“Howard Zinn and Lois Mottonen Fistfight in the Equality State,"

“Howard Zinn and Lois Mottonen Fistfight in the Equality State.”

That’s the title of my fourth book, released on the first anniversary of Lois’s death. Her memoir is published by WordsWorth Publishers of Cody, Wyoming. The book is available be emailing me at rmc81448@gmail.com or at https://wordsworthpublishing.com/catalog/

This remarkable woman called me in 2014. She read my book “Dying for Joe McCarthy’s Sins: The Suicide of Wyoming Senator Lester Hunt.” Lois wanted me to write a book for her. Lois didn’t have a clear vision. She was generally thinking of a book about the lives of women in Wyoming.

I declined, believing a book about Wyoming women ought to be written by a woman.

Lois called again, in 2016, this time more certain. The older she got, the more anguished she became about the lives of woman, racial and cultural minorities in what is euphemistically called “the Equality State.” She wanted to tell their stories.

Her grandparents emigrated from Finland in the late 1800s. She grew up during the Depression and World War II. Lois lived in the old mining camp, Winton, and attended school in Rock Springs before heading to the University of Wyoming.

Despite graduating with honors and becoming the second Wyoming woman to earn an accountancy certificate, Lois found firms in Cheyenne or Denver unwilling to hire a woman.

Between Lois and her family, the Mottonen’s lived in Wyoming from the beginning. She was offended by the effort of the 2^nd Territorial Legislature to repeal the right to vote given women by the 1^st Territorial Legislature. She celebrated Nellie Tayloe Ross’s being elected first woman governor but bemoaned that a woman was never again permitted to serve.

Lois was outraged by the Black 14 incident and the murder of Matthew Shepard and the unwillingness of Wyoming politicians to enact a hate crimes law. Having been victimized by employer discrimination, she was appalled by the wage gender gap.

Lois was looking for a writer who shared her belief that calling Wyoming “the Equality State” doesn’t make it so.

For nearly two years, Lois and I met every Monday afternoon. I listened. She told her story and the stories of her parents and grandparents, telling of their struggles, connecting her personal experiences to the stories of tens-of-thousands of Wyoming people who are kicked to the curb because of their skin color, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs or other characteristics that don’t line up with the contrived cowboy image to which many want to cling.

Lois wanted Howard Zinn the tell the story. He wasn’t available. So, she asked me.

“Howard Zinn…meet Wyoming.” Professor Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present,” is an honest look at U.S. history, the sort of which Lois wanted for Wyoming. Sherman Alexie’s classic, “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven,” provided readers a glimpse into the importance of symbols and images in building a non-existent reality. It seemed appropriate to carve this book’s title from those.

“Howard Zinn and Lois Mottonen Fistfight in the Equality State,” attempts a Zinn-like history of how Wyoming’s women, working people, racial, ethnic, and religious minorities are treated, posing the troubling question Alexie asked in his poem entitled “Hymn.”

            But, how much do you love the strange and the stranger?

               Hey, Caveman, do you see only danger

                  When you peer into the night? Are you afraid

                     Of the country that exists outside your cave?

                        Hey, Caveman, when are you going to evolve?

                           Are you still afraid of the way the earth revolves

                              Around the sun and not the other way around?

                                 Are you terrified of the ever-shifting ground?

In November 2017, Lois was diagnosed with a brain tumor and left this world on December 6 before this book could be published. She had, however, read the draft and approved of it. Afterward, she smiled and said, “You know, you and I are going to catch a lot of hell over this book.”

It would be a tribute to her if we did.

War trophies of an embarrassing past

The Bells of Balangiga are going home, where they belong. In spite of the chauvinism of Wyoming’s Congressional delegation, a decades-old debate about where the bells belong has ended. The dictionary notes apt synonyms for “chauvinism” include jingoism and excessive nationalism.

Unlike Wyoming politicians, Defense Secretary James Mattis rejected chauvinism and made the ethical choice, coming to Cheyenne to announce his decision. Mattis’s decision conflicts with the position of many veterans’ organizations, though his respect of veterans is unquestionable.

To his credit, Governor Matt Mead, who opposed repatriation of the bells, admitted Mattis has a perspective and an understanding of history “that is broader than mine.” As war trophies go, a thoughtful perspective and understanding of history leads most to believe that as long as they remain in the U.S., the bells are trophies of an embarrassing chapter in America’s ugly imperialistic past.

Our nation’s politically-polarized psyche results in part from the inability of many Americans to understand their life experience is not the same as those on the other side of a debate or controversy. Those who believe these bells are sacred U.S. war trophies should consider the Philippine side of the story as to how they ended up here in the first place.

In August a dozen years ago, a news correspondent for a popular Filipino investigative news program came to Wyoming to do a story on the bells from his country’s perspective. Listen to how his countrymen and women view the history.

It was “September 28, 1901, during the Spanish-American War. The Philippines then was at the last stretch of Spanish colonial administration and the Americans were already ruling the whole country.”

