Late summer in public spaces

Unlikely swells spurred by motorized fiberglass crash on a shoreless lip

A peaceful Sunday afternoon in the dwindling balance of summer

Blanket cast on brown grass, head resting precariously

Breathe in the cool shade, observe the now sun-choked landscape

Unable to shake the occasional twinge of an ant on exposed extremity

Wife gazing into novel she is moderately enjoying

Intermittently exudes an understated chuckle

Muted grin gradually teases at her lips

Adorable as ever

A trip to the vet

Sterile environment - literally and figuratively

I wonder how it feels to a feline

Trip to the dentist, general practitioner and specialist all in one

Palette of drab tones produces a beige and mauve glisten

Pupils dilate and recede

Howls, like oxidized, rusty bearings, proliferate throughout

Bouncing off of the cold steel of the exam decor

"Reformed" species roam the lobby

In search of a willing perch or corner

Slinking along the aged linoleum floor

Vinyl prisoner transport device sought

Often reviled, now represents a ticket home

The Hungarian Revelation

Sounds and voices on the radio were impassioned as the Boros family circled tightly around it. Marta’s parents listened intently to the news from Budapest on the student-led October revolution of 1956. They also tempered the premature excitement of their children – understanding that suffering was nearly certain in the wake of the lumbering, Soviet behemoth. After much deliberation, the parents decided to act in the best interest of the children and pack up the house and leave the country until further notice. The personal stakes were now too high to validate the civil stakes – especially with the hardship of World War II still fresh on their minds.

The wheels lifted off the runway and eventually the landing gear receded. Just then a surge of anxiety gradually overtook her. Marta had long dreamt of the bountiful pastures, snow-capped peaks and bustling city streets of the US, but had never expected to experience them first-hand. The American dream was at arm’s reach and, apart from family and close friends, she was only half-heartedly putting aside an oppressed existence. Her new husband drifting in and out of sleep beside her, she was departing from the only culture she’d ever known.

Carrying all of her personal effects, Marta sat with her sisters while her parents argued with customs officials amongst a throng of fleeing Hungarians at a train station just across the Austrian border. They waited to be collected by family – distant and only just acquainted. The scenery was familiarly mountainous and forested though the immediate change in culture and skyline was both unfamiliar and intriguing. While killing time reading while her siblings played and others prayed, Marta noticed the occasional odd look from strangers – amongst an occasional merciful smile and hum of familiar dialect about her. The new land was foreign, but offered a freedom. Not a negotiable liberty, a given one – a freedom from social tyranny.

As the plane descended, Marta leaned over her now-awake husband to catch a glimpse of America in full swing: New York City. The city smoldered with hope while the statue kept a distant watch over the rich and fragile civic rights from her perch in the harbor. After the plane arrived at its gate, she anxiously waited in queue – anticipating a draft of free and new air. Her brief taste while deplaning was unmemorable, but the spirited architecture of the airport provided momentary invigoration. While her husband inquired on their connecting flight with an attendant, Marta stood and gazed at the colorful décor and bustling families. It felt like a new start – an empty canvas with an expanded palette of colors.

The remainder of the excursion in 1956 had been uncomfortable and uninviting. Expressions of strangers grew increasingly cold – more so when they observed foreign dialect and customs. A brief and shrill greeting from family she hardly knew resulted in Marta and her sisters sleeping on a hardwood floor while sharing a bedroom with her parents and two sisters. The family found itself in a virtual purgatory with the fate of the country’s democratic future in the balance. As later, Marta found solace in literature and longed for Hungary. Her parents, regularly glued to the radio awaiting any glimmer of hope from Budapest, assured the girls that their future would be secured – if not by their countrymen then by God above. Then one afternoon while playing with her sisters outside, her parents called all of her family into their bedroom – the revolution had ended and they were going home. Unsure of how to respond, Marta’s eyes welled up with tears.

