Cut to the Chase

“The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct.” William of Ockham

William of Ockam

I first learned about medieval philosopher William of Ockham (1287-1347) reading Richard Russo’s “Straight Man,” whose antihero has a dog named Occam, named after Occam’s Razor, the principle that the simplest explanation is usually the most valid. The Franciscan friar disagreed with Thomas Aquinas that faith and reason can be reconciled.  According to Phrases.org, “cut to the chase,” which has become synonymous with “get to the point,” originated in Hollywood and referred to moving quickly to exciting chase scenes in silent movies rather than dwelling too long on the background story line.  Michael Warwick’s “Theatrical Jargon of the Old Days” (1968) reported on a similar phrase “cut to Hecuba” from Shakespeare’s Hamlet that refers to shortening plays, especially for matinees, by leaving out long orations.

With all the pontificating about the Mueller report, Trump’s phone call to Ukrainian President Zelensky exposes in the simplest of terms the embarrassing nature of his presidency.  He believes that the wrath of what he brands the “fake” news media is worth the price of tarnishing the reputation of Joe Biden, in his opinion his most formidable potential opponent in 2020. In fact, he’s quite open about his nefarious actions, now suggesting China should open a similar investigation.  His apologists simply say he was being sarcastic and didn’t really mean what he said.   

Trump’s near-total domination of the news cycle is maddening. The Post-Tribune failed to report the sentencing of former Dallas cop Amber Guyger to ten years in prison for murdering Botham Jean after mistaking his apartment for her own and believing the native of the Caribbean island of St. Lucia to be a burglar.  While protestors were chanting “no justice, no peace” outside the courtroom, Botham Jean, the victim’s brother, took the stand and said to Guyger, “If you are truly sorry, I forgive you.”  Then he asked the judge, “Can I give her a hug?  Please.”  What happened next, according to the Dallas Morning- News,was that “Guyger hesitated for just a moment, and then she rushed toward Jean and wrapped her arms around his neck.. . . Both were in tears when they finally broke away.”  Witnessing the scene on CBS morning news, I thought of Bill Pelke, who forgave Paula Cooper for murdering his grandmother and subsequently founded Journey of Hope . . . From Violence to Healing, an organization dedicated to abolishing the death penalty.  Similarly, essayist Hanif Abdurraqib learned that Dylann Roof, who killed nine black people in a Charleston, SC, church, was sentenced to be executed, he wrote, “My desire for his death had long passed” since “the insidious spirit of his motivations” would sadly endure.

I had a good couple of days in duplicate bridge, finishing second at Chesterton Y out of 12 couples (58.33%) partnering with Helen Boothe and third out of 15 couples (59.52%, top among East-West pairs) at Banta Center with Ric Friedman despite playing only a couple times with each.  Helen is liberal to the hilt while Ric is quite conservative, but they get along.  Helen is working on him.  Helen ran into 88-year-old Frank Casario who was on his way to a Zumba class and still teaches tap dance.  Mary Ann Filipiak complimented Ric’s pink shirt that he claimed his wife had purchased to support breast cancer prevention.  It shows off your feminine side, I said; he laughed and didn’t take offense.  I had a hand containing 29 points and took all 13 tricks after bidding 6 No Trump doubled for second high board. Only Fred Green had the nerve to bid 7 No Trump, playing with Terry Brendel. It was a virtual laydown.

above, Gary Book Club; photo by Jerry Davich; below, Felicia Childress in 2018; NWI Times photo by John Luke

Gary Booklovers Club dates from 1921 when African American women teachers started holding monthly meetings. Shirley Thomas told Post-Trib columnist Jerry Davich: “When I was invited to join over 30 years ago, we always met in members’ homes.  As younger members replaced the older ladies, they decided it was less work for the hostess if our meetings were held in a restaurant.”  Stalwart Felicia Childress, 102, came to Gary in 1946 and taught several of the current members, including Carolyn Dillon, who grew up poor in a Gary housing project.  “Books saved my life,” Dillon told Davich.  Others whose names were familiar to me included Jacquelyn Gholson, Jenell Joiner, Gloria King, and Loretta Piggee.  September’s speaker at Asparagus Restaurant was Purdue Northwest philosophy professor David Detmer, author of “Zinnophobia: The Battle Over History in Education, Politics, and Scholarship.”  It deals with attempts by Governor Mitch Daniels, who became President of Purdue, to ban books by radical Boston University historian Howard Zinn.

