Wallers Formed My Political Values and Views

 

Dear Clan:

As some of you know, I have been journaling since last Sept 12^th  (the opening gun of my 92nd lap)and have kept at it quite religiously. Also, quite satisfyingly. What the regimen has done is make me more aware, more observant, more willing to open myself to memories and reflection which I note and describe. Someday, when I’m gone, you can read it – maybe.

My reflections have touched on family history and that, in turn, has touched on material suitable for a One Small Step engagement. What’s One Small Step? This is an initiative of NPR’s StoryCorps designed to bring Americans with different political views into a single, respectful, 50‑minute conversation—not to debate, but to recognize each other’s shared humanity and to search for shared values or views. It’s framed as an antidote to polarization, grounded in listening rather than argument. The structured conversation probes how one’s political views and values have developed; what and who influenced one’s adoption of a political philosophy, belief, or viewpoint. In the last year, I have had three such One Small Step encounters and seek more. We locally, from Wider Horizons and/or Braver Angels, who wish to participate find conservatives generally reluctant to take part; many more blues than reds are willing to partake. StoryCorps reports that this is the case nationally, as well.

An acquaintance of mine, who holds diametrically opposite political views from mine (i.e., a MAGA Trump loyalist) turned down my invitation to do a One Small Step, saying something along the lines of it would be useless, you’re too far gone in your close-minded liberalism. This shows I failed to convince him that I wanted no debate, no proselytizing, no Road to Damascus conversion, just an exchange of histories of how our political values and views were established. Apparently, he distrusts me.

So, here’s what I might tell him about my history if given the chance. I know some of you of the Holmquist/Waller Clan will find of interest my version of our Waller family history. Adrien may have a different take and I hope she will share that. But, for most of you from the Holmquist side, this will be more than you really want to know and I will not be offended if you bail out from here.

            For One Small Step:

My strongly liberal political values were forged from those of Grandfather Halley Templeton Waller and his son, Fletcher Charles Waller. Halley was one of four brothers between ages 1 and 8 orphaned in 1880 by the death of Henry Curtis Waller, killed by measles. The brothers’ mother, Josephine Martha Bogue, followed Henry four months later, dying of a broken heart people said. They lived in Enosburgh and Barton Landing, VT. Percy, at 13 months, was adopted by his aunt and uncle Templeton; the other three were raised by the Bogues.

Grandfather Halley was a Baptist. His grandfather had turned away from the Congregationalists and founded a Baptist Church in Royalton, VT at the start of the 19thC over the issue of baptism: he was said to prefer to worship “with people bathed in the spirit of the Lord rather than were merely sprinkled.”

Halley was bright and ambitious. The Bogues helped Halley attend The Vermont Academy and from there he earned admittance to Brown University, class of 1901, the “noughty-ones.” He was putting himself through school by teaching elementary children in a one-room schoolhouse near Providence. He roomed with a minister and was increasingly drawn into Christian values and views and into the orbit of the local Young Men’s Christian Association. The YMCA of Providence appointed him chair of its college relations program. Halley proved an adept organizer, leader, and ambassador.

Upon graduation from Brown, Halley matriculated to the Baltimore Medical College (not a predecessor of John’s Hopkins but of the University of Maryland’s Medical School. Two of his brothers were physicians graduated from BMC.) But Halley withdrew from medical school in his 3^rd year to answer a call from the Providence Y to join its staff.

In 1905, he answered a second call from the Cambridge, MA Y to become its Secretary, what we would call its Exec Director or CEO. It was in this role that my father’s and subsequently my political values were most powerfully shaped. These were the years of max immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe. The mills and watchmakers of greater Boston were hiring. But what they wanted were laborers who could speak English and who had become comfortable with American culture. The Cambridge Y under Sect. Waller developed an effective Americanization program, including ESL; it drew strong industrial support for the Y and impressed national YMCA administrators. Sect. Waller was a comer.

His college friend, Fletcher Brockman, had gone on mission to found the Y in China. He asked Halley to join him in that work and was seconded by the International Division of YMCA. But Halley’s beloved wife, Florence Henrietta Cook, was suffering a difficult pregnancy. Her docs did not want her to take such an arduous trip across the continent and Pacific to Shanghai. So Halley put China aside. Fletcher (for the missionary) Charles (for Florence’s father) Waller was born in Cambridge in 1911, at the height of the influx of immigrants.

Meanwhile, the auto industry was booming in Michigan, Indiana, and Northern Ohio. Cars needed tires, five of them apiece. Seiberling (Goodyear), Goodrich, and Firestone needed workers in their Akron tire plants, workers who spoke English and who would become dedicated to American mores and values. At that time, Akron was the fastest growing major city in the country. Most of the immigrant arrivals in Protestant, conservative Ohio were coming from Eastern and Southern Europe – Roman Catholic Italians and Hungarians, Secular and Jewish Czechs, RC Slovaks, Orthodox Greeks, generally less well-educated than their more familiar German, Irish, English and Scandinavian predecessors. 

