Victoria Woodhull—An American Progressive 150 Years Ahead of Her Time

Victoria Woodhull—An American Progressive 150 Years Ahead of Her Time

Most of this musing was written back in 2002. This is somewhat a revised version. I reckon my wisdom has increased since 2002 but not my writing ability. My own biased interpretation is that while my perceptive abilities have not suffered all that much the last 14 yrs, my writing skills have taken a hit—not a major hit, but then they were never good enough to handle a minor hit. I reckon, most of those reading this, already know that. 

Back in 2002 I had no idea who Victoria Woodhull was. She is barely mentioned in history books, if mentioned at all. Yet everyone living in the U.S., back when she became the first woman to run for President, knew her well—a sort of female Dennis the Menace of American Society back then. I was surprised, when reading a book about her that she had a 1960’s mentality—and beyond, almost right down the line—even though she lived her adult life in the period right after Lincoln’s assassination. She was born in 1838, a long time ago.  This was a time when spiritualism was rampant—God spoke to you in visions, and there were those who claimed they could communicate with the dead and predict the future, that sort of thing. Victoria and her younger sister Tennie were very pretty girls, both charmers.  In what was not unusual for those days, Victoria dated, at age 14, an older established member of the community, in this case a medical doctor.  At age 15 she married him and they had two children, one a mentally handicapped son and a normal pretty girl.  Her husband, Dr. Woodhull, turned out be an alcoholic, so she left him.

Her family, one consisting of herself, her two children, her sister Tennie, and her parents were poor, very poor. So the parents took advantage of the public appetite for child mediums. Thus, Victoria, at age 21 and Tennie, 14, offered people messages from absent friends and relatives, alive or dead, all for one dollar.  At this point Victoria discovered the power she had over older men.  Ignoring the sexual implications of their interest, she would patiently spend hours with them holding their hands, making them the center of her attention.  She and her sister did not hurt for clients.  One of the clients was Colonel James Blood, who had seen action during the Civil War in almost every battle on the Western front.  He was said to carry seven bullets in his body and went to see Woodhull, the ‘spiritualistic physician’. At one session, she appeared to go into a trance and spoke so softly that Blood was forced to lean closely to her lips whereupon he heard that his future destiny was to be linked with hers in marriage.

Blood then left his wife and daughter, and went to Toledo, Ohio, and was joined there by Victoria Woodhull. At age 30 Woodhull and family now consisted of Victoria, Blood, her parents, her two children, and her sister Tennie.  Cornelius Vanderbuilt, one of the richest and most powerful men in the country, was known to have a penchant for clairvoyants and a sharp eye for female beauty.  He was aged 74.  It was Tennie who went to work on the Commodore, offering touching and massaging as a means to transmit vital and healing forces.  Tennie often read to him from newspapers and when he would fall asleep she would perch on his knee, pull on his whiskers, box his ears, and say, “Wake-up old boy”.  Vanderbuilt had long since stopped loving his wife Sophia, and often sent her on long trips so that he could carry on affairs unnoticed.,  When this proved a hassle he had Sophia put into a lunatic asylum. These, I guess, were the ‘good ole days’ which modern conservatives yearn for so much. Sophia died in 1868 and Vanderbuilt shortly proposed marriage to Tennie.  She was 24. Well, while Tennie thought it over, the Vanderbuilt family blocked it and Vanderbuilt married someone else. 

It is fair to say that Victoria and Tennie marched to the tune of their own understandings of life, were bold, intelligent, and charming. They perceived, like many other women, that women were held to a double standard in terms of behavior, and treated as second-class citizens in all other respects.  Vanderbuilt treasured his relationship with Tennie and Victoria.  He loved their company and no doubt there was some sort of sexual relationship between he and Tennie, although what sort of form that took, considering his advanced age, is hard to say.  The Vanderbuilt family put tremendous pressure on him to distance himself from the two sisters. Yet Vanderbuilt wanted to remain friends with them, and at this point Victoria and Tennie made their move.  They asked Vanderbuilt to give quiet support to their opening a brokerage firm on Wall Street.  Woodhull had already made a killing on Wall Street through tips from Vanderbilt.  So the two sisters did open a brokerage firm, a move that normally would have been a disaster.  There were no women on wall street except as secretaries and that ilk.   Victoria and Tennis flourished because many powerful business men saw giving Victoria’s firm, called Woodhull, Claflin and Company, support as a way to please Vanderbuilt.  The two sisters were plenty smart enough to run the firm and it did well and Victoria began to accumulate a lot of money. 

At about this time Victoria decided to commit her life to female causes.  She understood how the male world worked, and was herself in possession of the intelligence and beauty to manipulate men as they manipulated women.  Her first area of attention was suffrage, the right of women to vote.  She was absolutely nothing like any of the other female suffrage leaders.  They were prim and proper, laid back, and anything but sexy. When Victoria started to attend suffrage conventions she kind of took these conventions by storm.  The leaders needed her money and she was generous with it.  When Victoria held a press conference it was mobbed, as at this time men loved her as some sort of interesting and harmless free spirit.  By now Victoria had established herself in a expensive mansion with her whole brood—Blood, Tennie, her mother and father, her handicapped son, her daughter, and her former husband. Her former husband by now was a hopeless alcoholic and drug addict, but Victoria sheltered him anyway.  Her home was a visual and perpetual open house.  It was the place to go for stimulating discussions and to meet important people.  The suffrage leaders resented her deeply but they were trapped.  Because she bankrolled much of their activities she had to be allowed to speak at conventions.  But when she spoke she charged up the participants like no one else could, leaving her as the defacto leader of these organizations. 

