| Structure Bookmarks |
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| Vol. 11 No. 2 Twin Cities Fall 1989 |
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| Vol. 11 No. 2 Twin Cities Fall 1989 |
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| Clinton st quarterly, kfai and heart of the beast theater PRESENT |
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| FEATURING: |
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| FEATURING: |
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| FEATURING: |
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| the rockin’ pine cones rhea valentine daughters of invention |
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| TICKETS: |
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| TICKETS: |
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| available at tatters & platters, odegard books of minneapolis and northern lights music |
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| $8in advance /$10atthe door |
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| ILLUSTRATION: Charley murphy DESIGN: gall wallinga |
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| Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 |
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| Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 |
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| Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 |
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| Co-publishers |
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| Julie Ristau, Lenny Dee |
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| Julie Ristau, Lenny Dee |
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| Editorial Board |
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| Editorial Board |
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| Lenny Dee, Diane Hellekson, David Morris, Julie Ristau, Karen Starr, Charlie Sugnet, Jay Walljasper |
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| Lenny Dee, Diane Hellekson, David Morris, Julie Ristau, Karen Starr, Charlie Sugnet, Jay Walljasper |
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| Pacific Northwest Editor |
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| Pacific Northwest Editor |
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| David Milholland |
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| David Milholland |
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| Precious Metal Detector |
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| Lucinda Anderson |
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| Lucinda Anderson |
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| Art Direction |
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| Lenny Dee |
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| Lenny Dee |
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| Cover Design |
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| Connie Baker |
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| Connie Baker |
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| Designers |
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| Designers |
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| Connie Baker, Jezac, Kim Klein, Jay Miller, Eric Walljasper |
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| Connie Baker, Jezac, Kim Klein, Jay Miller, Eric Walljasper |
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| Contributing Artists |
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| Contributing Artists |
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| Shannon Brady, Patricia Canelake, Linda Gammell, GreetOMatic, Fred Harding, John Kleber, Constance Lowe, Rod Massey, Stuart Mead, Ann Morgan, Charlie Murphy |
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| Shannon Brady, Patricia Canelake, Linda Gammell, GreetOMatic, Fred Harding, John Kleber, Constance Lowe, Rod Massey, Stuart Mead, Ann Morgan, Charlie Murphy |
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| Cover PhotographerGus Gustafson Proofreader |
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| Ann Laughlin |
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| Ann Laughlin |
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| Account Representative |
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| Barbara Nelson |
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| Barbara Nelson |
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| Typesetting |
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| Jezac Typesetting |
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| Jezac Typesetting |
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| Tertulia Referee |
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| Tertulia Referee |
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| Karen Lehman |
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| Karen Lehman |
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| Spiritual Advisor |
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| Camille Gage |
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| Camille Gage |
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| Windy City Beat |
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| Lynda J. Barry |
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| Lynda J. Barry |
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| Thanks to thee |
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| Thanks to thee |
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| Brian Ahlberg, Betty Benjamin, William Casper, Jennifer Gage, Jim Hare, B.J. & Paul Loeb, Judi Ray, Ellen Ruffin, Carol Salmon, Linda Schinitz, COMPAS, Mary Walstrom |
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| Brian Ahlberg, Betty Benjamin, William Casper, Jennifer Gage, Jim Hare, B.J. & Paul Loeb, Judi Ray, Ellen Ruffin, Carol Salmon, Linda Schinitz, COMPAS, Mary Walstrom |
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| ON THE COVER |
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| ON THE COVER |
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| Portrait of David Rathman by his fiancee, Mary Kramer. |
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| Dave Rathman is a Minneapolis print­maker, book artist, and painter. He is a 1989 Jerome Foundation Fellow­ship recipient. This is an untitled oil painting courtesy of Steve Andersen. |
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| Subscriptions$10 a year. |
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| Subscriptions$10 a year. |
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| 212 3rd Ave. N., Suite 300 Minneapolis, MN 55401 |
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| The Twin Cities edition is published by the Clinton St. Quarterly, 212 3rd Avenue N., Suite 300, Minneapolis, MN 55401— (612) 338-0782. Unless otherwise noted, all contents copy­right ©1989 Clinton St. Quarterly. We encourage your comments, articles and art. All material should be accom­panied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope. |
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| Huxley’s Satellite Dish— |
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| Huxley’s Satellite Dish— |
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| Brian Fawcett The Global Village forever changes the backwoods. |
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| Teddy’s Waltz— |
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| Teddy’s Waltz— |
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| Reva Rasmussen A tune we all will dance to. |
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| A Poverty Program You Can Bank On— David Osborn A community development bank |
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| turns around an inner city neighborhood. |
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| 15 |
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| Shorebank North? |
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| Shorebank North? |
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| Lansing Shepard A local group tries for socially responsible lending. |
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| What the Hell! Let’s Go |
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| What the Hell! Let’s Go |
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| What the Hell! Let’s Go |
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| To France— Lynda Barry The Left Bank will never be the same. |
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| 16 |
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| All the PR That’s Fit |
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| All the PR That’s Fit |
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| All the PR That’s Fit |
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| To Print— Walter Karp |
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| Our local dailies declined to |
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| comment on this article. Find out |
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| why. |
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| why. |
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| 18 |
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| / Used To Think Like That— |
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| / Used To Think Like That— |
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| / Used To Think Like That— |
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| Musicmaster A screed for all of us on life’s daily insanities. |
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| Swimming— Robin Raygor The trip you always knew was better imagined than taken. |
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| Swimming— Robin Raygor The trip you always knew was better imagined than taken. |
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| Brain Damaged Blues— |
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| Brain Damaged Blues— |
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| Billy Golfus Trials and tribulations on the road to recovery. |
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| Clinton St. Gallery: |
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| Intimate Nature— |
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| Intimate Nature— |
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| Linda Gammell and ^1 |
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| Fred Harding W |
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| Photographs by two Twin Cities |
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| photographers. |
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| nI |
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| Current Trends in Architecture— |
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| Jim Blashfield and Steve Winkenwerder Food for thought on American |
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| architecture. |
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| PERSUASIVE LANGUAGE |
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| PERSUASIVE LANGUAGE |
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| The evening of last summer’s Supreme Court decision on abortion found the television airwaves filled with invectives from the so-called “right to life” movement. “Murder,” “baby killing” and “genocide” were shouted over and over to counter the well thought out arguments of the choice spokeswomen. No matter what the merits, it is hard to win your case while being labeled the lowest scum on the earth. |
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| The evening of last summer’s Supreme Court decision on abortion found the television airwaves filled with invectives from the so-called “right to life” movement. “Murder,” “baby killing” and “genocide” were shouted over and over to counter the well thought out arguments of the choice spokeswomen. No matter what the merits, it is hard to win your case while being labeled the lowest scum on the earth. |
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| Yet it seems the anti-abortion movement is even more wide open for attacks on their own morality. If they were so concerned with life why don’t we see them protesting nuclear weapons and military expenditures— very real instruments of murder, baby­killing and genocide. In fact many among the anti-abortion welcome nuclear armeggedon as a fulfillment of religious prophecies. If they cared for children we’d see them support child care, Head Start, guaranteed maternity leave and a host of other support services |
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| “Women have babies and men |
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| provide the support. If you don’t |
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| like the way we’re made you’ve |
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| got to take it up with God.” |
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| “Technical advances permit women to avoid conception or continuation of pregnancy. Women pay dearly for this non­freedom. First, they become slaves of their erotic sensuality, they are manipulated more eas­ily by the male of the species, they truly become sexual things (toys), and their denaturalization now transforms them into nothing more than large semen containers.” |
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| “Planned Parenthood is kill­ing millions of pagan babies Whom our missionaries could otherwise convert.” |
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| There are deep and dangerous currents in the “Pro-life” movement and it needs to be called on it. No longer can we let the right control the language of our political discourse. |
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| This use of language as a tool to cloud political debate has been an historic weapon of the right. Joe McCarthy invoked the sinister image of “card-carrying communists” to great effect in the 50’s. In 1988 George Bush updated that phrase to brand Michael Dukakis a card-carrying member of the ACLU and hence a man far out of the main­stream of American values. If Dukakis stood for anything he would have branded the religious fanatics swarming about Bush as the ones truly out of the mainstream. Unlike |
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| Dukakis we have to understand that |
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| these people are going for blood and |
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| we must fiercely defend ourselves. |
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| No longer should Victorian throw |
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| backs and undemocratic religious |
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| zealots be dignified with the phrase |
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| “right to life.” |
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| Today Jesse Helms and Republi­ |
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| can chairman Lee Atwater are lead­ |
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| ing a campaign to eliminate govern­ |
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| ment funding of the arts. They are |
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| once again cornering the terminology |
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| by accusing their opponents of being |
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| pornographers. Jesse Helms is a ma­ |
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| jor figure in the anti-abortion move­ |
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| ment. On top of that he is the major |
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| congressional supporter of the brutal |
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| Latin American death squads. As |
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| tough as it is, we must think of im­ |
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| ages that encompass the truly |
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| despicable character of a Jesse |
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| Helms or a Lee Atwater. |
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| To rid ourselves of villains such |
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| as these we need to realize that they |
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| count on our unwillingness to leave |
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| the comfort of our privatized lives to |
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| engage in the political process. It’s |
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| up to us to prove them wrong. |
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| This issue is dedicated to the mem­ory of I.F. Stone and Abbie Hoffman. Without their inspiration, wisdom and humor there never would have been a Clinton St. Quarterly. |
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| -Lenny Dee |
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| -Lenny Dee |
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| Clinton St. Quarterly— Fall, 1989 |
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| Clinton St. Quarterly— Fall, 1989 |
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| CALHOU N SQUARE • 3001 HENNEPIN AVE SO MINNEAPOLIS MN 55408 • (61 2) 825-03 36 |
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| Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 |
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| Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 |
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| The HuxleySatellite Dish |
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| The HuxleySatellite Dish |
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| Huxley is a small town on the coast of British Columbia, Sixty miles from Vancouver. About two thousand people live in Huxley, most of them making their living by cutting down the forests, throwing the logs into the upper reaches of a river and then collecting them at the river's mouth. Other people from Huxley string the logs together and tow them a little farther up the coast to a pulp and paper mill where the logs are skinned, ground up, |
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| Huxley is a small town on the coast of British Columbia, Sixty miles from Vancouver. About two thousand people live in Huxley, most of them making their living by cutting down the forests, throwing the logs into the upper reaches of a river and then collecting them at the river's mouth. Other people from Huxley string the logs together and tow them a little farther up the coast to a pulp and paper mill where the logs are skinned, ground up, |
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| and made into grocery bags or items hook it into the local cable network so equally interesting and crucial to the everyone in town could use it at no safety and well-being of Western charge. Now, the people of Huxley, Civilization. B.C. live in Detroit. |
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| In Huxley they don’t care much That’s Detroit, Michigan we’re where things come from and where talking about. Hub of the American they go. The town itself was named auto industry. Home of the Detroit after Thomas Henry Huxley, the Tigers baseball club. Murder capital English biologist, a disciple and of the entire world. sometime bulldog of Charles Darwin, Calling Detroit the murder capi­but no one in Huxley knows that. If tal may sound like an exaggeration. you were to tell them, they wouldn’t There are so |
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| Rough-and-tumble outdoor peo­but when people get murdered it’s ple, the Huxleyites. They drink beer, supposed to be personal and not polismoke cigarettes without filter-tips, tical, right? That’s the North drive four-wheel drive vehicles and American way. laugh a lot. A few of them live in those nice houses you can find in any suburb in North America, but most live in shacks and mobile trailers. On W ou may be wondering how |
