Local legends of the literary world

Troubled Colorado writers and a history of strangeness 

“There is no friend as loyal as a book.”
― Ernest Hemingway 

In 1964, Hunter S. Thompson traveled to Ernest Hemingway's home in Ketchum, Idaho, to write an article for The National Observer about "this outback little Idaho village that struck such a responsive chord in America's most famous writer." While he was there, Thompson stole a pair of antlers from the front door of the "comfortable-looking chalet," where Hemingway had shot himself three years earlier, wrote Matt Miller in Esquire magazine a few years ago.
"For decades, the elk antlers hung inside Thompson's Owl Farm ranch in Woody Creek, Colorado. Thompson and his wife allegedly planned to take a road trip back to Ketchum and quietly return them. Like Hemingway, Thompson shot himself in his home. Now, after 52 years, the antlers have made it back to the Hemingway family, as Hunter's widow, Anita Thompson, drove them back to Idaho this month where she returned them to the home—now owned by charity the Nature Conservancy," Miller wrote, in August of 2016.
Colorado writers (and most writers, in general) have a history of strangeness. Years ago, during my first year of college at Fort Lewis in Durango, I was re-introduced to the odd behavior of local legends of the literary world in a Contemporary Lit class taught by an odd bird named Paul Pavich, that sported a wild a hairstyle of tight curls in a full evenly rounded shape, and wore bibbed overalls and white tee-shirt, almost everyday.
Pavich later started the Western Literature and Durango Literature conferences. These conferences ran through the 1980s and 1990s, bringing internationally recognized authors of all genres to Durango such as Kurt Vonnegut, Maya Angelou, Larry McMurtry and Allen Ginsberg.
At the time, organizer of the conferences, retired FLC English professor Paul Pavich, says the Southwest was rapidly growing as a hotbed of producing writers. The region gradually crept its way into a variety of writer's works, many of them paying homage to a vast landscape that is diverse in its scenery, culture and politics, Pavich said.
"People were interested in the Southwest take on all kinds of things."
In Pavich's Lit class in 1980, I think we were required to read "Dharma Bums," by Jack Kerouac, and "Sometimes a Great Notion," by Ken Kesey, who was born in Colorado.
We also became quite familiar with Neal Cassady, whose mother died when he was 10, and he was raised by his alcoholic father in Denver. Cassady spent much of his youth either living on the streets of skid row with his father or in reform school.
As a youth, Cassady was repeatedly involved in petty crime. He was arrested for car theft when he was 14, for shoplifting and car theft when he was 15, and for car theft and fencing stolen property when he was 16.
In 1941, the 15-year-old Cassady met Justin W. Brierly, a prominent Denver educator. Brierly was well known as a mentor of promising young men and was impressed by Cassady's intelligence. Over the next few years, Brierly took an active role in Cassady's life. Brierly helped admit Cassady to East High School where he taught. Cassady continued his criminal activities, however, and was repeatedly arrested from 1942 to 1944; on at least one of these occasions, he was released by law enforcement into Brierly's safekeeping. In June 1944, Cassady was arrested for possession of stolen goods and served eleven months of a one-year prison sentence.
In 1946, he and his first wife, LuAnne Henderson traveled to New York City to visit their friend, Hal Chase, another protégé of Brierly's at Columbia University. While there,  Cassady met Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. While in New York, Cassady persuaded Kerouac to teach him to write fiction. Cassady's second wife, Carolyn, has stated that, "Neal, having been raised in the slums of Denver amongst the world's lost men, determined to make more of himself, to become somebody, to be worthy and respected. His genius mind absorbed every book he could find, whether literature, philosophy or science. 
Neal Cassady was prominently featured as himself in the first draft version of Jack Kerouac's novel "On the Road," and served as the model for the character Dean Moriarty in the 1957 version of that book. In many of Kerouac's later books, Cassady is represented by the character Cody Pomeray. Cassady also appeared in Allen Ginsberg's poems, and in several other works of literature by other writers. 
"The Beats," as they became to be known,  moved around a lot after meeting in New York City and substantially launching the movement in San Francisco, but Cassady made his home in Denver, which was a mountainous desert compared with the booming post-war coastal cities, says Marlo Safi, in The National Review, April, 2019.