At this junction Woodhull surprised all.  While women could not vote, there was no apparent legal block to their running for office.  So Woodhull announced her bid to be President with the following notice: “As I happen to be the most prominent representative of the only unrepresented class in the republic, and perhaps the most practical exponent of the principles of equality, I announce myself as a candidate for the Presidency.  While others of my sex devoted themselves to a crusade against the laws that shackle the women of the country, I asserted my individual independence; while others prayed for the good time coming, I worked for it; while others argued the equality of women with men, I proved it by successfully engaging in business; while others sought to show that there was no valid reason why women should not be treated, socially and politically, as being inferior to man, I boldly entered the arena of politics, and business and exercised the rights I already possessed….” Most of the suffrage leaders seethed with anger, this was not the kind of woman they wanted to lead their cause.  But most women across the country admired the courage and intelligence of  Victoria while men paid her no end of attention.  Even President Grant gave her an audience in the White House and quipped: “Some day you will be sitting in this chair.”

To keep her name and her issues in front of the public, Victoria and Tennis started the Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly, a newspaper. This paper covered everything, from suffrage to financial matters, to the arts.  Through her personal charm with the right politicians Woodhull was granted the opportunity to become the first woman to address a congressional committee at the highest level. Her presentation was impressive and for the purpose of space I will only quote one paragraph: “The American nation in its march onward and upward, cannot publicly choke the intellectual and political activity of half of its citizens by narrow statutes. The will of the entire people is the true basis of republican government, and a free expression of that will by the public vote of all citizens, without distinctions of race, color, occupation or sex, is the only means by which that will can be ascertained.  As the world has advanced into civilization and culture; as mind has risen in its dominion over matters; as the principle of justice and moral right has gained sway….as the might of the right has supplanted the right of might, so have the rights of women become more fully recognized…….”

As a candidate for President, Woodall then sought the support of labor and her weekly newspaper became, in effect, the first ‘muckraker’ publication as it sailed into corporate sins.  She attacked the abuse of wealth as she attacked the abuse of women.  Up till now the men who had a firm grip on the financial affairs of the country, including labor, had found Victoria a delight, a charming, intelligent, and a harmless enough adversary.  After all, women were no where’s near getting the right to vote, so let her carry on.  Woodhull went after big business with the same broadside she went after women’s rights: “Is it right that the millions would toil all their lives long, scarcely having comfortable food and clothes, while the few manage to control all the benefits?  People may pretend that is justice, and good Christians may excuse it upon that ground, but Christ would never have called it by that name.  He would have given him that labored but an hour as much he that labored all the day, but to him that labored not at all he would take away even that which he hath…A system of society which permits such arbitrary distributions of wealth is a disgrace to Christian civilization…..How is this to be remedied?  I answer very easily….when a person worth millions dies, instead of leaving it to his children, who have no more title to it than anybody else’s children have, it must revert to the people….Christianity of today is a failure…..the church has allied itself with money and power, when it should be speaking for the powerless…..true religion will not shut itself up  in any church away from humanity; it will not stand idly by and see the people suffer from any misery whatsoever…..it is foolish for a Christian to say, “I have nothing to do with politics’….It is the bounded duty of every Christian to support that political party which bases itself  upon Human Rights, and where is no such party existing, then to go about to construct one.”  In full gear now, Woodhull was nominated by a new party, the Equal Rights Party.  She pushed into the party platform planks for graduated direct taxation, the regulation of monopolies, laws to protect laborers, a civil service to be based on merit, giving ownership of land, mineral, and water resources to the people, guaranteed employment to all, and the establishment of a universal government with international arbitration for wars. Except for the last two, all of these eventually became law far down the future path. It could be argued that if the last two are not accomplished today and rather quickly, then human destiny may well be in danger.

But Victoria had gone too far. She had now declared war on all the power bases in the country, including organized religion. Almost immediately she was shut out from the press and nothing she said or wrote could be published anymore except in her own weekly newspaper.  Not wishing to engage her on any of the issues she raised, the preemptively and other centers of power decided to attack her on her sexual activities. This was an age when women were expected to remain sexually pure and loyal to their husband, at least certain women. It was also an age when prostitutes were an accepted alternative for men, and affairs for married men were widespread.  The sexual double standard was firmly in place—-except for Victoria. She not only competed in the business world as a man, but she behaved sexually like one.  The difference is that she was open about it.  She was a female John Kennedy except she was more selective and more creative. For a start they went after the fact that she lived with two men, her former husband and her current husband.  Here was her response: “one of the charges made against me is that I live in the same house with my former husband, Dr. Woohull, and my present husband colonel Blood.  The fact is a fact. Dr Woodhull, being sick, ailing, and incapable of self-support, I felt it my duty to myself and to human nature that he should be cared for, although his incapacity was in no wise attributable to me.  My present husband, Colonel Blood, not only approves of this charity, but co-operates in it.  I esteem it one of the most virtuous acts of my life.”

Woodhull probably could have survived the attack on her living arrangement, but she was guilty of various sexual trysts with various men, many of them married, and she made little attempt to deny it, and in fact expanded her political views to include the sexual liberation of men and females. To most anyone’s standards she operated sexually with a mode that was, if not offensive, certainly different.  What is probably most outstanding about Woodhull is her absolute public honesty about sexual matters.  Here are some comments from her public pronouncements, keeping in mind that she was a suffrage leader, a labor leader, and a candidate for President:  “I am fully persuaded that the very highest sexual unions are those that are monogamic and these are perfect in proportion as they are lasting…but relations between the sexes are matters of emotions that the government has no right to control….women have a right to say no to a loveless marriage and no to unwanted sexual advances…I advocate free love in the highest purest sense as the only cure for the immorality, the deep damnation by which men corrupt and disfigure God’s most holy institution of sexual relations…I claim the right to the same free-from-rules by which men play, the same sexual freedom many of them practice…to preach against free love openly and practice it secretly is cowardly…I know, that marriage as it exists today, is the curse of society….marriage is of the heart, not of the law, and when love ends, marriage should end…if the motives are pure and genuine affection felt, untainted by exploitation, then sexual experimentation is a matter of individual choice and individuals have a right to other kinds of relationships, to serial monogamy or exclusionist free love or varietist free love….Yes I am a free lover.  I have an inalienable constitutional and natural right to love whom I may, to love as long or as short a period as I can; to change that love every day if I please, and with that right neither you nor any law you frame have any right to interfere…” It is hard to comprehend the shock these inflammatory words must have created back in 1872.