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| v alternate weekends they drive into ■ hooking a satellite dish into a the mountains to ski or fish or they ■ community cable system can drive down to the city, where they land a small town in British Columbia shop in the big malls. Later on maybe in the middle of Detroit, Michigan. they take their kids to the movies. Or You probably suspect that I’ve made at least they used to do those kinds of up the town of Huxley and its satellite things. dish to illustrate some silly idea I have |
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| Last year they changed. A few about how horrible the modern world enterprising locals bought a TV. satel­is, and why you shouldn’t watch tele­lite receiving dish and found a way to vision. That being the case, you’re either battening the hatches against an attack on your television viewing habits, or settling in to enjoy some interesting bullshit. Sorry to disap­point you. This is as real as the eve- |
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| By Brian Fawcett Design by Kim Klein Art by John Kleber |
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| Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 |
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| Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 |
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| Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 |
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| Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 |
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| ning news. The only difference is that the definition here is going to be sharper. |
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| or a few months after the dish |
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| was hooked in, nothing much |
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| seemed to change in Huxley. One thing that was noticeable was that the bar at the hotel experienced a sharp dip in business, particularly around dinner time. In the old days, people' got off work and came down for a few beers before dinner. After the dish, only a few single men came in after work, and most of them left after one or two. Not many of them came back later, either. |
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| The local stores had a slightly different problem. Merchants com­plained to one another that what had previously been their best hours were now the deadest, and that they were now busiest at lunch hour—their stores were filled with workers book­ing off for extended lunches to do their shopping. It was hard to get part-time help at lunch hour, because the high school kids weren’t available, and none of the women seemed inter­ested in working. |
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| The reason for this was simple enough. Detroit is three time zones ahead of Huxley. What happens in Detroit at 8:00 p.m. happens in Hux­ley’s future. Carson and the late movies go on at 8:30. And in the Glo­bal Village, three hours is a practical eternity, an entire prime time. A future. And who wouldn’t want to live in the future if they could? The people of Huxley made their choice without second thoughts. |
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| iving in the future gave Doris |
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| iving in the future gave Doris |
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| Klegg a very specific leg up in an important family argu­ |
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| ment. From the time Doris and hersee—the town didn’t look any differ­ |
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| husband Herb moved out to Huxley,her sister-in-law Sue in Vancouver had let her know, and not very subtly, that she thought they’d moved to the mid­dle of nowhere. Each time Doris and Herb visited her in Vancouver, Sue took pleasure in relating the details of her sophisticated city life, with its fine restaurants, its aerobics par­lours, the better class of people, even the better selection of television pro­gramming available, things like the special sports and movie networks, or PBS and the local cable st |
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| But with the satellite dish hooked up, Doris knew what went on in the world three hours before her sister-inlaw did. She knew the plots of the soap operas and of Dallas and Dynas­ty before her sister-in-law did. Hell, when the Network ran a special movie about Mussolini, Doris knew what happened to him before Sue even started to watch. Doris racked up some hefty telephone bills demon­strating her new-found lifestyle supe­riority, but that was a cheap price to pay for living in the future. |
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| ■ immy and Janet Wilson got mar-f l ried three months before the H satellite dish. They were both local kids, fresh out of high school, and they got married because Jimmy got a full-time job in the boom­ing yard loading logs onto Japanese freighters.Getting that job was a big confi­dence boost for Jimmy. He’d always been a skinny, shy kid. He’d be the first to admit he wasn’t any genius, and right after that he’d tell you he didn’t have the kind of personality |
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| that would get him a job as a host on one of those game shows he liked to |
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| that would get him a job as a host on one of those game shows he liked to |
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| watch. He felt lucky to have his job, and even luckier to have been able to marry a good-looking lady like Janet. |
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| Janet’s parents gave them the down payment on a house for a wed­ding present. The house was a new one, too, but it was in a subdivision nobody seemed to want to live in— maybe because it was next to the In­dian reservation. Jimmy and Janet liked the house just fine. Jimmy’s par­ents bought them a 26-inch RCA col­our television for a wedding present. Jimmy bought a waterbed, a dresser, and a couch from one of those cham discount stores in Vancouver, and he scrounged a kitchen table and some chairs from a tra |
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| Jimmy and Janet weren’t in a hurry to do anything or get anywhere. They liked life in Huxley. They had everything a young couple needed. He had a secure job, they had a good house and a top-rated television, and when the satellite dish started operat­ing, it gave both of them a sense of the finer things in life, as tineas anything they’d get in Vancouver or anywhere else. Jimmy came home right after work each day and he and Janet watched the prime time programs with supper, sitting on the couch. They were i |
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| From the inside the changes weren’t easy to |
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| From the inside the changes weren’t easy to |
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| ent, unless you were driving down the deserted main street after 9:00 p.m. But since few people in Huxley were out at that late hour, nobody thought much about it. |
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| Other changes were similar. Huxleyites went into the city just about as often as they did before, but few of them did much except shop. Van­couver just didn’t seem quite as exciting as it used to. It wasn’t a very big city, and now it had a kind of foreign feel to it. |
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| Even fewer Huxleyites went ski­ing and fishing. There was more base­ball in the summer, and the winter after the dish started up the high school gym got taken over by people wanting to play recreational basket­ball. A motion was made at City Coun­cil the following spring to fund the construction of some outdoor half­court basketball facilities. The mo­tion received swift assent: it would give local kids something to expend their energies on. |
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| Over at the high school, the prin­cipal was mildly disturbed by the for­mation of two tightly organized and competitive social groups among the students. He didn’t care for the change in student dress patterns, either. The kids had taken to wearing leather jackets, denims and sneakers no matter what weather conditions prevailed. The two groups wore what they called “ colours,” jackets with crudely drawn pen markings, often with obscene slogans. He also noted the appearance of tattoos on both male and female |
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| More disturbing to him was that the two gangs appeared to be aligned racially. About thirty percent of his students were native Indian, mostly coming from the reservation that ad­joined the town. He’d always main­tained that as Indians go, the Huxley band was a pretty progressive lot, and he’d been an enthusiastic supporter a few years back when the band leaders petitioned the Government to extend the television cable system into the |
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| reservation. He wrote a letter saying that the Indian band had as much right as anybody to enjoy the fruits of modern technology and its cultural amenities. |
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| Up until recently, there’d been very little racial tension between the white and native kids in the school or anywhere else in town. If you worked hard and could hold your liquor, peo­ple would think you were okay even if your skin was green with purple polka dots. Now Indian and white kids weren’t even talking to one another. |
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| Another thing that disturbed the principal was the lack of interest in the kayaking club, long a fixture at the school. The principal was an avid kay­aking enthusiast, and his main rea­son for moving to Huxley, years before, had been the abundance of first-rate kayaking streams in the area. Over the years he’d taught hun­dreds of youngsters the skills of the sport. For the first time, not a single student had signed up for the club, nor could he coax or cajole anyone to apply. t |
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| People stopping in town noticed |
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| People stopping in town noticed |
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| People stopping in town noticed |
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| kids who were standing around a 7-11 store just outside the reservation. |
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| “ I’d like to talk with a few of you for a moment,” he said, clambering out of the truck and popping his I.D. card at them. |
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| A heavy-set youth, obviously the leader, ignored him, and walked over to the cameraman who’d gotten out with Chuck and had trained his cam­era on the group. The leader placed his hand over the lens, smearing its surface with his fingers. “Say what, man?” |
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| “Could you please remove your hand from in front of the camera?” Chuck asked, politely. “ I’d like to film your entire group.” |
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| The leader’s hand stiffened around the lens in a crudely threaten­ing gesture. “ I’m the dude does the talkin’,man,” hesaid. “Youwannatalk to the Chieftains, you talk to the Man.” |
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| “ Fine with me,” Chuck squeaked, |
8 |
| thinking that maybe he should try to sound more like one of those MTV hosts the kids watched. “ Hey! You’re the action here. You’re the news.” |
8 |
| The leader stepped back, and |
8 |
| Now Indian and white kids weren't even talking to one another. |
8 |
| Now Indian and white kids weren't even talking to one another. |
8 |
| the changes. The easiest things to spot were the unusual numbers of people wearing Detroit Tiger baseball caps; Magnum P.l. fans, they guessed. But then they saw the paraphernalia of the Lions, Pistons and Red Wings. That caught the eye of an investigative reporter by the name of Chuck Cambridge. Chuck worked for a Vancouver television sta­tion and he stopped into Huxley on the way back from a fishing trip upcountry. He thought it curious enough for a novelty story, and a week later he returned to Huxley wi |
8 |
| - |
8 |
| huck decided to talk to the |
8 |
| huck decided to talk to the |
8 |
| kids first. He figured they’d be more open; he knew |
8 |
| C |
8 |
| that they’d been raised on television, |
8 |
| and that they’d be more spontaneous with cameras around. But he couldn’t find any young kids on the streets. They were inside, he discovered later, watching Mickey Mouse club reruns or the cartoon channel. The older kids were around, but they weren’t inter­ested when they discovered he wasn’twith MTV, the rock video network, and that he wasn’t offering money or prizes. He did record one conversa­tion with a group of denim-clad native |
8 |
| and that they’d be more spontaneous with cameras around. But he couldn’t find any young kids on the streets. They were inside, he discovered later, watching Mickey Mouse club reruns or the cartoon channel. The older kids were around, but they weren’t inter­ested when they discovered he wasn’twith MTV, the rock video network, and that he wasn’t offering money or prizes. He did record one conversa­tion with a group of denim-clad native |
8 |
| Klegg. She was more ac­commodating. She knew that her sister-in-law would probably see the interview, even if no one in Huxley would. Doris tried to be philo­sophical, but it was hard to hide the pride she felt about living in Huxley, in the future. She said a few words about what it was like knowing things before people in Vancouver did, and she talked about how wonderful all |
8 |
| C |
8 |
| the new technologies were. Chuck was bewildered. “ You |
8 |
| the new technologies were. Chuck was bewildered. “ You |
8 |
| hitched his thumbs in his belt loops while Chuck’s cameraman rear­ranged his equipment and focused in. “ Hey man. Which station you working for?” the leader demanded. |
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| Chuck identified his station. |
8 |
| “ Never heard of it. You from Detroit or Dearborn?” “Vancouver.” “ Vancouver?” the leader |
8 |
| sneered, raising both hands to the sides of his head and snapping his beaded Adidas headband in a gesture of contempt. “Vancouver’s noplace. Chieftains don’t talk to cameras from Vancouver. Get out of my face, y’hear?” |
8 |
| huck interviewed Doris |
8 |
| huck interviewed Doris |
8 |
| know,” he told her just a little sternly, |
8 |
| Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 |
8 |
| Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 |
8 |
| Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 |
8 |
| puters, so we’ll be up to date on that sector as well. We’re looking to be front and centre on the future.” |
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| The kids had taken to wearing leather jackets, denims and sneakers no matter what weather conditions prevailed. |
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| The kids had taken to wearing leather jackets, denims and sneakers no matter what weather conditions prevailed. |
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| “that things really happen at the same time everywhere. You’re just on a time advance. Detroit’s time zone is three hours ahead, that’s all.” |
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| “that things really happen at the same time everywhere. You’re just on a time advance. Detroit’s time zone is three hours ahead, that’s all.” |
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| Doris gazed back at him, calmly superior. “Of course. That’s why we get all the important programs three hours before you get them. It doesn’t matter when things happen, anyway. It’s when people find out about them that counts. And we know about everything three hours before you do.” |
9 |
| He left Doris’s place shaking his head. A small part of him was wonder­ing if maybe she didn’t have some­thing. After all, the national news did come from Toronto, and it was broad­cast three hours late in the west. |
9 |
| oris suggested that he |
9 |
| drop over to Jimmy Mar­tin’s place. Jimmy, they said, watched |
9 |
| D |
9 |
| ing out on the couch indifferently. |
9 |
| more television than anyone in Huxley since he’dbeen laid Chuck moved in on Janet. “How |
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| off in the booming yards three months back. |
9 |
| off in the booming yards three months back. |
9 |
| Jimmy was watching Detroit To­day when Chuck arrived, but he invited the crew in anyway. |
9 |
| “This'll be over in ten minutes, so you guys can set up while I finish watching this,” he said, waving Chuck and the crew inside. “There’s an hour of reruns between five and six. I can talk to you while those are on. It’s ac­tually ten to five in Detroit,” he added. “ Here too.” |
9 |
| “The little woman’s asleep,” Jim­my explained to no one in particular. “She can’t watch as much as Ido. Oh, she gets up to catch the cooking pro­grams and a few of the early soaps, but she sleeps most afternoons, and she goes to bed before the late movies start.” |
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| “ How much television do you watch on an average day?” Chuck asked, signalling that he wanted the camera rolling. |
9 |
| Jimmy relaxed into the couch and pulled his feet up onto the plastic |
9 |
| Jimmy relaxed into the couch and pulled his feet up onto the plastic |
9 |
| milk crate that served as both foot­stool and coffee table. “Oh, I don’t know. About twelve hours most days. But I can go up to fourteen or fifteen on a good day. Janet only watches seven or eight. Sometimes nine if I push her.” |
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| Janet appeared, bleary eyed. She sat down heavily beside Jimmy and stared at the television set. “What’s going on?” she asked. |
9 |
| “ Nothing much,” Jimmy an­swered, without looking at her. “These guys came up from Vancouver to do a story on the dish. Someone told them we watch quite a bit, so they came over here.” |
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| “ Oh,” she said. “Anything inter­esting on?” She reached across Jimmy and changed the channel. “M.A.S.H. is supposed to be on chan­nel 42 at five. Anything interesting later tonight?” |
9 |
| “The usual,” Jimmy said, stretch­ |
9 |
| “The usual,” Jimmy said, stretch­ |
9 |
| do you feel about the satellite dish, Janet?” he asked. “ Has it improved your life here?” |
9 |
| Janet gazed up into the eye of the camera lens like a fish contem­plating a baited hook. “Oh, sure,” she said, brightly. “ It’s a lot better. There wasn’t really anything to watch before the dish. Just five or six chan­nels, that’s all. Really primitive.” |
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| “ Doesn’t all the programming about Detroit bother you? I mean, this is British Columbia. Detroit is a long way away.” |
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| Janet’s expression grew serious. “ I don’t know. I don’t mind it. I mean, Detroit’s real enough.” |
9 |
| Jimmy interrupted. “ Life is the same everywhere now. The prime time lineup is just about the same wher­ever you go. Since we’ve had the dish we get more choice, that’s all.” |
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| “ How many channels do you get?”Chuck asked. |
9 |
| “Gee,” Jimmy said, momentarily nonplussed. “ I’ve never really counted. Some of them are clearer |
9 |
| “Gee,” Jimmy said, momentarily nonplussed. “ I’ve never really counted. Some of them are clearer |
9 |
