How "The Great Humanitarian" Herbert Hoover Failed as President

A man was quoted in my local newspaper as saying that the idea of having a businessman as president is a good idea, but it had to be the right man. The speaker added that he had lost faith in politicians.

Americans have elected a number of businessmen to the presidential office. Herbert Hoover in the White House: The Ordeal of the President by Charles Rappleye show how the 'wrong' businessman failed to alleviate the ills of the Depression and failure of farms during the dust bowl days.

I requested the book because I wanted to know how a great humanitarian who orchestrated massive relief efforts to Europe, saving hundreds of thousands of lives, came to be remembered as distant, uncaring, and unmoved by American's sufferings.

Rappleye's detailed study on Herbert Hoover shows how his personality, experience, and beliefs impacted and derailed his presidency.

Hoover's intractable belief in the importance of charity at home and non-government involvement in relief were based in his own life experience. He grew up in rural poverty, was orphaned as a child, lived with uncles on an Indian reservation and in a sod hut, and scrambled to get an education. He became an successful engineer. That was life as he knew it, and he expected others could do as he did. He believed 'charity at home' was essential to building American character.

Hoover's success also meant he believed anyone could do the same. "If a man has not made a fortune by 40 he is not work much," Hoover said in his thirties. (My grandfather was born to a single woman, orphaned at age nine, worked hard to get through college, and had a long and varied career. It is done. Gramps also had intelligence, an uncle who rewarded academic achievement, and an excellent high school education.)

Hoover also believed in the power of positive thinking. He wanted to keep up morale. But suffering Americans thought Hoover was out of touch. Behind the scenes, Hoover's wife Lou handled the hundreds of letters and requests for help, aiding those she could, and giving of away his presidential salary to charity.

Farmers were starving, their children did not have clothing so they could attend school. Urban unemployment in some cities soared to 40%. It was feared that "slackers" would misuse government relief. Instead of direct relief the president worked with business and labor leaders and banks, increased Federal spending, limited immigration, increased tariffs, and increased taxes to keep a balanced budget.

Hoover recalls Richard Nixon: both of Quaker parents, both thin skinned and prone to anger, both sending staff to break into political enemies offices, both disdained by the press. Hoover was a pacifist.

'Bonus Army' of unemployed WWI veterans came to Washington D.C. to demand the bonus promised. The homeless men and families were installed in empty buildings and in a camp along the Potomac. When disorder sprouted up, and reports that radicals and communists had infiltrated the camps, Hoover was convinced to give carte blanch to Army Chief of Staff MacArthur. Mac Arthur was to return them to their camps. MacArthur ignored the president's instructions and the veterans were routed out of the city by soldier using tear gas and swords. Hoover failed to repudiate MacArthur for disobedience. Hoover was vilified as cold and heartless.

This book shows how hard Hoover tried to solve the problems of the country, but also how his fatal flaw of personality left him the legacy of being an ineffectual president. He was a shy, private person who avoided eye contact and read his speeches. As the publisher's promo says, Hoover had "a first-class mind and a second-class temperament"-- the "temperament of leadership."

The idea of electing a businessman to the presidency as a response to mistrusting politicians is not a good option. History has shown that businessmen make for failed political leadership. Consider the failed presidencies of businessmen like Warren G. Harding and Jimmy Carter. In fact, according to studies and ratings NO president with a successful business background is among the top rated. The skills of business and the ability to lead in government are not the same.

Presidential success is based on empathy, persuasive eloquence, and compromise. Hoover's failure to appear empathetic and his ineffectiveness as a speaker clearly hurt him. Considering the hundreds of thousands of lives he saved after WWI and WWII organizing relief abroad I know he had empathy. What a complicated man.

I received an ARC through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Herbert Hoover in the White House
Charles Rappleye
Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: May 10, 2016
$32.50 hard cover
ISBN: 9781451648676

Herbert Hoover/Curtis silk campaign handkerchief. Collection of Nancy A. Bekofske

Love For Lydia by H. E. Bates

Lydia arrived an awkward girl, bloomed into an attractive woman, discovered men liked her, and gaily left a wake of bodies in her path. When she saw what she had accomplished she tried to burn herself out in a two year binge of dancing and drink and ended up desperately lonely and guilty in a sanitarium.

Some might believe Lydia was a tease and vixen, partying her way into destruction. Others may feel she was a girl-child who, when released from the 'cotton-wool'  prison of her girlhood, mishandles her sudden sexual power over men. Or is she the genetic product of her profligate parents, an alcoholic mother paid off to keep away and the distant, womanizing father who proscribed her sheltered girlhood?

