A Guide to Dorothy Sayers IV

I've been conducting a review of the allusions that Dorothy Sayer introduced in her plan for a hypothetical poem. These are references drawn largely, though not entirely, from British history of the late 19th and early 20th century.  I'm not going to finish this up this week, but let's see how far we can get.

the Tolpuddle Martyrs, a group of farm workers who were convicted in 1834 for swearing an oath of solidarity to one another. The prosecution was part of the broader anti-union backlash of the day, and the convicts were transported to Australia.

Brown and Kennedy, Both of these names are of course quite common, and it isn't obvious who Sayers meant. My first suspicion was an American one -- she was linking the two men who separately defeated Richard Nixon's political aspirations in the early 1960s!  But Says seems to have completed this introduction by 1949. My present suspicion, since this item comes right after the Tolpuddle Martyrs, is that the reference is to James Brown (1862-1939), the head of the National Union of Scottish Mineworkers from 1917 to1936. Perhaps Sayers is coupling Brown with an American counterpart,  Thomas Kennedy (1887- 1963), an important figure in the United Mine Workers (in the US) from at least 1925 until his death. If anybody has a better idea for what this pairing means in this context, please let me know.

the Dean of St Patrick's, this is an allusion to Anglo-Irish novelist Jonathan Swift (1667-1745).  The St Patrick's in question is the Cathedral in Dublin.

the Dean of St Paul's, John Donne (1572 - 1631), the paradigmatic figure of what is nowadays called "metaphysical poetry." The author of the famous Meditation XVII, "And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee."

Dean Farrar, Frederic William Farrar (1831-1903), an advocate of "Christian universalism," the idea that all human souls will in the fullness of time be reconciled with God -- i.e. that there is no everlasting damnation of the sort Dante vividly imagined.

Fred Archer,  Frederic Archer (1838-1901) An organist and composer whose career began in England but continued after 1880 in the United States, where he became conductor of the Orotorio Society in Boston, Mass.

Mrs Dyer, Louise Berta Mosson Hanson-Dyer (1884 - 1962) -- Sayers helpfully groups two of her musical referents together here.  Mrs Dyer was an Australian born woman, who founded a music publishing operation, Éditions de l'Oiseau-Lyre, in 1932.

Lord George Sanger (1825-1911), an English analog to P.T. Barnum.  Sanger ran a variety of shows and circuses and founded an association to lobby for the intrerests of such businesses, the Van Dwellers Protection Association.

Lord George Gordon, (1751-1793), a Scottish nobleman who converted to Judaism in 1787, at 36 years of age. Charles Dickens makes a favorable allusion to George Gordon in the novel Barnaby Rudge.

General Gordon,  Major-General Charles George Gordon (1833-1885), best known for his determined defense of the Imperial position at Khartoum, in the face of the Mahdi rebellion, (Islamism, one might say) and his death in that defense in January 1885.

Ouida, The pen name of the novelist Maria Louise Ramé (1839-1908). Her works, considered racy at the time, were quite successful, but she did not manager her money wisely and died in poverty. Jack London cited her as an important influence on his own writing.

William Joyce, (1906-1946), known as Lord Haw-Haw, he was born in New York, but his family returned to his parents' home country, Ireland, while he was a child. They were Unionists in the Irish context, and they moved to England soon after Ireland received its independence. Joyce would found the British Union of Fascists and would broadcast radio propaganda for Hitler during the war. Hence his execution for treason in January 1946.

James Joyce, (1882-1941), one of the defining figures of literary modernism, perhaps best known fo Ulysses (1922).

More About Lucy and Desi

Back in September, I wrote a post here I called "Thoughts About Labor Unions."

Among the thoughts I shared at the time was one about the origin of "I Love Lucy," and a story indicating that those negotiations might be considered an example of collective bargaining in a microcosm.  I know more about that story now then I did in September, so I'd like to fill that in a bit.

I wrote in Septrember that when a certain CBS bigwig saw the pilot, his first reaction was: "Keep the redhead, but ditch the Cuban."