| than others. But there’s enough so there’s always something interesting to watch. You just keep flipping until you find what you need. There’s no need to count channels.” |
9 |
| “ I understand that you lost your job a few months ago,” Chuck asked, feeling sly and investigative. “ How does that make you feel? Are you wor­ried about the future?” |
9 |
| Jimmy shrugged. “Yeah, that’s right. I did lose my job. But look. I don’t worry much. The dish helps. It fills up the time. And something will turn up. Janet’s thinking of getting pregnant, you know, and I’d just as soon be around for that anyway. Something will turn up,” he said, this time a little more blandly. “Maybe something in the auto industry. You may not know about it, but things are looking up these days in the industry.” |
9 |
| huck Cambridge did sev­ |
9 |
| huck Cambridge did sev­ |
9 |
| eral more interviews be­fore he left Huxley. The |
9 |
| C |
9 |
| owner of the Huxley Motor Hotel said |
9 |
| rumour had it that he’d been, ah, en­ |
9 |
| that he’d considered putting his en­tire business on Detroit time. He’d de­cided against it because the tourists would have found it confusing. And tourists had become an increasingly important part of his trade now that the bar wasn’t doing the local busi­ness it once did. |
9 |
| “ People here just don’t go out like they used to,” he said, looking a little wistful. “They drink at home now, in front of the television. And god­damned if I can blame them, with all the programs we’ve got to choose from. I guess there’s a part of me that wishes the dish had never been in­stalled. If things don’t change it’s going to put me into the poor-house.” |
9 |
| The high school principal trotted out the predictable authoritarian con­cerns about the collapse of school discipline, but he didn’t seem to object to the dish even when Chuck prodded him to say something hostile. |
9 |
| “This is modern life, I guess,” the principal said. “When things change, a few good things are lost. That’s progress. As an educator I can’t ob­ject. It’s my job to teach Huxley’s children how to live in the real world, not in the past, however comfortable I may find it.” |
9 |
| He went on to mention the school’s new communication pro­gram, and when Chuck said he wasn’t sure what that was, the principal told him that he’d voluntarily cancelled the school’s library acquisition budget and had put the funds into educational video. |
9 |
| “The students are much more comfortable with video materials,” he said. “And it makes the teaching loads easier as well. The School Board is getting us three microcom­ |
9 |
| “The students are much more comfortable with video materials,” he said. “And it makes the teaching loads easier as well. The School Board is getting us three microcom­ |
9 |
| ust about everybody in Huxley |
9 |
| was positive about the dish, ex­cept for some old English duffer who said that it was destroying the town and everyone in it. Chuck was a thorough investigator; he filmed the duffer’s side of it too, even |
9 |
| J |
9 |
| though the old boy wasn’t too speci­fic about why the dish was so destruc­tive. Whatever it was he had to say got edited out of the four-minute story on Huxley that was run late in the Van­couver station’s news hour a few days later. |
9 |
| A few people in Huxley tuned in to watch it, but Vancouver’s news hour fell into the middle of prime time. Dallas was on, and for most Huxleyites who remembered Chuck’s visit, the choice was an easy one to make. |
9 |
| - |
9 |
| bout three weeks later |
9 |
| bout three weeks later |
9 |
| someone tied a couple of sticks of dynamite to the base of the dish, and right in the mi dle of Miami Vice, the explosion scat­tered the dish and half the cablevision office across the main street of Hux­ley. The local police investigated, and before too long, they traced the dyna­mite back to the owner of the Huxley Motor Hotel. Who knows why he did it. Maybe it was the interview with Chuck Cambridge that got him thinking.The corporal of the Huxley RCMP charged him with the crime, but the case never did ge |
9 |
| A |
9 |
| couraged to leave town, and pronto. His car disappeared with him, so that was the story the local police ac­cepted, and a warrant for his arrest was put on the electronic wire. It was Huxley’s first All Points Bulletin, which made the corporal feel quite proud of himself but didn't result in an arrest. |
9 |
| The Vancouver television crews showed up again, but this time no one in Huxley was talking, at least not about the owner of the hotel. The leader of the Chieftains did say that his people didn’t have anything to do with it but that he thought that the bastard had got what was coming to him. “Go talk to the honkys,” he said. “The hotel’s on their turf.” |
9 |
| It took six weeks to replace the dish and the damaged cable system. The community really came together to get it fixed, and they paid the cost out of their own pockets to keep the Feds from coming in and busting them for having a dish illegally hooked into a community system. They had a benefit dance to raise funds, and even some of the Chief­tains put aside their hostility toward the white community and danced up a storm. The new dish was hooked back into the Detroit network, and in a few days, life was ba |
9 |
| Brian Fawcett is a writer living in Victoria BC. This essay is from Cambodia: A Book for People Who Find Television Too Slow (Grove Press, New York, $16.95). |
9 |
| John Kleber is a Twin Cities painter and illustrator. |
9 |
| Kim Klein is a Twin Cities art director. |
9 |
| In the old days, people got off work and came down for a few beers before dinner. |
9 |
| In the old days, people got off work and came down for a few beers before dinner. |
9 |
| Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 |
9 |
| Teddy’s Waltz |
10 |
| Teddy’s Waltz |
10 |
| Leon rose slowly into wakefulness, rising |
10 |
| graduallyfrom a shallowpool. Always, he |
10 |
| waitedfor her call, always, he listenedfor her |
10 |
| movements. This night he lay quietly, unsure |
10 |
| ofhow longhe hadslept. He wonderedifshe wouldcallouthis name tonight. Ithadbeen dayssinceshehadusedhis name. Allweek she had talked to him in the thirdperson. |
10 |
| This evening she had been eating her potatoes when shelookedathim andsaid, “Where'sthat man who 'shereallthe time?" |
10 |
| This evening she had been eating her potatoes when shelookedathim andsaid, “Where'sthat man who 'shereallthe time?" |
10 |
| By Reva Rasmussen •Design by Kim Klein •Art by Patricia Canelake |
10 |
| By Reva Rasmussen •Design by Kim Klein •Art by Patricia Canelake |
10 |
| “What do you mean? What man?” “That man who takes care of me.” “ Me? I’m the one who takes care of you. I’m right here.” |
10 |
| “ No, that man. He cooks for me and gets me up in the morning. He’s here all the time.” |
10 |
| “That’s me.” She looked at him, confused. |
10 |
| “ He does a good job.” Her eyes shifted from his to her plate. He sighed. It was an odd disease. She dropped her spoon noisily. |
10 |
| /f n r t’s Teddy’s birthday,” she |
10 |
| • • I said. “ It’s Teddy’s birthday |
10 |
| now.” He looked down at |
10 |
| now.” He looked down at |
10 |
| J L his roast beef, pushed it aside, got up from the table and went into his bedroom. He pulled his violin case out from under the bed and took out the polished warm wood and bow. He brought it into the dining room |
10 |
| and tucked it under his chin. |
10 |
| “ Is this what you want, Chris­tina?” She looked at him expectantly. He bowed it. The pitch was good. At the first sound she smiled. He struck out in a waltz tempo. It was a simple waltz with a distinct beat. It was a waltz to teach a child to dance. He had written it for their son’s tenth birthday. The boy had scarlet fever and they were frightened that they |
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| 10 Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 |
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| 10 Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 |
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| her skin. He touched her shoulder. his forties and had seemed surprised |
11 |
| “Sweetheart, I have to turn you that Leon was concerned about his so I can change you. Don’t be scared.” inability to perform. The doctor was He pulled the covers down to her feet. reticent when Leon tried to talk about The moon cast his shadow across her it. sleeping form. He looked at her Christina’s response had sur­spare, bird frame. When they had prised him. “ It’s okay,” she had said. waltzed together she had been like a “ During all these years of marriage feather blown across the surface of a someti |
11 |
| would lose their only child. husband.” |
11 |
| “ I’m going to dance at my son’s She looked at him with disdain. wedding!” Christina said each mor­“An old man like you? Shit! My hus­ning after Teddy survived another band’s young and handsome!” night. “ Play Teddy’s waltz, Leon!” Unable to convince her of his |
11 |
| Forty years later, he swayed and identity, he had finally complied with Christina shuffled her swollen feet her wishes. In the following weeks he while he bowed his violin. No matter considered returning to their bed, but how confused Christina became, she she continued to be noisy and rest­still responded when he played his less at night. He remained in the ex­violin. He played the child’s waltz tra bedroom and roused himself tonight stepping in rhythm around every few hours to check on her. the dining roo |
11 |
| In bed now, he was grateful for cast a long shadow which moved the evening. She had complimented ahead of him across the carpet. The him and they had danced Teddy’s shadow of his outstretched hand waltz. He looked at the clock and saw reached her before he touched her that four hours had passed since he warm, fragile hand with his own. had last checked her. Lately, she had “Christina. It’s time to go to the been more restless and this was a bathroom.” She didn’t respond. He lengthy period for her to be quie |
11 |
| hoped she would not be frightened by |
11 |
| him shaking her. He tried to let her |
11 |
| year ago he had started wake up on her own since the time |
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| year ago he had started wake up on her own since the time |
11 |
| A |
11 |
| sleeping in the extra bed­she had left scratches and bruises on |
11 |
| room after being woken by his arms after he had roused her to |
11 |
| her one night. “Get out of my change wet sheets. He reached under |
11 |
| bed!” she told him in a voice that re­her covers to touch the protective mained strong and authoritative in blue pad beneath her. Wet. Was it dementia. “You ought to be ashamed sweat? He pulled his hand out and of yourself, climbing in bed with a sniffed his fingers. No, it was urine. married woman!” Should he let her sleep a little longer |
11 |
| “I’m the one you’re married to!” before he turned her to put a dry pad he reminded her. “ f’ m you ’re under her? Better not risk damaging |
11 |
| “I’m the one you’re married to!” before he turned her to put a dry pad he reminded her. “ f’ m you ’re under her? Better not risk damaging |
11 |
| still lake, touching lightly. She was just to be held and touched.” small, but solid and strong and responsive to his lead. Once, she whispered to him as they danced, onight, he lay next to her, one “ I’m making love to you in front of all hand touching her soft, white |
11 |
| these people.” hair, the other arm thrown across her. “ Let me hold you |
11 |
| again. I don’t mind taking care of you. e looked at her now and Stay with me, Christina.” The moon shown on their wed­ding picture on the dresser. Christina sat in front of him and looked boldly |
11 |
| H |
11 |
| thought about how he had |
11 |
| watched her mind slowly |
11 |
| seep away. She lay without |
11 |
| T |
11 |
| at the camera, smiling extravagantly. |
11 |
| moving, not even her breath ruffled |
11 |
| her feathers. He ran his hand under |
11 |
| her feathers. He ran his hand under |
11 |
| She clutched his left hand with hers |
11 |
| her chin and down her neck and felt |
11 |
| her chin and down her neck and felt |
11 |
| and he remembered feeling the metal |
11 |
| for her pulse. He couldn’t find it but |
11 |
| of the rings push against each other. |
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| her heart was weak and he often had |
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| her heart was weak and he often had |
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| He stood behind her young and |
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| trouble finding the beat. Her skin was |
11 |
| handsome. |
11 |
| warm and he lifted a wisp of hair from |
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| warm and he lifted a wisp of hair from |
11 |
| Next to their wedding picture |
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| her face and tucked it behind her ear. |
11 |
| was the portrait taken for their golden anniversary. Again, she sat in front of him but she gazed at the camera with |
11 |
| Then he leaned forward with his |
11 |
| cheek brushing the tip of her nose |
11 |
| and waited patiently to feel her mouth. He stood behind her holding her frail left hand gently. He leaned slightly over her chair as though he could protect her fragile mind with attention. “You’re wet. Don’t be wor­ |
11 |
| a flat expression and a straight |
11 |
| breath move against his skin. He |
11 |
| though he felt something but he |
11 |
| wasn’t sure. |
11 |
| The smell of urine caught his |
11 |
| his presence. |
11 |
| ried, I’ll change the bed.” He moved her right arm across her breast and the other searching for the years. “How did we get so old?” he asked the photographs. His brother and his wife had recently celebrated their sixty-second anniversary. Fifty years |
11 |
| Leon looked from one picture to |
11 |
| putting one hand on her right |
11 |
| shoulder and the other on her hip |
11 |
| Leon lookedfrom one |
11 |
| was not enough. |
11 |
| There was a third picture of Teddy in his Marine uniform. Teddy, who they nursed through scarlet |
11 |
| picture to the other |
11 |
| searchingfor the years |
11 |
| fever died overseas with strangers rolled her onto her side. He quickly before he had a chance to marry. “ He folded the blue pad towards her hips was a brave man,” the telegram from and then, steadying her with one Korea said. He looked at his son’s hand, used a wet cloth and a dry cloth picture and thought, I never expected across her bottom. Then he placed a to outlive you both. Fathers and hus­fresh blue pad under her and rolled bands are supposed to go first. How her onto it. much longer for me? |
11 |
| The county nurse had counseled He closed his eyes and cried, him to put Christina into a nursing rubbing his face against her shoulder home. He had refused, not daring to so the soft cotton gown would soak admit to either the nurse or himself up his tears. He lay with her, holding how tired he was. her close, feeling her warmth creep |
11 |
| “I promised to take care of her til away and when he opened his eyes death do us part. She would have again, the moonlight was gone from done the same for me.” So the nurse the room and the dawnlight had crept taught him how to take care of Chris­in. He rose on one elbow to look at tina’s skin and how to move her from her. bed to wheelchair. He was a consci­She was paler. He lifted her hand entious student and applied himself and looked at her small fingers. They to the lessons with the same atten­were slig |
11 |
| He patted her hand. He moved to the paramedics. “ My wife died in her the other side of the bed, washed be­sleep last night. Ijust found her. She’s tween her legs, lifted her left hip, been sick a long time.” He gave his pulled out the wet pad and straight­address and phone number and hung ened out the dry one. Then he lifted up. the covers up over her knees, lay He walked across the room to down next to her and pulled the the bay window and opened it. He covers up over both of them. He breathed in the fres |
11 |
| “Christina,” he whispered, “I rang. He gazed at Christina once need a little more time with you. It’s more before he put his violin down been so long since I could lay next to and left the room. you and hold you.” He lay on his side with his hand holding her hand and closed his eyes. How long had it been Reva Rasmussen has been a registered since they had made love? Eleven nurse for 9 years, and works as a clini­years? He had been seventy when he cian in Alzheimer’s Disease research. She is a contributing e |
11 |
| had started taking the pills to lower |
11 |
| Nursing Accent and is pursuing an M.A. |
11 |
| his blood pressure. He knew right |
11 |
| in English with an Emphasis on Creative |
11 |
| away when he couldn’t keep his erec­ |
11 |
| and Professional Writing. |
11 |
| tions that it was because of the pills but the doctor had said, “Look, that’s Patricia Canelake is a Duluth artist and a frequent side effect with blood McKnight Foundation Fellowship and |
11 |
| teacher. This year she received a |
11 |
| pressure medications. You’re seventy |
11 |
| was part of a show at MCAD. |
11 |
| and you don’t want a stroke, do you?” His doctor was a young man in Kim Klein is a Twin Cities Art Director. |
11 |
| POVERTY PROGRAM YOU CAN BANK ON |
12 |
| POVERTY PROGRAM YOU CAN BANK ON |
12 |
| Shorebank boosts a once troubled neighborhood |
12 |
| Shorebank boosts a once troubled neighborhood |
12 |
| Qu llouiz llehftr a |
12 |
| By David Osborne |
12 |
| Art by Rod Massey |
12 |
| Picture a black urban community of 80,000 in which crime, drug abuse, and unemployment have reached such levels that landlords are deserting their buildings rather than trying to sell them. Now picture the same neighborhood 15 years later, with $160 million in new investments, 350 large apartment build­ings rehabilitated, and property values rising five to seven percent a year. Hundreds of businesses have started, and thousands of people have received adult education, job training, and job placement. The co |
12 |
| Picture a black urban community of 80,000 in which crime, drug abuse, and unemployment have reached such levels that landlords are deserting their buildings rather than trying to sell them. Now picture the same neighborhood 15 years later, with $160 million in new investments, 350 large apartment build­ings rehabilitated, and property values rising five to seven percent a year. Hundreds of businesses have started, and thousands of people have received adult education, job training, and job placement. The co |
12 |
| Now imagine that all this is the ing. Government normally spends its result of an anti-poverty program that money in response to political clout. cost only $10-12 million. If this were a Shorebank seeks out those who can government program, we would have thrive in the marketplace, then gives implemented it in a thousand other them support. communities and declared victory in Shorebank’s one big weakness the war on poverty. But it isn’t, so we is that although it pays for itself, it is have virtually ignored |
12 |
| The “ program” is the Shorebank other entrepreneurs with capital to Corporation, in Chicago’s South imitate its success. After 15 years, it Shore neighborhood. Shorebank is a is clear that the Shorebank model will holding company that includes a not spread unless the public sector is bank, a real estate development cor­willing to invest. poration, a small venture capital firm, Shorebank was the brainchild of and something called The Neighbor­Ron Grzywinski, a graying 53-year-old hood Institute, which does l |
12 |
| Shorebankseeksout thosewhocanthrive inthe marketplace, then givesthemsupport. |
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| Shorebankseeksout thosewhocanthrive inthe marketplace, then givesthemsupport. |
12 |
| and the like. Within a small circle of bank in Hyde Park, home of the Uni­anti-poverty activists, Shorebank is versity of Chicago. Adlai Stevenson legendary. In Washington it is almost III was state treasurer. Searching for unknown. Yet it is the perfect model a way to help the ghettos, Stevenson for the 1990s: inexpensive, market-decided to deposit state funds only in oriented, and entrepreneurial. banks that agreed to create units spe­ |
