NYC MARCH FOR CIVIL RIGHTS | NAACP's James Weldon Johnson

James Weldon Johnson, c. 1917.

July 28, 2020—On this day in 1917, 10,000 Blacks organized by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) marched on Fifth Avenue in New York City.

Credit for this is given to novelist-poet-songwriter James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938), who was also a lawyer, a U.S. consul overseas and a leader of the NAACP.

Behind the scenes at the NAACP was Inez Milholland Boissevain's father, John E. Milholland, who was the NAACP's first Treasurer. Inez, of course, died in 1916 and her father would still be grieving.

James Weldon Johnson was born in Jacksonville, Florida. His father was a hotel headwaiter and his mother was a teacher at the segregated Stanton School, which  Johnson attended until he went to his school. He grew up in a middle-class home, and his mother encouraged him to pursue his interests in reading and music.

Johnson attended high school and college at Atlanta University. He received his bachelor’s degree 1894. After college, Johnson became the principal of Stanton School, and expanded the school to include a high school. He also began studying law.  In 1898, he was admitted to the Florida Bar, the first Black person to be admitted.

Johnson continued to serve as principal and began practicing law. In addition, he wrote  poetry and songs. In 1901, Johnson decided to pursue a career in writing. He and his brother, John Rosamond Johnson, left for New York City to write songs for musicals. They composed about two hundred songs for Broadway.
I
n New York, Johnson also became involved in politics. In 1904, he served as treasurer for the Colored Republican Club. In 1906, the Roosevelt Administration appointed Johnson as the United States consul in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela. In 1909, he served as consul in Corinto, Nicaragua until 1913. In addition to his service as consul, during this time, Johnson anonymously published his novel, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man (1912).

In 1916, Johnson accepted the position of field secretary for the NAACP.  He worked at opening new branches and expanding membership. In 1920, the NAACP appointed him executive secretary. In this position, he was able to bring attention to racism, lynching and segregation. After ten years of serving as executive secretary, Johnson accepted a creative writing teaching position at Fisk University.

Johnson developed his own philosophy on lessening racism in America. While W.E.B. Du Bois advocated intellectual development and Booker T. Washington advocated industrial training to combat racism, Johnson believed it was important for Blacks to produce great literature and art. By doing so, Johnson held that Blacks could demonstrate their intellectual equality and advance their placement in America. 

One of his more popular works was God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927). In 1927, he also reissued his first novel under his own name. Johnson died in 1938, after a train hit the car his wife was driving.

Sources: NAACP History.

THE LITTLE PRINCE | Still inspiring

The Little Prince, 1943.

December 27, 2019 – 75 years ago, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the French novelist-pilot, came to New York after his country was crushed by the Nazi occupation. He wanted to fly a military airplane to fight Hitler but was rejected because of his age.

Instead, he moved to New York City at the end of December 1940. He also stayed at Asharoken, on the North Shore of Long Island.

He lobbied for the United States to join the war, and in 1942 wrote Le Petit Prince, The Little Prince, one of the most popular books ever written, selling 140 million copies in 300 languages.

In The Little Prince, the pilot-author describes himself as downed with his plane in a remote desert, when suddenly the Little Prince appears and asks: "Dessine-moi un mouton,” “Draw me a sheep.”

The pilot tries, but the Little Prince is dissatisfied with all of the drawings. Exasperated, the pilot just draws a box and tells the Little Prince that the sheep is inside.

Now the Little Prince is ecstatic.

Moral: Reality is not as powerful as Imagination, something fashion designers have always known.

Another moral of the book, a distrust of abstraction, is limned in Adam Gopnick's review of Saint-Exupéry's book in The New Yorker during the time of the 2014 exhibit of the book's original manuscript at the Morgan Library and Museum.

R.I.P. | Ron Blackwell, 1946-2018

Ron Blackwell, 1946-2018

Having recently tried to track down Ron Blackwell in pursuit of information about the apparel industry, I was shocked to find out he had died.

Ron worked in NYC for ACTWU, the men’s equivalent of the ILGWU, but as apparel jobs steadily left New York City, his union merged with the ILGWU and other unions to form UNITE.

Ron became its Chief Economist and went on to Washington as Chief Economist of the AFL-CIO until he retired in 2012. He suffered from several illnesses before his death last year in Sibley Memorial Hospital.

I knew him in the 1970s. He was the first person I hired at the Council on Municipal Performance, where I was President in 1973-1988. He was smart and diligent and displayed  great strength of character, as evidenced by his willingness to do time rather than accept alternatives to military service offered to conscientious objectors who were drafted during the Vietnam War.

Here are four well-deserved eulogies for Ron:

1. Richard Trumka, President, AFL-CIO: Ron Blackwell Left Behind a Strong Legacy on Behalf of Working People Ron Blackwell, the retired chief economist of the AFL-CIO and pioneer in the labor movement, passed away on Sunday night. From his Alabama roots to his role as chief economist at the AFL-CIO, Ron was defined by his unshakable courage and conviction. Whether it was his choice to go to prison rather than go to war in Vietnam or charting new paths for our economy while serving on the board of the Baltimore branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Ron was always true to himself and working people. After teaching economics at the New School for Social Research in New York City, Ron began to leave his mark on the union movement. He joined the staff of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, where he quickly established his complete devotion to the rights of working people. At the AFL-CIO, Ron advised the leadership of the labor movement and fundamentally changed the way we thought about the economy. His legacy will live on through programs he created like Common Sense Economics—a radically different approach to economics that provides training and education for working people by working people—and that remain at the core of the AFL-CIO’s work. In addition to his work in economics, Ron was a recognized leader on issues of trade, globalization and corporate governance. He is survived by his wife of 33 years, Janet, and millions of working people around the world whose lives were improved by his decades of tireless work on our behalf. https://aflcio.org/2018/2/27/ron-blackwell-left-behind-strong-legacy-behalf-working-people

2. Metro Washington Council, AFL-CIO Former AFL-CIO Chief Economist Ron Blackwell died Sunday, February 25, in Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C., after a series of illnesses. Ron began his service to the AFL-CIO in 1996 as the Director of Corporate Affairs. He was appointed Chief Economist at the Federation in 2004, and retired in 2012. “He was highly respected not only in the AFL-CIO, but among union economists around the world,” said Marge Tracey of the National Capitol Area Union Retiree Club, where he was a member. “We will all miss tremendously his wisdom, generosity, and friendship.” At Ron's request, no public memorial service is planned. www.dclabor.org/home/in-memoriam-ron-blackwell.

