How I Miss Obama

“Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?  Barack Obama

At bridge Helen Booth gave me a copy of a column by Max Boot, former foreign policy adviser to John McCain and Mitt Romney and author of the forthcoming book “The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I left the Right.” Boot’s opening sentence reads, “How I miss Barack Obama.  And I say that as someone who worked to defeat him.”  He continued:

    I criticized Obama’s ‘lead from behind” foreign policy that resulted in a premature pullout from Iraq and a failure to stop the slaughter in Syria.  I thought he was too weak on Iran and too tough on Israel.  I feared that Obamacare would be too costly.  I fumed that he was too professorial and too indecisive.  I was left cold by his arrogance and cult of personality.

  Now I would take Obama back in a nanosecond.  His presidency appears to be a lost golden age when reason and morality reigned.  All of his faults, real as they were, fade into insignificance compared to the crippling defects of his successor.  And his strengths – seriousness, dignity, intellect, probity, dedication to ideals larger than himself – shine all the more clearly in retrospect.

  Those thoughts are prompted by watching Obama’s speech in South Africa on the 100th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s birth.  I was moved nearly to tears by his eloquent defense of a liberal world order than Trump seems bent on destroying.

  The first thing that struck me was what was missing. There was no self-praise and no name-calling.  Obama has a far better claim than Trump to being a “very stable genius,” but he didn’t call himself one.  The sentences were complete and sonorous – and probably written by the speaker himself (imagine trump writing anything longer than a tweet – and even those are full of mistakes).  The tone was sober and high-minded, even if listeners could read between the lines a withering critique of Trump’s policies.

  Obama denounced the “politics of fear and resentment,” the spread of “hatred and propaganda and conspiracy theories,”and “immigration policies based on race, ethnic, or religion.”  Gee, wonder who he had in mind?  He rightly noted that “we stand at a crossroads – a moment in time at which two different visions of humanity’s future compete for the hearts and minds of citizens across the world.”  He then rejected the dark vision propagated by Trump and the dictators he so admires.

  “I believe in Nelson Mandela’s vision,” Obamasaid.  “I believe in a vision shared by Gandhi and King and Abraham Lincoln.  I believe in a vision of equality and justice and freedom and multiracial democracy, built on the premise that all people are created equal with certain inalienable rights. And I believe in a world governed by such principles is possible and that it can achieve more peace and more cooperation of a common good.”  Even though I was thousands of miles away, I felt like cheering those stirring words.

Helen Booth mentioned recently visiteingrelatives in Lewisburg, West Virginia. When Dick Jeary was grooming me to be his successor as Sigma Phi Epsilon social chairman at Bucknell, I booked a band from Philadelphia, Tommy and the Tones, to play at the fraternity’s Homecoming dance.  They didn’t arrive until minutes before they were scheduled to start, having gotten off the turnpike at Harrisburg but then followed signs to Lewisburg West Virginia rather than Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

Bucknell’s alumni magazine focused on the 1950s.  Tuition in 1950 was just $500, and Art Linney won the 1953 Mr. Ugly Man contest after receiving the most change, $113.20, in his milk bottle.  Novelist Philip Roth, author of “Portney’s Complaint,” was a 1954 graduate. Bucknell’s president between 1954 and 1964 was Merle Odgers, whom I saw getting off a bus in Honolulu in 1965 with a woman who may have been his wife while I was attending the University of Hawaii.

 Steinbeck

At Chesterton Library to return Richard Russo’s “Bridge of Sighs,” I spotted his latest, “The Destiny Thief: Essays on Writing, Writers, and Life,” in the new nonfiction books section.  Russo had an epiphany about the importance of tone, mood, andbeing able to assume different identities by reading a description of a brothel in John Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row” (1945) that reminded him of his father’s voice – unsentimental, cynical, realistic.  Steinbeck had written: 

    Up in back of the vacant lot is the stern and stately whore house of Dora Flood; a decent, clean, honest, old-fahioned sporting house where a man can take a glass of beer among friends.  This is no fly-by-night clip-joint but a sturdy, virtuous club, maintained and disciplined by Dora who, madam and girl for 50 years, has through the exercise of special gifts of tact and honesty, made herself respected by the intelligent, the learned, and the kind.  And by the same token she is hated by the twisted and lascivious sisterhood of married spinsters whose husbands respect the home but don’t like it very much.