12 |
| Because it is subsidized by phil­cializing in minority business lend­anthropists, Shorebank does some­ing. Grzywinski asked Milton Davis, thing the private sector normally can­former Chicago chairman of the Con­not do: it makes investments whose gress on Racial Equality (CORE), to returns are often slim to nonexistent. run his minority business program. Because it is a business that will go “We were getting tired of sitting in under if it makes too many bad and getting thrown out by the Chi­investments, it |
12 |
| - |
12 |
| Design by Jay Miller |
12 |
| Design by Jay Miller |
12 |
| 12 Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 |
12 |
| munity Action Program—who, like Davis, had no experience in banking. Grzywinski hired Mary Houghton, a white 27-year-old graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Together, the four of them made the program work. |
13 |
| Chicago is often considered the most segregated city in America. Local residents joke that the defini­tion of integration is the period be­ |
13 |
| tween the arrival of the first black |
13 |
| family and the departure of the last |
13 |
| white family. When neighborhoods |
13 |
| go from white to black, banks and |
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| other institutions normally quit |
13 |
| investing, hastening the slide into |
13 |
| decay. Watching this happen all |
13 |
| around Hyde Park, Grzywinski and |
13 |
| company began talking about how to |
13 |
| reverse the process, how to bring |
13 |
| capital back into black communities. |
13 |
| Gradually the idea of using a bank as |
13 |
| the stable, profit-making base for |
13 |
| other development efforts emerged. |
13 |
| When South Shore Bank came |
13 |
| When South Shore Bank came |
13 |
| on the market, Grzywinski had raised |
13 |
| only $800,000. But the opportunity |
13 |
| was too good to resist. Only a few |
13 |
| miles south of Hyde Park, the South |
13 |
| Shore neighborhood was not yet too |
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| far gone to help. As a white com­ |
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| munity, it had been middle and upper­ |
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| middle class, with single-family |
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| homes of all sizes and gracious, red |
13 |
| brick apartment buildings from the |
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| 1920s. It was bordered by Lake Michi­ |
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| gan on the west and a park on the |
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| north and was only 15 minutes from |
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| downtown Chicago. Despite a 98 per­ |
13 |
| cent racial turnover in the preceding |
13 |
| decade, the neighborhood was still |
13 |
| perhaps two-thirds middle and work­ |
13 |
| ing class, only one-third underclass. |
13 |
| For all its amenities, however, South Shore was headed rapidly downhill. “There were no loans being made,” says James Lowell, commu­nity affairs manager for the Federal Reserve Board. “The bank wanted to pull out; it did not want to deal with black people, period. The neighbor­hood was going to lose its park, be­cause the city felt it was just going to be a crime hazard. The shoreline was becoming a disaster area. A lot of those old, beautiful buildings were |
13 |
| For all its amenities, however, South Shore was headed rapidly downhill. “There were no loans being made,” says James Lowell, commu­nity affairs manager for the Federal Reserve Board. “The bank wanted to pull out; it did not want to deal with black people, period. The neighbor­hood was going to lose its park, be­cause the city felt it was just going to be a crime hazard. The shoreline was becoming a disaster area. A lot of those old, beautiful buildings were |
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| just crumbling. An awful lot of units had been walked away from.” |
13 |
| In 1973 Grzywinski and his col­leagues bought the bank, putting down their $800,000 and borrowing the rest— more than $2.4 million. They launched a variety of aggressivelending programs: single-family mort­gages, small-business loans, con­sumer loans. This lending program worked. Though at that time not one other bank or savings and loan would lend to anyone in the neighborhood |
13 |
| — bankers had reflexively begun red­lining as soon as the neighborhood went black—Shorebank had no prob­lem with foreclosures. By 1980 other institutions had entered the market in South Shore. |
13 |
| Most of Shorebank’s other ef­forts failed, however. Between 1974 and 1980 Grzywinski and his col­ |
13 |
| leagues loaned $6.7 million and pro­vided heavy technical support to small businesses. Outside of loans to McDonald’s franchises, the results were dismal. Most of the businesses went under, and by 1980, 71st Street, the main shopping strip, looked worse than it had in 1973. With small |
13 |
| leagues loaned $6.7 million and pro­vided heavy technical support to small businesses. Outside of loans to McDonald’s franchises, the results were dismal. Most of the businesses went under, and by 1980, 71st Street, the main shopping strip, looked worse than it had in 1973. With small |
13 |
| interest. Even so, it took an intensive nationwide effort to attract them, since the bank’s neighborhood wasn’t exactly filled with eager depositors. Today development deposits account for almost half of the bank’s $150 million deposit base. |
13 |
| Gradually it became clear that the key to stabilizing the neighbor­hood wasn’t so much reviving its commercial areas as rehabilitating the apartment buildings that housed 70 percent of its people. When build­ings are abandoned in a neighbor­hood like South Shore—as they were |
13 |
| in rising numbers throughout the ’70s —the empty hulks become targets for arson, hangouts for drug dealers, and homes for junkies. Crime grows, law-abiding residents flee, and more buildings are abandoned. Once things get that bad, no amount of loans or rehab projects will stop the |
13 |
| "Real estate here doesn't makesensefor investors. It'sgotta befor hands-on people.” |
13 |
| "Real estate here doesn't makesensefor investors. It'sgotta befor hands-on people.” |
13 |
| stores— not to mention threatening teenagers loitering on the sidewalks —71st Street merchants could not compete with the shopping malls. The most dramatic failure came when a black merchant located catercorner from the bank—who was one of Shorebank’s first and most promis­ing borrowers—tied up two Small Business Administration employees who had come to foreclose on him and burned down his building, with them inside. |
13 |
| - |
13 |
| Throughout the ’70s the bank limped along, its profits in the bottom 25 percent of all banks; federal exam­iners pressured its managers to tight­en up their loan portfolios. As high interest rates buffeted the Rustbelt economy, two black-owned banks on the edge of the neighborhood failed. South Shore Bank survived primarily through the invention of what is called “development deposits” :large deposits made by institutions and wealthy individuals who shared the bank’s social goals. Some depositors accept bel |
13 |
| Throughout the ’70s the bank limped along, its profits in the bottom 25 percent of all banks; federal exam­iners pressured its managers to tight­en up their loan portfolios. As high interest rates buffeted the Rustbelt economy, two black-owned banks on the edge of the neighborhood failed. South Shore Bank survived primarily through the invention of what is called “development deposits” :large deposits made by institutions and wealthy individuals who shared the bank’s social goals. Some depositors accept bel |
13 |
| process. And because most resi­dents worked outside of South Shore, bringing jobs in was less important to them than saving the existing housing. |
13 |
| At the time, financial institu­tions refused to offer mortgages on apartment buildings in Chicago’s poor, black neighborhoods. They had tried and —as Grzywinski was warned by the chairman of one local savings and loan—they had failed. But-Shorebank’s managers decided to try anyway. They put in charge a young man who had started with the |
13 |
| only made loans in South Shore, and |
13 |
| only to people who agreed to rehab |
13 |
| their buildings. He then worked with |
13 |
| them closely, even sponsoring |
13 |
| monthly meetings where the growing |
13 |
| stable of landlords could swap trade |
13 |
| secrets. |
13 |
| For the most part, they were peo­ple who had never before been land­lords. “ Real estate here doesn’t make sense for investors. It’s gotta be for hands-on people,” Bringley says. “ It’s generally people with blue-collar mentalities, who don’t mind spend­ing their nights and weekends. It’s not a coat-and-tie business—the dirt­ier you come in the better....You go in and buy a bad building, you got drug dealers, you gotta get these people out.” |
13 |
| As the new landlords filled up one building with paying tenants, they bought another, then another. To­day South Shore has a core of about 50 housing entrepreneurs,-some of whom own as many as ten buildings. They have learned the trade; some have taught themselves Spanish to communicate with their low-cost crews. By investing in the neighbor­hood’s primary resource, its housing stock, they have kicked off a develop­ment process that has its own momentum; each renovated ,apart­ment building adds to the value |
13 |
| Driving Sduth Shore’s tree-lined streets, one sees elegant courtyard buildings that would fit well into the tonier north side neighborhoods. The brick is freshly sandblasted; the grounds are immaculate; wrought-iron fences and gates lend the old buildings an air of grace. There are still pockets of decay, but the better blocks bring to mind a white, well-todo community in the 1940s, not a black, inner-city neighborhood in the 1980s. |
13 |
| - |
13 |
| As important as Bringley’s entre­preneurs have been to South Shore, there are some areas they would not touch. One area, known as Parkside, had been designated the site of an ur­ban renewal project that was never carried through. With seizure by emi­nent domain seemingly, a certainty, landlords had quit maintaining their buildings. By the mid-’70s, nearly half of the large apartment buildings in the area were tax delinquent, most well on their way to abandonment. |
13 |
| After taking a close look, Bring­ley concluded that no rational person would buy and rehab a building there. He recommended a large, govern­ment-subsidized rehab project as the only way to stem the area’s decline. City Lands Corporation, Shorebank’s real estate development firm, brought in First National Bank of Chi­cago and another real estate develop­ment firm as partners, and together they structured a package that used heavy public subsidies and syndica­ |
13 |
| Byinvestinginthe neighborhood'shousingstock, they havekicked off adevelopment process. |
13 |
| Byinvestinginthe neighborhood'shousingstock, they havekicked off adevelopment process. |
13 |
| bank as a teller supervisor, Jim Bring­ley. Bringley is a nuts-and-bolts, blue-collar, get-it-done type. Slowly, care­fully, he began lending to people who wanted to buy apartment buildings. He started with three-and six-flat buildings and gradually moved up. He |
13 |
| bank as a teller supervisor, Jim Bring­ley. Bringley is a nuts-and-bolts, blue-collar, get-it-done type. Slowly, care­fully, he began lending to people who wanted to buy apartment buildings. He started with three-and six-flat buildings and gradually moved up. He |
13 |
| tion to limited partners, who invested as a tax shelter. They bought 25 build­ings, tore down five for parking lots, and ended up with 446 units of moderate-and low-income housing— the largest such rehab project in state history. With deep federal sub- |
13 |
| sidies, they did not have to skimp. And Shorebank’s managers screened applicants carefully with an eye to minimizing drug and crime problems. Parkways, as the project was dubbed, now looks more like an expensive condominium complex than a low-income housing project. |
14 |
| Elsewhere in South Shore, City Lands had rehabbed another 480 units. It will soon break ground on an eight-acre shopping center on 71st Street, which will provide the large stores and parking necessary to com­pete with the malls. The Neighbor­hood Institute (TNI) has rehabbed another 275 units, while offering remedial education and job training for people who are on welfare or unemployed. It runs a small business incubator, -which gives inexpensive space and intensive management as­sistance to small busines |
14 |
| It is harder to gauge the effec­tiveness of TNI’s training and busi­ness development efforts than that of Shorebank’s housing work, because trained employees are far less visible than renovated buildings. But TNI has placed more than 2,700 of its trainees in jobs, counseled more than 1,000 entrepreneurs, and assisted roughly 70 start-up firms. Though it depends more heavily on public money than do the other Shorebank companies (because it is trying to help the neighborhood’s poorest peo­ple), it is still fo |
14 |
| It is harder to gauge the effec­tiveness of TNI’s training and busi­ness development efforts than that of Shorebank’s housing work, because trained employees are far less visible than renovated buildings. But TNI has placed more than 2,700 of its trainees in jobs, counseled more than 1,000 entrepreneurs, and assisted roughly 70 start-up firms. Though it depends more heavily on public money than do the other Shorebank companies (because it is trying to help the neighborhood’s poorest peo­ple), it is still fo |
14 |
| buildings serve as gatekeepers to the community, evicting drug users and criminals. Crime is way down, and the black middle class is staying. Under pressure from the community, the police have finally cleared out the El Rukns gang (descendants of the notorious Blackstone Rangers), whose presence kept one corner of the neighborhood from blossoming. The gang’s headquarters building is being demolished, and TNI hopes to do a massive, Parkways-style devel­opment in the area. |
14 |
| South Shore is doing so well that Shorebank has targeted a second Chicago neighborhood, Austin, on the city’s equally poor west side. City Lands and TNI have 600 units of housing rehabilitation under way there, and Shorebank’s entry has touched off a small speculative boom, encouraging other developers to begin work on another 1,400 units. Shorebank has convinced the Illinois Housing Authority, a prestigious business group called Chicago United, and the Federal National Mortgage Association to target the |
14 |
| The peoplewho have bought and renovated apartment buildingsserveasgatekeeperstothe community. |
14 |
| The peoplewho have bought and renovated apartment buildingsserveasgatekeeperstothe community. |
14 |
| / |
14 |
| / |
14 |
| it doesn’t get paid until it has suc­cessfully placed a trainee in a job. And its incubator will fail unless it stays relatively full of businesses that pay their rent. Overall, TNI earns a full 90 percent of its $1.7 million operating budget —from training contracts, fees earned in developing and managing buildings, and rents. |
14 |
| Financially, 1988 was Shore­bank’s best year ever. In a neighbor­hood where 70 percent of loan recip­ients (through 1980) had never before borrowed from a financial institution, the bankearned a$1.7million profit— about average for a bank of its size. Virtually no real estate loans went bad, and even the commercial loans performed well. |
14 |
| As a community, South Shore not only has stabilized, it is improving markedly. The people who have bought and renovated apartment |
14 |
| As a community, South Shore not only has stabilized, it is improving markedly. The people who have bought and renovated apartment |
14 |
| Austin neighborhood. The Housing Authority provides rehab subsidies, Chicago United will focus primarily on job training and education, and FNMA will provide $5 million for low­down-payment mortgages. |
14 |
| Shorebank’s managers do not claim that their model would work in the very worst ghettos. But the worst ghettos, which get the most atten­tion, are actually less representative of America’s typical poor neighbor­hood than are South Shore and Aus­tin. (Actually, Shorebank’s success may make the worst ghettos worse. The drug dealers and pimps who are cleared out by South Shore’s land­lords have to go somewhere, so |
14 |
| Shorebank’s managers do not claim that their model would work in the very worst ghettos. But the worst ghettos, which get the most atten­tion, are actually less representative of America’s typical poor neighbor­hood than are South Shore and Aus­tin. (Actually, Shorebank’s success may make the worst ghettos worse. The drug dealers and pimps who are cleared out by South Shore’s land­lords have to go somewhere, so |
14 |
| South Shore’s gain is some poorer neighborhood’s loss. This is unfortu­nate, but if urban black America is to rescue itself it is probably inevitable. The culture of crime, drug abuse, and poverty can engulf community after community if we let it. The first step toward eliminating it is to confine it.) |
14 |
| For most poor neighborhoods, Shorebank's success offers great hope and teaches important lessons. First, it demonstrates the necessity of changing the marketplace in a poor community, rather than simply spending more money. In many poor communities, the only inflow of capi­tal is government transfer payments. In South Shore, money is coming in for investment. |
14 |
| Second, Shorebank demon­strates the psychological power of a bank. Unlike government programs, banks inspire confidence. They have the credibility needed to convince other financial institutions to invest. And they send an unmistakable sig­nal to a community’s residents: peo­ple with money have confidence in the future of this neighborhood. Also, residents view a bank not as a pro­gram designed to do something for them, but as a source of credit they can use to do something for them­selves. If the governmen |
14 |
| Virtuallynoreal estateloanswentbad, andeventhe commercial loans performed well. |
14 |
| Virtuallynoreal estateloanswentbad, andeventhe commercial loans performed well. |
14 |
| Shorebank demonstratesthe psychological power of abank. |
14 |
| Finally, Shorebank demon­strates the power of combining the investment methods of the private sector with the social goals of the public sector. The subsidy provided by Shorebank’s equity investors has |
14 |
| Finally, Shorebank demon­strates the power of combining the investment methods of the private sector with the social goals of the public sector. The subsidy provided by Shorebank’s equity investors has |
14 |
| allowed it to invest where normal banks could not. But Shorebank is still at risk in the marketplace; to sur­vive it must make investments that re­sult in successful individuals, busi­nesses, or buildings. If it doesn’t — if Grzywinski and his colleagues don’t get some return on their investments —they’ll soon be unemployed (and, more important in their particular case, they’ll have seen their dream die). |
14 |
| Shorebank is creating a slightly different version of the model in rural Arkansas, in partnership with the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation. Others are trying to replicate the Chi­cago model in New York, Washing­ton, and Omaha. But none of the three has been able to raise the $5 million to $10 million they need to get started. This is where government must step in (plans are also underway for a similar bank in the Twin Cities; see sidebar). If we want to see more Shorebanks, we need a source of capital. (We |
14 |
| - |
14 |
| This is not to say the model will be easy to copy, even with govern­ment help. Shorebank’s success de­pends, to an unknown degree, on the extraordinary qualities of the people who run it. Moreover, an important part of that success lies in the pro­gram’s very insulation from the dead­ening hand of government bureau­cracy. If government is willing to pro­vide equity investments to private development banks (and, perhaps, |
