The Silver Spoon In His Mouth With Which John Karls Was Born

[Pat]

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---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: The “Silver Spoon In Your Mouth” With Which You Were Born
From: Pat
Date: Tue, August 30, 2016 9:32 am - MST
To: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
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Dear John,

I have just finished reading your Suggested Answers to the Second Short Quiz and found very striking the contrast between George Kunath’s background (Q&A-2) and your background as described in Q&A-13 thru Q&A-19 of the Suggested Answers to the First Short Quiz.

It would appear that you “were born with a silver spoon in your mouth” and George was not.

Would you care to comment?

Regards,

Pat


---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Re: The “Silver Spoon In Your Mouth” With Which You Were Born
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Date: Wed, August 31, 2016 4:12 pm - MST
To: Pat
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Dear Pat,

You are right that I “was born with a silver spoon in my mouth” and George was not.

However, the reason why we have been such close friends for 28.5 years is because virtually everything else about our backgrounds is strikingly similar. And we enjoy immensely talking about sports, politics and religion. And the intellectual stimulation in ALL THREE FIELDS that each of us obtains from the insights provided by the other.

But back to the “silver spoon in my mouth.”

Even in that regard, we are strikingly similar.

Because George’s father was a blue-collar worker.

And my paternal grandfather was a janitor in the Saginaw MI public-school system. While my maternal grandfather was a farmer.

********************
The Rest of This E-mail Comprises Details You Can Skip Unless You Are Super-Curious

I never knew my paternal grandfather because he died of scarlet fever before the invention of penicillin long before I was born.

And I barely knew my maternal grandfather because he was nearly 80 years older than I was and passed away when I was a young teenager.

My maternal grandmother, Lillian Schreib, was his second wife following the death of his first wife who left him with 6 children, most of whom were still teenagers.

Lillian Schreib couldn’t be choosy because, although she was very intelligent and very attractive, she had caught a leg in a slamming screen door as a young teenager and the leg had to be amputated mid-thigh because of gangrene. Farmers are practical, so her “prosthetic” comprised solely a straight piece of wood whose end was carved to look like a foot. But it was nonetheless a “peg leg” that did NOT bend at the knee.

She gave birth to another 6 children, of which my Mom was the oldest.

And my Mom often accused her father of siring children for the sole purpose of creating unpaid slave laborers for his farm!!!

The local school only went through 8th grade.

But Lillian harbored dreams that every one of her children would finish high school.

So she made discreet inquiries and discovered that the end of the railroad line was in Tawas City MI, about 50 miles to the southeast. And that the local society was headed by its wealthiest citizen who was the Railroad Station Master. And that to assist his wife, he always employed two teenage girls as domestic servants for which they were “paid” room and board and the opportunity to attend the local high school.

Early that September while my grandfather was out in the fields, Lillian whisked my Mom away and presented her husband with a fait accompli when he returned after his hard day of labor!!!

My Mom loved school and finished at the head of her class.

Upon graduation, the Station Master’s wife asked my Mom what she would like to do next. She said that she had enjoyed school so much that she would like to become a teacher.

But the Station Master’s wife said that was NOT practical for someone in my Mom’s position and gave her a small amount of money with which she could attend a short course at Bliss Alger Secretarial School in Saginaw MI.

She became my father’s first secretary.

My father had always dreamed of being a minister.

Which seemed unrealistic for the son of an immigrant from Germany who had emigrated because of religious persecution of Methodists (Southern Germany is still virtually 100% Catholic and Northern Germany is still virtually 100% Lutheran, and neither tolerated Methodists).

Particularly unrealistic for the son of an immigrant who, after establishing himself as a janitor in the Saginaw MI public school system, wrote back to relatives remaining in Karlsruhe for a “mail order bride.” Anna Meister answered the call. And lived a hard life taking in washing from neighbors in order to keep the family together even before her husband passed away. [My father was the oldest of five children, all boys.]

BTW, my father was just completing fifth grade on 4/6/1917 when the U.S. joined World War I which had been underway for nearly 3 years. Like many, if not most, U.S. citizens of the Midwest, my father spoke only German -- public schools, church services, etc., had all been conducted in German. So along with many, if not most, U.S. citizens of the Midwest, he had to learn English overnight as a second language.

But back to his dream of becoming a minister, my father did not give up even when he had to work full time for a year after graduating from high school until his oldest younger brother graduated and could begin full-time work in order to support the family.

