Hatred on the phone, gnashing of teeth

It's been a week since I was called a Nazi and coward on the phone.

Other than that, it was a good evening, but I've been postponing, avoiding writing about it, because it was so, so violent a verbal attack, so filled with rage.

Several ironies of the incident were apparent to me immediately, especially since I'd been meeting with a group of Christians the day before, discussing nonviolence as modeled by Jesus, Gandhi, King. I'm not sure I really want to write about it still, but think I must, not to get even, but as part of a personal solution.

Here's the background.

I was recently voted into membership with the Oklahoma City Gridiron club, which is an honor. They've raised hundreds of thousands of dollars since 1929 for scholarships for journalism students. They raise money by putting on a once-a-year political satire show, filled with songs and scripts poking fun at politicians and more, from the state to the national level. See a post about last year's show here, for an example. Members of the club are journalists of all sorts, and former journalists. I think I'm one of few professors to have been a member.

At any rate, the club holds some meetings at the OETA facilities, and in trade for that, members run the phones for three hours one night during the OETA August  fund drive. That was last Monday night. It's all highly computer-operated, and in spite of training, it takes you a little to figure out all the intricacies of taking a call and filling out information on the computer.

It was the first phone call. I picked up the phone, said "Good evening, thanks for calling OETA. May I take your pledge?"

He started immediately, saying he was a member of the Tea Party and why should he support a tax-supported station that labeled the Tea Party "racist."

At first, I thought he was joking, but the venom in his voice changed that. I knew better than to try to argue or answer him, and just remained silent. He kept going, implying I worked for the station. I told him I was a volunteer, and he kept a barrage of questions coming all along the same line. 

I know OETA has never referred to the Tea Party as racist, but it wouldn't have mattered to him. I tried to tell him he was welcome to his opinion as an American, but that infuriated him more. He then said that being a volunteer for OETA was like being a volunteer for Hitler, and when I refused to answer any more questions, getting ready to hang up, he called me a coward for not answering his questions and slammed the phone down.

Yes, I caught the ironies of someone in the right-wing Tea Party calling someone a Nazi, and hiding behind a phone, calling someone a coward.

He called a couple of others during the evening and I guess, being satisfied, shut up.

The volunteers sitting next to me joked about it and that helped. And from then on, the phone calls were from friendly people all over Oklahoma, saying how much they appreciated the programming on OETA and pledging money to qualify for 1950s and '60s music CDs andDVDs.

Afterward, I wished I'd asked him if he were a Christian, since many Tea Partiers are, and if so, how he could be so full of hate and condemnation when Jesus preached love and forgiveness. But I wasn't that quick. It was a shock.

What disturbs me most  was the black-and-white, ignoring the facts attitude of this person, and wondering how representative he is of the Tea Party membership? Where does that hatred come from? It it typical of propaganda techniques--using labels, being unable to think, unreasoning action fueled by a mob mentality, an lack of being able to consider other peoples'  views--totally anti-government, anti-education, anti-science, mixed with complete lack of concern for others. 

For me, I came face to face with crackpot extremism and hatred that endangers our freedoms and our government which is based on working together. And with my personal restraint. I thought about Scripture saying  a soft answer turns away wrath, but it didn't work here. 

Then I thought about scripture telling how the Pharisees "gnashed their teeth," at some of Jesus' teaching. This guy went to bed that night, and probably every night since, very unhappy, grinding his teeth.  Really sad.

But he made me much more thankful for the other callers like the  lady (probably about my age), from Salina, Oklahoma, who called to pledge. We proceeded to have an intelligent conversation about the history of her town, and how thankful she was for OETA, supported by tax dollars, providing good in her life. 

I won't forget the angry crackpot. He actually enriched my life, because I value even more  the good people who called.

The second caller of the night said he'd already pledged, but he just wanted to call back and say how much OETA meant to him. I wrote down his name and passed the message on to the people in charge.

Road trip without roads, a book of summer

Road trip! We're traveling 350 miles plus into northwest Oklahoma, and then, staying on the back roads as much as possible, into Colorado, covering 2,000 miles in about seven days.
But before you get to the Western scenery, you need a book to listen to on long stretches of highway. 

Susan found an audio book that just fit, and I downloaded it on Audible. Thus Horatio's Drive became the first book I've "read" in July, my eighth this year.
It's the story of the first American cross country automobile road trip, in 1903, undertaken by Horatio  Nelson Jackson,  his mechanic Sewall Crocker and his dog, Bud.
No paved roads, sometimes no roads, no maps, no gas stations. 20-30 miles an hour was high speed in an open  20-horsepower Winton "touring" car he named "The Vermont." Starting in San Francisco and ending in New York, 61 days later, winning a $40 bet that it couldn't be done in under 90  days.
It's the book by Dayton Duncan, written for Ken Burns' 2003 documentary for PBS Horatio's Drive. The book is hard to come by in print, but easily available as an audio, and you can buy the documentary film too.

