Were Sacco and Vanzetti Guilty After All? How Bill Bryson Blew It

          After my program Tuesday night on "Suosso's Lane," a novel of the Sacco-Vanzetti case, an old friend pointed out to me that famous author Bill Bryson in his recent book "One Summer: America 1927" concludes that Sacco and Vanzetti were "probably" guilty of robbing a workers' payroll and killing two men in the Braintree shoe factory crime. 

             This is how I know Bryson blew it:

             He gets crucial facts wrong before delivering his smug, complacent apology for the status quo.

            After pointing out basic flaws in the state's improbable case against Sacco and Vanzetti, Bryson suddenly changes sides when he returns to the subject of the Sacco-Vanzetti case 20 pages later and now is all sympathy with the nativist, WASP establishment apologists for the judicial murder of two Italian political radicals during a time of racist hysteria over immigration by the "lower races."

          Here's the first of two incredible "howlers" (scholar talk for blatant mistakes) that show Bryson was not on top of his material:

            With the 1927 execution date two weeks away, Bryson writes, Massachusetts Governor Alvan Fuller granted a brief stay of execution to allow "the condemned men's defense team -- which was essentially the lone, harried lawyer Fred Moore -- twelve days to find a court prepared to grant a retrial to hear new evidence."

            How completely wrong is this? Defense lawyer Fred Moore had officially withdrawn from the case three years before (and ceased acting for the defense the year before that) after Sacco refused to speak to him any longer. In 1927 Sacco and Vanzetti's defense was led by the prestigious William G. Thompson, widely regarded as Boston's top lawyer, a thoroughly Brahmin establishment figure who took Sacco and Vanzetti's case because the obvious flaws in their trial offended his sense of justice (and after the defense committee raised his healthy fee).

            And despite Bryson's snide comment, Fred Moore was never a "lone" anything. An active Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee raised funds first to hire both Moore (a California labor attorney) and a team of assistants. The Defense Committee later provided funds for Thompson and his assistants. No "lone, harried" defender, but a team of lawyers chased US Supreme Court justices around the county looking to convince a judge to hear their pleas for a new trial and save their clients' lives.

            The second, and even more unforgivable goof is Bryson's wholly inaccurate claim that highly regarded historian Paul Avrich, in his influential 1991 book "Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background," states that Sacco and Vanzetti were "almost certainly involved" in the Braintree robbery-murder.             

             Bryson states (inaccurately):

            "In his 1991 book, historian Paul Avrich asked rhetorically whether Vanzetti could have been involved in the South Braintree holdup, and wrote: 'Though the evidence is far from satisfactory, the answer almost certainly is yes. The same holds true for Sacco.'"

            The actual quote (on page 150 in Avrich's book) is this:

            "Was Vanzetti himself involved in the conspiracy? Though the evidence is far from satisfactory, the answer almost certainly is yes. The same holds true for Sacco.'"

            The "conspiracy" Avrich refers to in this statement is not the Braintree holdup but a series of bombings (in 1918-19) widely attributed to anarchists. Anyone looking at the quote on the page will come to the same conclusion. The sentence that Bryson twists to his own purpose directly follows Avrich's lengthy account of how Italian anarchists turned to the use of bombs to strike back at the government officials and big capitalists that were persecuting them and, as they believed, oppressing the poor. That "conspiracy" included planting a bomb at the home of the US Attorney General, an act that precipitated massive arrests of immigrants and deportations and -- as many students of the case have argued -- the framing of known anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti for the Braintree crime.

            Those bombings (for whom no one was ever put on trial) and the Braintree shoe factory robbery-murder are entirely different cases. The only thing that puts the cases together is the state of Massachusetts' improbable theory that anarchists were responsible for the Braintree crime. Avrich may believe that Vanzetti and Sacco were "almost certainly" involved (in some unspecified way) in the Italian anarchist bombing conspiracy. He clearly does believe that they were members of the same network as the key anarchist figures he fingers as the principal conspirators (Carlo Valdinoci and Mario Budo).

          But when it comes to whether Sacco and Vanzetti bore any guilt for the Braintree crime, Avrich states explicitly that his book "makes no pretense of settling the issue of whether Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty of the crimes for which they were executed" (page 5). He states, instead, that the case against them "remains unproved... nor can their innocence be established beyond any shadow of doubt."  

            It's hard for me to believe that an author of Bryson's stature could have bollixed this up so badly unless, perhaps, he was working from notes made by others. Nevertheless, the representation of a respected historian's judgment about one matter as his judgment on a distinctly different matter is not merely sloppiness, it's the kind of academic wrongdoing that would get your PhD thesis thrown out of court. In my opinion, it destroys Bryson's credibility as a commentator on the case.

The Garden of Storytelling: Voices from the Snakish Past

       

           OK, let's admit straight off that "The Man Who Spoke Snakish" By Andrus Kivirahk offers readers one of the strangest premises they are ever likely to come across, yet this book is wholly accessible, easy to read, and often humorous. 

