Fault Lines

June 17, 1972.

It was the day of my marriage. By our first anniversary, the date had another meaning: the date of the Watergate break-in.

As a girl, I had seen America come together with the assassination of President Kennedy and divide over the war in Viet Nam. The sounds of my teenage years were the chants of "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today," and the music of Woodstock. 

I finished my education, worked, had a child, sent him to college, saw him settle in work and a house, and retired against the backdrop of a further dividing America.

Fault Lines condenses history into paragraphs, each event eliciting a memory. I remembered it all. And the more I read the angrier I became.

In under 400 pages, Kevin M. Kruse and Justin E. Zelizer have compacted American political, social, and media history into a readable narrative. 

Movements arose demanding equal rights while counter-movements strove to maintain the status quo--the authority of white males. The conflict has not resolved to a Hegelian shift to the center though, just a rising antagonism and deepening divide.

They describe how cultural shifts and disturbances impacted film and television and how the rise of the Internet and cable news shattered the common ground of national news.

For me, it was a condensation of memories. I had to wonder how a younger reader would respond. The authors are historians and Princeton University professors. They have taught this history to students. 

This is a history book and not an offering of solutions; there are plenty of current books that address where to go from here. The authors state that the challenge is to "harness the intense energy that now drives us apart and channel it once again toward creating new and stronger bridges that can bring us together." 

Gridlock, a traditional Democrat Donkey quilt block by Dustin Cecil

But so far, those leaders who endeavored to bridge the gap and pledge bipartisanship failed. There is no indication that the old fashioned values cherished in the past--working together for the common good, obeying the rule of law and custom, communicating, finding common ground--are reemerging. Instead, political leaders are ignoring the will of the majority, engineering ways to disenfranchise groups, with special interest group money buying political clout.

We are told that by knowing the past we can plan for the future, understanding our errors we can proactively prevent the repetition of those errors. I know that America has gone astray many times in our brief history, and the countering movements arighted our ship of state. It is my 'glass half full' hope. 

I received an ARC from the publisher. My review is fair and unbiased.

About the authors:

Kevin M. Kruse is a Professor of History at Princeton University. He specializes in the political, social, and urban/suburban history of twentieth-century America, with a particular interest in conflicts over race, rights and religion and the making of modern conservatism.

Julian E. Zelizer has been one of the pioneers in the revival of American political history and is a frequent commentator in the international and national media on political history and contemporary politics. He has published over seven hundred op-eds, including his weekly column on CNN.Com.

Fault Lines: A History of the United Staes Since 1974

by Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer

W. W. Norton

$28.95 hardcover

ISBN: 978-0-393-08866-3

Helen Korngold Diary: April 21-27, 1919

This year I am sharing the 1919 diary kept by Helen Korngold of St.Louis, MO.

Helen Korngold, December 1919, New York City

Monday 21
Visited Central High – Saw Hofferty, Stratton, Schweikert, Curtis – Blumstead. School – Tryouts for May Day. Headache – home. Winkler came over – I like him so much.

Tuesday 22
School – feeling badly- came home

Wednesday 23
School – Baseball

Thursday 24
School – Satellites – went with Winkler – he’s a fine kid. We had a nice long chat. Stayed up till 12:30 writing a theme or rather a report for Ed. 12. I hate that course.

Friday 25
School – baseball – dancing – home. Napped. Had ten couples over in evening. They all seemed to have a fine time. I think they did. Didn’t get to bed till 1 a.m.

Saturday 26
School – Home – Zel entertained in the evening. We had a good time.
Sunday 27

Sunday School in morning. Temple Israel – Dr. Harrison is really a marvel. Study in afternoon – write letters. Aunt Beryl’s in evening.

Notes:

April 21

Central High post card

Central High was situated at 1030 N. Grand. The building was destroyed in 1927 by an F3-scale tornado that caused over seventy deaths and injuring 550 more. At the time it struck, there were 1,500 students attending classes.