Following an arrest in 1958 for offering to share a small amount of marijuana with an undercover agent at a San Francisco nightclub, Cassady served a two-year sentence at California's San Quentin State Prison in Marin County. After his release in June 1960, he struggled to meet family obligations, and Carolyn divorced him when his parole period expired in 1963. Carolyn stated that she was looking to relieve Cassady of the burden of supporting a family, but "this was a mistake and removed the last pillar of his self-esteem".
After the divorce, in 1963, Cassady shared an apartment with Allen Ginsberg and Beat poet Charles Plymell, at 1403 Gough Street, San Francisco.
Cassady first met author Ken Kesey during the summer of 1962; he eventually became one of the Merry Pranksters, a group who formed around Kesey in 1964 who were vocal proponents of the use of psychedelic drugs.
In 1964, Cassady served as the main driver of the bus named Furthur on the iconic first half of the journey from San Francisco to New York, which was immortalized by Tom Wolfe's book, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968). Cassady appears at length in a documentary film about the Merry Pranksters and their cross-country trip, Magic Trip (August 4, 2011), directed by Alex Gibney.
"Cassady appears in several of Kerouac’s works as a character with a pseudonym, but a few of his biggest fans in Denver feel that he’s been lost, relegated to the footnotes of history, where he’s cast as a mere Beatnik groupie. They want to present the city of Denver with a gift to educate locals and visitors on the impactful American figure who spent much of his life in their city," Safi said.
"Mark Bliesener is one of the Denverites behind the effort to build a statue of Neal Cassady and gift it to the city. When speaking with Bliesener, I immediately gather from the elation and energy in his voice that this initiative isn’t just a professional project for him. After traveling the world, he’s met countless foreigners who, on learning that he’s from Denver, react with awe and fascination, immediately associating the city with Cassady. He realized that non-Americans viewed Cassady as a patently American icon but that many Coloradans didn’t. After these experiences, the project idea became a personal one, too. He even started the annual Neal Cassady Birthday Bash a decade ago in honor of the famed Beatnik," Safi wrote.
“What Neal brought to everything was an unbridled sense of freedom,” Bliesener says. “It’s time to finally honor this guy, especially when there are so many people trying to find cool and trying to manufacture it, whether it’s a kale smoothie or whatever else is new, but we have this incredibly cool character who’s a denizen of western America, and I feel he should be honored.”
People “might think that New York City had the most impact, but there was impactful stuff happening in Denver even though it was a cow town when Cassady was growing up,” Bliesener remarks. “When Kerouac and Ginsberg came out to visit Denver, they were enthralled with Neal’s lifestyle and the West. New York City was the capital of the universe, the modern art world was exploding there, and they still chose to come to Denver, which was the boonies at that point. What they wanted was Neal.”
Kerouac’s writing style, Bliesener says, was largely inspired by Cassady — his seminal work On the Road was informed by Cassady’s writing style and in his irreverent, free-wheeling spirit. He calls Neal the “original Beat writer.”
Sutton Betti is the sculptor tasked with creating the physical project — he says it would be life-sized, featuring both Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac embracing, based off the famous photo taken by Carolyn Cassady, Neal’s second wife, and cast in bronze. Betti and Bliesener want it to be interactive, or “instagrammable,” as the latter describes it. The hope is that making the sculpture approachable will be conducive to reviving the spirit of Cassady in Denver — an “optimistic big-sky attitude,” as he calls it, that’s quintessentially American.
"When Jack Kerouac went On the Road in 1947, he had one destination in mind: Denver, Colorado. Thus began the Mile-High City's crucial role in one of the most influential groups of writers and poets of the 20th Century, the Beat Generation, writes by Brian K. Trembath, in April 12, 2016, posting for the Denver Public Library.