    Dora is a great woman, a great big woman with flaming orange hair and a taste for Nile green evening dresses.

A celebration of labor leader Eddie Sadlowski’s life will take place in Chicago.  Paul Kaczocha, who described himself as a “wage slave for capitalism since 1967 and still going but not for much longer,”recalled first meeting “Oil Can Eddie” in 1973 in a eulogy titled “A Life Bigger Than The Man.”  Here are the first couple paragraphs:

    I was barely over 21 when I first met Ed Sadlowski. Al Sampter, a US Steel Coke Oven worker with a long history of struggle in the mill and the Union, asked me if he could bring Ed over to talk to me about his campaign to run for District 31 Director of the Steelworkers. At that time there were over a million steelworkers in the Union and District 31 was the largest. Al was a former Communist Colonizer from New York and was part of the grass roots revolt going on in the Steelworkers to democratize the Union and bring in new blood. Workers were upset about a recent dues increase and with giving up the right to strike along with having no right to ratify their contract especially one seen as a surrender of labor’s basic right to withhold our labor. Most importantly the voices of Black, Brown and women workers were absent from the national leadership.

    Al brought Ed, twelve years my senior, to my apartment in Gary one summer evening and I remember thinking that Ed, who was a huge over weight Staff Representative for the Union, was the stereotypic fat cat Union rep. However he talked the talk of trying to change the Union and take out the same people who had run the district for 30 years since the Union’s inception. I was spellbound as his rap touched a nerve in me. I was a young new Union representative at a shop full of young people at a plant that was the newest built fully integrated steel mill in the U.S. - Bethlehem Steel’s Burns Harbor plant. Like Ed’s father my grandfather, helped build the Union and had been a staff representative for the same District that Ed was trying to take over. Ed convinced me to join the cause of changing the Union by taking it over. You CAN beat city hall he was fond of saying. He used to tell me that when you were a Union rep you had to stay on the side of the angels and that some guys would sell out the members over a steak when the boss took them out to dinner. 

Here is the final paragraph of Kaczocha’s essay:

    I would run into Ed all over the Chicago area at different protests and even at a labor history tour of Chicago. We were at one of the Steelworker rallies for steel against imports and he told me that tariffs were no good for the worker. Tariffs raised the price on everything and it just cost workers more to live. One of the last times I spent some time with Ed was in the first Obama election when we took the good part of a day campaigning going door to door for Obama in Gary. Ed told me that he had worked with Obama and that it was going to be a long shot on how much Obama would do for labor. Ed Sadlowski was a different leader, ahead in his time opposing the Viet Nam War, tariffs and favoring a more democratic Union. His candidacy inspired many to a life of Union action way beyond his original campaign. 

I’ve finally gotten around to examining “Ides of March” journals that Steve McShane’s students kept in the spring.  Here’s part of what Traci L. Schwartz wrote:

    Introduction:I’m 44 years old, and my personal version of a midlife crisis comes as a return to school.  It took me 5 years to complete a 2-year associate’s degree at Ivy Tech in Valparaiso because I had to take 5 remedial courses in Mathematics. To say it was difficult is an understatement, I conquered my worst fear  - that I was too stupid to learn algebra.  I decided to pour myself into being a full-time student.  While studying Math, I took only one course at a time. Perhaps this seems like overkill, but I knew what I needed to succeed, and I allowed myself to have it in order to learn.  Last semester was my first at IUN.  Sometimes my family gets sick of me and my education.  My husband Bernie says he’ll be glad when I get done and get a job so he can finally retire.  He is 14 years my senior and has worked as a Teamster while I was a stay-at-home mom. We lived with my mom in Portage, and I took care of my great grandma, Etta Brown, during the daytime, while mom went to work.  She died  in 2000 at age 99. I loved her during my childhood, and through dementia and cancer. My mother’s father’s mother, she was the kindest woman I have ever met. Being Jewish, she introduced me to such strange food like gefilte fish, matzo ball soup, borsch, and macaroons. It was awful when we had to move her from the apartment on Sunnyside Avenue in Chicago, but she was being robbed constantly, and cockroaches had infested her things.  I loved taking her and my daughter to Deep River Park. I miss the simplicity of those days. My second daughter Saylor was born in 2001 and my third Sorenn in 2003.  Soon afterwards, my mom’s father, who was diagnosed with colorectal cancer, came to live with us - staying in the same room his own Mother had used.  She had been a saint, but he was ornery.  He died in 2005. My daughters were all in preschool or elementary school, so I spent most of my time cleaning, cooking, chauffeuring, homework helping, and bill paying.  In 2012 my grandfather’s sister, Millicent, came to live with us.  She had a little dachshund and would not leave its side.  Millicent was almost as sweet as her mom but slightly more assertive.  She was with us for 5 years.  She went daily to the Bonner Senior Center; a bus picked her up and dbrought her back home.  One morning she fell, hit her head on the tire of the bus, and broke 2 vertebrae in her neck. She died shortly thereafter and was buried with her parents, in the traditional Jewish tradition. Our family is not religious, but we sat Shiva for her. I feel guilty for enjoying my education, because I get so busy, taking a full load of classes.  I hope my going to school is making an impression on my daughters, because I do not want them to rely on a man the way I rely on their father or rely on me, as I have relied on my mother.  I want for them to be able to support themselves, and to choose an equal partner. My greatest wish is to graduate before my mom passes away.  I lost my dad in 2010, and he didn’t see me graduate from Ivy Tech in 2016.  

