Yesterday I finished reading The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, by Amity Shlaes. The policies of the New Deal, which Franklin D. Roosevelt pursued throughout the 1930s, never did bring unemployment down or otherwise resolve the Great Depression, and yet it is scary to observe the parallels between what was tried and failed then and what is being proposed in our own time.
Several weeks earlier I finished reading FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression, by Jim Powell. "In the minds of historians and the American public alike, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was one of our greatest presidents, not least because he supposedly saved America from the Great Depression," explains the back cover of the book. "But as historian Jim Powell reveals in this groundbreaking book, Roosevelt's New Deal policies actually prolonged and exacerbated the economic disaster, swelled the federal government, and prevented the country from turning around quickly."
"The next time economic cataclysm looms," wrote the National Review when this book was first published in 2003, "leaders should read Jim Powell's book." Well, the economic cataclysm is upon us again. I really hope President Obama and his advisers, along with our elected officials in Congress, have read the book. And heed its message. Or the days ahead could be nastier than they really need to be.
As George Santayana (1863-1952) wrote in 1905, more than a century ago: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" (Life of Reason, Or The Phases of Human Progress: Introduction and Reason in Common Sense, 1:284).
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Swimming
When I was a boy we lived within a mile of the Snake River, which curved to the south and west of our farm in a great bend that gave the area its name, Big Bend. We never went swimming in the river. Mama always warned us of its treacherous undertows and currents. Plus I always secretly knew it had snakes swimming in it, and snakes and I respectfully kept our distance, thank you.
We did swim, however, in a swimming hole a quarter or a half a mile south of the farm house. The swimming hole was at the junction of a couple of drain ditches and had a culvert, a small, moss-covered cement thing, we used to slide down into the water, a welcomed relief on a hot summer afternoon. (I visited the spot after I was a grown-up and was utterly amazed at how much smaller it was than when I was little.)
At other times we would drive to a place called White Rock, located somewhere on the Owyhee River, a much smaller and evidently less treacherous stream, since Mama let us swim there.
Sometime in the summer of 1955, just after I turned six, I nearly drowned at White Rock. (Mama mentioned in her diary our going to White Rock three times during the summer of 1955: July 23, July 25, and July 28. She did not mention my near-drowning, but she did record on July 28 that while up swimming she shut her little finger in the car door and "it sure hurt.")
Anyway, back to drowning. I was wading along the side of the river in shallow water, stepping among the rocks that covered the bottom in the spot where I was. Some of my older brothers, swimming farther out in the stream, had seen some fish and were trying to catch them with their hands.
The next thing I remember was standing or sitting on a rock that was slippery, with my body mostly under the water, when a fish splashed right in front of my face, just inches away. It startled me enough that I lost my balance, and I slipped out into the water, my head underwater, and I started drifting downstream. I didn’t know how to swim, and I don’t think anyone had noticed me go under. It seemed like I floated along underwater for the longest time, as my brief little life passed by, although I was probably under only a few seconds.
As I floated by my brother Kay, who was thirteen, he saw my foot in the water. As he grabbed for it I remember his yelling something like, "Hey, here's that fish!" And he pulled a coughing, sputtering little brother foot first out of the water.
The whole experience scared me terribly. For years I had a great fear of any water I couldn’t see the bottom of, such as a lake or a river. A few years later, when I was a teenager, this fear kept me from earning the Eagle rank in Scouting. By the time I quit Scouting, I was only two merit badges short of Eagle—swimming and lifesaving.
By the summer of 1967, just after I graduated from high school, I finally worked up the courage to try water skiing for the first time. And I actually survived.
We did swim, however, in a swimming hole a quarter or a half a mile south of the farm house. The swimming hole was at the junction of a couple of drain ditches and had a culvert, a small, moss-covered cement thing, we used to slide down into the water, a welcomed relief on a hot summer afternoon. (I visited the spot after I was a grown-up and was utterly amazed at how much smaller it was than when I was little.)
At other times we would drive to a place called White Rock, located somewhere on the Owyhee River, a much smaller and evidently less treacherous stream, since Mama let us swim there.
Sometime in the summer of 1955, just after I turned six, I nearly drowned at White Rock. (Mama mentioned in her diary our going to White Rock three times during the summer of 1955: July 23, July 25, and July 28. She did not mention my near-drowning, but she did record on July 28 that while up swimming she shut her little finger in the car door and "it sure hurt.")
Anyway, back to drowning. I was wading along the side of the river in shallow water, stepping among the rocks that covered the bottom in the spot where I was. Some of my older brothers, swimming farther out in the stream, had seen some fish and were trying to catch them with their hands.
The next thing I remember was standing or sitting on a rock that was slippery, with my body mostly under the water, when a fish splashed right in front of my face, just inches away. It startled me enough that I lost my balance, and I slipped out into the water, my head underwater, and I started drifting downstream. I didn’t know how to swim, and I don’t think anyone had noticed me go under. It seemed like I floated along underwater for the longest time, as my brief little life passed by, although I was probably under only a few seconds.
As I floated by my brother Kay, who was thirteen, he saw my foot in the water. As he grabbed for it I remember his yelling something like, "Hey, here's that fish!" And he pulled a coughing, sputtering little brother foot first out of the water.
The whole experience scared me terribly. For years I had a great fear of any water I couldn’t see the bottom of, such as a lake or a river. A few years later, when I was a teenager, this fear kept me from earning the Eagle rank in Scouting. By the time I quit Scouting, I was only two merit badges short of Eagle—swimming and lifesaving.
By the summer of 1967, just after I graduated from high school, I finally worked up the courage to try water skiing for the first time. And I actually survived.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
My earliest memory
Water is a part of my very earliest memory. We were out on a lake in a small motorboat. It started raining, and I must have been absolutely terrified. All I can remember is water. Water everywhere—water in the vast lake, water falling out of the gray sky, water spraying on me from the noisy motor. And, most likely, water streaming out of my bawling two-year-old eyes.
According to my mother's diary for July 1, 1951, we were with my grandparents on an outing at Jenny Lake in Wyoming's Teton National Park. That would have been two and a half weeks before I turned two.
According to my mother's diary for July 1, 1951, we were with my grandparents on an outing at Jenny Lake in Wyoming's Teton National Park. That would have been two and a half weeks before I turned two.
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