14 |
| 14 Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 |
14 |
| 14 Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 |
14 |
| SHOREBANKNORTH? |
15 |
| SHOREBANKNORTH? |
15 |
| AsouthMinneapolisgroupexploressociallyresponsiblelending |
15 |
| AsouthMinneapolisgroupexploressociallyresponsiblelending |
15 |
| By Lansing Shepard |
15 |
| A sure sign of a successful idea is the way it spreads. |
15 |
| In south Minneapolis, a group calling itself Common Profits has been following Chicago’s Shorebank story with particular interest. The group, incorporated as a nonprofit in 1988, was created by local business people, theologians, academicians, and state government officials who, back in 1985, came together seeking a way to break the cycle of urban poverty and governmental dependen­cy. They found their inspiration in a social and economic development organization based in Bogota, Col­ombia, called Grupo Soci |
15 |
| Referred to in Colombia as “an experiment in social capitalism,” Grupo is essentially a corporate con­glomerate of businesses dedicated to social and economic change in that country. Its constituent firms are set up and managed specifically to use their profits to further social and |
15 |
| Referred to in Colombia as “an experiment in social capitalism,” Grupo is essentially a corporate con­glomerate of businesses dedicated to social and economic change in that country. Its constituent firms are set up and managed specifically to use their profits to further social and |
15 |
| economic justice within their various communities. An important part of Grupo’s corporate strategy is to ex­tend loans to people who are tradi­tionally considered too poor to be credit-worthy. |
15 |
| Paul Halverson, executive direc­tor of Common Profits, says his group has a way to go before it be­comes anything like a lending institu­tion, let alone a Grupo. |
15 |
| “What we’re doing is setting up an opportunity where people who have money can invest in something for both financial and social return, to help underwrite and support the social purpose or development lend­ing that we want to do,” says Halver­son. “ Profit is our second-to-thebottom line. Social purpose is our pri­mary bottom line. |
15 |
| - |
15 |
| “ But at this point, we’re just working on a business plan. Right now, we can’t guarantee anything. We’re not even sure that a bank is feasible for this market,” he says. |
15 |
| Operating on an $80,000 budget, the organization is based in the Franklin Business Center in south |
15 |
| Operating on an $80,000 budget, the organization is based in the Franklin Business Center in south |
15 |
| Minneapolis. It is staffed only by Hal­verson, a self-styled “ reframed econ­omist” and economics professor who has taught at Augsburg College and Metro State University, and by Jim Cylkowski, a former president of the White Rock State Bank in Cannon Falls, Minnesota. Funded primarily by the Emma Howe and Dayton Hud­son Foundations and the Head­waters Fund, Halverson and Cylkow­ski are beginning to get acquainted with the southside neighborhood’s community groups and business leaders and explaining Common |
15 |
| Profits' mission. |
15 |
| “It’s critical to us to build credi­bility and rapport with the various community groups and the bankers,” says Halverson. “We're trying to build a partnership here. And by working with the banks, we’re trying to dem­onstrate that banks can be leaders in this area. |
15 |
| “ Remember, we’re dealing in an area that banks typically don’t touch. So you have to prove yourself ...you have to build a track record.” |
15 |
| How that track record can be |
15 |
| How that track record can be |
15 |
| How that track record can be |
15 |
| established is a central focus of the group’s business plan. |
15 |
| “There are ways to lend money other than by being a bank,” says Hal­verson. “We’re talking about a three­tiered lending program and structur­ing a lending operation that can manage a higher degree of risk than can regulated banks. We want to use this as a way of demonstrating how one works in this market.” |
15 |
| Halverson estimates that the process, the building of a track record, will take probably three years. “As you can see, this is all tremen­dously complex.” |
15 |
| Eventually, should the organiza­tion’s successes lead to the forma­tion of a community bank, Halverson envisions it occupying a unique niche among its kind. “We’ll probably be a hybrid of Shorebank and some other models out there,” he says. “The situ­ation in the Twin Cities is very differ­ent from that in the south side of Chicago." |
15 |
| Lansing Shepard is a writer living in St. Paul. |
15 |
| access to government deposits, favorable interest rates from the Fed, and so on) but not to demand more control than any other equity invest­or, a development bank program might work. If government treats development banks as government programs, required to meet all the public accountability standards and to jump through all the bureaucratic hoops, it will never work. |
15 |
| “Sometime in the last century or before,” Grzywinski says, “we figured out ways to create universities and hospitals as major not-for-profit organizations that were capitalized either with public funds or private funds, to achieve a public purpose. We created them in a way that they would be substantial, permanent, and in the marketplace. They have to be managed like businesses. And one could ask, ‘Why don’t we create development institutions the same way?’ ” |
15 |
| TERTULIA: Aninformal gatheringforconversationand discussion of the day’s issues. |
15 |
| TERTULIA: Aninformal gatheringforconversationand discussion of the day’s issues. |
15 |
| The CSQwill host atertulia of people involvedand interested in community based credit: credit unions, revolving loan funds, ‘‘community re­sponsive banking,” and their relationship to the peopletheyserve. Therewill berepresentativesofSouthside Credit Union, Common Profits and local banks. AllarewelcometoSt. Martin’sTable, 2001 Riverside Avenue at 7 p.m. on October 16. |
15 |
| The CSQwill host atertulia of people involvedand interested in community based credit: credit unions, revolving loan funds, ‘‘community re­sponsive banking,” and their relationship to the peopletheyserve. Therewill berepresentativesofSouthside Credit Union, Common Profits and local banks. AllarewelcometoSt. Martin’sTable, 2001 Riverside Avenue at 7 p.m. on October 16. |
15 |
| David Osborne is the author of Laboratories of Democracy published last year by Harvard Business School Press. Excerpted with permission from The New Republic (May 8,1989). Subscriptions: $56/yr. (48 issues) from Box 56515, Boulder, CO 80322. |
15 |
| Rod Massey is a Minneapolis artist. |
15 |
| Jay Miller has natural rhythm. |
15 |
| WONDERING WHAT YOU WOULD BE PO(NG |N FRANCE IFONty yaUWERETHERB? |
16 |
| WONDERING WHAT YOU WOULD BE PO(NG |N FRANCE IFONty yaUWERETHERB? |
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| 5 IT I N A CAFE AND HA VE A N INTE LLECWAL CONVERSATION),I AS EVER^oMe' W ELL KNOWS. OBVIOVSL M |
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| IN A LITTLE RED SPORTS CAR / THAT CAN -CAN |
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| H I HAM SUCH PAY ^AR-VEHLUSE HAN A RCAVTIFOOL/ “ |
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| 7.ees BOOK FAR EUB PROBLEMS ' WHH |
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| — It’s easier than you think// |
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| — It’s easier than you think// |
16 |
| NO LESSONS! NO TALENT! NOT IN STORES |
16 |
| ■H-Don't Expect to Get What j You Want Without Askingf* |
16 |
| ■H-Don't Expect to Get What j You Want Without Askingf* |
16 |
| AND WHAT you ARE ASKING IS, HOWMUCH CAN A VACATION IN FRANCE ACTUALLY CHANGE UM LIFE ? AND THE ANSWER is NOT A HECK WITHOUTTHIS BOOK ! |
16 |
| P -P Sill I |
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| BEFORE 12 DAYS LATER/ I FOUND MISS BA RRM'S BOOK |
16 |
| 16 Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 |
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| 16 Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 |
16 |
| YOVVEKCN WAITlN6 FOR1H |
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| YOVVEKCN WAITlN6 FOR1H |
17 |
| ALL THOSE-OTHERGUIDF BOOKS |
17 |
| ALL THOSE-OTHERGUIDF BOOKS |
17 |
| 5GE THING5 YOU'VE ALWAYS |
17 |
| TRY AND HANDYOUA BIG HUNK |
17 |
| DRCAPO OF IN 5UNNY PARLE / |
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| S U P P O S IT O R IE S |
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| DO N 'T SWALLOW IT |
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| DO N 'T SWALLOW IT |
17 |
| 5EXY GOLD LAME |
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| FO R SO RE THROATS |
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| LIKE WHATTHEVTELL youro BRING BAT HING SUIT BOITEMS _ys. WHAT WE TELL you TO g RING / FOR CHlL-PREts/ |
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| 1 |
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| THE ARC. CU |
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| THE ARC. CU |
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| • RUNNINGSHOES • POPCORN |
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| TR lO M PH E |
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| • cow soy BOOTS |
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| JOGGING SHORTS |
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| • PICTURES OF |
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| BACKPACKS |
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| TERRy LEWIS |
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| TERRy LEWIS |
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| • TRAVELERS CHECKS |
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| • CASSETTES OF |
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| POGS SITTING |
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| •SLEEPINGBAGS |
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| •SLEEPINGBAGS |
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| •SLEEPINGBAGS |
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| yiEK PEEING EVERYWHERE. |
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| PANCE MUSIC |
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| Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 17 |
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| Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 17 |
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| ALL THE |
18-19 |
| THAT’S FIT TO PRINT |
18-19 |
| THAT’S FIT TO PRINT |
18-19 |
| By Walter Karp |
18-19 |
| By Walter Karp |
18-19 |
| Who decides what is news in America? The answer lies right on the surface, as obvious as Poe's purloined letter. Reporters themselves know the answer, and talk of it candidly enough in their memoirs. Newspapers carry the answer in almost every news story they publish. What keeps us looking in the wrong direction, as I recently discovered while wading through an ample supply ofmedia studies andbooks by workingjournalists, isa deep-seatedlinguistic habit. Instead ofspeak­ing of news, we speak of "the press" a |
18-19 |
| of "the press" doing this or that—which is exactly what hides the pur­loined letter. For to say that the press does things conceals the fundamental truth that the press, strictly speaking, can scarcely be said to do anything. It does not act, it is acted upon. |
18-19 |
| This immediately becomes clear when one considers how and where reporters find the news. Very few newspaper stories are the result of re­porters digging in files; poring over documents; or interviewing experts, dissenters, or ordinary people. The overwhelming majority of stories are based on official sources—on infor­mation provided by members of Con­gress, presidential aides, and politi­cians. A media critic named Leon V. Sigal discovered as much after ana­lyzing 2,850 news stories that ap­peared in the Ne |
18-19 |
| interpretation,” according to Tom Wicker, for powerful people not only make news by their deeds but also tell reporters what to think of those deeds, and the reporters tell us. |
18-19 |
| David Broder, in his recent mem­oirs, recalls that while covering the Democratic party for the Washington Post in the late 1960s he learned that the grass-roots rebellion against President Johnson and the Demo­cratic party establishment, as he then put it, “degrades the Democratic Party” —having been told so by his sources, that is, by members of the Democratic National Committee, Democratic leaders in Congress, and local party officials. Covering Con­gress means talking to the most pow­erful legislators an |
18-19 |
| porters. A dozen great venues of power and policy— Defense, State, Justice, Central Intelligence, FBI, and* so on —form the daily beats of small claques of Washington reporters “whose primary exercise is collecting handouts from those informational soup kitchens,” as Alan Abelson once put it in Barron’s. |
18-19 |
| Sources are nearly everything; journalists are nearly nothing. “ Re­porters are puppets. They simply re­spond to the pull of the most power­ful strings,” Lyndon Johnson once said. Reagan’s secretary of state, Alexander Haig, explained to an inter­viewer in March 1982 that “even if they write something that I think is terribly untrue, I don’t consider that it was a writer who did it. It’s always someone who gave that writer that information.” So pervasive is the pas­sivity of the press that when a report­er |
18-19 |
| Under the rule of passivity a “ leak” is a gift from the powerful. Only rarely is it “an example of a reporter’s persistence and skill,” as William S. White noted in these pages more than thirty years ago. “ Exclusives” are less a sign of enter­prise than of passive service to the powerful. When Reagan’s State De­partment wanted to turn its latest policy line into news, department offi­cials would make it an “exclusive” for Bernard Gwertzman of the New York Times, former State Department spokesman John Hugh |
18-19 |
| 18 Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 19 |
18-19 |
| 18 Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 19 |
18-19 |
| most esteemed journalists are pre­cisely the most servile. For it is by making themselves useful to the powerful that they gain access to the “ best” sources. |
20 |
| most esteemed journalists are pre­cisely the most servile. For it is by making themselves useful to the powerful that they gain access to the “ best” sources. |
20 |
| So passive is the press that even seemingly bold “adversarial” stories often have the sanction of the high­est officials. In December 1982, Time questioned President Reagan’s queermental equipment in a cover story en­titled “ How Reagan Decides.” This was the first such story given promi­nence in a major news outlet. Yet the story’s source, it turned out, was none other than the President’s own White House aides, who thought it would help them club Reagan awake. Without White House approval the story would |
20 |
| Hedrick Smith, a star reporter at the Times, to lunch at the White House in order to press home the point. This kind of source journalism is almost irresistible to a reporter. As Wicker tells us with admirable candor, “ I regret...to say I have on too many occasions responded like one of Pav­lov’s dogs when summoned to the august presence of a White House official; whatever information he had for me, I usually grabbed and ran,” knowing full well that it was almost certain to be “ a self-serving bill of good |
20 |
| While serving as Reagan’s treas­ury secretary, James Baker promoted Third World debt policies that were profitable to himself. Yet that gross impropriety, though part of the public record, went completely unnoticed by the press for nearly two years, and continued unnoticed while the Senate was ostensibly examining Baker’s appointment as secretary of state. The new secretary had no sooner entered upon his duties, how­ever, when “someone in the adminis­tration” —White House counsel C. Boyden Gray, as it turne |
20 |
| - |
20 |
| he private story behind our |
20 |
| A national news is usually found in Congress. The powerful sources seen darkly through the glass of news are congressional lead­ers telling the press what to think and say about anything that happens in the capital and anyone who matters in the capital —excluding them­selves. “This is a well-known ‘secret’ in the press corps: Washington news is tunneled through Capitol Hill,” notes Stephen Hess, rightly italiciz­ing a secret well worth knowing: that congressional leaders make and un­make the nation’s news. |
20 |
| As long as Congress made aid to El Salvador contingent on improve­ment in~ human rights, Salvadoran death squads and political crimes were news in America. To keep well supplied, the Times put a local inves­tigative reporter on its staff. As soon as Congress lost interest in El Salva­dor, in 1982, the murderous regime vir­tually ceased to be news; the Times investigative reporter— Raymond Bonner— was promptly replaced by a reporter more amenable to the new congressional line. |
20 |
| another story.) Similarly, the prepos­terous “ news” that President Bush was haplessly “adrift” six weeks after his inauguration was whispered to reporters by congressional Demo­crats and “Republican insiders”— leading politicians of both parties. That is surely Hertsgaard’s “ power to define reality,” and just as surely, that power is not in the hands of a passive press and its source-bound reporters. The myth of media power is nothing more than a political orthodoxy that conveniently masks the purloined t |
20 |
| r |
20 |
| r |
20 |
| I he passivity of the press is -A . commonly— and mistakenly —called “objectivity,” the ruling prin. ciple of American journalism ever since World War I put an end to the |
20 |
| 1 |
20 |
| - |
20 |
| The overwhelming |
20 |
| majority of stories are based on official stories. |
20 |
| majority of stories are based on official stories. |
20 |
| For some years evidence of Pen­tagon waste and corruption had been available to the press in the uncom­monly graphic form of $660 ashtrays and $7,622 coffeepots. Yet this well-documented information lay in a sort of journalistic limbo until mid­September 1984, when certain politi­cal leaders held a well-orchestrated Senate hearing on Pentagon waste. Thus licensed as news, outrageous ashtrays became common knowl­edge and struck home with extraordi­nary force. The entire country was so enthralled and appalled |
20 |
| Do we harbor a clear and distinct impression about national affairs? Quite likely it comes from congres­sional leaders. “To a large extent, the reputations of Presidents and their top political appointees—cabinet members, agency heads, etc.—are made or broken on Capitol Hill,” Bro­der notes in his memoirs. The “ news” that President Carter failed to “con­sult with congressional leaders” came to us from congressional lead­ers. (The truth of the matter was quite |
20 |
| Do we harbor a clear and distinct impression about national affairs? Quite likely it comes from congres­sional leaders. “To a large extent, the reputations of Presidents and their top political appointees—cabinet members, agency heads, etc.—are made or broken on Capitol Hill,” Bro­der notes in his memoirs. The “ news” that President Carter failed to “con­sult with congressional leaders” came to us from congressional lead­ers. (The truth of the matter was quite |
20 |
| Progressive revolt against oligarchy, monopoly, and privilege. The code of “objective journalism” is simplicity itself. In writing a news story a report­er is forbidden to comment on his own, or draw inferences on his own, or arrange facts too suggestively on his own. Yet even in the most “objec­tive” story, as Wicker notes, nothing can be said “unless some official­enough spokesman could be found to say so.” |
20 |
| In 1984, the President and Con­gress were in agreement that a large voter turnout in El Salvador’s presi­dential election would prove that “a step toward democracy” (as the New York Times would later characterize it) had been made, justifying massive aid to the ruling faction. The turnout proved large; the results were hailed and Congress voted increased mili­tary aid at once. In the vast farrago of El Salvador news one fact was miss­ing: voting in El Salvador is compul­sory. What rule of objectivity kept t |