3. So Long, Ron! A Farewell to Ron Blackwell, “Common Sense” Economist for the Labor Movement, Tom Croft, Managing Director, March 14, 2018

“No doubt this attack on democracy reflected the rise of a wealthy minority…which called itself the Oligarchical Party, and denounced democracy as an incompetent sham.”   

This passage, from back in the day, might have been a tongue-in-cheek quote from Mark Twain about the raw, wild west violence of the robber barons of the Gilded Age, or maybe by Thorsten Veblen, the author who wrote The Theory of the Leisure Class and coined the term “conspicuous consumption,” about the rigged greed of the Roaring ‘20s.
Wrong.  It was actually a quote from a book by philosopher Will Durant, who was writing about the counter-attack on the democracy at the time, several hundred years BC, in Athens, during the time of Socrates.  Many Americans, including silver-haired business lions, feel we are returning to the Gilded Age and Roaring ‘20s, when financial and corporate barons ruthlessly worked to destroy their competition and remove the early vestiges of labor unions and business regulation. …

It is with these thoughts in mind that we mourn the recent passing of Ron Blackwell, who, most recently, served as the Chief Economist of the AFL-CIO.  Ron had a deep understanding of how current oligarchies have betrayed the country, and he had a progressive populist view that we—the 99%—need to fight back.  Ron would still be raging about the wars on working people and the resultant demolition derby that has been rolling across our land, hurting people and communities. …

During his years at ACTWU (the former men’s clothing and textile workers’ union), Ron and Bill Patterson established the LongView Funds, through Amalgamated Bank, which, for over 25 years have taken an activist approach to investing with ESG criteria.  At the AFL-CIO, Ron helped design and helm the corporate affairs department, and helped launch the Office of Investment and “Common Sense Economics.”  In that capacity, he was also a founder of the global CWC. I interviewed Ron for our Responsible Investor Handbook. As we said in the book, over the years, global labor leaders and capital stewards increasingly recognized the importance of coordinated activist engagements and investment collaboration. This led to the establishment of global labor networks that coordinate shareholder and political actions and provide mutual support. …

Last, as a country economist, so to speak, from Alabama, Ron related to those of us who were part of the plant closure and unemployment movements in the 1980s and ‘90s.  While at ACTWU, he and his union were a pivotal co-sponsor for the 1989 Industrial Renaissance Conference, along with our friends at the Steelworkers and our national network.  Ron was there, and he spoke at that event, one of the first stabs at presenting a national, sustainable industrial policy from the ground up. If you’ve followed the smart economic policy papers coming out of the Century Foundation “High Wage America” coalition and our ongoing Heartland Cities Tour, you’ll see that original, path-breaking Renaissance Conference outline.

After moving to the AFL-CIO, Ron whole-heartedly supported the break out of the Heartland Labor/Capital Network in the mid-1990s.  He supported alternative economic strategies and campaigns to the hilt.  Ron wanted to understand what worked, and he lent his name to our many-faceted, mutual struggles to take back America. In these times, we face a dangerous new Oligarchical Party.  When we fight back—for our jobs and dignity, for our families and communities—we are following the proud legacy of Ron Blackwell.   He was a warrior for workers, as Bill Patterson told me.  We are eternally grateful for the wit, wisdom and work of Ron Blackwell. www.heartlandnetwork.org/single-post/2018/03/14/So-Long-Ron-A-Farewell-to-Ron-Blackwell-“Common-Sense”-Economist-for-the-Labor-Movement

4. Jeff Faux, Economic Policy Institute Raised in Alabama, Ron Blackwell was a steadfast defender of the rights of working people and a life-long enemy of economic injustice in its many forms. He was the rare man of principle who actually had the courage of his convictions. As a young man, he chose to go to prison rather than submit to those who were waging the unjust and terrible war in Vietnam. https://www.epi.org/blog/ron-blackwell-1946-2018/

Also: C-Span Videos Ron Blackwell has six videos in the C-SPAN Video Library; the first was taped at a 1993 Forum. https://www.c-span.org/person/?ronblackwell.

PLANE OR TRAIN? | Washington to NYC

Washington, DC to New York City (and back)

Whether measured by time or money, taking Amtrak between Washington, DC and New York City wins over flying. Starting tomorrow, Amtrak offers nonstop trains. https://nyti.ms/2msKtOf.

Here's a review that raves about buying an Acela ticket (saves maybe an hour's time) and using 2,000 Amtrak points to upgrade to First Class: http://weekendblitz.com/amtrak-acela-express-class-washington-d-c-was-new-york-nyp/.

Here's a starting point for arranging a group (school) visit, presumably in a bus: https://www.travelbound.co.uk/trips/school-cross-curricular-trip-new-york-washington-dc/.

WELLESLEY '66 | At Agora Gallery to See Margret Carde's Art

.

Classmates assemble at home of Hachikō (fur ball far left) and Alice Tepper Marlin '66 (far right).
Photos by John Tepper Marlin, who sometimes writes about the #ArtBiz with that hashtag...

Wellesley is famed for its alumnae networking,
and the Class of 1966 is no slouch in that department.

Wellesley group in front of the Agora gallery.

Margret Carde, Wellesley '66, was one of the artists in the "Life Is But a Dream" Exhibition at the Agora Gallery at 530 West 25th Street.

This is near the High Line in the Chelsea area of New York City.

The show opened on May 22 and on Thursday May 24 had a reception for the New York City art community. The show continues through June 12, 2018.

The buzz at the gallery during the visit by the Wellesley class visit was voluble. The Thursday evening time slot is popular among the throngs of Chelsea gallery-trippers.

Margret peers out from among a group of
admirers of her art.

The Agora Gallery was founded in 1984 by an artist. 

It uses an innovative membership approach, allowing newcomers or mid-career artists access to the gallery scene in New York on a cooperative basis.

The membership revenue allows the gallery to require a lower sales commission on art than is currently asked by most upscale gallery owners in New York City.

Alice with Margret, in front of
one of Margret's paintings.

Margret says she creates her ephemeral, pastel-colored scenes inspired by her "emotional experiences and the thrill of viewing open land and sea."

After the gallery visit, the class group regrouped for dinner at the Red Cat Café, a block away on Tenth Avenue.

Other posts on the Wellesley College Class of 1966: Longhouse Reserve 2015. 50th Reunion 2016. Eclipse 2017.

HERALDRY | Goethe's Arms

Goethe's Arms in Players Club
Window. Photo by JT Marlin.

