Instead of that Donkey, Can We Try a Gazelle?

As a third grader, my high-school-age sister's courses always seemed more fascinating to me. When she showed me the political symbols of the donkey for Democrats and the elephant for Republicans, I was intrigued, but I don't remember at this point what she told me about them. With the election year upon us, I decided it was time to find out.

The donkey was actually chosen to represent the Democratic party in 1828 during the presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson. He was a popular war hero after winning battles in the War of 1812 and his campaign slogan was "Let the People Rule." Rivals called him a "jackass" and later used the donkey/jackass symbol to compare Jackson to a “stubborn ass.” Jackson didn't care and in fact, he ended up using the donkey as a campaign symbol.

The donkey-elephant symbolism solidified through the work of Harper’s Weekly cartoonist Thomas Nast. He used the donkey in 1870 to represent a group of antiwar Americans – and then used an elephant in a cartoon to tell Republicans that infighting would damage their election chances.

In November, 1874, he created a cartoon called Third Term Panic that cemented the symbols of the donkey and the elephant. During that year, Republican Ulysses S. Grant had already been president for two terms and was thinking of running again. 

In the cartoon, a donkey in a lion’s skin, called “Ceaserism” scares off other animals, including an elephant called “The Republican Vote.” From what I can tell, Nast was trying to make fun of the New York Herald, which was opposed to a third term for Grant.

Soon after Nast released his cartoon, other cartoonists started using elephants to symbolize Republicans, and still others used donkeys to symbolize Democrats. While comedians and cartoonists are still having fun with caricatures and elections, I don’t think anything has stuck nearly as well as the elephant and the donkey. I think the elephant is supposed to be a symbol of strength, and the donkey is still one of stubbornness.

I like that we have two symbols, but they seem so out of date to me now. I'm not sure what I'd choose for each side but I'd highly recommend animals that are more, I don't know, elastic? Jumpers, fliers, or animals that can rise out of the sea quickly and majestically. Gazelles come to mind, eagles, lions, foxes, maybe whales? I keep going back to the leapers, the gazelles and mountain goats. Because being nimble matters more now than being stubborn or physically strong - or it would, if I were in charge.

So if we did get rid of the donkey and elephant, what would you choose? Do you even agree we need  a new symbol animal for both parties? Can I really be the only one?

Gazelle photo: Ralf Steinberger

Doctor History Dispatch

I don't really think of myself as a writer of historical fiction, even though the Beat Street series is set in the 1950s and I've written plays set in the past too. I also set plays in the present so I would never think of myself as exclusively wedded to one time (or genre, for that matter).

But history has always interested me, as I know it interests many writers, because we just can't help wondering what people were doing back then. Some traditions are so weird they invite curiosity--like the long-beaked masks doctors wore in earlier centuries.

I was thinking about doctors now, I guess, having been seeing them more than I'd like lately, and thinking about what's different now than in the past. I've heard they wore those odd masks to guard against "bad air" believed to be the cause of the plague and other illnesses. 

It makes sense that doctors would want to armor up with herbs and masks if they were afraid of bad air making them sick. I also remember stories about using leeches to thin people's blood and how in some cases that worked (while in others, not so much).

THAT makes me think of something someone said in a group I attended with my son once for families of cancer patients. He said, "Medicine is really an art, not a science."

I think there is a lot of science in medicine, but I believe part of it IS an art as well, and I'm not sure how doctors approach that. (Not sure how artists approach science, exactly, either). Science is supposed to be based on cold, hard facts, but to get there, it seems to me you have to go through a lot of trial and error, while artists work a lot on instinct, on what our gut is telling us to do.

All of THIS makes me think about how when you write a story in a historical era, you need to think about WHY you are setting it in the past, and how that past informs the present. Setting book 2 of the Beat Street series (not out yet, but coming) in the time of the Blacklist made it easier to show how some of the hysteria of that age (with it's terror of Communists) might inform our own (with its terror of immigrants).

When all is said and done though, I'm still not sure what I think of those medieval doctor masks, except that in every age, we are likely doing something that people in the future will call primitive and misguided.

Cool-looking masks though. May have to use them in a story some time. We'll see.