Clarence Stratton, BA University of Pittsburgh, began his teaching career at Central in 1903 teaching English and Public Speaking. He also taught Public Speaking at Washington University. In 1921 he left to become Director of English in the Cleveland, OH public schools. He also wrote the Central school song.

Dr. George M. Holferty was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin class of 1893. He organized the Boys Literary Society, the oldest Central organization. The 1920 City Directory shows he lived at Morgan St. The 1928 Central yearbook shows he taught Botany, General Science, Biology, and Physiography. He sponsored the Botany Club and had coached the Boy's Debating Team. He died in 1930.

Harry Christian Schweikert appears on the 1920 St. Louis Census as a public school teacher living on Morgan St. with two lodgers, one a lawyer and one a salesman. Harry was 42 years old. His WWI Draft Registration shows he was born February 24, 1877, and taught at Central High School. His nearest relative was Christian Schweickert. Christian shows up on the City Directories as a baker. Harry had blue eyes and brown hair and was of medium height and build. He died in 1937 according to Who Was Who in America. A Harry C. Schweikert appears in the WWII Navy muster roles but I do not know if it is the same person.

Chester B. Curtis was a teacher and principal at Central High School and lived at 5192 Page Blvd. He was born in New Hampshire and studied at Dartmouth College. The 1910 St. Louis Census shows Curtis, age 43,  a high school principal married to Marie M.  The census of 1930 shows he was a personnel director.

Mabel Olmstead appears in the City Directory as a teacher at Central High School. On Mary 8, 1922 her application for a passport shows she was born 11/24/1871 in Potosi, MO to father Jonas who died in 1907 in Los Angeles, CA. Mabel was going to Italy, Austria, Switzerland and Gibraltar. She made several trips to Europe. She taught American and later European history. She died January 28, 1941, and is buried in the Potosi Presbyterian Cemetery. Her mother Amelia Riehl Olmstead (August 21, 1839-December 23, 1903) is also buried there.

April 24

Ed. 12 was Educational Administration taught by Prof. Wesley Raymond Wells. The course description:
The aim of this course is to make a critical study of the problems of school organization, administration, and supervision. It will deal with such problems as: education, a state function; local school boards, their organization, duties, and manner of election; kinds of schools, their aims and scope; duties of the superintendent, principals, and teachers; the relation of the school to the community; statistical and experimental studies in school administration. Three hours a week. Credit 3 units. (Wells)

June 1919 notices in St Louis Post-Dispatch

Satellites was an acting group that performed an annual Vaudeville and Dance. It was under the direction of Mrs. Diamant of the Thyrsus Dramatic Society at Washington University.

April 27

Congregation Temple Israel was established in 1886.


Dr. Leon Harrison (1866 to 1928) served Temple Israel as Second Rabbi from 1892 to 1928.

An April 1906 story in The Portland, OR newspaper New Age reported that Rabbi Leon Harrison was to be a speaker at the Willamette Valley of Chautauqua Association in July lecturing on “Shylock” and “The Glory and Shame of America.”

Helen's diary may not be full of war news, but the newspapers were. Below is an ad from the April 17 St. Louis Star and Times.

Ad from the April 27 St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Ad from the April 27 St. Louis Star and Times:

White Elephant by Julie Langsdorf

"It's so Norman Rockwell," Suzanne said. (...)Grant said, "Yeah. A little eerie. Remember the Twilight Zone episode..." from White Elephant by Julie Langsdorf

Twilight Zone, Walking Distance by Rod Serling

Willard Park is a close community filled with early 20th c Sears kit houses and family-friendly ambiance. In the center of town, there is a band shell decked out in bunting. Halloween is an all-day affair (with an implicit ban on sugar) ending with singing 1960s era folk songs around a bonfire. You know, seasonal songs like If I Had A Hammer. Oh--and everyone has their own mug at the coffee shop.

detail of Country Village quilt by Nancy A. Bekofske

It reminds me of places I have lived in, like the small city that banned fast food chains. Or the even smaller town that turned a grass-roots Halloween prank of rolling pumpkins down the hill into town into a family event, lining the street with bales of hay to prevent the pumpkins from crashing into storefronts. I remember being laughed at for my Big City paranoia, locking my house when I left and my car when shopping in town. Small towns always have a secret agreement of values to be ferreted out or learned through mistakes.