Actually, that line didn't come from any CBS exec, but from a consultant to whom CBS had turned.

Television was new in 1951, and nobody really understood what would work in this strange medium and what wouldn't.  The executives should be given credit for "knowing that they didn't know," the Socratic virtue.  They had all acquired their prominence within a radio-based corporation, after all.

Who was the consultant?  Turns out it was one-half of the phenomenal Broadway team that was re-making the whole idea of a musical at around this time:  it was lyricist Oscar Hammerstein.   I can imagine the thinkig of the network bigwigs as they called him in.  Oscar knows theatre.  Theatre is a visual medium.  This new box is visual, too.  Must be pretty much the same.  (It isn't, but I'll leave that aside for now.)

What I really want to set straight is this:  In September, when I didn't know who I was talking about, I wrote: Maybe the CBS exec was worried about the public acceptance of some televised "miscegenation," as they called such things back then.

Knowing that it was Oscar Hammerstein, the author to the lyrics to "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught" and the other songs in "South Pacific," a musical with a mixed-race marriage at its heart, I have to apologize for that.  I was way wrong.  

Just to atone to his spirit, here are those lyrics:

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

Job 31:13 - 15

I used this blog on Friday as a dump some some of my thoughts on a chapter of my forthcoming book that will discuss labor unions, i.e. collective bargaining.  Now I will follow that up on this Sunday with a potentially pertinent Bible passage, from the 31st chapter of the Book of Job.

King James version:

"If I did despise the cause of my manservant or of my maidservant, when they contended with me; What then shall I do when God riseth up? what shall I answer him? Did not He that made me in the womb make him? and did not One fashion us in the womb?"

You, Mr. Hard-ass employer, may have to answer to a Higher Authority.

Collective Bargaining

Some thoughts for the new chapter 14.

1) blaming the unions
2) a story about Desi and Lucy
3) defending the unions
4) how GM bought peace
5) cost shifting consequences
6) the business cycle and unions
7) unwinding unsustainable promises...
8) without chicanery (can the unions themselves do it)
9) evolving roles, union survival.

Changes

I continue to work on what will be the short version of "Gambling With Borrowed Chips," my discussion of the role of leverage, speculation, and regulation in a modern economy.  I'm making great progress.

Perhaps it is a sign of my progress that I have now abandoned the original outlines I wrote of the final chapters .  Indeed, as the book has moved along the difference between the actual content of each chapter and the original plan/outline has expanded.

At one time, I had contemplated that chapters 13 to 17 would have the following titles:

13. Bankruptcies and Rescues

14. Public and Private Pensions

15. Home Ownership

16. Energy

17. Conclusions.

According to the latest plan, whatever actually will be their titles, their content will be respectively thus:

13. Early Responses to The Crisis
(Especially focusing on the first year of the Obama administration and things that didn't work.)

14. Labor Unions and Pensions
(Working analytically, from the basic justifications for labor unions to their newer roles and the demographics.)

15. The Ideology of Home Equity
(I'd like to present this in the form of a fable.)

16. Health Care
(The key to the second year of the Obama administration, and its business-cycle significance, along with some philosophizing about biology.)

17. Final Thoughts
(Final thoughts.)

Yes, that might not seem to hang together when put thus, but I've learned that the teller should not fight the tale.

Thoughts About Labor Unions

The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, a/k/a the Wagner Act, recognized that workers -- if they are (a) private sector and (b) not working on farms -- have a right to organize into labor unions.

As to the public sector, each state has gone its own way in giving or withholding from its own employees, or those of its subdivisions, organizational imperatives.

Which leaves us with the federal gov.: JFK issued an Executive Order in 1962 providing for labor union recognition to a limited extent. The situation remains convoluted and becomes more so each decade, but there would seem to be an inherent probem in both organizing and threatening a strike if your employer is also the sovereign.