"What drew the Beats to Denver was Beatnik prototype Neal Cassady. Cassady, aka The Holy Goof; aka Western Kinsman of the Sun, spent his childhood on the notorious Larimer Street Skid Row and was as out of step with the mass conformity of postwar America as one could possibly hope to be. His influence on literary giants such as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg was undeniably profound.
While Cassady cast a long shadow, he wasn't Denver's only connection to the Beat Generation. Local architect Ed White is actually the person who connected the Beats with Cassady while attending New York University. While White wasn't technically part of the Beat Generation, he bears plenty of responsibility for their development. (White also contributed mightily to Denver by way of the many buildings he designed, including the dome at the Denver Botanic Gardens.)
Although the Denver that the Beats experienced is long gone, their footprints are still out there for researchers and casual fans to explore. To help facilitate that research, the Denver Public Library's Western History and Genealogy Department has plenty of material on the Beat Generation, Neal Cassady, their time in Denver, and the legacy they left behind.
The legacy of western writers running roughshod in Colorado was  established long before that, of course, by the likes of Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, and Dalton Trumbo.
 For example, during his 1883 tour of the United States the world-renowned author Oscar Wilde, reportedly noted a sign hanging in Leadville saloon.
“Don’t shoot the piano player; he is doing the best he can,” it read.
The phrase became a colorful western variation meaning roughly the same as “Don’t kill the messenger.”
Mark Twain (Sam Clemons) liked the reference so much he adopted it in some of his lectures, but neither Wilde nor Twain claimed it was their’s originally.
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and his brother Orion stopped for an hour in Julesburg, or Overland City, a Colorado town on the South Platte River. They were 470 miles into their stagecoach ride west from St. Joseph, Missouri. In Roughing It, Twain called Julesburg “the strangest, quaintest, funniest frontier town that our untraveled eyes had ever stared at and been astonished with.” Originally established in 1859 as a trading post named for Jules Beni, a French trader, Julesburg was known by the time of Twain’s visit for Jack Slade, desperado (reportedly killer of twenty-six people) and division agent at Julesburg for the overland stage company; one of Slade’s victims was Beni.
And there was James Dalton Trumbo, born in Montrose, Colorado, and educated in Grand Junction,  who became an American screenwriter and novelist who scripted many award-winning films including Roman Holiday, Exodus, Spartacus, and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. One of the Hollywood Ten, he refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947 during the committee's investigation of Communist influences in the motion picture industry. He, with the other members of the Hollywood Ten and hundreds of other industry professionals, was subsequently blacklisted by that industry. His talents as one of the top screenwriters allowed him to continue working clandestinely, producing work under other authors' names or pseudonyms. His uncredited work won two Academy Awards: for Roman Holiday (1953), which was given to a front writer, and for The Brave One (1956) which was awarded to a pseudonym of Trumbo's. When he was given public screen credit for both Exodus and Spartacus in 1960, this marked the beginning of the end of the Hollywood Blacklist for Trumbo and other screenwriters. He finally was given full credit by the Writers' Guild for all his achievements, the work of which encompassed six decades of screenwriting.

Photo 1: Neal Cassady, left, with Jack Kerouac in 1952. Photograph by his wife Carolyn.

Photo 2: Hunter S. Thompson on his wedding day with his new bride Anita - April 24, 2003. They were married at the Pitkin County Courthouse. Thompson, 67, died a self inflicted gunshot wound at his rural home, Owl Farm, (also known as the "Kitchen") in Woody Creek, near Aspen, Colorado. (Louisa Davidson/Special to the Rocky Mountain News.)

Photo 3: During a break in the filming of the 1959 historic beat film, "Pull My Daisy," featuring an original music score by David Amram, who also appeared in the film, the composer (top right, hand to mouth) shares ideas with some of his collaborators, including (left to right), poet Gregory Corso (back to camera), artist Larry Rivers, Jack Kerouac, David Amram and Allen Ginsberg. "Pull My Daisy" features Jack Kerouac's narration and a title song by David Amram, with lyrics by Kerouac, Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg. Photo by John Cohen.

Photo 4: Kenneth Elton Kesey considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s. Kesey was born in La Junta, Colorado, and grew up in Springfield, Oregon.

Photo 5: Dalton Trumbo at House Un-American Activities Committee hearings, 1947.

 

Photo 6: Oscar Wilde, photographed in 1882 by Napoleon Sarony.

Photo 7: In addition to being a famous author and humorist, American writer Mark Twain was also responsible for inventions like the adjustable bra strap.