What the rubber industry needed was what Boston had: the Y’s Americanization programs. Sect. Waller’s programs celebrated these new citizens and encouraged pride in their national traditions blended with patriotic pride in their new homeland.  His Y taught American history, English, civics, Constitutional rights of free expression and assembly in civic associations (read unions?)

Somewhere around 1913, Halley T. Waller got a call to become Sect. of the Akron, Ohio YMCA. Akron, at that time was among the fastest growing cities in the country.

1914: the Great War. Halley Waller headed the Akron War Bond drive, established Y-based programs of war relief, and sponsored a variety of USO and veterans’ relief programs.

The war shut down migration from Europe. Asian immigration was centered on and absorbed by the US West Coast. Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Akron began to promote migration from the South; the Great Migration of Black rural labor soon to encounter the explosive, racial animus of Northern urban citizens.

In the meantime, the Akron Y was recipient of generous capital investment for facilities and expansion of its programs from the rubber-baron families, i.e., the Sieberlings, Goodrichs, and Firestones. But it also attracted backlash, and by the early 1920s, from the Ku Klux Klan. By this time, Halley Waller was serving as elected chair of the Akron School Board, so he had two strikes against him in the eyes of Klansmen: Americanizing Catholics at the Y and running an integrated public school system. In 1922, the Klan ran school Board candidates against him and took over the school board. A cross was burned on their front lawn; Dad, ten at the time, thus received his first taste – a bitter, fearful distaste – of racial discrimination and intolerance, what Timothy Eagen called “The Fever in the Heartland.” 

The heat got too much for the rubber families, who withdrew support of the Y. In 1924, the Y board asked Halley to resign. Akron's new school board forced Halley’s resignation. Public attitudes were changing. Even Halley, in 1924, gave grudging support for the new national laws establishing quotas on immigration. I was shocked to discover a speech he gave to the Akron Chamber of Commerce expressing concern about northern European values being subsumed in the uncontrolled wave of immigration from Eastern Europe and the US South.

Dad was withdrawn from the public schools and sent to Western Reserve Academy, in Hudson, Ohio. (BTW, Rob Janes, another Ohioan, was graduated from Case Western Reserve before going to med school.) As the Klan wave receded, in the mid-20's, Halley was invited to join an advisory panel by the Akron Y but no longer served as its Secretary. He joined Northwestern Mutual as an insurance agent  worked to re-establish his civic leadership and esteem, particularly for his resistance to the Klan.

From this background came Dad’s, and through him, my political values of civic service, public courage in the face of intolerance, and liberal respect for all callings of men.

As for Fletch Waller, Sr: he went to Colgate on a football scholarship which was cancelled his sophomore year after a blown knee injury. He majored in industrial psychology and worked his way through with summer jobs as tennis coach and (armed) bodyguard to the Seiberling kid (in response to the dreadful Lindberg kidnapping, 1932). Dad worked in the sleep lab at Colgate during school. He met Eleanor Taylor, Syracuse University coed; they secretly married at Easter, 1933.

Fletch left Colgate prematurely, in May of’33, to get the jump on job hunters coming out of Eastern schools all within a three-week window of late May and early June. Through his and Grandad Halley’s contacts in Akron, B F Goodrich picked him up for their industrial relations department because of his studies in industrial psychology. But there was position budgeted. So, first, two years of 20 hours/week of night shift on a heel press line. This is where Fletch developed his respect for labor, for workers, for unions. These years of the late ‘30s impressed on him the terrible toll un- or under-employment takes upon workers and families.

He was promoted to line supervisor but argued that he should retain his union membership. The union disagreed, strongly: for his trouble, Dad was physically thrown out of the union hall and had his arm broken. Eventually, B F Goodrich moved this smart, college guy into time studies and onto the management development ladder.

December 7^th, 1941, the day that changed the direction of our lives. I had recently turned seven. That Sunday evening, Dad, borrowing Grandad’s Pontiac coupe, was taking our cousin, his Aunt Evie’s son, after a weekend visit back to the Navy’s Sandusky training station on Lake Erie. I seated between them, the radio on, and came the flash interruption announcing the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. I sensed their alarm, their outrage, but little grasped how that day was to alter forever the course of our lives.

December 8^th, 1941. Monday, my mother made me stay home from first grade in order to listen on our huge, console radio to President Roosevelt’s speech to Congress, the famous “day of infamy” speech. To be kept home upset me, for I was a good boy who had learned how important it was to attend school. I have a strong memory of that day at home and the sound of Roosevelt’s voice, but I’m not sure if that's a memory of the event or of multiple replays of the famous call-to-arms. Later that afternoon, the Senate declared war on Japan 82 - 0, and the House, 388 – 1 (Montana pacifist Jeannette Rankin dissenting.)

