My sophomore English teacher at Jefferson High School in Portland, OR, was Martha Shull, a very elegant daughter of a lawyer who was the president of the NEA in this year, 1954. One day she brought three magazines to my Enriched Education class. (We were smartypants, mostly girls. Smart boys took physics.) One mag was yellow, sleazy; one was slick and bright; the third was the Atlantic which we were informed was an elite publication we should read, since we were all above average.
As a beginning to my reflections about institutions or communities, you might want to look at this vid from The Atlantic which no longer confines itself to print. I agree with this quick premise of two influences, but would add a third which is the development of science itself into something that reaches beyond the world as we knew it.
To make an institution work, one must first draw a boundary, a line around a body of people. One does this by finding a commonality that everyone agrees on, even if it is only living in one place, like the occupants of this village. Next there will develop a body of “knowledge” that is accepted by this group and for some, it will limit what is worth knowing. Everything outside this limit is either not worth knowing or somehow tainted. This is an ancient and feudal way of looking at things.
I remember the Sixties. I did not experience the Sixties as described in this vid because I was living in Browning, on the Blackfeet rez, which was still preoccupied by WWII. I did know about the Sixties and was curious, but I was partnered with Bob Scriver who was born in 1914, just before WWI to a mother deeply committed to Brit ideals: fine things, propriety, and allegiance — though no one in the family was a church goer. (I was) Their way of participating was that Bob paid for a stained glass window to have their name attached.
The family’s real attachment was to white owners of small businesses, not even the white employees of the BIA and not to the rez. Bob’s problem was that he identified with the indigenous people, which put him a little outside and upset his family.
In the Sixties years when I sat in the corner of the shop sewing felt borders on bear rugs, unacknowleged, white owners of small businesses often came to visit and I listened to them lecturing Bob on how he ought to run the taxidermy shop. They never really registered the later sculpture business until it made big money (according to the media) and then they were more respectful, but taxidermy was a kid’s occupation. Most of their advice was about making money by cutting corners, avoiding regulation, exaggerating, bending more than breaking the law. It was gray area crime and Bob was worried by it, even as he took their advice. His second wife was more than a little bit inclined this way.
It was not the taxidermy business, but the Scriver Museum of Montana Wildlife that was open to sharp dealing. Admission was cash, only recorded by the cash register tape. It was adjustable, so special dispensation was given to friends, the local indigenous people and resident white people, etc. Counting, packaging and banking was done by Bob and later the grandkids, sitting on the floor of the house with piles of dollar bills and shoe boxes. Even when the sculpture was bringing in big money, the costs were also in big money, but the product came out of skill and popularity which could not be measured.
It was not until “Western” tropes were attacked and discredited, revealed to be Empire scams, arousing high indignation among the indigenous, that the value began to leak away from the sculpture. By that time the small businesses of white men, mostly begun right after WWII, had closed because of the aging of their owners or because their services were obsolete. It was in those years that Republican values began to define the group.
The group was both defined by things like socioeconomic factors that kept few rez people from identifying, but -- because they were diminishing -- began to get more and more like a “religion” believing that they were right. These were never people who believed in Enlightenment values like logic or science. I began to be bugged by them and to resist, which upset Bob and eventually ended the marriage.
Though my first job off the rez was animal control and it was also defined in a small way, in/out partly maintained by popular contempt for “dog-catchers.” I had a brilliant boss, Mike Burgwin, who wanted to break this up. He was an old cop, an occupation that teaches a person that laws are arbitrary and sometimes justice demands something more. His principle was that enforcement was a continuum that served the whole and that anything that moved both law and justice towards well-being was good. So he set me on a path of research and development. I invited in speakers from the Primate Research Center, from the zoo, from the veterinarians, and so on.
When I left for seminary, I still carried the idea that I was “Enriched” and identified with Enlightenment values. The denomination was based on scientific and Western high values, which had a meritocratic base, but also increasingly was socioeconomic and therefore a target for those who wanted to be exceptional, secure, and “correct.” Women, minorities.
When I left that for seminary and even after seminary, I followed the new science because as the speaker in the vid said, I was responding to internet access even though I am now living in a small defined community. Some boundaries exploded. One of them was the socioeconomic factor. Another was the idea that being “religious” was anything but belonging to an institution, but that there was something else that I could “feel” here that was open to existence.
Martha Shull (1902 - 1997), I’ve been told, was gay — everyone knew it. No one argued with it. She was nationally respected, very classy. Not a feminist, not an agitator, a judge’s daughter. Someone should write a biography. There will be resistance, but times change.
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