expected to work very hard–cooking bread over a wood burning stove, doing without running water, without electricity.

     Without a neighbor’s light visible in any direction, the loneliness at night bore down hard upon her, especially when her husband was gone much of the time to the Texas legislature in Austin and elsewhere.  Years later she told her eldest son, Lyndon,  “I never liked country life, and its inconveniences.”

     After three kids Sam moved the family into Johnson City, which in 1913 was a primitive and backward town without roads in or out, a bare island in an ocean of land, without books or a library.  And she was the only woman in the entire county with a college degree.  She understood that the schools were terribly inadequate.  “I don’t want to bring up my children in Johnson City!” she wailed desperately, and yet she did. 

     After two difficult deliveries with her fourth and fifth children, she quit doing the housework; she was simply tired and almost broken with all that work and child bearing.  Sam was forced to hire girls to come in and do the cooking and cleaning, and what they did not do, did not get done.

     Rebekah then persuaded the school board to set up a “literary society” where she could teach public speaking, poetry, dancing, debate, and theatre to the country girls and boys who were given their first chance to stand up in front of an audience and speak.  To complement those public lessons, she also gave private ones where she encouraged and stroked their tender egos, and in so doing, Robert Caro wrote, she “changed those young people’s lives” who saw distant horizons way beyond the shabby fringes of a Hill Country town.

     To her students and children Rebekah frequently quoted Robert Browning.

     “The common problem, yours and mine, everyone’s

     Is not to fancy what were fair in life

     Provided it could be — but finding first

     What may be and how to make it fair up to our means.”

     In a memoir Rebekah wrote of her first year on the ranch.  “Recently my early experiences on the farm were relived when I saw the movie The Egg and I;  again I shuddered over the chickens, and wrestled with a mammoth iron stove.  However, I was determined to overcome circumstances instead of letting them overwhelm me.  At last I realized that life is real and earnest and not the charming fairy tale of which I had so long dreamed.

     Motherhood, no matter how you look at it, it is self-sacrifice, time devoted to others rather than to yourself; it can be creating opportunity where none exists.  Sunday is Mother’s Day.

THE LIBRARY

 by William H. Benson

April 25, 2002

     Although technically under Congressional authority, the Library of Congress serves as our nation’s national library.  Its contents include books in all languages, a perfect Gutenberg Bible, Presidential Papers from Washington to Coolidge, Chinese and Japanese and Russian memorabilia, paintings, photographs, music recordings, etc.  It is truly a national treasure, a depository of knowledge. 

     Standing at 101 Independence Avenue on Capitol Hill, its three buildings cover 71 acres of floor space and each were named after Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Madison.  The Librarian of Congress oversees the Library’s day-to-day operations, and is appointed by the President with the Senate’s approval.  The poet Archibald MacLeish served as the Librarian in the early forties, and the bow-tied popular historian Daniel Boorstin served from 1975 until 1987.

     Congress initially funded the Library on April 24, 1800 with a $5000 appropriation and housed it in a room of the Capitol; however, on August 24, 1814 the British burnt the Capitol, and in so doing destroyed the Library.  To re-establish it, Thomas Jefferson in 1815 offered to sell his 6000-volume collection to Congress for $23,950, and a very reluctant Congress agreed.  So the Library had a new birth.

     Also situated on Capitol Hill just north of the John Adams Building stands another marble construction, another library–the Folger Shakespeare Library.  Henry Clay Folger, a former President of the Standard Oil Company of New York earmarked his entire fortune toward the establishment of this library, dedicated primarily to the British playwright.

     William Shakespeare died in 1616 on April 23, his 52nd birthday, for presumably he was born on April 23, 1564.  He wrote 37 plays, 154 sonnets, and five poems during a 25-year writing career in London.  In 1623, seven years after his passing, two of his old friends and fellow actors, John Heminge and Henry Condell gathered his works into a single volume–the First Folio. 

     Since then writers have written extensively about Shakespeare, and collectors have gathered memorabilia, such as playbills and promptbills and account books, from his era.  It was Henry Folger’s dream to gather all of these into a single library.  Today the Folger Library contains 79 copies of the 1623 First Folio edition, plus many of the quarto editions of individual plays.