    March 15, 2018:I woke up at 6. I’m trying to look professional because I go to Longfellow New Technical Elementary in Griffith, as a part of my Education field experience under third grade teacher Mrs. Rose Phelan. In the morning I worked on a door display. For lunch I at Burger King, a whopper cost me darned near $6.  I better not get too used to this, I thought, teachers don’t earn enough for this kind of malarkey!  I returned to working on the door, hoping that I did not have oniony whopper breath, but I’m sure I did, and hell with it, the damned thing cost so much, I might as well have some kind of extended experience.  After lunch, Ms. Phalen printed the wording she wanted to use for the door. She decided to make the words look like clouds, so after putting the cloud wording in place, I had 2 types of butterflies, 2 types of bunny rabbits, 3 types of flowers, and a bumble bee. I cut more green stems to add to the largest flowers after placing them, or it appeared they were all just floating in the air. I got many compliments from staff.  I found out, as I worked on the project, that it was a contest, put together by the principal.  

The very best part of my day was when the principal asked if I had to make up a day during my spring break. (Yes, this IS why showing up is half the battle, by the way.) I said “No, I just LOVE it” with a giggle. I told her this (education) is my “Corvette,” my middle-aged dream of being an active part in our world.  Then she asked me if I was interested in working in an urban school.I said “Oh, yes” and barely contained doing my happy dance, and stopping my eyeballs from popping out. On the way home I picked up corned beef, cabbage, turnips, parsnips, carrots, and potatoes! Tomorrow is St. Paddy’s!  

    March 16:  I take my two high school girls to Portage between 7 and 7:15. My 19 year-old, C’Belle, wants to go to school with me for study-time, as she is a student at Ivy Tech.  I come back, and she tells me at 7:30 about the big mess of dog vomit she found. She cleaned it up and took out all the yucky trash WITHOUT being asked.  We studied for 5 hours at IUN’s Anderson Library and afterwards she said she wanted to try a sweet shop in Gary she’d heard about, Z’s Donut Bar, located at 1929 Broadway.  On the way we passed a dilapidated football stadium and several baseball diamonds.  Only in Gary, Indiana.  Z’s was a cute little place and painted to look sweet, in fuchsia and white.  My kid went in. I didn’t want anything, so I waited in the car.  C’Belle returned with a giant milk shake and two donuts!  At home, and my husband needed to pick up a trailer from his brother in Winamac, so we ate out at a place I have been wanting to go, One Eyed Jack’s, known for serving huge, delicious pork tenderloin. 

    March 17: I am cooking. Turnips, and Cabbage, and Carrots, and Potatoes and Rutabega, and CORNED BEEF!  The family will enjoy it today, and then I’ll freeze individual portions to heat up later in the microwave.  My kitchen is steamy, and there are veggie scraps in my rabbit cage. All is good in the world.