December 11^th, 1941. On this day, Hitler acted out his 2^nd worst decision: his declaration of war on the US. The first? to invade the USSR in June of 1941. Had Hitler and Mussolini not declared war on us in accordance with their alliance with Japan, we likely would have stayed out of the European war in order to focus entirely on the hated Japanese Emperor and his Premier Tojo. Hitler’s two decisions rang the death knell on the Drittes Reich. 

            That afternoon, the US declared war on Italy and Germany. Now, it was full-on WWII.

This was the day in’41 that Dad tried to enlist at the Akron Army Recruiting Center. Rejected:30-yrs old, married, two kids (Carol born in January of ’39,) a trick football knee, and working in a war industry, rubber: tires, tank treads, seals, boot soles & heels, essential bushings, transmission belts, and such.

Soon Dad turned to Taylor family acquaintance Larry Appley, recently appointed Advisor to Sect. of War Stimpson on civilian and personnel training. Larry arranged an interview in Washington. We, none of us save Dad, ever saw Akron again.

Fletch was assigned to the War Dept.’s Office of Civilian Manpower and posted to McDill Army Air Force base, then under construction in Tampa, Florida. Mom, Carol and I moved into a tiny little rental on a dirt road on the edge of St. Petersburg. Dad worked six days a week, essentially disappearing from Carol and my lives. Grandma and Grandpa Taylor wintered each year in St. Pete, so we were not entirely alone.

In small town Florida, I saw prejudice, discrimination, and segregation in action, while watching Mom treat all people with respect and dignity. Aside from that, my Mom imparted more personal than political values. I recall, later, her taking me, a third-grader, to get my first library card; to open a savings account; her admonitions to “look it up”, to know; her management of our Cub Scout pack. During the AEC years in Washington, it was she who taught me to drive and parallel park. Politics and public policy? Not so much; that was Dad’s province.

At McDill Field Dad forged his respect for independent contractors; his appreciation of the cruel discrimination against Negroes (we didn’t use Black back then) who had not migrated Northward. He encountered bureaucratic nonsense from the Pentagon, nonsense he castigated in colorfully irreverent telegrams north.   

Soon enough, he received a summons to appear at his boss's desk ASAP: "if you know so damn much, get your ass up here." I recall we taking him to his priority reservation out of Tampa’s tiny airport on a Lockheed Lodestar, the first commercial airliner I had ever seen. Dad went, expecting to be fired.

Ellie received his wire the next day: "Gather up the kids and meet me in Washington." He had been appointed Deputy Director of the War Department Office of Civilian Manpower. I remember the subsequent two-day drive in our '41 Oldsmobile with its wondrous Hydra-Matic transmission. (A new car? Dad had ordered it when the public learned US production of civilian automobiles was to be suspended for production of tanks, Jeeps, trucks, army staff cars, and aircraft. Our Olds was among the last that rolled out of the plant in September of ’41. We had the Olds until1953; I learned to drive in it.)

About the drive north, I remember Mom's confusion at DC addresses and the mystery of traffic circles. But most vividly, our awesome nighttime arrival with the Lincoln Memorial welcoming us from the DC end of the Arlington Memorial Bridge. Eventually, we found our way to the Bethesda house he had rented and to an anxious reunion. All in time, the next day, to register me for 3rd grade.

His experiences at MacDill Field imbued him with tolerance and a hatred of prejudice and discrimination, values he passed on to his children. He also acted out his impatience and irreverent disdain for bureaucratic impedimenta, attitudes I unfortunately have come to share.

Fletch Waller, Sr. went on to develop a remarkable career of public service at the War Department and then at the newly formed Atomic Energy Commission. He worked 6 ½ day weeks during the war, and six-day weeks until 1952 when he left government to join private industry again. 

BTW, Colgate came back during the Pentagon years and offered him his diploma – provided he pay his library overdue fines with interest. He told them to go to hell. So, no, Fletch Waller never graduated from college.

Liberalism, intolerance of intolerance, respect for work, civic courage, faith in education, skepticism of ideologies, urge for pragmatic solutions – all products of the lives of Halley Templeton Waller, of Fletcher Charles Waller, and of Eleanor Taylor Waller, of the facts of their public and private lives and of the family mythology that has grown up around them. I'm no saint, to be sure, but these are the values I aspire to live up to.

 

So, that’s what I would tell my reluctant acquaintance if given the chance. Perhaps he’ll read it here. I want to learn how his very different views developed, first out of curiosity and second because it might help build bridges to friendship. 

Our Creche

This is our creche -- proudly taking center stage in Waller household Christmas decor since 1982. 