Then my father, like George Kunath, began working his way through college by not only working full-time during the summers but also working FULL-TIME during the academic years.

But after 3 years he was finally forced to give up his dream of becoming an ORDAINED minister.

Because his family needed him.

So instead of continuing with the 7-year program of a B.A. in Philosophy followed by 3 years of Divinity School, he cut the process short by a year by becoming an attorney instead.

[At that time, the University of Michigan had a 6-year combined program so that you could start law school after only 3 years of undergraduate study. If you passed your first year of law school, you received your undergraduate B.A. and two more years of law school later you had your law degree.]

He graduated in 1931, the depths of the Great Depression. He had done exceedingly well but was one of only 2 members of his class to land a legal job -- working for a 2-man firm back in Saginaw MI.

Two years later, a position opened in the Trust Department of Second National Bank of Saginaw MI.

Family lore has it that Second National was the only Michigan bank outside Detroit to survive the Great Depression. But that may only be family lore, like the family lore of U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) that she had Native-American ancestors.

Second National was where he was permitted his first secretary, my Mom.

He loved the work because he could combine it with his original ambition to be a minister. He had already volunteered his services as a free Legal Adviser to the Methodist Bishop. And had also begun to serve as a substitute minister when single-minister churches needed to let their pastors take vacation. And he was often invited back to give his presentation on “wills, estates and trusts” to the Men’s (and sometimes Women’s) groups.

So there was no mystery why he was able to rise to Head the Trust Department. And then switch over to become Chairman and CEO of the bank. Since this was before Bill Clinton repealed in 1999 the 1933 Glass Steagall Act requiring the separation of commercial banks (which did little more than take deposits and make loans) and investment banks (whose “bread and butter” until that time was public underwritings of stock and bonds, and mergers & acquisitions).

But back to the relationship of my Mom and Dad.

By this time my Dad was supporting his invalid widowed mother and an invalid brother. And it was still the depths of the Great Depression.

But he and my Mom enjoyed attending free concerts in the park and occasional splurging to share an ice cream cone.

However, my Mom had NOT given up on her dream of becoming a teacher.

So after a couple of years of scrimping and saving, she left to attend the University of Michigan.

My father would often visit on weekends. And they would attend the weekly concerts in Hill Auditorium.

[Yes, Arthur Hill, the Saginaw lumber baron after whom my high school was named, gave the money to build Hill Auditorium that has acoustics that rival Carnegie Hall and that is still used by U/Mich as its primary venue for cultural events.]

Four years later my Mom, who again had done extraordinarily well academically, was due to graduate.

My Dad asked her what she intended to do.

She replied that she had an offer to teach in Chicago that she intended to accept unless there was a better offer.

A better offer was immediately tendered.

She raised 4 children while, as mentioned in Q&A-17 of the First Short Quiz, being selected many times as Citizen of the Year for organizing many different groups that worked with unwed teenage mothers and with drug abusers, and for always “rolling up her sleeves” and “working in the trenches” as an ordinary volunteer in the groups she organized.

In addition, she worked herself to the bone to organize the Sunday School for our church, to organize city-wide after-school religious programs for children, and to provide a Summer-Vacation-Bible-School for the children of our church -- again “rolling up her sleeves” and working as an ordinary volunteer in each of those projects as well.

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Preliminary Conclusion

Yes, you are correct that I “was born with a silver spoon in my mouth.”

But it is interesting that each of my parents “pulled themselves up by their bootstraps” just like George Kunath did!!!

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How My Parents Insured Success For Their Children

I had an older sister and two younger brothers.

As already described, my parents believed in education, the more the better.

So all four of us wound up with graduate/professional degrees, most of us with multiple post-graduate degrees.

But your inquiry made me realize that there were more essential ingredients.

*****
First, of course, a strong religious belief that we should dedicate our lives to “loving our neighbors as ourselves” and doing everything we can for others.

*****
Secondly, hard work.

Which used to be called by historians “The Protestant Work Ethic” but which, because of George Kunath’s case, should have been accompanied by the term “Catholic Work Ethic”!!!

Digressing momentarily, you might be amused how my Dad instilled in me a “work ethic.”

In his only act of nepotism, he used his position as President of the Saginaw School Board to get me a summer job as an Assistant Janitor in the Saginaw Public Schools the first summer the child-labor laws permitted me to work.

Which is ironic because, as mentioned above, my paternal grandfather was a Janitor in the Saginaw Public Schools.

