Category Archives: History

Change We Can Believe In!

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The ups and downs of the decade. We made a bunch of great closeout deals but this column has room for only a few. Here are the top nine of 2009:

The downside: We may not have changed many of the Old Guard of pols but we surely did change how they do business inside the Beltway. They no longer throw billions of We the OverTaxedPeople’s dollars at problems.
The upside: Now they throw trillions.

Hoo wee. That’s change we can believe in!

The downside: President Obama (praise be his name) stole General Motors from its rightful owners (that would be small stockholders like thee and me) and put Ed “I Came from the Phone Company So I Don’t Know Anything about Cars” Whitacre in charge.
The upside: Thanks to the soybean lobby, your new Chevy Condescension will be the first model to come with tofubags instead of the dangerous and expensive airbags as well as the new OnStar-by-AT&T. Rumors that OnStar service will also be available on your iPhone have not proven out.

The downside: Democrats were appalled when President Obama nominated Senator Judd Gregg, R-NH, as his Secretary of Commerce. The U.S. Department of Commerce fosters, promotes, and develops business and industry. Democrats called Senator Gregg “too pro-business.”
The upside: Caroline Cartwright of Great Britain was arrested for noise levels that ranged between 30 and 40 decibels, with some squeaks “being 47 decibels” during sex. Bird calls are generally 44 dB.

The downside: Congress passed without reading a $787 billion “stimulus package” that, instead of stimulating We the OverTaxedPeople who provided the money, all went for swine flu shots to bankers. Vermont had a looming two hundred million dollar budget deficit so the Democratically controlled legislature there decided to spend three hundred million dollars of its portion of that G.R.A.F.T. Act windfall to “stabilize” its budget. Since that wasn’t enough, the Democratically controlled legislature also raised taxes by $24 million dollars in order to make up for the revenue shortfall.
The upside: The Nobel Committee awarded the Peace Prize posthumously to Michael Jackson.

The downside: The Environmental Protection Agency ruled that political science trumps actual science as a danger to human health and to the environment.
The upside: Millions of people flocked to Al Gore’s house in the Belle Meade neighborhood of Nashville where his Christmas decorationsand the upturned smiling faces were photographed from the International Space Station.

The downside: Just two years ago, world leaders of 193 countries pledged to reverse the course of climate change in Denmark this year. When the hot air cleared in Copenhagen this month, there were two inches of snow on the ground, two pounds of faked “global warming” emails, and $200 billion dollars in a Global Relief fund. Guess who they want to pick up the tab?
The upside: Each world leader flew to Denmark in one or more private airliners thus reducing the worldwide surplus of Jet A and Jet A-1 petroleum-based fuels.

The downside: In a strange coincidence, the International Olympic Committee also meeting in Copenhagen voted not to award the 2016 Summer Olympics to Chicago for fear that a fire in former Governor Rod Blagojevich’s hair might undermine the new “pay to play” Olympic game category.
The upside: The one billion dollar Cash for Clunkers program which cost three billion dollars left an estimated 643,000 1974 Ford Pintos on Illinois and Michigan highways as entry level vehicles for migrant farmers and high school students.

The downside: The Environmental Protection Agency said it will increase the percentage of ethanol in gasoline to 15% by next June. Ethanol producers and most newspapers say the higher blends will increase fuel economy, create more jobs in the industry, and increase government payments to ethanol producers by $787 billion.
The upside: The Social Security Administration announced that since Congress will lock fuel prices at $4.599 per gallon through 2012, the Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) can remain fixed at 0% for the same period.

The downside: The U.S. economy has shed 15.4 million or more jobs including those once held by Rufus, Biff, and my wife, Anne.
The upside: The $787 billion “stimulus package” has created an estimated 643,000 brand new jobs (roughly identical to the number of saved 1974 Ford Pintos). All the new employees are dedicated to maintaining the White House website that tracks new jobs.