You know about Ken Burns, of course, including his recent documentary on The Dust Bowl which had its premier screening here in Oklahoma, in April, 2012, and we were fortunate to attend thanks to former student Ashley Barcum at OETA. Here's my report on that Dust Bowl documentary.
Duncan has also written other Burns' PBS films, on the West, Lewis and Clark, the National Parks, Mark Twain, and more. He's won many awards, including a Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum here in Oklahoma, A conservationist, he's been involved in New England politics. The Audio book has an introduction by Ken Burns, beginning with a quote from Walt Whitman.

What a trip. Go take it. 

"Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road," --Whitman

"The Vermont" is in the Smithsonian, plus this display.

Ken Burns' Dust Bowl premiere

People with grit

Seventy-seven years ago was "Black Sunday" when the worst dust storm of the Dust Bowl devastated the Oklahoma Panhandle and adjoining states. http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/?n=blacksunday

Black Sunday, 60 mph turning day to night

Ironically and appropriately, we attended the first screening of famed documentarian Ken Burns' "Dust Bowl" film at the Oklahoma History Center last  night. It was pouring rain when we arrived.

Burns speaking
last night

Burns, producer of the Civil War series, National Parks, and other documentaries, is on a promotional tour, and OETA http://www.oeta.tv/ and the Oklahoma Historical Society    http://www.okhistory.org/  teamed up to bring him here.  We watched five segments of the four-hour-long program which will air in Nov ember on OETA , and it brought tears and pride and stunned astonishment.You can see some clips of the film on his website: http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/

We got to go thanks to former student Ashley Barcum who is communications director for OETA. There was a huge crowd, including politicos.

It was typical Burns' excellence. He and his team interviewed hundreds of people and did extensive research. Some of the photos and videos had not been published before. But it's not dry history, it's part of the emotion that makes Oklahoma what it is.  Burns and his crew went to Guymon today--leaving at 5 a.m., to show the clips and give copies of entire interviews with many of the people who were in the film. He sadly noted that four of those have already passed on.

More astounding was the fact that people in the audience knew the people in the film. One woman was from Hardesty and lived through it with her neighbors. Another said, "That's my mother." The stories kept rolling, and Burns quipped that he felt like the story wasn't done yet. Here's a clip of some of his comments. 

Listening to Burns talk made me want to get out my notepad and take notes. OETA newsman and friend Dick Pryor had a 45 minute interview with him that will air in November also. Dick said Ken almost talks in poetry. 

Here is one comment that stood out: "Memory is not past tense. It's present tense. So is history." If you doubted that, it wouldn't last. Someone asked to see the hands of the people in the crowd of about 200 who had been through the dust bowl and knew someone who did...Most of the hands in the room went up.

Seeing this work makes you proud to be an Okie. This was all the more real to me since I recently returned from Black Mesa, Boise City--heart of the dust Bowl and prominent in the film--and Guymon. 

The Oklahoma Historical Society says Associated Press staff writer Robert Geiger coined the phrase "dust bowl" in an article the day after the April 14th storm.  He and photographer Harry G. Eisenhard were overtaken by the storm six miles from Boise City, and were forced to wait two hours before returning to town. He wrote an article that appeared in the Lubbock Evening Journal the next day, which began: “Residents of the southwestern dust bowl marked up another black duster today…” Another article, published the next day, included the following: “Three little words… rule life in the dust bowl of the continent – ‘if it rains’.” 

Much of that area is still almost desolate, and sparsely populated. The people who live there have real "grit," and not the kind that they survived in the Dust Bowl. Here are a couple of shots I took when passing through, in addition to those windmills I've been painting.

Boise City, Cimarron County Courthouse

Gone and forgotten

Vacant land

At the end of the presentation, History Center head honcho Dr. Bob Blackburn presented a Woody Guthrie poster to Burns. Guthrie is in the film. It's appropriate that Guthrie, whose 100th birthday Oklahoma is celebrating this year, wrote about Black Sunday:  
“A dust storm hit, an’ it hit like thunder;
It dusted us over, an’ it covered us under;
Blocked out the traffic and blocked out the sun,
Straight for home all the people did run,
Singin’:
So long, it’s been good to know yuh;
So long, it’s been good to know yuh;
So long, it’s been good to know yuh.
This dusty old dust is a-getting’ my home,
And I got to be driftin’ along.”


Before the presentation, a volunteer, Theresa Black, entertained the crowd with her guitar and singing, including this Guthrie song.

Here's another person's You Tube program. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csnY0Tnvdj8