Now, this may surprise those of you who know that I am not a Christian. Raised in a proper Christian home by a Methodist mother and a father raised in a devout, nominally Baptist home under direction of a skeptical mother who could swear like a cavalry trooper and a YMCA Secretary father, "Secretary" being the title for what you would call CEO. 

I absorbed and accepted the ethical and moral precepts of Christianity with one glaring exception: I cannot affirm a belief in the Apostle's Creed, that essential statement of Christian belief adopted by Charlemagne in early 9thC -- an affirmation that God exists, that Jesus was bodily resurrected after three days in the tomb, and risen, he shares with God responsibility for the universe. Bodily, physical resurrection? No, not I. And when it comes to God, I am an agnostic. I cannot profess belief in God, especially an interceding God; I simply don't know. And for me to affirm belief in resurrection would be dishonest. 

Millions of Christians, I am sure, share my disbeliefs. Many accept the hypocrisy; as a Sicilian might say, futtatini, fogedaboudit. Many Christians take refuge in a rationalization that the words are symbolic, not literal. That sophistry won't wash with me. The Cardinals of the 5thC and 6thC Gallic churches who developed the creed believed the words literally. Those early Christians who pegged their membership in the brotherhood of Christ to the Creed, espoused its literal truth, The oath they were taking when reciting the Apostle's Creed was binding acceptance. So, I cannot be a Christian.

Perhaps, I am Christian in form but not in substance. But, if not a Christian, why the creche? Well, first it's part of a comforting tradition; we're used to embracing it in the usual story of Christmas. Second, this creche has some special meaning for my family, which I'll tell you about. Third, it suggests some important truths about the life of Jesus of Nazareth, and about the Gospels. And last, it gives us some clues about the birth of Jesus, the Nazarene. 

The first point -- a comfortable, familiar part of Christmas -- is self-evident. Let's move on: our Creche.

In 1981, after 23 years with General Mills, I was recruited to join Marriott as Senior Vice-President of Sales and Marketing, We moved from Minneapolis to Bethesda, MD. That first year was very stressful, very intense; lots of travel, lots of difficulty explaining to my peers and my employees what I was up to as I strove to transform a  transactional, sales culture into a marketing and customer service culture. 

My wife, Barbara, was seven years along her journey, our journey, from alcohol dependency to sobriety and self-development. The damage her illness inflicted on the family was evident in our lack of confidence and in the kids' inability to engage with new people and new situations. And our relationship, hers and mine, was slowly developing but in a new and uncomfortable way. 

As we entered fall of 1982, I conceived a Christmas trip to a destination in which we could relax and enjoy one another away from ties to parents and old acquaintances, to build a new experience and new memories. I wanted to avoid a Marriott resort and the gossip it would inspire, but it was getting late for access elsewhere. My secretary told me Bill Marriott had a casita con servicio at Las Brisas and would rent it out when not in use. I checked with my friend, head of Marriott's HR; he assured me there would be no reputational repercussions about my renting the chief's get-away, and so in mid-December off we went to Acapulco.

Christmas in Mexico: we learned trees were sold in the market, mainly to ex-pats at exorbitant prices, but what about decorations? We gathered candles, flowers, and banners that proclaimed “¡Feliz Navidad" y "Próspero Año Nuevo!”

One afternoon before Christmas Day, Barbara came home with a Mexican creche featuring a black-eyed, dark-haired, brown-skinned Holy Family. We were charmed, and for the next 43 years they have taken center stage. And now it all takes on new meanings, given J D Vance's neo-Catholic genuflecting before a white, blonde, blue-eyed Mary thoroughly vetted and approved by Steve Miller.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I love our creche for its story, undoubtedly false, but with important hints about and links to historic truths. The author(s) of The Book of Mathew had to invent an apocryphal census ordered by Caesar Augustus with a mandate that families had to register at the original home of the male head of household -- Mary on an Ass and no room at the inn and all that -- in order to get Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem to fulfill Micah's prophecy that the Messiah would be born in the city of David i.e., in Bethlehem. The Book of Matthew is clearly aimed at a Jewish audience and argues that Jesus is indeed the Messiah, the Christ for which they wait. Apocryphal? There is no record, no mention in Roman or Greek chronicles of such a census, Not a trace of what would have been a pivotal event in the history of Rome's sponsorship of Herod's reign over Judea and Galilee.