That raises the question. “What was the U.S. was doing in the Philippines?” Historian Michael Beschloss’s “Presidents of War” documents the American quest for empire, new commercial markets and opportunities to convert “heathens” to Christianity as motives for invading and occupying that small island nation.

Mercado continues, “According to the tale of the Balangigans, various types of abuse were experienced by them at the hands of the Americans, from stealing to inflicting physical pain.” Mercado says it was these abuses by U.S. occupiers that caused the people to plan an attack on the Americans.

“The plan,’ he reported, ‘was for all the males to gather inside the church, to hide arms [i.e., bolos] inside coffins, and to dress in women’s clothing so that they would not be noticed. The next morning, while the Americans were eating breakfast, the bell of the church rang. This signaled the attack.

“The Filipinos had no other weapons but bolos and knives, but this battle was recognized by history as the worst defeat of the Americans in the war here.”

Mercado’s report describes American retaliation. “They revenged (sic) and burned the entire town of Balangiga and its neighboring towns. This chapter in history is called ‘kill and burn’ and it was enforced by Brig. Gen. Jacob Smith. His order: ‘Make Samar into a howling wilderness…and kill all males 10 years old and above.”

It was a vengeful massacre of the people of Balangiga for which these bells became an American “war trophy,” eventually finding their way to Warren Air Force Base.
As a State Senator in the 1970s, I lobbied for the return of the bells to the Philippines. I thought then and I continue to believe that our country’s values are realized more by its generosity toward other nations than by the exercise of chauvinistic bullying over them.

In the U.S, the bells are jingoistic symbols of a history that 21^st century Americans should regret, a history we have thankfully moved beyond. In the Philippines, these bells symbolize the patriotic courage of their ancestors.

A part of our most recent history with the Philippines includes fighting side-by-side in World War II and Vietnam and the role Filipinos play today as allies in an important part of the world. Wyoming politicians don’t have to take that broad a perspective, though they should and Secretary Mattis did.

A Thanksgiving Ode to Compassionate Cheyenne

Sometimes these columns write themselves. I’ll be sitting at my desk, twiddling my thumbs, wondering what to write about. Suddenly, there it is.

Recently, the talisman came in the form of quotes from the October 23^rd Wyoming Tribune-Eagle report on the City Council’s decision to forego an endorsement of kindness and compassion.

It was the words of City Councilmen Rocky Case and Dickie Shanor. It was Mr. Case who said, “Some words on a piece of paper are not going to deter someone who is going to commit a less than kind act.” In the same debate, Councilman Shanor announced, “I don’t believe that’s my job as a city councilman to be generous with taxpayer dollars.”  

Mr. Case has been among the most committed public servants in our community. So, his quote gave me reason to think about the significance of “words on a piece of paper” and whether they have the power to change people’s lives. Mr. Shanor’s pronouncement raises the question of the meaning of generosity and whether the trait should be avoided by elected officials.

How would Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, not to mention the Galilean Sage whom they quoted throughout their writings, feel about the alleged meaninglessness of putting words on a piece of paper? Surely, they would not have employed so many words on pieces of paper had they believed those words were without any impact on people who were contemplating less than kind acts.

What about Thomas Jefferson? His words on a piece of paper changed the world. The “Federalist Papers,” were nothing but words on pieces of paper and yet they continue to influence the course of our nation.

Indeed, the job of city council members is to consider which words to put on pieces of paper; e.g. budgets, ordinances, resolutions. Words on pieces of paper are what it’s all about in a nation of laws.

Words elected officials choose not to put on those pieces of paper also matter. Take, for example, the refusal of Cheyenne’s City Council and the Wyoming legislature to put words on pieces of paper protecting gays, lesbians, bisexual, and transgender citizens from discrimination. So it is with the decision not to endorse compassion as a guiding principle for the city.

Perhaps Mr. Shanor’s words deserve more thought. Generosity. What does the word mean? Why would a public official deny generosity is part of his job in deciding how to use taxpayer dollars?

Jesus told us generous people give to all who ask. Both Matthew and Luke put those words on pieces of paper. Elected officials cannot do that with the public’s money. None the less, when making decisions about how to use that money, true leaders can still be generous.

Leigh Buchanan is the editor-at-large for Inc. Magazine and the former editor of the Harvard Business Review. She is an expert on leadership and defines it to include generosity. The term includes a willingness to be open to the ideas of one’s colleagues, to listen especially to an explanation of those to which you may not be initially warm before dismissing them or diminishing them.

Mr. Shanor quit listening the moment he learned the national compassionate movement’s website mentioned the United Nations. He was no longer generous. He was unwilling to consider any other information, including the fact that the Compassionate Cheyenne movement did not adhere to the choices made by the national organization. 

Listening honestly is an act of generosity and should be an expectation of those who hold the public trust, especially when deciding how to use tax dollars.

The term “compassion” is frightening to many. Everyone wants to be known as compassionate. However, some need to define the word for themselves. Putting words of compassion on a piece of paper without controlling and limiting their application proved far too generous for some of our elected officials.

Fortunately, none of this affects the Compassionate Cheyenne movement. It will boldly continue its work and Cheyenne will be better off for it.