I hated the job, not because of the manual labor. But because I was cooped up in school basements for 8 hours/day for the entire summer!!!

But most importantly, my Dad made clear that if a summer ever arrived for which I had not already arranged other employment, I was going right back to being an Assistant Janitor in the Saginaw Public Schools!!!

Which lit a fire under me to obtain some interesting summer jobs.

Some of which were quite beneficial.

The next summer, 1960 following high school graduation, I was a lifeguard on Lake Michigan.

The next summer 1961 I worked on a German farm (Das Gut Postschwaige) for 10 weeks. After which I had 2 weeks free because the charter airplane operator discovered that it was more lucrative to stash all of us (there were quite a few others in the program who had worked elsewhere) in a Frankfort hotel while he flew arms to the dwindling forces of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo following his assassination!!!

So I went to Berlin for the 2 weeks instead of Frankfurt. When my overnight train from Munich arrived in Berlin, the papers had headlines screaming that overnight the Russians had just begun constructing a wall around West Berlin!!! Midway through my 2 weeks there, Vice President Lyndon Johnson arrived to give a speech of reassurance (President Kennedy’s famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech was NOT until 22 months later when the situation looked safe).

More than a million West Berliners crammed the Platz near Templehof, the airport that had enabled West Berlin to avoid Russian rule beginning 1948-1949 thanks to the Berlin Airlift only 12 years earlier. There was a cold drizzle and Lyndon Johnson was 3 hours late arriving!!! But he took the stage with West Berlin Mayor Willi Brandt (who later became Chancellor of West Germany). Willi grabbed the microphone first and said, pointing at the crowd – "It’s your fault we’re late because there are so many of you that we had to abandon our vehicle and it took 3 hours to push through 3 miles of crowds to get here on foot!!!”

BTW, while attending the 1972 Munich Olympics, I tried to find that German farm to see how they were doing. Which was easy because it was only 3 miles from the old U.S. airbase at Erding which was one of the 3 West German airbases that had been used in the 1948-9 Berlin airlift. And is today Munich’s commercial airport.

[The 1948-1949 Berlin Airlift had been the response of America and the Brits to Russia’s suddenly blocking the 3 land corridors from West Germany to West Berlin in violation of their military agreements with Russia at the end of World War II dividing Germany and Berlin (which was 100 miles INSIDE East Germany) into “occupation zones.” Instead of responding with armed convoys through the 3 land corridors as would have been proper under their military agreements with the Russians dividing Germany and dividing Berlin into “occupation zones,” America and the Brits responded with a massive airlift of supplies to West Berlin. The Russians did NOT shoot down the British and American aircraft for fear of provoking a general war. Because they probably thought their military forces of 1.5 million in East Germany guaranteed an easy takeover of isolated West Berlin without firing a shot. Several historical works dealing with the airlift report that it could never have worked under normal airport operating procedures that remain in effect worldwide today that if an airplane misses its landing, it flies around and tries again. The special procedure implemented for the 1948-1949 Berlin Airlift??? Fully-loaded cargo planes took off at 26-second intervals 24/7 from the British airbase at Hamburg and the American airbase at Munich -- so each plane had a 26-second window for landing at Templehof!!! And if a plane didn’t make it, IT IMMEDIATELY TURNED AND FLEW TO FRANKFURT FULL along with the successful planes that were flying out empty in the one-way-out air corridor to Frankfurt. After a bitter winter 1948-1949 in which Berliners cut down most of their beloved omni-present Linden trees (gorgeous full-bodied trees that grow to a height of 65-130 feet) for firewood to avoid freezing, the Brits and Americans proved that they could deliver more cargo on a sustained basis than had previously been transported through the land corridors. In large part this was due to modifying a wide avenue near Templehof and using it as an additional runway. Rather than escalate to a “shooting war” the Russians “threw in the towel” and lifted the blockade.]

In 1951, the family for which I was searching had come through Berlin as refugees, abandoning their farm near Leipzig in East Germany. And not realizing that Bavaria is Catholisch (while they were Evangelisch, aka Lutheran), they headed south and were incredibly lucky that anyone was even willing to rent them a farm, which in a few years they had purchased by sheer hard work.

The old patriarch was proud that he had two sons, one good with horses and the other good mechanically, so that they were ready for whatever the future would bring.

Dumb Old Me, I had thought Volker Werchau, the mechanical son, “would inherit the earth.”

Not so!!!

