Four times have governors of the fifty states suffered the indignity of a recall election.

     On October 28, 1921, the governor of North Dakota, Lynn Frazier, lost the recall election to Ragnvald Nestos: 111,434 for Nestos vs. 107,332 for Frazier. This was a first in U.S. history. 

     What had Frazier done so bad to suffer a recall and be driven from office? It was due to poor economic conditions among the state’s farmers, scant crops, a drought, plus a budget crisis. 

     A second occurred on October 7, 2003, when Gray Davis, governor of California, lost the recall election to Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

     Two questions appeared on that recall ballot. The first: Shall Gray Davis be recalled from the office of Governor? The results were 4,976,274 “Yes” votes vs. 4,007,783 “No” votes. 

     The second question asked voters to vote for either Schwarzenegger, Cruz Bustamente, or Tom McClintock. Schwarzenegger gathered 4,206,284, 48.58% of the total, enough to win.

     What had Gray Davis done so bad? There was an electricity crisis causing blackouts and excessive electric bills, a massive budget deficit, and a vehicle license fee hike. Voters were not pleased. Davis admitted at that time that “he had lost touch with the voters.” 

     A third time occurred on June 5, 2012, when governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, won the recall election, 1,335,585 votes to Tom Barrett’s 1,164,480 votes. Walker retained his office.

     What had Walker done so bad? He had signed Assembly Bill 11, the “Budget Repair Bill” in February 2011, which drove public sector employee unions out of collective bargaining, in order to work toward a more balanced state budget. 

     A fourth time occurred on September 14, 2021, when voters answered the first question: Shall Gavin Newsom be recalled from the office of Governor? The “Yes” votes tallied 4,894,474, but the “No” votes tallied 7,944,092, or 61.88%, enough for Newsom to retain his office as governor.

     What had Newsom done? In part it was due to mandatory restrictions that Newsom imposed during the Covid pandemic, such as closing the schools. Newsom remains governor of the state.

     Four governors. Two were driven out of their office: Lynn Frazier in 1921, and Gray Davis in 2003. Two retained their office: Scott Walker and Gavin Newsom.

     Of the fifty states, California has the odd distinction for the most recall attempts for their governors, a total of 55, even though only two went to election, and only one succeeded.

     Even the more popular governors of the state of California knew about the circulation of recall petitions, even though almost all the attempts failed to get onto a ballot. 

     Two times for Edmund G. (Pat) Brown. Three times for Ronald Reagan. Five times for Jerry Brown. Eleven times for George Deukmejian, a record number. Five times for Pete Wilson. 

     Three times for Gray Davis, and one succeeded. Seven times for Arnold Schwartzenegger. Five times for Jerry Brown, his second term as governor, and seven times for Gavin Newsom.

     Why so many in California? The threshold in the state is for only 12% of the last election’s voters for the office to sign the petition, and that signers must originate from five counties. Many states have a threshold of at least 25%. 

     Of the seventeen states west of the Mississippi River, seven do not have any governor recall provisions: Utah, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. 

     Certain voters in Colorado launched a petition to recall Jared Polis on February 24, 2022. Officials told the petitioners they had sixty days, until April 25, 2022, to gather and submit 631,266 signatures, near the state’s 25% threshold. The signatures collected were not submitted.

     The lesson here is that it is most difficult to remove a governor once voters place him or her into that office. 

The zoologist, Hans-Wilhelm Koepcke, graduated from Germany’s University of Kiel, in 1947, with a doctorate in Natural Sciences. He migrated to Lima, Peru, in 1950, and worked at the Museum of Natural History, along with his wife Maria, whom he had met at the University. 

     Maria was an accomplished ornithologist, who enjoyed sketching pencil drawings of birds.

     On October 10, 1954, Maria gave birth to a daughter, Juliane, their only child. 

     In 1968, Hans-Wilhelm and Maria moved to Panguana, a small settlement in extreme eastern Peru inside the Amazon rainforest. Their aim was to explore the diversity of the flora (plants and trees) as well as the fauna (animals and insects) of a jungle. 

     In 1968, Juliane was fourteen. She left the comforts of the imposing city of Lima and learned, with her parents, how to adapt to life inside a jungle and a rainforest. 

     Peru’s authorities encouraged Juliane’s parents to allow her to attend high school at a German-speaking high school in Lima. Juliane graduated from high school on December 23, 1971, at the age of 17, with her mother in attendance. That evening Juliane attended her prom.

     Maria was anxious to return to Panguana, and purchased tickets for two for the next day, Christmas Eve, on LANSA Flight 508, from Lima to Pucallpa, the nearest airport to Panguana.