Responsibility: Duty without pain

Pueblo reporter perishes in the flooding waters

 By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Ben Franklin, an old newspaper man himself, noted that is “It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.”
 In the midst of questioning authority, and generally bringing useful information to public,
"Public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. Ethical journalism strives to ensure the free exchange of information that is accurate, fair and thorough. An ethical journalist acts with integrity," according to the Society of Professional Journalists.
I have always considered it a noble profession with a lot of responsibility.
It can also be dangerous. I was reminded of that recently researching the story about the 1965 floods in this area. One of the first reported deaths during that crisis was James Osnowitz.
"James Osnowitz, 23, a Pueblo Star-Journal and Chieftain employee, died when his car crashed thru  the barricade at the scene of flooding, near Larkspur, south of Denver," said the Chicago Tribune on June 18, 1965.
 His obituary in the Colorado Springs Free Press on June 18, 1965 headline read:
"Pueblo Newsman Drowns in Flood Near Larkspur." It goes on to report.
"The body of a 22-year-old Pueblo newsman was pulled from his submerged car near Larkspur, Douglas County, Thursday. James Edward Osnowitz, a summer employee of the Pueblo Chieftain and Star-Journal, was found by skin divers. Because officials of the Douglas County Sheriff's Office could not reach the area, Sheriff Earl L. Sullivan of El Paso County ordered the body brought out. The body was taken to St. Francis Hospital and then to the Law Mortuary pending transfer to Pueblo. Osnowitz was born on Jan. 9, 1943, at Sioux City, Iowa. He was a recent graduate of Southern Colorado State College at Pueblo and held a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania School of Journalism. The Osnowitz car apparently crashed through a barricade and he was trapped inside by flooding waters Wednesday, according to the report."
The Committee to Protect Journalists identifies 1,134 journalists killed, just since 1994, when it started keeping records. Other ways of making a living, and just living itself, of course can be dangerous.
For example, Jessica Ghawi, an aspiring Colorado sports reporter who barely missed a deadly Toronto shooting a few days before, was among those killed by a crazed gunman at an Aurora theater, just going to movie on her off time.
And the Alan Berg killing, June 18, 1984, was a stark reminder that certain crazy people can take offense from things you might say, and even the way your say it.
Berg was an American attorney and Denver talk show host notable for his largely liberal, outspoken viewpoints and confrontational interview style. Berg was gunned down in the driveway of his Denver town home by members of the Order.
All of us know of more tragic examples that burn uneasy concern in our operating plans. Journalists, and of course everyone's, primary responsibility is to try to stay upright and breathing in the line of duty and danger.
Sam Clemens, or Mark Twain by the name he developed writing for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, had perhaps the correct take.
“Do something everyday that you don't want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain."
To emphasize: Duty without pain.

Photo info: Aerial photo of Lowell Ranch, taken by Hank Kimbrough, Douglas County Commissioner, June 17, 1965. Douglas County History Research Center

Newspapers have a million ways of being useful

To paraphrase Mark Twain, rumors of our demise are greatly exaggerated. Newspapers have a million ways of being useful and some of them have nothing at all to do with being black and white and read all over.

Let me give you a few examples.

“Fix a flat tire,” advises Michelle Hainer, of the Washington Post. “If you get a tear

in your bike tire while riding, fold a quarter page of newspaper into a square big enough (and thick enough) to cover the hole. Slip the paper between tube and tire. Inflate the tube enough to hold the paper in place, then put the tire back on its rim and inflate the tube fully. This quick fix should keep you going for several miles.”

Hainer has a few more suggestions for constructive application of newspapers including the following:

“Ripen tomatoes. Wrap green tomatoes individually in a couple of sheets of newspaper. Store in an airtight container in a dark place at room temperature. Check them every three to four days,” she writes.

The material can also be used to keep weeds out of your garden. “Layer three to four sheets of newspaper next to your plants (at least two inches away from the stems to prevent rotting) and then water the entire area. Add a top layer of mulch, grass clippings or straw. The newspaper blocks sunlight – which weeds need to grow – and will help keep the soil moist,” says Hainer.

Make-Stuff.com also recognizes valid, positive, practical benefits to extend the life of the paper. Among them: “Glass cleaner. After you wash your windows or mirrors with soap and water or regular glass cleaner, wipe the glass with a piece of crumpled newspaper for a streak-free shine.”

It recognizes the health benefits of newspapers as well. “One trick used by baseball pitchers and mountain climbers to strengthen their fingers and forearms is to lay a single sheet of newspaper on a flat surface and then lay their hand, palm down, in the center. Using only that hand, begin crumpling the newspaper and see how small a ball you can crumple it into. This is a great inexpensive rehab technique for those who have suffered hand injuries or strokes,” according to Kelley Mitchell who contributed this idea to Make-Stuff.

Other well-known practical functions for newspapers include: cheap insulation, pot holders, giftwrap, sop or sponge, packing material, kite material, hat material, garden mulch, odor remover, dress patterns, garbage can liners, vegetable drawer liner, papier mache, pet litter liner, workspace cover, and fire starters – to name a few.

