Tag Archives: history

691. Science Fiction Begins

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Science Fiction Begins

If you don’t like that title, here’s a longer one.

Science fiction begins as literature, becomes a genre, sinks to a sub-literate state in the eyes of the intelligentsia, regains legitimacy in the Saturday Evening Post, and then consumes the universe.

I like the short one better. And by the way, this is just a quick survey. If you don’t like the way I’ve chopped up history, write your own. After all, most SF “scholars” disagree — on everything.

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Science fiction has been around for a long time, although the early stuff is hardly recognizable. You could make the argument that it truly began when writers started using machines instead of supernatural beings to do marvelous things. That is why we look to H. G. Wells instead of Charles Dickens for the beginning of time travel stories.

Scrooge visited the past, present, and future, but it took three spirits (plus Marley) to pull it off. Wells did it with a time machine.

Jules Verne’s Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863) and H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1895) are a good enough place to start looking at science fiction. Both were considered literature from the beginning. Verne’s writing style was held up for emulation by the French establishment. H. G. Wells was a respected social commentator. In that same era, Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward was a call for society to perfect itself — science fiction ideas spoken by the voice of the elite.

But what if you are an outsider, with a coarser voice?

Later, rougher, more exciting writers of science fiction didn’t fit the proper mold. They were frequently not all that interested in uplift, they just liked the idea of the future. Their characters were more likely to carry a ray gun than to address Parliament. Through the early decades of the twentieth century a whole generation of young men (and a few young women) found excitement in reading this kind of science fiction presented in the form of short stories in inexpensive specialty magazines.

This period, beginning in the thirties and lasting until roughly World War II, was often called the Golden Age of Science Fiction. (Remember, golden ages are always in the past somewhere.) A great deal of high quality science fiction was produced, along with the usual kinderdrivel. Science fiction had left the mainstream and become a niche interest, ignored or derided by most people.

Science fiction also acquired its own name. The Time Machine was just called a novel when it was published, but now science fiction had become a genre. Calling it sci-fi was forbidden by those who loved it. Everybody else just considered it cheap trash.

I wasn’t there for all that. For most of the Golden Age, I wasn’t born yet. I saw the science fiction of the golden age when it was reprinted in the paperback books published in the sixties, seventies, and eighties.

My actual connection with Golden Age magazines was brief but exciting. A few of them were still around when I began writing, and my first publication was in Galaxy. It was a novella called To Go Not Gently, and the cover of Vol. 39, No. 6, 1978, showed my character Ram David Singh walking uneasily down the Avenue of Abominations in New Bombay. I was over the moon.

It was also the last issue of Galaxy, although there were later attempts at resurrection.

So science fiction began as just a part of normal literature, then went on the gain an intense fan base as well as the disdain of everyone else. Heinlein and history were about to change that.

The discussion continues next week.

690. Fighting Stupidity With Stupidity

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Gavin Newsom

Fighting Stupidity With Stupidity

The cliché is “fighting fire with fire”. Sometimes it makes sense to fight fire with fire. Sometimes it doesn’t.

This time the cliché should read “fighting a danger to our democracy with another danger to our democracy”, which explains the title of this post.

I’ve been giving President Trump a hard time and I plan to continue to do so, but he isn’t the only politician endangering our system of government, and they aren’t all MAGA. My home state of California has come up with a plan to counter the Trump agenda which is as dangerous as anything Trump is doing.

It’s called Prop 50. It’s all in the news here, but if you live in Paducah or Peoria, it may be new to you. When Texas, following Trump’s call, unfairly redistricted its congressional map, Democratic leadership in California, following Governor Gavin Newsom, followed suit. Before I can tell you exactly what they did, a little background will be needed.

Since 2010, California had done its redistricting through the Citizens Redistricting Commission, a balanced panel of five Democrats, five Republicans, and four members unaffiliated with either party. This board was brought about the people through Proposition 11, and later modified by Proposition 20. Its redistricting map is probably as fair as anyone could expect.

Now the Democratic leadership has produced Proposition 50 which throws out the CRC redistricting map in favor of one which completely and openly favors Democrats. They make no apologies, but call it a necessary reaction to the unfair actions of the State of Texas. The Citizens Redistricting Commission is not disbanded by Prop 50; it will draw the 2030-2040 map after the 2030 census, but the 2026, 2028, and 2030 elections will be skewed Democratic. Deliberately. Openly. Nakedly. And without apology.

