Review of ARTHUR COLLINS RADIO WIZARD by Ben Stern

 

ArtthurCollins Radio Wizard by Ben W Sterns

Ben Sterns worked as a public relations executive for Collins Radio for fifteen years and he has assembled here an exhaustive coverage of the life of Arthur Collins and the development of his company.  Collins Radio began as provider of ham radio equipment and before it was sold to Rockwell International it had become a giant in the world of electronic storage and communication.  Art Collins did not invent the concept of communication by wire or through the air, but by the end of his life in 1977, he was recognized world over as belonging right up with Guglielmo Marconi, as  one its major developers.   

Stern’s book is not a mass market tour of the career of a famous businessman. It logs the company’s operations minutely right down to technical details and product serial numbers.  A general reader will not be excited by a lot of this, but do not let that scare you off.  The story of the man behind this technical curtain proves that he was indeed a wizard.  

Collins was born in 1909 and by the 1920’s was already fiddling with crystal sets in the attic of his parent’s home in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It was there he started his first ham radio business and it didn’t take him long to outgrow manufacturing his units in the family’s basement. By 1933-34 he had a rented location in town. His name was already becoming a byword in the industry because his transmission equipment was on board and functioning when Admiral Richard Byrd embarked on his Antarctic expedition.  Over the next years Collins Radio built a reputation for providing high quality products that could perform even under the most challenging of conditions.

One thing that comes through in the book is that Art Collins was a driven man. He was devoted above all to experiment, improvement, and ultimately perfection in every product he made and sold. To that end he hired talented employees and expected them to be as driven as he was. No executive stayed long at Collins if they could not become accustomed to being called on a Sunday morning or in the middle of the night to report for work in the lab or to have a committee meeting. The only piece of humor about him cited in the entire book was from 1950. He was asked by a reporter “How many people you got working for you now?”  Art’s answer, “About half of them.”

WWII provided the juice that moved Collins out of the ham radio niche and into the world of large government contracts. The war needed airplanes and those planes needed to be able to communicate privately with each other and to their bases on the ground. Collins literally invented the radios that could do that and by war’s end his company was a world leader in aviation electronics. An interesting sidelight to this was that the assembly lines in Cedar Rapids that produced his equipment during the war years were held together by women—many from Iowa’s Amana Colonies. Arthur discovered that with smaller fingers and skills in fine sewing work the women could do accurate electronic assembly jobs better than men. Civilian air traffic mushroomed after the war and Collins equipment anchored the construction of the nation’s air traffic control system and by the early sixties it was the largest supplier of aviation electronics in the world.

Never resting on his laurels, Art Collins piggybacked next on the discovery of solar radio waves and radio-astronomy. His company designed, built, and installed massive receiving dishes for astronomical research and long-range communication all over the world. He also managed to revolutionize marine navigation by inventing something called the radio-sextant that made it possible for ships and even nuclear submarines to know their exact position even when no sky was visible or the sub was underwater. This was one of the key elements in our entire defense posture as it enabled nuclear submarines to stay underwater for extended time periods without ever re-surfacing and thus being almost impossible to track.

The continuation of major government contracts continued on into 1970’s with Collins Radio building facilities in Texas and California as well as Cedar Rapids, IA. (where the company was now the city’s largest employer.)  NASA’s space program was heating up and Collins engineers supplied the audio and video transmission equipment for the Apollo program that culminated in live pictures from the surface of the moon. With the Space Program’s success assured, Collins leaped ahead to work on high-speed computers and network communication. He began pouring large sums of money into research in this area, but unfortunately profitability dropped as the research bills skyrocketed.  Other entities saw weakness and began to make buyout and merger offers. Art’s vision was accurate, but too far ahead of its time.  With his health deteriorating and the business under stress, he was finally edged out of the president’s chair and the company was folded into a new consortium. Happily, they did keep the Collins name alive and the signs now say Rockwell Collins Aerospace.