In Julie Langsdorf's novel White Elephant, Willard Park is filled with residents with roots, like Ted and his twin brother Terrance. Newcomers are expected to fit in and hold the same values.

She and the other neighbors might have forgiven them the sin of bad taste with time, but as the months wore on, the Coxes continued to disobey the unspoken rules of the neighborhood. They didn't compost. They had pesticides sprayed on their grass. They didn't join the Friends of the Willard Park Children's Library. They didn't even recycle.

The Coxes were like foreign visitors who had not read up on the local customs.

Since I had an ARC of White Elephant by Julie Langsdorf I made pencil notations in the book instead of on a slip of paper or on post-it notes. I soon realized I was underlining and circling and notating to the point of absurdity. There were so many wickedly funny lines summarizing up scenes! So many characters' inner thoughts leading up to hilarious insights! The way some people randomly open the Bible while looking for guidance, I can randomly open White Elephants looking for a laugh.

Suzanne was at the top: serious and smart. Brilliant maybe. No sense of humor. Did she have a humor disability? Why wasn't that a thing?

Country Village by Nancy A. Bekofske

Other lines struck home--too close for my comfort. Was Langsdorf thinking about how I felt thirty years ago--or her character Allison--when she wrote,

It was stressful being a mother these days, increasingly so. Mothers who chose to stay at home were so well educated--and so ashamed about not earning a paycheck--that they put every ounce of their abundant energy into mothering, determined to get results.

Ted and Allison Miller and Nick and Kaye Cox were on a collision course with destiny, impelled by their personal fatal flaws.

It all started when Nick and Kaye Cox and daughter Lindy moved next door to Ted and Allison and daughter Jillian. Ted grew up in Willard Park. Allison is photographing the town with hopes of making a book. They love the vintage time-loop 'Twilight Zone' vibe.

Nick has a vision of turning the Sears houses into upscale palaces. As a Washington D.C. suburb, it would make the community a magnet--and make his fortune. He turned his charming house into a towering abode filled with the biggest and best money can afford. He started a new showcase home to sell before running out of money, the house nicknamed the White Elephant.

My little city is proud of our Sears kit homes and a page is included on the city web page. But as house prices have risen, young people can no longer afford our neighboring cities and our houses are in high demand. Many have been torn down and replaced with huge 'farmhouse' style buildings that take up most of the lot, towering over the neighboring houses.

Not only is Nick changing the town Ted loves, but he is also cutting down trees, including one Ted planted when Jillian was born! Ted becomes obsessed, patrolling the neighborhood, seeking out fallen trees and other evidence of Nick's crusade to destroy Willard Park. He can't relax and it's affecting his ability to give his wife the physical attention she desperately craves. Leaving Allison with an obsession of her own: their neighbor, Nick Cox.

Meanwhile, Kaye Cox is lonely for her old friends; she always made friends so easily, but she feels shut out and shunned in this closed town. Lindy Cox takes up with the studious Jillian Miller, intent on making her 'cool.' Lindy gets everything she wants and lacks self-discipline and self-control. Jillian allows herself to be taken up into Lindy's world of unlimited consumerism and pleasure and rules-breaking.

And then there is Ted's loveable twin brother, Terrance, who lives in a group home.

A new couple comes into town, Grant and Suzanne with son Adam. Grant is carefree and fun (especially when high) and unreliable, while his wife is a perfectionist intent on keeping his nose to the grindstone. They were forced to move into a small bungalow after Grant lost his job at the law firm.
Needless to say, their marriage has been under stress.  Now, Suzanne has an unplanned pregnancy. They become caught in the middle of the battle between nostalgia and progress.