By 1972, Germany was exporting so many BMW’s, Mercedes, Porsches and Volkswagens that the Deutschmark was in great demand so the world could buy German cars. Which meant that the Deutschmark exchange rate was so high that farm products were flooding in from other countries and most German farmers had been bankrupted!!!

But I should have realized that when I partied with Juli Werchau and his equestrian friends every Saturday night that summer of 1961, and Juli and his friends all hung over the following Sunday mornings would get on their horses to compete in dressage (having their horses jump over obstacles), Juli almost always won!!!

By 1972, Das Gut Postschwaige had been transformed!!! Because Juli was so famous for his riding expertise that horse enthusiasts from Munich were flocking to Juli’s farm for lessons!!! And he was operating full tilt with breeding and boarding horses, and giving lessons in his indoor riding ring!!! The old farm house was now a guest house, with several posh wings having been added!!!

And Volker Werchau was running a gas station 3-4 miles away.

[BTW, over the years people who have trained at Das Gut Postschwaige have won Olympic Medals in Dressage.]

The summer of 1962???

An intermediate-boys camp counselor at the National Music Camp, Interlochen MI. A cabin full of boys to supervise during the evenings and overnight. And a waterfront instructor for life-saving and sailing during the day.

The summer of 1963???

A fraternity brother of mine and I borrowed my sister’s car and began bumming around out west. In other words, working road crews, mines, anything we could find. And in between gigs, spreading our sleeping bags by the side of the road. Eating dry cereal with powdered milk in the morning. And cans of baked beans accompanied by powdered milk in the evenings.

Toward the end of June, we had a gig moving a safe in Bozeman MT. It was 6 feet tall and 4 feet on each side and 3 men with crowbars had NOT been able to get it into their truck. I’ve forgotten whether we were in a union office or an unemployment office when the call came in for 2 more people. With 5 crowbars, we managed to get the safe into the truck. And it promptly fell through the floor and was resting on the truck’s frame!!! So it required infinitely more work to get it out of the truck at their destination.

The guys on the truck suggested that we take a swing through Yellowstone NP since the U.S. Government was still on June 30 Fiscal Years and there was bound to be a lot of road work as the appropriations for the new FY would have to be spent in the next 2 months or, under the “use it or lose it” appropriations process, there would be no more money the following year.

But no road crews in Yellowstone NP were hiring yet (“please leave a telephone number” but this was before cell phones!!!).

But as we were going out through Yellowstone’s North Gate, we happened to notice that it was the location of the Park Office. So we stopped in.

They were waiting for a telephone call from Washington to tell them the amount of their exact appropriation for their White Pine Blister Rust Control Crew.

For which they had long-since hired approximately 150 sons of important people so that, under the aforementioned “use it or lose it” policy, their full appropriation could be spent during July and August.

But they had left a “safety margin” of a few empty slots so that they wouldn’t have to fire the son of anyone important if the appropriation was a bit less than expected.

So we were told to come back in a few hours and we might get jobs.

We were the only 2 members of that 150-person crew that summer that had not been hired because we were the sons of important people.

BTW, white-pine blister rust control is a boondoggle that had been performed for ages at Yellowstone. A boondoggle because the tourists don’t know the difference between white pine and the zillions of other kinds of pine.

So you think that it is ecologically sound to preserve the white pine from the fungus that kills by spreading all over their trunks by killing all the ribe bushes (ribe is a genus that includes currants and gooseberries) within a quarter-mile of the white pine you are trying to protect???

You might want to consider that the rust-colored fungus that creates the “blisters” on white pine trunks is part of nature!!! And college kids running around killing ribe bushes are not!!!

But we were on first call for fire if the smoke jumpers couldn’t handle a wildfire.

And we spent 4 hours one of our first mornings creating a “fire line” which means swinging a Pulaski (a huge axe handle with, at the far end of the axe handle, an axe blade opposite a hoe blade) until you are a Zombie!!!

I can’t conceive how anyone could swing a Pulaski for 16 hours, sleep 8 hours, and go back to swinging a Pulaski for another 16 hours, etc., etc., until a fire is extinguished.

Luckily, 1963 was the first summer in the history of Yellowstone’s Blister Rust Control Crew that it was not called out for 2 summers in a row!!! Gott sei dank!!!

In case you’re wondering how a “fire line” is created with Pulaskis, you use the hoe blade to dig a trench approximately a foot wide and perhaps a foot in depth to remove anything that can burn. The axe blade is used to sever any roots because they can burn underground across your trench after you have re-filled it.