Another link to probable truth: the Three Wise Guys following a star in the East. This is the best clue we have to date the birth of Jesus. A helical rising of Jupiter, i.e., a rising of a celestial body in the pre-dawn East illuminated by the sun which is still below the the horizon. This one in mid-august of 3BCE, a beaut because Jupiter was in conjunction, that is, lined up with, Regulus, the brightest star in the Constellation of Leo and at 1.4, one of the brightest stars in the night sky. Out in the desert, with the planet and star blazing away in the pre-dawn sky, this would have been impossible to ignore. Coming as it did in the Constellation of Leo, court astrologers would have said it foretold a royal birth, the birth of a King. Greek, Roman, Sumerian, and Babylonian astrologers all related Leo with royal, kingly qualities. Given Herod's tenuous hold on power and, as the scribes tell us, his paranoia, it seems to me perfectly believable that he would send counsellors to investigate (brown-skinned, semitic counsellors, as in our creche.) Ergo, the three Magi, whom we have come to call Gaspar, Balthazar, and Melchior (they are not named in the Bible.)  The celestial conjunction recures, of course, a pattern of every 71 years, then in 12; it recurred in 1873 and 1885; 1956, and 1968. The next recurrence will be in 2039. But I don't expect to be here for that one, either.

Our creche is special. You can see why. Its simple peacefulness, its balance and hand-crafted beauty, its meaningfulness make it magical. When I go, where will it go? Who will be its caretaker, its custodian for Wallers/Stoners/Janes-Wallers/Janes yet to come? Someone will, for our creche is treasured and growing more so every year.

 

A Voice to Heed

These times call for new leaders . . .

, , , at least of the opposition and, ultimately, of the nation. We are faced with faltering faith in democratic republicanism, in ethical leadership, in fairness and equity of capitalism, in the relevance of the Constitution, in expertise, in compromise and community , , , I could go on and on.

I recommend to you one voice to heed, one person who offers executive capability; an ethical rudder; a determination to collaborate and to cooperate, to develop consensus; and a proven track-record of having done so.

I am recommending you take a long and thoughtful look at Senator Cory Booker as potential  Senate Majority (or Minority) Leader and as prospective President of these disunited States of America.

Booker is smart and broadly educated, with a BA in political science and a MA in Sociology from Stanford (where he started at tight end for the Cardinals), with a Fulbright and a year at Oxford studying history, followed by a JD from Yale Law School.

He entered politics and was elected mayor of Newark, NJ, no simple undertaking. Crime, poverty, unemployment, and failing schools had earned Newark membership in America's FUCC, the Failed Urban Cities Club. Over his seven years as Mayor, Booker rebuilt civic pride, reduced crime, straightened out and instituted reforms in the Newark school system which increased student attainment scores, and increased affordable housing stock through zoning revisions, incentives, and collaboration with the Chamber of Commerce and the real estate industry. Booker knows, as only do mayors and governors, how things really work and how to make them work better.

Booker was elected to the Senate in 2013 where he has concentrated on economic equity, health care access, and criminal justice reform. He and Chuck Grassley -- there's an unlikely partnership! -- authored and lobbied for the First Step Act, the first major reform of criminal justice in decades. It was signed into law at the end of 2018 by then President Donald J. Trump.

Courage and honor? In April this year, Booker delivered a 25-hour filibuster in opposition to Trump's policies cutting Medicaid access, impeding voting rights, relaxing police accountability, and revising criminal justice measures. That it is the longest speech in Senate history is interesting, but it is his expression of ethical, powerful, and reasonable pragmatism that really counts.

In all Booker has done and does, his preference for pragmatic problem solving over politics, his strong ethical rudder, his commitment to community and his skill at building coalitions make his a voice to heed and his leadership to be sought.  

I recommend to you Sen. and Mrs. Cory Booker

A Suggestion to President Trump

Every member of the committee which will award the Nobel Peace Prize is Norwegian, appointed by the Stormont, Norway's parliament. Norway is a founding and active member of NATO. They share with Sweden, which just joined NATO after years of standing aside, growing alarm about Russia's sabotage and disinformation campaigns, submarine intrusions into national waters, and air space violations.

If you so hunger, Mr President, to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, would it not be prudent to be seen as an even-handed mediator, a conciliator favoring neither one side nor the other? Whether so or not so, you are increasingly believed to be catering to Putin's wishes. Is not your claim to be seeking to broker a just peace weakened by use of a Manhattan real estate developer to negotiate, one who appears to seek accommodating Putin and who coaches Russian his Russian counterparts on how to win points with you?

Is this the way to impress the Norwegians, to be regarded as helping find a settlement that awards and encourages Russion aggression? 

Autumn Leaves

A couple of weeks ago, before the onset of our steady November rains, I lay abed one morning idly staring out our window wall into the back yard. (Until recently, I awoke and the feet hit the floor. Now, suddenly, I can laze about in bed for ten minutes or so. Must be that the trazadone Doc has prescribed to help me get to sleep is working its pharma-magic but on the other end of the night.)

Anyway, the oranges of the big leaf maples, the umber Japanese snowdrop leaves, the brilliant reds (I’m told) of the Japanese maples were drifting down in a gentle breeze from the south. Of course, Johnny Mercer’s Autumn Leaves became my ear worm for the day.