Victoria’s marriage to Blood was itself unique.  While they remained married for most of her life, he found no fault with trysts and whenever the need arose, he made himself scarce, even sleeping sometimes in another bedroom so as not to interfere.  It was Jack and Jacqueline Kennedy in reverse: perhaps Blood himself engaged in endless trysts, this I don’t know. It was sort of like Blood was her true love and the others were entertainment. But then, can true love exist along side sex with others?  While others drank alcohol to satisfy their emotional needs at her constant social and political gatherings in her home, she didn’t drink, and seemed to use a sexual session with a selected person at the end of some nights to relax her. 

So what do we make of all this? First, her male partners never had their careers damaged by any trysts with her, the only one who came under fire was her. So there was obviously a double standard.  Of course she was a whore if having sex with someone else for reasons that have nothing to do with real love, is the definition of a whore. But even here it gets confusing.  The tramp in the ghetto who has sex for $25 is certainly a whore in everybody’s mind.  Sex for money, pure and simple. But what about those high class women who marry for money or power?  Isn’t that being a whore?  Jackie Kennedy made little pretense that she cared most about money and power, sex was not very important to her.  Her nickname for Jack was ‘bunny’ and one gets the impression she was relieved that she did not have to endure as the only focus of Jack’s sexual energy.  Many females marry the one they marry in varying degrees because of the financial or social position of the male involved, sex being just part of the cost.  Men can be guilty of this too. 

Victoria’s response to allegations of her sexual affairs struck me as somewhat amazing. There was no “we all sin and I am sorry” or “I refute these scandalous charges that I had sex with these men” or “I find it undignified to respond to such personal charges” etc. Instead she hit it head-on, more in the vain, “is that so?” She reminded people that she was no different than the Vanderbuilts, or the Henry Ward Beechers, or the Theodore Tiltons, or an array of prominent politicians, all of whom she named. Henry Ward Beecher was a prominent preacher and advocate of women and minority rights, as was Theodore Tilton.  All of these prominent public figures denied they were unfaithful to their wives, that Victoria should not be believed. Woodhull responded that she knew about what she talked since she was aware that Beecher had a longstanding affair with Tilden’s wife and that she had engaged in sexual relations with both Tilden and Beecher. At this point all the sex charges against her were published in the major papers while her responses only were covered in her own weekly paper. Sales of her weekly paper soared.  Woodhull never relented claiming “I believe it is my duty and mission to carry the torch to light up and destroy the heap of rottenness which, in the name of religion, marital sanctity, and social purity, now passes as the social system”

Then things got worse.  At that time a self appointed guardian of the public morals, Henry Comstock, the head of the YMCA’s Committee for the Suppression of Vice, decided to go after Woodhull and had her arrested for distributing her weekly paper, which he claimed was a form of pornography.  Of course none of the papers that made the sexual charges against her were charged, only her paper which contained her responses to the charges.  Woodhull was jailed several times, but each time a jury declared her not guilty.  The whole case was complicated by the fact that none of the people who knew her personally ever joined in denouncing her and no one ever came forward and claimed they had been sexually ‘used’ or ‘corrupted’ by her. 

After being freed from jail one time she went before a national convention and declared: “I never had sexual intercourse with any man of whom I am ashamed to stand side by side before the world….I am not ashamed of any act of my life.  At the time it was the best I knew.  Nor am I ashamed of any desire that has been gratified or of any passion alluded to.  Every one of them are a part of my own soul’s life, for which, thank God, I am not accountable to you….and this sexual intercourse business may just as well be discussed now, and discussed until you become so familiar with your sexual organs that reference to them will no longer make the blush mount to your face any more than reference to any other part of your body.  My life has been my own.  I have nothing to apologize for. Sexual intercourse that is in accordance with nature, and is therefore proper, is that which is based upon mutual love and desire, and then ruminates in reciprocal benefit (orgasm)…First love; Second, desire based on love; and Third mutual happiness the result.  Fully half of women seldom or never experience any pleasure whatever in the sexual act and almost every women, at some time in her life, has suffered from false sexual relations (no orgasm) which left a void in the inner soul”.  In some respect Victoria Woodhull was a female Terrell Owens defending herself and her character by fueling the flames of her attackers and throwing caution to the wind. It does seem a tad odd that defending your own character becomes a reason for criticism by the character assassins themselves. 

Hardly anyone has ever escaped from sexual controversy over their personal behavior unharmed.  Woodhull was no different.  It is a guaranteed way to destroy a person’s credibility with a certain segment of any population.  It works either way, whether the person is painted as some sort of harlot, or some sort of sexually repressed hypocrite.  As long as human sexuality is so varied from one person to another, whether based on moral beliefs or genetic nature, the topic is always a wash, with each side claiming the moral ground.  Woodhull was no different. Victoria’s career as a politician was over, so was her marriage, the usual consequence of any public sexual assault on any marriage.  Woodhull, exhausted from it all, moved to England.

While in England she met and then married a wealthy English nobleman and businessman named John Biddulph Martin. His family of nobility was aghast but Martin prevailed and eventually the whole family accepted Woodhull. Martin wrote to a friend: “There are only two sorts of women, the ones in whom you lose yourself, and the ones in whom you find yourself.  She was more alive than anyone I have ever met.  Ordinary words don’t describe her. When you were with her everything became so thrilling, so worthwhile.  You looked at the world through her eyes and you saw miracles all around you.  The commonplace, the dull, the everyday had disappeared.  She believed that people were interesting and wonderful and they became it. She wanted people to be happy and she made them happy.” An interesting side point here is that Martin suffered from ‘sexual incapacity’ which Victoria purportedly corrected.  Maybe it was her experience. Whatever. 

