Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain

Most of the time, the smoke leads us somewhere. So does the money, and when there is smoke AND money...

Rumors about Trump and Russia have been around for decades now and there is plenty of evidence that there is something not quite right with Trump and his family and obvious admiration for dictators, with Putin being the exemplar. This social media post about wanting Ukraine to stop destroying deisel production facilities because THAT is what has dramatically driven price increases in the U.S.... Come on!

Even the Russians said that not bombing those facilities would have little impact on prices, though they certainly appreciate the support. After all, poor Russia is at the mercy of the monstrous Ukranian war machine and any help they can get, you know.

It's such a looney tunes thing to say that we can only surmise that Trump has completely gotten lost in some delusional fantasy (likely the correct choice) or that he is a Russian agent working on the behalf of a powerful adversary (the most frightening option). 

I have read comments on how it's safe to ignore Trump's fantasies about 9-11 and physically helping at the site with a hundred workers he pulled from a project, or his dramatic rescue by two burly firefighters (some sort of homoerotic fantasy shared with the world?) just before a building fell on them. Neither of those things happened and everyone knows it. 

It is disturbing that Trump doesn't know it. 

Memory is a funny thing and it's completely possible that someone can come to believe some false memories (desires, nice-sounding stories, tales of heroism) are ACTUAL memories. I really would love to somehow translate many high school athletic moments of heroism into facts, but I retain enough of myself to know those would just be me making stuff up. 

We have a president who is just making stuff up, and a majorty of congress and government that is just nodding along.

"The emperor wears no clothes," exclaims the little boy in the story. The good news is that all the adults who had pretended the man was gloriously clothed due to peer pressure were able to awaken from their trances and see the truth plainly before them.

I large chunk of America plainly sees that Trump wears no clothes, lives in a fantasy, cares only for himself and his wealthy friends... but won't awaken from the trance. I guess that is what depresses me about the country and our future. 

When Trump calls fears of AI doing what experts say is quite possible -- the robots destroying humanity through disease or nuclear annihilation or whatever -- a hoax is the president trying to protect his investments in AI (and crypto and private equity investment). Climate change is a hoax because Trump might not make money on his fossil fuel investments. 

Those commentators who brush off most of Trump's ravings as Trump being Trump are fools who are outthinking themselves. The crazy man is in charge and the totality of his ravings is what gives him away. Trying to sort the analytical from the fanciful from the bigoted from the self-serving... that's a fool's errand. 

It's got to stop. 

Yes, it's madness... but there's baseball on TV

I'm not sure how my confidence will ever return regarding both the "rule of law" and national leadership after Trump... and this week serves as a good example of how low things can get.

The Supreme Court seems to agree that the Trump Ballroom is illegal but a technicality allows construction to continue. The Trump sycophants are starting the Arch construction despite that process not having the necessary approval. Courts stop the USPS from carrying out a hasty attempt to limit mail-in voting but the work doesn't stop. Most of the country decries the "war" with Iran, but the vice president simply claims it's not really a war. 

Trump is going to fly to Ireland in his Quatar palace plane... the same one he had to use as a decoy just a few weeks ago. Gas prices continue to rise while Trump and the cult claim oil is flowing freely through the Strait of Hormuz... and the raw numbers show that is an outright lie. 

The Blitherer in Chief continues to rail against the polls, as if every national polling organization had made a pact to keep his numbers devastatingly low. 

We are down to a dangerous number of weapons and it's Biden's fault. Trump whines about not being allowed to speak at the 9-11 ceremony and the cult defends him. 

All that stuff is just this week! 

Our nation's moral fiber has pretty much disappeared, though it is also true that "life goes on" and many Americans just shrug, say all politics is corrupt (90 percent in a poll this week) so who cares?

The gauling thing is that no one appears capable of doing anything to stop the madness. Certainly not our elected officials in Congress or on the Supreme Court. A national weakness is that if Trump won't be shamed and won't be even challenged, then he can just do what he wants and stay ahead of any legal issues. 

"It's already done," will be the mantra for the next two years. 

It is already done, though I am quite willing for the government to invest billions to tear down as much Trump crap as is possible. 

I'm certain you can't find any Adolf Hitler statues in modern Germany. Let's use that as our model in a little over two years.

Is there any difference, in the end?

As the new semester enters Week 2 for Metro State, I find myself confronted by a "new one." I have a 14-year-old boy freshman boy from Colorado Springs taking Composing Arguments (which is a mandatory first-year writing course). 

I hesitate to call this "existential" in its possible effect, but it forces me to consider whether the course I have created is advanced enough to be beyond a current English I student's abilities (and Riley may be quite a fine student and writer) or whether the very concept of grades and life experience is irrelevant.

A high school student taking college classes is not new... we have lots of concurrent courses in Colorado, at least, and many high school students are interested in either getting dual credit or simply acquiring some college credits without any added expense. I hadn't given the entire issue much thought until, well, last week, when I could not avoid it.

On the one hand, I would like to think that my content, from readings to assignments, was aimed at college-age students. I guess I am enough of a traditionalist to think that we build our skills over time and take on more and more sophisticated thinking and writing as we go along. 

But on the other hand, I have long argued that my ENG1010 course is just a version of AP Language and Composition, and it may honestly be a bit less demanding than I expected from smart Rock Canyon HS juniors. After all, many of my Metro students are not native English speakers and a large proportion are what I would term "non-traditional" in many ways. 

In the very brief introductions made online, at least two students shared in the online discussion that they are non-binary, at least two are grandmothers returning to school (young grandmothers, but still), and at least six are from Africa or the Middle East. To hold such students strictly to what I call " Mainstream U.S. English" standards seems a bit too much. The English department even has a strong suggestion that grammar and punctuation not amount to over 10 percent of a student's grade.

I don't know how to properly measure that without a grading rubric that is close to a physics formula, but I get the tone. When I am feeling particularly snarky, I will quietly share with people that I have pretty much abandoned most of my standards for writing and thinking in my college teaching.

It will be interesting to see how Riley does. If he sticks with everything, he has as good a chance as others in the course to earn a solid grade. 

Is it OK, however, to treat him any differently than anyone else? My first instinct is to provide more guidance to a young teen, but that doesn't seem just, to Riley or to other students (and maybe to me).

I don't want to inflate the significance of this situation too much, but perhaps by the end of the semester I will have a different perspective on how "college writing" should differ from "high school writing." The answer may be: Not at all.

Stay tuned.

What if we pushed government to be better, faster, clearer?

Every once in a while, an article in the New York Times or The Atlantic will worm its way into my head and lead me to investing 20 minutes reading one post on my iPad. Today was one of those occasions and it was a podcast transcript, of all things. 

It was Ezra Klein and his wife discussing her new book and her in-depth research on "the time tax" that government creates for all Americans... though hardly uniformly and definitely not fairly. 

Here is the thing that struck me as something I should have realized... but did not.

The IRS knows exactly how much I should be paying in taxes without me struggling through TurboTax each spring. After all, we take the standard deduction and have no mortgage (and I assume the IRS could know what that is from some bank form). 

The truth is that every bit of our income, other than a handful of very small payments for judging from various organizations, goes to the IRS electronically. Our investment income is all reported to the government right alongside the forms mailed to us. Our retirement income (social security plus PERA) comes from government and those totals are also automatically shared. 

In a way, the current system is based on the weird choice of making us take a test, so to speak, just to see if what we come up with is accurate. The IRS already knows.

If we foul up on the "test," trouble follows. Mostly fines and penalties.

Most modern governments just send out notices about what should be paid in taxes, with an opportunity to respond if there is a discrepancy or some special case. We could do this, as well, and many IRS professionals are quite clear that the service is quite capable of doing that.

As the podcast episode makes clear: the Republican Party is almost entirely responsible to the convoluted tax filing system we have. The goal is not mysterious. Republicans want us to hate the government and creating laborious paperwork is part of the plan. 