Since this is a proposition, it will be up to the people of California to vote this in — or not.

I suppose the California Democrats who wrote Prop 50 will call this fighting fire with fire. I agree, if they mean, “You Republicans set fire to one end of the Constitution, so we Democrats are going to set fire to the other end.”

Welcome to 2025. If this had happened any other year, I would have suspected I was reading a script from Saturday Night Live, but apparently this is the way we do things now.

We shouldn’t.

Our country is in serious trouble and it needs serious leaders. It needs people in office who trust the Constitution. It needs Democrats who do not simply copy what the MAGA Republicans are doing and call it justified.

You shoved me, so I’m going to shove you is not a reasonable political philosophy.

He did it first, is not an excuse for violating responsible political behavior.

The only good thing that could come out of this would be a sound defeat for Prop. 50. I expect it to go down, because I trust the people of California.

As always, folks, its all up to you.

689. Birth of a Blog

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I started the blog you are reading on the twenty-ninth of August, 2015. I took a hiatus in 2020, because of covid. Here is what I said that day.

— << >> —

Yesterday, here in California, the Governor requested that all people over 65 self-isolate. That makes sense to me, and I passed that milestone seven years ago, so my wife and I are going to hunker down and become temporary hermits. That isn’t too much of a hardship since we live in the country and keep a well stocked larder anyway.

This change shouldn’t bother my blog, but it does. I’m not worried for my wife and myself, but worrying about the rest of the country and the world beyond weighs on me. It has also been getting harder lately to come up with new things to say, especially on subjects that don’t call for hours of research for a post that will be read in three minutes. This is post 678, after all.

— << >> —

Actually, A Writing Life had more than 678 posts. From day one it was a double effort, a website called A Writing Life with almost daily entries in a blog of the same name (causing some confusion) and a secondary blog on the same website called Serial which provided many of my fiction writings in serial form.

According to WordPress who handles my blog and keeps track of such things, I had 1280 posts when I restarted this blog.

During the hiatus, seven posts trickled through, so make that 1273 posts in less than five years. I know I was working my tail off during that period, but it still boggles my mind.

I made a lot of friends during that period, but after six years off most of them probably don’t even know I’m still alive.

I am.

I disappeared but I never went away. During those years I finally put the last period on a five book series of novels I have been working on since 1972 called The Menhir Series (fantasy). I completed two new novels The Cost of Empire (alternate universe) and Like Clockwork (time travel), and am fighting with another called Dreamsinger, a sideways sequel to Cyan which won’t quite come to heel yet.

You will be seeing all my works, old and new, in e-book format in the next few years. The Cost of Empire and Like Clockwork won’t be published for a while, so I won’t name their release dates. Too many possibilities lie between now and then.

688. Another Assassination

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Another Assassination

9/11 was last week. Most years I have at least acknowledged the event in this blog, but life moves forward. I had a blog in the can for last week, and was working on others that will appear around the New Year, when another event took over the news too late for me to have anything to say. I had a different post planned for this week, but it will have to wait.

On September 10 Charlie Kirk was assassinated. So much for leaving politics aside for a while.

The truth is, I had never heard of Kirk. He was deep in the MAGA movement and I am not. If I knew more about him, I am sure I would disagree with much of what he believes. I would probably agree with a lot as well.

If you are deep into MAGA, you don’t have to think a lot. You may — but you don’t have to.

If you are a committed liberal, you don’t have to think a lot. You may — but you don’t have to.

In either case, if you are far to the left or far to the right, you would never vote for the other guy, even if you didn’t like your own guy. I’ve been voting for over five decades, and I never felt like that — until Donald Trump came along.

When Biden came slowly to the podium in the infamous debate, my heart sank. He was clearly unfit for the office, and everybody knew it. But I would still have voted for Biden because Trump was also unfit, and evil besides.

Evil is a word that requires explanation, and I will do that in a moment.

Since I live in California, I already knew Kamila Harris from her debate on the way to winning a Senatorial seat. I was not impressed then, and that never changed. But I still voted for her because of Trump.