Woodhull never quit. She returned to the U. S. and yep, she ran for President again in 1892, twenty years after her first run. She lost again and at a press conference made this statement: “To be perfectly frank, I hardly expected to be elected. The truth is I am too many years ahead of this age, and the exalted views and objects of humanitarianism can scarcely be grasped as yet by the unenlightened mind of the average man”.

Woodhull was no minor figure during her lifetime.  She dominated four major suffrage conventions, she ran for president twice, she was the first major female player on Wall Street, the first Woman to be granted high level appearances before Congress, a major focal point in the national debate over pornography, the major figure to exploit and condemn the double standard for one in business and sex, a major publisher of popular weekly newspaper that served as an outlet for alternate political and social views, a major supporter of labor rights, of environmental protection, and of the need to regulate and limit corporate excesses.  

I find two things truly amazing about Victoria Woodhulll.  First, she surely must be the first ‘true’ hippie.  Everything about her fits the 1960’s which came 100 years after her first run for President. Secondly, history books ignore her almost completely, like sometimes happens in Communist countries. Maybe a sentence or two, and always related to the ‘free love; business. That seems quite unfair, the ‘free love’ business came at the end when the major political power centers in the country decided to destroy her. These power centers cared little about her ‘free love”, but they did care about all the changes in society of which she began to effectively generate public interest.  Whatever else, she handled all the sex accusations honestly.  As for all the free love stuff, it is too complicated for me to digest, but her own family life, in reality, consisted of a large extended family unit that remained with her throughout almost her entire life. With the exception of Blood, no one ever fell by the wayside, and all lived with her until they died. She was ‘family values’ throughout her life. Most of them died before she did, except her daughter and son. To my knowledge, no friend, of her many many friends, ever turned against her. I think that says a lot about Victoria Woodhull.  It poses an interesting question. Can a person really be a moral depravate if he/she has an army of reputable friends, none of whom find anything morally depraved about him/her?

Postscript.  Colonel Blood puzzles me.  He seemed a little too accommodating even for an open marriage.  For a man who had been in every civil war battle on the western front and carried 7 bullets in him, perhaps he was no longer sexually potent.  He and Victoria never had any children.  If that were the case it would better explain his support for  Woodhull’s sexual trysts.  Be all that as it may I have come to be awful careful how to judge any couple’s sexual behavior. What works for them is fine with me as long as it is consensual and does not involve minors. And I am kind of practical about his ‘free love business’. If this were widespread wouldn’t it cut down on most of sexual actions? I mean, there would be this handful of males and females in the neighborhood who would monopolize all the orgasms. “Not tonight dear, I stopped by neighbor Harry’s house on the way home and three of us gals had a wonderful time with him.  He really turns me on. Maybe tomorrow if the grade A candidates are all busy.”  Sex just seems one area of human life that can’t be corralled and fit into any logical or reasonable box. As much as sex provides orgasms, it also creates a lot of frustration and turmoil in the lives of many people, including couples. A porn site might have over 50 categories of sex to choose from. How much simpler and time saving sex is in other animals where hormones simply generate specific sexual activity which rarely lasts very long. In most animals there is a normal pattern of sexual behavior. In humans the diversity of sexual behaviors and turn ons is overwhelming and frankly, makes sexual compatibility a major challenge for many couples. Add to that the likelihood that sexual preferences and sexual drive may change over time and we are left with a very tricky long term situation. Human sexual behaviors are simply not very subject to rational reasoning. If someone says they are turned on by anal sex while swinging from the chandelier what are we suppose to say? Maybe that is why sex should be listed under comedy and it sure as hell serves as the subject matter for our most hilarious jokes—unless we are in the middle of a sexual quagmire ourselves, then the humor is lost, and in fact, we might end up in jail or divorced.

Be all this as it may, Victoria Woodhull was a fascinating national figure, full of enigmas, shocking honesty, and intellectually challenging rhetoric. Victoria’s policy stands, which her generational leaders despised, are today’s social and political norms.  What does seem to remain is her effective elimination from our history books. She certainly was not ignored during her lifetime. Practically everyone knew about Victoria Woodhull back then, albeit only establishment attacks on her were in the major newspapers. Her defense was limited to her own weekly newspaper. Imagine if there had been TV and radio, and internet back then. Her life was wild and intense theatre.  Well, not to be too depressed.  We have Trump.  One genuinely loved just about every group imaginable and the other genuinely dislikes most every group different from himself. We will all, like it or not, get to see how that works out. 

A Very Personal Email

A Very Personal Email

Some people have suggested I should write more personal letters to my friends instead of endless musings about general topics. So here goes:

My Dearest Friend,

There are certain personal things about you that only a dear friend can, or should, bring to your attention for your own good. Good friends are perfect for that. You are my friend through hell or high water BUT: (in order to eliminate any necessity for a personal letter to each good friend, this one will suffice if you just cross off whatever of the below does not apply to you). 

___You look like you have lived life too fast, with too many responsibilities, under too much pressure. You need to smile more and develop a more carefree air-headed type countenance. You know—the real you. 

____You could have picked a better spouse. What do you see in him/her anyway? This for sure downgrades your family gene pool. 

____I am surprised how much you spoiled your kids rotten.  The only thing you can do now is disown them. 

_____Your pet(s) need to go to pet training school or be put to sleep, as the neighbors wish. 

_____You are the kind of person who never should drink. Not even a little. 

_____ I don’t think you understand politics—it’s not yours strong suit, so just shut up, and  get the person you voted for to do the same.  