The novel works up to an exciting climax and unexpected reveal and finally, a happy resolution.

I loved Langsdorf's comedy and I loved her insights into human nature and the values battles in a small town that reflect the larger national tensions. Do we look to the past or the future for the betterment of our society? How can rampant consumerism and environmental protectionism exist side by side? Can we find or build community in a mobile world were the average person moves a dozen times in their life? How do women balance the need for personal achievement and motherhood?

I received an ARC from the publisher through a Goodreads giveaway. My review is fair and unbiased.

White Elephant
by Julie Langsdorf
Ecco/Harper Collins
Publication March 2019

The Dinner by Herman Koch

Our book club read this month was Herman Koch's The Dinner. I had seen Goodreads friends who had read it and enjoyed it. I didn't realize it was a dark  'thriller'.

The novel begins slow, and well, is actually boring, the narrative voice telling how he and his wife are getting ready to meet another couple at an upscale restaurant. They are not looking forward to it.

We learn that the other couple is the narrator's brother and sister-in-law, and the brother is going to run for Prime Minister.  The brothers have a strained history and relationship. The narrator had a 'meltdown' in the classroom when he was teaching and was on medication.

There is a scene before the dinner where the narrator looks at his son's cell phone and is not pleased with what he discovers.

How would this evening, our dinner at the restaurant, have proceeded, had I indeed quit right then and there? from The Dinner by Herman Koch

There is a lot of description of the meal and the staff and how the sister-in-law is wearing dark glasses to hide that she has been crying.

And when we discover what it is that brought these parents together, you may wish you were not reading this book. It's too late--you have to keep turning pages. The crime is so horrendous! And the cover-up is even more disturbing.

The plotting is masterful.

But I wish I had not read this book!

Did I mention it is DISTURBING?

What would YOU do if your fifteen-year-old son had committed a crime? How far would YOU go to protect your child?

Maybe we don't take that seriously enough...How young they are. To the outside world, they're suddenly adults, because they did something that we, as adults, consider a crime. But I feel that they've responded to it more like children.  from The Dinner by Herman Koch

Would you rationalize your child's behavior? Hide the crime? Smooth the way without repercussions? Or make the child own up to his error, support their turning themselves over to the authorities? Would consider bribery or threats or violence? Or set a standard of morality and law?

So be forewarned--you will encounter some nasty folk, and if you pick the book up, be prepared for a slow simmer that comes to a roiling boil!

Diary of Helen Korngold, April 14-20, 1919

This year I am sharing the diary of Helen Korngold of St. Louis, MO. Helen was a student at Washington University and a student teacher.

April

Monday 14
Tired – arose 6 a.m. Helped Momma with Passover dishes. To school – Soldiers Peace Conference.  Home after basketball. Herbert came for Seder. We are crazy about him. Letter from Summer.

Tuesday 15
School. Home – Herbert was over for dinner. He’s such a peach. Too bad he had to leave for Springfield. We wanted him to stay over, but he couldn’t.

Wednesday 16
School. Baseball. Home – Aunt Beryl’s for dinner.

Thursday 17
School – Letter from Koloditsky – mushy. I don’t know what I’m going to do about it.

Friday 18
School – dancing – To Bonnie Young’s at night. Went with Morris Gates. Her cousin, Spiro, plays violin very well. Had a good time.

Saturday 19
School. J.C. Board meeting. Saw Susan Hauskay/Hawakays [illegible] with folks

NOTES:

April 14

An article in the April 14 Soldiers Peace Conference in the St Louis Post-Dispatch.




April 18 (Good Friday and a school holiday)

Morris Milton Gates was born on July 8, 1895, and died on December 1969. His World War I Draft Registration shows he worked at R. Gates Furniture Company at 804 N 7th St. Morris was in the National Guard. He was of medium height and weight with brown eyes and black hair. Morris appears on the 1920 St. Louis Census as 24 years old and a salesman, living with his family. In 1931 Morris married Ruth Gutfreund.

