How are you at meeting US presidents?

The Name of the Game is Fame

 I think of myself as a fairly ordinary yet lucky individual. I had two loving parents who were hard workers and made it a point to help me get the kind of education they never had access to. I got that education and was able to parlay it into a career as a Professor of Communications and Theatre Arts in a small mid-western town. My wife and I raised our family there and we were residents for over fifty years.

 

Since most of what happened in those fifty years is pretty hum-drum, I am going to take the liberty today to tell you about how I happened to have been able to see in person three United States presidents in those fifty years. Now there was nothing buddy-buddy or intimate about those encounters, but in two of the three cases I was close enough to get a handshake and a short conversation.   

 

I don’t know if my experiences are in the realm of a normal percentage or something unusual for the average citizen of a small town. What I can tell you is that Jeff Rankin, a local historian, friend, and a long-time neighbor of ours, wrote an article in 2021 that appeared in our local newspaper. It reported that our tiny town had had visits from at least eight men who would become, were serving, or had been U.S. Presidents.  

 

Rankin wrote that the first recorded presidential visit to Monmouth was that of Abraham Lincoln. He visited as a circuit lawyer in 1834 and again in 1858 when he was running for an Illinois Senate seat. In 1858 he gave a speech, had his photograph taken, and stayed overnight. The following day he traveled the 13 miles to Galesburg, IL where he took part in a debate against a man named Stephen A. Douglas, who was his opponent in the race.  President James Garfield visited in 1861 long before he was president and Ulysses Grant in 1879 after his term had expired. The only visit by a sitting president came when William McKinley came to town in 1898.

 

This was followed by a long dry spell that was broken by Gerald Ford, who at the time of his visit was the Republican minority leader of Congress not a vice president or a president. He spoke at Monmouth College on Valentine’s Day in 1964. I was in my first year of employment at the college and am sorry to say that I have no recollection of his visit so I will not count it as one of my presidential contacts.

 

In 1976 Ronald Reagan was the next to visit and he became the first soon-to-be president I had ever met. He was really no stranger to the town since his family had lived in Monmouth from 1918 to 1919 and he had attended both first and second grade at a local school. His return in 1976 was during his campaign for president and I do remember that visit well. His advance team actually produced his old first grade teacher and had her sitting in the front row to be introduced during his speech. I was one of the volunteers who helped prepare the college gymnasium for his visit. We helped set up chairs, hang placards and flags, and pass out programs. According to Jeff Rankin’s article, there were over 2000 people in attendance and I can attest that the place was packed right up to the rafters. Like the consummate politician that he was, Reagan made sure that he pressed the flesh of all of the helpers backstage. It was a quick shake and a word or two and we had no idea whether he would win the election or not. Even though I was already a Democrat,  it was still quite a thrill. Many years later, when I was the Director of Acquisitions  for our county historical museum, I helped to collect and catalog the available President Reagan materials for future exhibits.

 

My second presidential meeting was not with a president-to-be, but with a former president. On Mother’s Day in the year 2000, George Herbert Walker Bush was gave the commencement address and received an honorary degree from  Monmouth College. By that time, I was a tenured full professor and occupied a spot rather high up in the marching order. Ex-President Bush was in the platform group just ahead of me and as we were all gathering on the sidewalk waiting to process in and take our seats, he made a point of walking back to talk to several of us and shake our hands. Bush had two Secret Service bodyguards with him. They had donned academic caps and gowns just like all the rest of us, but did stay pretty much in the background. The following morning Mr. Bush, who had stayed overnight at our president’s home, went out to the local golf course and played a round. I didn’t get to join that group, but a nice picture of him with our pro still hangs in the clubhouse at Gibson Woods. 

 

My final presidential encounter was also with a future president. On a warm late July afternoon in 2004, shortly after his impressive keynote address at the Democratic Convention, a young Illinois state senator was scheduled to make a short speech at Monmouth College. He was in the midst of a grueling thirty-nine city tour in pursuit of one of Illinois’ U.S. Senate seats. His talk was originally scheduled for a small second floor room at the college, but the crowd got so big that it had to be moved to the college chapel.  It was there that the audience, including me, was enthralled by his short address. I don’t think I need to remind you that Barack Obama won that Senate seat and then in 2008 made his lasting mark with a successful run for the presidency. I didn’t have any personal contact with him and I don’t remember if Michelle was there, but the now famous Obama smile was on full view along with his oratorical skill. I felt as though he was speaking just to me even though I was only a small part of a large crowd.  I proudly voted for him in 2008 and again in 2012.   