(I’d best explain that “I’m told.” I am partially color blind. I see oranges and yellows – at least my version of them: I have no idea what you see. But for reds and greens, they just don’t register. This time of year, Ann will call out some apparently vivid red which I don’t see. She gets mad at me: “Of course you do; you’re just saying that!” Now, if I had lung cancer or a broken leg would she get angry? But my inability to share in her joy of color enrages her. I don’t get it.)

I asked Co-Pilot to help me trace the evolution of the song. I knew it was originally French; Yves Montand, Edith Piaf, and Juliette Greco among others made it a favorite from 1947 on. The French original, a poem by Jacques Pre'vert set to music by Joseph Kosma entitled The Dead Leaves, Les Feuilles Mortes, is a sad, philosophical lament on the inevitability of loss and death of one's love.

In 1947, Jo Stafford recorded an English version with adapted lyrics by Johnny Mercer. Adapted, not translated. Mercer’s take is more romantic, more focused on longing, nostalgia and sweet memory:

                But I miss you most of all my Darling,

                When autumn leaves start to fall.

I acquaint it with high school, perhaps Jo Stafford's version mixed up with Nat King Cole's; he didn’t record it until 1955, by which time I was either ending junior year or beginning senior year at Hamilton. It was Cole’s recording that set Autumn Leaves into the pantheon of the American Song Book, since recorded by everybody: Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughan, Bill Evans, Frank Sinatra, Chet Baker, Billy Eckstine with Benny Carter, Ella Fitzgerald  and tons more.

Nat King Cole was a phenom. He was topping the charts in ’44 and ’45 (with whites, just as was Jackie Robinson to erase the color line in baseball) and steadily thereafter. Whatever he brought out, sold out. We danced to and necked to Nature Boy (’48), Mona Lisa (’50), and Too Young (’51.) Are you old enough to remember those?

By the time I got to Hamilton College, fall of ’52, the tail-end of the GI Bill vets were gone a year. But they left a legacy at my fraternity (yes, regretfully, I’m one of those) of revering Edith Piaf and of making an annual pilgrimage to Hickory House to hear Mary Lou Williams or Marian McPartland or Dinah Washington. And, of course, Nat King Cole continued to mesmerize us – and our parents.

So, are you still with me? Since watching autumn leaves literally drift past my window the other morning, the song has popped up again and again: “Alexa, play a Bill Evans track, please:” Autumn Leaves, first up. (I always say please to Alexa and to Co-Pilot; my mother taught me to be polite.) Tuning in to KNKX: Autumn Leaves.

Last night, Ann and I attended Seattle Opera’s Recital Series’ presentation of Patricia Sings Piaf featuring Patricia Racette accompanied by pianist Craig Terry. Ann enjoyed it more than did I: for me, Racette’s operatic voice did not quite catch the anguish of the original. But it was a fine evening – and there again, of course: Autumn Leaves. I suppose it’s inevitable in November, but again and again, there it is: the sad, nostalgic longing triggering sweet memories of my own on this, my 92^nd journey around the sun.

 PS I was reading this draft aloud to Ann in the kitchen. Alexa, in the adjacent dining area, must have been eavesdropping. She interrupted my reading to dutifully deliver Bill Evans' Autumn Leaves again.

PPS, four days later: Last night, I was clearing the piano in preparation for Max's and his accompanist's audition tape rehearsal. Atop a pile of Ann's Dad's organ and piano sheet music, there it was again: Autumn Leaves with lyrics in French and English! 

Have You No Shame, Sir, At Last? Have You No Shame?

I echo the famous question “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at last? Have you no sense of decency?” asked of Sen Joe McCarthy by Joseph Welch, counsel for the US Army at the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings. That marked the turning point of McCarthy's career.

To President Trump, I ask: Have you no shame, sir, at last? Have you no shame?

Yesterday, President Donald J. Trump disgraced himself and the Presidency in his hypocritical remarks at Arlington National Cemetery, put into his mouth by some lackey, perhaps Stephen Miller who prepares many of his speeches. This Draft-Dodger Donald J. Trump, who received in 1968 a 1-Y deferment from his Queens draft board after his fourth student deferment had expired (and later, in ‘72, a re-classification to 4-F) on the basis of his claim to have a letter from a doctor (Podiatrist Larry Braunstein who, it turned out, was a tenant of Fred Trump’s) attesting that Donald J. Trump had bone spurs. Trump later said the bone spurs were “minor” and “cured themselves without treatment.” How convenient. And where is this purported letter?

This is same Donald J. Trump who during the 2017 wreath-laying at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, turned and asked his chief of staff, General John F, Kelly “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” General Kelly, who rose from enlisted infantryman to four-star General, was renowned for his leadership, presence, and accountability. Kelly was stunned.