At the Players Club in New York City yesterday, I noted a stained-glass window with a coat of arms and the label "Goethe". 

Nearby windows were labeled with other authors such as Molière, so the window clearly honors the great German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832).

Rietstap's
Rendering.

Goethe was a Saxon, ennobled by by the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Karl August, in 1782. 

The blazon for Goethe's coat of arms in the authoritative Armorial by the Dutch heraldist and genealogis Jean-Baptiste Rietstap is:

Azure a mullet six points Argent a bordure of the same crowned Helmet. Crest: the mullet. (Barons, 28 August 1859, Extinct house on 17 April 1885.) 

Goethe's Arms (Wikipedia
Commons).

Rietstap's drawing of Goethe's arms shows the six-pointed mullet. Wikipedia provides a full achievement for the arms, with a six-pointed mullet.

So where does the five-pointed mullet come from? 

Most mullets in German heraldry are six-pointed or eight-pointed. The five-pointed star is more common in France and England.

Did the artist in doing the window for Goethe have a preference for the five-pointed mullet? 

Goethe wrote a poem in 1789 pitying the stars because they could not love:

Nachtgedanken Euch bedaur' ich, unglücksel'ge Sterne, Die ihr schön seid und so herrlich scheinet, Dem bedrängten Schiffer gerne leuchtet, Unbelohnt von Göttern und von Menschen: Denn ihr liebt nicht, kanntet nie die Liebe! Unaufhaltsam führen ew'ge Stunden Eure Reihen durch den weiten Himmel. Welche Reise habt ihr schon vollendet, Seit ich, weilend in dem Arm der Liebsten, Euer und der Mitternacht vergessen. 

In English:

Stars, you are unfortunate, I pity you, Beautiful as you are, shining in your glory, Who guide seafaring men through stress and peril And have no recompense from gods or mortals, Love you do not, nor do you know what love is. Hours that are aeons urgently conducting Your figures in a dance through the vast heaven, What journey have you ended in this moment, Since lingering in the arms of my beloved I lost all memory of you and midnight.

BIRTH | Oct. 18 – A. J. Liebling (Personal Comment)

A. J. Liebling. He died at 59, the
same year I met him briefly.

October 18, 2017 – This day was born in 1904 in New York City A(bbot) J(oseph) Liebling. As a boy, he loved reading the newspapers:

[M]any of my early impressions of the world, correct and the opposite, came to me through newspapers. Homicide, adultery, no-hit pitching, and Balkanism... 

So he became a newspaper reporter and loved it. He would:

pound up tenement stairs and burst in on families disarranged by sudden misfortune. ... I learned almost immediately what every reporter knows, that most people are eager to talk about their troubles.

To get a job at the New York World, he hired a man to pace back and forth for three days outside the Pulitzer building with a sign: "Hire Joe Liebling." Although nobody at the World ever admitted to seeing the sign, he was hired. 

From The World in 1935 he moved up to a job with the The New Yorker that lasted till he died nearly 30 years later. He wrote about World War II, boxing and food. You might not figure out the first two topics, but you might guess the third by looking at his photo.

Comment

I met A. J. Liebling in the spring of 1963 when we were both at the Bircher-Benner Clinic on Keltenstrasse 9 in Zürich. Dr Bircher had an international clientèle, including my mother's Dutch relatives who claimed he cured several of them (including my grandmother) of cancer. His son Ralph Bircher carried on some of his work, and Dr Bircher's Estonian-born niece, Dr Dagmar Liechti-von Brasch, took over the Clinic in the 1940s after the death of Dr Bircher, who raised her as one of his own during and after World War I when the von Brasch family was at risk in Estonia. My mother made sure I was checked out several times at the Bircher-Benner-Privatklinik and I was given many earnest individual and group lectures on the value of exercise and minimally processed food. Modern medicine is catching up with Dr Bircher's régime. When I was there in 1963, I was told that a fellow American from New York I had met, Mr. Liebling, had left early because he didn't like the unprocessed food. Liebling was a gourmet and it showed (see photo above). It's too bad that he didn't learn to appreciate the gourmet qualities of Bircher Muesli. He died before the end of the year I met him, at a young 59 years of age.😕 

As Dr Bircher's son and daughter-in-law aged, the Bircher-Benner-Privatklinik lost some of its energy and it closed in 1994, becoming a government health facility. But as new research confirmed many of Dr Bircher's claims, and as the taste for Bircher Muesli spread throughout the world, the demand grew for the Clinic's return. It reopened in another location (Braunwald) in 2011.

NYC | Comptroller's Ofc Reunions May 2017

L to R: Peter Flynn, Eric Wollman, Andrew Rosenthal, Aya Gureil and 
Cristina Ottey (staff of the Contracting Unit). Photo: May 2017.

The big reunion coming up is at 1 pm on Friday, May 19 when Eric Wollman retires.

DEATH | Mar. 7–Stanley Kubrick (Comment)

Stanley Kubrick.

This day in 1999, American film director  Stanley Kubrick died in Hertfordshire, England, at 70.

Born in New York City in 1928, Kubrick became interested in photography in high school and at 17 got a job as a staff photographer for Look magazine.

An assignment to cover a boxing match inspired him to make The Day of the Fight, a documentary short (1951) that was bought by a news service, and he was launched. He directed his first five feature films he was living in the United States. The next eight were produced when he was living in Britain. These 13 feature films explore the Dark Side of human existence–war, murder, horror, pederasty, cults.

1. Fear and Desire (1953) was his first feature-length movie, dealing with war. An indie movie, it got little attention outside New York City, where it was praised.
2. Killer’s Kiss (1955) and
3. The Killing (1956) brought him Hollywood interest.
4. Paths of Glory (1957) starred Kirk Douglas. It was about military injustice in the French army during World War I. 
5. Spartacus (1960) was another Douglas movie, about the slave rebellion led by the Roman slave Spartacus in 73 B.C. The film was a hit and won four Academy Awards, including Best Cinematography, which was attributed to Russell Metty but was largely Kubrick’s work.
6. Lolita (1962) was based on the  novel by Vladimir Nabokov. By this time Kubrick had moved to the UK and lived in Hertfordshire near his studio.
7. Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb was another success. Starring Peter Sellers and George C. Scott, it made fun of the nuclear arms race. It earned Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Direction, Best Screenplay, and Best Actor.
8. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) was co-written with English writer Arthur C. Clarke.It is considered by many to be the greatest sci-fi film ever made. It won a Best Visual Effects Academy Award. 
9. A Clockwork Orange (1971) was a social commentary set in the near future. The U.S. rating was X and the UK banned it. However, it collected four Oscar nominations including Best Picture.
10. Barry Lyndon (1975) was a picturesque movie based on the 19th-century novel by William Thackeray. Kubrick took a record 300 days to shoot the film. 
11. The Shining (1980), starring Jack Nicholson as the caretaker of a mountain resort who goes insane, was a horror masterpiece. Jack Nicholson said in an interview that his acting for this movie was helped by his having taken experimental drugs.
12. Full Metal Jacket (1987) covered the Vietnam War and had an anti-war theme. It was popular with cinemagoers and critics.
13. Eyes Wide Shut (1999) was a puzzling thriller about a monkish sex cult, starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Kubrick died at 70 after turning in his final cut of the film.