I called Trump evil. Evil is losing a Presidential election, lying about it, fomenting rebellion, and attempting to overthrow the Constitution. Evil is the attack on the Capitol. Evil is pardoning the guilty. Donald should have — and still should — stand trial for treason because of those actions.

But he should not be assassinated. And neither should Charlie Kirk.

The people spoke in 2016. They spoke again in 2020. They spoke yet again in 2024. The people decide.

So much for Donald Trump, in my opinion. Insurrection is unforgivable.

But that doesn’t make Charlie Kirk evil, and it doesn’t make any of Trump’s other followers evil. It doesn’t make them crazy. It doesn’t even make their ideas wrong.

I can understand why people follow Trump, both Republicans and Independents. He is persuasive, despite his lies. And he is just humorous enough to pass his lies off as exaggerations. He is also the first Republican president since Bush Two left office in January of 2009. That counts for a lot.

Extreme Republicans will vote for a Republican he doesn’t like before he will vote for a Democrat. Even though I am independent, I get that.

Extreme Democrats will vote for a Democrat he doesn’t like before he will vote for a Republican. I get that, too.

The people who voted for Trump — with the possible exception of very young voters — already had their opinions long before Trump came down the escalator. Most of them were already conservative. Most believed in limited government. Most of them believed that America was going to Hell.

(Actually, most people over 50 have always believed that the country is going to Hell. Liberals and conservatives just think it is true for diametrically opposite reasons.)

When Trump started selling MAGA hats, most of the people who wore them hadn’t been converted to anything. They were just following a man who seemed to be saying what they already believed.

There is no excuse for insurrection. Beyond that, if somebody is doing something you hate, then organize, protest, file a lawsuit, or scream at the top of your lungs.

But assassination? No. Never.

As for me, I am wringing my hands and grieving for America. Again.

— << >> —

That is not all I have to say about assassination. Science fiction uses assassination as the starting point for a lot of stories, particularly ones in the alternate timelines sub-genre. It will be coming up again when we talk about that in a few weeks.

687. Irritated Independence

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WELL, I’M BACK.

This renewed version of A Writing Life will primarily be about supporting the publication of my novels, giving hints to young writers, and telling my story. But nothing in 2025 can avoid politics.

If I am also going to complain about the new iteration of Donald Trump — and I am — I have to declare my place in the argument for those who don’t remember me. Anyone who reads what I write deserves that much.

I am not a liberal, particularly. I am not a conservative, particularly. I listen to both sides and find both positions full of wisdom and stupidity. Most of the time, it’s about a fifty-fifty toss-up.

I was raised to be a proud and loud Republican. Like many other things my father taught me, it didn’t take.

I didn’t become a Democrat in reaction either. When I first registered to vote, I chose Independent. Or, as they call it here in California, “no preference”. I hate that term. I have a preference on pretty much everything. My preferences just don’t line up with everybody else’s.

I am fully in favor of a woman’t right to abortion. I am equally supportive of the gun rights spelled out in the second amendment. If I tried to join either party, neither one would want me.

On the liberal side, political correctness seems to have been pushed to the point that telling the plain, unvarnished truth is out of fashion. Not quite illegal, but not acceptable in polite company. I’ve had enough of that.

On the conservative side — actually I don’t know. Where have the conservatives gone? I can’t find them anywhere.

Trump isn’t a conservative. He isn’t a Republican, either. None of the conservative Republicans of my father’s generation would have accepted him. None of the Republican former Presidents support him, and the dead ones are turning in their graves.

And yet he won the last election. We’ll have to talk about that — even though we will talk mostly about science fiction and why it is so hard for writers to get published.

They say we live in unprecedented times. Maybe, but American politics has always been a liar’s game, so that overworked word unprecedented doesn’t quite fit. It’s just that Trump is just so damned convincing that it changes the whole situation.

But mostly this blog is going to continue to be about writing.

684. Bible in Schools

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I am not really back, but I never really went away. You can expect to hear from me more regularly sometime in the near future, but today I have to respond to something in the news.

Before the Biden-Trump debate stole all the bandwidth, a seemingly minor story crawled across the bottom of our TV screens.

Oklahoma Schools Superintendent Ryan Walters orders schools to teach the Bible.

This is not new, as I can tell you from personal experience.