_____Where did you get your decorative tastes? I’ll just say it is different. Hire a professional decorator. 

___You’d be so much more pleasant to be with if you’d admit when you are wrong, like most of the time.

___I think if you sat in a different kind of chair your posture would be less taxing on the eyes. 

____Have you been working too hard? You seem to be aging so fast.

_____Do you always pick losers? Give more thought to things and you will do better. 

____I never watch TV shows like you watch, it insults my intelligence

____Doesn’t your hobby bore you?  I think you could find a better one for your time, level of skill, and competence.

____Do you ever shut up?  You could learn so much from others.

____I think you could find clothes just as comfortable that are more fashionable

___You laugh in an odd way. I don’t mind but others probably do.

___ You find the strangest things funny.  Others probably think you have a screw loose. 

___You seem so tense, maybe you need to find a way to improve your sex life, maybe something more vigorous or stimulating. With Viagra and internet sex sites for every sexual fetish, you could find relief and not be so tense and repressed. Maybe buy a more comfortable or stronger kitchen table. 

___Your boss must be a very patient person.  Don’t you worry about being fired?

___What made you take a trip there? You must have time and money to burn.

____You need to watch some of these TV cooking shows.  They can give you tips on how to cook some of the things you serve.

___Always count to ten before you open your mouth and then DON’T. Except in the bedroom.

____If you took advice from a higher class of people you wouldn’t be such a jerk. 

____You have some nice outfits, but there is no way you can ever be sexy looking anymore, so quit trying to be somebody you are not.  Cover up and shut up as much as possible. 

___Do all those wrinkles itch?  Well, they make others itch. Use more makeup. 

_____See what happens when you think? 

___you need to relax.  In the long run you will be dead anyway.  So why don’t you go ahead and start being dead.

____Your tone of voice when you say things turns people off. Maybe you are tone deaf. 

____If you would think before you speak you would have more friends.

___Do you always repeat yourself? I don’t mind but I suspect others do.

___You need to talk about different topics.  No one cares about you.

____I don’t think you are a jerk, but if you talk to others like you do to me, they do.

____I always liked your parents. You are nothing like them.

____Did you ever consider a personal fitness trainer? They can sometimes do so much with so little.

___Your taste in music is outdated.  Have you had your hearing checked?

____You played too much football with your helmet off.

____I have difficulty remembering what you are best remembered for, so maybe you are best forgotten.

____I would not personally employ you except for reasons of our personal friendship, like a buffoon in a common carnival. 

___You are a little nobody with a lot to be modest about.

___You seem to think there is a fourth person in the trinity

____You have no depth to your thoughts which are as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had been starved to death.

___If you fell off a bridge that would be a misfortune. If anyone pulled you out that would be a calamity.

___From the moment I picked up something you wrote I was convulsed with laughter.  Some day I intend to read it. 

___I don’t know why you took such umbrage at my comments on birth control, you’re such a living argument for it.

__You seem to have great respect for women. Only last week you saved a female from being attacked.  You controlled yourself. 

____Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you voted for Trump, but I  repeat myself here. 

____As a conversationalist you are the one who talks during someone else’s sleep.

Now just shape up or do the decent thing and have a fatal accident before your tired old ass becomes an unbearable burden on society, to your family and friends, and an eyesore to the natural beauty of the planet. 

All of the above is not so much creativity on my part but proof, that despite my scarcity of writing personal letters to others, many have written me personal letters. While I ignore them I trust that you will take all of this to heart. 

You’re Welcome,

Your good friend, 

Reid

The Final Lap

The Final Lap

I sort of knew this was coming. Before most important decisions in my life where finalized I sort of knew what was coming on my part. I learned or sensed or imagined early in life that the right decision, in important matters, is a decision that is right for ourselves. It seems a mistake to let others define us or dictate our personality/values/goals/our station in life/our whatever. These important decisions in life dictated where I went to college, to graduate school, to where I taught at the University level for most of my life, to how I lived retired for 21 years now, and shortly to how I live the last lap of my life—however long that lap might be. I am indebted to my dad for encouraging me to just be what fits me best. He never attempted to steer me down any particular path in life except advise me to just do the right thing for myself and others in an ethical manner.  

We have to be careful with how we achieve some contentment. Chasing after contentment is a slippery slope. We need be particularly thoughtful about how we view ethical behavior. For varied reasons I decided by around age 40 that any Heaven is here on Earth during our own lifetime, that there is no Heaven in some sort of afterlife. If good decisions generated good memories, then I made some rewarding decisions in my life. My formative years, my productive years, and my retirement years have all given me a lot of good memories. With a bank of pleasant memories the need to keep up that pace sort of evaporates. When people say to me sometimes: “What do you do for excitement”? I respond: “I am not looking for excitement or tense challenges anymore. Been there, done that, and now I prefer some quietude, solitude, solo walking in nature and city neighborhoods, reading, food for thought via musings, real sumptuous food via cooking, musical favorites from my past, good doctors, pleasant people at a respectable personal distance in my daily life, my FANAFI Fund which enables me to support the less fortunate, and projects within my condo which create the right atmosphere for personal contentment. All this I sense is my personal ‘Heaven on Earth’. Each unique person would need create their own ‘peculiar’ Heaven on Earth.  

Trump is, if nothing else, an interesting study. Here is a man who inherited millions, amassed billions via bilking investors, stiffing contractors and then declared bankruptcy—keeping huge amounts of money for himself, and all legal, thanks to the laws which lobbyists of the wealthy have engineered to get on the books. Yet with all this money, and all his bragging about how wealthy he is, his various trophy wives, and how money can buy him anything he wants, Donald Trump is one of the angriest persons around. He is mad at everything and everybody, especially minorities, the poor, the less fortunate of every ilk. Compulsive behavior never leads to contentment. The real tragedy is his compulsive behavior and consequent anger ends up making the lives of so many less fortunate in life more miserable. 

Past good memories help immensely in the retirement stage of life, and will provide the needed support during our, however long, last lap. Good health is imperative during our terminational years and for the last 21 years of my terminational years good health has been a blessing. Having sort of intensely observed how a lot of people spent their last lap in life (which is decidedly different than the terminational years), I have a good feeling about the best stage props for my own last lap. Peculiar is perhaps the best word many would use to describe my own essence, although I doubt many would use it in a derogatory manner. Of course being ‘peculiar’ carries some baggage, but it is what it is. 

Whether we like it or not, it seems we all die alone. Whether we like it or not ‘we can never go home again.” Every time we hit a button and try to relive the past, we fail. Reunions, in theory, try to recreate the past, but in that respect they fail miserably. They only remind us that the past is gone. The closest I ever succeed in recreating realistic emotions from the past is in the quietude of night or nature. We can, with effort, regenerate some of the intense feelings we had with others in our youth, or with past objects of affection, or with past fellow workers, or our parents, etc. While partial emotions are possible, it can never be the same simply because the past is over, done with, a closed book. That will always be sad fact while we still exist. Unless we die prematurely via an accident, disease, whatever, we will die a ‘death by a thousand cuts’. With each loss of our meaningful past, we die a little ourselves. We move on, travel down new paths until at some point new paths are less rewarding. At that point in our lives we either go gently down the stream, or we make an ass of ourselves trying to swim upstream, or at the very least resist going down stream to the great unknown.

In our last lap, the difference is that our own essence will begin to fade. No one mistakes interacting with someone, say 83 years old, as interacting with the same person at age 20 or 40. I can vividly remember sitting at a dining table with my mother in a facility for the aged in which so much silence permeated the event. These were once vibrant energetic individuals who often never shut up, but now communication was sparse, inane, and required considerable effort. It simply is what it is, with their life ebbing away in slow motion. Though all were kind of in the same boat, some were going gently down the stream and others were constantly whining and fighting battles which could never be won. My mother was too smart to listen to me very often, but I advised her not to whine a lot when the attendants of varied sorts came into her room. She surprised me—she didn’t. These attendants would remark to me, when I was visiting, that it was a pleasure to go into her room. Some would sometimes go to into her room after work and play games with her. 

As usual I drift off topic. For 21 retirement years now I have had the opportunity to find ways to amuse myself. A prominent goal was never to be a pest to others by always seeking ways to have them amuse me.  I think I learned this from my father. He, to put it succinctly, simply cut himself off from his past, and found ways to amuse himself. He had been all his life socially active with a lot of people, but in his last years he made zero effort to continue contact with them. When I pressed him why he didn’t stay in contact with his former friends he simply responded “What for? You can’t relive the past.” 

I have now reached the conclusion that this is the right path for me, just as it was for my father, for Howard Hughes, and for a lot of people who I have known in the past. For me, it is very comforting, that when I wake up each day, I simply do the things I want to do—all, or certainly almost all, of which are not dependent on others. I spent a lot of my time in my productive years doing things which were challenging and rewarding—-BUT involved endless meetings, maneuvering, competing, challenging, and protecting young people who were in tough situations, and vulnerable to failure without assistance (and too often eventually failed anyway). This changed my whole perspective on life and human diversity. I never remotely succeeded to the extent Obama did, in the sense Obama never seemed to meet a group he didn’t want to help succeed. Those with a more restricted sense of humanity hated him for the help and attention he gave those groups whom they, if not detesting, desired little contact with, or to support those different from themselves. Obama’s reward was clearly a kind of contentment depth which most of us can never achieve.

I said earlier in this treatise that we all die alone. So why, I wonder, would I want to drag others through my own dying process? All our lives we needed help from others to achieve many of the successes in our lives, no matter how modest. On our last lap, we are going to die and no one else can prevent it. They could gather around us on a daily basis and nothing would change. What we need are good doctors, good caretakers, comfortable surroundings, and the ability to control our own dying process. Some states are edging in that direction ever so slowly. Modern medicine can often keep us alive in some sort of tortured state for longer and longer periods of time, at a cost that is astronomical. In my case, a peculiar dude of harmless nature, when I have had enough, whenever that time arrives, I am prepared to peacefully die via my own actions if necessary. That comforts me. There is no reason to fear dying, just what kind of dying torture we might be forced to go through by the government and certain religious groups. 

During the last lap of life I think it best to seal myself off from all except those involved in my daily life, and even those will be kept at a safe distance. So far it seems I am getting the necessary pattern set up for achieving this goal.  It just seems we need keep an accurate assessment as to what we can still do and what we can no longer do. Never let others do what we can still do ourselves. There are plenty of kind enough people who will do things for us that we can still do ourselves, but at an age when we can linger so much longer in life, this burden on others is simply wrong. IF we can no longer care for ourselves and do any of the things we use to do for an enjoyable life, why do we want to be a burden to others? If we are going to recover that is one thing, but if not, well—like already stated, death is nothing to fear. We didn’t exist for millions of years in past evolutionary eras and we never lost any sleep with regrets over it. And the fact is, once dead we certainly cannot have any feelings whatsoever about future evolutionary periods. No one is turning over in their grave about anything after their death. No one fears going to bed because they will know nothing about the time period in which they are asleep. 