Love for Lydia by H.E. Bates is an autobiographical homage to his home town, with the narrator Richardson sharing Bates' early jobs and family.
It is the story of young people growing up, the thrill and torment of first love, the end of a way of life, and class stricture. It is the story of what happens when four young men fall for Lydia and how she handles their adulation. It is the story of learning what love really means. It is a love story to England's pastoral beauty.

A cuckoo flew with bubbling throaty calls across the wheat-field, disappearing beyond the copses. In the still air I caught again a great breath of grass and hawthorn and bluebell and earth beating through new pulses of spring loveliness to the very edge of summer.

The novel begins in 1929 when Richardson is nineteen and a reporter for the town paper. Richardson is sent to the Aspen manor to learn about the eldest Aspen brother's demise. The deceased's elderly spinster sisters introduce Richardson to his heir and daughter, Lydia. The aunts suggest he take her skating, show her some fun, for they don't want her growing up in isolation. Ill dressed and stick thin with candlestick curls, Lydia is having fun with peers for the first time. It is a magical time.

Above the trees a mass of winter stars, glittering with crystal flashes of vivid green, then white, then ice-clear blue, flashed down through a wide and wonderful silence that seemed to splinter every now and then with a crack of frost-taut boughs in the copses, down where the drive went, above the frozen stream.

Richardson discovers that Lydia is game for anything, pushing him past his comfort zone. And into regular clandestine meetings where she enjoys his physical attention. As Lydia fills out her aunt's hand-me-down dresses Richardson falls in love, and Lydia claims to love him too.

'Oh! Darling--don't stop loving me'--she said. 'Don't ever stop loving me-'...'Even if I'm bad to you--would you?--will you always?''Yes,' I said.

The aunts press the young people to attend dances and Lydia's social network expands. Richardson's best friend, Alex, local yeoman's son Tom, and chauffeur Blackie all fall under Lydia's charm and vie for her love. Lydia is 'excitable and impulsive," following her instincts thoughtlessly.  In the battle for Lydia's attention hearts are broken and even a death occurs.

The descriptions of the landscape are beautifully written. Richardson seeks out nature as a respite and for its restorative effects. The town is a center of shoe manufacturing, an unattractive and crowded place. Richardson is very aware that the loveliness of the land has been infringed upon by mankind.

In 1977 I watched and enjoyed the Masterpiece Theater's series Love for Lydia but had not read the book until now. I am so glad I did. I will look to read more by Mr. Bates in the future.

Anyone interested in the English Language must read Mr. Bates, one of its outstanding masters. Times Literary Supplement.

Learn more about H. E. Bates at
http://www.bloomsbury.com/author/he-bates/
http://hebatescompanion.com
http://www.thevanishedworld.co.uk/index.html
See a clip of the series Love for Lydia at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EV2MkbRI4I

I received a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Love for Lydia
by H. E. Bates
Bloombury Books
Publication Date May 12, 2016
ISBN: 9781448216444
ebook

New Quilt Idea & 1857 Blocks & Nancy Meets Author of Station Eleven

I loved making William Shakespeare so much I want to do another portrait. I am thinking about fabrics for Edgar Allen Poe.

Last night I attended a talk and Q&A with Emily St. John Mandel whose novel Station Eleven is the 2016 Michigan Reads book. I read her novel last year and again last month for my local book club. Read my review here.

Mandel's presentation was thoughtful and revealing. She walked through how her decision to write Literary Fiction with a strong plot and crime element leading to her being considered a Noir genre writer. To avoid being typecast she wanted to write a novel that was completely different. Her first thought was to write about actors. She also wanted to write about the awesome wonder of our world--the technology that we take for granted. She decided to set up the loss of modern marvels due to a pandemic and traced her research back to ancient Rome when soldiers brought smallpox back to Italy, devastating the population. As it did to the Native American of North America during the earliest days of exploration.

Mandel had first visited Northern Michigan on a book tour to Traverse City and thereafter made excuses to return. The novel is set in the upper section of Michigan's lower peninsula, where the traveling Symphony stays close to the fresh water of the Great Lakes.

I loved the second reading of Station Eleven. I think I helped my book club appreciate some of the themes and messages of the book.

I have completed two more 1857 Album blocks, mostly finished another, and have the fourth ready to appliqué. I also need to add some embroidered details on the bird in the cherry tree.

What is it?

nearly done

ready to go

The Methodist Episcopal Church and the Sand Creek Massacre

We grew up on stories of Indian raids, the scalps taken and women and children murdered. We have heard tales of children kidnapped by Indians. We were raised on tv shows and movies full of pioneer families fearful of Indian attack. In 1764, my own sixth great-grandparents were murdered by Native Americans led by a white criminal. Rev. John Rhodes was a Swiss Brethren pacifist, an early settler in the Shenandoah Valley. Theirs was not the only family targeted in the area. It must have been a frightful time for the new immigrants. Their ancestors had faced persecution and death because of their faith. They had hoped their life in the New World would offer better.


