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Life's Little Experiences |
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My kids found this picture of me in
uniform;
I wrote the following for them. What a flood of, fuzzy, memories that old army picture has evoked. Puzzled, bemused, I repeatedly put it aside, then looked at it – trying to recapture or reconstruct what it was that caused the three of us to look so uniformly content and serene. Then – in fragments – I remembered: For sure, it was taken in Austria.
Pat Meaney and Limey (his last name was (is?) Marshall) were the only men in my squad who had made it through the war with me. All the others, original squad and some replacements, had been wounded or killed. Well, one replacement had deserted; he simply wasn’t there one morning, and no one ever heard from or about him. Because he was of Russian descent and spoke with an accent, we assumed he had decided to join the Red Army, which wasn’t far to the east. Kirschner, the guy who took the picture, was a recent replacement (from Lima, Ohio), had been in a firefight or two with the three of us and had sensed our closeness. Hence, his "three stooges" notation on the back of the picture. Meaney had served in another squad, but he so irritated his sergeant that the sgt was glad to approve Pat’s request to be transferred to my squad. Pat was a nervous, frightened, but brave young man. He was wounded (in the heel, I seem to remember) and was sent to a field hospital. When he learned that the batch of wounded to which he was attached was to be sent to the rear, he ran away from the hospital and found his way to my frontline position. I suspect that the contented smile on each of our faces reflects both relief that the European war was over and the intimacy which had developed after having shared several . . . uh, memorable . . . experiences. Really? Decades ago, one of the young reporters working for me accompanied me when I spoke to a group of Japanese businessmen one day and to a group of German engineers the next day during a national conference. He learned quickly that cultural differences do make it possible to establish generalizations about at least some aspects of ethnic groups. Traditionally, Japanese groups attending a 6-hour seminar, for example, take notes for four or five hours, saving their questions till the end of the session. Over several years of speaking to Japanese, both in this country and in Japan, I had learned to persuade my audiences to ask questions every 30 minutes or so, as each sub-topic was covered. Japanese politeness prevailed even under that Americanized format, and they worked hard to make it clear they weren't being discourteous or interrupting. My reporter-companion experienced several hours of the gentility characteristic of Japanese in such contexts. "They are so discourteous," he observed about the Germans I addressed the second day, when within minutes my Teutonic audience began interrupting and offering contentious challenges and kept it up for most of the seminar. The Germans weren't discourteous, I explained. In their culture it is not impolite to openly question interlocutors -- even though German scientists, engineers, professional employees still behave in a manner Americans consider subservient when dealing with their superiors in the workplace. Yes, there are bellicose Japanese and gentle Germans, but it is neither offensive nor invalid to note that, generally, Germans differ from Japanese differ from Americans. -- FJV 30 Aug 06 Making it
in America
All of which came flooding back when re-reading Shelby Steele's book about being a middle class Black in America. [See] -- Aug 2006
What kind of wine is this? We asked the waitress to get the name of the wine for us. She left and returned a minute or two later to announce proudly that the wine was "parmigiano," which of course is the name of a sauce. As we left the restaurant, we asked the owner the name of his house wine, and he answered, "Paul Mason" (pronounced mah-sohne).
Wife Muriel chases Governor
Engler I alerted Muriel, who ran down the stairs shouting, "Governor! Governor!" Over the objection of his aides, she persuaded Engler to visit our reception. A pleasant surprise for him --and a plus for us because it seemed to make the governor stay longer -- was that he recognized our association's legal counsel, who happened to be a major player in the Michigan Republican Party. "What's next," the association president asked Muriel, "are you going to get President Bush for us?" A couple of years later, Muriel arranged to have the governor's wife, Michelle, address an awards banquet of the Royal Oak Business Women's Network, at Red Run Golf Club. In the small talk during networking and dinner before Mrs. Engler spoke, there was much humorous conversation about a Royal Oak redhead chasing Michigan's governor in the Lansing Sheraton. Book-learning
versus skilled hands? The human dimension here was that my physicist-colleague was an intellectual snob who wondered how I could expect a bunch of mechanics to create the setup before he had specified materials of construction, pipe thickness, valve configurations, diaphragm dimensions, pump pressures, joining methods. My mechanic-friends derisively belittled the ability of a theoretician to understand how such a complex assortment of components should be selected and assembled in the real world. On show-and-tell day we all met in the model shop. The physicist was astounded to see an apparatus which was 90% ready to provide what I needed, and the mechanics were amazed at how similar the physicist's design-drawings were to their shop-sketches and to the apparatus they had built. This isn't a fairy tale, so they didn't live happily ever after, but the mutual respect which developed between the book-guy and the skilled hands served the company well for several years. Growth of the Middle Class slows social
mobility Some observers express concern, see this slowdown as something to worry about. Others contend that because more people have moved into the Middle Class (the largest economic class in developed countries), most of them remain in that class throughout their life. A personal memory
puts faces on this dialogue: After the family visit, he said, "You must have a sense of movement and progress in your life. I was born Middle Class and I expect to die Middle Class, so I don't feel that sense of movement." So it is with us and with those of our children now "stuck" in the Middle Class. Our sense of accomplishment comes, not from social mobility, but from satisfaction with work, gratification in volunteer activities, enjoyment of hobbies. People are still moving up to the Middle Class; social mobility continues.
A story in black
& white "I can't make it through a day without being reminded that I'm a Negro," Dave said quietly, then sadly added, "The only reaction to that is resentment or resignation, and neither is healthy." Just the other day, a black deliveryman brought a document to my door, then asked if I knew where ____ Street is in Royal Oak. I didn't know and since it was cold outside, I invited him into my study to look at a couple of street maps. He commented about the Lincoln portrait and about my wall of books. As he left, he said, actually he questioned: "You didn't hesitate to invite a black stranger into your home?" The more things change . . .? -- 20 Dec 2006 |
Interesting tidbits,
appropriate in a vanity
publication, which pop up as I browse through old records
and files.
Recollections upon seeing an old army photograph Book-learning versus skilled hands? The Middle Class & Social Mobility |
Only a few nights
before the picture would have been taken, there had been a heavy thunderstorm,
loud and with distant lightning, and many of us had shouted with joy because
those sounds and flashes could not be from artillery, ours or theirs.