As noted in my introduction, this book contains considerable amounts of names of many executives and engineering researchers as well as details of products that are somewhat technical in nature. This slowed me down, but will not hamper a reader who has a more advanced technical background. It does not obscure in any way the fact that Art Collins built a multi-million dollar company that had a major impact on the nation’s military capabilities, helped put the country on the moon, impacted the computer age, and brought the joy of clear, long-range radio communication to the masses. He was indeed a wizard.

I give it a 4 out of 5.

 

Reviewing Cassidy Hutchinson's Enough

 

Enough by Cassidy Hutchinson

There is a difficulty in writing an autobiography about your own heroism. It is hard to escape the occasional pitfall of self-congratulation. It is also hard to eliminate extraneous mundane detail, like the bagel flavor you like best or your preferred fizzy water. I presume these details are added to emphasize her ordinariness, but it is hard to forget this was someone who managed to be stationed a few paces from the office of the president of the United States.

Hutchinson lists no ghost writer to help her develop a personal style and color and her narrative, while interesting for its closeness to power, tends to be a bit flat especially in the early stages. There is a lot of “and this happened and then that happened.” The prose is clear, but falters in its physical descriptions and her sense of her own motives and of the people around her.    

Although she did indicate that Rudy Guiliani pawed her and Matt Gatz was consistently trying his luck, she does not draw any connections to the toxic male sexual world she was living in and her own experience with an absentee father. She spent a good deal of her early life trying to re-establish real content with this man and at a critical point went to his home, discovered it empty, with no forwarding address. Shortly after that she began her years of trying to ease and organize the lives of two more power hungry and heartless men—Donald Trump and Mark Meadows.

It is not until we get to the story of her subpoenas and her various public and private testimony sessions that the book becomes more compelling. It is not until the end of Chapter Ten that she records her first sense of something rotten in the Trumpian dream world. The president suggests light highlights in her hair would suit her better.  He compliments her after she tries it and she accepts his praise. Shortly after that, she does note that she decided to quietly return “to the dark side.”  I would have loved more comment on the significance of that mention.

A bit further on, her immediate boss, Mark Meadows, asks her if she would take a bullet for the president. She answers jokingly—"only in the leg”. As they continue walking down the hall, she says that she asked Meadows the same question. He replied, “I would do anything to get him re-elected.”  And thereby hangs the crook of the book and all the multiple sycophants who would do anything to stay on the right side of their cultish and never a loser leader.

Her turnaround gains steam when she begins to hear that some of Trump's enablers are starting to fish for pardons. On January 6^th she reports that the president wanted to let armed people into the rally location, then voices a willingness to let his Vice President be hung, and then tries vainly to get the secret service to take him to the riot he created. Finally, after waiting and watching on TV for more than two hours and rejecting appeals to intercede, she labels Trump's appeal for the rioters to go home as half hearted. 

Her final decision is made as she reads Bob Woodward’s book Last of the President’s Men. This was the story of Alexander Butterfield, who exposed the taping system in the White House, that set up the demise of Richard Nixon. Butterfield’s example, she said, gave her the backbone to adjust her earlier testimony and go on to answer all questions fully and truthfully.

There are certainly some choice tidbits in this book, but you can skim through a lot of it. It remains for me a sad story of a very young woman thrust into the cynical center of political power. She is under great stress and is compelled to please. Then, at a major turning point, she does manage to become one of the few in the Trumpian inner circle to find and use a moral compass.    

I give the book a 3 out of 5.

 

Review of SOMETHING ROTTEN AT Theatre Cedar Rapids

Something Rotten is the kind of show that you cannot take seriously.  You must let it roll, laugh lots, cringe occasionally, and then just enjoy. There is nothing smelly at all about this jiving jumping musical now on view at Theatre Cedar Rapids. It is not the first or the only musical take off on the Bard, but it does rock. Your best introduction to seeing this show is a neat You Tube cut of “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” from  Kiss Me Kate.  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJIpp2Jj8AQ) You can then ease into this show's plot that follows the creation of the greatest play of all time—Omelette. Just remember you can't make anything happen unless you break a few eggs. 