A fire line can stop cold any fire if there is no wind.

But if the wind is blowing, the fire can jump an interstate highway in the blink of an eye!!!

And you have to retreat and start creating a new “fire line.”

The summer of 1964???

A factory worker for General Motors, as described in Q&A-18 and Q&A-19 of the First Short Quiz.

The summer of 1965???

A Washington summer job as an Economics Consultant for Tyler Abell.

Tyler Abell always hired 6 Harvard Law School students with economics backgrounds and 6 Harvard MBA students each summer as Economics Consultants.

At that time, he was the Assistant U.S. Postmaster General for Facilities and each of our jobs was to figure out something that was important to find out, and then proceed to find it out.

By way of background, the U.S. Post Office during that era was NOT independent and was the favorite place for U.S. Presidents to warehouse temporarily their top political operatives.

Tyler Abell was the son of, if memory serves, a former U.S. Senator.

But more importantly, he was the biological son of Drew Pearson who was the Dean of the Washington Press Corps.

Tyler Abell was the spitting image (except younger) of Drew Pearson who openly embraced him in Washington society, who maintained stables for the ponies of Tyler’s children (Drew’s biological grandchildren) at Drew’s ranch, and who permitted Tyler to throw must-attend parties for official Washington at Drew’s ranch.

Tyler Abell had organized the 1964 Democratic Convention for President Lyndon Johnson.

And his wife, Bess Abell, was the Social Secretary for First Lady “Lady Bird” Johnson.

I decided that it would be a good idea to ascertain whether self-service post offices were economically justified.

Tyler Abell had just finished building three small free-standing postal units on small islands in shopping-center parking lots in Silver Spring MD, Atlanta GA and Anaheim Hills CA. With another under construction in Canoga Park CA. They were unmanned and featured candy machines adapted to vend postal commodities such as books of stamps, packs of postcards, etc.

I designed and implemented two surveys.

One to measure the impact of the units to ascertain whether there were any savings at the nearby conventional post offices that could justify the self-service units as a “supplement.”

They couldn’t.

The other to measure the cost of vending through conventional units postal products that were available at self-service units to ascertain whether the self-service units could be justified as a “substitute.”

Incredibly, the U.S. Post Office at that time had no idea how much their conventional vending costs were!!!

And my survey demonstrated that the costs of small and medium-sized post offices for selling postal products such as stamps WAS WELL OVER 100% OF THE REVENUE without even taking into account the costs of actually performing the services!!!

Additional studies???

(1) Other locations such as lobbies of post offices and office/apartment buildings, etc.

(2) Eliminating the cost of having a qualified equipment-repair person service the units 3-4 times/day.

Easy -- Since each unit had a mailbox that was serviced 3-4 times/day, just have an ordinary USPS truck driver who picks up mail from mailboxes in the neighborhood pull out any malfunctioning piece of equipment and replace it with a spare from the truck, bringing the offending piece of equipment back to the central office where a full-time repair person could spend 100% of her/his time actually doing solely repair work.

(3) Getting rid of change-making machines!!!

It turned out that the cost of the self-service units was typically only about 5% of the revenue (vs. far in excess of 100% for small and medium-size post offices).

But the overwhelming cost associated with the 5%-of-revenue cost was for stacking change in change-making machines!!!

And the Atlanta GA unit was across the street from a large apartment building whose residents drained our change-making machines every evening for their poker games!!!

No problem if you took the trouble to talk with the manufacturers of the equipment!!!

Both change-validating equipment and bill-validating units for any denomination, can be wired to an accumulator from which is deducted the cost of anything the customer selects, with any leftover “change” taking the form of small-denomination stamps.

What fun!!! Deciding where to travel and whom to consult and designing surveys, etc., etc. I could happily have spent a career doing such things!!!

The summer of 1966???

De-segregating schools in North Carolina for the U.S. Government. During the course of which I was within 60 seconds of being assassinated according to the North Carolina State Police.

[If you are curious about my having been within 60 seconds of being assassinated as a Civil Rights worker for the U.S. Gov, there is an 835-word description of what transpired available on http://www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org by scrolling down to the 5/18/2016 meeting on Harvard Prof. Matthew Desmond’s “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City” where the “Participants Comments” section contains a posting entitled “Legality/Morality of Analyzing/Advocating Self-Immolation” to which the first reply entitled “Indictment of the American News Media: Tom Brady = Exhibit A” begins with that 835-word description.]

