A Banquet of Consequences

For the sake of full disclosure, my idyllic visit to the Ashland County Fair with the lovely Madelyn Simone and the delightful and determined Elizabeth Holiday didn’t turn out to be quite the “hap-happiest season of all.” The animal barns smelled, rowdy cackles and crows greeted us in the poultry barn, and the thunderous noise of the dragon roller coaster was overwhelming to our four-year-old Lizzie. Our balloons escaped into the heavens. I questioned my sanity as we rocked at the top of the rickety Ferris wheel - how could we possibly get rescued if the ride broke down?

With a no-nap day, a sensory overload, and a sugar high for which I totally take responsibility, it’s no wonder my precious granddaughter had a meltdown or two during our five-hour visit to the fair. Her behavior needed to be addressed, but as she wailed in the midway, the possible consequences were limited. I threatened to take her to the car if she couldn’t get it together. I looked for a quiet corner for a short time-out. I raised my voice. I thought about the word “spank.” I nearly cried along with her. And I wondered if maybe next year, we might just stay at Nana’s house and eat mashed potatoes and gravy on the day of the fair. 

The ministry organization I served in for many years had a similar dilemma about consequences. A series of checks and balances were in place on a regional level, including an adherence to work standards and organizational policy. A weekly meeting of regional leadership reviewed requests and concerns and subsequently expected responses in line with policy. One day, a friend shook her head as she exited that weekly meeting, saying: “I wish I had known years ago that I didn’t need to do what headquarters told me to do!” Knowing my friend, her own sense of a moral compass wouldn’t allow her to consistently break the rules, but she recognized the struggle of leadership when faced with the response: “So what? What are you going to do to me?”

When a person utilizes a well-developed moral compass, they ask the questions: who will be helped by what I do? Who will be harmed? When the answer to the first question is “me” and to the second is “everybody else,” then we’ve got trouble. Many workplaces are constrained by a lack of enforceable consequences short of termination. “You’re fired” may resonate on reality TV, but it’s not a practical response on a day-to-day basis in the workplace or the family. Neither is “we’re leaving the fair now” only ten minutes into our visit. 

Parenting experts tell us that consequences for poor behavior should be age-appropriate, immediate, and enforceable. The consequence should also impact the misbehaver, not the enforcer or other family member. Taking recess away from the entire second grade class because two classmates didn’t finish their lunch on time is not effective punishment. That’s true in the workplace as well. Keeping a less-than-productive employee is tough on the rest of the staff, but a suspension or firing puts a heavier burden on co-workers and supervisor as they take up the slack until a replacement can be hired and trained.

If the breaker-of-the-rules knows there are few consequences for their actions, then why not do what they want? Pop music star Charli XCX blatantly admits the challenge: “I don’t wanna go to school, I just wanna break the rules.” 

In nursery school, Lizzie learned about making green choices and red choices, an early step in the development of a moral compass. She understands the difference, but still needs encouragement to make green choices, and age-appropriate consequences when she chooses red. Ideally, we expect adults to operate with a mature moral compass, guided by personal values and societal norms. But unless effective consequences are in place, we all pay the price when another’s compass is warped, ignored, or non-existent.

Robert Louis Stevenson provides a memorable image: “Everybody, sooner or later, sits down to a banquet of consequences.” Will the menu be bitter or sweet?

The Hap-happiest Season of All

“It’s the most wonderful time of the year,” croons Andy Williams, soon to be heard on the endless loop of Christmas music that takes over my brain long before December 25^th. While Edward Pola and George Wyle claimed the weeks surrounding Christmas were the “hap-happiest season of all,” I’m guessing these song-writing collaborators never experienced county fair week in Ashland.

I’m writing this year’s column based upon my own somewhat faulty memory and the miracle of Facebook posts, as my visit to the corner of Baney Road and Claremont Avenue with the lovely Madelyn Simone and the delightful and determined Elizabeth Holiday won’t take place until the final day of the fair, long after my column is due at the Ashland Times-Gazette.  

Memory and Facebook posts share a common limitation: we only see what comes up in our feed. Unless we search for a certain  social media post, we are at the whims of the Facebook gods (aka algorithms) that I can’t begin to understand. That’s also how my brain seems to work. Scientists tell us that memory is dependent upon the processes of encoding, storage and retrieval. Apparently, memories begin with either a visual or auditory cue, which makes sense, but my memories of the carnival-like atmosphere of the fair, both from childhood and more recent years in Ashland, seem to be associated with smells and tastes as well.