What we don't often hear about is America's policy of genocide, the massacre of Native women and children, the broken treaties--justified by European Christians who believed that God had ordained them to inherit the earth and to convert the savage.

Massacre at Sand Creek: How Methodists Were Involved in an American Tragedy by Gary L, Roberts was commissioned by the General Commission on Archives ad History of the United Methodist Church. It rose out of the 2012 General Conference of the United Methodist Church through the Council of Bishops call for repentance and healing of relationships with Indigenous peoples. They called for a full disclosure of the Methodist Episcopal Church's involvement in the Sand Creek Massacre.

In 1864 at Sand Creek in the Colorado Territory, 250 Cheyennes and Arapahos under the protection of the US. government--mostly women and children--were murdered in a raid led by John M. Chivington, a popular Methodist minister. The Territorial Governor whose policies led to the attack, John Evans, was a prominent Methodist layman. 

Roberts book is scholarly in its approach. It is not a popular narrative history. He details the culture and mindset of American society at the time and considers how Native American and Western cultural paradigms differ. He offers a synopsis of American/Native relations.We learn about Chivington and Evans as religious, political, and military leaders. The natives were divided, some seeking American protection but some bands attacking the settlers. Fear was magnified and all Natives were vilified. Chivington became adamant about decimating all natives.

Thankfully, Roberts does not dwell on the outrage of the massacre, for the details he offers are too horrendous to want to know more. The reaction to the massacre was explosive and polarizing. It was considered the worst crime ever committed by America. But Methodists were reluctant to accept the charges against those responsible. They were, after all, church leaders and greatly admired.

What was the culpability of the Methodist church? Was it a lack of moral leadership, its alliance with an immoral culture? Why did the local Methodists not take a stand against Chivington? Can we judge the actions of our forefathers based on today's values and understanding? How could a society based on freedom enact such evil? Roberts explores these crucial issues.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

"It is time for this story to be told. Coming to grips with what happened at Sand Creek involves hard questions and unsatisfactory answers not only about what happened but also about what led to it and why. It stirs ancient questions about the best and worst in every person, questions older than history, questions as relevant as today's headlines, questions we all mus answer from within." from the publisher

Massacre at Sand Creek: How Methodists Were Involved in an American Tragedy
by Gary L. Roberts
Abingdon Press
$19.99 hard cover
ISBN:9781501819766

Four Poems on Motherhood

Mom and me, 1952. Mom was 21 years old.

My mother said she was told that a "good mom is a selfish mom." I would wake up early and she would put me in a playpen and go back to sleep. My cousin Linda would come and take me out and play with me. I would beg Mom to color my favorite coloring book pages, knowing I would only scribble and she could make the picture pretty. She told me to do it myself. 

I did learn to color, quite well in fact.

When our son was born Mom thought I was too weak and easily manipulated, too indulgent. I had to learn to set limits, say no, make demands. Then I was told that parents have to 'line the nest with thorns' to force children to leave the nest and fly. 

Mothers ache to protect their children and smother them with feather hugs, but end up being mean--setting limits and expectations, pushing towards growth and self sufficiency. Instead of being idolized, we are cast into the outer darkness as our children detach and learn independence. It's hard being a mom, for its when we are not needed that we have succeeded. 

Mom in 1970

When my son was little I was still actively writing poetry. Here are four poems I wrote about motherhood.

****

Pockmarks

He is seven now, the child who was so small and perfect

when he was given to me.

Incarnation comes with strings attached,

pain and disappointments,

hard lessons to be learned, illnesses and heartaches.

Today he is learning about bullies and power;

the power we give up, and the power forcefully taken from us.

He tries to articulate the feelings that fill his small breast,

the fears and the questions. And I try to teach him

one more lesson, although I am not certain I know truth from fable.

Day by day, I send him off into the world; questioning

my ability to explain how we live and survive

and surmount life's challenges...

My child was born a perfect model of babyhood,

bright smile under observant eyes, his body flawless.

Today I note his allergic red eyes and the three pockmarks

on his face, the red gum where a new tooth gnaws upward,

and I wonder what lesions are forming in his heart,

and if he will keep them with him for ever

or if they will be healed with only a scar left behind.

****

A whisper of most tenuous thread

fragile, frail, the feeling of belonging

one to the other

Yet testing, always, endurance,

limits, our own strength

to live apart,

Alone. And fearing to find

it can be done,

one does survive

without the other.