This is the same Donald J. Trump who in August of 2018, upon the customary lowering of flags to honor Sen John McCain’s death, stormed “What the fuck are we doing that for? Guy was a fucking loser.”

Yesterday, President Trump indulged in hyperbolic eulogies for “fallen heroes”, who answered their nation’s call, “borne the battles” and “formed ranks of mighty walls of flesh and blood”, “lived through nightmares so that we could live the American Dream” and so on and on. What hypocrisy!

He also broke the law forbidding political use of National Military Cemeteries for political purposes by calling out by name his predecessor and lying about the Biden administration’s management of the VA.

In the past, I have shrugged off Trump’s lies and stupid claims (yesterday’s? That we won WWI) but now he has gone too far – cynical, hypocritical claims of loving, respecting, revering veterans and military service – this from a first order draft-dodger. He has defamed those buried at Arlington; has dishonored men like Gen. Kelly; men like Major General Bill Boice with whom I travelled in Sicily; like close friend USMC Capt. John Meredith, who voluntarily undertook two combat tours in Viet Nam.  Trump has made a mockery of such service. 

At the recent Hegseth meeting of general officers from across the globe, Trump accused them of being soft, of "wokeness", of not being martial. He threatened that if they did not like his directives, they should get out, losing their rank and their retirement. He had previously said, to Kelly, that he "wants generals like Hitler's generals", evidentally totally ignorant of their disdain for Hitler and of Operation Valkyrie's attempt to assassinate him.

Moreover, yesterday at Arlington and Tuesday, a week ago, at the Pentagon, he disgraced himself. 

With his hypocrisy and disdain for selfless service he has besmirched the office of POTUS – and this is unforgiveable. 

Have you no shame, sir, at last? Have you no shame?

 Fletch Waller (SSgt. USAR, 1958 - 1964)

The Middle Eastern Nation I Long to Love

Yesterday, at the Olympic Club, I gave a speech under that title. It was suggested that I post it to give others access to it. This is a blog version of that talk. Which middle eastern nation? I dedicated the talk to Kourosh and Darius, new members of the Club, both Iranian-American.

Yes, it is Iran that I would most like to admire, to visit, to love. But of course, I am not talking about today's Iran, but of the Iran it once was and could become again. Five reasons I long for that new Iran.

First, I long to love Iran because of its Persian Heritage.

We, educated in the Western canon, focused on Greece and its heritage, and most of us don't know of or appreciate what Greece's implacable enemies, the Persians, have given our culture. The first monotheist of which we have records was Zoroaster, founder of what became Persia's state religion, Zoroastrianism. Though dating is fuzzy, he preceded Akhenaton and Abraham in preaching monotheism to polytheistic societies. Zoroastrians also believed in an affirmative evil. To Christians who might ask how a loving God could make a Hitler, a Zoroastrian would answer that there is a competing evil God,  not just an absence of good or demonic possession but an affirmative Evil. Zoroaster also gave us judgement day.

Moreover, Persia gave us civic order by rule of law (at about the same time as did Hammurabi) and in architecture, the arch -- long before Roman engineers came on stage. 

Shiraz, a lush valley surrounded by dry mountains

And man-made oases with gardens and water features, not for supply, but in which to relax and fuel the soul with beauty.

Eram Garden, Shiraz

Second, because of its modernity

Until the advent of Fundamentalists Khomeini and his son Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran had a middle class -- now battered and impoverished, caught between Iran’s fundamentalists and our hostility and sanctions -- but still aspiring to middle class lives.. Before the theocracy, Iran had a representative parliamentary system; Iranians know how to run elections. For the first 3/4 of the 20thC, Iranian women enjoyed access to education, workforce participation, the professions, and had legal rights of property and independence. Under Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, Sharia law was suppressed. Iran increasingly urbanized.  True, the Shahs Pahlavi, father and son, had autocratic powers over the legislature. None-the-less, Iran's economic, social, and political structures had much ours could relate to and work with. Iran has experienced more modernity than its neighbor Islamic states.

Third, because it’s Shia, not Sunni

This may strike some of you as prejudice, but reflect with me:                        

• Of the 19 airliner hijackers who attacked America on 9/11, all 19 were Sunni.
• Sunnis appear to grow radicals: ISIS, Al Qaida, The Islamic Brotherhood, the Taliban, Boko Haram, al-Shabaab, Salafi Jihadism, etc.: all Sunni. Yes, theocratic Iran sponsors Hezbollah, the Houthi, and Hamas as instruments of state policy, but they don't have such a track record as have the Sunni of home-grown terror movements. 
• Traditionally, Shia have shown more tolerance of non-Muslims than have Sunni though Khomeini changed that for the worse.
• There is no in-grained history of animosity to the US until the modern era of oil politics. British Intelligence with CIA aid and encouragement changed that in 1953 by deposing democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh because he moved to nationalize Anglo-Iranian Oil (now known as BP.) By contrast, prickly Sunni governments, especially the Saudi Wahabis, have long resented US interference and presence in the region.