The smells of the animal barns are common to county fairs, with the freshly groomed horses, the newly shorn sheep, and the caged chickens, ducks and turkeys all vying for our attention. I remember trips to the zoo or the fair as a small child, and being fascinated as I watched the animals poop. With grandchildren, history tends to repeat itself – enough said!

I’m convinced I have a reserved place in my memory for fair food. My mouth is watering as I type, triggered by memories of my childhood favorite: sugar waffles at Crystal Beach. Guess what? They have these delicacies at the county fair. These aren’t the kind of waffles you make for yourself at the hotel breakfast buffet. One anonymous reviewer described them as “basically fried dough, crispy and crumbly and ultimately, just a means to an end: sugar.” And they usually have free samples! Lerch’s donuts, funnel cakes, candy apples, French fries . . . sugar and grease are king at the Ashland County Fair.

Madelyn is already asking if the kid’s roller coaster is at the fair this year. That’s her ride of choice, and I remember all too well her disappointment when it failed to appear one year. Here’s hoping the petite Lizzie is tall enough to ride, or there will be trouble in paradise for sure.

I love the small group of volunteers who make recycling a priority at the fair. Facebook even offered up a photo of the recycling fairy wearing her magic heels. While it seems a tiny drop in an ocean-sized bucket, when we toss the pop can in the recycling container, we are doing our part to create a better world for our kids and grandkids. Thank you, recycling team, for your faithful early morning work.

The county fair allows local organizations to meet and greet the thousands who pass through the merchant buildings and visit under the grandstand. Two booths, both trimmed in red, white and blue, provide aspiring political candidates and civic leaders the chance to chat with constituents. The Dems have added an intriguing component this year, as Ashlanders can vote in a straw poll, deciding which face they prefer as the democratic candidate for president in 2020. As of Wednesday, it looks like Biden and Warren are in the lead, with Mayor Pete a popular third. The Heartland speaks!

There’s so much more to see and do, smell and taste at the county fair, but I’m out of space. Be sure to head out to the fairgrounds today to sample your favorite fair food, congratulate the 4-H kids, and breathe one last glimpse into your memory of the “hap-happiest season” – the 2019 Ashland County Fair. I’ll be the one with two beautiful granddaughters and powdered sugar on my shirt. See you there!

Of Corsets and Tight-Lacing

The month of September is marked by the opening of the Ashland County Fair, Friday night football under the lights, the first cider pressing at Mitchell’s Orchards, and the thundering cannon blast at AU home games. Autumn beckons us onward, and for the most part, we’re ready. 

September is also a month to focus on the women of the greater Ashland community with this week’s celebration for 2019’s Ashland County Women of Achievement. The Women’s Fund of the Ashland County Community Foundation is also joining in the fun with their upcoming “Celebrating the Past and Envisioning the Future” program, on September 24. 

One of the features of the Women’s Fund event is a display of historical clothing, including the wedding gown of Edna Garber, the mother of Ashland’s beloved matriarch, Dr. Lucille Garber Ford, and the grandmother of retired ATS professor, Dr. JoAnn Ford Watson. As the pictures confirm, in 1914 the young Edna said “yes’ to a beautiful dress. 

As a girl, I enjoyed reading about the society weddings in the Buffalo Evening News, describing taffeta A-line creations with sweetheart necklines and cap sleeves, or ballroom gowns of organza trimmed with Chantilly lace. Yet despite my early interest in wedding attire, my fashion sense remains underdeveloped, so I can’t fully describe the Garber gown. It has a delicate lace insert at the neckline, and it’s apparent the bride had a slim figure, as the natural waist is accented by a lace bow. The cinched waistline was quite fashionable in the late 1800s and into the first decades of the 1900s, often seen in pictures from that era. It’s likely that Edna’s tiny waist came naturally to her, but I’ve discovered that many women went through a daily process of tight-lacing to achieve such a fashionable look.

Wikipedia, that twenty-first century source of all knowledge, explains that “the primary effect of tight-lacing is the decreased size of the waist.” I’m not sure whether Ethel Granger made the Guinness Book of World Records, but she is noted for having the smallest waist recorded at thirteen inches. She achieved that reduction by tight-lacing for most of her life, successfully reducing her waistline by ten inches. Ouch!

Obviously, I’ve never practiced tight-lacing, scared away by the scene from “Gone With the Wind” where Mammy tells the young Scarlet, “Hold onto something and suck in your breath.” Grabbing the bedpost, Scarlet does as instructed. Mammy tugs and pulls, and “the tiny circumference of whalebone-girdled waist grew smaller” (Scnoop website). Scarlet later remarks, “Goodness, but my stays are tight.” Or, as Lady Cluck complains as she plays tennis in the 1973 “Robin Hood” classic from Disney, “Oh, my girdle’s killing me.”