Ironically, many Republican voters are victims of the "you need to earn everything and pain comes with the experience." To their credit, many Americans have been taught to hate government so much that they are quite willing to vote against their own plain interests.

Shockingly, the U.S. tax system is chock full of all sorts of twists and turns that mostly serve tax preparation companies as well as -- who would ever guess -- really rich people. 

The podcast contained all sorts of other outrages and governmental clumsiness, created on purpose by both parties, BTW, but most of those affect my fellow citizens who are not doing so well. To be poor in America necessitates a certain amount of suffering... again, part of the plan.

In America, too many times the cruelty is the point. 

Another mixed bag this Sunday

I tried to follow today's sermon... really. It was Liza and I have long been a booster and have appreciated her youthful energy. Kathleen and I rarely miss a "pub theology" gathering, led by Lisa and something she started to provide young men, particularly, an excuse to drink a beer and talk about morality and religion and to find community. 

That never worked. There is a core group that averages 60-plus years old and consists of St. Luke's members who think of such gatherings as part of their preferred community. Shockingly, young men are not attracted to a Rock Bottom on a Wednesday at 6 p.m. to hang out.

At any rate, today the theme was "a Methodist constantly prays," one of five features of what being a Methodist means. This was the fourth of five Sundays in the series. She chose the Parable of the Unjust Judge, also called the Parable of the Persistent Widow, which is found in Luke 18:1–8. Jesus tells the story to teach His disciples that they must always pray and never lose heart. 

The widow is, from one point of view, rather annoying and will not be put off. The "unjust judge" eventually gives in and gives her what she wants (smiting her enemy? throwing someone in prison? issuing a steep fine?... we don't know). 

Leaving things unsaid, Jesus shifts to comparing a "just judge," i.e. God, to the unjust judge who does not fear God and cares little for others. The point seems clear to me: Look, if the unjust judge eventually answers prayers (or pleading or nagging), just think of how much quicker and better a just judge will act.

It's really a rather simple little story, one that a reasonable person could interpret as "don't give up in your request for vengeance... your continued pleading may eventually break down even the least sympathetic person." 

Never give up.

But Liza got a bit lost in her ruminations on this parable and she never got close to helping us define what "constantly praying" might be. I could sense that she knew she hadn't gotten anywhere, and I'm sure our blank faces betrayed out own confusion. One friend came up to me after the service and immediately shared that she had sort of napped during the sermon. I was glad to hear a similar reaction to my own, and I mostly filed this sermon as another is a long series of sermons that did not start with a strong anecdote or "news peg," and then proceeded to become more and more confusing and convoluted.

There have been a very few occasions when I have emailed Liza about a particularly fine piece of rhetoric shared during a sermon. This will not prompt such a message. 

Kathleen and I have been noticing that Liza has over the past few months seemed adrift in her sermons and even in her informal exchanges. The pub theology last week went nowhere (not helped by the acoustics of the restaurant and the tight seating), and Liza's prompt was basically "What is pub theology? And "what is public theology?" 

Even among our little group of four at our table, we couldn't really hear one another and it was pointless for tables to report out, so to speak, to the larger group. 

These pub theology gatherings have been happening for over a year and we are still trying to define what the heck we are doing? Liza doesn't know. Neither do I. 

There's another one in September and we will be going. It's a new venue that may be better acoustically. Liza also teased that she had asked Janet Forbes, who was lead pastor from 2004-2016, to lead that one. 

Probably a good time to hand things off to someone else.

My latest battle in the war with AI begins next week

It seems too early for a new semester to begin, with a couple more days of 90s (followed by the return of the monsoons and the 80s), but my Metro class officially begins Monday. And there is an on-campus department meeting Friday, though it is not required of part-timers like myself. That is fine, since we are supposed to be in Seattle Thursday - Sunday. 

CSU begins a week later, which seems more civilized, so I still have some time to fiddle with that course. But the Metro class is pretty much locked now, with several new assignments. 

My hope is that they will be AI resistant. I even asked Claude.ai for some advice on creating AI-resistant assignments, and the ideas seemed solid to me. The key seems to be to tighten the time span that the assignment covers and stick to recent events. AI needs to be trained and there is a lag between the programs grabbing up the news and processing the new information.

Even better is to make assignments intensely personal... AI does great when it comes to generalizations, for instance. So, asking a student to write a descriptive essay about something that seemed interesting in his or her life over the past two weeks might work.

On the other hand, I have simply copied and pasted assignment prompts into Claude.ai or ChatGPT and the robot is quite shameless in simply making stuff up. I am getting fairly good at recognizing "robot writing," but I can't claim to have any foolproof method. In fact, I couldn't make an iron-clad case if students protested their innocence.

One thing that I learned last semester was that any famous writing or speech or movie or TV show cannot be the subject that an argument essay can build upon. There's just so much writing out there and the tech companies have done an effective job of vaccuming all that data into their systems.

So, for instance, if I asked for an argument that grows out of even a brand new show, like Season 4 of Tedd Lasso, fuhgettaboutit. I had a favorite graduation speech by David Foster Wallace from two decade ago - "This is Water - and had to replace it after being confronted by a handful of obviously AI-aided rhetorical analyses last spring. There was really nothing I could do about it, since there is no detection software that is 100 percent. The best I can do in that case is sigh and make a note to find something else as a prompt.

The good news is that argument prompts are everywhere. Claude suggested asking students to keep a log of their social media feed for a short time, with screen captures as evidence, and to then ask them to analyze what their "feed" thinks about them. 

I have added a version of that for this fall, though it is one of two options that week. It did occur to me that I shouldn't just assume that every students follows social media, just like I shouldn't assume every student will choose a shortcut with AI over doing their own research and writing their own drafts. 

I would never kid myself about inventing "uncheatable" assignment prompts, and the universities have not created anything that we can count on. Lowly adjuncts such as myself are left to stumble and experiment and agonize. 

And I'm not sure it was ever much better for online writing classes. Heck, a kid could easily hire someone or just have a bright spouse do all the work, and that has nothing to do with AI. 

There is a certain amount of faith required in academic life... and in life, more generally.

When socialism just looks like being a good neighbor

The latest fad in political reporting involves "Democratic Socialists," which is something I didn't realize was a thing until a few months ago. I'm not sure it is a thing in reality, BTW, and I will hazard a guess that few voters really understand whatever the concept is.

I know "socialism" is a dirty word in American politics, with the traditional American reluctance to let go of our fabled independence while embracing our hatred of government. No wonder we are a messy country.

I also know that a lot of what I value about the country is at least "socialism adjacent." We can start with Social Security, which many claim we have all invested in over many years and are just "getting back what is ours." But I, for one, will be receiving far more in benefits than the amount I contributed, even considering interest. Medicare is quite similar, though I continue to hope that I don't need all that much from that particular safety net program.

I pay taxes each year into local, state, and national government with little idea of how my money will be used. I do know that I am paying a lot more than many extremely wealthy Americans, but I am not really angry about it. After all, that tax money provides all sorts of great things that benefit me, and my neighbors more generally. 

Nice roads are one of those things. Municipal lighting is another. I expect police and fire fighters, if they are needed, and expect that those services will arrive quickly (if rarely, of course). 

I am a supporter of unions, and happily paid my minimal dues into various teacher associations for decades. I never needed the help of a union rep, which seems positive, but it was nice to know there would be someone available. I appreciated union officials investing many, many hours in negotiations over salary and benefits. I gladly donated sick leave to "banks" for teachers in need. I never was a booster of "merit pay," preferring to be part of a system that supported all teachers and avoided ranking systems. 

I served in the military, not willingly, but... I "lost" three years of my life, in a sense, though there were some great things that came out of the experience. One was G.I. Bill, that paid over $300 a month for me to attend school over several years and those years allowed me to earn a B.A. and an M.A. Most of my fellow veterans did not take advantage of G.I. Bill benefits, I am sure, but we all paid in. 