Comment

I met Stanley Kubrick in England in the 1980s.  I remember him looking like he does in the photo at top. His wife was a member of a group of painters in Hertfordshire that included my sister Brigid and I attended a party that he was at. Kubrick was extremely intense and seemed to be looking for intensity in return. I was surely a disappointment.

NYC Comptroller's Ofc 1994-2001 - Regina Calcaterra

NOW - Regina Calcaterra, Author of Etched in Sand. 
Photo taken August 9, 2015 by JT Marlin.

THEN: Regina Calcaterra was one of the lawyers in the front office of the NYC Comptroller's Office during the eight years that Alan Hevesi was Comptroller, 1994-2001. (I served as Chief Economist during that administration and the ones before and after.)

NOW: After running for the State Senate from eastern Long Island, she was appointed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo as Executive Director of a Moreland Commission to look at corruption in Albany.

Most recently, she has written her life story, Etched in Sand. Here is a video trailer about the book.

I met her on Saturday evening, August 9, at the Authors Night in East Hampton.

The subject of her book reminds me of the new book by my sister Brigid Marlin, The Box House, also about a girl who takes charge of her siblings.

Another "Then and Now" post on what happened to people who worked at the NYC Comptroller's Office in the 1990s is here.

WOODIN | Charlie Miner Interview, July 31, 2015 (Updated Nov. 21, 2015)

EAST HAMPTON, N.Y., July 14, 1939. Wedding of Anne Woodin Miner and William Hamilton Phipps [original photo with handwriting]. An edited photo has been added to Appendix B of the Woodin biography.

I am writing about the life of Will Woodin, FDR's first Treasury Secretary. I have spoken so far with three of the four living Woodin grandchildren - Charlie Miner, Jr., Anne Gerli, and Woody Rowe. I am hoping soon to talk with the fourth, William H. Woodin III, who is 90 years old. 

Yesterday (July 30) I again interviewed his grandson Charlie Miner, Jr. With us were Charlie's daughter Charmaine, his niece Suzanne, his granddaughter Ashley, and my wife Alice. I am grateful to them for their patience. Some questions were prompted by Marlene O'Brien, a former co-worker at the NYC Comptroller's Office, who has kindly read the draft bio. I am impressed with how much Charlie's grandma was involved with her grandchildren relative to her husband, which I take to be a reflection of the life of someone like Will Woodin who was one of most important business and government leaders of his day.

As the comments are transferred to the respective chapters, this post will shrink.

Chapters 5-7. [Comments moved to the chapters]

Chapter 8. New York City

[Charlie and his sister Anne and his mother Mary Woodin Miner lived with Will Woodin in New York City during the school year and near him in East Hampton during the summer.]

My mother Perky lived with grandpa and grandma at 2 East 67th Street. I had a bedroom up in the penthouse on the 13th floor where grandpa's office was. My parents divorced so she lived with grandpa and grandma along with her two children. There was lots of room. I remember the lavish dinners they would have, when grandpa entertained. I remember some of the famous people who visited - J. P. Morgan, William Vanderbilt, Al Smith - that's how grandpa got to know FDR - the Astors. They would come to dinner. There was a big living room at 2 East 67th Street, with deep blue drapes.  My mother and grandma would always say that grandpa was sleeping and was not to be disturbed. I saw a lot of grandma, but grandpa was always very busy. Once, I remember, I sneaked into the beautiful big bedroom one evening, when he was relaxing after work. I was about seven years old. He was in his bathrobe and he was asleep.

Q. There is a report of two adjoining townhouses on East 64th Street between Lexington and Park that your grandfather bought in New York in 1902 and then sold a few months later. What was that about?
A. That was probably grandma Woodin... she would have been the one who bought them. She liked to buy houses. She probably wanted to have a place for grandpa's parents in New York, after grandpa's father lost a lot of money speculating in gold mining stocks. There was a crash in 1893, and then in 1896 a gold rush in Arizona. Clement invested in Diamondfield Daisy and Humbug gold mines. We got "Gold Bug" pins to wear. Then the stock price fell. [One of the stocks was issued at $1 par and fell to 4 cents. There was gold in the mines they bought, but not much.]

Q.  Did you interact much with the staff in New York?
A. Oh, yes. Delia and Mary, and the cook, I forget her name. Lawrence, who drove the company Rolls Royce, and James and his son George, who drove the family Cadillac, mostly for grandma. Lawrence used to take Anne and me to school in the morning. When we got near the school, I asked Anne to keep her head down so the other boys wouldn't see I was riding with a Girl.

Chapter 9. Woodin as Musician and Collector

Q. Did you ever see your grandpa's world-famous coin collection?

Will and Nan Woodin, 1933.

A. I saw the box he kept it in. It was in his office in the New York City penthouse, where my bedroom was. He would look over his collection on the weekends.

Chapter 12. Washington

Q. Did you visit your grandpa in Washington when he became Treasury Secretary?
A. We went to the Inauguration in 1933, the one for which grandpa composed a march. I remember that it was cold and it was raining. It was in March.

Ashley Kim on Woodin Bio (Updated Mar 11, 2017)

That's Ashley Kim, intern, front and center, one of 12
students from Mahwah (N.J.) High School commended
 for performance on the National Merit Exams. Now a
student at GWU, she read and commented on my
bio of Will Woodin as a student intern in August 2015.

Outline of Bio
w Links to Chapters
Introduction
WOODIN'S EARLY LIFE
1 2 3 4 5. 
MAGNATE, COLLECTOR, COMPOSER
 6 7 8 9 10 
TREASURY SECRETARY
 11 12 13 14 15 
APPENDICES
A B Acknowledgments

The following comments on a draft of the biography were sent to me by Ashley Kim, an undergraduate majoring in international affairs at George Washington University. She read and commented on the book draft as a student intern in August 2015. A graduate of Mahwah (N.J.) High School, Kim was on an honors/advanced placement track all four years. She served as the Model U.N. Treasurer and participated in Congressman Garrett's Model Congress.