     Hans-Wilhelm had warned Maria not to fly LANSA because of that company’s history of crashes and poor maintenance of their aircraft, but it was the only flight out with seats available.

     Maria sat in seat 19G, the middle seat on the right hand side, second from the back row. Juliane sat in seat 19F, beside the window. She wore a mini skirt and sandals. The man who sat in the aisle seat, 19E, fell asleep. 

     The flight took off at 11:50 a.m. Within 30 minutes, the aircraft crossed the Andes Mountains, and Juliane could see the Amazon rainforest, its deep green canopy below her. It was then that the aircraft encountered a black cloud, a thunderstorm with updrafts and downdrafts.

     Juliane watched as a lightning bolt struck the right wing. The aircraft fell apart. Juliane later said that “it was not that she was ejected from the aircraft, as it was that the aircraft was gone.”

    She was seat belted to her seat as it began a 3000 meter, or 10,000 feet, or two-mile drop into the rainforest. She blacked out upon impact.

    The next day, Christmas, she awoke, and realized she was alive. Her mother and the sleeping man were not seated next to her. She unbuckled and assessed her injuries: a concussion, a broken clavicle, a deep cut on her upper arm, another across her leg’s calf.

    She waited for help to arrive, but none came, although she saw planes flying overhead. She decided she must walk out, although she was missing a sandal and her glasses.

     As she walked, she discovered debris from the aircraft as well as at least three dead bodies. She found a bag of candy, and ate two pieces per day. She followed a trickle of water to a river, careful to avoid sting rays, poisonous snakes, and caimans, South American alligators.

     On the tenth day, she saw a boat tied next to shore, and a hut. She struggled to the hut, found a can of gasoline and poured it onto her upper arm’s wound to kill the maggots and infection.

     The next day three men appeared at the hut and stared in bewilderment. She seemed more of a ghost, due to her blonde hair, her swollen-shut eyes, her sunburned skin, her mosquito bites.

     By boat, over 11 hours, the men transported her to a hospital. Hans-Wilhelm arrived soon.

     Days later authorities arrived at the crash site and discovered Maria’s body and others, but they were dead. Authorities speculated that 14 of them survived the fall, but had died waiting.

     Juliane was sole survivor. She is now a director at Panguana, but lives in Munich. Her incredible story is that of a struggle to live that succeeded, despite overwhelming difficulties.

     In three weeks, she will celebrate her 72nd birthday, very lucky to be alive. 

Sociology looks at how people behave in groups: family, work, politics, and religion. A quote: People in a crowd will do or say something that they would hesitate to do or say as an individual.

     In 2004, a writer named James Surowiecki published a book he entitled “The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies, and Nations.”

     In it, Surowiecki argues that “a diverse collection of deciding individuals is likely to make certain types of decisions and predictions better than single individuals or even experts. In some cases, groups are remarkably intelligent and often smarter than the smartest people in them.”

     Yet, Surowiecki admits that crowds do make mistakes, due to: “homogeneity, a lack of diversity; imitation, following others; and emotions, such as peer pressure, or the herd instinct.”

     His book’s title, “The Wisdom of Crowds,” is an allusion to Charles Mackay’s 1841 book, “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.”

     Which is it? Are crowds wise, or are they prone to seasons of madness?

     Mackay’s book is a 702-page tome, a doorstop. Yet, within its pages, he explores a series of mania’s that in past centuries engulfed entire groups of people.

     In his third chapter, “Tulipmania,” Mackay describes how the citizens of Holland drove up the price on “a rare species of tulips in the year 1636, so that regular markets for their sale were established on the Stock Exchange of Amsterdam, in Rotterdam, and other towns.”

     “At last, however, the more prudent began to see that this folly could not last forever. Rich people no longer bought the flowers to plant in their gardens.” Prices dropped as did the mania. 

     In addition to economic manias, Mackay describes social and religious hysterias: the pursuit of witches across central Europe; the Crusades to the Holy Land; alchemists, who tried to turn lead into gold; haunted houses; and the search for relics of famous people. 

     Then, Mackay reveals a true counterfeit, a mountebank, an illusionist named Franz Mesmer, a German who arrived in Paris in 1778. “It is impossible,” said M. Dupotet, “to conceive the sensations which Mesmer’s experiments created in Paris.”

     These experiments, or healing sessions, called animal magnetism, produced group hysteria.

     “The cheeks of the ladies began to glow, their imaginations became inflamed; and off they went, one after the other in convulsive fits. Some sobbed and tore their hair, others laughed till the tears ran from their eyes. Mesmer would then wave a wand, and they would calm down.” 