I was in high school in the mid sixties, in a small town in Oklahoma. Once a year a local evangelist named Reverend Heck was invited to our school. No, that was really his name. For an hour, the auditorium was turned into a church. Attendance was mandatory; respectful silence was also mandatory. No one complained; no one mentioned the constitution. No one asked to be excused. We all knew that the weight of community opinion would fall upon us if we did.

If you are not a fundamentalist Christian, or if you are Buddhist, Muslim, Jew or other non-Christian, I don’t need to convince you that this was not right.

On the other hand, if you are a Christian and you think that Superintendent Walters might have the right idea, you are the person I want to talk to.

Let us reason together. (Isaiah 1:18)

My childhood world consisted of two tiny communities, populations of 121 and about 300, with a consolidated school. There were five churches in the two communities, all Christian, all more or less fundamentalist. Belief that dancing was a sin was so strong that there were no proms. Do you have the picture?

Now fast forward to my adulthood. For twenty-seven years I taught middle school in a small community of a couple of thousand people. The composition of my new community was roughly half Mexican-American Catholics and half White Mormons. This community was in California, not Oklahoma, but I know it well, so I plan to use it in my comparisons.

Superintendent Walters wants the Bible to be taught. Let’s see how that would work.

If my California community were in Oklahoma, would Walters also call for the teaching of the Book of Mormon? He calls the Bible a historical text; the book of Mormon has been around since 1830, just under two hundred years. That’s just 42 years less than the Constitution. You can’t get more American than a Holy Book which was found (or ghost written, you decide) here in the U.S.A.

My childhood community would not stand for Mormonism being taught in the schools. They barely tolerated Catholics.

Speaking of Catholics, how would Superintendent Walters teach Matthew 16:18? It says (King James Version, according to my father the only version authorized by God for speakers of English):

And I say unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church: and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

It’s in the Bible, and if you are part of a Bible Church, you have to believe it. But what does it really mean?

To Catholics, it means that Peter (a name meaning rock) was the first Pope and that Jesus appointed him in this verse. By extension only Catholics are true to God’s teaching.

See how well that goes over in my old home town. Or teach it the opposite way, and see how that goes over in Catholic Oklahoma.

Those are the first two problems that come to mind, but there are hundreds of differing opinions among Christians, even in Oklahoma. Most of the people I knew as a child thought that those holding other opinions had been deluded by the Devil. And those other people probably thought the same about my people.

Be careful what you ask for. God may be on somebody’s side, but is it yours? Are you absolutely sure? Do you want to bet your freedom to worship as you please on it?

There is one more thing to consider. How much do you trust the government?

Not much, you say; that’s what I thought. So why do you think they are going to get this right? That they will teach the Bible as you think it should be taught, not as some (insert the group you hate the most) would do it?

Good luck, friends. If you go down this road, you’re going to need it.

Once you have the Bible being taught in school, it won’t be long before the courts insist on fairness. You might find your children being taught Christianity, probably by religious liberals, on Monday and Wednesday while the rest of the week they are being taught the Koran, the Mahabharata, the I Ching, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Daozang, the Gathas, the Mahayana Sutras . . .

And so forth. The list is very long.

There is an alternative. Accept the first amendment. Accept that all those other people who aren’t as smart as you are, have the right to go to the Devil in their own way. Accept that the only way to ensure your freedom is to let them have theirs – all outside of the schools.

It has worked for 248 years.

683. Dry Oklahoma

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Greetings. I have been gone a long time and I did not intend to come back now, but a weird thing happened. Just before covid struck, I had finished two posts; when I decided to bow out for a while, I reset them for a month later than their original posting date. Then again, then again, as the year rolled on.

Then something else weird happened. WordPress completely changed the way posts have to be written. I opened it up one day and couldn’t make heads or tails of what was on the screen. Clearly I had to completely relearn their system, but there was no hurry, since I didn’t plan to post for a couple more months.

Then this morning, I saw that I had posted yesterday. My pushing the dates forward on those two old posts had caught up to me. Since I don’t really know how to post in the new fashion, and the other old post (this one) is scheduled out in three hours, I decided to just add this explanation and let things go. I don’t even know if these paragraphs will be added to the Dry Oklahoma post.

If you don’t see this information, ignore it.

=========================

I grew up during prohibition.

If you are mathematically challenged or historically challenged, that statement might seem possible. Otherwise, you have already calculated that this statement makes me over a hundred years old, which I’m not.