 

There you have it. An ordinary American in a small town in the USA was able to have short but close contact with three American presidents. I consider that pretty lucky and am grateful for it. I’d love to hear about your experiences in seeing or meeting any of our presidents or even other famous people. 

 

Jim De Young  1/11/2024      

 

FOLLOWING CAESAR book review

 

I recently had the opportunity to read Following Caesar, in an advance publisher’s copy before its formal release in December of 2023. The book covers an extended trip through Italy and the Adriatic by a reporter who loves Italy, Roman history, and the magnificent roads the Romans built to make and administer one of the largest empires ever created.

 

Keahey’s modis operendi was to rent a car and drive the routes of three great Roman highways—The Via Appia, the Via Traiana, and the Via Egnatia. As he proceeds along the modern roads that sometimes mirror, sometimes parallel, and occasionally deviate from the ancient ones, he enlists the aid of local guides to help him locate now exposed sections of the ancient byways. At many of his stops he merely sits and contemplates the grandeur and historic importance of past. You get the bloody stories of Julius Ceasar, Mark Antony, Brutus, Octavius, Cicero, Hannibal, Hoarce, Virgil and other not so notables who marched along on the carefully groomed ancient stones and made history with their footfalls.

 

This is not a dry academic treatise. Keahey dispenses with footnotes and keeps the style unassuming and down to earth. He concentrates as much on the current sights, the food, and the morning coffee he consumes en route as he does on the history. My guess is that if you have traveled in Italy or studied at least a bit of classical history, you will enjoy his travel journal more.  Even if your knowledge of Julius Caesar is confined to “Beware, the Ides of March” you may still find some pleasure in this short and easy read.   

 

 

 

Holiday Greetings from Jim and Jan De Young

 

Volume L                                                                                      December, 2023

                                                   Christmas 2023

 Would you believe that this will be the fiftieth consecutive year for this letter? The first one was on a ditto (only old people will know what that was) dated 1973. Our family had just returned from a year in our favorite city in all the world—London, England.  

Where are we now? The pair, who will soon celebrate their 64^th wedding anniversary, are beginning their third year of residency at Grand Living. We don’t travel much anymore; covid put a real stopper on that. We still drive for medical appointments and to our daughter’s first grade classroom where we spend an hour once a week reading stories and tutoring. Jan’s special project has been working with a little girl who just arrived from Mexico with zero English. She is finding her college Spanish is a bit rusty. The rest of our activity is pretty much focused inside our home community. Jim is on the resident council and chairs the Activities and Sales sub-committees. We both work on tending the building’s two libraries and we lead a book and creative writing group.

 Daughter Amy and her husband Todd live ten minutes from our apartment. She still teaches first grade at Hiawatha School in Cedar Rapids. Her life is a whirl of activity mostly devoted to her students, and her fellow teachers (all of whom are facing educational challenges that have not receded even though Covid has diminished.) She has inherited some of my appreciation of clever humor and recently sent me this one. “Have you seen the ad from a company that makes yardsticks promising that they won’t make them any longer?” Todd is officially retired and is now waiting for a surgical implant that we hope will alleviate his back pain. He is doing a lot of the cooking and is so good at it that he can even make brussels sprouts taste good. His skills also extend to marksmanship. He bagged a wild turkey and a deer with his crossbow last month. The year’s jerky supply is ensured.

Grandson Mikel will be graduating from Upper Iowa University in May. His next steps are not clear at the moment, but he likes the outdoors and it looks like he will land somewhere in the area of conservation or the environment. He now has his own apartment and is working part time while he finishes his senior year.

Big brother Taylor, a paramedic and firefighter in Texas, is also embarking on something new. He has announced his engagement to be married in March. His bride-to-be is employed by the

police department and both of them are familiar with the hours that must be kept by the people who work to heal and protect us. A commitment to helping others runs deep in our family and we wish them well.