My view is that I have (perhaps naively) assumed that society would support me at some basic level if disaster occurred. When I tripped and broke my hip some years ago, police and an ambulance were there within just a few minutes. I did not have to give them my credit card, though I certainly paid for most of those services since my insurance only covered so much. 

I am not anti-capitalist, though I am skeptical about many aspects of the system. Mostly, I don't trust the extremely rich and don't hesitate to blame that elite group for many American problems. 

I have never owned a business. In fact, I have always been employed by some governmental entity, whether the Air Force or Regina HS or City HS or Heritage HS or Rock Canyon HS or Colorado State University or Metro State University. Oh, I guess I did work for Jostens for one miserable year when we lived in Arizona, but that is barely a blip in my history. 

I trust government to solve problems and "bend toward better" over time. The few politicians I have actually met and spoken with seem like they genuinely would like to make things better, though I am well aware of the Mitch McConnells of the world who are in it solely for the power. 

Individuals seem both "basically good people" as well as "dumb as posts," and we are collectively not nearly as good as we should be. Yet I still assume good intent when I walk the neighborhood or drive the streets or even fly the skies. 

I will end my interminable list here, but I am pretty sure I am a Democratic Socialist. I won't buy the water bottle or attach a bumper sticker, nor join that "party," if it exists.  

Time to print what I have. There's no second draft without a first.

I will soon be publishing a book... the history of the first 25 years of St. Luke's United Methodist Church in Highlands Ranch, covering 1979-2004. It's going to be nearly 150 pages and I will be publishing using Kindle Direct Publishing from Amazon. Anyone wanting a copy can order through Amazon and the company handles printing "on demand" as well as shipping and handling the money.

That paragraph above is full of stuff that might need further explanation, it occurs to me. 

Before you ask: No one asked me to research and write this book, and I have no idea if anyone will ever buy a copy, much less read it. I won't be making money on it. Right now the estimate is that I might earn as much as 63 cents per sale in royalties. Alert the accountant! 

I have been conducting interviews, making phone calls, scouring the internet, browsing print materials from the past, including an invaluable scrapbook compiled by a woman who died about a month after Kathleen and I joined St. Luke's in fall of 2002. I have become friends with two former ministers, both now in the 80s but quite "with it." That is something I would never have predicted. 

I have also designed the book and will be able to upload the PDFs of the letter-sized pages as soon as Kathleen and I complete one more reading of the content. There will be a few errors, I assume, but my sense is that the narrative will be readable and logical, even if incomplete in many areas. 

The history is at times dramatic and at times a bit mysterious and occasionally surprising. I was not here for most of it and really could not be classified under "religious guy." I have avoided attributing good or bad luck in this history to some celestial plan. What fascinates me in the history are the people and the unlikely connections many of them share. 

In many ways, I am the last person who should be writing this history, but perhaps distance from the events allows me to produce something interesting. I guess I will find out soon.

My original plan was to write the history up to today, but the more I dug, the more I wanted to include. And when I saw the pages count going toward 140, it was easy to leave the "second 25 years" to a later date (and a second volume). In fact, I am not all that excited about writing a "next volume," assuming that when some people read the first volume, I will suddenly receive emails and find myself buttonholed by folks after church or in King Soopers who want to disabuse me of some notion I included in the book. I anticipate lots of "how could you leave out...?" questions and my only response will be "sorry, but did you see how long this thing is now?" 

I honestly hope I do hear from people. The great thing about online publishing (I don't what else to call the KDP service) is that it's relatively simple to upload a "second edition" of the book, and a third. I can make changes on my own desktop computer and I don't have to worry about "sunk costs" of inventory sitting in the garage. 

It was never my intention to make a nickel on this project, so that simplifies things. I would call it a retirement project that is as close to a hobby as I can come. 

There is satisfaction in discovering answers to questions, which I suppose I have known for a long time and have certainly taught to so many student journalists over the years. But it's been instructive to be in the role of writer as opposed to writing teacher. One role informs the other, that's for sure. 

Interestingly, I often say to friends that I am ready to finally publish the "damn book." It's been in works for some time. I began the research in June of 2024 and have invested hundreds of hours in this enterprise. But as the time to upload it (and learn all the ins and outs of Kindle Direct Publishing) nears, I wonder if I will find excuses to hold off. 

Nah! Time to get this book out in the world and move on to new projects. I have been toying with doing some family history writing about the Kennedy and Guffey sides of the clan. 

And then there will be those inevitable corrections and expanded explanations and all new characters and anecdotes that the first volume will produce. Could be fun.

Texas religious conservatives are about to catch the car... then what?

This was coincidence, but brother Joe mentioned during a quick call the other day that one of the things he remembered most clearly from being in my class at Regina was the "Bible as Literature" unit within junior year English class.

Then yesterday I read a compelling post in The Atlantic that argued for inclusion of reading Bible passages/stories as part of a well-rounded education. That was prompted by a Texas board of education choice to require selected readings in grades 4-12 in the state's public schools.

There are at least two unlikely things to consider between those two facts. One is that Catholic school is relatively Bible-free, it turns out. I don't recall ever being required to read the Bible in my own Catholic high school years, for instance. The passages read on Sundays during mass were rigidly prescribed by the powers that be and priests rarely attempted to modernize Scripture for the masses. Ritual was way more important than whatever exhortations a priest might offer.

For the Atlantic, the supposedly ultra-liberal publication, to come down even in the same ballpark as the religious conservatives of Texas seems a bit surprising. 

After all, we live in the age of knee jerk reactions and "give no quarter" arguments. If a religious conservative likes something, a modern progressive is expected to adopt an opposite position.

I honestly don't remember much about that Bible unit in 1979. I do remember that it was pretty easy to get copies of the Bible for everyone in a time when we didn't have much money for new texts. In fact, they may have been free. I also remember a vague sense of fun in taking young minds into the actual Good Book and talking about it much as we would a novel. I know most of my students had never opened a Bible until that unit.

It's a fine collection of classic stories and is often so strange and remote from our current lives that we can feel comfortable cracking some jokes or pointing out scientific errors. When I moved to City High, a public school, there was a trimester-length course called Bible as Literature, and I don't recall any brouhaha over its inclusion in the curriculum. The "as Literature" seemed descriptive enough for most of the public.

In today's Texas politics, requiring students to read the Sermon on the Mount or the Book of Job may seem like a victory for Christian true believers. But my prediction is that such a victory is likely to produce chaos, lawsuits, and unintended consequences. 

Imagine a second-year ELA teacher having units containing Biblical passages dropped into their curriculum and suddenly engaging in philsophical debate and discussion about meaning and spirituality with a room full of juniors. My guess is that parents will very quickly begin objecting to almost anything that is said. 

After all, the Sermon on the Mount extols all sorts of virtues and the virtuous who are out of favor in modern times. Kids won't be reading something about "Blessed are the billionaires" -- more likely they might discuss the difficulty of a rich man entering the Kingdom of Heaven (I know, different parable). 

My sense is that most modern politicians haven't read very deeply in the Bible and I am equally sure that even top scholars will argue for all sorts of interpretations. That young teacher doesn't stand a chance.

But ignoring the looming chaos: My long-held view that for a person to be able to fully engage in the thought and tradition of the Western World (where we live, after all), that person needs to be familiar with at least basic Bible stories and passages. And with Shakespeare. 

It's not that the Bible or Shakespeare are inherently superior in insights or language use or morality, but that they have been so influential for so long. I might argue something similar about the need for an educated American to have a passing knowledge of baseball, BTW. We use phrases and analogies from that once mighty game all the time. 

There are plenty of additional important books and poems and stories that a Texas student would do well to be aware of and understand. I would never argue that all a person needs is one big book and a collection of plays to be educated. 

But this Texas curriculum change is more likely to get kids thinking deeply about the immoral and downright evil Trump administration than turn kids into religious zealots.