The emotion which should dominate the final lap is one of gratefulness. We were born by chance and we should be grateful we had that chance:

“A million million spermatozoa All of them alive; Out of their cataclysm but one poor Noah Dare hope to survive. And among that billion minus one Lincoln, another Obama, T.O., a new Ira Louvin— But the One was Me.” Once dead we are not totally nonexistent yet. But once all have died with memories of our existence, then finally we cease to exist. In the big picture of God’s evolutionary process, our existence was no big deal, no matter how hard we tried all our lives to make ourselves important. We even tried to believe that our immediate offspring were duplicates of ourselves, a continuation of our own essence. That also is rather farcical. If we were to put 100 parents who we knew well in a room, and then put 100 adult immediate offspring who we knew well in a room, our ability to match up the right offspring with the right parents, in the absence of any physical resemblance would be a colossal failure. Diversity is a driving force in the evolutionary process, never our own essence.  My last lap has not yet started but my plan is to be prepared.   “The clock of life is wound but once And no man has the power To tell just when the hands will stop, AT late, or early hour. Now is the only time you own. Live, love, and toil with a will. Place no faith in tomorrow, For the clock may then be still.” For the most part, those in their last lap of life turn inward and withdraw from all that much interest in others. When pushed they will try to be respectful about all the activities others are going through in their lives, but left on their own in group settings they tend to become the silent ‘elephant in the room’, managing a nod here and there, a smile when pushed to smile, but their mind is inward and fading. With a substantially decreased energy level they appreciate sleep the best. I often get the impression they are ready to go into retreat mode, but others try their best not to let them. We may wish that people who were once so important to our lives not die alone, but they will. That, of course, is not to say they don’t need a comfortable environment to die alone. Actually we were born alone without the slightest clue or appreciation of any others present. We kind of die the same way whether we are dying from a car accident, a deadly disease, a deadly medical condition, whatever. Probably the fairest thing we can do for those on their last lap is enquire if there is anyone they want to see and limit any visitors to that list. Many of these round the clock vigils meet the need of the visitors, not the dying patient. This is not to suggest these vigils are wrong. Just like funerals are for the living survivors, these death bed vigils are likewise similar. Many species prefer to die alone, and when possible, go off somewhere to die. Yes, life itself can end up being a nuisance on the final lap, and our mental activity so weak and inane that if we could suddenly recover, we would not even remember much of that final lap. My dad, well into his 80’s, once remarked to me “I feel ok but what is the point?” There seemed to be no real answer to his question. Perhaps the terminational years is our ‘Heaven” if we choose to make it so. Statistics show that those past 60 tend to have a more contented life than those in earlier years. My own feelings attest to that. But I also sense that my last lap will go smoother if I prepare ahead. It amazes me when some older person hits their last lap and is in a dither about the turn of events as if it were a total unexpected surprise. Did they really think they would be immortal? In the next few months my intention is to prepare and thus be prepared. Things could turn south at any time. So I guess this is part one.  Many would say it is morbid to think about, or plan for one’s final lap. Frankly, death is about as any for sure part of life that we can plan on. Those who plan carefully important events in their life are more likely to have such events go well. These events include college plans, marriage, career plans, potential job situations, ethical beliefs and the rewards, tolerance to diversity, personal priorities, personal values, etc. More to the point, if we do not prepare to face our final lap, we often find that trying to prepare ourselves, as it happens, may well find us not in the best mental state at such a time. Of course, given the choice, we would rather just drop dead, but we are more likely to slowly fade away—albeit we can, at some point, when enough has become enough, elect to simply drop dead in a dignified painless timely fashion.   Part two, if there is one, will be the game plan for my final lap.

  

Why T.O. Won’t Shut Up!

Why T.O. Won’t Shut Up!

“T.O., I get it. Your numbers, your body of work should have spoken for itself, but you’re not helping your cause… He’s always been outspoken. He feels that if someone is taking a slight at him, he’s going to defend himself. That’s who he is. The little bit I’ve been around him, he sincerely, honestly believes that people are out to get him.”  Shannon Sharpe

Sharp reads T.O. accurately. From the start T.O.’s grandmother told him he was ‘special’, that everyone—yes everyone—would try to keep him down—in his place, poor, a nobody in society—and that only God could make him strong enough to will his way over, around, or through all the hurdles others would place in his way. He was to trust no-one—yes no one.  Given this well implanted view of life, Terrell was fortunate enough to have an unusual genetic degree of willpower. He took this genetic willpower, learned to self-focus on his goal of being a great wide receiver, and it took all of high school and most of his college to develop his limited natural athletic ability into a well muscled athlete. The knowledge of his position was gained by listening to coaches coach first stringers. Before San Francisco T.O. was a shy, introverted person who seldom spoke much with others. People from those early days hardly even remember him, he was so shy and quiet and a second stringer.  It was watching Jerry Rice create pressure on coaches and quarterbacks to get him the ball that caused T.O. to create the T.O. persona in practice and during games. 

Any effort to get T.O. to tone down his defense of himself regarding the Hall of Fame is likely to fail. At this point he probably is truthful when he states “I no longer have any respect for the process and could care less if I get in anymore.” He will get more attention at this point by being rejected year after year. No one hardly remembers who is in the Hall of Fame or much remembers them at all in their thoughts. But most everyone will remember a ‘stat king’ who the committee refused to admit for their own personal dislike of his personality.  Will he ever forgive them for their attack on his character?  Hard to see it happening but nothing is ever fixed in stone with T.O.  The committee has created their own monster. Now discussions for who to pick are likely to be filled with all kinds of character assassinations. Good luck with the committee pretending Randy Moss was a better teammate. He was with just as many teams, was outright let go by 4 teams and is most known for his giving up playing hard when his team was losing and saying “I play when I feel like playing.”   Many star football players were stars in high school and have many of the traits that come with being spoiled brats—supported and protected by coaches, fans, and assorted kinds of ‘posse’s”.  T.O. had none of that until he reached the pros, by which time he already had become a genuine loner with everyone kept outside his own personal bubble. 

If T.O. didn’t act like he ‘had been there before” when scoring a touchdown—well, he hadn’t until his pro years. He was a ‘one man band’ when it came to celebrating, just as he had been a one man band developing his muscular body, his year round training schedule, his creation of the T.O. personality, and his isolation from others. Not only did others not impact much on him, no matter how hard they tried to understand and get close to him, but T.O. paid a tough price for his focused success and willpower in football at the expense of all other aspects of his life. He didn’t just ignore other people, but he also ignored other aspects of his life. We can hate him for his being a different sort of personality, but without his genetic willpower and learned self focus, T.O. would have been a relative ‘nobody’ just like almost everyone who grew up in his neighborhood—one of the poorest in Alabama.  That is, very poor. 