I am sure there are many, many more wonderful and interesting things you can find to do with this very newspaper. Please let me know about your favorite.

Newspapers and gold seem to go together

California was left briefly without a newspaper, as reporters, editors, typesetters, and printers sought their fortune in the placers

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

In what turned out to be one of the major false alarms in mining history, the ‘Pikes Peak Gold Rush’ was cause enough, to start the first newspapers in Colorado history. I say newspapers, because both William Byers and John L. Merrick each came to Denver City in 1859 with that expressed purpose.

Merrick arrived first, and then four days later, Byers showed up. The race to get the first copies on the street was on. And bets were place among the town’s people on who would win. Each of the two faced trouble that included down-pouring rains, leaking roofs, temporary canvas press rooms, and floods.

Byers won the race on Saturday night, April 23, 1859, with the first copies of the Rocky Mountain News. Twenty minutes too late, Merrick delivered his first copies. The loser sold his press and left to seek his fortune in the gold fields.

It was a similar deal apparently in the “World’s Greatest Gold Camp” (a.k.a Cripple Creek), in 1891.

Earnest Chapin Gard, with support from W.S. Neal and editor Bert Pottenger, beat William McCrea to the punch in this district by four days, by moving a press from Palmer Lake to publish the first edition of the “The Cripple Creek Crusher” on December 4, 1891.

The first Crusher was printed with gilded ink – a layer of gold over the regular ink. McCrea’s “Prospector” sported a vermillion headline that said, “New Gold Field.”

The current Pikes Peak Courier View is a descendent of the Crusher and no less than a dozen other news products and consolidations, including the Teller County Times, The Victor Record, Cripple Creek Times Citizen, The Gold Rush, The Ute Pass Courier, The Woodland Park View, Cripple Creek Banner, and The Daily Press. Over the years, more than 20 titles have operated in the district and many of them were absorbed by others.

Those papers have been the stomping grounds of such notable icons of journalism as Lowell Thomas, Jr., in 1910 and 1911, Ralph Carr, who later become a controversial governor of Colorado during World War II, (editor in Victor in about the same time frame as Thomas), Charles G. Ross, who later served as press secretary for president Harry S. Truman, and Irena Ingram, who became Colorado’s first female district judge following a stint as an editor and re-writer for papers in the district.

 But gold and newspapers seem to go together, usually.

Newspaper workers abandoning their stations but eventually returning, seems to be a common problem in other areas.

In January of 1848, California Star Editor Ed Kemble was completely unimpressed when a boatload of men from New Helvetia landed in San Francisco with stories and sample gold flakes from Sutter’s Mill.

Kimble was reportedly more concerned with how many acres of wheat John Sutter would plant in the spring and put that in the paper, and many more issues to bed, without reporting the gold strike.

When he finally did on March 18, 1848, newspaper workers abandoned their presses and left for the gold fields forcing Kemble’s Star, and virtually all papers in California to fold or suspend publication. In effect, California was left briefly without a newspaper, as reporters, editors, typesetters, and printers flocked to seek their fortune in the placers. Eventually, many returned to the news industry to carve out a more dependable living. By the mid-1850s, more than 60 different newspapers operated in and around Sutter’s Fort.

In Nevada Territory in 1862, after being less than successful in the gold fields, a disappointed and broke Samuel Clemens went to work for W.L. Jernegan and Alfred  James at the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City. He worked there for the next two years and it was here that he first wrote under the name Mark Twain.

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Twain on risk vs. return in tech investing

Well-known author invested as much as $300,000 in compositor before pulling the plug