    March 23: I am taking new ADD meds and am concerned if I will be able to concentrate enough to do my studies effectively.  My shrink is out of Porter Starke, one of the few low cost mental health providers in the area. Since I have depression, I decided to go to a real shrink instead of my family doctor, who found that my depression is comorbid with ADHD.  This seems logical, as when I was a child, I was thrown out of Catholic school in Markham Illinois due to my parents not wanting to medicate me. In any case, my attention span is poor.  Also I cannot bring myself to start anything without a major interior battle.  It gets really old. I wish that I could afford mental health counseling, but sometimes my husband’s health insurance lapses, and I simply can’t afford it. I loved going when I had a regular therapist. I loved her; she did some bad-ass therapizing.  Anyway, my homework includes typing up a Teacher interview with Rose Phalen at Longfellow and finishing my History notes.  Then I have an online class about development of young children which requires a journal and a discussion over the required reading, and then another field reflection on my Longfellow experience.  My husband got laid off, and I wish I could sit at home, watch my favorite soap, and visit with him, but I have all this. 

Bernie, Traci, Traci's mom, Aunt Millie and Traci's daughters

Honor Flight

“Only the dead have seen the end of war.” Plato, “Life of Aristotle”

Gene Piatak returns; crowd cheers at Rochester airport

At Rochester Airport dozens of people in yellow t-shirts with Honor Flight written on the front and Ground Crew on the back were awaiting the arrival of a plane carrying 80 old soldiers and their companions who had visited the Tomb of the Unknown [World War I] Soldier at Arlington Cemetery and the World War II, Korean, and Vietnam war memorials in Washington, D.C.  Most had fought in Korea, but some were WW II vets in their nineties. Thousands of well-wishers were gathering outside for a welcome home ceremony, and while at my gate I suddenly heard applause.  The TSA must have allowed family members to pass through security.  My plane was delayed due to a tardy flight crew, so I hurried down to witness the honorees deplane.  Many rose from wheelchairs to walk past us, some saluting or giving the thumbs up, others looking stoically straight ahead.  A guy in a Ground Crew shirt – probably a Vietnam Vet – addressed each by name (they wore I.D. tags) and said “Welcome Home.” It was an incredibly moving climax to a memorable weekend for me and, I’m certain, for them.

Invited to a fiftieth wedding anniversary surprise party for Dick and Donna Jeary, I encountered a horrendous traffic jam Thursday morning on the way to the airport coach terminal in Highland, twice exiting 80/94 to avert stalled traffic. I arrived a minute before the bus was to leave, only it was 30 minutes late, too.  Since I always allow myself extra time, the rest of the trip went smoothly, and it was just a ten-minute drive from the Rochester airport Avis site (I rented a Hyundai Sonata) to Comfort Inn.  After unpacking I walked four blocks to historic Monroe House, location of next day’s surprise party and once the site of a tavern dating to 1722.  I ended at The Brick, a pizza place that had Stella on draft. 

Having brought along the John Grisham’s “Bleachers” that I got from Cindy Szmanski’s IUN’s Free Little Library on the corner of Thirty-Fifth and Washington, I came across a character named Paul Curry, same as a friend who died in Vietnam.  I came within two spaces of solving the USA Today crossword puzzle, failing to figure out the clue “get a load of” (answer: saw). An editorial advised readers to vote for anybody but Donald Trump, first time ever that USA Today, launched in 1982, took a position in a Presidential election, calling Trump a serial liar who traffics in prejudice, is reckless and erratic, and ill-equipped to be commander-in-chief.  Ray Smock called the editorial “chicken shit” for not endorsing Hillary, given Trump’s unacceptably.

Bucknell roommate Rich Baker drove three hours to see me, and at lunch we caught up on current doings and rehashed freshman dorm memories and characters.  I told him I was flattered when he decided to room with me sophomore year; he knew he’d flunk out if he moved into the Psi Phi house.  My fraternity, Sig Ep, had burned down during a pledge raid because someone threw a cherry bomb into the living room that rolled under a couch. Our three-hour visit flew by, then Rich drove 12 miles to see fraternity brother Ron Baroody, who (small world) lived next door to one of Dick Jeary’s close friends.