Her comments are what I needed to steer the book to my target audience, the college history student. She says she enjoyed the assignment.  I have since had other another student, a senior at Bard College, work on the book. I am grateful for the help that both provided. Recently I have been working on the book with feedback from two writing groups that meet weekly in the libraries in Amagansett, NY (led by Kara Western) and Vero Beach, Fla. (led by Janet Sierzant), and one that meets monthly at the Harvard Club of NYC (led by Paula Brancato).

Kim's comments, lightly edited for continuity, are organized as follows:

1. Summary of overall comments on chapter length. 
2. Comments suggesting changes, added to from my own notes and a few comments of other readers like Dick Roberts (thank you, Dick). I have deleted corrections that have been addressed, especially for Chapters 1-4, 6, 9, 14.  Corrections are mostly still to be made for Chapters 5, 7-8, 10-13, and 15.
3. Positive reactions.

1. Summary of Comments on Chapter Length

TRIM Chapters 5, 7, 12, 15. Chapter 5 may be too long, especially after adding to the section "Woodin Runs For Congress", but not if it is split into three separate chapters. Chapter 15 can be trimmed by reducing or summarizing repeat information from earlier chapters.

EXPAND Chapter 13 on Woodin's last year.

2. Ideas for Improvement

Changes once made have been deleted; but a few comments are added by the author to remind himself what he needs to work on. The early chapters on Woodin's ancestors and the Appendix on his  descendants are being prepared for a separate book to be privately published. We start right in with our hero, as in the Iliad and the Aeneid.

Chapters 1-4 moved to a private blog in anticipation of publication.

Chapter 1. The Woodin Family.
Chapter 2. Berwick.  Chapter 3. Jackson & Woodin. Chapter 4. Will Woodin's Parents.  

Chapter 5. Will Woodin's education, marriage, politics
Too long.  [Might cut the first four existing chapters and split this chapter into three parts.] Can we get a photo of Nan Woodin as a younger woman? Add more on Woodin's Congressional campaign. Need more about Woodin's character, his personality traits. Was he a family man? What kind of father was he? Did he have a temper? Was he calm, collected, and cool? I think adding this would allow the reader to paint a picture of W.H. Woodin and proceed to read the rest of the book more personally and with a perspective. [He was charming, a salesman. Recent generations of the family were risk-takers, but they didn't do so well. Will is described as "impish" - he was also eager to show himself ready to "muck in" on the family business. Use grandchildren's comments, contemporary descriptions - Moley.] Campaign - how did Woodin go from vice president of Jackson & Woodin to being nominated as the Republican candidate for his congressional district? How did Woodin earn the Republican nomination for his congressional district? [Use Berwick sources.]

Chapter 6. Merger Mania Puts Woodin Atop ACF [Watch out for style consistency in this chapter.]

Chapter 7. East Hampton too long. Would Like to See: Besides the signs of prosperity, what else is significant about the East Hampton scene? [One answer: It is where many matrimonial introductions were made.] Could the chapter have more theme, such as Will as a family man? Or behind-the-scenes activist? Someone who inspired other people like Mrs. Woodhouse in East Hampton to do great things for the community? [Woodin was the man people turned to, e.g., at the two East Hampton clubs, when they needed decisive action?].

Chapter 8. Woodin in NYC [Updated August 26, 2015. Went to FDR Library in Hyde Park, NY on Sept. 9 to look at correspondence of FDR and Woodin between 1922 and 1934. What specific activities did Woodin and FDR engage in together that brought them so close to the point where Woodin continued to call FDR Governor? [Warm Springs is one; another is regular evening events/meals in New York.] The section is titled "Woodin and FDR," but I don't quite see Woodin and FDR yet as a team. I see them as two separate units and then a lot of FDR.  "In this way Woodin got to know FDR well." - In what way, specifically? Woodin was put on the Board of Trustees of the Warm Springs Foundation, but I feel like there has to be a more personal aspect to Woodin's relationship with FDR. For example, Woodin having raised money to pay off FDR's debt, saving him from his candidacy for president shows a more personal touch, but it would be nice to see something even more personal between them, if possible. [Woodin always called him Governor...]

Chapter 9.  Woodin as Collector, Musician [new material being inserted here]

Chapter 10. NY Elections of 1928 and 1930, and the Crash of 1929 

[This and the next chapter were the focus of my trip to the FDR Library in Hyde Park Sept. 9.] It may be nice to have a separate section on FDR's 1928 campaign for NY State Governor. This is a great chapter, especially the section on the 1929 Crash. However, I need more help putting the pieces together. Can we have more connections between the 1929 presidential election, FDR's campaign for NY State Governor, the Crash, and FDR's 1930 re-election campaign for NY State Governor? I like it when you summarize the important things with bullet points at the end of a section. Can you do that here? As a student and a lover of American history, I would really appreciate learning more about this, in depth. I genuinely got excited reading this chapter because I learned so much "between the lines" information that I never learned in school or in the textbooks we used.

Chapter 11. FDR's Election, Cabinet Selection, Transition  Why did Raskob urge Woodin to help raise money for FDR? [Raskob was head of the Democratic National Committee until 1932. He was looking for a Democrat to oppose Hoover. However, he didn't fundamentally disagree with Hoover. He did not support FDR's New Deal. Woodin was much more loyal to FDR.] Did he know FDR had a high chance of winning [He knew that Hoover was the butt of bitter jokes because of the Depression and bank panics]? What did Raskob get out of it? [As a Democrat working with Smith, he won the confidence of Smith and the two of them put up the Empire State Building, no mean achievement. But he didn't get much out of FDR because FDR split with Smith and Raskob because they didn't like the New Deal.]  I still see a lot of FDR and Hoover in this chapter and not enough Woodin. Could Woodin be a made a more central and dynamic part of this chapter?  I lose track of Woodin's footsteps.  [I will have to talk more about the Warm Springs Foundation. Woodin went down there quite often and this must have contributed greatly to his friendship with FDR.]

Chapter 12. Woodin Calms the Storm [Trim back length]

• Fix/explain apparent overlap in problems 2 and 3 in the "Insolvency, Illiquidity, Gold" section
• Why did President Hoover refuse to meet with Treasury Secretary Mills and Governor Meyer, as in the section "March 1 - The New York Fed Sounds Alarm."
• Early sections are chronologically titled (e.g., FDR declaring a National Bank Holiday and Woodin deciding to print more money). Later in the chapter, however, we rewind to FDR winning the election and appointing Woodin as Treasury Secretary. Recommend making the whole chapter chronological.

