Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

9/26/05

Term Limits: In 1992 Michigan voters approved term limits for state representatives, senators, and the governor. Now voters may be asked to relax the state's strict limits on how many terms legislators can serve. We'll talk about the pros and cons of the system. What do you think of term limits?

Jack talks with Chris Christoff of the Detroit Free Press, Former State Senator John Kelly, and Wayne State University Professor Marjorie Sarbaugh-Thompson who authored "The Political and Institutional Effects of Term Limits."

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Jack's Essay: A Man Among Women - 9/23/05

I first met Patricia Hill Burnett twelve years ago. She was looking for someone to help her with her autobiography. I had no desire to do that, but had always wanted to meet her.
She was, after all, a legend. The beauty queen turned feminist who had become the state portrait painter of Michigan. We had lunch and to my surprise, before dessert I had agreed to help with her book.
Why? Well, she was charming and fascinating. But the real reason was the challenge. When you work on an autobiography, you in a sense have to become someone else.
Basically, that meant I had to become in some way a 75-year-old woman, to put myself into her mind and her history and brain waves. That wasn’t easy, but was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.  Patricia and I are very different.
And I don’t mean because she is a woman and I am a man. She is a pure artist, entirely right-brained. She can’t remember names and dates, and I can’t draw a stick man. Yet I came, at least partially, to see the world through her eyes.
I saw enough to get a glimpse of what every beautiful woman had to endure. I felt what it was like to be seen as an  ornament rather than a person. An ornament, that is, who could also cook, clean and change diapers.
I felt her indignation when clients asked her to sign portraits with her initials, since, as one said, “it’ll be worth more if people think it was painted by a man.”
Helping a feminist of my mother’s generation express herself was one of the best things I ever did for myself.
And I think it made me a better man.

9/23/05

What is Feminism Today: Do you consider yourself a feminist? If you did at one point in your life, why don’t you anymore? What do you think the term describes? Do you think feminism is still needed?  We'll look at what the movement accomplished and its relevance today. 

Jack will be talking with Patricia Hill Burnett, who convened and chaired Michigan's first NOW chapter as well as the Michigan Republican Women's Task Force, and Dyann Logwood, Founder of HUES Magazine and Lecturer in Women's Studies at Eastern Michigan University and Wayne State University.

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Jack's Essay: Sports Then & Now - 9/22/05

I never played organized sports as a child, for a variety of reasons. Mostly this was because I have the athletic ability and coordination of wet linguini. The times were different, though. This was the early 1960s. In my day kids could, and did, play a form of baseball in the front yard with a deflated beach ball.
Today, it seems that suburban parents get nasty looks if their kids aren’t constantly in organized activities. Take my godson Nick, who is seven years old and crazy about all sports.
His favorite is hockey. His parents take him to practice at 7:30 on weekend mornings. They take him to games on Friday nights, when they are both exhausted. He lives near the Detroit Zoo, and last year was in a league which had playoffs and tournaments– for six year olds -- in places like Flint and Muskegon.
Last year, his parents spent more than $2,000 on everything from equipment to ice fees.  I don’t know how they do it, and it seems clear that any poor child would be priced right out of kiddie hockey.
His mother, Alice, a writer in her early 40s, told me she was vaguely uneasy that things are so structured these days, but, as she said, “that’s the way things are now. And they make you feel like a bad parent if you say your kids are just out playing.”
That doesn’t mean sports have prevented Nick from being well rounded. Back when he was four, he used to stand in his driveway and sing the American and Canadian National Anthems before imaginary hockey games.
One day, after the Olympics, he asked if I could teach him the Russian National Anthem. I said yes. But not quite yet.
Dosvedaniya, tovarishchii. 

9/22/05

Are Sports Good for Kids? On one hand you've got physical fitness and "the building of character". On the other, injuries and an overemphasis on winning. Are sports good for our kids?

In an age where parents punch out game officials and tight budgets force cuts in other programs, it's a good time to examine our obsession with kids' sports here in Michigan. 

What's been your experience with kids and sports? 

Jack talks with Eve Claar, the Assistant Athletic Director at Ann Arbor's Pioneer High School; John Johnson from the Michigan High School Athletic Association; and Daniel Gould who is the Director of the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports at Michigan State University.