Because it pushed vital organs out of place, tight-lacing could be quite harmful to young women. I’m in possession of a copy of a letter from Maude B. Booth, who led The Salvation Army in the United States in the late 1800s with her husband Ballington. She wrote to women leaders, speaking of her consternation that “some women officers are addicted to tight-lacing.” She continues, “I say addicted purposely for I really think that tight-lacing is as bad as cigarette smoking in a man.” Pictures of Salvation Army women from that era confirm her observations. Even in women who swore off “worldly adornments” and the “follies of fashion,” the lure of the tiny waist was strong, and, according to Mrs. Booth, both sinful and life-threatening.

Now, more than one hundred years later, “we’ve come a long way, baby.” As we celebrate the accomplishments of this year’s Women of Achievement, and envision the future with ACCF’s Women’s Fund, it’s apparent that many of the constrictions that faced women a century ago have been lifted, as the constraints of limited opportunity have gone the same route as the daily wear of girdles and corsets. 

These words hang behind my desk: “Here’s to strong women. May we know them. May we be them. May we raise them.” For Madelyn, Lizzie, and Emma, for our daughters and granddaughters, for the girls in the pew and the young women behind the fast food counter, here’s to an un-corseted future marked with strength, courage and boundless dreams.

Deep In My Heart

When we were transferred to The Salvation Army in the Hough neighborhood of Cleveland in 1990, our son Dan was one, and we enrolled him in the day care at our center. Each year the staff planned a grand celebration for Black History month, and I was curious as to how the teachers might engage Dan’s class in the festivities. That first year, they lined up all sixteen babies in high chairs, gave them each a spoon, and popped a tape in the VCR. As family and friends proudly looked on, Hap Palmer sang “sittin’ in a high chair . . . bang my spoon,” the on-screen chimp wore a banana peel on his head as he messily ate his lunch, and our precious babies banged their spoons in joyous response. Brilliant!

By his third year in the center, Dan progressed from banging his spoon to being cast as Martin Luther King, Jr. in his class skit. He took his part seriously, especially the singing. I got a sneak preview at the fast food counter as he sang for all to hear, “We shall obercome some day!” 

Adapted from a gospel hymn by Rev. Charles Albert Tindley called “I’ll Overcome Some Day,” the song was first used in labor strikes in the late 40s, and would later be led by folk singers Pete Seeger and Joan Baez, familiar names from my adolescence. A theme song of sorts in the civil rights movement in the 60s, by the 90s it was being taught to our three-year-olds (including my young blonde son) to explain and explore the heritage of their people. 

Over the centuries, music has been at the forefront of history and change. In the nineteenth century, protest songs addressed war, abolition of slavery, and women’s suffrage (for and against). By the 1900s, the focus shifted to labor, the Great Depression, the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam. One example:  Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” may be a patriotic song for fireworks shows today, but it was also a bitter commentary on the return of soldiers from Vietnam. 

As a teen in the late 60s and early 70s, I passionately sang Pete Seeger’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” and “Turn, Turn, Turn,” and Peter, Paul and Mary’s cover of Seeger’s “If I Had a Hammer.” I looked desperately for the answers that Bob Dylan promised were “Blowin’ in the Wind.” How fervently we believed, “The Times, They Are A-Changin.’” And change they did.  

One silly favorite is “Charlie on the M.T.A,” or “The Metropolitan Transit Authority Protest Song.” It’s a narrative account of “a man named Charlie,” who got on the subway “on that tragic and fateful day” and couldn’t get off because the exit fare was raised while he rode the train. Written for a mayoral candidate who couldn’t afford other advertising, the Kingston Trio recorded the song, and Charlie’s plight traveled around the world. “Did he ever return? No, he never returned . . .” 

As I was revisiting many of these songs, I stumbled upon a treasure of a book, “Songs of America: Patriotism, Protest, and the Music that Made a Nation,” by Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw. The flyleaf explains: “Through all the years of strife and triumph, America has been shaped not just by our elected leaders and our formal politics, but also by our music – by the lyrics, performers, and instrumentals that have helped to carry us through the dark days and to celebrate the bright ones.”

A stroll down Memory Lane is great for reminiscing, but what of the music of this century? Will music breathe life into protest, might it become a source of healing and hope? Meacham and McGraw echo my question: “Given the current state of the nation, can music play any role in smoothing out the sharp edges of our disagreements and easing the tensions of tribalism?” They poetically conclude: “The song of America is not finished; the last notes have not yet been played. In that spirit, in that cause, now and always, let us lift every voice and sing.” Because deep in my heart, I do believe . . .