Also worth considering it that once we require a kid to read something, that assignment becomes part of "school work." Just something else to get through. But maybe, just maybe, some of the material will stick with some kids. And maybe a very few will want to learn more and do their own reading, even without the threat of a pop quiz.

Fill in the blank: "Blessed are the ___________, for they will be called children of God."

And don't say "cheesemakers." But if you are watching Monty Python's "Life of Brian," knowing the answer adds to the fun. And don't we all want to be in on the joke?

A basketball player and a symbol of America's original sin... for some

Having avidly watched almost every game Caitlin Clark has played over the past severn years (four at Iowa and now the third in the WNBA), I must admit to being an unabashed fan. Would I feel the same if she had chosen UConn or Notre Dame instead of my alma mater for her college years? 

Probably not. Would I even watch WNBA games regularly were it not for her entering the league? Again, probably not. I don't have unlimited spare time to engage with every sport that cable TV offers. Just as I pick and choose the Netflix shows I invest in, I pick and choose the teams I follow. I don't always choose the best teams, BTW. After all, I will still go to channel 1262 and watch the Rockies from time to time. They are not great but can be entertaining. 

So I am anything but a longtime observer of the WNBA, particularly compared to some sports columnists who cover those women for a living. 

But a recent column by USA columnist Nancy Armour has created quite a controversy and I must admit that I am surprised by the claims she makes in that column as well as the more general zeitgeist and Caitlin Clark. 

As critical positions are often constructed, Armour hastens to claim that she is "no Caitlin Clark hater." She mentions her player of the week award, for instance, and several times praises her ability. But he argument is that a) Caitlin Clark does too much flopping, and b) the more she complains, the more she encourages racist behavior by at least some of her fans. 

I often wonder what the correct amount of flopping might be, though I have long wished Caitlin were a bit less vocal and outraged over basic fouls. Armour never mentions her lost playing time due to injuries in her column, and my guess is that at least some of her physical issues result from rough play. I will also note that she never missed a college game in four years, and many teams certainly wanted to "take her out" of her game, triple team her, etc. She was often knocked down but always got up.

Armour took a slight detour into how flopping is not that uncommon. After all, we have just seen so much of it during the World Cup. She also is content to make her own judgment calls about Caitlin's complaints, as in "come on... it's a tough league and you're a big girl" -- she never wrote that but that was what comes across. Armour dismisses any hint of jealousy from those who hound her everywhere on the court, about those who resent a skinny white girl stealing the limelight.

But then she goes to this paragraph: 

It shouldn’t need reminding this country has an awful history of Black people being harmed, even killed, in the name of “defending” white women. The irony of the WNBA's All-Star Game is that it's happening this weekend in Chicago, the hometown of Emmett Till, who became an icon of the civil rights movement after his tragic murder. The local art gallery is currently hosting an exhibit imagining his life if he hadn't been lynched. While it’s incumbent on the WNBA to do more to protect its players, there also should be an expectation on Clark to recognize the broader implications of her actions being weaponized.

I guess everyone with a forum is entitled to critique Caitlin Clark. She doesn't fit some neat mold of the All-American girl who suffers blows and disdain but keeps focused on the next play without complaint. She does complain. It seems like a lot to ask but it at least is a criticism with some evidence we can examine. She is certainly beloved by teammates and coaches and multituds of young kids, including grandson Jack. I see she is funding an $11 per ticket night for a future Fever game to allow those without unlimited means to enjoy a game. She signs autographs and grants interviews patiently and plentifully.

But to suggest that each time she objects to a foul (I would argue that she is not flopping so much as demonstrating the result of some impressively strong and aggressive women trying to slow her down), she is making racism worse in America is, well, outrageous.

We are one screwed up country, with a significant amount of racism and sexism and general corruption, but the idea that one young white woman should be playing basketball in such a way as to protect the nation's identity and solve all those systemic problems... that is nuts. 

It's the All-Star game Saturday, and Caitlin will be joining mostly Black athletes in that weird tradition that marks a break in the season and provides the league and the TV hosts and networks another large check. I hope she plays well and I assume there will be camaraderie galore, since winning and losing is not the point for that game.

Nothing will be said about Nancy Armour, BTW, though I will note that she herself is another white woman feeling the need to comment on society and on one young, gifted player who pretty much single-handedly injected life into the WNBA. But since CC lives in America, she can't just be a basketball player whining about crappy calls. Caitlin Clark now has been made the Queen of racists who are just looking for ways to troll their neighbors.

That doesn't seem right.

Nine-year-old flashes artistic skill in two diary entries

This is an unusual spread from dad's 1938 diary... unusual primarily because he rarely included any illustrations (though his innate artistic talent is quite clear). There are several mentions of playing paper dolls, sandwiched around the Baldwins coming over on Sunday. Perhaps this was mandated by Grandma demanding he not mess up his clothes. But the paper dolls reappear on Monday, so...

In other diary entries, paper dolls were occasionally described as "fun," but that Sunday's experience elicted the equivalent of shouting "No Fun." 

Here's an educated guess as to whom "the Baldwins" referred to: Leo and Anna Baldwin lived in Tiffin and ran the local grocery story and post office station. They had daughter Betty Jean, who was a year older than Dorothy and graduated from St. Patrick's School and, later, Iowa. Dorothy's son John Kisner remembers his mom often mentioning Betty Jean... certainly one of her long-time friends. 

Betty Jean Baldwin married Charles Eicher in 1950 and Dr. Eicher may or may not have assisted with my delivery at Mercy Hospital. My apologies to Betty Jean Baldwin Eicher if the illustration iss not her. That girl appears haughty and a bit scary, and she would have been 13 at the time and likely disdainful of a pesky kid. In my imagination, the NO FUN reflects his annoyance with Betty Jean or Dorothy or both.

Monday's entry is typical until we get to "Slept with Mom to protect her," along with a vivid drawing (complete with all those ZZZZZs) of that event from ceiling height perspective. 

There is no mention of what my grandmother needed protecting from on June 20, or anywhere else in the diary. This was a one-time event, evidently. We might even speculate about who was protecting whom here. I particularly appreciate the caption for the illustration, though I wish dad had added a bit of context. 

But he wasn't writing for me.

By the way, an earlier vivist from the Baldwins -- from Sunday, April 24 -- received rave reviews. He wrote that day that they brought Betty Jean home after church, eventually playing not only with paper dolls but playing "cops and robbers," described as "lots of fun." High praise. 

The Baldwins came to dinner later, picking up their daughter. Dad writes that they "played Grand National. Fun." That is the lone mention of that game, which likely referred to a board game that mimicked the British horse race, with dice and betting as the "track" included unpredictable hurdles. Well, that's what I found online. 

If dad awarded the coveted "fun" designation, my guess is that he did well.  

He missed the big war, but another was looming

Kathleen was on Ancestry today and clicked on a link she had not noticed that connected military documents with my father's general information. They are scans of the original small cards that were filled in by hand, but are filled with interesting information.

Oh dear, you are thinking. "Interesting" is part of the curse: "May you live in interesting times." We are currently living in "interesting times," so I get it. But it's my blog...

The first of the two documents is dad's original selective service registration card, which was dated Sept. 6, 1946, just two days after his 18th birthday. His address was RFD #3, Iowa City, so he was still living on the farm. He was listed as a student at State University of Iowa. SUI changed to the University of Iowa in 1964, which I had to look up, but I do remember WSUI, the campus radio station that still operates on 910 AM. 

That station was the NPR outlet that I regularly chose to play when ferrying children around town in my car. "Oh no! Not AM radio!" they would complain. Their preference would have been KRNA, our local rock station. 

His phone number was "18 F 11" and that is both interesting and mysterious. Not sure exactly how that was dialed or if the operator had to make that connection. 