Marion Merrill with photo of Sam

What I admire most about Hanif Abdurraqib’s “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us” essays is that they cut to the chase. Almost without fail, the initial paragraph sets the tone and conveys the theme, something my Maryland faculty adviser Sam Merrill drilled into his grad students.  Another of Merrill’s rules was never write in the passive voice.  Abdurraqib opens “On Future and Working Through What Hurts”: “My mother died at the beginning of summer.  What this meant more than anything was that I didn’t have school or some other youthful labor to distract me from the grieving process.”  Here the first sentence of “They Will Speak Loudest of You After You’ve Gone”: “What I got to experience in moving to the Northeast after living my entire life in the Midwest is the different masks that racism wears.” As critic Kiese Laymon concluded: “No writer alive writes first sentences like Hanif.”  Or, for that matter, last sentences. “They Will Speak Loudest,” about racism, ends: “And the impossible weight of it all.”

Billie Eilish songs get straight to the point about flawed relationships with menacing humor.  In “Wish You Were Gay,” about one who doesn’t respond to her overtures, she pleads:

To spare my pride

To give your lack of interest an explanation

Don’t say I’m not your type

Just say I’m not your preferred sexual orientation

The lyrics of “Watch” reflect disillusionment with unreciprocated love:

When you call my name
Do you think I'll come runnin'?
You never did the same
So good at givin' me nothin'

The final line of “Watch”: “Never gonna letcha back.”

Living Eulogy for Marion Merrill

Next Tuesday I am driving east and after visiting a few friends, including former fellow grad student Ray Smock, will attend a "Living Eulogy" in Hockessin, Delaware, for 95 year-old Marion Merrill, the widow of my PhD adviser H. Samuel Merrill. Sam was an avuncular, devoted scholar who was much beloved. After I started teaching at IU Northwest, he and Marion would stop overnight at a motel near our house for a vist with us on their way to visit his relatives in Wisconsin. Other former grad students were also on their route. Here's what I plan to say:

Living Eulogy for Marion Merrill by James B. Lane
Marion Merrill and her husband Sam were wonderful mentors. They were role models both in terms of personal and professional development. First and foremost, the Merrills showed me the positive effect a caring teacher can have. To be a Merrill student, as we privileged Maryland grad students called ourselves, was almost like being their adopted offspring. They guided us, prodded us, tried to keep our heads on straight (after all, it was the Sixties), made us aware of what other Merrill students who came before us were doing, and helped us get jobs when we graduated. I love the fact that the Maryland History Department has a Merrill Seminar Room, but the irony is that Merrill seminars took place at Sam and Marion’s house, with Marion’s cookies served at the break.

Second, Sam and Marion had a far-reaching influence on my political thinking. They were progressives - Flaming liberals in the best sense of the connotation - passionately dedicated to civil rights and world peace. Sam took part in the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery March and was with me at the 1969 Moratorium Rally against the Vietnam War. Marion involved herself in a successful fight to free an African-American teenager convicted of rape after he had consensual sex with a white girlfriend. Marion used to drive neighbors’ maids back to their homes in Washington, D.C., so they wouldn’t have to go through the cost and inconvenience of public transportation. My liberal beliefs, to a large extent, are due to the Merrills. When Barack Obama was elected President, I immediately thought of how happy Marion would be.

Finally, the Merrills influenced my growth as a historian, not only making me mindful of how to write, according to guidelines known to us grad students as Merrill’s rules (no passive voice was number one), but showing me how exciting original research can be. At the Library of Congress while working on my dissertation on urban reformer Jacob A. Riis (a subject they suggested) I frequently had lunch with friends of theirs who were some of the most famous historians in my field, such as Allen Davis and Elliott Rudwick.

In 1971 Sam and Marion co-authored "The Republican Command, 1897-1913." My copy is inscribed “For Jim, One of our very favorite historians and persons. And with affection for Toni, Philip, and David.” (my wife and two sons). The jacket describes Marion Galbraith Merrill as “experienced in manuscript research and especially interested in the record of political successes and failures to alleviate poverty and improve race relations.” In the preface they wrote, “Our concern with the unnecessary suffering, waste, and danger which legislative inadequacy perpetuates in our society prompted us to make this study.” Those words ring just as true today. On the acknowledgements page Marion attributed much of her intellectual development to the patience of Mrs. Lila Fisher Woodbury and Osman P. Hatch, in her words two “exceptional teachers in a two-room school in Passumpsic, Vermont,” where they led a little girl gently by the hand into the magical world of books and free inquiry.” Just as Marion owed them, in her words, “a lifelong debt,” so do we Merrill students owe a lifelong debt to her. How fortunate I am to have known her.