The summer of 1967 after graduating???

Taking the NYS Bar Exam July 13-14 and reporting to U.S. Navy Officer Candidate School in Newport RI at noon on Sat July 15.

[We still had a military draft and this was only 2 years after the Gulf of Tonkin incident as we were rapidly building up from 20 thousand “advisers” in Vietnam to 625,000 uniformed combatants in-country Vietnam which did NOT include any of the personnel of the Naval ships bombarding from offshore and the Air Force B-52 bomber crews and support personnel located in Guam. No able-bodied person under 26 could be deferred any longer for anything past an undergraduate degree, including no deferrals for participation in the Peace Corps. Several dozen of my law school classmates joined me at Navy OCS.]

[NB: You didn’t want JAG Corps because the Navy recruited from the BOTTOM of the Harvard and Yale Law School classes in order to have a chance for career retention, so JAG would have been a “black mark” on your resume.]

*****
The Third Gift From My Parents For Success

The Gift of Gab!!!

My mother was raised on a farm before the widespread use of radio. So after a long day’s work, the only form of entertainment was to sit on the porch and gab.

Psychologists say that everyone’s personality is 90% her/his mother’s personality because you have spent most of your first five years with your mother.

I am Exhibit A. Though my kids call it a curse rather than a gift.

But digressing momentarily re getting others to gab???

Both of my parents were “strong as horse radish” that you don’t learn anything when your mouth is open. But they never had any lessons on how to get others to gab -- that was the other person’s responsibility.

In 1962, I met a person from Tecumseh MI who would become a life-long friend. He had two Cardinal Rules regarding how to get other people to talk –

(1) Everyone’s favorite topic of conversation is her/him-self, so think of a question to ask her/him about her/him-self and s/he will be off and running.

(2) Whenever s/he comes to a stop, just repeat the last 5-6 words s/he said with a question mark at the end, and s/he will be off and running again.

*****
The Fourth Gift From My Parents

A love for classical music in general and opera in particular.

Both of my parents were fabulous musicians!!! Both vocally and instrumentally!!! And both were superb pianists and superb organists!!!

[Indeed, there is standing next to my Steinway in the living room of my Utah ski house the antique reed pump organ on which my Mom learned to play as a youngster. It had been a wedding present from my grandfather to his first wife. And farmers being practical, when she died and he re-married, this time to my grandmother, he re-cycled the wedding gift.]

BTW I often thought my Mom was more intelligent than my Dad.

Not only because she was able to handle him so well.

But because of a trick she often employed while “sight reading” unfamiliar piano works such as piano reductions of operatic scores.

Which she often did with obscure operas to discover what they sounded like.

So what was her trick???

I noticed at a young age that when she was sight reading unfamiliar works, she never looked down at the key board!!!

So I asked her how she was able to do that!!!

Her explanation was simple!!!

You could not “sight read” unfamiliar works at tempo if you were constantly looking back and forth between the music and the keyboard because you will “lose your place” for both places.

So she had used her old secretary’s touch-typing ability!!!

You never have to look at the keyboard if you are using one of the 2 major keys or 2 minor keys that employ all of the piano keyboard’s 5 black keys that occur in each octave.

Because you anchor your hands using the feel of the black keys.

So she had long-since adopted the practice of glancing quickly at whether a particular aria or passage was in a major key or minor key.

In order to make a snap judgement of the closest major or minor key employing all 5 black keys per octave.

And then, without missing a beat, she would proceed to zip along at tempo while simultaneously transposing into the 5-black-key key (NB: that is NOT redundant) what she was sight reading.

*****
The Fifth Gift From My Parents

Bouquet tossing.

They wanted to hook me as a classical-music lover in general, and an opera lover in particular.

Knowing that I was a good athlete and figuring that tossing a bouquet is nothing more than “a baseball bat slipping out of your hands while hitting a home run to left field” they hatched their plan when I was only 9-10.

[Actually, the home run swing has to be modified slightly to avoid directional inaccuracy caused by releasing the bouquet a micro-second early or late, which is easily accomplished if your “swing” is actually pushing and then pulling the bouquet in a straight line instead of an arc.]

The reason why this turned out to be so important??? Bouquet tossing, that is, rather than modifying the swing.

All of my fund-raising for the “I Have A Dream”® Foundation and, at the request of the U.N. Under-Secretary General for the Environment, for UNEP (ref the old resume posted as Ref M in the third section of http://www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org) was the result of tossing more than 3,000 bouquets, mostly in Europe and mostly for opera stars but some for ballerinas.

