Uncle Jack's Baltimore Blog: On Wisconsin?

   As faithful readers know Uncle Jack is a native of Wisconsin so they would not be surprised that he is concerned about the news out of Madison where he matriculated at the university back in the first ice age. He learned many things while he was there, most of them having to do with beer, but by far the most important course he took was called "A History of Trade Unionism in the United States". Of all the experiences he has had in his long life that was probably the one that did the most to turn him into the unrepentant pinko, lefty liberal he remains today.
   He wishes that everybody could read professor Selig Perlman's book of the same name because they would have a much better understanding of the events transpiring in Wisconsin right now. Life was hell for many workingmen (and working women and working children) in the U.S. before unions became strong enough to stand up to the worst exploitative excesses of the corporations. Only by banding together in unions could workers hope to improve their miserable situations by collectively demanding change. Most of the good things that have happened for American workers over the past century have resulted from union activity.
   Uncle Jack is proud to say that historically Wisconsin has been in the forefront of legislation to improve the lot of working people and he is distressed to see that Wisconsin voters have seen fit to elect as their governor a man who seems hell bent on crushing the last vestiges of unionism in the state with the help of extreme right-wing groups funded by ultra-wealthy corporate backers. If they succeed look for more of the Wal-Mart approach to cutting labor costs----low wages, poor or no benefits, lots of part-time employees lusting after the pathetic jobs of the full-timers who are too cowed to complain---and no unions. Not a pretty picture but all too accurate in our high-unemployment economy.
   This isn't the first time Wisconsin voters have shot themselves in the foot, of course. They gave the country Senator Joseph McCarthy a half-century ago and we're still recovering from that. Perhaps the time will come when Governor Walker will be lumped together with McCarthy as one of the biggest mistakes Wisconsin voters ever made.

   The news from Baltimore is substantially better. The winter is progressing mildly-----no big blizzards like we had had by this time last year---and temperatures warm enough most of the time to permit an occasional walk through the JHU campus where the new library addition is taking shape at a rapid pace.
He hopes the workers over there are unionized and making decent wages because they deserve it. Working construction out of doors in the winter is not a walk in the park---even when the winter is mild.

   Uncle Jack found time this week to put the finishing touches on a website advertising the fact that his and Mrs. U.J.'s house in Nags Head will be available for rental this summer. Interested parties can see it by clicking on this link:   http://unclejackshouse.blogspot.com/

   Once again he has dug deep into the archives to resurrect a piece he wrote a long time ago about music in his old public high school. He hopes the cost cutters haven't wrecked what was once a wonderful program because kids today deserve it just as much as he did.

   The Music Man

   Sometime during all that hoopty-doo before the Super Bowl
Uncle Jack saw a show on TV about a high school band in New
Jersey that was so good they were invited to march in the
Super Bowl parade. He didn't get all the details about it because
his eyes tend to glaze over when he sees too much stuff about
the Super Bowl but he remembers this band's nickname---The Big
Green Machine---because they had it painted on the side of their
bass drum which was so big it took two people to carry it and
two more to play it.
   They showed pictures of this band marching around on a
football field and doing a lot of fancy stuff. There must have
been 200 kids in the band, not counting all the cute girls who
waved flags and twirled batons and tried very hard to look sexy
like the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.
   They also showed these kids washing thousands of cars at
shopping malls in New Jersey to earn enough money to go to the
Super Bowl.
   This story was actually even more boring than most of the
stuff they put on TV about the Super Bowl but it did remind
Uncle Jack of the time when he played in his school band so
it wasn't completely worthless.
   Uncle Jack went to a rinkey-dink lttle high school up in
northern Wisconsin that didn't have as many students in it all
together as they had saxaphone players in the The Big Green
Machine. His high school band never had a nickname which is
a good thing because it probably would have been something really
stupid. Uncle Jack's high school football team was called the
"Purgolders" because the school colors were purple and gold.
They were not very good at thinking up nicknames when Uncle
Jack was in high school, maybe because it was too cold.
   Uncle Jack's high school band never got invited to go anywhere
which was a good thing, too, because nobody had to wash cars
to raise money and that gave everybody more time to practice.
You had to practice a lot because if you didn't you couldn't
stay in the band.
   Everybody in Uncle Jack's high school wanted to be in the
band even more than they wanted to be on the football team.
Uncle Jack himself never went out for football because he was
afraid he would hurt his fingers and not be able to play his
clarinet. (Also his mother would not let him go out for football
because he was six feet tall and weighed about 74 pounds but
that is another story).
   The reason everybody wanted to be in the band was that they
liked and admired the band director so much. He was one of the
most inspiring teachers in northern Wisconsn at that time.
Uncle Jack is not going to mention his name because you probably
never heard of him even though he did become quite famous in
band circles after he got fired from his job in Uncle Jack's
high school.
   Why did this revered teacher and all-around impressive person
get fired from Uncle Jack's high school? The board of education
did not like him because (l) he did not want his band to waste
a lot of time marching in football games where the instruments
could get rained on, (2) he thought he should be able to go
into a tavern and have a glass of beer just like any other grown-
up person even though he was a teacher, and (3) he got caught
fooling around with the choir director.
   Anyway Uncle Jack was lucky that the band director didn't
get fired until after he graduated from high school because
the band director was the most important teacher he ever had
in all the 25 or 30 years he spent going to school with the
possible exception of Mrs. Stonebreaker in the fourth grade
who taught him to hold his pencil right.
   He was so important because he taught Uncle Jack about the
music of Beethoven and Mozart and Schubert and Bach and the
other great composers. That was the kind of music Uncle Jack's
high school band played.
   He feels sorry for those kids in the Big Green Machine band
because all they got to do is march around and wash cars and
   go to the Super Bowl. They got cheated.
   Uncle Jack knows.

The library project seems to have entered a new phase. Lots of scaffolding has been erected on top of the concrete slabs poured in the last couple of weeks. It looks like a huge erector set at the moment.