We have, as a nation, spent the entire decade unwilling to learn from our mistakes. Change We Can Believe In! certainly changed all of that and we are this >||< close to ObamaCare to prove it.

You can’t make this stuff up. Happy New Decade, everyone!

Being Boppa

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It pleases me enormously that my nearly 20-year old granddaughter is not embarrassed to call me Boppa. She does it not only in public but even on Facebook.

“Boppa” has a history.

Wilbur Groendyke Dunning was Bill to his family of four other brothers and a sister. All the boys sounded alike on the phone, so when one called us in Westtown, he would say, “Hello, Art, Bill, Pres, Sid, June.” June was Frank, Junior, named for their father. He usually stopped when the right one answered. He was the second eldest.

He married Ethel Barnard and raised a couple of kids in the stone manor house of her father’s farm. They had chickens, a lot of grass to mow, and a dog named Monte who would lick the butter off a piece of toast and bring it back for more.

Bill Dunning started teaching chemistry at Temple at the beginning of time. He retired, then returned to teaching at PMC (now Widener) until his second retirement about the same time I was flunking freshman Chemistry at Stevens. I was not at the time smart enough to ask for help. He enjoyed working with his hands in the dirt as much as he enjoyed working with college kids. We had a pretty serious vegetable and flower garden in Westtown.

All the Dunning boys were athletic. Sidney, the tallest, turned down a major league pitching contract because they played ball on Sundays and the five of them together were tall enough to have fielded a pretty fair basketball team.

Interesting man he was. Ordained an elder in the Presbyterian Church of Frankford six months before my mother’s birthday. Invented and patented “red gas,” an anti-knock ingredient for gasoline that might have prevented our pumping tetraethyl lead onto our roadsides for decades. Rode the train every day to school. Transcribed hundreds of books into braille for the Pennsylvania Association for the Blind.

I had it good as a kid. My own folks moved back to the family home shortly after my grandmother whom I called “Da” died in 1953. Everyone shared the chores and I always had a built in babysitter. Boppa was usually home when my folks were out and vice versa. And my dad’s parents were just down Street Road at the station house on the Pennsey.

He made sure I had my own copy of Christopher Robin while I lay on Da’s bed eating Fig Newtons and pulling Jason’s tail. Jason was a great, golden-fleeced tom cat, the kind that comes but once a generation. I’m often not sure whether to identify with Christopher Robin or Pooh but I learned enough to make sure our cat, Ruff, was another.

He bought me my first slide rule when I entered Stevens. Keuffel & Esser manufactured its last slide rule in 1975. I still have Boppa’s first and my last. A slide rule does not depend on batteries.

He taught me, years before I had figured out that I would teach, too, that the teacher must stay a chapter ahead of the student. And he taught me how to coil an extension cord in a chicken laying box so it would not tangle.

Boppa was a quiet, private Victorian gentleman of strong will and strong opinion. I only once heard him complain — about a truly lousy honors chemistry course my high school snookered me to take — and that was after I had been graduated from college. He did not accept specious logic at the dinner table, at church, or in the news. He did volunteer at church, in the Township, and with friends. He did not like Dial soap because their commercials promoted “wishing everyone did.” He did speak Latin and read German.

In 1982, after living in the same house for more than 60 years, he took stock. “All my friends have died,” he said. “All of my brothers except the oldest have died. I have nothing more to keep me here. Let’s move to Florida.” 18 months later, after selling the farmhouse in Westtown, he and my folks started another great adventure, one that would last until his 100th year. He bought a little house in the middle of the Keys. I’m sitting there now, watching an egret preen on the rail of the boat next door.

Barnard/Dunning/Harper generations ran about 30 years each for a couple of centuries so he was 60 years old when I met him for the first time and he became Boppa. I guess I’m old enough to grow into it now, too.

Buying the first text book. $1.95
Buying a slide rule. $29.94
Remembering history. Priceless.

Promise me you’ll always remember: You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.