     And so a library devoted to Shakespeare stands just a stone’s throw away from the legislature;  every other author has a niche of shelf space in the vast Library of Congress, but William Shakespeare has his own special place.

     Last month at a used book sale, I purchased two books–Joseph Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man and Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind.  Bronowski observes almost reverently man’s crawl out of ignorance, focusing on those miraculous moments when science overcame superstition, prejudice and fear and emerged supreme.

     On the other hand Bloom finds deplorable the current state of American intellectual life, and he severely judges the decline and decay of the typical American’s capacity to reflect upon life’s larger and more important questions.  Whereas Bronowski tout’s humankind’s previous victories, Bloom sadly comments upon today’s failures in the eternal battle against ignorance. 

     In virtually every community across America, stands a library, that dividing point between wisdom and ignorance.  Their doors are frequently open, and they charge nothing to enter.  And with even the most modest mental effort anyone can find inside the means to overcome their own lack of understanding and at the same time increase their capacity to reflect upon good and evil, truth and falsity, tolerance and prejudice, knowledge and superstition.

     Shakespeare’s Hamlet said it this way, “What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals.”

     And you can read all about it and much more in the library.   

TRANSITIONS IN CAREERS

by William H. Benson

April 11, 2002

    George Washington started out as a surveyor before owning a plantation, becoming a military leader, a founder of a new country, and its first President.  Ralph Waldo Emerson began his working career as a school teacher before serving as a Presbyterian minister in Boston.  Then, abruptly he quit to begin a speaking and writing career, and in the process he became the best philosopher America has produced.

     Lincoln swung an axe, failed as a storekeeper, read enough law to set up a law practice, moved into politics, and ended up as President.  Harry Truman failed in a men’s clothing store and then farmed with his father for years before entering politics.

     I find this biography fascinating, especially the jerks and false starts of a convoluted path that winds its way to the top.  How do some people get so far ahead?  Is it energy level, intelligence, the willingness to take risks, or inner drive?  Or is it some combination of those?  Billy Herndon, Lincoln’s law partner, said of Lincoln, “His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest.”

     James Michener wrote that two things are required for a successful career–dedication and re-education.  He wrote, “Men and women who wish to accomplish anything must apply themselves to tasks of tremendous magnitude.  The good work of the world is accomplished principally by people who dedicate themselves unstintingly to the big job at hand. . . . The average man or woman can expect to work in three radically different fields before he retires, and adults who are unwilling to re-educate themselves periodically are doomed to mediocrity.”

     Adele Scheele, who wrote Skills for Success, suggested that career transitions are often more the result of using the non-technical skills, such as positioning, self-preservation, and connecting, than the acutal job’s technical skills.  Ther is much to be said for developing appropriate relationships with people and letting them know what you want to do.

     Mike Ditka’s son complained to his dad about his first job after college.  Mike told his son to quit.  “If you cannot give 100% of yourself to that job, go find something where you can.”

     In the late 70’s Steve Martin was at the very top of his career as a standup comedian, and on occasion he was good, very funny.  But then suddenly he quit and announced that he wanted to do more, and so he pursued motion pictures.  Robin Williams did the same.

     And then there was Arnold Schwartznegger, a champion Mr. Universe, the best in a body building competition, and yet he wanted to be an actor.  Hollywood laughed at him, “With your Austrian accent and muscles and huge body, what part could you possibly play?”  He found the answer–Conan the Barbarian, and so he launched his movie career.

     Newsweek‘s lead story last week was an interview with Bill Clinton who is now in his second year of adjusting to his new position as former President.  A whirlwind of activity, he is speaking, reading, writing, traveling, and paying off his legal bills.  What he will do in the near future and how he will focus his itelligence, drive, and energy all remains wide open.  However, looking back he admitted that he like being President, “I’m very glad I did it.  I loved it.  I loved it.”

     On April 11, 1951 then President Harry Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur from command during the Korean War.  A career U.S. military man, MacArthur was suddenly without a job, and staring him in the face was retirement.  On April 19th he addressed a joint session of Congress and recalled the song about old soldiers that never die, saying, “like the old soldier of that ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away.”