Medieval doctor mask photo: Thomas Quine


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Writing in History: Sharing the "Red Scare" with Middle Schoolers

I first started working on The Beat on Ruby's Street because of spending time in Greenwich Village when my older sister moved there with her family. I loved the history all around me and thought it would be fun to explore the Beat Generation culture and set my story there.

That sent me on a journey that led me to exploring the poetry, writing and art of the 1950s and early 1960s, and now brings me to book two of the Beat Street Series, called Fool's Errand. Set again in 1958, it pits Ruby and her best friend Sophie against the infamous Blacklist, which robbed many writers of their livelihoods and hurt numerous families.

When you're working on a historical novel, I've found the trick isn't so much the research - though of course you need to do that to figure out what was going on at the time you're writing about. The trick for me is situating your characters inside that historical time and seeing how it affects them.

As it happens, the Blacklist was starting to wind down in 1958 and times weren't nearly as crazy as they were about 10 years earlier. But there still was a Blacklist, which allows me to plunk it down in the middle of my story and mess up everyone's life (because that's what writers do).

Because Sophie's mother is a comedy-show writer, she is deeply affected by the Blacklist and loses her job. Fool's Errand focuses on what happens to Sophie, her mother and Ruby during this time.

What was most interesting to me about the Blacklist was how it bred a culture of fear, not only in the minds of those affected, but in people who worried about being affected. I think what happens when countries are led by people whose main purpose is to control them--confusing the word "govern" with control--is that the country becomes sick, like someone with the flu. And the sickness spreads through fear, which keeps people from speaking up and rebelling.

While writing this new story, I've also started thinking about our own times, and whether the Blacklist years have anything to teach us about government, power and the way we react. 

Because my characters are growing up in the heart of the Beat Generation in Greenwich Village, they tend to be rebellious. I hope this leads them to fight fear and use whatever they have to stay strong and free. That doesn't mean they won't get hurt along the way--but it does mean they're going to get up again and keep trying. That's what I want middle schoolers to know--and why I landed on this book.

Fool's Errand should be out in 2018.

For more information on the Blacklist, try these links:

Blacklist Profiles: 7 Writers and Actors Who Defied Hollywood

The Red Scare Comes to Hollywood

Walt Disney, Ronald Reagan and the Fear of Hollywood Communism




Photo

Young girl: Katie Tegtmeyer

Looking for His Theater: Back from Vietnam

It was a warm night--even for New York--and I was in a showcase play (where you try to get agents to see your work). The play was called Dark Ladies, Bright Angels and was a collection of Shakespeare pieces. The opening involved the actors going onstage and talking with each other, to get into character.

There was only one person in the audience when I emerged, and he didn't seem at all to be there for Shakespeare. He was quiet, thoughtful, and seemed very serious, even sad. After a moment or two watching the actors, he said he was looking for a theater for Vietnam vets.

Some of the actors ignored him, and then someone told him this was a Shakespeare play. That was the end of our communication with him, and we began trying to get into character--chattering, laughing and saying a few of our lines. I have always regretted it, though.

Because I really wish we had at least talked to him, character or no. He seemed to need to be there -- in a theater with his peers, others vets, people who had experienced what he had. As it happened, he waited for a little while and then left.

This weekend, Ken Burns' long-awaited documentary on the Viet Nam war is beginning to air on PBS. This summer, my husband and I have been watching China Beach, for no particular reason except that we'd always wanted to see it and never have.

I do remember the era and the protest marches, and then later, the vets coming home, and generally not being treated very well. The night this particular vet walked into the theater where I was working seems part and parcel of that, somehow, though we were not intentionally being rude or mean.


The bright spot in all of this is that I did see him again at the theater, because he found the group of vets he was looking for. I said hello, but not much more than that, because I had to get to my performances. And to be fair, he was busy with his group too.

And yet, and yet.

So much that happens in wars changes the people who experience them. And I believe artists have a real obligation to learn from and listen very carefully to the people who lived through wars and traumas. I wish that night, we had taken the time to listen to this man. Or even ask about the theater company he mentioned and go to one of the shows.

We could have learned so much.

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Resources for you and/or your kids:

• The Vietnam War: a film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick
• China Beach (for older teens)
• Teaching about the War in Viet Nam (for grades 9 -12)
• Vietnam War Facts and Worksheets

Soldier photo: Manhhai