Fourth, I'd love to love Iran for the sake of my old friends – i.e., my 13^th & 14thC friends, the great medieval Persian poets.

Persia was polylingual: Arabic was the language of theology; Turkish, the language of administration; and Persian, the language of poetry. Persians revered their poets. Rumi, of the13thC, is perhaps the most famous, but in fact he was not Persian. He wrote in Persian, but he was born in what is now Afghanistan and raised in Turkey (Ann and I have been to his grave at Konya.)

My favorite bed-side companions, a century younger than Rumi, are from Shiraz. Shiraz, the beautiful, lush city of vineyards and rose gardens, of nightingales and wine shops. Yes, wine. In medieval Iran?  Shiraz was governed liberally at that time, though from time to time, conservative reformers shut down the wine shops. The wine shops were to Persian villages and towns what the pubs are today to English and Irish towns.  

Hafez wrote of love: love lost, lovers lost, unrequited love's despair, love of wine, of wineshops, and of youthful wine servers (picture barkeeps.) Hafez loved beauty and youth. He wrote of his love for girls and for boys. Muslim critics and clerics have woven a veil of propriety over Hafez's words, claiming his talk of loving boy or girl was a symbol of his love for his celestial maker, for God. Well, there is no evidence from Hafez for that. I don't believe Hafez ever gave a hint of that interpretation. My translator, Dick Davis, applies Occam's Razor to the work and simply takes at face value what Hafez says about liking boys and girls. Hafez's poetry is moving and beautiful despite what to us are occasional references to the unacceptable. (Persian society was not alone; the ancient Greeks and Romans condoned homosexuality and adolescent sexuality.)

Tomb of Hafez, Shiraz.

His companion on my beside table is Jahan Malek Khatun, an educated woman of the 14thC, a published poet, a royal princess, who sincerely and movingly wrote of love from the distaff side, but with little of the self-deprecating humor that endears Hafez to me.

The translations I use are Dick Davis's from Faces of Love (in which he also includes the works of Obayd-e Zakani, the bad boy of Shiraz who loved to write about his naughty bits and shock the 'nice' people of Persia, causing much clutching of pearls, I'm sure. I don't know this, but my guess is that some of the Pythons must have found him amusing.)   

And my Fifth reason for longing to love Iran are my new Iranian-American friends and acquaintances 

        such as

• beautiful Shiva S, Dir. of marketing and communications for the Friends of Waterfront Park. Shiva fully lives up to her name, which in Farsi means charmingly expressive;
• Shawn T, a medical entrepreneur in San Diego, a B’hai refugee from fundamentalist persecution; and
• Kourosh and Darius T whom I met through their/our Olympic Club. Kourosh, another refugee from fundamentalist persecution, has found acceptance here in hopefully still tolerant America.

Those, then, are my five reasons for longing to accept, to reach out to, to love Iran. But obviously, one cannot do so today. 

What would it take for me to come to love Iran? Change: big change in Teheran and Qom, big change in Washington and Miami Beach.

       From Qom:

• The passing of Ayatollah ali Khamenei and a return to moderation; 
• A middle-class uprising against theocracy; the dismantling of the Guardian Council and the Assembly of Experts;
• A blossoming of participatory republicanism;
• A restoration and opening of Shiraz -- its rose gardens, vineyards, and nightingales (and its wine shops;) 
• And for Kourosh and Shawn, the freedom of choice, to choose to go back or to make their homes here, the freedom to visit their homeland in confidence and safety.

       And from Washington:

• A suspension of ideological intolerance; a repudiation of blood and soil as a litmus test of Americanism;
• An end to needing an "enemy” to justify autocratic rule by Executive Order; (fill in the blank _________. Venezuela? China? Iran? Canada? Who will be next?)
• A willingness to listen, to be present and really listen, and to discuss rather than bluster and threaten, or economically punish with tariffs;
• An acknowledgement of our differences but without judgement or proselytizing or coercion;
• A genuine search for common ground for collaborating on addressing common concerns. 

Iran is significant. Three times the land mass of France; half again as many people. Can we just feud and strangle this potential, modernist Middle East nation, or should we work toward an accommodation with it? My answer is evident if you have read this far. 

Yes, it will take regime changes, here and there, to enable me to love Iran, the Middle Eastern nation I most long to love. Will I live to see it? Probably not, but if my children persist and demand  change, my grandchildren might. Some of them might visit Shiraz one day and raise a glass to me. I sincerely wish so.

Fletch