On the back of the card was a physical description. Dad was listed at 6 feet, 190 pounds, with blue eyes and brown hair. His complexion was listed as "Ruddy." Other options included sallow, light, dark, freckled, light brown, dark brown, and black. I don't recall ever thinking of dad as being "reddish" or "rosy," but he was just out of high school, or maybe Margarite Gatens, the Johnson County registrar who signed the form, was just bored.

The second document Kathleen found is his updated registration card, from Sept. 13, 1948. "Complexion" was no longer a category on the form, but he had grown an inch and gained tn pounds. His mailing address was listed as 528 Iowa Avenue, despite the fact that he was living in Freeport, working in advertising for the Freeport Journal Standard newspaper. 

We were between wars at the time and the WWII draft expired in 1947. I had to look this up, but during the roughly one-year "draft holiday" that followed, the United States relied on voluntary enlistments. However, due to dwindling enlistment numbers and escalating Cold War tensions, President Harry S. Truman signed the new Selective Service Act of 1948 in June 1948, which officially reinstated the peacetime draft. Recent Iowa grad John Kennedy had to register once again.

He joined the Illinois National Guard 66th Fighter Wing as a private on June 23, 1948, and he may have gone to basic training that summer, though I have only the faintest memories of anyone ever talking about this. It will take more research to discover how long he was in the National Guard, but he was never called up to active duty. 

The 66th Fighter Wing was not activated between 1950 and 1952; instead, it was inactivated on October 31, 1950, and folded into the new U.S. Air Force. It might have helped that he was the father of two children by May of 1952, of course, and there was a deferment for fathers. But I found that President Eisenhower changed the Class III deferment in 1953, and the new requirement was to show that your induction would cause extreme and harmful financial damage to your family. 

I don't know if he ever had to argue his case, but I'm pretty sure he didn't have much money in the early '50s. 

Final thought for today: In an earlier post I wrote that 528 Iowa Avenue was purchased in 1950 by Grandpa from Emma Dunkel, widow of the previous owner. That remains true, but the 1948 document indicates that the family was occupying that house prior to September of 1948. Maybe renting? 

Every time I think I have found "the truth," I am disabused of that notion. But I will carry on with my family history musings and explorations. You have been warned.

The older I get, the less I seem to know

I was surprised to find the records of the sale of 528 Iowa Avenue, which I had always known as my grandparents Jack and Adelaide Kennedy’s house, but that sale occurred in 1950. So, dad and Dorothy had to have attended high school and college while still living in the big farmhouse west of town.

Dorothy was a star student at St. Patrick’s, graduating as Valedictorian in 1944, before earning her degree from Iowa. Dad attended St. Pat’s for two years and then transferred to University HS, Iowa’s lab school in the College of Education. Why he did so remains a mystery, and the few souls who might have known took the secret to their graves. Dad managed to graduate in 1945, which means he must have begun school early or skipped a grade. He was a smart guy, so it might have been either reason.

The story that my brother Mike and I remember was that Grandma Kennedy had been lobbying to move to town for some time. She certainly put a lot of miles on the car driving in and out of Iowa City on Melrose, if dad’s diary entries are a good indication.

A suitable house came on the market, one that Albert and Emma Dunkel owned for many years. Albert was quite a local character, and the Dunkel family added a lot to Iowa City history.

Albert was a businessman and musician (he led a small orchestra that played locally) and he was known as Punch. He died in 1947 and his widow Emma was who sold the Iowa Avenue home to Grandpa. Punch had run several businesses, including the Pastime Theater.

I mention this because dad’s diary mentions attending 11 movies just during the month of March in 1938. The Pastime is mentioned specially, along with the Varsity, Englert, and Iowa theaters. Dad went to movies multiple times a week, usually with his mom and sister.

The fact that the home of the longtime owner of the Pastime would eventually become my grandparents’ home is one of those coincidences we should probably expect in a smallish town.

The theater was located at 205 E. College, was renamed the Capitol after Punch’s estate sold it in 1947, and closed in 1960 before being demolished when the block came down during Iowa City’s urban renewal phase. I vaguely recall seeing some animated films there… maybe Disney cartoons.

I wish I had kept a diary in my youth. That would be handy in trying to reconstruct events from many decades ago. I also wish I had been as organized as dad in how he rated the movies he saw (and when you go to at least two a week, you have earned some perspective): Rotten, OK, Good, and Swell, with “swell” being the highest rank.

So why would I be surprised to learn that the family did not move to Iowa City until 1950? My explanation is that a young kid doesn’t ask questions about the past too often and that I likely was so focused on my own monumental life experiences that it never occurred to me that there had been much history prior to my entering the picture.

I thought my dad and aunt lived in town when in high school – but was clearly mistaken – and I do remember that Dorothy had a bedroom on the second floor, looking out on the street. She might have lived there through college and beyond. I would guess that dad didn’t live there at all.

The house featured a somewhat steep but quite small front yard that sloped down to the sidewalk and I remember having to ride my bike over there from University Heights on many summer days to mow the lawn. That sloped front yard was my bane and it didn’t help that their lawnmower was a manual. Turns out I was not all that strong, I guess. The backyard was perfectly square and flat and backed to an alley. Nice and easy for mowing.

The good news about being sent by my mother to mow that yard was that Grandma would always offer pop and candy for my trouble. There was also a small grocery store called Pecina’s across Iowa Avenue that was one of the few stores willing to sell an entire box of baseball cards at a time. I remember the cost as being $3 or $4, but that may be low. There were 36 packs of cards in a box.

Gene Wandling and I would bike to the store occasionally when we had each accumulated enough money from our paper routes and then revel in opening each pack of ten cards, trading them, always searching for a Mickey Mantle card or some other gem.

I read that an unopened “wax box” of baseball cards from 1960 would go for $200K today. Keeping even an unopened PACK of cards would have been unthinkable back then, and I routinely would attach cards to my bike spokes to make cool noises as I sped through the streets. 

That small grocery closed in the mid-1960s, as larger groceries took their business. Hy-Vee’s first store in Iowa City opened in 1957 and Pecina’s was an eventual victim of that major chain’s success.

And now the idea of collecting baseball cards doesn’t come up much in popular culture. I did keep a large box of my favorite cards, and it was stored when I left for the Air Force in an upstairs closet in the Woodridge house.

When I went to retrieve them in the mid-1970s, I learned that mom had made the executive decision to toss them. She did not toss my stamp collection, which I still have and which is now worth about nothing. But that’s for another tale.

I will just note that the price of a first-class stamp rose to 82 cents last Sunday. A first-class stamp in my youth was 3 cents.

But the service is better, right?

Thinking about a birthday from long ago

The year of my birth -- 1950 -- brought a number of changes to the Jack and Adelaide Kennedy family, though I was none the wiser. 

One change was the still new farm equipment sales and service business that Grandpa had begun a few year before. Grandpa must have been friends with Glenn Hope Sr., who farmed northeast of Iowa City, with both serving in WWI and on the local draft board in WWII. Hope was well-known as chairman of the Johnson County Supervisors in the 1940s. At any rate, they went into business together and created Capitol Implement Company right after the war (my assumption as to the timing). 

A second big event was my arrival on the scene, which brought mom and dad to Iowa City. My brother Mike remembers learning that our grandfather bought out Hope in 1950, coinciding with dad's return from Freeport as a married man with a pregnant wife. That led to my birth at Mercy Hospital (and my 76th birthday is tomorrow, not coincidentally). 

Mom always told me that I was the first baby that Dr. Charles (Chuck) Eicher delivered, perhaps as a resident at Mercy. He graduated with his M.D. degree from UI in 1951. 

But, according to my birth certificate, which I am looking at right now, the attending physician was Stephen A. Ware, M.D. Ware was a long-time Iowa City doctor who served as City Health Officer, whatever that entailed. He likely would have been a strong voice adocating for local children to receive the polio vaccine, a vaccine I am grateful to have received. 