Chapter 13. Will Woodin's Tragic Last Year [Expand - replace clips with text.]

Chapter 14. Woodin's Physical Legacies. [Chapter okay.]

Chapter 15. Woodin's Intangible Legacies [Need to trim the chapter, esp. any repetition.] There's some repetition in the section "Will Woodin, the Treasury Secretary from Main Street", specifically the last paragraph. Also in "Company President and Avocation," "Treasury Secretary," When you address Woodin and his life, actions, and accomplishments, there is a lot of overlapping information from other chapters. [I'm fixing that - rewriting it as a summary and a flashback.]

Appendix A

• It would be nice if the update on the Fifth Wave could include a more personal connection to the reader, since we have lived this wave (or are still living it).

Appendix B. Moved to private blog.

3. Appreciation for the Book as it Was, August 2015

Introduction

I really like the bulleted list of what Woodin did under FDR, how Woodin literally worked to his death and risked his reputation amongst family and friends to accomplish the things he did, the last paragraph before "Who Was Will Woodin?", and, of course, the section on who Woodin was as a person. It's all wonderful.

I. EARLY LIFE (Chapters 1-5)
1. The Woodin Family

I like knowing more about Will Woodin - who hardly is mentioned in the AP U.S. History exam or the SAT II U.S. History exam. I never thought about how Woodin was really the one who calmed the financial storms of 1933 under FDR. 

This puts me on edge, wanting to read your book: "It is unfair because he had a fascinating life that ended because Woodin poured everything into being FDR's point man on the financial markets. Woodin really did give his life in the service of his country." 

A Treasury Secretary dying because of his job? That's a cliffhanger. 

Your explanation for why you call him Will Woodin gives this name a clear identification and adds a personal flair that makes the reader feel closer to him.

2. Berwick

I really like all the background information you give. Separating time and place into two different sections is well organized - and I am a lover of all things organized and easy to maneuver. 

Even within the section on time, you break the time periods down into the different waves, allowing the reader to clearly visualize the progression of the dominance of railways. I love this: "Watt shrunk the world." It is succinct and powerful. 

"The fifth wave since 1990, information technology, is the one we are in," makes me feel... like I am part of something grand and important, like we are part of history (which we are). It gives a light yet effective personal touch to the reader. I love to feel connected to what I am reading, so this is a huge plus. 

"Labor relations were famously difficult in many parts of Pennsylvania, but Berwick's plant paid 'fair wages' and was run with a benevolent spirit." This is a great testimony to Woodin's character: fair and benevolent, despite the different labor relations in the coal and iron mines near Berwick. 

This sentence -- "But Owen was an unassuming Quaker and said 'Thee must be kidding,' or something to that effect," -- made me laugh out loud. I am actually still laughing, reading it over. A subtle playful touch braided into certain areas is very effective in engaging the reader, and that is exactly what "'Thee must be kidding,'" did. 

At the end of the chapter, you bulleted a list of characters for a movie about Berwick. This is absolutely brilliant, really. I couldn't help but smile as I was reading the description of the characters, especially those of M.A. Markie and Klinetob Bros. John Fox's little blurb is fun too.

Leave this chapter as is. 

3. Jackson & Woodin 

I like the bulleted list of what Jackson & Woodin manufactured in chronological order clearly shows the reader the gradual expansion and advancement of the business.

It's nice to show that Jackson and Woodin were kind and fair employers, even during World War II when there was a lot of unrest between workers and employers.

The section on Col. Jackson was very informative, but it also painted a picture of the man Jackson was -- diligent, intelligent, dedicated, prestigious, and sentimental, a family man. Your writing shows  these characteristics of Jackson.  

I like the description of the Jackson mansion. Not only does it provide a beautiful, specific image, it even allows the reader to understand what kind of people the Jacksons were -- generous and sentimental.

4. Clement and Mary Woodin and The Heights

I like the first paragraph under the section "The Heights." It shows how close Clement Woodin felt to Berwick. It reminds me of the moms and dads in my hometown, who have lived here their entire lives. 

I love the description of "The Heights." It opens up my senses and gives me beautiful visuals. 

The timeline is excellent! I especially love how it stretches all the way to today and your voice is in that last paragraph. It's nice to see that history still stands. 

I liked reading about your personal visit to the mansion and the possible message of the glass. It's inspirational yet humorous. 

The last paragraph under "Furnishings"  - your inquiry of what the 1942 catalogue of the furnishings at the auction have to say about the glass - is interesting. It adds a tiny cliffhanger, mystery, and significance to the glasses. It's also a fun way to end the chapter. 

5. Will Woodin's Education, Marriage, Politics

I like the personal touch that you bring to the second paragraph, especially "But in my search for a unique identifier..." 

Adding "It was good advice," right after explaining that Will Woodin wanted to be a doctor but his father insisted otherwise adds a light humorous touch. Of course as the reader, we know it turned Will Woodin into a man of history. Playful.  

I like the character of romanticism you add to Judge Jessup and his wife and how you add Charlie Miner's voice to tell it. 

Noting several famous Jessups is clever. It adds a lot more prominence to the Jessup family, showing the reader the depth of the family Will Woodin married into.

I love the section "Will's Courtship." A reader loves drama and romance in a biography since they are real. I especially love the quote you used from Annie's interview. It actually made me smile in awe. It's nice to see the Secretary of Treasury as an artistic man, a man of music and romance, not just a man of politics and economics. It's a beautiful side of a powerful man to see.  

But nothing tops the poem Will wrote to Annie. That's hard evidence of the romance. I like the section "European Trip": Of course when duty called, he didn't fail to serve, but I like that Will is a man of passion and a dreamer.

I like the section "Nan Woodin as Homemaker". The physical description of Mrs. Woodin, the activities she and Will used to do, her humility shown through the fact that she doesn't enjoy formal entertainment and is "noted for her poise, serenity, and sympathetic interest in other people's problems." I also really like her husband saying she never got angry.

I love the way you described the evidence of Mrs. Woodin preferring home life over a public life - all around their home.

This is the best chapter I have read so far. I love everything about it. It shows the facts, character, emotion, and certainly Mr. and Mrs. Woodin as human beings.  