Nick Bottom, Shakespeare’s proverbial jackass, has a brother who wants to be a poet and needs a big hit to bring success against the competition from that cool dude, the bard himself. Bottom consults a soothsayer and discovers that all he needs to do is cut the tragedy out of Romeo and Juliet and add music and dancing. Then you get a good Puritan villain and you are all set.

While keeping an Elizabethan flavor, Wayne and Karey Kirkpatrick manage to give homage to the sound or name of almost every musical ever written. There are snippets of theme music, the mention of plots, the names of characters, the titles of blockbusters, and even signature dance motifs from tap dancing to the traditional chorus line from surprise! surprise! Chorus Line.  

The lighting is flashy, the costumes including a bunch of false beards and breakaways, are wildly colorful, and the scenery wagons roll on and off efficiently propelled by costumed stage personnel. Not a second is wasted. The bouncy score was too loud for my tastes, but it had the younger set rising up and shouting. Technically, the production was led by magnificent and energetic choreography. Megan Helmers is credited, but I could find nothing in the program about her background. It is obviously superlative and the hoofing in several styles shows that the Cedar Rapids area has a large well of dance talent. The only thing missing was a “dream ballet.”    

Kudos also goes to director Matt Hagmeier Curtis who clearly knows how to put a large cast, with no glaring weak spots, through its paces.  Calvin Bowman, decked out in leather pants and long sideburns is cool to the core and like his namesake a master of disguise. Brandon Burkhardt, who I loved as the Tin Man in Wizard of Oz, puts in another stellar performance as Nick Bottom. Katelyn Halverson looks the part of Portia all the way, but I felt was a victim of the amplification system. Her voice seemed to come off as unnecessarily shrill through the speakers. One can only wish that modern actors could carry the day better without artificial amping up of their voices in order to survive above the electronics of the score.

The fast-talking character work of Greg Smith as Nostradamus and Aaron Pozdol as Shylock were also victimized somewhat by the amplification. They talked fast and loud, but the articulation didn't seem crisp enough--though I am first to admit that my hearing is not what it used to be.     

Then there is the ending. The Omellette number is hard to top for pzazz of the first order and that leaves the Finale a tad soft. My suggestion for a final visual that might put a better exclamation point on the show would be a new drop or projection of the "new world" New York harbor with the Statue of Liberty standing tall. The core idea of the show is the American invention of the musical as a popular genre and where was that done?  In New York on Broadway, of course. So, let's cross fade out of Mr. Visscher's view of the Thames in 17th century London to the real new world. This is just something for Matt to think about if he has the chance to do this show again.

Congrats to the entire company.  It was a blast.   Jim De Young 2/20/24

 

Review of The Which of Shakespeare’s Why by Leigh Light

The Which of Shakespeare’s Why is a comic take on the historic Shakespeare authorship quest. It has a play within a novel, good and bad puns, some overblown characters, and an Artificial Intelligence sub-plot that is torn right out of the interests of today’s tech startups. Right off the bat the author’s name, Leigh Light, would appear to be an androgenous “nom de plume” and the cast of characters includes an abundance of aliases and some cross dressing. All of this suggests that at least part of the spoof is aimed at Shakespeare’s plays regardless of who wrote them.

The main character, Harry Haines, is a frustrated aspiring actor who is cast as Hamlet in the initial production of a new New Jersey repertory company.  Just before rehearsals get under way, the major angel runs off with his mistress and takes his money with him. Faced with financial disaster even before the first production, Lance, the ever-resourceful director, tries to save the day by recruiting the also wealthy jilted wife of the first money machine. This woman will turn the cash faucet back on if there is benefit for her technology company and a part in the first production. Lance offers the role of role of Queen Elizabeth in the play.  