Because virtually all of the world’s multi-billionaires are elderly widows who are bitter that they had to waste their lives as a slave to some tyrant!!! And now the tyrant is dead!!!

[Women live longer than men, especially men who have lived high-pressure lives.]

And their widows can’t believe their eyes that here is a male who is trying to help females by tossing bouquets!!!

So they want to meet you to find out what makes you tick!!!

And if you are a dapper dresser with impeccable manners who can talk circles around them on their favorite topics (the performing arts and the fine arts) without being obnoxious, you are a rare commodity whose attention they crave.

Competing with each other for it.

But you “never make an ask”!!!

As my friend from Techumseh MI described above, was careful to instruct.

Because if you ever ask, you have reduced your status to being a mere supplicant rather than remaining an equal-status friend.

Instead, you wait until each of your friends is feeling morose. Such as over the sudden death of a favorite grandchild.

And then you suggest OPPORTUNITIES. Such as the fact that the grandchild graduated from Whatever University and you just happen to know that Whatever University needs a new chemistry building and would be delighted to put the grandchild’s name over the door.

Whereupon your friend is grateful that you are so understanding.

But on those rare occasions when such a friend has no obvious recipient organization for a gift, you suggest recipients that most closely approximate her interests and wait for her to ask: “Aren’t you involved with something, and would they be interested in a donation.”

*****
The Sixth Gift From My Parents

Impeccable manners!!!

Which were acquired from my Mom.

Who acquired them from the Railroad Station Master’s Wife whom she served as a domestic servant while attending high school as described above.

For those rare occasions that 4 years of observation as a domestic servant did not address, my Mom always had her Etiquette by Emily Post ready to consult, just like the Station Master’s wife did on the rare occasions confronting her.

You’d be amazed how many of the super-wealthy widows described above would be curious regarding the source of my manners, which they almost always found were unusually impeccable.

I would always tell them about my Mom and the Station Master’s wife.

And most of them thought the tale was very charming.

********************
Final (vs. Preliminary) Conclusion

I hope I haven’t garbaged you with TMI.

However, surprisingly often people get to wondering about their parents and grandparents.

Particularly after they have passed away and it is too late to ask.

So I Carpe’d the Diem presented by your request to put together a little essay for my kids to read after I have gone, in the event (however unlikely that may turn out to be) that they decide they are interested.

So thank you again for your inquiry.

Your friend,

John K.

[Pat]

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During John’s description of summer jobs during his student days, he mentioned that the summer before his last year of law school, he was within 60 seconds of being assassinated according to the North Carolina State Police while working for the U.S. Government to de-segregate North Carolina’s public schools.

He referenced an 835-word essay describing the episode in case anyone is curious.

For convenience, the 835-word essay is as follows --


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5/18/2016 Meeting on Harvard Prof. Matthew Desmond’s “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City”

Participant Comments

Legality/Morality of Analyzing/Advocating Self Immolation

Response entitled “Indictment of Amn News Media - Tom Brady = Exhibit A”

Indictment of Amn News Media - Tom Brady = Exhibit A
Posted by solutions » Wed May 04, 2016 7:39 am

This is the material referenced above by John Karls which contains an 835-word description of how, according to the North Carolina State Police, he was within 60 seconds of being assassinated during the Summer of 1966 as a member of the first U.S. Government team sent to dismantle the de jure dual-school system of the Old Confederacy.

It was posted on our website in connection with our 2/11/2015 meeting on “Losing Our Way: An Intimate Portrait of a Troubled America” by Bob Herbert (Doubleday 10/7/2014).

John used the Tom Brady imbroglio to illustrate the moral bankruptcy of the Amn news media while placing the issue in a sports context (rather than a public-policy context) so that the reader could focus on the issue without being distracted by the feeling that her/his “ox is being gored.”


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Tony Reali (GoodMorningAmerica-ESPN) and Lynching Tom Brady
Posted by johnkarls » Fri Jan 23, 2015 5:28 pm

This might seem as frivolous an item as Q&A-6 of the First Short Quiz, which was intended to get readers to lighten up.

However, this is intended as deadly serious.

Because a huge problem faced by “A Troubled America” that has “Lost [Its] Way” is that we have a media that is dominated, if not completely saturated, by “talking heads” who are “regurgitators” rather than “thinkers”!!!

