For
years, as I read along on popular non-fiction books, magazines, newspapers; I have
jotted down dates and factoids which are of interest to me on scraps of paper,
notecards, and what have you; and kept them in a file, pasted them into
notebooks, etc.[1]
Since authors
regularly use dates and time incidents to make their points, I am lucky in this
regard. Rather than just let the date or the factoid pass, I extract them and
re-assemble them into timelines.
For me, ordering facts into timelines is
like a “spatial” tool for my brain, it IS like a map through time. Timelines enable trajectories or conjunctions
of seemingly unrelated incidents. Small events sometimes grow and, over time, become
more related and more meaningful. Paths
become roadways of cultural confluence and collide with others causing
struggles or flow together defining future directions.
A number
of years ago, I began using the generational cycles which social historians
William Strauss and Neil Howe presented in their work THE FOURTH TURNING[2]
to organize my timelines and so present and use their work in this book.
As David
Brooks said, “Each generation travels across their own moral terrain[3]”
and you can see the reality of this insight in these timelines.
Recently
I have been writing a multi-generational family memoir and found that these
timelines and commentaries linked our small, family memoir to the much broader
sweep of history. They helped give me much needed context which provided motives
for family actions, even many generations back.
For
example, what would motivate my great-great-great grandfather and grandmother immigrate
from Sweden in 1848? The timeline
revealed the great sales job by the railroad “Robber Barons” that brought
millions of European immigrants who bought into these sales pitches and were
drawn by a hope for a future. The reality was that the sales pitch was too good
to be true. My great-great-great grandpa and his wife and their two-year old
son nearly died in a dug-out hovel outside Elgin, IL. But they survived despite American greed and
because of grit and this story is not uncommon.
The timeline helped out again in
helping me understand why my father quit his well-paying job as the General
Manager of the Denver Milk Producers Association (DMPA) in 1964 and suddenly
moved our family? All he ever said was that he didn’t think “the dairy business
should be in politics.” I was only sixteen at the time and never asked why we
had to move – we just moved.
With the
timeline, I discovered that, as the GM of the DMPA he would have been an
executive of the Associated Milk Producers of America (AMPA) who decided in
1964 collect $2 million from member associations to illegally contribute to Richard
Nixon’s election campaign. These became the “bribes” from the Dairy Industry
which led to Watergate. The fact was, if my father not resigned when he did and
had gone along with the scheme as some of his contemporaries did, he too may
have wound up in prison for violating Federal campaign laws.
A small
family matter was actually part of a larger historical story if you are aware
of the context and connection.
I start
this book with Walt Whitman’s “The Song
Of The Open Road” (1852) because in 1852, shortly after my family
immigrated and bought into the American “dream”, the road to the future seemed
“open”. In fact, to the millions who came to America there was in fact a
different kind of future than was available anywhere else in the world.
Over the
years, this American “open road” has been crossed by many competing economic,
religious and eventually political forces trying to shape the American future.
Read
Whitman’s “Song of the Open Road” - Whitman
says as much:
Now understand me well – it is provided in
the essence of things that
from any
fruition of success, no matter what, shall
come
forth something to make a greater struggle
necessary.
My call is the call of battle, I nourish
active rebellion,
He is going with me must go well armed,
He is going with me goes often with spare
diet, poverty, angry enemies, desertions.
The
American road is a struggle and a real culture war at times. The work of
Strauss and Howe show us the pattern of this struggle and the timelines show
how optimism or struggle changes from generation to generation.
Recently
I have been reading “Chokehold” by Paul Butler, “The Unwinding” by Geoge Packer. “Hillbilly Elegy”, by J.D. Vance, “The
Road to Character” by David L. Brooks.
“One Summer: America 1927” by Bill Bryson. “The Chickenshit Club” by Jesse Eisinger. And, others. And, as is
my habit, I have extracted factoids from these books to add to my timelines.
As I
looked over my recent timelines containing contributions from these (and other)
works, I saw that since 1860, some important
qualities of what it means to be an American have changed. Many authors express
concern about how America has changed and detail our current situation. But,
none of us know what to do.
I offer these timelines because of Alexi de
Toqueville writing in Democracy In
America (1835): “Since the past has
ceased to throw its light upon the future the mind of man wanders in
obscurity…”
So,
perhaps these timelines will throw the light of the past upon our future and we
will no longer wander. One of the great
things about the American past is that an individual may change the course of
history. Americans are poised to overthrow the tyrant once again. That like my
great-great-great grandpa, there is grit.
To
remind us of this fact, I have included in the 1960s commentaries section, a portion
of a chapter from Rachael Carson’s book Silent
Spring[4]
entitled “The Obligation to Endure”.
Here is just a few words from that piece:
The public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the
present road, and can only do so when it is in full possession of the facts. In
the words of Jean Rostard’s time: ‘the obligation to endure gives us the right
to know.’”
The
“present road” to which Carson referred was the road as defined by DDT, leaded
gasoline, and chemical agriculture. It was the first time that a world wide
environmental catastrophe had been identified. Carson gave us the facts, and
the American people decided what to do. The government created the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), DDT was banned, lead was taken out of
gasoline and autos re-designed, and consumers created an organic “movement”
which continues today.
In this
generation, something has changed in the character of our American culture, our
values and virtues have changed, or perhaps some agent is “blocking” our
ability to find truth. Debt has thickened our shells. Hope has become almost
impossible. Anger is palpable in our communities.
In a
similar way that Carson saw a change in the physical environment and studied
what had caused the symptoms. I hope these timelines will be helpful in our
research.
Change
is possible. I own some farms which 10 years ago were farmed with industrial,
chemical ag.
We
transitioned to organics that it took three years for the soil to begin to
heal, for life to re-enter. But the natural world was all around us. It takes a
cycle which soil scientists knew.
Many
social scientists are working to determine what that healing process is in our
culture, the means by which our neighborhoods and communities can renew
themselves. Like organic farms, disease
and death will simply drift away after several years of a community process.
-
Jean Yeager, Labor Day 2018
[1] Nearly 20
years ago, I started teaching classes on “biography” or personal history, and I
created timelines as a helpful memory tools.
[2]
THE FOURTH TURNING
[3]
AMERICAN CHARACTER, David L. Brooks,
[4]
SILENT SPRING, Rachael Carson,
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