          It's the mental leaps that require some energy, perhaps the old-fashioned "willing suspension of disbelief." But even these are presented charmingly -- talking snakes: the fount of all true wisdom; a cosmically gigantic "frog" waiting to bring the end of the world or the birth of a new cycle -- delivered with a kind of infinite withholding of an anticipated punch line that makes it easy to give up expecting some sort of 'rational' explanation. 

          Once you get used to the wisdom of talking snakes, then you discover that the hero's mother was off having an affair with a bear... when, unhappily, they were discovered en flagrante by her husband who, unfortunately, startled the bear. Bears are really very gentle (so we are told) but get nervous when surprised, and on this occasion the bear reacted by biting the husband's head off. All a tragic misunderstanding.

          If you think cohabbing with bears -- and talking to snakes -- is passing weird, wait till you meet the "hominids"... who keep a written record of all the changes in their paleo-history in wall markings on an endless cavern.

          But none of these extra-species connections make life difficult for people who live in the woods; it makes it easy. When you live in the primal forest of Estonia, all you really need to survive is a good command of snakish. Most of the beasts bow before the ancient authority of this tongue. So if you're hungry, a deer or a goat will come along, get the word, and offer his neck for the sacrifice.

         Estonian author Kivirahk offers us a pre-lapsarian universe. Nobody 'works.' No sweat of the brow. However, changes have come in the form of outlanders who cut down trees, build villages, plant fields, and sweat over their labor to earn their daily bread -- which they eat instead of the freely offered meat of the wild forest. They're also Christians.

          Kivirahk's book offers a kind of transvaluation of all values. We see the world from the perspective of the dying wilderness-dwellers whose values, skills, and way of life are being pushed to extinction by the new.The news way aren't better; they're demonstrably worse. But they're 'novel.' And the new, this book suggests, inevitably wins.

          While it's still obvious to our snakish-speaking narrator that his world is far superior -- freer, safer, more independent, in tune to what it is rather than the 'faith' some alien divinity wishes to create. How much easier, for example and 'natural,' to crawl into a nest of vipers to spend a winter warm and protected than fight the elements in a village hut by burning an acre of trees.

           What happens when new meets old is both sad, and funny, continually entertaining, and hard to sum up. It's a mythic story, worth pondering, like an old legend handed down from a people who not only talked to animals but regarded those could not as pathetically dense... A people who also knew what it was like to live at the end of the world.

             

The Garden of Story-telling: Tuesday Night at Plymouth Library

          "Suosso's Lane" is not a courtroom novel, nor is it a straightforward dramatization of the factual record of Vanzetti's life in Plymouth. Why not -- a reasonable question -- simply stick to the facts? Historians do that, and they should. 
          But fiction is storytelling, and we need stories to give meaning to events. Stories are receptacles of meaning created by individuals and societies to interpret, advise, and make sense of the big mysteries and routine deeds of human experience. Folk tales, fairy tales, legends (emperors who want to cage the nightingale, kings who want the Midas touch), Greek myths, the book of Genesis in the Bible... We can all think of stories that matter to us.

            Further, "Suosso's Lane" goes beyond historical fiction by developing a 21st century storyline based on reactions to the earlier events (Vanzetti in Plymouth), with characters forced to deal with some of the same deep social issues. 

           The principals here are:

-- Mill Becker, a young history teacher, who moves to Plymouth after being hired for his first real academic job at a nearby community college. Mill complains about his students and needs to develop a firmer grip on who he is, accept his limitations, and trust strengths. His fascination with, and desire to learn more about, Vanzetti drives the plot.

-- His wife, Bernie Becker, a committed human services worker. Though more grounded than her husband, she has rescue fantasies about one of her clients (having fallen afoul of the law, he needs to be kept on the right path). Bernie has her own opinions; she asks Mill, 'Why were anarchists so against unions?'

-- A second plot-driver -- here's a familiar character! your nosy local reporter (his working life, btw,  is a lot more interesting than mine ever was), Maurice Jeter. He's investigating a real cold case, a 60-yr-old suspicious death of a Plymouth policeman. How can this death connect to the Sacco Vanzetti case? Well that's what fiction is for.

-- Finally, Ike, the 'new immigrant' client Bernie seeks to help, works at a big box store (that I'm not allowed to call Wal-Mart). He finds parallels to V's story in his own life. He's in this novel because immigrants today do low-paying service job (they've replaced unskilled factory labor), as many of them as they can find to patch together an income, live in crowded conditions, save in order to send money home, or to bring loved ones over. 

          Our response (judging from the tenor of our current politics) is to try to make things harder for them.

            So (quick plot wrap-up) Mill Becker is trying to find rumored documentary evidence, a letter or note of some sort, that would prove that Vanzetti could not have been at the scene of the Braintree crime that day (April 15, 1920). How well he does you'll have to read the book to find out.  

            Tuesday night I'll be talking about and reading excerpts from "Suosso's Lane" at Plymouth Public Library, starting at 7 p.m.

Spring's Garden of Anticipation: Return!