A lie? No, the twenty-first amendment did not end prohibition everywhere. States had the option of continuing it, and Oklahoma did until 1959 when the consumption of alcohol was made legal, but only under stringent conditions. For two and half decades, the Kansas-Oklahoma border was the starting line of a nightly race between bootleggers and the Highway Patrol.

That’s all behind us, right? Not quite. Today the Kansas-Colorado border straddles pot highways, but this time the product is flowing into Kansas. The history of Oklahoma as a dry state in a wet nation might be useful in 2020.

As for my tiny part in the story, when I was five years old our house was fifty feet from Highway 169 which ran from Coffeeville, Kansas down to Tulsa. As I watched the cars go by, many of them were carrying booze for personal consumption, and some of them were carrying booze in bulk for resale. Tales of high speed chases and big busts were common.

There was no checkpoint at the border. Bootlegging was as simple as buying a bottle of whiskey legally in Coffeeville, driving home, and drinking it illegally in your living room. And there were plenty of bootleggers who were willing to save you the trip, for a profit.

Oklahoma was dry. Okies weren’t. Local humorist Will Rogers said that Okies would vote dry as long as they could stagger to the polls.

All this started before statehood and continued until 1959. When national prohibition came along in 1919 with the eighteenth amendment, it only cut off the source of liquor from surrounding states.

During national prohibition no one in America got all that thirsty. There were always stills, along with mass smuggling from Canada and Mexico, and rumrunners on all three coasts. From 1919 to 1933, America was dry, but Americans weren’t. With the advent of the twenty-first amendment, the rest of America could legally drink again. Okies could not, but it didn’t even slow them down.

Actually a few other states also remained dry. Mississippi was dry longer than Oklahoma, and many counties remain dry or moist today. Moist means consumption is legal but only under severe restrictions.

Consumption of alcohol finally became legal in Oklahoma in 1959, fifty-two years after statehood, but only with great restrictions. For example, you could buy beer, but only with 3.2% alcohol or less, and only at room temperature. Cold beer could not be sold. The idea was that you had to take it home to refrigerate it, and then consume it in the shameful privacy of your own house.

So what does this have to do with pot in 2020?

Beyond the obvious issue of people from Kansas having to drive to Colorado to get pot, and bringing it home illegally, there is the issue of why prohibitions get overturned, and how wide is the overturn.

People in Oklahoma were convinced to overturn dry laws in part because of all the tax revenues they felt they were losing and because the cost of enforcement. That should sound quite contemporary.

Of course there was a lot of home brew being made and a lot of stills that went right on selling their wares after 1959 so drinkers could avoid the booze taxes.

The snarky part of me also wants to wonder if the booze tax revenue after 1959 in Oklahoma made up for the gas tax revenue that all those bootleggers were paying, but never mind . . .

In a similar way, there is still a thriving business in illegal pot in California today, causing disappointing tax returns on legal pot. What a shocker! Remember all those million dollar busts of pot in the old days? That was based on street prices. Once pot becomes legal, the street price goes down. Legal pot sales go up, but they never match those old inflated revenues. No problem, raise the pot tax. But then people go back to buying illegal pot, because it is cheaper.

Funny how politicians never think of that until it happens.

Also, to say that pot is legal in California is not quite true. It can still be made illegal county by county and city by city. In Calaveras County, near where I live, it is currently illegal to cultivate pot, illegal to manufacture (which I assume means process) it, but legal to sell it retail. There was a recent battle to change the local laws, with billboards for and against. The argument against was “keep out crime”. The argument for was “tax revenue”.

This should all seem familiar.

682. Hard Road to America

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When I taught middle school science, I always took St. Patrick’s Day off from levers, rockets, and chemical reactions to teach a session on history. Irish history, but with a twist.

Those days very few of my students had an Irish background, but about half were Hispanic. There is a connection between St. Patrick’s Day and Cinco de Mayo which I will explain that at the bottom of this post.

The Irish immigrant story I taught on St. Patrick’s Day  was always new, since my student’s were always new. That is also somewhat true of those who read this blog. If you were here the last time I told a version of this story, my apologies. It has been several years and this one is somewhat changed.