“Wait a minute” you might say.  “Queen Elizabeth the first, or the second for that matter, is not in Hamlet.”  This confusion may be based on the fact that the Queen was seen as attending a play at the Globe in that cuddly romantic fiction movie titled “Shakespeare In Love”. Dame Judi Dench even won an award for it. Whatever!  To accommodate the new money fountain, a re-write of the bard’s script is necessary. Harry, our lead in Hamlet, for some inexplicable reason, is hired to do the job. He is given the name of Mr. Bottom. Get it!  After which he is plopped in a fancy hotel suite overlooking Central Park and given a pile of money to write a new Shakespearean masterpiece called “The Which of Shakespeare’s Why.” This includes a role for Queen Elizabeth and a slew of other Shakespeare characters like Lear’s daughters, who just happen to saunter by.

 Another requirement is to highlight the 14^th Earl of Oxford. This nobleman will be revealed at the opening, which takes place at New York’s famous Radio City Music Hall, as the author of all the plays now attributed to William Shakespeare. There is a good scene when Harry/Bottom has a drunken conversation with Will’s statue in Central Park, but the long passages that discuss the work of Stratfordian Shakespeare scholars will probably leave most readers cold. You may also find some of the strange druggy sentence structure hard to decipher. The Radio City Rockettes in sequined panties playing some of King Lear’s daughters give us some sex, but the characters created by Mr. or Ms. Light mainly end up having less weight than Shakespeare’s. Even with a pretty good surprise ending, this was still a slog.  

I give it 2.5 stars

What My Mother Told Me or How I Almost Failed Kindergarten

 

I am trying to write up little pieces of memories that will be incorporated in a fuller biography at some point. I did this one for our writing group this past week. 

Not too long ago, I read a brief essay by Robert Reich that told of his expulsion from his day care center when he was a small boy.  Young Bob had refused to eat another tasteless lunch prepared by the dragon-lady proprietor of the school and she had cashiered him out and sent him back to his parents with the dire warning that he was a petulant smart-ass and would never amount to anything. Granted that poor Oliver Twist had wanted a bit more gruel, but the Dickensian echoes do remain.  

Child nursery school behavior has also come up in the PBS Doc Marten series. I remember an episode where the Marten’s young son and only child, James, attracted teacher and parental concern when he did not appear to mix easily with the other children.  This James, like young Bob, was small in stature, but was basically shy rather than outspoken.

All of which leads me into one of my own early confrontations in the educational realm. This story was told to me by my mother a number of times when I was growing up and was the result of my still active penchant not to suffer fools gladly.  In the 1940’s the Milwaukee school system gave a competence test to all kindergarteners before promoting them to first grade. I suspect it involved such things as taking simple words or pictures and putting them into categories or crossing out things that did not belong in a group.  It was a late spring afternoon in  1943 that my mother said she received an urgent and concerned message from my kindergarten teacher and could she please come to the school for a conference at her earliest convenience. 

She diligently turned up the next day right after school with me in tow. The teacher, whose name was Miss Van Raalte, was probably around twenty-five and single although I no doubt thought she was a grouchy old maid. No matter. My mother said she was told that I had refused to complete the required promotion test and would be kept back in kindergarten for another semester if I did not pass it. Not only had I refused to do the required test, I had loudly asserted that I had done all of those exercises before and it was stupid to keep doing them over and over again.

Luckily, I had done what I was supposed to do on one account. I had been instructed to take all my work home to show my parents and I had done that.  My mother brought the papers with her to the meeting and was able to remind Miss Van Raalte that I had indeed not only completed all the various practices for the test, but had gotten lots of good-work stars affixed to the papers. A serious discussion and stern warnings  by both teacher and parent ensued. Both of them insisted that being a student and doing well in practices was never going to be a substitute for passing a required test. At this point, I was apparently convinced of my error and rapidly filled in the appropriate answers on the blank test sheet displayed by my teacher. Come the fall I was happily ensconced in a first-grade classroom and for the record can say that I have managed tests and promotions pretty well ever since.  

Dr. Jim De Young, PhD  2/3/2024