You would think she would have remembered the doctor who was there for her first child. Dr. Eicher did love delivering babies and I am pretty sure he delivered John and Barb's other seven children. During his career, he delivered 2,683 children in Iowa City. I was not one of them, though it took examining my physical birth certificate to realize that my mother had fudged the facts a bit and that I have lived a long time under a false impression. Who studies their birth certificate?

Kathleen points out that I am assuming stuff here. After all, Chuck Eicher could certainly have been a resident at Mercy Hospital when I was born and Ware just added his official signature. 

Dr. Eicher was our family physician for many years, and mom was quite clear on my status in the man's career. Mysteriously, mom and dad got a wedding present of a vase from the Eichers though they did not marry until months after my parents. How the two couples were connected is something I would love to discover.  

On the "certificate of live birth," we find that dad's listed occupation was manager of a bulk oil plant (meaning he delivered gas, I assume, for his father, probably for Skelly Oil). He was 22 and he and Barbara Fern's street address was listed as "Iowa Apt. #29." That doesn't seem like a complete address to me, but that's what is on the document. 

That birth certificate is stored in a fire-resistent box in our home office, and that box contains lots of other valuable information.

For instance, I find that my godmother was Dorothy Kennedy, my aunt, and my godfather was Ray Hoffman. The baptism was performed by Father P.J. O'Reilly (that name seems like a cliche) on July 30, 1950, at St. Patrick's Catholic Church. 

"Ray" appears many times in dad's 1938 diary and I assume refers to Ray Kennedy, one of dad's cousins, but that may be, as Kathleen would point out, just another assumption. 

The Hoffman farm was adjacent to the Schnare farms (later the Kennedy farms), just to the west. I feel like I should remember Ray Hoffman, but those brain cells are not connecting very well, apparently. 

Anyway, 1950 was quite a year for the Kennedys, with mom and dad renting a little house on Summit Street (not one of the giant, expensive ones). Dad began working for Grandpa, abandoning his advertising degree, while mom traded college dreams for raising a large family. 

In other 1950 news, McCarthyism was just starting, and the Korean War had begun in June. The "Peanuts" comic strip premiered, and Harry Truman was president.  

Those things don't match my birth, of course, in terms of world import, but it's nice to have a little context.

Have I mentioned that I hate the president?

My mantra these days is "Trump ruins everything," and this 4th of July weekend, as well as the 250th birthday of the country, doesn't disappoint in terms of a range of ruination. The nation is in distress.

Of course the guy is a creep and demented and ugly and obscenely rich... and his cult exults in all of that. His MAGA fanatics aren't bothered a bit by his raking in over $2 billion, with the clear connections to corruption, if not outright bribery, in just the past year. Their reasoning? That just shows how great a businessman he is. My view is that he's just a pumped up P.T. Barnum who fully embraces the idea of a "sucker born every minute." 

I also am a fan of H.L. Mencken and his quote from a newspaper in 1926: “No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.” 

That quote is not as pithy as "nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public," which he never really said, I find. But the edited quote captures the sentiment pretty well.

The "plain people" are the ones who would sympathize with an Iowa MAGA leader who was quoted in the Times today saying, "It's the 4th and kids are out of school... and it's hot" to explain why most of those plain people in Iowa can't be bothered by Trump's fleecing of America. Willful ignorance is powerful.

Honestly, it turns out that Dear Leader is not grabbing nearly as much loot as his multi-billionaire buddies. Many of them have reaped hundreds of billions in new wealth as they bribe their way into our would-be dictator's graces. In the big picture, Trump isn't even in the same league as the world's first Trillionaire Elon Musk. So, maybe his buisness acumen is overrated.

Trump gleefully posts an illustration of his mug being added to Mount Rushmore and everyone is well aware that such a thing won't happen. His supporters cheer. But he most delights in mocking and trolling anyone NOT already invested in his cult.

Trump represents everything we should be ashamed of in America's history, of course, from the hypocrisy of the wealthy to the outright racism and sexism that many cult members share (or are willing to overlook). But what struck me today is that Trump has allowed me to see so many people all around me as just as flawed as he is, though without the money and power. 

No matter what excesses are exposed, about 40 percent of Americans seem to be OK with them. It's puzzling, since most of them will never see much more wealth and will continue to be patsies for the super rich. But their hate of everyone else is enough to drive them.

A Christian nation indeed.

Independence Day should be all about unity and a nation that truly represents "e pluribus unum," out of many, one. It really should be a great time to discuss conepts of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The Declaration of Independence didn't claim that anyone would attain happiness, however that might be defined, but that everyone could pursue it. 

I must admit to not being as patriotic as I once claimed to be. It's tough to be proud of a nation that can be so ugly and so ignorant as to elect a charlatan like Trump... twice. 

Still, it's a big country full of big ideas and I have benefited from so many of them. 

Trump will continue to ruin everything, with help from the bigots and wackos he has surrounded himself with, for another 30 months. That seems like an eternity, but my brain tells me it's not.

So this Indepedence Day I will hang onto hope and set my sights on January of 2029, when the Old Fool is put out to pasture. THAT will be a true day to celebrate.

Let there be light - June 3, 1938

 

Friday, June 3 – Light in hall.

Before 1938, the vast majority of rural areas surrounding Iowa City—including West Lucas Township—remained entirely in the dark, so to speak. Private investor-owned utility companies based in nearby cities viewed running lines into sparsely populated rural farmlands as economically unprofitable. While residents in Iowa City enjoyed modern electric infrastructure, nearly 90 percent of local farm homes lacked access to the electrical grid, including young John Kennedy's house.

The Rural Electrification Act (REA), was a major New Deal initiative signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936. The REA provided low-interest, long-term federal loans directly to farmer-owned, non-profit cooperatives. This bypassed commercial power companies and empowered local communities to build their own distribution networks.

The formal push for rural electric cooperatives (RECs) in eastern Iowa began in 1938, and the family farm benefited from the Eastern Iowa Light and Power Cooperative. Township meetings were held to secure enough participants, typically at least three subscribers per mile of line, with each subscriber paying a $5 membership fee to buy a stake in the co-op. Farm owners also needed to sign easement paperwork that allowed crews to dig, plant utility poles and string copper lines across their property and along local roads. 

Electricity meant that new wells could be much more efficient, and dad had written on May 17: Helped men dig well. I drank too much lemonade this afternoon.

The next day part of his diary entry added: Watched men dig well. I got hit on the head with a pipe. My head hurts awful.

Must not have been too horrible as he was able to join the family later for a movie in town, but between feeling a bit queasy due to overindulging in lemondade and being in the wrong place as a pipe was being maneuvered, the lesson may have been to let the workers do the work.

Then came a flurry of activity as the farmhouse was readied for new utility access.

Tuesday, May 31 – Carpenters at work. They tore out closet. The electrician is at work. His name is Stevens.

Wednesday, June 1 – Carpenter, electrician, plumber and furnace men at work. They tore down chimney. Slept upstairs because downstairs bedroom is tore up.

The lack of electricity to that point might explain the frequent drives into Iowa City, not only for those many movies but to visit homes of relatives who had moved into town. My dad never writes about being jealous of town life and conveniences, but he must have been very happy with the changes, despite some temporary upsets as the work was completed. 

I also assume that Jack and Adelaide must have gotten service relatively early since their house was so clost to town. It would be another 12 years before they left living on the farm behind in favor of a very nice home at 528 Iowa Avenue. 

That house's history will be covered in my next blog post.

Two busy days in mid-March, 1938

 

Tuesday, March 15 – Went to school. Hebls and us were the only ones there. Got A in Spelling. Had lessons good. Played basketball. Bad day. Pack [probably Pack Williams -- His birth name was Paschal, married to Mae or May, and he farmed in the area] went with Dad to mission. Art stayed here. Played six handed. Art, Joe and I against Dorothy, Mother and Grandma Schnare. They won 2 and we won 1. Spot and Dannie slept with me. Situation in Europe tense. England + Germany!