20 |
| On February 25, 1986, the New York Times reported, a presidential panel investigating the crash of the space shuttle Challenger proved in­capable of explaining “the cause of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s apparent insistence that the liftoff proceed on Jan. 28.” According to the Times, the panel was baffled by NASA’s “changed phi­losophy” of launch safety and puz­zled by its sudden decision to put en­gineers “ in the position of proving it was unsafe [to launch], instead of the other wa |
20 |
| On February 25, 1986, the New York Times reported, a presidential panel investigating the crash of the space shuttle Challenger proved in­capable of explaining “the cause of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s apparent insistence that the liftoff proceed on Jan. 28.” According to the Times, the panel was baffled by NASA’s “changed phi­losophy” of launch safety and puz­zled by its sudden decision to put en­gineers “ in the position of proving it was unsafe [to launch], instead of the other wa |
20 |
| poned). What rule of objectivity re­quired the Times to omit mention of this “coincidence” and so shield its readers from the blatant dithering of a presidential panel? None, of course. |
20 |
| There is no public information more objective than an official gov­ernment document, yet “few Wash­ington news operations have their own facilities for serious documents research,” notes Hess. Even when there is time, there is a “shunning of documents research.” What rule of objectivity accounts for the shunning of unimpeachably objective sources? None, yet even the most newsworthy documents disappear into journalis­tic oblivion at the mere behest of the powerful. On February 26, 1987, Rea­gan’s “special re |
20 |
| “Aggressive challenges to the official version of things” arouse what Wicker calls “ Establishment disapproval” and bring down the Es­tablishment lash: “ lost access, com­plaints to editors and publishers, social penalties, leaks to competi­tors, a variety of responses no one wants.” “To examine critically the institutions and mores of govern­ment,” notes Leonard Downie Jr., managing editor of the Washington Post, “ might mean breaking friend­ships with trusted government con­tacts, missing the consensus fr |
20 |
| 20 Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 |
20 |
| 20 Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 |
20 |
| a Sandinista sympathizer disguised as a journalist. |
21 |
| Self-serving politicians bully and threaten the publishers’ employees, hinder their work, and weaken their stories, yet almost no audible protest corries from the “super-rich and pow­erful businessmen who ultimately controlled the U.S. news media.” Slandered by State Department hatchet men, Parry discovered that, as he told Hertsgaard, “ if you don’t succumb to all that, you get the line from your editors that maybe they should take you off the story, since you seem to be pursuing a political agenda. When t |
21 |
| Fearful of losing access, “beat reporters must often practice self­censorship,” notes Herbert Gans, “ keeping their most sensational stories to themselves.” Fearful of offending the masters of the soup kitchens, they “have little contact with an agency’s adversaries.” Servile by need, Washington reporters all too often become servile in spirit, like prisoners who come to side with their jailers. “You begin to understand,” as |
21 |
| I.F. Stone once put it, “that there are certain things the people ought not to know.” For nearly twenty years reporters covered the FBI beat without reporting that the bureau was engaged in massive domestic spying under the transparent guise of “counterintelligence.” For ten years reporters covered the CIA without reporting on the agency’s own illicit domestic spying operation, although they surely had wind of it. For the “myopia of a Washington political beat,” says Broder, “there is no sure antidote.” Wer |
21 |
| he political whip that falls on reporters also falls on the media “powers that be.” The pub­lisher or broadcaster who allows his reporter to delve into the forbidden mores of government or to challenge the official version of things by mak­ing “controversial charges...quoting unidentified sources,” says Wicker, “is likely to be denounced for ‘irre­sponsibility.’” His patriotism may be questioned, his advertisers roused |
21 |
| against him. He can be held up to public contumely as a prime example of unelected elitist power, with what effect on profits the “ powers that be” do not wait to find out. “All too many of [them] are fundamentally busi­nessmen,” says Wicker, and nothing scares more easily than a billion dollars. |
21 |
| After President Nixon assailed the Times for publishing the Penta­gon Papers, “the nation’s most influ­ential newspaper,” as William Rusher calls it, grew so frightened that “we bent over backwards trying to culti­vate Nixon,” in the words of Max Frankel, now the executive editor of the newspaper. After the Reagan White House publicly scolded CBS for its vivid prime-time documentary on the plight of the poor in 1982, “CBS News management,” reports Herts­gaard, “ began pressing journalists... to tone down cr |
21 |
| CBS was the protagonist, too, in one of the most telltale stories of political power and the national news media. On October 27, 1972, CBS News carried a fourteen-minute sur­vey of the Watergate scandal as it stood after four months of brilliant in­vestigative reporting by the Washing­ton Post, which had dared treat the break-in as a crime to be solved, even without official approval. Elsewhere in the media, however, the story had been “bottled up,” notes Halberstam in his account of the episode. The rest o |
21 |
| That was not compliant enough for the White House, however. A few days after Nixon’s re-election, Colson |
21 |
| Reporters are puppets. They simply respond to the pull of the most powerful strings. |
21 |
| Reporters are puppets. They simply respond to the pull of the most powerful strings. |
21 |
| powerful to account? Yet here was a president grossly abusing the power of his office (which was newsworthy in itself) in order to censor the news (which was doubly newsworthy) so that the electorate might not hold him accountable at the polls—which was newsworthy three times over. |
21 |
| In John Adam’s thunderous words, a free people has “an indis­putable, unalienable, indefeasible, di­vine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers.” Now a ruler was subverting our inalienable right to dreaded knowledge of him. Surely that was newsworthy, yet it didn’t become news. It rarely does. The news media in America do not tell the American people that a political whip hangs over their head. That is because a political whip hangs ove |
21 |
| “The Washington politician’s view of what is going on in the United States has been substituted for what is actually happening in the country,” former president of the A.P., Wes Gal­lagher, pointed out in the mid-1970s, a time when the press enjoyed a brief hour of post-Watergate freeness. And why would Washington politicians |
21 |
| The most esteemed jour­nalists are precisely the |
21 |
| most servile. |
21 |
| most servile. |
21 |
| called up Paley’s longtime lieutenant, Frank Stanton, to issue a still more sweeping threat: If CBS persisted in broadcasting hostile news about the President, the White House would ruin CBS on Wall Street and Madison Avenue. “We’ll break your network,” said tyranny’s little henchman. Stan­ton suppressed his rage. Paley, deep­ly ashamed, told no one of Colson’s threats. Why didn’t these two media magnates turn those threats into news? What else is a free press for if not to help a free people hold the |
21 |
| called up Paley’s longtime lieutenant, Frank Stanton, to issue a still more sweeping threat: If CBS persisted in broadcasting hostile news about the President, the White House would ruin CBS on Wall Street and Madison Avenue. “We’ll break your network,” said tyranny’s little henchman. Stan­ton suppressed his rage. Paley, deep­ly ashamed, told no one of Colson’s threats. Why didn’t these two media magnates turn those threats into news? What else is a free press for if not to help a free people hold the |
21 |
| want us to know that our knowledge of them comes from them? That is the kind of knowledge that awakens a sleeping people, that dissolves poli­tical myths and penetrates political disguises. To keep all such dreaded knowledge from the rest of us is the “ information policy” of those who rule us. And so it is we hear, from the left as well as the right, the steady drone about media power. |
21 |
| p |
21 |
| I rom the “frightening information policy” to the impeach­able offenses documented in the shunned Iran-contra report, the pri­vate story behind every major non­story during the Reagan adminis­tration was the Democrats’ tacit alli­ance with Reagan. It is this compli­city, and not the Reagan administra­tion’s deft “management” of the news we hear so much about, that ex­plains the press's supineness during the Reagan years. As usual, it was Congress that was managing the news. “ It was very hard to write stori |
21 |
| - |
21 |
| There is no such thing as an objective news story. |
22 |
| There is no such thing as an objective news story. |
22 |
| from the start to “create a fiscal cri­sis,” Moynihan said, and use that cri­sis to force the country against its will to reduce “social spending” for years to come. The indictment was truly grave: an American president conspiring to deceive the American people in order to achieve goals he would never have dared avow. The would-be source was impeccable: a prominent senator, respected, reflec­tive, and uncommonly eloquent. Yet Moynihan’s indictment never became news, not even in the spring of 1986, when Davi |
22 |
| from the start to “create a fiscal cri­sis,” Moynihan said, and use that cri­sis to force the country against its will to reduce “social spending” for years to come. The indictment was truly grave: an American president conspiring to deceive the American people in order to achieve goals he would never have dared avow. The would-be source was impeccable: a prominent senator, respected, reflec­tive, and uncommonly eloquent. Yet Moynihan’s indictment never became news, not even in the spring of 1986, when Davi |
22 |
| not even an eminent senator can make that knowledge news on his own. |
22 |
| For eight years the Democratic opposition had shielded from the public a feckless, lawless president with an appalling appetite for private power. That was the story of the Rea­gan years, and Washington journal­ |
22 |
| For eight years the Democratic opposition had shielded from the public a feckless, lawless president with an appalling appetite for private power. That was the story of the Rea­gan years, and Washington journal­ |
22 |
| ists evidently knew it. Yet they never turned the collusive politics of the Democratic party into news. Slavish­ly in thrall to the powerful, incapable of enlightening the ruled without the consent of the rulers, the working press, the “star” reporters, the pun­dits, the sages, the columnists passed on to us, instead, the Demo­crats’ mendacious drivel about the President’s “Teflon shield.” For eight years we saw the effects of a biparti­san political class in action, but the press did not show us that polit |
22 |
| n May 8, 1969, the Times |
22 |
| n May 8, 1969, the Times |
22 |
| reported, none too con­spicuously, that President Nixon was bombing a neutral country in South­east Asia (Cambodia) and making elaborate efforts to conceal the fact from the American people. The Democratic Congress ignored the story completely, and without a con­gressional news license, perforce, it “dropped out of sight,” as Wicker notes. The entire party establishment had tacitly rallied around a president who harbored dangerous ambitions. That was what had happened, but it wasn’t news. Instead of reveali |
22 |
| reported, none too con­spicuously, that President Nixon was bombing a neutral country in South­east Asia (Cambodia) and making elaborate efforts to conceal the fact from the American people. The Democratic Congress ignored the story completely, and without a con­gressional news license, perforce, it “dropped out of sight,” as Wicker notes. The entire party establishment had tacitly rallied around a president who harbored dangerous ambitions. That was what had happened, but it wasn’t news. Instead of reveali |
22 |
| nothing. Think of it: nothing. Our divine right to dreaded knowledge of our rulers, faY from being indefeas­ible, could scarcely have been said to exist. |
22 |
| Three and a half years later, the same congressional leaders decided to delve into the Watergate scandal, almost certainly to check Nixon’s careening ambitions. Yet how many Americans know that a bipartisan political establishment had actually made such a decision, wise and pru­dent though it was? All too few. How many Americans believe that an “ imperial press” had taken it upon it­self to drive a president from office? All too many. And how many Ameri­cans have the faintest idea that “the earliest and mos |
22 |
| So it has continued day after day, decade after decade. Our rulers |
22 |
| So it has continued day after day, decade after decade. Our rulers |
22 |
| make the news, but they do not ap­pear in the news, not as they really are— not as a political class, a gov­erning establishment, a body of lead­ers with great and pervasive powers, with deep, often dark, ambitions. In the American republic the fact of oli­garchy is the most dreaded knowl­edge of all, and our news keeps that knowledge from us. By their subjuga­tion of the press, the political powers in America have conferred on them­selves the greatest of political bless­ings—Gyges’ ring of invisibility. An |
22 |
| The managing editors of the Star Tribune and Pioneer Press Dis­patch declined to respond to this piece. ’ |
22 |
| Walter Karp’s last book was Liberty Under Siege: American Politics, 19761988. He was, until his recent untimely passing, a Harper’s Magazine contribut­ing editor. |
22 |
| - |
22 |
| Ann Morgan is a Twin Cities artist. |
22 |
| Connie Baker (Gilbert) is a designer and a regular contributor to the Clinton St. Quarterly. |
22 |
| Copyright ©1989 by Harper’s Magazine. All rights reserved. Reprinted from the July issue by special permission. |
22 |
| 22 Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 |
22 |
| I used to think like that |
23 |
| I used to think like that |
23 |
| bank clerk asks for i.d., |
23 |
| bank clerk asks for i.d., |
23 |
| beams quake I say “you’re assuming I’m not me you want me to prove I’m really me you otherwise think I’m guilty of impersonation embezzlement or passing bad checks-listen when I say ‘I don’t believe this’ the “ I” of whom |
23 |
| my teeth bristle |
23 |
| I speak is me!” I skid my plastic identity across the tomb- |
23 |
| sober marble I renew my vows, continue “ Surely you’ve at least given LipService TO FREEDOM in your lifestyle ads for IRAs?” and the clerk smiles, says “ thank you sir” slides license back, hands me my cash Banks on my legitimacy BLUDGEONS me |
23 |
| with her unholy oversized floppy bow “ have a nice day” she says; I growl and pocket my phony i.d. |
23 |
| I sit down to special edition t.v. dinner potatoes reconstituted/Molded into bust of |
23 |
| Judge Crater they taste like mulch I glimpse a running something along floorboard it darts behind a bookshelf I think it’s a mouse, a soft and frightened |
23 |
| wide-eyed hobo mouse without social security number or credit card (or phony i.d.) or lame defense for a favorite |
23 |
| pop singerand I must kill him I’ll set traps tonight; I’m still hungry as Judge Crater vanishes |
23 |
| supermarket cashier rings up on-sale can of |
23 |
| tomato paste at the regular price I say “excuse me but that’s on sale” she says “ Oh I’m sorry” flips through a circular doesn’t see it says “ it musta been last week” I say “ I don’t get the paper there’s a sign |
23 |
| on the shelf” and she says “ it doesn’t matter if it’s not in |
23 |
| the paper” I say, vowels launching quills, “go and look there’s a sign on the shelf that says 39 cents” “ I’m sorry sir other people are waiting if you don’t want the |
23 |
| tomato paste I can subtract it from your total” I notice that two carts behind me a woman is staring accusingly “this cheapskate |
23 |
| is making me late for my Price is Right” and I say to the cashier “Okay (okay) charge me the regular price but Please-you should never EVER believe that what’s not in the paper doesn’t matter” and she smiles sweetly, says “ soyou’ve never gotten your name in the paper(!?)” someone back in produce shouts “four bucks for a pork chop and you want me to taste a free sample |
23 |
| - |
23 |
| of Tater Steaks?” !; my mind reels-UNCRATE THE RIPCORDS! it says |
23 |
| when I spot him today he’s a creature Bounding, not scurrying and instead of just rustling wires behind console he’s grumbling, I hear curse words rodent sneers, he’s grown stronger he pushes some of the furniture out from walls so he can do his laps with fewer detours, he’s the size of a small torpedo, wears a baseball cap that says TONY he springs the traps with a very expensive |
23 |
| technical pen he swiped from my briefcase; I add his name to the mailbox |
23 |
| technical pen he swiped from my briefcase; I add his name to the mailbox |
23 |
| technical pen he swiped from my briefcase; I add his name to the mailbox |
23 |
| the insurance CARRIER (Ah! what GREAT word usage THAT is) tells me that my comprehensive coverage just won’t cover certain charges on a bill for sinus surgery she says “ some of the charges are for medically unnecessary proceduresand therefore (on the basis of our intimidating inorganic abstract and cathedral-like gut) not covered” I say “ so you’re telling me that my policy is only ‘comprehensive’ in a noncomprehensive-kind-of-way”and she answers “Absolutely” and I say “ so while I was knocked out, with Xa |
23 |
| in eyeballI should’ve yanked myself up through anesthesia produced my medical credentials and said to the specialists licking my blood off of |
23 |
| THEIR fingertips‘excuse me but the nasal passage-to-passage |
23 |
| carpetingyou’re installing is Medically-Unnecessary!’? and the carrier laughs with a friendly smiling slamdunking laugh a laugh that says ‘you’re-defeated-you’re-gonna |
23 |
| - |
23 |
| payyou’ve-been-shtupped-you’re-a-foil-you’ve-beentrapped-you’ve-been-had-you’re-a-nitwit-and |
23 |
| - |
23 |
| - |
23 |
| - |
23 |
| a valued customer' |
23 |
| a valued customer' |
23 |
| the mouse is slurping so noisily tonight that I walk over and look behind the couch |
23 |
| to watch he’s the size of a rotund presto log instead of springing the trap, he’s simply holding BACK the guillotine bar with muscular |
23 |
| paw )is That what they’re called on mice?( and he’s dribbling sputtering Cursing the Quality of the Cheese he glares at me and says “ What!? I NEED this!? YES they’re my goddam paws;” sounding like New Jersey childhood out to haunt me |
23 |
| I dream that I get telemarketing phonecall with electronic voice lecturing me about aluminum siding, I interrupt with “ I live in an apartment building” and the voice switches lanes, asks if I have ComPreHENSive medical insurance (?) I say “ I HATE INSURANCE AGENTS!” and the faraway synthetic rasping singsong with seminar-notches up and down its |
23 |
| successful incisors says “well we have a limited-time-only special on burial plots” and I say “ I’M NOT DEAD YET” and the voice begins to laugh and multiply it hollers “well at least you won’t need your i.d. anymore, not even the fake one” and I wake up yelling “What does medically unnecessary Mean? |
23 |
| It’s not like they sent out for pizza!” |
23 |
| it’s 3 a.m. as I stumble into kitchen for ginger ale or leftover pancakes and Tony is sitting at the table drinking a beer he’s the size of sumo wrestling midget “ I couldn’t sleep” he says “Why Not?” I ask “MICE keeping you up!” ? “ nahhh” he says “ I got butterflies 'bout startin’ that insurance job tomorrow” |
