My Mark Twain (A tenuous, triple relationship)

I have always suffered from the pleasant illusion that I have a personal relationship to Mark Twain. This is a family matter.  Those who have read Roughing It will recall that Mark Twain describes going to Nevada, where his brother was to serve as the secretary to the Governor. That governor was named James Nye. In fact, an entire county is named after him today, Nye County, in Southern Nevada.  Go look at any map, and it is there, perhaps the largest county in the state, and some of it highly radioactive.  On the map below, it is the largest green spot, the green being a case of false advertising, for this is a sun-baked desert of little value to most people, unless you like rattlesnakes and tumble weed.

No doubt it was this part of Nevada that Twain had in mind when he remarked, "Some people are malicious enough to think that if the devil were set at liberty and told to confine himself to Nevada Territory, he would...get homesick and go back to hell again." Nye County has one of the most impressive suicide rates of any county in America. It is almost exactly the same size as Denmark, and I am proud of its sun-baked potential. It will surely one day prove to be a solar energy bonanza. If any of you want to  know more about Governor (and later US Senator) James Nye, I have a book in the office that gives a short biography of him. My uncle, George Nye, the family antiquarian and genealogist until he passed away in 2000, wrote that book.

But this is not my chief reason for thinking I have a personal relationship to Twain. No, it gets worse. Twain spent much of his time as a platform speaker and humorist. One of the other  speakers of the day was Edgar Wilson "Bill" Nye. Like Twain, he was a Midwesterner who had gone out West. Bill Nye was the editor of a newspaper in Laramie, Wyoming for a while in the 1880s, with the wonderful name The Boomerang, and while writing for that paper he became a funny man. In 1894, considerably after escaping from Wyoming, he wrote a comic history of the United States that sold almost as well as some of Twain's books. Both of these men began as newspaper reporters. They started stretching the truth to fill their pages, and ended up telling tall tales and making fun of the world, as a way of making a living. This line of work has always appealed to me. It explains why I became a historian. Twain once said of Bill Nye, "Edgar W. Nye's humor I enjoy for it is the frosting on the cake. There is something shining out through it all."

Bill Nye and Mark Twain were friendly, and they even appeared on the stage together a few times. The difference between them, however, is, that Mark Twain is still funny today, while much of Bill Nye's humor seems a bit faded. Some of his remarks are still fresh, however, such as: "I have been told that Wagner's music is much better than it sounds." Bill Nye was in tune with his times, and he made Victorians laugh, but Twain was more in tune with the ages. He not only made his contemporaries laugh but all those who came after him as well.

Still, I like to think that with these blood relatives who knew Twain, one at the start of his career and another one later on, I have some deeper connection to him than most people. I also have visited his house, which is now a museum, in Hartford Connecticut, not far from where my parents once lived. I could give the tour guide's talk myself, if I had to. So, if after a few drinks I begin to make mystical claims about Twain, you will have to consider the fact that my family and his have been connected for about 150 years. Of course, Twain died decades before I was born, but I have spoken to people whose lives overlapped with his. My great aunt, Grace Nye, lived to be 101. She was born in 1892, so it may well be true, as she said, that she once saw Twain when she was a little girl.

Mark Twain

None of this really means a great deal. In the world of criticism it counts for nothing at all.  But I want to claim a genuine and ineffable superiority to anyone who does not have a giant desert wasteland county named after their family in Nevada, a now forgotten ancestor who was a platform humorist who knew the great Mark, and a deceased aunt who (she said) once met him. 

Socialists Break Another Promise: Public Transportation

After the American Century

Socialists and the Socialist People's Party campaigned on the green platform of improving mass transit, reducing fares, and taxing the heavy traffic that floods into Copenhagen every day. Now that they have won, however, the plan is to do nothing of the kind. Instead, they will make no improvements in mass transit, raise the fares, and yet still impose the road pricing on those who drive into town. So taxes will go up, prices will go up,  quality will go down, and the roads will remain just as crowded. This is not what one expects from a socialist government. One expects them to be able to deliver social services.

The photograph shows a Copenhagen bus advertisement promising that if they come to power the Socialist People's Party will lower bus and commuter train fares by 40%.  Instead, they will rise 3.1%

The Socialists have broken many campaign promises, notably to the universities and the hospitals. They have decided not to return to the tax code in use when the country was prosperous and could afford its social services in the 1990s. Rather, they will keep the lower tax rates developed by the previous conservative coalition. The new government seems to have been captured by the same incompetent planners and economists who advised the conservatives. It appears that there is almost no difference between Right and Left in reality, with the notably exception of how they say they will treat immigrants.

An Electrical Blackout Just For Me?

After the American Century

The storm that lashed Denmark Saturday night with hurricane winds caused a blackout at our house. We were watching television when suddenly all the lights on the ground floor went out, and the film we were enjoying disappeared. The buglar alarm began to ring, as it does when forced over on to battery power. Not its forceful full screaming mad sound, but an insistent call for assistance. Looking out the window, my wife and I immediately saw that the neighbors were not affected, and we soon found that the floors above and below us still had power. It seemed obvious that the problem could be solved by changing a fuse. We found a flashlight and a fuse, made the change, and. . . nothing happened. By this time we were getting a bit cross, missing the film, and quickly put in another fuse, also without any result.