The problem, of course, is that American education (whether K-12, university or grad school) rewards with good grades students who do nothing more than “regurgitate” whatever their teachers and professors say!!!

That’s fine if the subjects happen to be science or mathematics.

But any other subjects, and we have nothing more than trained “regurgitaters” who are almost invariably incapable of thinking!!!

Which is the “bed rock” reason why America is where it is!!!


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Reason No. 1 For Citing the Lynching of Tom Brady as Exhibit A

All of my life, I have been very sensitive to lynchings.

Not only because of the racial aspects that are often involved.

But also because of my love for the law and how, even if the law occasionally gets something wrong, at least there is an orderly process for considering the facts.

With respect to the latter, the mainstream media has become a howling lynch mob screaming for the head of New England Patriot’s Quarterback Tom Brady IN THE WORST AMERICAN TRADITION OF LYNCH MOBS REFUSING TO STOP AND THINK!!!

With respect to the former (racial aspects) -- full disclosure here (though not disclosed on the resume that is posted as Ref M in the third section of this bulletin board because it only involved a summer job), I was according to the North Carolina State Police within 60 seconds of being assassinated in Bertie County NC while working for the U.S. government to desegregate schools during the Summer of 1966 before my last year of law school. This was only 2 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 2 years BEFORE the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy.

The details of the near assassination???

I was a member of the first U.S. Governmental Task Force formed to dismantle the dual-school systems of the 11 states of the Old Confederacy plus six more Southern States that had also established De Jure Dual School Systems

[It still breaks my heart to remember how bleak and squalid were the physical conditions of the segregated schools that African Americans were forced to attend, though we did not witness the schools in operation since this was during the summer.]

Our Task Force was divided into 17 teams, each focusing on a different state. Mine was North Carolina.

Even though we were based in Washington DC with offices in old CCC barracks on the Washington Mall (the only office space available on short notice), we spent half of each week on location in the state to which we were assigned.

Toward the end of the summer, I was in Bertie County, NC.

Our teams were always integrated. So I had a partner (I regret no longer remembering his name) and both of us were always amused at how everyone never failed to evacuate the motel swimming pool in a panic as soon as he jumped in for his laps at the end of each work day.

Our last evening in NC that week, he suggested after his laps that we should go across the highway to the Tastee Freez to get something to eat.

This Tastee Freez also functioned as a “drive in” and there immediately piled in the door after us about 15-20 mean-looking angry men who apparently had been waiting in their cars to be served.

Nonetheless, my partner suggested playing a pin-ball machine in the back corner as soon as we got our food, and the proprietor countered by giving us our change in pennies that, of course, would not fit the coin slot for the pin-ball machine.

Accordingly, we quickly came to the realization that it would be best to retreat forthwith.

I fell in behind my partner to ensure he had the best chance of escaping.

All of the mean-looking angry men began sticking out their feet trying to trip us.

When we finally reached the door, I noticed that the last person looked a bit smaller than I was, so I purposely tripped over his foot, spilling my milk shake all over his clothes and then, giving him an apologetic smile, said “I’m sorry, I tripped” and was out the door.

We ran across the highway.

Within 20 seconds of our departure, there were 3-4 state-trooper squad cars with red lights flashing.

The troopers told us that in their judgment, we were within 60 seconds of being killed (literally) at the moment we exited the Tastee Freez.

They also admitted that they weren’t particularly interested in protecting us -- that they had been summoned by the proprietor of the Tastee Freez who was afraid that his property would be destroyed.

There was no further incident during the night, presumably because the state troopers kept a close eye on the motel at the behest of its proprietor who also feared property damage.

Two footnotes.

First, my partner and I were never impolite to anyone or provoked anyone in any way except by our presence.

Second, the policy of our Task Force was always to stay in a motel at least 20 miles away from the community with whose school officials we were meeting. Accordingly, it is most likely that we were threatened by men who happened to be in their cars waiting to be served at the Tastee Freez Drive-In when we happened to enter. However, it is possible that we had been tracked the 20-or-so miles from the community on which we were focusing.


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Reason No. 2 For Citing the Lynching of Tom Brady as Exhibit A

Yes, it is true that if I had been assassinated in North Carolina in 1966, both the lynch mob and I did know the reason why they wanted to assassinate me = I had entered an unlabelled “white only” establishment with a U.S. government partner who was African American. ["White only" labels had been outlawed 24 months earlier for "public accommodations" such as the Tastee Freez and such as the motel across the highway by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.]

But, on the other hand, Tom Brady…