It is a moving story, which eighth graders are old enough to appreciate. Potatoes from the new world were perfect for Irish soil; where a crop of oats had supported four people, a crop of potatoes would support eight; when previously hungry people were no longer hungry, they had more babies. Then the potato blight struck, and there was no going back to oats because the population had grown.

The land was largely owned by the English. They continued to export grain throughout the famine. Vast numbers of Irish starved. Those who could raise the money took ship for America.

The passage was hard. Ten percent of those who left Ireland died on the way. Their quarters were cramped, filthy, and unhealthy. Eighth graders both love and hate this part of the story; they have a very human capacity to be simultaneously moved and grossed out. I would walk about the room, measuring out the cubicles with hand movements, mimicking the heaving of the ship in a storm, telling of the bilge seeping up from below, pointing out the sound and smell of vomiting from seasickness, and reminding them that the cedar bucket behind the blanket at the end of the central aisle-way would fill to overflowing with human waste on those days when the hatches had to remain battened down.

Then I would quote a passage from a letter sent back to Ireland by an immigrant, who described the passage then said, “But I would endure all that ten times over, rather than see my children hungry.”

Once in the United States, things were still hard. The Americans who were already here didn’t want them. They could only obtain the jobs no one else wanted. Many were Gaelic speakers and did not speak English. They were segregated into the poorest part of the cities. They were disrespected.

They bettered themselves, generation by generation. They learned American democracy, and elected their own kind to office. They learned American capitalism and many became rich. Eventually, they elected one of their own, John F. Kennedy, to be president.

Along the way, they began to celebrate themselves. St. Patrick Day parades are an American invention. They have only recently begun to be celebrated back in Ireland, but they have been important in America for more than a century.

A teacher has to talk fast to get all that into forty minutes and still have time for the payoff.

St. Patrick’s Day isn’t about shamrocks and leprechauns. Its about Irish pride. Its about saying, “I’m as good as anyone.” It can even say, “I’m here — deal with it.” St. Patrick’s Day is American, not Irish, because America is where the Irish had to speak up for themselves.

Cinco de Mayo is an American holiday. It is not widely celebrated in Mexico. Just as St. Patrick’s Day is Irish Pride Day, Cinco de Mayo is Mexican Pride Day.

It is a message I got across most years, but no one would have listened if I had not first captured their emotions with the story of a politically neutral and sympathetic people with whom both Anglo and Mexican students could identify.

673. Constitution

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As I write this, the Senate is about to begin questioning both sides in the impeachment of Donald Trump. Presumably by the time you read this, the issue will have been decided.

Both sides have sworn their allegiance to the Constitution, claim to be dedicated to preserving it, and claim that the other side will destroy it.

It’s actually kind of hard to destroy our Constitution, but it is changeable. Soon after it was passed — and its passage was based on the assumption that this would happen — ten amendments were added which changed the Constitution immensely.

Today, when people avow their loyalty to the Constitution, they are usually referring to those ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, which were not part of the original constitution at all. They also say:

. . . one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

That is from the flag salute, not the Constitution, and during the first decades of the Republic several groups from several different parts of the country, north as well as south, attempted to prove that it was divisible. reversible, or could be ignored.

Eventually the South did secede, and was brought back by armed force, making our country in fact indivisible, whether or not that had been the intent of the founders. It also resulted in the removal of a sizable chunk of the constitution.

What chunk? This one:

Article One Section Three — Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

Article One Section Nine — The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.

Article Four Section Three — No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service of Labour, but shall be delivered up

Translating those into ordinary language:

Article One Section Three — There are free people, indentured servants, Indians, and slaves. Free people and indentured servants count as one whole person, Indians don’t count, and slaves count as three-fifths of a person, when determining taxes and representation.

Article One Section Nine — The importation of slaves cannot be stopped until 1808.

Article Four Section Three — Slaves escaping to free states have to be sent back.

It is hard to imagine anyone, even the most rabid white nationalist, wanting those pieces of the Constitution back. However,  it is very easy to forget that they were there in the first place.

Freedom of speech and religion, freedom of the press, freedom for all Americans to vote, even women, protection from unreasonable search and seizure, the right to a trial by jury — none of these were provided by the original Constitution.

The point? There are two, actually, both of which deserve reiteration.