On that day, Adolf Hitler stood at the Heldenplatz in Vienna and delivered a speech officially declaring the Anschluss - the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany. This marked a critical flashpoint in European history, effectively erasing Austria's sovereignty and absorbing it as a province of the Third Reich.

I am not certain how dad would get such timely information other than through the radio. But the farm had not yet been hooked to electricity. Some farms had battery-operated "farm radios." Specially designed to bypass the lack of a power grid, these radios relied on heavy, direct-current (DC) batteries or home-rigged generators to power their vacuum tubes.

Electrical power would arrive in the fall of that year. 

I have not yet determined who Art and Joe were, but would guess that one or both of them were in the Williams family. But what struck me was the final notation about what would eventually become WWII. It didn't earn much detail from the boy and was placed last in the diary, perhaps because he learned of the tensions just before going to bed. I had the sense that dad tried to end his day with his daily summaries.

Now, with full knowledge of the carnage and disruption of the war that was on the horizon, it's a good reminder that children can't possibly comprehend earth-shaking events... but they can certainly take notice of what the adults are discussing.

Wednesday, March 16 – At the top of that page is a special inscription that "today is Gus’s birthday." Augustus A. Schnare was born on March 16, 1863 and had died in 1936, age 73. 

Augustus, or Gus, as everyone called him, never married and is described in various official documents as a bachelor farmer. Dad had only been seven when Gus died, but Gus clearly had a major influence on the boy. Dad himself summed it up as "they were close" and he spent a lot of time with his uncle. Family members and neighbors took to calling young John "Gus," and the nickname stuck for his entire life.

Augustus was born in Iowa to German immigrant parents, Wilhelm Schnare and Lena (Sabina) Schnare, who settled in the region during the mid-19th century wave of German immigration to the Midwest. The arrived in Iowa in 1854, just six years after Iowa became the 29th state. Iowa City was the original state capitol, giving way to Des Moines in 1857. 

He grew up in a large household alongside five siblings:

• Henry William Schnare (1860–1927)
• William Fredrick Schnare (1865–1928), who later served as a local steward for the Johnson County Poor Farm, which we will get into in the future.
• Louise Schnare Davis (1869–1904)
• Wilhelmina "Minnie" Schnare Hastings (1873–1904)

A few years before his death in 1998, dad typed up some thoughts on how he would like his own death and funeral to go, "just in case," as he wrote. 

To tie the two days together, dad remembered that when his Uncle Gus died, neighbors came to the house and stayed up all night with the body, telling stories. Pack Williams was specifically mentioned as being part of that wake. Dad hoped something similar might happen after his own passing. He also urged everyone to not "spare the horses."

An all-night vigil was out of the question when dad passed, but a good-sized crowd did gather 50 years after the death of  his beloved Uncle Gus at the Donohue-Lensing Funeral Home to share stories and laughs the night before the funeral. 

Monday, March 8, 1938 – the county schoolhouse

Ash Wednesday had been March 2, just before my father's diary began, but the family went to mass every day that week before school.

The diary entry for March 8, following "went to mass":   

The two Heble children, Bernard and Billie, start to school. They and us were the only ones in school.

First, the correct spelling is Hebl, and that family lived on the north-south gravel road that ran along the west edge of the school.The road, now named Hebl Avenue SW, runs south to the landfill. The Hebls had 10 children.

That one-room country school was officially West Lucas No. 1 and unofficially the "Hebl School." Helen M. Cole was the primary schoolteacher who taught at the West Lucas Township country schoolhouse during the late 1930s. It was under the jurisdiction of the Johnson County Superintendent of Schools. The system of township schools eventually ended in the 1950s when West Lucas No. 1 was included in the Iowa City Community School District. 

The Iowa School Law of 1858 mandated and structured public education throughout the state. The goal was for these one-room schoolhouses to be about two miles apart, putting them within walking distance for children living on farms.

Cole was an Iowa City resident and student at the University of Iowa, and it was common for rural schoolteachers obtaining their teaching certificates from the university's education program to take such positions as they began their careers. 

As the teacher, Miss Cole was responsible not only for the daily curriculum (reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography) but also for maintaining the schoolhouse woodstove, organizing the annual Christmas pageant, and prepping the older students for the mandatory county-wide 8th-grade examinations held in Iowa City.

Frank J. Snider served as the Johnson County Superintendent of Schools from 1937-1964. He initially managed over 60 independent, local rural school districts and oversaw the professional certification of teachers.

He led the major legislative shift toward school district consolidation in the 1950s, drastically reducing the number of small country schools to form larger, more resource-rich community school systems. In 1959, he established Johnson County's first daily special education classes for children. Believing public school settings should accommodate everyone, he urged the County Board to transition a former one-room country schoolhouse, the Blackstrap School, into a dedicated daily classroom.

The Blackstrap School (also called Black Strap) was located near Highway 218 just south of the Iowa City airport.

Final thought: Miss Cole must have needed to be extremely flexible with her approach to each day as she seemed to regularly welcome then-11 year old Dorothy and my father for lessons. But the Hebls and several others from nearby farms might show up or might not. I assume many farm children were pressed into needed farm work. Dad mostly referred to others in school by their first names. He never mentioned questioning how many were in school on a particular day, but he did often "take attendance" in his diary entries. 

There were never more than eight in school. 

The school was permanently closed at the end of the 1962–1963 school year due to mandatory statewide school consolidation. In the fall of 1963, students from West Lucas No. 1 and other nearby rural country schools were absorbed into the newly constructed Lucas Elementary School in Iowa City, which was named in honor of Iowa's first territorial governor, Robert Lucas.

Our daughters Lesley and Sara attended Lucas in the 1980s and were able to walk there from our home. Buses would have been required to get West Lucas township students to the school (though later Irving Weber Elementary opened, which was much closer... but not walking distance).

Day three of dad's diary - March 6, 1938

At the risk of losing the handful of readers I can boast...

Here’s a full Sunday’s activities, from my dad's diary, dated March 6, 1938:

Went to Mass. Went to Kennedys this afternoon. Played a marble game. Went to show at Varsity. It was the “Hurricane” with Dorothy Lamour. Fair. Ate supper at Dysarts. Went to Helena’s [there was a Helena Berhens in grandma's line, though she had passed in 1909, who married Wilhelm Schnare... so maybe a daughter?]. Mom went to the mission. Played cards at Helena’s. George and I played Dorothy and Dad. We won two and they won two. It was 11:30 when we got home. Spot and Dummy Dan slept with me all night.

There’s a lot to unpack there. "Hurricane” was Dorothy Lamar’s second starting role, released in 1937, and she became famous in “female Tarzan” roles where she wore sarongs and interacted with “civilized men” in corny love stories. She most famously played a “straight woman” to Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in their series of Road pictures. Nine-year-old Johnny was not a big fan of romantic comedies, it appears.

The Varsity theater was on Washington Street, basically across the street from the Englert. The site was originally the Garden Theater, which burned down in 1932, with the Varsity replacing it that same year. In September 1968, the theater was renamed The Astro. It closed in 1991 and was torn down to become part of the U.S. Bank building. It was sort of a dump, as I remember it, but a building down was Barbara's Bake Shop, where I would buy one of their amazing chocolate cake donuts when I had a spare quarter. I have never had a better one.

Dysart's Dairy Store was located at 218 East Washington Street in downtown Iowa City during the late 1930s. I don't know when it closed, but the building was occupied by other local businesses, including Younkers department store prior to it moving to the Old Capitol Mall in 1981, and currently houses a Target.

Grandma evidently went to “the mission” regularly that year, grandpa much less often. The St. Pat’s parish hall – St. Brendan’s Hall – was located across the street from the church itself (228 East Court Street), and was a vital hub for local Catholic charity work. It was informally called the mission, at least by my dad.

There was another mission known as the Iowa City Gospel Mission, run by the Mennonite community and located on Orchard Street, which provided Sunday school, spiritual guidance, and essential community support during the 1930s. There may have been others, most connected to a local church.