     For most people who exit the workforce, retirement does not need to be such a dreary proposition.  A comment I hear frequently is “It’s great!”  And if we do not like the thought of retirement, we can continue to work or we can go back to work or we can change jobs.  After all, in America we are free to choose our employer.

ARIEL SHARON & YASSIR ARAFAT

by William H. Benson

March 28, 2002

     The daily news repells and disgusts us.  Israeli soldiers stomp into people’s homes and arrest whomever.  Suicide bombers blow themselves to bits on a crowded bus, killing innocent people.  Shattered and bloody bodies are drug through the streets.  All of this has become the end game for Ariel Sharon, the Israeli warrior, and Yassir Arafat, the Palestinian freedom fighter.

     The fight is about differences in religion, race, culture, and economic advantages, but above all else, it is a land fight over who will ultimately own and control the territory.  Both Jew and Palestinian want to own and live on what has been called the Holy Land, but I think a better term might be a Thirsty Land, thirsty for the blood of its martyrs who are willing to die to posess it.

     Ernest Renan once wrote, “A nation is a group of people united by a mistaken view about the past and a hatred of its neighbors.”

     The Israelis point to the Bible and to God’s promise to Abraham as their right and justification to own the land.  And the Israelis believe that in 1947 they did not push the Palestinians out of their homes.  Those people just simply left on their own, without any undo force.  However, Benny Morris, the Israeli journalist, argues otherwise, that they were driven out deliberately.

     On the other hand, the Palestinians still hold on to their dream “to return to their homeland” and establish their nation from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, and in the process drive the Israelis into the Sea.  Neither side wishes to give up their myth and their dream of total ownership and face life in the normal world.

     In September 2000 then President Clinton was working hard with both sides at Camp David to hammer out a peace accord, and he was close to getting an agreement.  But then it fell apart, and Round 2 of the Intifada erupted.  Clinton afterwords privately blamed Arafat, and yet last Sunday’s New York Times suggested that it was actually Sharon who deliberately scuttled the peace talks when he visited a site considered holy by both sides accompanied by 200 police officers, knowing full well that chaos would result from his antagonistic act.

     What does Sharon want?  In his book Warrior, Sharon wrote, “We must say very clearly that our concern for our own survival does not permit the establishment of a second Palestinian state on the West Bank.”  It appears that the idea of two peaceful nations is at this moment a fiction.

     Politicians rave; soldiers learn the truth.  Soldiers die quickly; war dies hard.  But other wars have died, and peace has broken out in hate-filled places like Kosovo, Bosnia, Kuwait, Vietnam, Northern Ireland, Korea, in the Pacific, in Europe, and even in our own country 140 years ago.  We dare not forget places like Shiloh, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg.

     Consider Sherman’s March to the Sea.  Historians see that his purpose was to destroy and annihilate the South’s very will to fight any further.  In this he was larger than both Grant or Lincoln.  The South’s capacity and will to make war posed a legitimate threat and a target; the sooner he smashed them, the sooner peace would come.  Thinking of his own children he devoted himself to that ideal–peace.  He attacked the very mind of the South, crippling the Confederacy’s will to fight.  He did his nastiest work, the South boiled in helpless rage, and they quit fighting.

     Ariel Sharon has been quoted saying, “The aim is to increase the number of losses on the other side.  Only after they’ve been battered, will we be able to conduct talks.”  Strangely, Arafat and the other Palestinian freedom fighters carry a similar thought.  And so the violence escalates.

     Peace will happen, and it will happen when one side overpowers the other, or when one side gives up, or when new and more responsive leaders agree to stop fighting, give up their mistaken myths, and choose peace.  They must see other options, rather than the path of violence.

     Palm Sunday is behind us.  Easter approaches.  It was a Passion Play then (as it is today) with the betrayal of friends, accusations, arrests, speedy trials, and government-ordered executions–a frightening and bewildering and chaotic existence.  Both the Palestinian and the Jew deserve better, much better.  They deserve their own land.  They deserve peace.  It will happen.