Words from the Sixties (in a weird alphabet)

I’ve just spent a delightful couple of evenings with my dad, who’s been dead for the last 35 years. No, not a séance. A collection of letters he wrote over a three-year period in the 1960s. So for the second post in a row, I’m writing about Dad—in part because I am finding little inspiration of my own these days. I trust it will return. But also because I found myself reflecting on his observations from fifty-plus years ago.

My dad was one of a handful of people who became interested in the Shavian alphabet—have I mentioned this before? When George Bernard Shaw died in 1950, he left money in his will to develop a phonetic alphabet for the English language that would do away with the language’s crazy irregularities. In my dad’s words, in addition to being phonetic, it would be “a fresh and simple design…written with ease…esthetically pleasing…” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shavian_alphabet

Dad’s academic specialty was George Bernard Shaw—and he was, himself, a bit of a radical—so it’s not surprising that, when the new alphabet came into existence in the 1960s, he joined one of several groups of people who communicated with one another using it. The group of four or five kept an “ever-circulating” letter going from 1963 to 1966. That is, a packet of letters arrived every couple of weeks with contributions from each member. The recipient would remove his (they were all men) oldest letter and replace it with a new one, then send the packet on to the next in line. As a result, Dad ended up with all of his own letters in a file—alas, none of the others. He transcribed and bound them into a book in the year before he died. 

Even just reading one side of a 5-sided conversation, it’s clear that the participants came from very different perspectives and that most of them enjoyed a lively argument. Certainly Dad did.

That’s the back story. 

I found myself perusing these letters for the first time in decades after a chance mention of them a few days ago. These were the years when I was a university student—not a time when I was particularly interested in what was happening inside my father’s head. But reading the letters now, I was sorry that I couldn’t conjure him up to dig deeper. Not sorry, though, that he isn’t witnessing the world as it is now.

Here are some snippets that struck me as timely.

On this very day in 1963, the US was reeling from the assassination of JFK. Dad writes of the events in some detail, and concludes with this:

I have just finished watching, as some of you no doubt have also, the moving of the flag-draped casket into the rotunda of the Capitol. A really moving ceremony…

…And now comes the news that the suspect assassin is himself murdered! What chance have we of convincing cultured people abroad that they will not be scalped by Indians…”We are still savages at heart and wear our thin uniform of civilization very awkwardly.” (GBS, 1937).

…In this age news is so instantaneous and transportation so fast that the funeral tomorrow will be a glittering assemblage of notables from all over the world. Is this all to the good? I’m not sure. We are subject to mass sentimentality, and even morbidity…The Christian world is where more pagan than in it handling of death and bereavement.

Dad would certainly feel right at home in the current US kerfuffle about medicare:

In our own family we have always been well taken care of…But the intransigence of the AMA has been most maddening. And there is no question that many Americans can not afford adequate medical care. In this I feel the British (and the Saskatchewans) are socially in advance of us. We must get over being frightened of labels and judge things on their own merits. In certain phases of our crowded lives there ought to be socialism.

And then, in a later letter, as if to illustrate, he describes an accident in which my younger brother broke his arm and the process of seeing a doctor, getting an x-ray, setting the bone:

All of this took from seven to nine p.m….Would the whole thing have been more efficient under the British socialized system? I must say that if one breaks his bones during proper hours there would be an x-ray technician on duty close at hand—or if one went to a larger city to break his bones…Most of the expense will be covered by my medical insurance. But it will include bills from both doctors and fees from the x-ray room. This latter I know is $10…My guess is that it will turn out to be a $75-$100 accident. Even if I am covered by insurance, what do people do who are not?…I think those folks up in Saskatchewan know what they’re doing.

This is what the letters looked like.

In response to what was obviously a tirade about anti-social youth in the 1960s, he came to our defense:

I do not condone antisocial behavior, but do we stop to consider that today’s 16-18 year-olds were born and reared completely in the atomic age? All youth is insecure, but to all other insecurity, this generation has had something completely new: They are the first generationto grow up literally not being sure that an adult world would be waiting for them…

Coming to maturity with some amount of sanity is a “longer shot” than it used to be, and scoldings from on high, especially if they seem “stuffy”, are not going to help one bit.

During one of the international crises a few years ago, my daughter, then perhaps 15, came down to my study from her bedroom one night. She was crying. “Daddy,” she said, “I want a chance to grow up without being bombed.” She knew the facts. What solace could I honestly give her?…

This is one of my most powerful memories—it was during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the subject of an essay I wrote some years ago. The fact that Dad remembered it too has always moved me.

One of his correspondents (George) was Canadian—an Ottawa civil servant—and from Dad’s responses, it’s obvious he was rabidly anti-American. I wish we could read what the George wrote, but all I have is Dad’s responses. It seems timely to read Dad’s attempt to reassure him that not ALL Americans were sympathetic to their government!

The fact is that few folks south of the Great Lakes ever get to hear your side of the story—and certainly not with the passion that appropriate goes with it. I read a good many of the liberal papers, yet I have never been confronted with the charges he throws at us…I have never heard any indication that the Canadian Provinces should become states of the union.

George, on your private war with the U.S.A., may I suggest that the differences are not so much those of Americans versus Canadians, but those of minority viewpoints concerning atomic armaments versus majority viewpoints throughout the West. I know folks who have spoken out very vigorously against atomic stockpiling in this country—at the risk of losing jobs, reputations, security. Many of us take positions contrary to our government on this matter.

Throughout, Dad makes various political arguments—against the US involvement in Southeast Asia, against the dumbing-down of politics, against Goldwater whose run for the presidency occurred in this timeframe. And—with an idealism that I associate with him—in favour of world government:

Two technological developments have changed the nature of our planning—the atom and television. Both are forces that may be used for good or evil, but they are in the process of cutting across national boundaries as other ever has before. They will, I believe, make world government both necessary and possible.

World government enthusiasts are often starry-eyed about all this, and they will certainly be disillusioned. No super-national power structure can solve the real problems: population, food, racial discrimination, etc. But it might have a chance of keeping a relative kind of peace and order while these over-riding problems can be worked out…

Oh, Dad.

And finally, on an amusing note:

Well the Christmas season is again almost upon us…Our daughter [that’s me] is coming home from her college in Iowa…this time with a boyfriend in tow [that’s Jack]. This sort of thing is new to me—for quite obviously this isn’t the kind of guy who drops by for a date…

The boy friend arrived—quite human, you know. Our consensus was he’s a good guy. “Neat” says our 16-year-old, which is this year’s favorite word for anything from ice cream to motion pictures. Applied to a person it means he’s not square—not a dog.

Back in the present, the Christmas season is almost upon us 53 years later. It’s a sunny and reasonably warm day in Echo Bay. A week ago we had several inches of snow, but that’s gone and I think maybe I’ll get some garlic in the ground before it freezes after all! Nothing like last-minute gardening! The guy who’s “not a dog” is out in his pottery studio, potting up a storm.

I’ll try to come up with something original of my own next time.