Our author never specifies a mission name or location, but my best guess is that grandma devoted her time to working in St. Brendan’s Hall. I would also guess that volunteering there provided many local women opportunities to interact and support one another.

Spot and Dummy Dan (a few days later referred to as Dannie) were dogs that dad was quite fond of (well, Spot, at least) and “sleeping with him all night” was a way he measured his popularity with them. There is no record of how Dorothy felt about that. Dorothy was two years older than dad, born in 1926. 

"The Kennedys" might have referred to my grandfather's parents, who lived outside Oxford, about 15 miles west. Grandma to our author was Ellen "Nellie" Mahoney Kennedy, married to James Matthew Kennedy Sr. James died in 1949, Nellie in 1968.

But considering the timeline of that Sunday, more likely is that "The Kennedys" here were my father's uncle Dennis and his wife Rachel, who lived in Iowa City, near Longfellow Elementary. They had an 8-year-old son at the time, James Edgar Kennedy (Jim), and THAT may be the closest we can come to ascertaining that my grandfather's birth name was John Edgar Kennedy. Grandpa's brother Dennis Edward Kennedy adds the possibility, however, that the brothers might simply have had the same middle name. So, crap.

 

And now for a few thoughts on my family heritage, which the diary has sparked.
I grew up thinking we were Irish, probably due to dad deciding that was the case (and who was I to know any better?). He sure loved to sing "Clancy Lowered the Boom" in assorted odd keys while driving me and brothers back from the Elks after a long day of golf. He often was a bit tipsy after some time at the "19th hole" (which would be the 10 hole since the Elks was and is a nine-hole course), and there were no seatbelts in the car. I never thought a thing of it, though I would guess my sainted mother might have had any number of choice things to say as we returned late on a summer evening.

And my grandfather John E. Kennedy could certainly claim Irish roots, with last names Fleming and Berry for his great grandmothers. My grandmother Adelaide was a Burke, with her grandmother being an O'Neill. BTW: Cornelius Burke married Catherine O'Neill and both were born in Limerick. 

She married a German fella, though, evidently not uncommon when the majority of those farming west of Iowa City were Irish or German. It wouldn't have hurt that the guy had money and land. But my grandfather could boast of having a lot of Irish blood.

Today would have been my mother's 99th birthday, and she was born Barbara Fern Guffey. The Guffey clan came to America before the Revolutionary War and were the McGuffeys until about 1800. They seem to have emigrated from Scotland. But my grandpa Champ Columbus Guffey (one of the all-time great names) married Sarah Davis, whose ancestors trace back to Wales. 

But my Grandma Estella Lorena Guffey was a Bausman whose mother was a Hurst, with grandmothers named Stoft and Menzemer, and all her grandparents were born in western Germany and mostly from the Alsace-Lorraine region, which regularly shifted from Germany to France due to various wars. It is currently in France, but was in German hands when my ancestors exited Europe for the new world.

Bottom line: my father was Irish/Irish/German/Irish among his grandparents. My mother was Scottish/Welsh/German/German among her grandparents. Add them all up and that leaves me with Irish x 3, German x 3, Scottish and Welsh. 

In other words, my siblings and I are mutts. Most Americans likely are.

Two days in March, 1938

My father, John W. Kennedy, AKA Johnny and Jack and Gus, kept a diary quite faithfully for most of 1938. The first entry is dated Friday, March 4 and he was nine.

How I wish people (including myself) were explicitly encouraged (required?)  to keep a journal or diary. Maybe that's what this blog equals, I guess. But those early years are so unguarded and revealing. 

Full disclosure: I had no idea of the existence of that diary until after dad's death. 

Here’s a quick summary of the setting: The boy lived on a farm just a couple miles west of Iowa City, along with his sister Dorothy and his parents: Jack (really John E., and no one knows what that middle initial stands for!) and Adelaide. They lived in a quite large two-story house that faced south, located on the IWV (Iowa City, Williamsburg, Vinton… towns which the narrow two-lane highway connects).

Not to complicate things too much, but there were three Schnare brothers - Henry, William, and Augustus, each with a farm - and Gus shared the large farmhouse with Bill and his wife and, eventually, my grandpa and grandma and their two children. Augustus Schnare was a bachelor, and after his death in 1937, my grandfather purchased the farm. He had been farming both properties since Bill died and he would farm those lands for 42 years.

Henry's farm passed to his wife Julia in 1929, and their son Leslie eventually sold the land to the Slothowers. There is a busy road that bears that family's name at the current west edge of Iowa City.

A couple hundred yards west of the family home was a one-room schoolhouse, which is immediately mentioned in the diary in that very first entry:

Went to school. Dorothy and I were the only ones there. Played ring toss. I against Miss Cole and Dorothy. I won 12 games. They didn’t win any.

My dad was meticulous about recording winning and losing at age nine, and that was something that never really changed. A very competitive guy. The school's enrollment was no more than a dozen local children, as far as I can tell, and served grades one through eight.

The Saturday, March 5 entry:

Went to dentist. Got a tooth filled. Ate dinner at Grandma’s. Went to kattakize.

He was referring to Catechism, a tough word for even a bright nine-year-old. This was a weekly religious education class that most young Catholics attended at least through Confirmation, and was held at St. Patrick’s just south of Burlington Street. The 2006 tornado collapsed the roof and the church was basically destroyed. Many of the original bricks and other pieces were used in rebuilding the current St. Pat’s, which is now on the northeastern edge of Iowa City.

I am not certain which grandma he was referring to, but my best guess is that it was his Grandma Schnare, who had moved to a house on Gilbert Street at some point following Bill's death in 1928. They had driven to town for that dental appointment, so why not stop by Grandma's? 

I wish I could say I had vivid memories of my Grandma Schnare, but I was twelve when she died and she lived "all the way across town" from our Koser Avenue house. She was 83 when she passed, and the only image I have of her was as a tiny, wizened woman who seemed incredibly ancient to a kid. I'm not sure I ever said one word to her.

I wish I could say more, and I will certainly try to do more digging, but this is one of those many times when I devoutly wish I could grill my mom about all that. One thing becomes quite clear in the diary: the family routinely would drive into town, often multiple days per week.

Grandma Margaret (Maggie) Schnare was in her mid-60s at the time of this diary entry, and she and her late husband Bill had two daughters: Adelaide and Elsie. After Margaret died in 1963, the two Schnare farms were inherited by those sisters, and their grandchildren in turn would eventually split the land ownership 13 ways. The “owners” will continue to multipy and my estimate is that if we don’t sell that last parcel, the total owners will number in the dozens not too far in the future.

My point is to not consider that land as a future nest egg.

Dad wrapped up that Saturday entry with:

Went to the Williams’s tonight. Just talked. No fun. There are floods in California.

Our author often rated his days, using vivid terms such as “no fun” and “fun.” Clearly, a visit with neighbors that did not involve play was not a favorite and "no fun." 

The flood he mentioned was one of the worst in Los Angeles history, bringing nearly 10 inches of rain in back-to-back storms, killing over a thousand and causing what today would be nearly $2 billion in damages. That flood led to converting the Los Angeles River to concrete, which allowed the excess water to rapidly get to the ocean. 

Dad also rated the many movies he would watch downtown. That scale ranged from “bad” to “fair” to “swell,” which appears to have been his highest compliment.

The diary got me doing some research into Iowa City theaters, and eventually I discovered that the house at 528 Iowa Avenue that the family purchased in 1950 was sold by the widow of one of the town’s more flamboyant characters, who owned one of those theaters.

I plan to return to the diary and expand on it with a combination of speculation and research on Iowa City (and maybe wider world events) in the late 1930s. It would give me an excuse to do more family research.

The diary is a great example of how quickly time moves along. I would be born just a dozen years later, and I would bet serious money that nine-year-old Johnny was not imagining that turn of events.