II. MAGNATE, COLLECTOR, COMPOSER (6-10) 
6. Merger Mania Puts Woodin Atop Giant ACF, 1899-1915

I like the beginning, the hypothetical scenario of how Will Woodin's life might have been lived. All the literary devices you throw in there -- personification, the cake metaphor, alliteration, diction -- really add a lot of spice to the reading. This part is well written. 

The hypophora is great, especially your answer to a question: "It was a fashion." Such a large decision by a corporate head funnels down to one simple reason - fashion.  

I like "but I am again getting ahead of my story." Shows your eagerness to share the great burdens and responsibilities of Woodin as FDR's Secretary of Treasury.  

Like: "Merger mania," Merger frenzy" :-) "Gobbled up companies like Pac-Man" 

Repetition of "Not until 19... would..." is a great finish for paragraph 7 - adds a bit of suspense. 

The organization of the last three paragraphs of the section "Weakness: Merger Mania" is brilliant. I like how you first provide a reason that would be gratifying if it were actually the reason for why the merger frenzy came about, then evidence for a very credible reason for the merger frenzy, and finally your voice telling how you buy the theory that the merger wave was a response to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 (which I learned about for years in U.S. History).  

I like the contrast between the third generation of the Woodin family and the average third generation of the other families in the first two paragraphs of the "Strength: The Family Firm" section. 

Like: "The ACF merger might have been spurred by a fear of competition from cars as well as the temptations of monopoly." I like the fear and temptation woven into this sentence. 

It's nice to see the family aspect of the Woodin family firm's success and fallings."...Berwick could have been become a ghost town after 1899. That did not happen." Succinct and powerful. Also, the bulleted explanation is informative. 

7. Woodins Take on East Hampton, 1911-1928

I like: "Will Woodin had also become a leading coin collector and cashed out much of his valuable pattern-coin collection in 1911, perhaps because he was more interested in the hunt for the coins than in their possession." - I like the character I see in this statement, adventurous and active, a go-getter.  "He may also have been anticipating the need for liquid assets prior to buying land in East Hampton." - I like how the more realistic reason follows the above sentence. It's funny. :) 

"However, he couldn't stop collecting and soon enough he began rebuilding it." - And this... This shows passion. A small passion, but passion is still passion and Will Woodin could not let go of it. Good paragraph. 

The second paragraph in the "Woodin Builds 'The Dunes'" section. I like how you tell about the two possible architects of the home, but draw a conclusion on who you think the architect really was. It really emphasizes your introduction when you say how little information there is on the Will Woodin. I also just like whenever you directly put your voice into the writing. "Woodin seems to have had a knack for good timing." - This is good. 

The quotes and descriptions Woody Rowe gives on his Grandma Woodin and athlete Will Woodin. It's nice to see that "The Dunes" was a place of socializing. 

That Will's experience as a the hero of rescuing the club from its financial troubles is noted almost as a preface to Will's role as the hero of the 1932 panic under FDR. 

Ahhh, the last paragraph of the dialogue exchanged between Will and his grandson is so cute.

8. Woodin in NYC - Business and Politics 1902-1928

• The first paragraph in "The Woodins' Manhattan Residence" section - that it has  your voice is in it. I also laughed at what Will said to his wife. So casual... "'Now don't go and buy another house!'" 
• Seeing the relationship between FDR and Will subtly form through the fact that they lived so close to each other. 
• "As they approached his school, he would ask Anne to keep her head down so none of the other boys would see he was traveling with a girl." - I like these bits of information weaved in. No, this sentence is not oh, so super necessary, but it lifts a lot of weight off the reading, and it's funny. Adorable, actually :)
• Seeing Will save the day. First with his family company, then the near-financial tumble in East Hampton, and now with the fuel shortage. 
• "After FDR was elected, Woodin continued to call him Governor." - Without context, Woodin calling his president "Governor" could be seen as disrespectful, but we all know that Woodin calling FDR Governor is only a sign of how close they were and the affinity they grew for each other.  
• I love the descriptions of FDR, what his early life was like, how he progressed to be part of politics, his hobbies and interests. It's always nice to see an iconic person as a normal human being, for once. 

9. Woodin as Musician, Composer, Collector

I like: "He played the guitar and piano all his life, although he refused to take piano lessons after several of them." - This reminds me of myself. I still play the piano at home even though I hated piano lessons and stopped taking them after a year or two. It's funny to see that even the Secretary of Treasury didn't like piano lessons. 

I like paragraph 5 proving that Woodin's songs are still somewhat relevant. "Take that, Barbie!" Hahaha. "My older sisters Olga and Brigid grew up in the late 1930s and 1940s and they remember the Raggedy Ann dolls." - Nice personal touch. 

I like how Woody is basically telling the story of music in his family. It flows very well and it feels a lot more personal hearing it in the first person. 

I like how you ended the chapter with a dialogue between Woodin and his grandson Charlie. 

10. The NY Elections of 1928 and 30, and the Crash of 1929

• I like how you challenge Hoover's reputation as a champion of laissez-faire advocate with a quote from him,  and then you immediately challenge the idea that the 1929 stock market crash is the cause of the Great Depression. This paragraph nails down your point:  "So... the stock market crash occurred two months after the Depression started. Since the Depression started before the crash, something else was at work. The crash of the New York Stock Exchange is not a cause of anything. It is an indicator of the valuations of investors." - This is a great paragraph. When I learned about the Great Depression and its causes in school, the stock market crash was indicated as the main cause.
• "The problem in making bank failures the cause of the Depression is  the timing. For A to cause B, A must precede B. The Depression is dated 1929-1933. There were no bank failures between 1926 and 1929 (see chart)." - I really, really like your flow of logic. You truly use the tricks of the human mind to account for the way people have attributed bank failures as the cause of the Depression. The best part is, you use the works of the human mind to prove these people wrong.
• I love the three bullet points you write to summarize why bank failures were not a cause of the Depression! The Warren Buffet quote is a great plus.
• "They worried about the economy and wanted a program of public investment in infrastructure. That became FDR's National Recovery Act." I like you make connections between the topics of the 1928 presidential election and the action FDR took as president years later.
• It's good that you make clear that the Crash of 1929 made a big difference for the 1930 election. 
• "The picture changed completely within a year, and Al Smith's successor as Governor of New York would be a more formidable challenger to Hoover than Smith." - I like how this leads way to the Crash and foreshadows FDR's big 1930 win. 
• This book is really great, Dr. Marlin. I'm not only getting an internship experience out of it, but I'm learning more about American History, especially the interesting things that I probably would not be taught. 