23 |
| Graphics by Greet-O-Matic Design by Jay Miller |
23 |
| I |
24 |
| I |
24 |
| A Project by Robin Raygor and Constance Lowe |
24 |
| 24 Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 |
24 |
| by Robin Raygor |
25 |
| by Robin Raygor |
25 |
| Swimming |
25 |
| Swimming |
25 |
| Frank says we’ll be home by Christmas. I want to believe him. |
25 |
| We’ve |
25 |
| We’ve |
25 |
| We’ve |
25 |
| . 1 . 1started when we decided |
25 |
| to see Niagara Falls. We never had a honeymoon because Frank was so busy with his job. I really don’t know very much about his job except that he was always going places and that he always had to wear a long coat, even in the summer. |
25 |
| One day over breakfast Frank said “ Honey, I think we should see Niagara Falls.” |
25 |
| I couldn’t believe it. We had never so much as gone to a movie together in eight years of marriage. I was a little nervous about the trip but it seemed important to Frank so I-didn’t say anything. |
25 |
| The funny thing was, when we got to Niagara Falls, Frank didn’t seem that inter­ested in it. He threw a cigar­ette over the edge but I notic­ed that he didn’t even watch it fall. Before I knew it he was back in the car looking at a map. He said he wanted to show me Lake Michigan. He marked our route on the map with a ball-point pen, putting a little heart with our names in it out in Lake Michigan. It was near the “thumb” and it looked like Michigan was try­ing to get a grip on us. |
25 |
| I thought maybe we would stop in Chicago for a day or two but Frank drove right on by it. It seemed like we hardly ever stopped. Some­times, when he thought I wasn’t looking, Frank took these little white pills to keep awake. When he got really tired we’d pull into a motel but only for a few hours. Some­times we’d stop just long enough for me to take a shower so I had to do a lot of my sleeping in the car. |
25 |
| They have this place in Michigan where people come from miles around to feed these carp. The carp are so thick that birds are walking around on their backs. I wanted to feed them but Frank said we had to get going. |
25 |
| I remember after that we |
25 |
| went past a place where my |
25 |
| parents took me smelting |
25 |
| when I was about seven years |
25 |
| old. The smelt all come up out |
25 |
| of the big lake to spawn and |
25 |
| people wait for them at night |
25 |
| with nets. I remember there |
25 |
| were fires along the shore and |
25 |
| the water looked like black |
25 |
| glass. It was cold and you |
25 |
| been drivingfor as long as I can remember. |
25 |
| been drivingfor as long as I can remember. |
25 |
| could feel the wind off the lake. My father was worried about us going too near the water. He tied us to my mother’s waist by big braided ropes and made her stand way up on shore. My rope was scratchy and smelled like tar but it made me feel safe. My mother said that if I got car­ried away by the current I would be swept out into the big lake. She said it like the current could come up on shore and get me. I thought about telling Frank about it but he looked so intent on his driving. |
25 |
| could feel the wind off the lake. My father was worried about us going too near the water. He tied us to my mother’s waist by big braided ropes and made her stand way up on shore. My rope was scratchy and smelled like tar but it made me feel safe. My mother said that if I got car­ried away by the current I would be swept out into the big lake. She said it like the current could come up on shore and get me. I thought about telling Frank about it but he looked so intent on his driving. |
25 |
| After Michigan we went further west. We saw Mount Rushmore for a few minutes and then went on to the Rockies. |
25 |
| When we crossed the desert Frank seemed to relax a little. Once he even turned on the radio for a little while but we were a long way from any towns and couldn’t get any stations. When it got dark, Frank actually put his elbow out the window and drove with one hand. He didn’t smile exactly, but once in the moon­light, I saw his face kind of relax. |
25 |
| The desert seemed like home to me somehow. Not like it was where I grew up in Michigan, but like I knew what things meant there. In the moonlight it looked like the top of the quilted bedspread I had as a girl. I imagined I was sliding under the desert as I drifted off to sleep. I dreamed that the desert animals all came up to me. The foxes, the mice, the owls, even the snakes and lizards. Their faces were pale but friendly in the moonlight. They wanted me to tell them something important. I did; I told the |
25 |
| The desert seemed like home to me somehow. Not like it was where I grew up in Michigan, but like I knew what things meant there. In the moonlight it looked like the top of the quilted bedspread I had as a girl. I imagined I was sliding under the desert as I drifted off to sleep. I dreamed that the desert animals all came up to me. The foxes, the mice, the owls, even the snakes and lizards. Their faces were pale but friendly in the moonlight. They wanted me to tell them something important. I did; I told the |
25 |
| portant things they had ever heard but after I woke up I couldn’t remember what I had said. Frank asked if I had been dreaming. I said “ no honey, I was just sleeping.” |
25 |
| F |
25 |
| J L rank takes his driving very seriously. He almost |
25 |
| always has both hands on the wheel unless he’s smoking a |
25 |
| cigarette. He drives exactly the speed limit and when you |
25 |
| go around a curve that has its |
25 |
| own speed limit sign, Frank |
25 |
| slows down to that speed. |
25 |
| At Yellowstone I didn’t expect to but we did see Old Faithful. It happened to be going off when we pulled up and Frank let me get out of the car to get a better look. People in the parking lot were talking about it being a wonder of nature. I thought it was sad, that water coming up over and over again and still having to go back under­ground and wait for another chance. |
25 |
| I had always wanted to see Morning Glory Pool. When I was little, my parents gave me a little stereoscopic viewer and one of the first wheels I got was Yellowstone Park. It had the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and bears beg­ging for food but the best pic­ture was the deep blue depths of Morning Glory Pool. I had spent the whole morning thinking about how to tell Frank I wanted to see it and when it came time I just blurted it out. Frank said “ sure honey, if you really want to.” |
25 |
| It was toward the back of a series of pools and I got pretty far from the car. It was a little smaller than I thought it would be but that didn’t spoil the effect. The pool was a lit­tle scary to look into, all that deep blue calling out to you. It got narrow at the bottom but then I thought maybe it’s just far away, like railroad tracks coming together in the dis­tance. Maybe you could just keep on going down and it would be nice and warm and it would get dark but there would always be room for your arms. |
25 |
| We got to the Grand Can­yon just as the sun was com­ing up. Frank didn’t get out of the car but he told me to go have a look at it. It was much bigger than I expected and all the colors made me dizzy. It seemed like I could spread my arms and fly down into the canyon, banking around the towers of red rock like a con­dor. Looking over the edge I could feel myself dropping toward the floor of the canyon like a pearl in a bottle of shampoo. I wanted to stay longer but I knew Frank was getting impatient in the |
25 |
| When we got to California Frank drove straight to the ocean. “Well honey,” he said “this is the Pacific Ocean.” |
25 |
| It was kind of a gray day and it looked like it might rain. Frank just sat there in the car looking out at the water like it was a fallen tree blocking the road. After a while, he got out the maps again. We had lots of maps. It seemed like every time we stopped for gas Frank would buy more maps. |
25 |
| He’s talking about seeing the Mississippi now and I’d like that. All that water flowing into the Gulf and all those fish, swimming to stay in one place and never knowing what they’re going to do next. Maybe I could get into the water somehow and tell them about my trip. I’d like to be home for Christmas but I guess it’s up to Frank. |
25 |
| Robin Raygor is a writer living |
25 |
| in St. Paul. |
25 |
| in St. Paul. |
25 |
| Constance Lowe is a visual artist who lives in Minneapolis and teaches at MCAD. |
25 |
| Designer Gail Swanlund is a frequent contributor to the CSQ. |
25 |
| Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 25 |
25 |
| Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 25 |
25 |
| 26 Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 |
26 |
| BRAINDAMAGED |
27 |
| BLUES |
27 |
| An odyssey of recovery |
27 |
| By Billy GolfusArt by Stuart MeadDesign by Jezac |
27 |
| By Billy GolfusArt by Stuart MeadDesign by Jezac |
27 |
| You want to know how Richie woke me up from the coma? I'm laying there for over a month. Out cold. Richie's a fourth degree black belt in Aikido. So the schmeckel grabs my hand in a Nikkyo and twists my wrist. "If this hurts," he says. "Say uncle." |
27 |
| What would you do? I said uncle. |
27 |
| You know, the doctors had been sticking pins in me and shaking their rattles and doing whatever docs do. They said that saying uncle didn't count. "It would have happened anyway." |
27 |
| When I woke up, my body and spirit were broken. I was so brain­damaged that I couldn ’t count change and had lost the use of my left arm and leg. Doctors suggested to my family that I spend my life in a nursing home. The best job that I could think of was selling pencils at the bus station. Things did not look good for the home team. |
27 |
| They said I'd never sing again |
27 |
| I learned a lot about my friends |
27 |
| When you're shot down and out |
27 |
| You don't get many calls |
27 |
| —Hank Williams, Jr. |
27 |
| —Hank Williams, Jr. |
27 |
| "All In Alabama" |
27 |
| They not only said I’d never sing again, they said I’d never walk again. When I first started standing up from the wheelchair I had a platform cane with four tips which I called “four on the floor.” Me and my brother Richie had to run a heavy con to get a copy of it from the physical therapy people so I could practice walking. I suppose that they were afraid that I’d fall... and sue. “You can use it for a half an hour a day— under supervision.” Somehow Richie and I got one for my room. Unheard of. Boy, I wo |
27 |
| Let me tell you, being in the hos­pital for over a quarter of a year is a trip and a half. It probably comes as no surprise that the whole world looks different from in there. One of the big deals in the life of a longtime hospital patient is what’s for dinner. Or maybe it’s the evening “snack.” Dig it, if you’ve ever eaten hospital food, you know I was in trouble, Jack. And, of course, another thing hospi­tal life revolves around —until it’s visiting time— is television. On top of everything else, being in |
27 |
| The hospital had what they call escorts to schlep you around in your wheelchair. Their job was to take you |
27 |
| The hospital had what they call escorts to schlep you around in your wheelchair. Their job was to take you |
27 |
| to physical therapy at two o’clock, or whenever. It was through the escorts that I was first able to see some of the schools of recovery. There’s the sack of potatoes school of recovery where they grab your wheelchair from behind—there’s nothing you can do, remember—and start to drag you to whatever it says on their clipboard. “Says here, X-ray at one o’clock.” There’s the “ For Me” school of recov­ery. “ Eat all your carrots, form e" And the “We” school of recovery. “Do we want to go into the bathroom and |
27 |
| n this whole picaresque routine I |
27 |
| I |
27 |
| met some of the good guys and |
27 |
| some of the bad guys. Dr. Tod Holmes was one of the good guys. He knew my brother and I knew his. And his brother Tim and I had been on the same rock & roll cruise for a few years. Dr. Holmes didn’t slip me free pills or anything like that, he just — what would you call it?—took an in­terest in me as a person. |
27 |
| He did something unorthodox and unprecedented that saved my ass. He wrote me a rock & roll pass. Any time I felt like it I could leave the hospital and go out to hear music. All of a sudden I was looking forward to the upcoming concert instead of to dessert. I ran into people that I knew on those outings. Bottom line is, I began to take an interest in life again. |
27 |
| Now, you can’t get too far in a wheelchair by yourself. I needed somebody to drive and get me in and out of a car. Sometimes I’d get brought back late. Even now Richie makes fun of me about the night nurses. He makes his voice real low and raspy like I sounded when I first started talking again and says, “ The night nurses! The night nurses!" I |
27 |
| Now, you can’t get too far in a wheelchair by yourself. I needed somebody to drive and get me in and out of a car. Sometimes I’d get brought back late. Even now Richie makes fun of me about the night nurses. He makes his voice real low and raspy like I sounded when I first started talking again and says, “ The night nurses! The night nurses!" I |
27 |
| suppose that was because the eleven to seven shift was my least favorite. During the day whenever I wanted to urinate I’d approach the toilet with my gang. It took a couple of nurses to hold me up. It was difficult to get the night nurses to help because they didn’t want you to disturb their knit­ting. But they were kind and consider­ate enough to give me a urinal and a bedpan. Toward the end of my hospi­tal stay I finally got it together enough so I could go to the bathroom by myself. For the first week or |
27 |
| months and months after the acci­dent, I got to the point where I could go to the bathroom without turning on the nurse’s light first. |
27 |
| Kim was there back then. She had either picked me up in a bar or I had picked her up in a bar. I know somebody picked somebody up. |
27 |
| She was there when I woke up from the coma after the accident. |
27 |
| Kim and I were starting to have problems. Big surprise. So, I figured we needed help, not to mention all the junk that goes with almost dying, being crippled, brain-damaged, no in­come, left by most of my “friends,” turning 40 in a coma, and some other things. |
27 |
| Shrinks are the witch doctors of the American tribe. Medical doctors we think of as sort of biological mechanics. But, shrinks are the seers. So much so that anything that suggests the name counselor, thera­pist, or any psychological advisor is invested with power. Somewhere in there is the feeling that shrinks can see and therefore know what’s really going on. That’s why we really give the power of the Wizard of Oz to shrinks. (“ Ignore that man behind the curtain.”) So anyway, Kim and I went to see a shri |
27 |
| Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 27 |
27 |
| I can’t remember for sure but I |
28 |
| I can’t remember for sure but I |
28 |
| think I was just out of the wheelchair |
28 |
| when we went to see Jeremy Delphi |
28 |
| at this do-gooder social service agen­ |
28 |
| cy. I think I had just started walking |
28 |
| with the cane. |
28 |
| I turned to Jeremy for help. Be­ |
28 |
| cause I’d known him for a long time I |
28 |
| figured that when I was so badly hurt |
28 |
| and really in trouble I could count on |
28 |
| him and the agency. Boy, was that |
28 |
| wishful thinking. |
28 |
| ' I was always being |
28 |
| put in a position |
28 |
| put in a position |
28 |
| where I had to argue |
28 |
| that I had, in fact, |
28 |
| been brain-damaged. |
28 |
| I was having all these feelings |
28 |
| about death. It’s only natural. After |
28 |
| all, I had just about died. In the begin­ |
28 |
| ning, they were taking bets if I was |
28 |
| going to make it at all. I wanted to |
28 |
| “deal with” —therapy’s like a card |
28 |
| game where you “deal with” s tu ff- |
28 |
| deal with feelings about being crip­ |
28 |
| pled and brain-damaged, family and |
28 |
| friends, work and money, what’s left |
28 |
| for me, you know: Love and Death. |
28 |
| But there wasn’t time to “deal |
28 |
| with” all these feelings about dying |
28 |
| and getting crippled because we had |
28 |
| to deal with The Relationship. Jeremy |
28 |
| didn’t have much to offer when it |
28 |
| came to dealing with feelings about |
28 |
| dying. He had a well-worn agenda |
28 |
| about Relationships. You know, when |
28 |
| allyou got is a hammer, you tend to |
28 |
| treat the whole world as a nail. |
28 |
| It was like any sucker bet. “Just |
28 |
| one more card.” I figured we were just |
28 |
| inches away from working it out. To |
28 |
| get somebody to put a lot of chips on |
28 |
| the table they’ve got to believe that |
28 |
| they can’t lose. Or at least they’ve got |
28 |
| a really good chance (which trans­ |
28 |
| lates to they won’t lose). Honest to |
28 |
| God, I figured we were going to work |
28 |
| it out. The idea was to first deal with |
28 |
| The Relationship and then, maybe, |
28 |
| we could deal with life and death. |
28 |
| ll this time, nobody could see |
28 |
| A |
28 |
| that I was injured. When I was |
28 |
| still in the hospital people were tell­ |
28 |
| ing me “You’re OK, You’re OK.” My |
28 |
| Fd forget what I was |
28 |
| mouth, who I’d known for over twenty years, since way before he went to law school, told me, “You’re back to normal.” Part of this junk is denial and part of it is that people just can’t see it. Through this whole deal I was painfully forced to relearn that “see­ing is believing” for most people. |
28 |
| mouth, who I’d known for over twenty years, since way before he went to law school, told me, “You’re back to normal.” Part of this junk is denial and part of it is that people just can’t see it. Through this whole deal I was painfully forced to relearn that “see­ing is believing” for most people. |
28 |
| Maybe if I would have put my heart into it I could have learned to drool and make baby-talk. It probably would have made people a lot more comfortable. Or it would have made more of them split. |
28 |
| Jeremy was one of those who didn’t see much wrong with me. I re­member saying to him, “ I’m crippled.” |
28 |
| “You’re not that crippled,” was his loud insistent answer. When he |
28 |
| “You’re not that crippled,” was his loud insistent answer. When he |
28 |
| thought that you didn’t catch his meaning he spoke louder and clearer. |
28 |
| He saw me walking with diffi­culty, unable to use one arm, having some difficulty talking. Not even in a wheelchair. I mean, he wasn’t having no trouble walking. And he wasn’t having no trouble with his memory. I mean, if you ain’t been through this junk, how much empathy you gonna have, anyway? |
28 |
| It took me a couple of years to get a hint of what was going on. Of course, the loss of the use of one arm and one leg caused by the brain dam­age and all the many problems that come out of that. Difficulty “control­ling” my emotions. Loss of memory that’s common to everybody with brain injury. You know, I couldn’t count change because if there were a nickel and a dime and a quarter, by the time I’d get to the quarter I’d forget the nickel. I’d forget what the hell I was talking about in the middle of a sen |
28 |
| - |
28 |
| I was having “judgment” prob­lems, difficulty swallowing and a ten­dency to choke, little control over going to the bathroom, the abandon­ment that happens to people with serious problems (they might be catching), the lack of income— 75 percent of the handicapped are unemployed and most of those who do work can only get part time jobs. And Jeremy is saying, “ You’re, not that crippled.” |
28 |
| When he became director of the clinic he sent me to see this woman at another branch of the agency. She suggested that I go to Al-anon meet­ings. |
28 |
| So, I was always being put in a position where I had to argue that I had, in fact, been brain-damaged. What am I doing now, for God’s sake? I kept continually asking for help and, as I’ve just said, nobody would see that there was anything wrong. |
