In a historic meeting at Charlottesville, Virginia, last September, President George Bush and the nation’s governors promised to revitalize America’s public schools by establishing “clear national performance goals, goals that will make us internationally competitive.” Their language recalled the document that had inspired school reforms earlier in the 1980s, A Nation at Risk. President Reagan’s first Secretary of Education, Terrel Bell, a quiet educator from Utah, had been appointed in 1981 under the cloud of a Reagan promise to abolish the department. Insecure in his cabinet position and never the public figure his successor, William J. Bennett, proved to be, Bell was nonetheless determined to do something about the mounting evidence of poor performance in the nation’s public schools. He appointed a National Commission on Excellence in Education, whose 1983 report resonated deeply with the public mood.
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January 2011
In the early spring of 1969, I was an Army colonel recently assigned to the office of the inspector general in Washington, and I was not particularly happy about it; I have always disliked living in Washington, and I think that most infantry officers would rather serve with troops than investigate allegations about irregularities in procurement, which was most of what the IG’s D.C. office did. Our job was to look into complaints sent to us from the Executive Branch or the Congress, and seven or eight fresh ones circulated in each morning’s Read File. When the file came around one morning in March, it contained a lengthy letter from an ex-serviceman named Ron Ridenhour; he had sent copies to the president, 23 members of Congress, the Secretaries of State and Defense, the Secretary of the Army, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. General William Westmoreland had forwarded a copy to our office with orders to investigate. Ridenhour’s letter began:
I like to think that, had I been born in an earlier time, I would have been a great historical painter. I have a real gift for composing epic scenes, I enjoy rendering minute detail, and I would have had no moral conflicts about portraying people as handsomer than they really were. How I would have loved to paint the coronation of Napoleon, or an allegorical homage to the opening of the Erie Canal with joyous angels looking down from the heavens. Ah, well...
The truth is, the world no longer needs artists to record its momentous events. It has the camera. The camera does an adequate job, I suppose. It certainly produces pictures faster than an artist can—even an abstract expressionist needs more than a tenth of a second to complete a painting—but the camera has one serious limitation; it can only record what appears before its lens.
In 1898 Theodore Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, acting without any authority from his superiors, gave orders to Commodore George Dewey that resulted in a decisive naval victory over the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay. With the Spanish-American War now under way, TR resigned his post to raise the volunteer cavalry regiment he called the Rough Riders. Before setting off for Cuba, the badly nearsighted adventurer carefully packed many extra pairs of his pince-nez eyeglasses and had others sewn into the lining of his uniform.
Enrico Caruso managed to sing one performance of Carmen before the 1906 earthquake cut short the San Francisco opera season. The tenor was in the St. Francis Hotel when the first shock hit, and he ran terrified into Union Square with a towel around his neck for protection while drawing spiritual sustenance from a signed portrait of Theodore Roosevelt that he cradled in his arms. “Give me Vesuvius!” he cried, and on checking out of the hotel Caruso vowed never to return to San Francisco. He never did.
The troops loved Bill Mauldin’s weary, messy GIs Willie and Joe. Not so Gen. George S. Patton, who ordered the cartoonist to 3d Army headquarters in Luxembourg’s royal palace to “talk it over.” The general wasted no time: Willie and Joe were goddamn bums. Was he trying to incite a goddamn mutiny? Mauldin defended his work, only to set off a new barrage against characters who “bitch and beef and gripe.” Finally Mauldin was dismissed, taking with him several new ideas for cartoons about the military.
When housing was needed at Oak Ridge in 1942, Frank Lloyd Wright was summoned to the White House. He showed up in his plaid cloak and soft fedora—which he never removed. Booming out “I would rather be Wright than President!” he strolled over to FDR’s desk and said, “Frank, you ought to get up out of that chair and look around at what they’re doing to your city here, miles and miles of Ionic and Corinthian columns.” The buildings at Oak Ridge were not designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
The Texas tourist office (1-800-8888-TEX) and the Fort Worth Convention and Visitors Bureau (1-800-433-5747) will provide lists of events and information on lodging and sights. To fill in the story of Cowtown, visit Thistle Hill, the only cattle baron’s mansion in Forth Worth regularly open to the public. The Cattleman’s Museum, sponsored by the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Foundation, covers the story of the industry with verve and skill. The Sid Richardson Collection of Western Art has a fine selection of Frederic Remington and Charles Marion Rusell paintings.
While in downtown Fort Worth take yourself on a walking tour, accompanied by Fort Worth and Tarrant County: A Historical Guide , edited by Ruby Schimdt, and Cowtown Moderne , by Judith S. Cohen (1988). To see how the wealthy lived in the teens and twenties, buy a map and look for Elizabeth Boulevard, a National Historic District.
On January 25 a half-century of unsuccessful attempts to unionize the coal-mining industry ended when miners from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan founded the United Mine Workers of America. The union’s main objectives included an eight-hour day, better safety conditions, and the end of scrip payments and child labor. “Without coal there would not have been any such grand achievements, privileges, and blessings as those which characterize the twentieth-century civilization,” said the first UMWA constitution. “Those whose lot it is to daily toil in the recesses of the earth…are entitled to a fair and equitable share of the same.”
Introducing legislation to the House of Representatives, said Thomas Reed of Maine, was like trying “to run Niagara through a quill.” The Democratic majority of the House had resisted for years all attempts to reform the procedural rules that too often caused congressional business to grind to a halt, and when a new Republican majority elected Reed Speaker in December 1889, he vowed to reform the process.