Hard Times Without Studs

On Sunday, I went to a memorial for Studs Terkel, that human dynamo, our nation's greatest listener and talker, the one person I just couldn't imagine dying. After all, the man wrote his classic oral history of death, Will the Circle Be Unbroken? at 89, and only then did he do his oral history of hope, Hope Dies Last. The celebration of his life went on for almost two and a half hours. Everyone on stage had a classic story about the guy, one better than the next, and Studs would have been thrilled that so many people talked at such length about him. But he wouldn't have stayed. Half an hour into the event, he would have been out the door, across the street, and into the nearest bar, asking people about their lives. And the amazing thing is this: they would have been spilling their guts. He could make a stone talk -- and not only that, but tell a story of stone-ness that no one had ever heard before or even imagined a stone might tell. His death is like an archive of what was best in America closing; his legacy lies in oral histories that will inform the generations.

Unfortunately, his remarkable oral history of the Great Depression, Hard Times, may prove all too hauntingly relevant to our moment. In fact, in the midst of the ceremonies, the radio host Laura Flanders pointed out that, in Studs's beloved Chicago, a group of more than 200 workers from United Electrical union local 1110 were sitting in at their factory. After the Bank of America had cut the company off from operating credit, the execs of Republic Windows and Doors shut the plant for good on just three days notice without offering severance pay. The workers responded by demanding some justice and "blocking the removal of any assets from the plant" until they got their "rightful benefits." Shades of the 1930s! As John Nichols of the Nation writes, "[They] are conducting the contemporary equivalent of the 1930s sit-down strikes that led to the rapid expansion of union recognition nationwide and empowered the Roosevelt administration to enact more equitable labor laws. And, just as in the thirties, they are objecting to policies that put banks ahead of workers; stickers worn by the UE sit-down strikers read: ‘You got bailed out, we got sold out.'"

If this isn't a message from and about a changing nation, I don't know what is. And, by the way, the fact that the President-elect supported their demands at a news conference on Sunday indicates not just that change has indeed occurred, but that messages sent from the bottom en masse don't go unnoticed by canny politicians at the top.

Until this second, who would have predicted such a thing? And who can imagine what version of hard times we will face? All I know is that, if Studs, who made it to 96, to the verge of the historic election of Barack Obama, were alive today, he would have recognized a moment of hope when he saw it and made a beeline for Republic Windows and Doors, tape recorder in hand. He was, after all, a man who knew that anyone can hope in good times, but that, in bad times, to feel hopeful you have to act, you have to take a step, even on an unknown path. And he was a man who also would have taken it for granted that the lives of the workers in that Chicago factory were at least as complex, deep, dark, surprising, fascinating, confusing, and remarkable as any among Washington's elite or the movers and shakers (down) of Wall Street.

In one of Studs's interviews, the chief of the trauma unit at a Chicago hospital, talking about how a doctor should deal with the family of a young person who has just died traumatically, says that, when he introduces himself, "they won't even remember my name. Sit them down. Sit down with them. Look into their eyes. If you can, hold on to them and say, 'it's bad news.' And they'll say, 'Is he dead?' Or they just look at you. You have to use the word, you have to say it: 'He's dead.' If you say he's 'expired,' he's 'passed away,' they don't hear that… It's very important to put yourself into their shoes, but you've got to say the word 'dead.' You've got to give them the finality of it."

Well, Studs is dead. And it's hard times without him.

Comments (5)

1. wonder what studs would have thought of the auto bailout deal...

   only 40 percent sopport the bailout, but so what?

   how many of the 50+ percent are actually voters? how many are the marching morons of the "jay walking" crowd who neither know which countries border us nor vote for anything more than american idol?

   and so it appears satano-aynrando ideology, combined with the worst of human nature (which it so aptly enables), as well as the natural cowardice and myopia of all too many senator-congressmen, has at least one last role to play in flushing our once powerful, prosperous, civilization down the toilet of history...

   700 billion to the financial industry (which i would argue was a lot more irresponsible and a lot more responsible for our current economic catastrophe) and not a penny to maintain that sector of our economy which actually CREATES WEALTH AND VALUE, the flagship sector of our manufacturing industry...

   but then the satano-aynrando ideologues have been content with destroying that "overpaid" segment of our economy for quite some time, an LOOK HOW EFFECTIVE THEY HAVE BEEN SO FAR!!!

   the treasonous, traitorous, unamerican internationalist ideologues appear bound and determined to destroy this country after all...

   end of partisanship? MY ASS...

   Posted by ibbleblibble at 12/12/2008 @ 10:24am

2. "but then the satano-aynrando ideologues have been content with destroying that "overpaid" segment of our economy for quite some time,"

   while the CEO class has paid THE HELL out of ITSELF, sometimes to the tune of 15 - 20% of their companies' profits,

   "and LOOK HOW EFFECTIVE THEY HAVE BEEN SO FAR!!!"

   Posted by ibbleblibble at 12/12/2008 @ 10:44am

3. Now that we've been edified by the prolix nattering between HAPPYLonghorn and ibbleblibble in re their pet hobby horses (maybe they should get a room somewhere instead of wasting our precious electrons?), I wonder if it's possible to turn to the more interesting prospect of Studs and the UE sit-down.

   Studs had the capacity to let real people shine and tell their own stories without benefit of filtering. That was part of his genius and what makes his many books and articles so fascinating. If he was to profile the UE sit-down, I imagine he would have done so even-handedly, from the viewpoint of all sides in the conflict, and produced his usual amazing results.

   All of us are poorer for his passing. He's truly without peer.

   Posted by S Thornton at 12/12/2008 @ 9:47pm

4. Studs was a champ. If you disagree you're a chump. That is all.

   Posted by takemyveepplease at 12/15/2008 @ 02:15am

5. blackcoptermedia.com, check out the gallery of posters and donate. I want to see this one finish.

   Posted by sidthekidney at 12/18/2008 @ 11:58am