Monthly Archives: July 2022

Margaret Sanger — Was She a Nazi?

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So – was she really a Nazi?
Before we ask that, perhaps we should ask – who the heck are we talking about? My son just walked in, and he needed about 10 seconds to place her. I venture that most people today couldn’t place her in 10 hours, without using a reference. But in her day she was one of the best-known women in America, and one of the most fiercely hated.
Margaret Higgins and her sister Ethel were born in Corning, along with almost 20 brothers and sisters. They were baptized at St. Mary’s church, but that was about the limit of their connection. Their father Michael was an activist for atheism, constantly at odds with Father Colgan, and cut off from the Irish-American community that might have been a source of support and encouragement. The family faced a hard life, and they faced it alone.
Ethel (married name Byrne) and Margaret (married name Sanger) became nurses, and grew increasingly horrified at how many women faced the ravages of endless pregnancies, or of abortion. Birth control, they reckoned, was the answer, and they opened a women’s clinic in New York City, under the banner “Do Not Kill – Do Not Take Life – But Prevent!”
Such advice, however, was against the law in New York, and in most other states. Birth control information was considered obscene materials.
It didn’t take long (as they knew it wouldn’t) before a police woman turned up in plain clothes, asked for information, and came away carrying the evidence. The sisters were arrested and taken to court, and their clinic shut down. Ethel began a prison hunger strike, and was slipping into a coma when Margaret cut a deal with the governor, vowing that Ethel would end her campaign for birth control.
But that deal did NOT apply to Margaret, who embarked on a life of propaganda (her word). Throughout Europe and America she campaigned for the right to use birth control, and for woman’s rights in general. Her life now included such figures as H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Clarence Darrow, and Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr.
What it did NOT include was abortion, which she opposed – this was, of course, the days before antibiotics, when ANY surgery was dangerous.
The Nazi charge rests mostly on the fact that she once gave a birth-control lecture to Women of the Ku Klux Klan, and that she shared some ideas with the eugenics movement. (So did H.G. Wells, Winston Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt, and Alexander Graham Bell.) Eugenics aimed at “scientifically” improving humanity through controlled breeding, and some, including the Nazis, did so by forced sterilization, or by killing those deemed unfit. Sanger basically hoped that the less fit would limit their own numbers through voluntary birth control, and she also supported immigration restriction. Her first husband (Mr. Sanger) was Jewish, and thus her children would have been rated half-Jewish (and marked for death) under Hitler. Sanger donated money to anti-Nazi causes.
She campaigned for birth control and women’s rights along with her sister Ethel and their Corning contemporary, Katherine Houghton Hepburn (relative of Amo, mother and grandmother of noted actresses). Sanger helped secure money to develop the birth control pill, and lived long enough to see the Supreme Court legalize birth control FOR MARRIED COUPLES ONLY – a right that the current court strongly suggests that it will soon repeal, scarcely a hundred years after women got the right to vote.
So, the charge that Margaret Sanger was a Nazi is (using her word again) propaganda. (So is the charge that she favored abortion.) She DID have some ideas that overlapped with some ideas of the Nazis… so did Reverend Billy Sunday, Rousas J. Rushdoony, and Dr. James Dobson. Love ‘er or hate ‘er, a Nazi she wasn’t.

Beat the Deadly Heat — on Weekends!