Our Constitution has changed tremendously since it’s ratification. No one alive today would even consider living under the Constitution in its original form. Even the people who ratified it felt that way. They demanded, as the price of ratification, that a Bill of Rights be immediately added.

When people say, “I support the Constitution,” and we think they are lying, they may not be. We carry in their minds many different interpretations of what “Constitution” means. And we will probably keep on arguing about those interpretations for another two hundred years.

672. Strong As a Woman

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No one would doubt that Hellen Keller and Anne Sullivan were strong women,
but so are tens of thousands of unknowns. One of these was my friend.

I’ve been writing forever, and I taught middle school for twenty-seven years, which sometimes felt like forever. I came in as an intern, which put me into a veteran teacher’s classroom for a time before moving to my own. The teacher I was under was wonderful, but tough.

Twenty or so years later I spoke at her retirement ceremony. I’ll leave her name out of this, since she deserves her privacy. That’s why there are so many “shes” and no proper nouns in what comes below.

These are the notes for that speech. I found them today and they made me smile.

She took no crap, and I took no crap, so we were something of a matched pair. When I started to read this at the ceremony, she stopped me in mid-sentence and said, “Is this a roast? I don’t want a roast.”

It isn’t a roast, it’s an homage.

======================

I think it is fair to say that *** has a forceful personality. I can’t think of a time when I was in a room with her that everyone there was not aware of her presence. She makes an impression.

Over the years there have been a number of people who have changed their attitudes because she brought, shall we say, compelling arguments to the table.

She generally knows what she thinks, knows what she wants, and isn’t shy about saying so.

She doesn’t mind standing up for herself. Everyone who has ever met her knows that. But if you listen during those endless discussions we all get into in the teacher’s lounge, you will notice that she stands up for more than just herself. She respect herself and demands respect from others, but she also demands respect for teachers in general.

I can’t remember how many times I have heard her say to other teachers or aides, “Don’t take that. Don’t put up with that. You deserve to be treated better than that.”

I’ve also heard her say, “You’re really stupid if you do that. That will get you into big trouble, and you’ll have nobody to blame but yourself.”

You always know where you stand with her.

*           *           *

She has been at our school long enough to become an institution —- longer, in fact, than anyone else except for the real old fogies like me. It is easy to forget that she spent most of her career at the elementary school. That is where I met her.

I was an intern, on my first day, when I was placed with her. She is actually a few months younger than I am, but she had been teaching seven years while I was off becoming a starving writer. She was mongo pregnant and I was to replace her while she was on maternity leave.

I had a few precious weeks with her before she went off to have her son, and even after she was gone I had the benefit of working in a classroom environment which she had crafted. In her absence I did things her way, and her way worked.

Most people who think they know her, don’t really. You can’t really know a teacher unless you have been in her classroom and watched her teach.

After she returned from leave, we continued to work together for a few months before I took over a different class part way through my internship. Over the years I have spent a lot of time in her classroom whenever I had the chance. Each of us has come to use the other as a sounding board. Those of you who have never team taught have missed something. You can learn a great deal about your partner, and about teaching, when you team up.

When she is teaching, she is the center of attention, but she is not the center of the lesson. This is a subtle and crucial distinction, and one that a person who has only see her lambasting the latest educational stupidity would miss. When she is teaching, she demands, controls, dramatizes, cajoles, exhorts, and forces student’s attention onto the matter at hand. She is the focus of what is going on, but what is going on is not about her. It is not a way to glorify herself, but a way to force her students to confront the tragedy of Anne Frank, or the importance of knowing their own family heritage, or the despair of the Wreck of the Hesperus.

A few years ago it became politically correct to say, “Be the scribe on the side, not the sage on the stage.” What contemptible crap! If you aren’t the smartest person in the room, why are they paying you? It is our job to be tough, organized, enthused, and relentless in bringing our knowledge to our students. But we must be the lens through which the students see, not the actual thing that they see.

I would have figured this out on my own, but I didn’t have to. It was all laid out for me the first day I walked into her classroom.

======================

So I found these notes and wrote them into the computer. As I did, I had to consider the changes that have come about in these last few years.

My friend and I both knew that if I said something loud and contrary about the endless brown rain coming down from the state board of education, I would be seen as forceful. If she said the same thing (and she did), she would be a bitch. She never let that stop her.

If she has seen a glass ceiling, she would have taken an axe to it.