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Jack's Essay: Of Planes and Trains - 9/21/05

L. Brooks Patterson, the colorful Oakland County executive, doesn’t think much of mass transit. That is, as we normally think of it. But the fact is, Brooks uses mass transit all the time.
His preferred form of mass transit is called an airplane, which he frequently uses when going out of town. That’s a form of mass transit favored by even the rich, since few own private jets.
On the ground, of course, it is a different story. Patterson would prefer to spend money on widening I-75.
That’s easy enough to sneer at. How terrible – wider freeways   just encourage urban sprawl. But would all the good liberals who would prefer a light-rail line use it enough to make a difference?
Frankly, I doubt it. And here’s what I think the big problem is. The world of work is changing. Mass transit made a lot of sense when people went to work at one place at a regular time every day, and then stayed there till they came home.
Many people still do that. But a lot of us have to scoot around daily from place to place. Then we get home and drive the kids to hockey practice or drum lessons. Almost none of us really believe yet that we are going to have to change our lifestyle.
And yet, I think about all the people in Detroit who can’t drive or have no money for a car. There are jobs in Brooks Patterson’s suburbs they could fill, but there is often no practical way for them to get there. I don’t know what to do about that.
I am not sure who does. But I am sure that sooner or later, this is going to cost us all.                     

9/21/05

Public Transit: The federal government is giving southeast Michigan officials $100 million to design a light-rail line between Ann Arbor and Detroit. And a number of communities from Grand Rapids to Sault Ste Marie are putting money into their public transportation system. The question is if a community builds a public transportation system, will you actually use it? What would it take to get you to forget the car? Do you want public transit? How would it change things for you or your community? We’ll talk about when public transit makes sense and when it doesn’t.

Jack talks with Bob Prud'homme, President of Transporation Riders United; Carmine Palombo, Transportation Director for SEMCOG; Michigan Senator Alan Cropsey; and Joe Grengs a Professor of Urban Planning.

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Jack's Essay: Michiganders - 9/20/05

  Have you ever wondered why some people call us “Michiganians” while others say, “Michigander?” There is a story behind this, and it is one of my all-time favorites.
The term Michigander was coined by Abraham Lincoln himself. Back in 1848 he was a lowly first-term Whig congressman, while Lewis Cass, the political godfather of Michigan, was the Democratic nominee for president. 
They were political opponents. And Cass, who was a powerful senator, also had the approximate profile of a mature goose. So during an argument over some issue Lincoln got up and called him “The Great Michigander.”  The name stuck.
And I have always felt that if the word was invented by Abe Lincoln, it is good enough for me. Sorry, Michiganians. Besides, I am shaped more like Cass than I’d care to admit.
But there’s more that divides us than a name. I’ve never been to Ironwood, in the far western corner of the Upper Peninsula. In fact, Ironwood is closer to St. Louis than it is to Detroit. 
Yet we have shared history. We are, in other words, all in this together. Joining Saskatchewan isn’t really an option.
Ironwood was a lot harder to get to during the Civil War. Yet we hung together, and in fact Abe Lincoln, then president, and old Lewis Cass joined forces.
The original Michigander came home to lead the effort to raise troops, and lived just long enough to see his union preserved.
We have a pretty good state here. Seems to me the latest generation of Michiganders ought to try to make it work better for all of us. Somehow, I think both those old guys would like that.

Sept. 20, 2005

Is Michigan One State:

You might read the Free Press and root for the Lions.

Maybe you get the Tribune and follow the Bears.

You might even be closer to Lambeau Field and the Green Bay Packers.

Michigan is vast state with a diverse population.  Are we a unified state or more like city states with wildly differing agendas?  What influence do the various regions have? And what brings us together?

Jack talks with Bill Thomas the editor of "The Traverse Record Eagle", Bill Rustem who is the President of Public Sector Consultants, and Bill Anderton, the Director of the Center for UP Studies at Northern Michigan University.

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Jack's Essay: Taxes & the Ice Man - 9/19/05

These days, whenever people talk about taxes and the high cost of government, I think of the Ice Man. On this day in 1991, a frozen body was discovered in the Austrian Alps.

It turned out to be the corpse of a prehistoric man who had been dead for more than 5,000 years.

There’s lots we’ll never know about the ice man, but we are fairly sure he didn’t pay state taxes. On the other hand, there weren’t any roads. There weren’t any police or schools. There also wasn’t any health department – his autopsy showed he had worms. And he could have used some police protection, since he had an arrow in his shoulder that probably caused him to bleed to death.

These days, most of us pay more taxes than the iceman – and are better off. Taxes, as Oliver Wendell Holmes said long ago, are part of the price we pay for a civilized society.

That doesn’t mean we can’t moan about them. But we have to get real. We all might be able to buy a new flat-screen TV if we stopped funding

Michigan’s universities, but that would kill our state’s ability to compete in the economy of the future.

Without world-class universities, Michigan could turn into Mogadishu – with ice storms. Unless we fix our roads properly, we risk paying a lot more when a pothole destroys our car.

Our lawmakers, from the governor on down, need to face the truth contained in two clichés. First of all, you get what you pay for. And second, there really ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Wendell Holmes was right. A civilized society is worth paying for, unless you prefer the Iceman’s life –cold, illiterate and infested with worms.

And incidentally, Justice Holmes was a Republican.

- Jack Lessenberry