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So it’s being a hot, hot summer… unsurprisingly! EVERY year now is among the ten hottest years ever recorded, and it keeps getting worse.
*During heat waves the counties and other agencies often announce lists of “cooling stations,” where people can go for some relief before the dangerous heat makes them ill. Very often, these cooling stations are our public libraries.
*This makes sense – apart from the mall, the library is about the only place you can just “drop in” without charge – plus, there are books, magazines, computers and puzzles to occupy you, AND things to occupy the kids. If you want to check materials out, a card in any of the 49 Southern Tier System libraries works in just about any of the others. I wrote about this four years ago, and I decided it was time to update.
*Not every library is air conditioned, so you shouldn’t just make that assumption. Also, Dormann Library in Bath has been without A/C for a couple of months while the entire system is being replaced (they’re almost finished!). The system at Taylor Library in Hammondsport broke down for a while. But nearly all of the libraries I’ve been in (which is quite a few) ARE air conditioned.
*Sad to say, there are fewer sites, and fewer weekend hours, available now compared to four years ago.
*The smaller libraries and reading rooms are only open a limited number of hours per week, and some libraries (even large ones) close altogether for summer weekends. I understand their situation. In an institution dependent on volunteer workers, summer in the Finger Lakes makes scheduling almost impossible. (COVID doesn’t help, especially when you realize that many volunteers are older people.)
*ALL of the Chemung County libraries, sad to say, are closed for summer weekends. So are Bolivar, Richburg, and Genesee, in Allegany County, plus Montour Falls in Schuyler. Addison, Arkport, Atlanta, and Wayland, all in Steuben, each close for both Saturday and Sunday.
*But what about the other libraries in our Southern Tier Library System? My wife Joyce is a professional at Dormann Library in Bath, and she helped me assemble a list. But it’s always possible that some of information is not up-to-date, so CHECK FIRST before making a trip!
*Alfred is open on Sundays but not on Saturdays. This sounds familiar to me, coming from southeastern New England. That stretch of the country, like Alfred, is historic Seventh-Day Baptist territory. I speculate that that history underlies the unusual scheduling. As far as I can tell, Alfred is the ONLY library that still has Sunday hours.
*Andover is open the first Saturday of each month.
*Let’s look now at the every-summer-Saturday-but-never-summer-Sunday roster by counties. They vary from two hours of operation up to six – usually three or four.
*ALLEGANY: Almond; Angelica; Belfast; Belmont; Canaseraga; Cuba; Fillmore; Friendship; Rushford; Scio; Wellsville; and Whitesville.
*YATES: Branchport; Penn Yan; Dundee; Middlesex; Rushville. (Every one – hooray!)
*SCHUYLER: Watkins Glen and Odessa. Hector I’m not sure about.
*STEUBEN: Avoca; Bath; Canisteo; Cohocton; Corning; Hammondsport; Hornell; Howard; Jasper; Prattsburgh; Pulteney; Savona. I wasn’t able to locate information on Greenwood Reading Center.
*Some of these libraries (or their settings) have special features BESIDES air conditioning. Bath (Dormann Library) has its own cafe, so you can keep cool with smoothies. Hammondsport (Taylor Memorial) has its own lovely park with shade trees and a gazebo, and it’s only a few steps down to the Keuka Lake waterfront. Branchport (Modeste Bedient) is at the other end of the lake, and has its own nature preserve right outside. Pulteney also has a Keuka view. Hornell, Penn Yan, and Andover are Carnegie libraries.
*Down the hall from the Watkins Glen Library is the International Motor Racing Research Archive, where there’s almost always a classic racing car on exhibit. Angelica is in a lovely small-village setting, with a Saturday outdoor farmers’ market down the street in the Circle.
*There are also open libraries just over the edge of Southern Tier Library System territory in Dansville, in Naples, and in Wellsboro, PA (Green Free Library – they DO have Sunday hours!). Right next door in Wellsboro is Gmeiner Art and Cultural Center, where exhibits are always free admission.
*Remember that libraries, especially the smaller ones, are not necessarily open “full time.” On the other hand, most of them have evening hours at least once a week. That’s worth remembering – even those libraries that do NOT have summer weekend hours, DO have hours DURING the week, when the heat also might get dangerous.
*So keep cool, and be cool. Even on weekends, if only for a few hours, the library waits.

Mossy Bank — One of Bath’s Crown Jewels

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If you’ve ever visited Bath, you’ve almost certainly noticed the 500-foot wall that looms over the village from the south, just across the Conhocton River. That wall was formed in part by the glacier – the same glacier that gouged out Keuka Lake, then the vale of Pleasant Valley, slammed to a halt at Bath.
Mostly. While most of the glacier stayed put, its very top edged over and kept going for a spell, leaving behind “glacial erratics” – boulders and smaller stones that started out far to the north, and got swept along (actually, got inched along) by that last glacier.
Back in the early days of Bath several small groups of Native American people lived up at or near the top, and on several occasions officials from down on the flat had to trudge up to the top, in order to negotiate arrangements for peaceful co-existence.
In the 1840s a woman diarist wrote that it had become “a fad” in Bath to ride up to Mossy Bank to walk around and have picnics. Since that’s still going strong 180 years later, we probably can’t call it a fad any more!
By the 1850s the vista from Mossy Bank was noted as one of the two or three great “views” in Steuben County. Logging went on, though the slope made the work challenging. Whether with horses or on foot, you it was quite a job to get your picnic up to Mossy Bank. People found it worth the trip.
Ira Davenport built his “Riverside” mansion right over the Cameron Road bridge from Bath, roughly across from where the S.P.C.A. is now. In 1864, having seen the terrible death toll of the Civil War, he built a castle-like “Female Asylum” farther back from both the river and the road, right at the foot of the slope. He passed away in 1868, but his orphanage still made a home for distressed girls for another 90 years.
Mr. Davenport’s property included the steep slope and the Mossy Bank area, which became part of the orphanage after his death. “Davenport Girls” had their own Scout troop, and often enjoyed hikes up to the top.
The Appalachian Plateau begins at the top of the cliff, and while much of that is hilly, there’s a mile or so of fairly flat space first, and some of this is still used today as pasture. In the 1960s a forest fire burned for days between Cameron Road and Babcock Hollow Road. Folks pulled up lawn chairs onto the unfinished Southern Tier Expressway, and watched the show.
After the fire Mayor John Langendorfer fulfilled the dream of many years, turning Mossy Bank into a public park. Today there are picnic spaces, the Ted Markham Nature Center, occasional nature presentations, rest rooms, playground, a fitness trail, multiple hiking trails, and the lookout.
If anything defines Mossy Bank to most people, it’s the lookout and the view. Unsurprisingly, you get a great view of downtown Bath, the railroad, and the Conhocton River. The county fairgrounds. Several cemeteries. Lake Salubria. The West End, and beyond. Mount Washington blocks any view of Keuka Lake, but you can clearly see the roads to Hammondsport and Mitchellsville. If you know where to look, and conditions are good, you can spot the wind turbines in Howard, and the other batch between Prattsburgh and Cohocton.
Bath’s Christmas star is mounted on the lookout pavilion. Lately it’s again been lighted, this time in blue and yellow, to show support for the beleaguered people of the Ukraine.
At a little remove from the main body of the park is a smaller 14-acre section, largely taken up by a pond used for fishing and bird-watching (not to mention firefighting, if needed).
Mossy Bank is famed because eagles and osprey often nest within sight down below, and sometimes soar overhead, or even right in front of our faces. It’s a favored spot for many migrating birds and butterflies, including the monarch.
White-tail deer abound, and bears can be present, though I’m happy to say I’ve never encountered one.
The park is open to auto traffic from May 1 to October 15, and you often find families there on hot summer evenings, for the temperatures are commonly three to five degrees cooler than they are down below. Foot traffic is allowed the rest of the year, but so is hunting in season, so exercise good sense and care. Mossy Bank has 168 acres. It’s one of the crown jewels of Bath.