Our son David and his family live in Finland. He works in IT (Information Technology) and reports that AI (Artificial Intelligence) is all the buzz. His wife, Lotta, still finds time for her Gestalt Therapy clients and their two girls (Frida and Selma) are up to their winter caps in school and activities. This brings us to the event of the year. BRUNO, David and Lotta’s 3^rd child, arrived in January. We didn’t meet him in person until this fall when everyone visited us in the USA. The young charmer took his first unassisted steps while here and with his twinkling eyes and wide smile endeared himself to everybody-- especially his uncle Mikel who seemed to develop a special bond with him and was a godsend as a caregiver during the visit.

 

Perhaps, in this season of giving, you will also give a thought to a bit of wisdom from Andrew McCall Smith: “Gracious acceptance is an art most of us never bother to cultivate. The very best gifts have no conditions attached to them and you must realize that accepting another person’s gift is allowing them to express their feelings for you.” With that in mind, we send you this gift of love which is enduring and carries no strings. May your season be merry and your new year bright.

 

Yours, Jim and Jan De Young.

dramajim@gmail.com janetwdeyoung@gmail.com  http://stirringthepudding.blogspot.com

Book Review of William Kent Krueger's THE RIVER WE REMEMBER

 

Krueger, William Kent The River We Remember

 

William Kent Krueger is a “sneaky” writer. He begins The River We Remember as a standalone, straightforward detective story. A man, Brody Dern, with a dark WWII past, is now a county sheriff and is called out, on what was celebrated as Decoration Day in 1958, to the site of a vicious death along the banks of the Alabaster River. The victim is Jimmy Quinn, a local man of considerable means, who has accumulated more than enough enemies over the years. The traditional questions of a murder mystery are broached. Was it suicide, was it murder, or was it a tragic accident? Then, quietly, we begin to meet some of the suspects and other people in the town. Things rapidly get  more complicated. The Alabaster River harbors dark secrets that go back through the history of the town and we begin to see how the hopes, the fears, the adolescent longings, the interlocking love affairs, the racial hatreds, and the violence of wars have impacted the lives of those who live in the ironically named farming community of Jewel, Iowa.    

Krueger writes with profound sensitivity about the scarred lives of the folks who live Jewel. His characters appear normal on the surface, but many are lost in their past secrets and sins. The narrative flows on and is continually deepened by references to both modern and ancient literature. We have lost adolescents who seem drawn out of Holden Caufield; we have lives compromised by alcohol and drugs; and we have the maimed veterans of modern wars whose lives could have easily been pulled from the pages of Homeric legend.  All of these folks now live near the quiet banks of the keynote river. The book moves you most specifically by dealing with the deep seeds of hatred toward the American Indian and the Japanese that have been planted in our history and continue to grow today in the rich soils of the USA. Each of the lives depicted leads inexorably to a violent resolution that takes you through more twists than a pretzel in distress.  

I must admit that this book caught me up. I read most of the last third in one sitting. The plot is solid and convincing, the characters seem spot on, and the overpowering inclusion of the sad history of our land puts a rich and satisfying sauce on an already well-made meal. Through it all, the Alabaster River runs with a current that sweeps all contents “from our beginning to our end.” As Kreuger says in the epilogue, there are many stories to be told and in all of them there is some truth and a “good deal of innocent misremembering.”  Separating it all out remains the ultimate challenge of living.

Jim De Young 12/11/23

 

Reviewing The Wizard of Oz at Theatre Cedar Rapids

 

The Wizard of Oz at the Theatre Cedar Rapids is spiced up by some sizzling performances while being taken down a few pegs by glitzy overly busy lighting effects and a second act that goes on about fifteen minutes too long. The younger viewers around us started getting pretty antsy as the endless and not well integrated Jitterbug and reprise went on and on. The choreography overall was not quite as rousing as the high voltage hoofing in last year’s Cabaret, but still was pleasant enough to keep us involved.

All of the performances were competent while the standouts were well worth the ticket price. My favorite was the sprawling gangly Scarecrow of Jenup Wan and second by a hair goes to the creaky movement and strong voice of James Odegaard’s Lion.  Kudos also to Jessica Link as the nasty Miss Gulch and the Wicked Witch.  Rhylee Larson’s Dorothy had the mature voice of a pro, but I felt she did not quite manage to portray the youthful vulnerability of the Kansas Dorothy as well as she might have or maybe Judy Garland’s performance in the movie was still a haunting presence for me.