 Michael Jeary (left) at skin cancer foundation dinner

Upon entering Monroe Restaurant I ran into Dick’s sister Judy and a Bucknell fraternity brother Bob Fischer.  About 75 friends and relatives attended, including cousin Michael Jeary, President of Laughlin Constable advertising agency. Handsome and affable, he reminded me of a cross between Dick and Star Plaza CEO Charlie Blum.  Dick’s youngest sister, a teenager in 1966, was, I recalled, a huge Beatles fan.  At my table were realtors who worked with Donna.  When Vietnam came up, I referred to myself as a “Fortunate Son.”   CCR, the guy said, recognizing the reference to Credence Clearwater Revival.

my table at party; below, Dick and Donna with kids and grandson

 

I had decided against delivering my prepared remarks, given the room configuration until son Brian Jeary talked me into it and said he had a microphone. Dick and Donna’s grandson Shane Niesen, a freshman at Brown majoring in History, is taking courses on Revolution in the Americas and the Byzantine Empire.  He was familiar with “The Alexiad” and the recent trend of studying American history from an Atlantic perspective.  I sensed that most guests were Republicans, but a middle school principal, noting that Shane’s liberal bent, told him not to change.  My advice would have been to think for himself.  Dick and Donna seemed genuinely surprised and delighted to see me.  They insisted we spend all day Saturday together.  That’s what I’d hoped.

Dick and Donna leave church with Jimbo trailing behind (1966)

Joining us Saturday at Cheesecake Factory were folks who had come from Florida and Syracuse.  Dick told them about my books on Gary.  A Syracuse couple recently saw the Jackson brothers (sans Michael, of course) at the New York State Fair; the wife noted that Janet was pregnant at age 50.  Brian, a wrestling coach who rehabs houses, recalled his family visiting us some 30 years ago, that he could see Lake Michigan from our house, and that we danced with air guitars to the Ramones.  We drove past the Erie Canal, where last winter an ice skater went from Albany to Buffalo.  Dick ordered a pizza, and I found Yuegling in the fridge, turning down one of Dick’s famous martinis.  When he dropped me off at the Comfort Inn, we embraced and promised to stay in closer touch.  My motel TV got Showtime, so I watched an episode of “Masters of Sex” and a bloodless but tense revenge movie called “The Gift” (2015) starring Jason Bateman.

 Lake Michigan; photo by Jim Spicer

Soderquists

At the Rochester airport a vending machine had no prices next to the items or buttons to push; instead one inserted a credit card and a computer-generated menu popped up.  Back in Chicago the weather was identical to when I left, cold and overcast. I learned Judge James Moody sentenced former Lake Station mayor Keith Soderquist to 42 months and his wife to two years.  They stole from the city’s food panty fund to support their gambling addiction.  From the bench the magistrate pontificated, “What were you thinking?  Are you goofy or what?”  Then he demanded that Soderquist answer. He bravely answered, “No.”  Moody then exclaimed: “You took full advantage of the poor.  Shame on you.”  Boo, hiss.

Missy Brush as 40s Lucille Ball and Tyler Arcuri at Scott's wedding

In Steve McShane’s class I discussed the importance to historians of primary sources such as interviews, which students will be conducting with someone who lived in the Region during the 1990s.  I read excerpts of Chenoa Williams’ paper on Gary Lew Wallace grad Cherese Fields from my Nineties Steel Shavings, copies of which I gave to all 30 students. Fields recalled: “People wore leather medallions with the green, yellow, and red continent of Africa or a clock around their neck like Flavor Flav.”  She described her initiation into Y-Teens: an older girl rubbed a raw egg in her face and stuck a tea bag in her mouth filled with an onion and dipped in vinegar.  She summed up tenth grade as “same old, same old.” In English class Cherese watched the O.J. Simpson verdict on a small TV; most students cheered the verdict.  Science teacher Mr. Alexander drove a motorcycle and dressed like a biker.  Speech teacher Ms. Lark got popped with rubber bands when at the chalkboard and didn’t finish the year due to a nervous breakdown. Cherese described a controversial auditorium program:

  Guest speakers from a funeral home were talking about how kids needed to straighten up or they’d end up dead.  They had a casket on stage.  No matter high up you sat in the bleachers, you could not see inside it.  When they allowed us to look in, we saw a mirror inside. I did not look close enough to see my reflection, but a lot of people were angered.  Some stormed out of the gym.  It was crazy.