His father Rudolph was a German born in Poland in 1868 and died in St. Louis in 1946. He married Fannie Weiss, sister of Rose Weiss who married Charles Wolf and was mother to Helen’s friend Dan Wolf. Rudolph was a merchant of furniture on the 1910 St. Louis Census. Morris’ brother Sidney also worked for the family business. Morris also had sisters Jeanette and Ernestine.

Bernice Young’s cousin Bernard Spiro was born in 1898 in New York, NY and died in 1992 in California.

April 19 (school holiday)

Susanne Hawakays I have not been able to verify the reading of Helen’s handwriting to pin down this woman.

April 14
All year long, Helen mentions going to the Satellites, often with a boy. Once she wrote 'Temple Satellites.' Newspaper announcements show it was an acting group that performed an annual Vaudeville and Dance. It was under the direction of Mrs. Diamant of the Thyrsus Dramatic Society at Washington University.

June 1, 1919, St Louis Dispatch article

The April 20 St. Louis Post-Dispatch first page featured an article supporting women's right to work. Perhaps this kind of thinking influenced Helen into embracing a career and marrying for love later in life!

Helen Korngold Diary April 14-20 1919

This year I am sharing the diary of Helen Korngold of St. Louis, MO.

Helen Korngold, December 1919, New York City

Monday 14
Tired – arose 6 a.m. Helped Momma with Passover dishes. To school – Soldiers Peace Conference.  Home after basketball. Herbert came for Seder. We are crazy about him. Letter from Summer.

Tuesday 15
School. Home – Herbert was over for dinner. He’s such a peach. Too bad he had to leave for Springfield. We wanted him to stay over, but he couldn’t.

Wednesday 16
School. Baseball. Home – Aunt Beryl’s for dinner.

Thursday 17
School – Letter from Koloditsky – mushy. I don’t know what I’m going to do about it.

Friday 18
School – dancing – To Bonnie Young’s at night. Went with Morris Gates. Her cousin, Spiro, plays violin very well. Had a good time.

Saturday 19
School. J.C. Board meeting. Saw Susan Hauskay/Hawakays [illegible] with folks

Notes:

April 14


Soldiers Peace Conference article in April 14, 1919 St Louis Star

April 18 (Good Friday and a school holiday)

Morris Milton Gates was born on July 8, 1895, and died in December 1969. His World War I Draft Registration shows he worked at R. Gates Furniture Company at 804 N 7th St. Morris was in the National Guard. He was of medium height and weight with brown eyes and black hair. Morris appears on the 1920 St. Louis Census as 24 years old and a salesman, living with his family. In 1931 Morris married Ruth Gutfreund.

His father Rudolph was a German born in Poland in 1868 and died in St. Louis in 1946. He married Fannie Weiss, sister of Rose Weiss who married Charles Wolf and was mother to Helen’s friend Dan Wolf. Rudolph was a merchant of furniture on the 1910 St. Louis Census. Morris’ brother Sidney also worked for the family business. Morris also had sisters Jeanette and Ernestine.

Bernice Young’s cousin Bernard Spiro was born in 1898 in New York, NY and died in 1992 in California.

April 19 (school holiday)

Susanne Hawakays: I have not been able to verify the reading of Helen’s handwriting to pin down this woman.

April 14, 1919 ad in St Louis Post Dispatch

Books I Didn't Read or Finish

I didn't read them. Or I didn't finish them. This does not mean they are BAD books. I ran out of time, it was the wrong time, I was the wrong reader.

I was offered several books from publishers through NetGalley but had to pass them over when eye surgery meant a two-week vacation from reading. I decided to have my lifelong astigmatism corrected with my cataract surgery and I could not see with or without glasses until the second eye was operated on. I was falling behind in my reading!