 The costumes were spot-on with fanciful touches in hats and hair. I loved it when the apple trees started throwing their fruit.

 Now I come back to the lighting and special effects. Flying actors are always special and this was done with expertise and safety though perhaps it could have been done a few less times to keep it special. This goes for the lighting as well. The jazzy projections were simply not enough to keep me from feeling that the “Jitterbug dance and reprise in the 2^nd act was too long. It was not all clear to me what the dancers were doing for so long or why. In any case I do wonder if the moving projections and wild color changes were overused in the show. The score is more mellow and romantic than frenetic and boom-boom. This “hit em hard” ambiance was also evident in the miking of both actors and orchestra at what I felt was an ear-splitting level. This may be part of the reason I had some doubts about Rylee Larson’s Dorothy. Over-amplification gave her voice a grating harshness at times that was at odds with the tenderness of her character.

My doubts may also be the result of my many years as a play director. I detected a sense of even though the show has plenty of “wow” all by itself, let’s juice it up some more by overusing the special effects until they begin to pale from repetition. Not knowing when to stop is a disease that afflicts actors, directors, and designers as well as gamblers and drinkers.

 In spite of my quibbles, this was a fine afternoon at the theatre and I continue to admire the Theatre Cedar Rapids’ work. They have a fine mix of reliable adult talent both in front of and behind the curtain and they are giving younger performers a chance to work in what is clearly a talented ensemble.

 

   

 

Review McCall Smith Alexander The Private Life of Spies and The Exquisite Art of Getting Even

 

Alexander McCall Smith is like a warm comforter in a chilly room. The last books I’ve tackled, in particular Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead, have been stuffed with so much negativity, violence and despair that I was starting to cry “enough already.”  I know the world is a nasty place, but I also need a lighter lift once in a while and McCall Smith is the author who can deliver that. This is not another edition of one of his wonderful series like the Mma Ramotswe No 1 Ladies Detective Agency books. This is a group of droll short stories that illustrate the catch-all title of espionage and revenge. The heroes are pretty kind and the villains more often puffed up with themselves than sinister. As always the vignettes teem with philosophy, history, humor and spot-on character development.   

 

Section one features five stories about espionage. “Nuns and Spies”, for instance, deals with a male German spy in WWII who parachutes into England and ends up disguising himself as a Catholic Nun. It is based on a real but unproved rumor and McCall Smith re-makes the story into a delightfully absurd adventure.  In “Filioque” a young theology student in Rome is recruited by a Cardinal into the dark and secretive Vatican Secret Service—again with some unusual results. 

 

The second half of the book has four stories about various types of comeuppance. My favorite was “The Principles of Soap” a story of an actor/waiter in Australia who manages to strike it reasonably rich with a continuing role in a TV soap opera. Along the way he survives an attempt by a former nemesis and classmate from his old acting school to derail his career and replace him with her lover. The story is filled with fun, coincidences, and plenty of ironic humor about actor training and the theatre business. I liked that one for obvious reasons. 

 

If you feel the need to escape for a time from the horrors of today’s news, I suggest you try a dance in the sunshine with this Alexander McCall Smith collection. It will surely lift your heart and tickle your funnybone. I give this collection a solid 4 out of 5 stars.  

The Overnight Guest by Heather Gudenkauf

 

The Overnight Guest, a 2022 novel by Iowa author Heather Gudenkauf, mines a genre that I personally am getting sick of. Sure, the world has sadistic killers who specialize in binding and torturing women and children, but far too many writers today seem to find this particular horror and the detailed description of its painful and bloody results to be a mainstay.

 When you combine this with another modern writing convention of popping back and forth constantly between times and characters, you have a novel full of already overused conventions.  The plot tells the story of a bloody family massacre that reverberates over many years. It depends on the improbable meeting of two of the victims and continuous descriptions of fear, dread, and violence. Of course, it is “a dark and stormy night in a secluded farmhouse and the power (wait for it) just has to go out etc. and etc. The imprisoned must also pick this night after years of sick torture to try an escape. To be sure there is the requisite final twist at the end, but I remain convinced that you should pick this book up only if you have nothing better to do. I am going back to Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes.