My New Book

If I haven't been around for a while, it's because I've been working on the publicity for this new book written under my pen name of Norma Druid.  I've actually got some publicity of the thing this time around!  My son Lawrence did the cover for me, so I've even got a great cover going for me.

 

Dailymotion        : http://www.dailymotion.com/video/56059050

Youtube               : http://youtube.com/watch?v=SXdDPc12_vs

Metacafe            : http://www.metacafe.com/w/9857436

Here are three websites for my book trailer; I'm really pleased with it.

I've also done an interview with Toginet Radio, which you can find at toginet.com under my name in their library.

This book is a prequel to A TEST OF ALIEN ALLIANCE, and I've included in it all the things I didn't first time around, like a list of characters and chapter headings.  Since this book covers 20 years and an entire galaxy, I needed a lot of characters.

Basically, it is the story of a doomed diplomatic colony with one ten-year-old survivor.  Did the aliens they were liasing with destroy the colony - or was it somebody else.  Only ten-year-old Licinio knows the truth, and he would never get the chance to tell it if he hadn't befriended aliens. 

I have also stopped trying to sell retail craft supplies at peaypatch.com.  It just wasn't working.  I continue to sell items on ebay and have great hopes for this book.

 

The "Free Market Entrepreneurs" & the World They Made

My Father's Memories

A bit later, 1931 as I recall, my maternal grandmother took me along with her to the Hippodrome on West End across from Centennial Park to see a 'Marathon Dance Contest'.  Today I remember the dancers, moving like the sleepwalkers they in fact were, and the recorded dance music they were supposed to dance to.  It was an outstanding example of The Free Enterprise For Profit System at work, and one I have never forgotten; poor out-of-work men and women going through the motions of dancing almost without stop for days until only one of the couples was able to more or less stand on the floor.  These completely exhausted people were then rewarded with, I think, one hundred dollars.

 

The Free Market Entrepreneurs, following time honored custom, charged viewers (most of whom were only marginally employed if at all) a dime to view other poor out-of-work people so desperate as to engage in this legal torture.  What a system, and so strongly supported by the poor!  I'm sure the promoters all made money on the deal, which produced not a single thing of value to a suffering society but had the virtue to be an example of the free market system approved by God - or so the Bible thumping preachers all declared.  I should like to point out here that a dime then would have purchased a loaf of bread and would have been more humanely spent.  But the gods of the market place had spoken, and the prosperity we were assured was just around the corner remained there.

 

The economic destruction of the first world I hoped to grow up in is clear in my mind.  The concernit brought to my childhood home was of huge proportions, and I can still hear my father, closeted with mother in their bedroom at night, crying aloud "What am I going to do?".  Then the deply concerned voice of my mother would reassure him "god will provide a way".  Indeed, in the passage of time a way developed and, if it was not quite the way they would have liked, it was a way to make a living and keep the family together and educate me - not a bad deal in those horrid days.  I was there, and the churches could not help, for their members were as bab off as any.  The state could not print money and was flat broke as well.  What happened?

 

What happened was the 1932 elections, and FDR became president.  While the righteous and the Republicans tried hard to blunt everything he did, we began a slow recovery.  How the church people hated FDR and the New Deal, but all who could took the Relief offered, the CCC and the WPA jobs they preached against even as they ate the government's salt.  It has been a long lasting lesson to me, and I know how the Christian gentlemen then returned good for ill.  Nearly all tried to bite the hand which was feeding them.  I may not remember much, but that I will remember as long as I live.    

Last Time the Rich Hijacked the Economy - My Father's Story

These are my father's memories of the money woes of the 1930s - caused by the same type of people who are doing it today.

 

  Most know the movies were silent until the late twenties and that color came to the silver screen in the late thirties, but I doubt they grasp the shock most of us experienced the first time we heard voices from the screen.  What these folks don't understand is how hard it was to come by the 15 or 20 cents required to get in a movie house if one went early in the day - at night the cost might be as high as 35 cents, a staggering amount then for a picture show.  By the time I was scrounging for picture-show money, most workers were fortunate to be making twenty to twenty-five dollars a week, and there were a dozen men for every job.  The thirties were hard times, I can tell you, but for fifteen cents one could dream in a movie and forget the hard times for a while.

 

If one was laid off at work, there was no unemployment compensation nor job bank to turn to; you were on your own in a non-welfare state.  Until the FDR years, there was no minimum wage law, and you worked for whatever a business was willing to hand out.  These were indeed the 'good old days', but only for a very few.

 

The economic difference between the twenties and the thirties was almost one of daylight and dark.  Hardly anyone really understood the 'stock market crash of '29', surely not us children, but every home I knew of suffered greatly, and even we kids knew the world had changed indeed.  For adults, the crash and the resulting depression (which forever altered the meaning of the word) was a life or death struggle, and quite a few of them never made it.  My family was more fortunate than many, for, while Dad was out of work for some time, he did land a career job in the Madison Water Works.  The loss of the home on Fairfax was a disaster he never got over.

 

In the first years of the '30s, I was able to see a host of men and young boys 'riding the rods' as hard-time hoboes.  I had not then heard of Woody Guthrie, but I knew the bad times he wrote about.  Mother fed many of these formerly well off people on the back steps of our home.  They, and the people I saw at the improvised soup-kitchens set up in Centennial Park are still clear in my mind.

 

And we have people in Congress who would see us like that again.  Raise your voice!   

What My Parents Told Me About Religion in Public Schools

Okay, I've about had enough.  I opened my email today to find this notice from Faithful America:

And speaking live on Fox News, Mike Huckabee said that this shooting happened because "we've systematically removed God from our schools." He added, "Maybe we ought to let [God] in on the front end, and we wouldn't have to call him to show up when it's all said and done."

These words are an insult to the victims, an embarrassment to sincere Christians, and a dangerous distraction from the national scourge of gun violence. Hateful and unchristian rhetoric like this has no place on a major television news network.

 Going to public school in the 1950s and early 1960s, I was exposed to plenty of prayers, special assembly sermons, and hymns with accompaniment - many of them contrary to what the Church of Christ taught and disturbing to me.  When the same rhetoric started up while my son was in public school, I decided to take a private poll of my parents.  Both went to Nashville Public Schools in the 1920s and 1930s.  Did they have God in school?

My mother recalled an occasional scripture reading and one address by a missionary just returned from China.  She also recalled a teacher stating that all the apostles were Baptists, which made her very angry because she was a Lutheran.  Regular prayers and Bible reading were definitely not part of her schooling.

My father's memories were even odder.  He could recall no scripture reading, public prayers, or religious assemblies that had made any impression on him.  What he did recall was that, when he attended Ransom School in the 1920s, the morning assembly always included singing of "Aurora, Goddess of the Morning".  How this came about, I don't know, but it caused no uproar from either Christian or Jewish students.  (Ransom at this time had a large proportion of Jewish students.)

Actually, I think Religion in School must have finally turned up when we started worrying about Godless Communism.  I remember well that I had just learned the Pledge of Allegiance when Eisenhower added the two new words "under God".  This was just like a grown-up, I thought, changing things when you'd just memorized them!

I was always taught the supreme importance of separation of church and state, and I saw for myself how religious exercises could make difficulties in school.  One year at Jere Baxter, we had Christmas and Easter pageants.  Being of the Church of Christ, I was forbidden to participate in these.  My mother arranged that with the teachers.  I felt cheated, of course - all those costumes!  The next year, no such pageants were presented.  I suspect this was the influence of the ever-vocal Jehovah's Witnesses, whose children attended public schools.

For certain, we have not always had the Bible and piety in public schools. 

 

Blanche Greene Peay - A Poor Kid in the City

This is my father's mother, a rare portrait taken when she was about 17.  She probably paid for it out of her earnings; she had been working since she was 11.  Most of her earnings went to help out at home.

 

My great-grandfather Greene worked for the railroad, but he died young at a time when there was no such thing as a pension.  His widow (the lady my father wrote about) was left  with a house, three small children, and her parents to care for.  Great-great-grandfather Greene had made what turned out to be a bad career choice - he was a cobbler.. About halfway through his working life, everybody started buying cheaper factory-made shoes.  He still occasionally got a commission to make a pair of shoes and presumably helped with the heavy household chores men normally do.

 

Blanche's mother Nettie and her grandmother Parthenia immediately started taking in boarders; plenty of railroad workers wanted a room near their work.  They also took in laundry and sewing - anything to make a few pennies.  The household was so busy that no one noticed when little Blanche, sent out to draw water from the well, let the well handle get away from her.  It hit her on the back of the head and knocked her out.  When she came to, she got up and drew the water.  No one had missed her.

 

Jessie Allison Gobel was lucky to grow up in the country, where school was part of the agricultural year.  She spent plenty of time chopping weeds, but also got a high school education.  Blanche went to elementary school in the old Falls School Building (now a restored historic monument), but she never got farther than the sixth grade.  Her mother sent her out to work.  At eleven, she was sticking labels on coffee cans for Cheek Neal Coffee Company.  She was so small her fellow workers could put her into a 50 pound coffee bin and close the lid.

 

There was no such thing in those days as vacation or sick days.  I still have a very courtly letter written to her by one of the company owners at about the time this picture was taken.  He wrote that he understood she had been sick lately, and that she could spend a week convalescing in Franklin (where my grandfather's relatives had a farm) without losing her job.  Everyone appreciated her hard work and good example, he said.  She cherished this letter.

 

Of course, she met my grandfather, Joseph Baugh Peay, at Cheek Neal; he eventually became their chief coffee roaster.  As was expected, she quit work upon her marriage, and my grandfather took on the responsibility for her mother and her surviving grandfather.

 

Would you want to live in a world like this?    

The Tale of Jessie Allison Gobel - How It Still Resonates

My maternal grandmother wrote a short account of her life to give her grandchildren some insight on the world in which she had lived.  She was born in a little country town in 1883, so it was hard for us to imagine life in that time and place.  An important part of her story is how ordinary people fared before Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.  I will quote her own words:

 

But alas; the first phase of my life is about to close.  I am seven years old and Ola and I are having lots of fun.  [This would be 1890.]  One day in April, the first to be exact, we were playing under the front porch when we heard a terrific blast.  Blasts were almost everyday occurrences, but this was not the usual, as Pa always gave the signal of "all clear" and sent one of the men to the house to tell Ma to get us inside.  [ David Crockett Allison was supervisor of a road building gang.]  We knew something was wrong.  Ma started down the hill and met men carrying Pa on a stretcher.  One of the buckets of powder [black powder used in blasting] had accidentally been ignited and several men had been killed and some injured.  The doctor from Iuka [Mississippi] said that if he hadn't had a wonderful constitution he would have died instantly.  He lived until the fourth, but never regained consciousness.  It was a sad day for us.  I am sure Pa had never considered the probability of leaving us at the age of thirty-four.  Few men carried life insurance at that time, so we were left not only bereaved but practically penniless.  Uncle Andrew, Pa's younger brother, came from Birmingham to help about the funeral, and Ma's brother John came to accompany us back  to Tennessee to Grandpa's home, after laying Pa to rest in a beautiful cemetery in Iuka [grave donated by his employer, who valued him].  The trip by train would have been an adventure at any other time, but we were all dazed and the goodies Uncle John bought for us on the train didn't taste very good.

 

For months after our return we were like chickens without a roost.  Everything was so different; but the thing most lacking was Pa's presence.  Understandably, there was a marked change in Ma, too.  Besides her loss she had been suddenly thrust into a home other than her own, with five noisy offspring.  We were made welcome, at least as much as is possible to accept that much change in number in the family. Our grandparents were kind, but we were soon to understand that there were rules and customs to live up to.

 Grandma mentioned life insurance because she later worked in an insurance agency.  I later realized that under the Workers' Compensation Act of 1911 the family would have had some monetary settlement.  Union activity and the 1970 Occupational Safety and Health Law would make things much safer for road workers.  For one thing, we no longer use black powder (Civil War gunpowder) for blasting and have regulations about storing and handling blasting materials.

 

You say government oughtn't to regulate business - yeah, right!

 

What My Mother Taught Me About Social Security

Mama (Eugenia G. "Bonnie Gene" Gobel Peay 1920-2004) knew all about what it meant to be without income when you were old.  Her maternal grandmother was a frequent guest for months at a time, though Granny Allison preferred to stay with her oldest daughter nearer Nashville.  But she was not the only poor relation who came for long stays.

 

Mama's family lived in what was then the country (1102 South Graycroft, Madison, TN).  They lived in a wooden house of six cavernous rooms with an outhouse and a farm.  Nobody had much during the Depression, but they always had food, so poorer relatives came and went.  I asked Mama how in the world the family managed to live like that.  "We just fed whoever turned up," she replied.

 

The relative who impressed her most was her Aunt Ellen (actually the daughter of her great-grandfather).  Aunt Ellen Elmore would come with her trunk, stay a few months, and then go around the rest of the rota of relatives.  She had been born in Eagleville in Rutherford County and had never married.  All the Elmore family possessed sewing skills, and Aunt Ellen had worked as a dressmaker for as long as she could work.  There was no pension.  She was, not unnaturally, a cross and snappish old lady, and Mama was the only person to pay her much mind.  Mama loved to listen to her stories.

 

In the mid 1930s, Congressman Jo Byrns managed to steer into law a measure that gave Aunt Ellen a small pension, about $7 a month.  When the Congressman came to Nashville, Mama was one of the schoolchildren taken to meet him.  She shook his hand.  When Aunt Ellen found out, she said, "Let me shake the hand that shook the hand of the man that got me my pension."

 

I still have among the family papers the opened out envelope Aunt Ellen used to write a note to congratulate Mama on her sixth grade graduation.  The note had $1 in it - a touching sum.

 

Now, imagine being left like that in your declining years, and go call your congressperson.