“Prophesy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks.” __ Mark Twain

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

When considering printing technology, no one knew those risks better than Mark Twain. His pet project, the Paige Compositor, nearly sent him and his family tumbling into bankruptcy and never did see mass production. But the former printer’s devil would never give up on the idea of using new inventions to enhance the presentation of the written word.
He would have been awe-struck with the possibilities of news aggregators, interactive novels, and new and improved display technology. But he most certainly would have wanted to get in on the ground floor of the most promising of the lot. And he would have promoted it vigorously.
“All other inventions of the human brain sink pretty nearly into commonplaces contrasted with this awful mechanical miracle. Telephones, telegraphs, locomotives, cotton gins sewing machines, Babbage calculators, jacquard looms, perfecting presses, Arkwright’s frames – all toys, simplicities! The Paige Compositor marches alone and in the far lead of human inventions,” wrote Twain in letter to his brother Orion, in 1889.
The Paige Compositor, an automatic-typesetting machine invented by James W. Paige, was designed to save time in the printing process. The well-known author invested as much as $300,000 in it before pulling the plug on the project.
“Though the Paige Compositor was faster than the Linotype, its 18,000 parts were prone to malfunction. Paige’s invention exhibited superior technological achievement, but its price and temperamental nature made it unattractive to a business world that had already embraced the Linotype. Still, it is regarded today as one of the finest examples of nineteenth century mechanical engineering,” notes The Mark Twain House & Museum, where the only remaining one in existence resides in the basement. It has never been taken apart since it was loaned to the museum by the Merganthaler Linotype Company and installed there in 1958, for fear it may be impossible to put together again.
In addition to his investment in the compositor, Twain is also credited with writing the first novel in America to be written on a typewriter. Twain, in his autobiography remembered that first as the manuscript for “Tom Sawyer” in 1874 but typewriter historian Darryl Rehr holds that it was “Life on the Mississippi” in 1882. Regardless, the Remington Typewriter Company seized the opportunity to drop his name to promote its product for years following the disclosure in his autobiography.
The Twain (Clemens) House in Hartford Connecticut was one of the first to have a telephone in that city and revered author was known to pal around with eccentric inventor of alternating current, Nikola Tesla.
“I have just seen the drawing and description of an electrical machine lately patented by Mr. Tesla and sold to Westinghouse Company, which will revolutionize the whole electric business of the world,” wrote Twain in his notebook in 1888.
Later Twain visited Tesla’s lab and they both frequented The Players Club in New York and attended parties with contemporaries such as a Teddy Roosevelt, Rudyard Kipling, and John Muir.
Tesla’s inventions, of course, have made possible some of the wondrous developments of the modern day. Like a “Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” Twain already saw such possibilities. But, as he was also fond of mentioning, “The more you explain it, the more I don’t understand it.”
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One kind of animal in the hole

It is my understanding that there is very specific reasons that donkeys, rather than horses were used initially in the mining industry. Among those reasons is the innate reaction of each when its ears brush against something unexpected.
A donkey or burro will duck his head with the unexpected brush-up whereas a horse will rear up on its hind legs. Because you can’t have large animals rearing up on hind legs in a mine, thus the animal of choice became donkey and derivatives. The derivatives came in the form of selective breeding to encourage the size and strength of horse but the useful tendency to duck as evident in donkeys. This is where the hybrid, the mule, appeared on the scene.
In the political process, we have of course, the two dominant parties, Republicans and Democrats, represented by Donkeys and Elephants.
Mark Twain had some interesting things to say about Republicans and Democrats.
“I had been accustomed to vote for Republicans more frequently than for Democrats, but was never a Republican and never a Democrat. In the community, I was regarded as a Republican, but I had never so regarded myself. As early as 1865, or ‘66 I had this curious experience: that whereas up to that time I considered myself a Republican, I was converted to no-party independence by the wisdom of a rabid Republican. This was as man who was afterward a United States Senator, and upon whose character rests no blemish that I know of, except that he was the father of the William R. Hearst of today, and therefore grandfather of Yellow Journalism — that calamity of calamities.”
Which is basically saying Mr. Twain saw benefit in straddling the fence. As I do, to some extent —except when comes down to voting in the primaries of recent experience.
In the primaries, of course, you must make some sort of declaration. Either you are for us or you are against us. Either you are Democrat or a Republican, but in area where you are not likely to get elected dog catcher without the proper party affiliation, some races naturally are decided in the primaries by the dominant party’s electors.
Representative government at its best asks voters to make choices. A political science professor I spoke with recently notes that there isn’t a dimes worth of difference between the two parties anyway. “The Republicans are out-promising the Democrats,” he says. So you might as well operate in the dominant one, because that allows you to make more choices and in effect, be a better voter.
I hope, however, you see where I am going with this. Maybe what we are really creating is a process that breeds candidates that are as strong as an elephant but able to keep their head down and won’t rear up on their hind legs when they travel down a mine tunnel. Such a process is rife with danger. Pretty soon there is only one kind animal in the hole. No room for difference of opinion, no diversity, the politics of compromise, and a bunch of elephant-mules running things. In my opinon, that is not really good for voters who need to make choices.
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