All this time the burglar alarm continued to ring, intermittently, and we began to wonder if we might be hearing this all night. So we called the security company and asked if they could stop it, and of course also reported that the power outage was the reason. We could hear the wind howling.

It being the middle of a weekend, the last thing we wanted to do was call an electrician, because coming for an emergency on a Saturday would cost us a minimum of $200, based on past experiences when we needed a plumber or a locksmith. So I decided to go outside in the rain and wind to see if by any chance I could spot the problem. It seemed unlikely, but worth a try.

Outside there was lots of wind, but little rain, and I shone the flashlight up on the side of the house where the four electric lines come in. They all seemed very securely attached. But then, from the corner of my eye I saw and in my right ear I heard a buzzing bluish spark. One of those four lines was loose at the other end, where it joined the main line! 

We called the power company, assuming that we would have to wait, perhaps even to Monday, but glad we knew the problem. It was not a short-circuit caused by a leak, for example, which would have been hard to find, expensive to fix, and in the meantime a danger.  This was far better, as the problem was not our fault, and we would not have to pay anything.

Remarkably, a crew was on the scene in less than two hours from the time we called, and by 11 PM a truck with a lift had taken a man up to the loose wire, sizzling there in the rain, and his nonchalance made him casually heroic in the gusting wind. In less than two minutes he had reattached the electrical line and the power was on again in our house.

What does this event mean? Well, that some things work really well in Denmark. But not everything. One of the most frequent causes of blackouts is a failure to trim trees growing beneath power lines. Did I forget to mention this? The electrical line that failed is slightly entangled in a tree, and our neighbor whose windows are closer to the connection than ours, asked that someone from the city come and cut it back. Nothing was done, however, as the municipality seems to be saving money on such things.

That said, it nevertheless did seem rather amazing that of all the houses on this  street, ours should be the one affected, and only one floor, where I happened to be. After all, my last book was about electrical blackouts. Power failures are usually more widely shared, but this one was quite private.

New Danish Government Breaks its Word and Slashes University Teaching Budgets

After the American Century                          

Many hoped that the new socialist-led government would offer a dramatic improvement over the previous right-wing coalition. But in many areas where they promised change, they have continued the old policies. Some of the promises they have broken were made with extreme clarity, and then forgotten immediately after they came to power.

One of the most notorious examples was the promise, given in writing as an unshakeable commitment, that the hospital emergency room in Svenborg would not be closed. It serves several islands and the southern part of the larger island where I live, This signed promise was broken as soon as they took office. Now they declare it will be closed. I firmly believe that some people will die because it will take them over an hour from the time an ambulance arrives until they can get to the only emergency room left on these islands, in Odense, where I live. This is a blow to a beleaguered area that already has trouble attracting residents. Before the election, the Socialists claimed they would help such outlying areas, and not continue the policy of centralization that is undermining them.

Likewise, the new Socialist-led government promised to roll back a large cut to the university budgets proposed by the old government before the election. In Denmark a certain amount is paid to each university for every student it matriculates. The old government proposed to cut this amount by 3000 kroner per student, and the new government now agrees. In 2012 Danish universities will find their teaching budgets reduced by c. 600 million kroner, or more than 100 million dollars. (Those who read Danish, see the news stories here, and here) To put this another way, support in most of the humanities will fall by 6.5% per student, but given rising costs the effect will feel like a 10% reduction. This decision will force universities to cut the number of teaching hours, put students into larger classes, fire some faculty, and slow down the purchase of essential equipment. UPDATE, October 2012. These things are all happening. There are now "language" classes, focused on improving oral proficiency, with more than 30 students, in some cases more than 40. This means that during an entire semester a student in such a class will only speak English for about 20 minutes each, at most about two minutes per week. It means that new BA programs are implemented without hiring any additional faculty or providing any additional money in the budget, while announcing goals that cannot possibly be met given the faculty and resources.

These cuts are twice as large as the increases announced for research, amounting to c. 300 million kroner for 2012. These funds are not all funneled to the universities, however. For example, some research money will go to hospitals or other institutions. In any case, the research funds that do go to universities cannot be used for teaching. The plans for 2013 call for even larger reductions for teaching, which will create a severe crisis.

Before the election the Socialists said (or rather they pretended to believe) that increased funding for education was essential, because the only real asset Denmark has is its people. A highly educated and skilled population will be needed to compete in the global market. But this new government, like the old one, now is unwilling to pay for it.  SDU's Rektor Dr. Jens Oddershed, speaking for the rektors of all the universities, declared that the government had broken its word. He was being diplomatic. A more objective view would be that the Socialists are cynical prevaricators.

Readers inside Denmark know that these are just two of many examples of the socialist-led government's unapologetic refusal to honor campaign promises. Like the previous government, the Socialists lack integrity. They proclaim one thing, but do quite another. In a few areas they are better, but in general it seems that, as George Orwell put it in the conclusion to Animal Farm, "The pigs have become men."

Where might the money come from to support hospitals and education? This government has refused to roll back tax cuts given to the wealthy by the previous right-wing government. Anyone can now see that the cuts were based on miscalculations and that they were un-financed.

Why should universities and hospitals be cut instead of rolling back the tax cuts for the wealthy? This is not even remotely a socialist program. It is not even an intelligent capitalist program. The new government has been a severe disappointment.