             March is the month of returns. The biggest of all -- hard in fact to imagine anything bigger -- is the return of the sun to the northern hemisphere. That takes place next week and marks the beginning of the long-awaited season of spring. Le "printemps," in French, or 'the first of times.' 
          In most ways that matter spring is the beginning of the new year. The soil will warm up, the sun will dry up wet fields so farmers can plant once again. Only if the farmers can plant, and the sun makes the crops grow, will there be food for another year so that life for all creatures who depend on earth's bounty (especially us) can go on. 

         On a humbler, less survivalist note, the return of the sun also stirs the little flower gardens back to life as well. Last week we saw white and yellow, pink and violet crocuses popping up. 
         However, in some spots many fewer than planted, with clear signs of squirrel predation. I put in dozens of new bulbs last fall and tried to cover my tracks, but our latest generation of squirrel pests -- I call them 'the barbarian horde' -- found and ate (or at least relocated) about 90 percent of the crocuses.
          I could use some lessons in squirrel deterrence. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know.
          Nevertheless the return of those cheerful, brightly colored mugs smiling up at us on sunny mornings is greatly fortifying. And the purple flowers of the Vinca minor are also fast spreading in both front and back gardens. Everywhere else the greening has begun in what fast becomes a garden of anticipation. Color, once begun, will expand geometrically now every week or two.  
          The middle of March, with spring on the near horizon, also means it's time to move the clock forward. I failed to anticipate this moment with my own wristwatch and so was living in the past for several hours this morning.
          Speaking of returns, I'm back too, having lost the entire first half of this month to an extended recuperation period after a surgery to remove my gall bladder proved much more complicated than anyone anticipated.  
          Finally, "return" is also the theme for poems in the March issue of Verse-Virtual, the online poetry journal that draws more than 25,000 page views each month. 
           I have three poems in the issue, a group I titled "Three Dream Poems on the Theme of Return."
           One of these, as its title "Return (ii): The Sun," suggests, is about the changes we see in March. It begins.

He finds the yellow ball in his backyard
And takes it to the sea.
The others are eating cornflakes.
They're shining bicycles.
Flutes and brass gleam in the sun.
The summits are brazen, glowing from their daily polish, 
sparkle and dew,
a sheen in the night, silent as ice-fall at daybreak.
...

(For this poem and so many others, see verse-virtual.com and click on 'current poetry.')
 

The Garden of Sickness and Health: The Uses of Maladies

            At least, people say, we have our health. Don't take it for granted. 

            Oh, I don't. 

            Don't worry about the little things, we tell each other.The big things? Start with health.

            Oh, yes, nothing can be more important than that! And if you are healthy, be sure to appreciate your good fortune.

             But how to appreciate it?

            One answer to the latter question at least, I think, is by leaving it for a while. If we're fortunate our stay out of health, as opposed to in health, is only a brief one.  

            But when that occasional absence-of-health experience comes around, I think we should recognize a learning experience when we see one.

            When you're sick, or recovering from a cure, a lot of ordinary defences are stripped away.

            You have a bad night. You cannot sleep, and lie awake looking at the ceiling and the lights in the world outside a hospital window, the IV trolley, the door of the bathroom you prefer to think you will not need. You have looked at these objects for hours, and they have nothing more to tell you. You cannot ring for the nurse to bring you something, because there is nothing at this point you are permitted to have. Perhaps the breathing tube is still up your nose, so you cannot wipe the area successfully when it begins to run.

            You have slept already once, earlier this evening, but then someone woke you to take your vital signs and make sure you are all right. 'I was all right when I was sleeping,' you think, 'but I am not "all right" now. I am awake and perfectly miserable.' Hospitals put limits on sleep.  An hour; perhaps an hour and a half. You conclude, after much high-minded philosophical reasoning (and nothing else to think about), that human life without sleep is insupportable.

            Some time later, a few days, a week, maybe even longer, you realize that such nights are common, maybe even routine, for many people for long periods of time. Maybe all the time. You will go home in a few days, recuperate with some more bed rest in your own bed, resume your life. Many others are not so fortunate. Perhaps "health" doesn't always snap back; it's like an elastic stretched too far.

            Other bad nights, here there and everywhere, have other causes. Refugees sleep in the rain, holding their place at night in the endless queue that spirals out from the killing counties to the barbed wire and newly closed doors of Europe. Even in his own city, men and women sleep in doorways and parked cars. Perhaps sleeping in the back seat of an old car provides more interesting vistas than looking out of a hospital window, but he doubts it.

            How do we learn compassion? Does it come from our own illnesses with the concurrent bad nights and troubled thoughts? This is hardly a new idea. To be humbled by the flesh is a teachable moment.

            Old man Lear cast out on the heath on a stormy night discovers for a companion the poor mad beggar Tom. Poor wretch, the old king thinks, how many such others groan this cruel night?      
           "O! [Lear moans] I have ta'en too little care of this..."
           No one chooses illness, the loss of physical comfort. But if it comes you try to learn something from it.