While I was in law school, Ronald Reagan fired the federal professional air traffic controllers (PATCO) when they walked out in 1981.

I've been thinking of such matters of late. It may have made more sense in terms of the calender if I had written something of such issues on the 6th of this month, which is known after all as Labor Day. Still, my thoughts come when they wish.

The fact is, love them or leave them, unions represent a shrinking portion of the labor market pie. Despite (or because of?) the protection of union activity in the private sector, the role of unions there has been in decline for decades. In the 1950s one in every three private sector employees was a member of a union. By 2004, only 7.9%, somewhat less than one in twelve were union members.

This all reminds me of a story I once heard about the origin of the television show I Love Lucy. When a certain CBS bigwig saw the pilot, his first reaction was: "Keep the redhead, ditch the Cuban."

When told they were a married couple and CBS had to take or leave them as a package, he said that they should stick with the in-home comedy, but cut way back on the nightclub scenes where Desi sang. Which was done.

The married couple itself, in that story, functioned as a labor union, offering its services collectively, as a take-it-or-leave-it package. It was successful, not just in getting Desi Arnaz a job, but in producing a wildly successful product. CBS was hardly the loser in this negotiation, after all. It was win-win: CBS did rather well off the show, even though they had to keep that Cuban.

And, for the record, I think Desi did a fine job as Ricky. It is hard to imagine anyone else having pulled it off as well. Maybe the CBS exec was worried about the public acceptance of some televised "miscegenation," as they called such things back then.

Jersey Boys

The trip is back on. The strike after all is off.

One week from today.

For those of you who haven't heard. Its a musical based on the life of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. The other three "seasons" (aside from Valli) were: Bob Gaudio, Tommy DeVito, Nick Massi.

Among their hits: "Sherry," "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Rag Doll," "Oh What a Night," and "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You."

The cast?

John Lloyd Young plays Valli.
Daniel Reichard = Gaudio
Christian Hoff = DeVito, and
J. Robert Specer = Massi.

Jersey Boys

I may not have the opportunity to see Jersey Boys after all. I had planned an outing to Manhattan early next month for this purpose, but the strike news hasn't been good.

The first sentence of the above paragraph required a double-check. I wondered as I wrote it whether the show is named The Jersey Boys, or simply Jersey Boys. I checked and found that it's the latter. Further, although one could presumably write, "I won't get to see the Jersey Boys..." so long as one keeps the "t" on that "the" lower-case, what would be the point? That would sound as if I was regretting that I wouldn't see the performers of the show, whereas in fact I couldn't name the performers with a gun to my head: what I regret not seeing is the show, Jersey Boys.

The article "the" causes endless trouble of this sort. So do the meanderings of my stream of consciousness. Let's get back into the proper channel.

I may not have the opportunity to see a certain Broadway show after all. The lights of the White Way are dark at most theatres these evenings. One well-publicized exception is the St. James theatre, where The Grinch Who Stole Christmas is playing.

Presumably, the quick settlement of the strike with regard to thatone show only is related to the limited seasonal nature of the run. Nobody will care to see a Grinch-related movie in February. So settlement there is rather bad news for the other shows affected, since it would seem to indicate that everyone expects the strike to last right through the holiday season.

There are a handful of other shows that are open, because the strike is targeted at three organizations. Theatres not owned by one of those three aren't affected. Unfortunately, most of the theatres in the B-way district ARE owned by one of those three.

Still, for the benefit of the curious, here are the shows still running on Broadway:

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
Cymbeline
Dr' Seuss' How The Grinch Stole Christmas
Mary Poppins
Mauritius
Pygmalion
The Ritz
Xanadu
Young Frankenstein


--------------------

I culled that list from the theatremania website. Note that "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee" is the first on the alphabetical list. This is of course, because numbers are listed before letters in a conventional alpha ordering.

Notice, also, that the word "The" before "25th" is capitalized -- it is part of the name. So, logically, that item on the list ought to be written thus:

25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, The

The article "The" causes inordinate trouble. That's where I came in.