The Daily Grand and Sundry

This is the 500th Edition of THE DAILY GRAND and SUNDRY Blog.

This Blog  would like to honor this occasion by ruminating on the TEA PARTY, WILD RIVER and Ms. Jo Van Fleet, and the prescience of Elia Kazan. Fifty years ago, his film,  WILD RIVER was released; in it is the best explanation of TEA PARTY principles ever given, by Jo Van Fleet to Montgomery Clift. 

Over the  course of the last year, I have gotten quite a few emails from denizens of Europe asking me to explain the notorious TEA PARTY. 

To my European readers, The TEA PARTY is deeper than a slogan, or fecklessness, or cribbing glibness, or designer shallowness. It is Jo Van Fleet in WILD RIVER(1960). Fifty years ago, FIFTY YEARS AGO, 50 years ago, Jo Van Fleet laid it all out in the film WILD RIVER.  Jo Van Fleet gave birth to the TEA PARTY right then. 

BACK STORY

The Tennessee River was a killer, so the United States Government, under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, decided to tame the river, the wild river, by creating the Tennessee Valley Authority(TVA) and building a series of dams along the river.

The dams would flood out old homesteads, so Federal agents fanned out through the path of the floods to buy the land.  WILD RIVER is about the one woman who would not sell out to the Federal Government, the first Tea Partier.

WILD RIVER is one of the great American films EVER made. It starred Montgomery Clift as the young do gooder from Washington, brought in to convince the lady farmer to sell out, and a radiant Lee Remick as the young widow who falls for him.

It was Directed by the towering genius of American theater and film, Elia Kazan.

If you have ever wondered where the ideology of the TEA PARTY comes from, it comes from Jo Van Fleet articulating the rights of the people above the rights of the government, even above the rights of progress(something we should all remember concerning the situation in Afghanistan).

With great honor, and humility, in this 500th Edition, this Blog honors the 50th anniversary of WILD RIVER by sharing with you, Jo Van Fleet in WILD RIVER.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mUepS6mhL4

 Elia Kazan

This  Greek, born in a country which no longer exists(the Ottoman Empire) came to America at the age of four. This immigrant knew more about America, and the Tea Party  than any living pundit or politician, including Mama Grizzlies.

Jo Van Fleet in WILD RIVER, The First Tea Partier

Lest we forget, amid the disasters of the world, The Gulf Oil Spill, Haiti, Chile, there was a flood of Biblical scope in Nashville, Tennessee.

However there was no attention from the National Media because there was no looting, no need to call out the National Guard, no breakdown of law and order,  just a bunch of  Nashville Volunteers helping their neighbors.

I have a friend in Nashville, JC Oden, a Christian Marketing Consultant, who is liaison betwen my film, the classical John Ford Western, LOS PISTOLEROS and the Christian community.

We chatted during the flood, I asked him how Nashville was doing?

He replied, “Gerry, Tennessee isn’t called the Volunteer state for nothing.”

Then he had to cut short the conversation to volunteer to rescue stranded immigrants who did not speak English.

‘MUSIC CITY” takes care of its own.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Big names from various music genres came together for Nashville Rising, a benefit concert Tuesday night to help victims of last month’s devastating flood.

Faith Hill opened the concert by saluting the city’s residents, who have been praised for handling one of the state’s largest natural disasters with grace, dignityand charity. She was joined on stage by her husband, Tim McGraw, Gov. Phil Bredesen, Mayor Karl Dean and coach Jeff Fisher and Vince Young of the Tennessee Titans.

“Nashville will rise and that is why we have come together tonight,” Hill said. “Musicians, football players, coaches, our elected officials, you in the audience, yes, we are all the same. We’re just neighbors who care and friends who want to make a difference.”

“LOS ANGELES – The funeral for “Stand and Deliver” math teacher Jaime Escalante has drawn some 600 family and friends, including Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and actor Edward James Olmos..

Olmos led the Saturday service at East Los Angeles College. He helped make Escalante famous when he played him in the 1988 film “Stand and Deliver.”

Olmos said Escalante was “a genius in teaching, but he was a saint when it came to empowering students.”

The funeral began with a procession from East LA’s Garfield High School, where Escalante inspired struggling students to excel at advanced math and science.

Escalante’s wife, two sons and family members from his native Bolivia were also at the service.

Escalante died March 30 of cancer at age 79″

Name five American educators or teachers off the top of your head, who are they? Horace Mann, William James, Booker T. Washington, William McGuffey and Jaime Escalante. Mr. Escalante was a great American hero, borrowed from Bolivia. When everyone despaired, in a high school no one cared about, teaching students our school system seemed bound and determined to make a permanent under class, this Bolivian immigrant stood and delivered,  figuring out how to teach calculus to Hispanic kids.

And in the end he was trashed by his own.

There is only one other American hero who has suffered the fate of Jaime Escalante, to be scorned and trashed,  by the people you had helped to uplift, and that other one is Sam Houston of Texas.

Sam Houston was a soldier, Indian fighter,  statesman, drunk, Indian lover. Andrew Jackson’s protoge, they radically disagreed on treatment  of Native Americans; Houston did not want to wipe them out.

 He was a Tennessee Congressman and Governor; he resigned the Governorship   after marrying 18-year-old Eliza Allen.After his Eliza  left him,” he lived among the Cherokee, who formally adopted him as a member of their nation. He married a Cherokee widow named Tiana Rogers Gentry, During this time he was interviewed by Alexis de Tocqueville. ”

 Houston left the Cherokees(his Cherokee wife died shortly thereafter) and went to Texas. He took command of the rebel Texas army, who were fighting for their independence against Mexico and Generalissimo Santa Ana. Houston retreated, letting the Alamo fall, until he lured the Mexican Army into a death trap at San Jacinto. The Texans lost nine men, while killing 630 Mexican soldiers, capturing  700 more. Houston was a pretty good general.

He achieved Texas independence, became President of Texas, got Texas annexed into the Union. He became Governor of Texas and Senator from Texas. In 1860 he was Governor again.  When the Civil War started, Texas slave owners wanted to take Texas out of the Union and into the Confederacy. Houston said No; the man who gave them their independence  and American citizenship said No.

So the slave owners and racists  trashed him, and deposed him, sending him to his home, in exile. He died before he could see the ruin of Texas.

So why are Sm Houston and Jaime Escaanate alike? 

“The Los Angeles Times reports that he (Escalante)was an opponent of bilingual education. He campaigned for passage of Proposition 227, which curtailed bilingual education in California in 1998.

The obit says that Escalante had said the hate mail he received for taking the position he did on bilingual education led in part to his resigning from Hiram Johnson High School in Sacramento, the teaching post he had taken after leaving Garfield High School”

Jaime Escalante, the greatest Hispanic teacher who ever lived, was driven from his profession by professional Latinos, who don’t want their children, in the United States , educated in English.

The man who uplifted their children is driven from his vocation because of entrenched political correctness.

Escalante, the man who opened the doors for Hispanic kids to enter the world of higher math, is driven to ground, because he sees the key to education is English.

The man who did so much for Latinos  is broken by the people he helped.

The Profesional Latinos and the Texas slave holders have a lot in common, foremost, ingratitude to the men who uplifted them.

The California school system is collapsing under the weight of entrenched interests, and I fear that Mr. Escalante’s death has been timed so he could not see the ruin of his beloved students. Like Houston, he has been spared seeing the desertification of everything he had built.