28 |
| My mom was just in town and told me about a TV show where she just saw The Truth about brain injury and all brain-damaged specimens on the show were complaining because nobody could see that there was any­thing wrong. |
28 |
| doing all the time. |
28 |
| Much later, a doctor told me, “ No! No! You have been through something.” |
28 |
| “Well, why the hell can’t these social work/therapy types see it?” |
28 |
| “ Most of them haven’t had neu­ropsychology,” he said, and all them other ologies. |
28 |
| he National Head Injury Founda­ |
28 |
| T |
28 |
| tion calls brain damage—they |
28 |
| tion calls brain damage—they |
28 |
| call it closed head trauma—the “hid­den epidemic.” I wanted to explain what happened to me so I tried for |
28 |
| call it closed head trauma—the “hid­den epidemic.” I wanted to explain what happened to me so I tried for |
28 |
| about a year and a half to raise money to produce a radio documen­tary to let people know about brain damage. Victoria Sprague, the co­founder and director of the Midwest Association for Comatose Care felt that the documentary I wanted to make was related to what they’re do­ing and worked with me. A lot of brain-damaged people do some coma time. She has a brother who is a researcher for the Library of Con­gress. He did some research and wrote: |
28 |
| ...in this country, over 500,000 people are hospitalized each year as a result of traumatic brain injury. Of these, 70,000 to 90,000 will sustain head injuries severe enough to cause lifelong physical and mental impair­ments. Put another way, there are three times more head injury victims than [victims] of multiple sclerosis. There are ten times more head injury survivors than spinal cord injury sur­vivors. There are forty times more head injured individuals than persons with muscular dystrophy. |
28 |
| It was not only hidden but the doctors don’t know what was pulling off. I did a talk show about brain dam­age on KUOM, the college radio sta­tion where I used to work. I said just that: “You guys are just guessing. You’ve got white coats and big words but you’re just guessing.” The doctor on the program acknowledged that was true. |
28 |
| Somewhere in there is the feeling that shrinks can see and therefore know what's going on. |
28 |
| I was trying to put together a na­tional radio program abo6t brain damage. I had done a bunch of docu­mentaries that ended up on National Public Radio, had a watl full of awards, had the injury myself, and had worked out distribution with NPR as much as you can before there is a product. So I figured that it would be a piece of cake. But, like Woody Guthrie says, If you ain’t got the do, re, me... |
28 |
| Can you imagine how all the people who are brain-damaged feel? Five hundred thousand every year, a million in two years, a million and a half in three years....Frustrated. No­body hears them or sees it or else they get written off like a sack of potatoes. |
28 |
| And there’s this other thing go­ing on called disinhibition that’s got to do with the brain damage. Disin­hibition means not being able to inhi­bit yourself. I never thought about it, but civilization has got a lot to do with inhibiting your responses. With not telling your boss what an asshole he is, with not kicking in the TV when once again you can’t tell the differ­ence between tonight’s news and a sit-com. There’s a lot of stuff that we |
28 |
| And there’s this other thing go­ing on called disinhibition that’s got to do with the brain damage. Disin­hibition means not being able to inhi­bit yourself. I never thought about it, but civilization has got a lot to do with inhibiting your responses. With not telling your boss what an asshole he is, with not kicking in the TV when once again you can’t tell the differ­ence between tonight’s news and a sit-com. There’s a lot of stuff that we |
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| don’t do—that we might even want to do—that we inhibit. Well, it’s your brain that stops you. |
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| Anyway, it’s real common in the brain-damaged that inhibiting don’t work so good. On top of that you get pissed off real easy. |
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| Tom, this guy with a nice-nice come on, who works with the handi­capped, says the brain-damaged are “an angry population.” He says it in that kind of do-gooder, understated way, making sure to let you know by the paralanguage that he’s not one of them. You got the message that he was above that wretched lot. |
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| Some of the nurses who were familiar with brain damage would of­fer a generalization that they had learned. “You’re sooo angry.” In other words, they might not have known anything about me as an individual but they knew that I had suffered closed head injury and therefore I rriust be “sooo angry.” |
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| While most everybody acted as if there wasn’t too much wrong with me, the doctors assumed that every­thing that was going on with me was caused, or at least affected, by the brain damage. Like pissing. I started to piss a lot. Every ten, fifteen, twenty minutes. And after examinations and sticking tubes up me and examina­tions their best guess was that it had to do with the brain damage. The brain damage gave them something to hang their “ I don’t knows” on. Over six months this pishing went on. Los­ing con |
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| And everyone else’s attitude was like Jeremy’s “You’re not that crip­pled.” My father was ragging on me in the car, “You’re not brain-damaged,” he said trying to argue me out of it. One time I got stopped by the cops and said I had to go to the bathroom before I could even talk to them. Thank God, the cop was nice enough to let me do it. |
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| So anyway, one day Dr. Szabad says to me on the phone, “Good news! You’ve got a bladder infection.” |
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| The injury caused me to really depend on my friends. Like, I couldn’t climb the stairs without a handrail. Years later, I still ain’t no maven on the stairs. I was waiting for a couple of friends to screw in the screws to hang the handrails so I could get to the bathtub at the top of the stairs. And I couldn’t get up the stairs until my friends got around to putting in those screws. They kept putting it off. It was over a month before I could take a bath. Stink much? And that wasn’t the only way that I was |
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| Having all these people go away and ignore you is fiendish punishment. |
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| 28 Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 |
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| friend. So you don’t notice one go away. Or five who split. But, when it started to get to be ten and twenty, I paid a little attention. |
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| friend. So you don’t notice one go away. Or five who split. But, when it started to get to be ten and twenty, I paid a little attention. |
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| //T „ |
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| I t happens every time, every X time” says Sandy Ford, a nurse who does research at Hennepin County Medical Center. “ Like we’ve got a guy was injured this week. And he’s 32 and he has this cute little fiancee that’s there holding his hand, that’s there crying. Weeping, weep­ing. All this stuff. And unless he has an extremely good recovery she is not gonna hang in there. “And when I see high school kids come in. The first three weeks there are kids everywhere. I mean, they’re flockin’ in here and everyone i |
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| The injury caused me to really depend on my friends. |
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| And everybody’s all the time tell­ing me what’s happening with me. Like, Stevie’s got this thing that it’s very hip to turn the obvious on its ear. “They didn’t leave,” he said. “You left.” He really said that. |
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| Later, when I went back to the University of Minnesota and Dr. Pro­fessor George Shapiro kept pushing this book called The Pragmatics of Human Communication, that I start­ed to groove with. It quotes William James, who everybody calls the father of psychology. James talks about this thing called “disconfirma­tion.” He wrote |
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| No more fiendish punishment could be devised, even were such a thing physically possible, then that one should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed by all the members thereof. |
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| No more fiendish punishment could be devised, even were such a thing physically possible, then that one should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed by all the members thereof. |
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| Having all those people go away and ignore you is fiendish punish­ment. Some people have walked by me on the street and pretended they don’t recognize me. Like, you need interaction with other people. Prob­ably the worst of them were the “old friends” who acted like everything was OK and we’d “work it out.” And still split. It all caused me to look at love and trust real different. |
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| Let’s not turn this into some kind of junk about the handicapped. Peo­ple left for all kinds of different rea­sons. Because they “ couldn ’t handle” pain or even unpleasant­ness, because I wasn’t the hard-drinking know-where-the-party-is-at kind of “fun” guy any more, because I didn’t have the radio show....You pick it. But, they did leave. |
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| All this time Kim and I are still seeing Jeremy Delphi at the dogooder agency. Dummy that I am, I kept thinking that part of The Prob­lem with us had to do with communi­cation. I think, even now, that commu­nication in its various forms is what makes people human. There’s all this book learning that says that it actual­ |
29 |
| All this time Kim and I are still seeing Jeremy Delphi at the dogooder agency. Dummy that I am, I kept thinking that part of The Prob­lem with us had to do with communi­cation. I think, even now, that commu­nication in its various forms is what makes people human. There’s all this book learning that says that it actual­ |
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| - |
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| ly makes up reality. Far out, huh? The Pragmatics says communication’s got to do with basic survival. That’s what I told Jeremy. But he, like most people, still thinks that there’s this thing called “reality” that’swhat’sgo­ing on and communication is just how we talk about it. Most people think that communication is only a step above how to write a business letter or run your modem or some damn thing. Jeremy didn’t see com­munication as much of a relationship problem, either. |
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| That wasn’t the real problem, he explained to me, in that therapist’s way, without ever exactly using the words. The real problem was that I was getting old. (“Thank you for shar­ing that.”) |
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| I grow old... I grow old... |
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| I shall wear the bottoms of my |
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| trousers rolled. |
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| trousers rolled. |
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| —Little [T|ommy [S]teams Eliot |
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| "The Love Song of |
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| J. Alfred Prufrock" |
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| Everybody’s got their junk to say about what’s going on with me. No­body wants to ask me...or even seems to be able to see me. Every­body’s all the time “dealing with” some idea of reality: “ It’s not that bad.” People want stuff nice, and get­ting better. Nothing painful, or un­pleasant, or negative! |
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| There are forty times more head injured individuals than persons with muscular dystrophy. |
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| Much later I came across a book called Transitions, by this guy William Bridges, who points out the American fast food way of “dealing with” experiences. You know, get it over, especially painful stuff. Billy Bridges writes, |
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| To deny it [pain, loss, confusion, etc.] is to lose the opportunity it pro­vides foran expanded sense ofreality and a deepened sense of purpose. And tobe overwhelmedbyitisjust as unfortunate, for one then has no way to integrate the experience with the rest of one’s life. |
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| I just thought I was losing every­thing and was in a lot of pain. I didn’t understand it was an “opportunity.” I suppose, like Mrs. Nietzsche’s little |
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| I just thought I was losing every­thing and was in a lot of pain. I didn’t understand it was an “opportunity.” I suppose, like Mrs. Nietzsche’s little |
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| boy Freddie says, anything that don’t kill you makes you stronger. |
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| eremy kept identifying different |
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| things as “The Problem.” |
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| It was because I was out of work. “ People get a lot of their good feel­ings about themselves from their jobs,” he told me. So jobs didn’t have jackshit to do with paying the rent and buying food, they were about “good feelings.” |
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| Later, he sent me to Vocational Services, an arm of his own agency. Talk about the three stooges. They give you all these tests to finger out what you should be. Or at least what you want to be. Why the hell didn’t they just ask me, it would have saved a lot of time. They subtly asked, “True or false, ‘I would like the work of a prissy doily embroiderer.’” Honest to God, they seem to see those tests as closer to Moses’ Stone tablets than they are to tea leaves. But, If they run the tests then they’re covere |
29 |
| They assigned me to this woman who only got me one interview in the months and months that I worked with them —and that was for an internship at a TV station I’d already worked at, for God’s sake. Like I said, she was less than responsive. MoJo says it’s catch twenty-two if you question your therapist, do-gooder types. You know, it you ever question them then what’s wrong with you. They are like a protected priesthood. They’re beyond being always right— they can’t be questioned. They’re “trained professiona |
29 |
| I’d love to tell you that somehow the do-gooder agencies were the ex­ceptions to the rule—but they ain’t. The Social Security people and the State services—with a couple of real notable exceptions—and all the offi­cial. and unofficial do-gooders that I ran into are unbelievable. Handi­capped people know this. There’s what I used to call wheelchair to wheelchair communication. You can say it to them with a look. Or a part of a sentence. But things are set up so nobody else ever hears about it. |
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| Anyway, something told me to go back to the U. I figured it would be like a gym for my brain. There, I came from not being able to count change to getting my M.A. I suppose it was that and the computer labs at the U. Remember Marshall McLuhan saying that computers were extensions of the brain and central nervous sys­tem? If you're one of those people |
29 |
| Anyway, something told me to go back to the U. I figured it would be like a gym for my brain. There, I came from not being able to count change to getting my M.A. I suppose it was that and the computer labs at the U. Remember Marshall McLuhan saying that computers were extensions of the brain and central nervous sys­tem? If you're one of those people |
29 |
| who want an explanation for how I got better, that’s my guess. Compu­ters and the university. |
29 |
| The university is as cold, hostile, and unfriendly as everyone ever said it is. It was a fight, let me tell you. Crawling up a cliff with my finger­nails. But, two professors saved my ass. Dr. Professor Shapiro and Pro­fessor Christopher Robin took me under their wings and ran interfer­ence for me. So I went from not being able to count change to finishing a master’s degree. Coming from where I was that’s a big deal. |
29 |
| And the Office for Students with Disabilities got me the phone number of this guy, Earl, who was willing to work on computers with beginners. I started calling him the Dukkha Earl. (Buddha said, “ Life is dukkha.”) The Dukkha Earl also jumped in way above the call. Took my phone calls all the time. At work. Late at night. The guy’s pure gold. When he met me I couldn’t even figure out how to turn it on. I’d call him up and he’d tell me how to get it rocking. |
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| I believe that the computer and the Dukkha Earl are a couple of the main reasons why I’m not in a nursing home. That and Dr. Professor Shapiro and Professor Christopher Robin. |
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| If I would have done what those who “ know best” said, I would have had a bed in a nursing home. |
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| Let’s face it, if you’re handi­capped in America you’re in the toilet without a paddle. It don’t have to be that way, but that’s the way it is. That’s the way we set it up. |
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| But, I could be mistaken. I’m brain-damaged, ya know. |
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| This is an excerpt from a larger article. Some of the names have been changed, “to protect the guilty,” says the writer. |
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| Billy Golfus has spent the last five years recovering from a serious motor scooter accident. He is brain-damaged and has some physical disability. In the spring of 1989 he earned his master’s degree in Speech— Communication and now can talk to anybody. Billy has produced a number of award-winning radio docu­mentaries. His master thesis, DAP CRAP, is an example of the nude journalism. He is currently working on an article about organizations and community with Dr. Professor George Shapiro and Professor Chris |
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| Stuart Mead is a frequent contributor to the CSQ. He will be showing paintings with Dean Luckers’ sculpture at the Rifle Sport Gallery starting Nov. 19th. |
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| Jezac is a typesetting/design firm in Minneapolis that has been with the Minneapolis edition of CSQ since its introduction in the spring of 1988. |
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| Clinton St. Quarterly— Fall, 1989 29 |
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| 30 Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 |
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| Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 |
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| 32 Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 |
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| Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 |
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| 34 Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 |
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| Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 35 |
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