III. TREASURY SECRETARY (11-15) 
11. FDR's Election, Cabinet and Transition

• I like how simply you put that FDR not having been a Catholic was a big advantage for him. 
• That you state Al Smith's losings tumbled over to FDR. It seems similar to the fact that some people automatically do not support Jeb Bush because of George W. Bush's failures. You bear the burdens of your predecessor. 
• How you introduce Will Woodin to all of this in the last sentence of the introduction ("Will Woodin was to play a big role in..."). It has the effect that the star of the event finally being introduced at his big event would have, an anticipated excitement. 
• As always, the way you organize the chapter - it makes everything easy to follow along.
• The parallel I see in one of the reasons why FDR had such a big deficit and one of the reasons why the years 2007-2009 were a financial fiasco. FDR accepted patients regardless of their ability to pay. Lenders offered more and more loans to higher-risk borrowers. 
• "They succeeded in finding the right person." - I like all the short sentences you use. They're always effective.
• I love the chant against Mellon you put in the chapter. It's funny. It's also funny that the Democrats and Republicans joined together in tearing down Hoover and Mellon.
• I laughed reading the "joke" (more of an insult) Mills made against Hoover. "'Here's a dime. Treat all of them.'" Hahaha, that's a good laugh. 
• The character of Hoover I see in the quotes and excerpts you include. It's always helpful and enjoyable to see primary sources. 
• The personality traits of FDR I see through your writing. By stating the FDR refused to take on his responsibilities prematurely I see that he is an honest man. Many politicians promise to do these big fancy things even though they do not have full faith that they'll be able to deliver - the obvious explanation being it wins them the votes.
• "A wooden frame for the swimming pool is preferred to a glass one." - It's impressive how you find these witty quotes said years and years ago.
• How you end the chapter with how great a choice Woodin was as FDR's Treasury Secretary. 

12. Woodin Calms the Storm - March-May 1933 

• I like the immediate connection to the 2008 economic crisis, a great start. 
• The chapter's chronological organization, which helps the reader appreciate the sense of gradual worsening of the financial panic.
• The primary source articles you use in the "March 6 - FDR Declare Bank Holiday" section. It's helpful to see from a direct view what people at that time were going through.
• The quotes by Woodin when he came up with the idea to print money makes everything seem more real. It doesn't seem las though we're reading a biography; it seems more like we are reading a novel and Woodin is a character declaring his plan.
• "When FDR brought it up, Woodin would say, 'Oh no, not that again...'" There's even room for humor in the midst of a Depression.
• "Deposit Insurance and a Ring Around Banks" - Great section! I love how you incorporate your personal visit to the Carter Glass Collection, and I really like the quote you used. I also like how you extended Woodin's work beyond the financial market to the reform of financial practices.
• The bullet points on actions Woodin took to calm the panic.
• "In the same month that Time ran its flattering cover story about Treasury Secretary Woodin there was a minor scandal that surely contributed to his subsequent illness and death, although the long hours he put in would have been enough to make him sick." - I finally get to know what heavily contributed to Woodin's death, how he literally worked to his death... 
• "Woodin offered his resignation but FDR refused to accept it." Wow, this really shows the value FDR saw in Woodin, despite the scandal and the image Woodin would have on FDR for refusing to accept the resignation. 
• The rhetorical questions you ask in the last paragraph under the section "The Pecora Committee."
• The final section dedicated to Woodin's achievements, a great ending to the chapter.
•  I feel I learned a lot about the behind-the-scenes events of the calming of the panic. 

13. Will Woodin's Tragic Last Year

I like the photo of you and Mr. Selden and how you add your encounter into the chapter. Article clippings are always useful, and the one on Woodin's tragic scandal is helpful.

14. Woodin's Physical Legacies 

This is a valuable, easy-read chapter. It is interesting to see what Woodin left behind and what happened to his belongings. The photograph of Woodin's great-granddaughter [Charmaine] with her granddaughter [Kayla] is a great touch, showing that the Woodin legacy still lives. I also like how you take the time to explain the details of the Woodin mausoleum. 

15. His Intangible Legacies - 2008 vs. 1929

• I like the connections you draw between 1929 and 2008 and FDR and Obama. 
• The section on Will's sense of humor is funny and depicts a nice personal side to him.
• It's informative that you explain the motive and desire behind collecting coins (especially since I never understood why people did it).
• I like "I was an economist at the Federal Reserve Board and the FDIC during the William McChesney Martin era at the Fed, and I vividly remember a long-time staff member of the FDIC, a southerner with an amazingly large-brimmed floppy hat, telling me more than once that if you hadn't lived through the Depression you couldn't know how much damage is caused when bank credit dries up and how important it was to keep commercial bank assets from being used for speculation." - Great personal input. Gives you even more credibility than you already have.
• I also really like how you address today's financial problem and propose a solution ("If we really want to modernize the American financial system...").
• Overall, the best part of this chapter is how you draw the connections between the past, present, and the future.

     This is a great biography! I learned so much from reading this.

Appendices 
A. Kondratiev Waves 

• I like how you keep using some version of "Watts shrunk the world" as you tell the story of the Waves. 
• I like how the descriptions from the First, Second, and Third Waves have a domino effect on each other. For example: "The steam engine was used to generate power and supply electricity to the public through electric utilities that wired every home." 
• The photos are a nice touch.
• I really like the way you write and talk about the Sixth Wave. I personally like it because it relates to the first chapter of my microeconomics textbook I am reading (health care).
• I like how you note that you list the global trends in a different order. It shows your expertise and personal input into the book.
• I also enjoy that you propose possibilities of the future.

B. Woodin's Descendants

• I like that you include a sample of Perky's poetry.
• I really enjoy all the photos. 
• The family "tree" (outline?) of Anne Woodin's five children is informative.
• I really enjoy the section on Charlie Miner Jr. - his time as a pilot in the war, the fact that he likes Vero Beach (and why), his breakfast recommendation and life advice. It's nice because Charlie exists in the present. 
• The photo of Charlie, you, and his niece is a good one! :)
• "...Charlie Miner says that Willy was sometimes called "CUL" (pronounced Kool) because he frequently used these letters to sign off ("See You Later")." - Funny and casual. 
• Willy's story is interesting. His accomplishments are impressive, and his personal misfortune (wife asking for a divorce on grounds of mental cruelty) is interestingly odd.
• I like the things Woody Rowe says. It's more enjoyable when the stories can be told from a closer, more personal position to the subject, Will Woodin.

Acknowledgments