Both books have received good reviews from my Goodreads friends.

One book was The Ash Family by Molly Dektar from Simon and Schuster. I read perhaps fifty pages. The writing is wonderful. I felt a dark story coming up and was not sure I wanted to go there at the time. From the publisher:

When a young woman leaves her family—and the civilized world—to join an off-the-grid community headed by an enigmatic leader, she discovers that belonging comes with a deadly cost, in this lush and searing debut novel.
At nineteen, Berie encounters a seductive and mysterious man at a bus station near her home in North Carolina. Shut off from the people around her, she finds herself compelled by his promise of a new life. He ferries her into a place of order and chaos: the Ash Family farm. There, she joins an intentional community living off the fertile land of the mountains, bound together by high ideals and through relationships she can’t untangle. Berie—now renamed Harmony—renounces her old life and settles into her new one on the farm. She begins to make friends. And then they start to disappear.
Thrilling and profound, The Ash Family explores what we will sacrifice in the search for happiness, and the beautiful and grotesque power of the human spirit as it seeks its ultimate place of belonging.

Another book I had been offered was Saving Meghan by D. J. Palmer from St. Martin's Press. Being a thriller, which is not one of my favorite genres although I do read them now and then, I decided to forgo it as well.

From the publisher:

Saving Meghan is a riveting new thriller full of secrets and lies from author D.J. Palmer. 
Can you love someone to death?
Some would say Becky Gerard is a devoted mother and would do anything for her only child. Others, including her husband Carl, claim she's obsessed and can't stop the vicious circle of finding a cure at her daughter's expense.
Fifteen-year-old Meghan has been in and out of hospitals with a plague of unexplained illnesses. But when the ailments take a sharp turn, clashing medical opinions begin to raise questions about the puzzling nature of Meghan’s illness. Doctors suspect Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a rare behavioral disorder where the primary caretaker seeks medical help for made-up symptoms of a child. Is this what's going on? Or is there something even more sinister at hand?
As the Gerards grow more and more suspicious of each other and their medical team, Becky must race against time to prove her daughter has a deadly disease. But first, she must confront her darkest fears and family secrets that threaten to not only upend her once-ordered life…but to destroy it.

I was eager to read Stephanie Barron's historical fiction novel That Churchill Woman. Some years ago I had read several of Barron's Jane Austen mysteries and enjoyed them. I had read about Jennie Churchill in books about her famous son Winston Churchill and I had seen a television series about her life. I was pleased when I won an ARC on Goodreads.

I have read 188 pages of the 381-page book. I am going to be setting it aside for now.

Jennie's marriage was at once brilliant and a failure, Jennie supporting her husband's career and social life while engaging in a series of love affairs. Barron takes us into Parliament and Lord Randolph Churchill's career, as seen through Jennie's eyes. And in the background are Jennie's children. They adore their parents even if both are distant and uninvolved in their lives.

My disappointment is that the novel is not drawing me into a deep emotional connection with Jennie. There is lots of period detail about her costumes and the social scene and dark hints about Lord Randolph's sexual orientation. Jennie gives up her true love to remain in her marriage. And she puts her social obligations over being a mother, even when it breaks her heart. 

An example is the scene were Lord Randolph is involved with voting against Home Rule for the Irish. Jennie has come to listen to the debate and was with another woman whose lover is in Parliament. There is a long paragraph telling the other woman's backstory. There is a description of Lord Randolph's apparel. A few paragraphs about his speech and the reaction and Jennie's understanding of what this meant to her husband's career. The scene lacks the excitement and emotion that must have been in that room. A new government was formed out of that debate. I felt that Barron missed an opportunity to make history real.

Readers can glean a great deal about this time period and society from the book, and perhaps be motivated to learn more. Perhaps I will return to this book later. But I have seven other Advanced Reading Copies sitting on the table and another half dozen egalleys to be read! Time to move on.