Now settled in the Midwestern US in January of 1966, Marta and her husband nestled into the Hungarian contingent of South Bend, Indiana. A bustling college town with a scenic campus and little more, she found herself struggling with undesirable social elements in the tight-knit community. The gossip, rivalry and new-found pursuit of material gain caused her to retreat from a culture she had longed to return to. Marta longed for expression and panorama in a conservative, manufacturing hub on the edge of the Great Plains and, it seemed, the world. She frequently found solace in the literature of her youth and longed for the days of her youth and fellowship with her family. Compounded with her broken English, Marta became encased in a loosely populated existence. The pair settled in a progressive, forested West Coast, but the lure of Hungary always present.

The years passed on and Marta’s life progressed mostly according to plan. Family remained a strong focus and her children were born and raised into a community of opportunity and the basic freedoms. No matter how accustomed she became to the US, she retained a connection to Hungary. Be it through the local Hungarian association, her writing and love of literature or her political status. Her frustrations with people and dysfunction transcended cultures, but her love for her true home burned ever brightly. It was true – she had left Hungary definitively and possibly permanently, but it would never leave her.

The day the television shook

Television was only just on its way out of being a novelty – a pricy, intriguing gadget of the wealthy–in the mid 1950s. The device was in the midst of a 10-year run in which its presence in US households rose from a paltry 9% in 1950 to 90% in 1960 – a staggering increase of 900% – when its innocence was swiftly lost at the mid-decade. Approximately fifty percent of families owned one by 1954 as the appliance continued a dazzling rise to the mainstream.

In the early 1950s United States, fear of an imminent communist upheaval hung thick in the air of the American public. Politicians eagerly and widely exploited this fear to garner influence and sway voters, but only one dared publicly try to attach purported communists to the institution – his name was Joseph McCarthy. A February 1950 speech in Wheeling, West Virginia spurred a meteoric rise to fame for Senator McCarthy, who had won a Senate seat in 1946. It was during this speech that McCarthy claimed to have names of 205 federal employees who were members of the “fledgling” communist party. Although his numbers of “loyalty risk” caliber citizens fluctuated wildly over the course of the following month (to as low as 57 – his advisors seemingly censoring the list as inquiries flooded in), the surprising fame did its part in ensuring his re-election to the Senate in 1952.

Despite the creation of the Federal Communications Committee in 1934, television itself had limited censorship up until this point in time. From 1948-1952, the FCC had actually frozen granting of new channels as existing VHF channels (2-13) were deemed insufficient for television service and the tight grouping of the channels had resulted in widespread interference amongst existing and new communities. In short, the FCC had limited content in circulation to worry about censoring. When the freeze was put aside in 1952 thanks to the “Sixth Report & Order,” one must figure that the FCC was buried in requests for new channels and content which constrained resources to dedicate to the thorough evaluation of content. As McCarthy’s infamy gathered steam and the government (specifically the Army) responded in kind to his 1953 investigations, the FCC agreed to ABC’s request to televise the now famous “Army-McCarthy Hearings” from April-June of 1954 (36 days in total). It would be a decision the government would regret and a spectacle that left an indelible impact on the public’s perception of the inner workings of congress.

The “Army-McCarthy hearings” began as a proving ground upon which Joseph McCarthy would substantiate his claims of communist activity in the US Army Signal Corps at Fort Monmouth (the subject of McCarthy’s 1953 investigations). They ended with the Senator’s reputation destroyed and his Senate seat hanging by a thread. With a staggering 80 million total viewers over the course of the series, most of whom this was their first observation of US Congress, Joseph McCarthy was unable to substantiate any of his claims and was thrust on the defensive for disputed preferential treatment of a servicemen during the investigation. As the hearings drew to a close in early June, McCarthy was backed deeply into a corner – he was challenged by the Army’s counsel, Joseph N. Welch, to reveal his infamous list “before the sun goes down.” McCarthy, grasping at straws, proceeded to slander a young recruit of Welch’s firm. Tired, emotionally drained and eyes full of tears, Welch punctuated his response with the now legendary words: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

The destruction of a vindictive, reckless and power-hungry man determined to crush – once and for all – a dissenting opinion to whole-hearted capitalism was all but complete. Those with social and civil concerns rejoiced; those with industrial interests celebrated the resounding success of what would become reality television; those with political interests, machinations and revelations wrung their hands…and the TV, for the first time in its brief history, noticeably shook.