     The English word “mesmerize,”  is derived from Franz Anton Mesmer’s trickery, and means “to put someone into a trance or a hypnotic state.”

     Delusion is defined as “a fixed, false belief that a person holds, despite clear proof or logical evidence that it is wrong.” An illusion though is a trick, like an optical illusion, or a magic trick.

     A favorite essay of mine is entitled “Illusions,” by Ralph Waldo Emerson. At its end, he says,   

     “Every god is there sitting in his sphere. The young mortal enters the hall of the firmament; there is he alone with them alone.

     “On the instant, fall snowstorms of illusions. He fancies himself in a vast crowd which sways this way and that, and whose movement and doings he must obey; the mad crowd drives hither and thither, now furiously commanding this thing to be done, now that. 

     “What is he that he should resist their will, and think or act for himself?

     “And when for an instant, the air clears and the cloud lifts a little, there are the gods still sitting around him on their thrones—they alone with him alone.”

     Within any given age, a mania, a madness, or a popular delusion can and will emerge. It is extraordinary, and it is then that crowds fail to display much, if any, wisdom.

 Music. Two Neil’s. The first is Neil Sadaka. 

     In 1974, Sadaka recorded a haunting song entitled “The Immigrant.” “Harbors opened their arms to the young searching foreigner, come to the light of the beacon of liberty. Was it anything like that when you arrived? A legend that spoke of a mystical magical land called America.

     “It was a time when strangers were welcome here. Music would play. They tell me the days were sweet and clear. It was a sweeter tune, and there was so much room that people could come from everywhere. . . . To find they’ve closed the door, they don’t want him anymore.”

     Sadaka dedicated the song to John Lennon, who was fighting deportation back to England.

     The second Neil is Neil Diamond. In 1980, for his movie “The Jazz Singer,” Diamond recorded the song “America.” 

     “Far, we’ve been traveling far, without a home, but not without a star. Free. Only want to be free. We huddle close, hang on to a dream. On the boats and on the planes, they’re coming to America, never looking back again. They’re coming to America today!”

     At certain concerts, Neil would introduce his song by projecting a picture of his grandmother, Molly Rapaport, then a Jewish girl, and explain.

     “It was almost a hundred years ago. A little girl, twelve years old and alone, was put on a train in Kiev, then in Russia, and made the journey 1200 miles to Rotterdam in Holland. She then boarded a ship to make the great voyage to freedom in a place called America.

     “That little girl was my grandmother. She and her daughter, Rose, inspired me to achieve everything that I have achieved in my life. Her courage will never be forgotten.”

     Literature. In 1894, writing in Yiddish, Sholem Aleichem published a series of eight stories under the title, “Tevye the Dairyman.” The fictional Tevye tells stories about his seven trouble-prone daughters, his wife Golde, his poor life in Tsarist Russia, and his duty to his Jewish faith.

     In a final story, entitled, “Lekh-Lekho,” (Get Thee Out), a Tsarist decree expels the family. 

     Theater. The musical, “Fiddler on the Roof,” is an adaptation of “Tevye the Dairyman,” In the final scene, Tevye, Golde, and the two youngest daughters leave for America.

     History. In 1901, a family of Germans by the last name of Ament, or Amen, then living in Franken Cuter, or Frank, in Russia near the Volga River, prepared to migrate to America. 

     In Russia, “They lived in villages protected by a high fence, fearing Russian intrusion or the wolf packs that ran wild on the Russian steppes. The wolves were hungry in the winter’s snow.”

     Conrad was the dad, Catherine the mother. Six of their nine children tagged along. The seventh child was David Amen, then 14 years old. The family settled in Culbertson, Nebraska, near McCook. They gravitated to farming, the work they knew best. They searched for land

     In 1904 or 1905, two sisters, in their teens, also from Frank, Russia, migrated to America, fed up with a brutal step-mother’s abuse. Their names: Anna Mary and Anna Margaret Lebsack.

      They too came to Nebraska. The older sister married David Strasheim, and settled in Lincoln, but Anna Margaret traveled west to McCook, and there, in 1907, she married David Amen. David and Anna Amen were my maternal great-grandparents. 

     In the fall of 1911, in Frank, Russia, the brother of the two Lebsack sisters, a farmer named Jacob, plus his wife Katherine, and their four children migrated to America. They settled in Hastings, Nebraska. In 1917, they too moved north of Proctor, Colorado.

     There, the two families, the Amen’s and the Lebsack’s, farmed corn and hay. 

     Like other Volga Germans from Russia, the families became German Congregationalists.

     Katherine Lebsack told her kids, “Be glad we are in America, or we might not be living.”