Steve’s class was studying pioneer Gary, so I read excerpts from Margaret Cook Seeley’s “My Life in Gary, 1911-1956.  Margaret wrote:

  Most millworkers carried a large aluminum lunch pail to work.  There was an upper tray for coffee and a lower part for lunch.  When dad came home from work, we kids would run to see what surprise he had in his lunch pail for us.  Sometimes it would be huckleberries he had picked along the slip that was the inlet to the mill from the lake.  Sometimes it was sassafras bark he had dug along the E.J. and E. tracks.  We loved sassafras tea; Mother called it pink tea. Sometimes it was just leftover food, which we ate.  Once it was a little gopher he had caught.  He got a kick out of surprising us.

I paused and said with emotion, “Isn’t that great stuff?” What a precious resource for social historians.  The following paragraph read:

  Dad smoked one cigarette a day, and that was in bed.  Just as I passed their bedroom one night, I noticed smoke coming up from the side of the bed.  I asked where the smoke was coming from.  He jumped up and began pounding out the fire with his pillow.  He never smoked in bed again.  Our company house was so hot in the summer.  At night I’d pull my bed to the window so I might get a breath of air.  If that didn’t work, I’d take my pillow and sheet downstairs.  Doors were left open.  The milkman would wake me up in the morning with his clattering bottles.

Brian Berger asked if he could do a Facebook chat with an uncle who has since moved away.  I liked the idea and told him I enjoyed his “Star Trek” references in David Parnell’s Crusades class.  When David mentioned that lions lived in the Levant a thousand years ago but now only in sub-Sahara Africa, Brian interjected that there were a few in India.  Switching from lions to horses, David mentioned that knights traveled with a pack animal, a favorite horse for normal travel, and one or two chargers for battle outfitted with armor.

below, St. Bernard of Clairvaux

Someone mentioned that that the board game Risk was on the agenda for the next History Club meeting.  “That’ll be a long meeting,” David noted, not skipping a beat.  Brian wondered if the St. Bernard dog was named for St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153). Parnell told Brian to look up the answer.  The dog’s namesake is another medieval monk, St. Bernard of Menthon in the western Alps.  St. Bernard of Clairvaux rallied troops for the Second Crusade and then blamed its failure on the sins of participants.  One of his alleged miracles was restoring an old man’s power of speech to so he could confess his sins before he died.  WTF?  He once plunged into ice-cold water to assuage his lustful temptation and allegedly rid a cathedral of bees by excommunicating them.  He wrote: “Truly, love is delightful and pleasant food, supplying, as it does, rest to the weary, strength to the weak, and joy to the sorrowful.”  

Parnell spoke of a tiny, twelfth-century Shiite sect known as the Assassins who twice tried to kill Saladin.  Enemies referred to them as the hashish because supposedly those selected to carry out assassinations would be drugged with hashish.  They ingested rather than smoked it, perhaps, David quipped, in the form of brownies.  He referenced the 2005 film “Kingdom of Heaven” starring Orlando Bloom and Jeremy Irons, about Balian, a French village blacksmith on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to defend the kingdom against the forces of Saladin.  Balian ends up with a higher opinion of the Sunni sultan than the rulers of Jerusalem after the death of the leper king Baldwin IV.  I wonder whether the movie was inspired by America’s misadventure in Iraq.

Archbishop James Tobin expressed thanks for the latest Steel Shavings, which mentioned him in connection with ministering to prisoners and befriending Paula Cooper.  He called the magazine intriguing, entertaining, and informative and expressed delight that I was friends with two people he admired, prison survivor George Van Til and Bill Pelke, advocate for abolishing the death penalty.

Crossing campus, I ran into former student Larry Larson, who noted with approval my Hillary button.  He teaches Speech classes at a community college in Illinois.  At Chesterton library I checked out the Clash CD “London Calling” and Craig Nelson’s “Pearl Harbor: From Infamy to Greatness.” New York Times reviewer Doug Stanton wrote: “The book has a thousand poignant and unforgettable moments.”  Finding territorial governor Joseph B. Poindexter (subject of my MA thesis) in the Index, I read that General Walter Short pressured FDR into forcing Poindexter to declaring martial law, claiming it would end within a short time unless Pearl Harbor was prelude to an invasion.  Poindexter took that to mean about 30 days, but martial law lasted three years, an unpopular development that Poindexter got blamed for.  The Governor told an aide that he never hated doing anything so much in all his life.