O, Child, you grow so quickly

who once believed me you

And I, Mother, lose you

ever so quietly, an erosion

of bounds, to the world.

*****

I watch my son

go down the corkscrew slide

slowly, slowly turning.

He holds onto the rails

to pace his descent.

In his features I can trace

the toddler’s self-satisfied joy

and wonder.

How much longer will I see there

the face I know so well?

He does not understand how quickly he descends,

who thinks he is moving so slowly.

Let him go slowly, slowly.

Let the child remain.

Let me see in undeveloped features

the eternal possibilities,

the contentment

of merely being.

February 25, 1998

                     *****

I had believed I would bear light

to the glories of this world,

leading by the hand in small steps

to view sugar plum fairies and robin's eggs

like the pastel illustrations in a book.

I did not know I would be

also the first bearer of darkness,

teacher of life's many small cruelties.

Steel heart, o sharp and needle-like!

And that small face seeking in mine

consolation, questioning love,

his eager kisses, smothered in them,

each like an electric volt.

I am forgiven of necessity,

held greater than disappointment;

for how long, I wonder.

                  

                      *****

Last Things: Zero K by Don DiLillio

The Market abhors a vacuum; where there is a need and money it will create a product to fill it. In Don DeLillo's new novel Zero K, with money one can buy out of the cycle of life, opting for a cryogenic stasis that is neither death nor the ego-driven awareness of life. You can buy a future in rebirth.

Ross Lockhart's wealthy father has summoned him to the death of his second wife, Artis, and to witness her transformation and installation into a womb-like pod that will hold her until, at some undefined future time, she is returned to life. Artis longs for this non-death, and Ross's father does as well. They have financially and spiritually bought into this eschatology of a secular age.

Ross arrives at the Convergence facility in a remote part of the Ukraine. The hallways are filled with nameless closed doors. Everything about the place is unnamed, unexplained, locked away. He is allowed only glimpses into what happens there. There are screens showing war and armies, death and self-immolation, supposedly in the greater world, images of 'last things', end days, death. A dark world bent on apocalypse.

The father's sunglasses brings "the night indoors;" the opening chapters are rife with the stark words of night, blind, empty, nothing, nowhere, abandoned, and especially dark which DiLillo uses eight times in two pages.

Ross's father and Artis are ardent believers in this new technology, a post-death cryogenic suspension which brings disconnection to the chaotic world and the demands of the self, exchanged for a Nirvana state of bliss until future technology reawakens the living dead, mind and body restored. A resurrection. It is a faith-based technology, promising life after death. Between death and rebirth is offered a 'virgin solitude" in an idealized, rebuilt body, waiting in a womb-like pod.

Ross has an obsession with facts, details, math, and especially naming. He learns that his father assumed the last name Lockhart. And his father did lock his heart away from his son, abandoning him and his mother when Ross was a boy. When his father admits he wants to chose to undergo the process with Artis at her death, Ross talks him out of it even while Artis whispers for Ross to 'join them.'

A Convergence worker preaches that apocalypse is "inherent" in the physical world, the world will end, that humanity's insanity of war and destruction of the earth is part of a self-willed apocalypse.

What is death, what comes after, and whether death should be a choice are considered by all the characters. In a dismal and meaningless life caught in a world of technology that brings distance, can wonder still be found?

I received a free ebook though NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

DeLillo infuses the drama with metaphysical riddles: What of ourselves can actually be preserved? What will resurrection pilgrims experience in their cold limbo? With immortality reserved for the elite, what will become of the rest of humanity on our pillaged, bloodied, extinction-plagued planet? In this magnificently edge and profoundly inquisitive tale, DeLillo reflects on what we remember and forget, what we treasure and destroy, and what we fail to do for each other and for life itself. Booklist

Zero K
Don DeLillo
Scribner
Publication May 3, 2016
$26 hard cover
ISBN:9781501135392

Trillium and Other May Wildflowers at Tenhave Woods

We returned to a local wildflower sanctuary in Royal Oak, MI to see the Trillium. The woods is next to my Alma Mater (Kimball High, now the Royal Oak H.S.). The Royal Oak Nature Society has worked to keep the deer out of the woods and the local wildflowers are blooming in abundance--more Trillium than we have ever seen.

Marsh Marigold was also in bloom.

 I forgot this purple flower's name.

After several rainy days the vernal pond was full. There were 'ponds' all throughout the woods.

Chipmunks, woodpecker, Redwing Blackbirds, and some flutter-bys were also enjoying the sunny afternoon.

The woods is left natural and the downed trees provide interesting safe havens.

 

It is so wonderful to live in the 'burbs but have this little bit of nature just down a mile down the road!