July — the Height of Summer

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JULY is the height of summer, the ideal of summer… the only month that is all summer, all the time. Spring creeps into early June, and by late August the geese are gathering, the green is going brown, the nights are growing chilly. But not in July.
Julius Caesar reformed the calendar (which sorely needed it) back in ancient Rome, and one of the reforms he felt SURE the calendar needed was a month named after him. So we still salute Julius, one-twelfth of every year, after two centuries and two millennia.
July celebrates our Independence Day, going back to 1776, with music and fireworks, just as John Adams predicted. On July 4, 1826, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died. July 4 of 1827 ended slavery in New York. James Monroe died on July 4, 1831. Two smashing Union victories in 1863 doomed the Confederacy. In 1876 it marked huge celebrations for the nation’s centennial, and again in 1976 for the BIcentennial.
In 1908 Glenn Curtiss spectacularly flew the airplane “June Bug” in Pleasant Valley. As a boy he had loved to have his grandmother read the poem “Darius Green and His Flying Machine,” which was set on the fourth of July. Glenn did much better with HIS flying machine than Darius had with his.
George M. Cohan, creator of “Over There,” “Give My Regards to Broadway,” and “You’re a Grand Old Flag” was famously born on the fourth of July, though it was actually on the third. His was a show-business family, and his father saw the publicity potential in an Independence Day date.
July 1 is Canada Day. July 14 is Bastille Day, the French counterpart to our Fourth of July. On July 16, 1945 scientists, engineers, and military men exploded the first atomic bomb. Japan surrendered, and World War II ended, 29 days later.
July is part of hurricane season. It’s also a month where thunderstorms roll across the land, though it shares that “honor” with August. On July 8, 1935 drenching rainstorms suddenly spawned destructive and murderous floods, killing 44 people between the Hudson and Hornell.
Thurgood Marshall was born in July, and so were presidents Calvin Coolidge (on Independence Day!), George W. Bush, John Quincy Adams, and Gerald Ford. Beloved children’s writers E.B. White, Beatrix Potter, and J.K. Rowling first saw the light of day in July. So did P.T. Barnum, John Paul Jones, Robert A. Heinlein, Ringo Starr, Nelson Rockefeller, Henry David Thoreau, George Eastman, George Washington Carver, Rembrandt, John Glenn, Camilla Parker Bowes, Amelia Earhart, Jackie Onassis, Henry Ford, and Alexander the Great (before there even WAS a July!).
On the down side, we should mention Lizzie Borden and Mussolini. Also on the down side, Glenn Curtiss died unexpectedly on July 23, 1930, at the age of 52. He was buried in Pleasant Valley two days later. And a July 4, 1912 wreck involving THREE trains killed at least 39 people near Gibson, making Steuben County’s worst single-incident death toll.
The Summer Triangle is straight overhead – how I remember my father pointing it out to me, one night in our driveway! The Perseid meteor shower begins in July, although it peaks in August.
Though we don’t really notice it, and hardly believe it, the days are getting shorter. But we push that knowledge aside, and drop it from our minds. After all, it’s July. And summer will last forever.