The inability of some committee members to tolerate diverse personalities is more a reflection of their unsuitability  to be on such a committee than it is any unsuitability by T.O. to have been a first ballot selection to the Hall of Fame. The vast majority of those electing players to the Hall of Fame haven’t a clue about the reality of locker rooms. A lot of these writers enjoy and value getting juicy tidbits about other players from unnamed players and lower level team management personnel on various teams in football. It is fairly certain from T.O.’s personality that these writers never got any attention from T.O. That is not a crime. T.O. lived in his own bubble, why would he choose to let these sport writers be the exception? Their attitude seems to be that he never paid any attention to them at all, and now is their chance to pay him back—and some seriously advise T.O. to just shut up and take it from these people he calls pencil pushers. This is simply up front blackmail.  The odds that T.O. is going to tap dance for them at this stage in his life are probably slim. 

A lot of people who accomplish great things are unique, different, distant, and wrapped up in their own peculiar world. They are not ‘bad’ people but real challenges to understand. Failure to understand someone ,or particularly like their personality, is no legitimate reason to demean them or refuse to acknowledge their great accomplishment. It is not like we are dealing with criminal behavior here.

My favorite well known intriguing personalities include Abraham Lincoln, Victoria Woodhull, Allen Iverson, Obama, Dalai Lama, Barry Goldwater, Winston Churchill, Jack Kevorkian, John Muir, Jackie Gleason, Teddy Roosevelt, Charles Stanton, Tecumseh, and Terrell Owens. Of course with Lincoln there is so much input and yet he never wears his welcome out. He is by far the King of Intrigue.  I guess I would call Lincoln and Victoria Woodhull the King and Queen of Intrigue. Woodhull was a 150 years ahead of her time and most of the policies she stood for eventually became established law. 

The Best of Things Learned (Part 1 of ?)

The Best of Things Learned (Part 1 of ?)

When we have learned enough to really live, we are old enough to die.  And we die in part because we can never go home again.  Our unique self, created by chance, with our given genetic cards, given environment and given age in which we live—got exposed to God’s laws which govern the evolutionary process. To the extent we are like most humans, we depended heavily on help from others to achieve some goals, being a self made achiever (aka Terrell Owens) not a reality.  

Unlike other species, most of what we learn came from those humans before us, and thus we achieve new heights of living on the shoulders of the ‘giants’ who came before us.  We learn that enlightenment does not always generate happiness, that there is more sadness in human lives than contentment, that we are not all created equal at all, that the Golden Rule is the basis of ethics, that any Heaven is right here on earth in the form of achieving maximized personal contentment with our own lives. Contentment itself is a tricky essence that is never pure, but dwells along side our sense of regret that there is so much suffering by so many for so many different reasons. We learn that any inability to appreciate diversity and the role diversity plays in the evolutionary process will make us incapable of achieving much contentment in our own lives—after all, there then being so many heathens/non replicates of ourselves all around us. If we cannot appreciate diversity and be enriched by it, we suffer endless irritation by these others all our lives (aka Donald Trump). 

If we are fortunate, we learn to appreciate nature and seek to feel being a part of nature, not treat nature as something to be used up whenever convenient. We find a way to understand that Mother Nature bats last. No species yet has controlled it’s own destiny. In fact over 97% of species ever existing are now extinct. We learn that human values, not family values, are the obligatory demands after the formative years of our offspring is completed. The care of all adults is the responsibility of all adults via the Golden Rule, and that government exists for just that purpose. Yes, for human society to be a healthy one, we are all, individually and collectively, our brother’s keeper. To the extent we cannot find the will to protect and nurture the less fortunate—we are, in reality, their executioner. Every major empire in history fell essentially because their foreign empire of some sort was too expensive to maintain, and at home too much of that nation’s wealth was in the hands of the wealthy few. “If we cannot save the many who are poor, we cannot save the few who are rich.”

We learn that compulsive behaviors of any sort are self destructive, that failure to properly judge when enough is enough, of most anything, will never lead to personal contentment. We learn that science, not feelings, not inherited religious dogma, leads to correct answers about life. We learn that some aspects of life are beyond reason like sex, the extent of our own personal importance, what God is like, where God came from, and the direction of evolution in the future. 

We learn to accept that death is a natural end point of life. No one gets out of this world alive. We learn that it is our personal right to control our own dying process via written directives, or sane decisions at the time we make the very personal decision as to when enough is enough. We have no need to fear death, just to fear that social and religious dogmas might force us to endure a difficult and tortured dying process. To fear death is to have never accepted with gratitude the fact that we had a chance to exist at all. Gratitude should be the dominant personal emotion during the dying process. To accept life with gratitude for the chance, and not generate the illusion that God (however defined) will save us from danger, negate any of the laws which govern the evolutionary process on our behalf in order to enhance our own life—then we avoid ending up in life feeling “Why God has thou forsaken me?” The exceptions are of course murders, sudden fatal disasters of any sort, including accidents—these kind of deaths are not seeped in gratitude. Tragedies in life are everywhere. Evolution is genius, but the process can often be brutal—one of those no pain, no gain processes. We don’t play the lottery because we can do anything to make us win, but because we have a chance to win, no matter how slim. Being born was essentially an involuntary lottery. 

A musing of this sort cannot written all at one time. We spend a lifetime learning so much about so many aspects of life. Learning is personal. Conclusions differ. For me, learning is what gives life the most meaning. Retirement is a great time in that there is enough time available to learn and cogitate in depth about all that we have experienced in life. Learning is self rewarding, it contributes to personal contentment, it is inexpensive, it mellows us out, it is something we can best do on our own. Of course it has limitations and is subject to human error. So from time to time, in the quietude of peculiar moments, the time will be ripe to address other ‘best things learned about life’.  Nothing in bold letters here, or everything would be in bold letters.