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Autobiographical writing
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I’M FOR BERNIE
It is December, 2015, eleven months before the presidential election. Candidates for the Democratic and Republican nominations have already been campaigning for close to a year. The GOP had about 16 candidates and is now down to half that number. The Democrats started with five and are down to three.
Actually there are only two—Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders—and I suspect many Sanders supporters doubt that Bernie can get the nomination. 2016 is supposed to be Hillary’s coronation. If Bernie’s people are like me, they are excited that a democratic socialist is getting the kind of coverage, crowds and contributions that he is getting. What Bernie is doing is educating America, and pushing Hillary to the left. Nobody has done anything like that before. Bernie is giving Hillary a run for her money. And she has big money behind her. It was supposed to be a shoo-in. The DNC is for Hillary, and they stacked the debates for her. Still, Bernie might even take New Hampshire.
In 2008, we elected a black president. In 2016, we are supposed to elect a woman. Why not a Jewish socialist? I should note that Bernie made it clear from the start that he is in this race to win, not to educate America or push Hillary to the left. When he started, the polls gave Hillary over 60% to Bernie’s less than 5%. By July, Hillary was still over 6o% and Bernie at 12%. As of this writing, it is 56% to 34%. And 43% of Democratic voters say that Bernie shares their values.
Bernie has raised real issues, and the crowds are coming out to cheer him. He is talking about what many of us have been talking about most of our lives: Income and wealth inequality, decent paying jobs, a living wage, free public higher education, getting big money out of politics, civil rights, women’s rights, single payer health care. And he has an impressive resume: Mayor, Congressman, Senator.
Come on. Did we ever, in the furthest stretch of our imagination, envision a nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn, and a democratic socialist, running for the Democratic presidential nomination, and having a chance of getting it and being elected?
In 1932, and I assume in 1928, my mother voted for the Socialist Party candidate, Norman Thomas. After FDR was elected in 1932, Socialists accused him of stealing the Socialist Party platform. Almost everything that FDR did to get America out of the depression had been originally proposed by Thomas.
In 1936, my mother’s union, the ILGWU, together with several other “socialist” unions, formed the American Labor Party in New York to enable workers to vote for FDR without having to vote the capitalist Tammany star. Dubinsky was a practical man. America wasn’t going to elect Thomas. Support Roosevelt, and we will have a president who will support organized labor.
Many of us used to accuse our parents of voting for any candidate who is Jewish. What is wrong with that if the Jewish candidate is concerned with advancing Jewish concerns and protecting Jewish interests in a period of racism and anti-Semitism? They emphasized Rabbi Hillel’s “If I am not for myself, who will be for me…” The next generation emphasizes “But if I am only for myself, what am I?” A good democratic socialist position. Bernie is fighting for Tikkun Olam, to repair the world; for a Shenere un Besere Velt, a more beautiful and better world.
I regret that the two democratic socialist thinkers and writers who best articulated the position that Bernie holds, my heroes Michael Harrington and Irving Howe, are not around to enjoy Bernie’s success. Thanks to Bernie, socialism is no longer a dirty word, and no longer equated with communism. And people are finally getting the message that America’s millionaires and billionaires are really calling the shots, ands it does not have to be that way.
For years, we have been voting for the lesser of two evils. We went to the polls and held our nose and voted. We had to be practical. With Bernie, we have someone who is everything we could want in a candidate. And if he gets the nomination, he won’t be a third party candidate. He will be running as a Democrat. A Democratic Socialist! I’m for Bernie.
12-28-15
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I'm for Bernie
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Jacob Schlitt
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"It is December, 2015, eleven months before the presidential election."
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2015-12-28
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I'M_FOR_BERNIE
DSA (Democratic Socialists of America)
ILGWU
Observations
Politics
Socialism
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Autobiographical writing
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For a lot of years—say from before the turn of the century (the 20th) until the 1960s—there was a group of remarkable Jewish labor leaders leading what was known as the Jewish unions. (The same unions had a large Italian membership and Italian locals with able leaders like Luigi Antonini.) The most prominent were David Dubinsky of the ILGWU and Sidney Hillman of the ACWA. There were scores of others, and Dubinsky was followed by Stolberg and Chaikin, and Hillman by Potofsky and Sheinkman. The Hatters had Alex Rose, the Furriers had---etc. There had also been Jewish labor leaders who led unions that did not have a large Jewish membership, the best example being Samuel Gompers.
The fact is, that the “Jewish” unions stopped being Jewish during the 1940s. The old-timers were retiring, and they were being replaced by black and Hispanic workers in the large metropolitan areas—New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Los Angeles etc. And when the garment shops ran away from the Northern metropolitan areas to rural areas and the South, the workers were mostly WASPS, white and mostly Protestant, like Norma Rae.
Interestingly, the organizers who followed and attempted to organize those runaway shops were mostly Jewish. And the union officials in the large metropolitan areas were mostly Jewish. So for a while, the Jewish leadership and staff of the once Jewish unions, now consisting of urban minorities and rural whites, remained in place. As an aside, a Jewish staff member of the NAACP led the attack on the ILGWU claiming that its black members were denied leadership positions. Over the next decade, the garment factories which ran away from the metropolitan garment centers to rural America and the South, ran to Latin America and Asia, and the garment unions faded away.
But then there was a reemergence of Jewish labor leaders, among the teachers and public employees. Some of the children of Jewish workers, finished college and went to work for a wide variety of trade unions. I grew up aware of, and proud of, Dubinsky and Hillman. When I had the opportunity, I became one of those Jewish organizers, starting out trying to organize non-Jewish garment workers in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Then non-Jewish alteration workers and shipping clerks in New York. Yes, and all of the locals and districts for which I worked were headed by Jewish officials: Pennsylvania—Sol Greene; Ohio—Nicholas Kirtzman, Local 38—Isidore Sorkin, and Local 99--Shelley Appleton.
When I left the ILGWU in 1956, I went to work for the Jewish Labor Committee, getting to know hundreds of Jewish labor leaders. Many were the legendary pioneers who created powerful unions. Politically, they were socialists who received their early training and point of view in Eastern Europe from the Jewish Labor Bund, which they adapted to the American scene. I also had the pleasure of working with the next generation of Jewish labor leaders: Charles Cogen and Al Shanker of the Teachers (AFT), and Jerry Wurf of the Public Employees (AFSCME).
In 1962, I left the JLC to serve as the Education Director of the Amalgamated Laundry Workers Joint Board, headed by Louis Simon. He was Jewish, but had no connection with the Bundists. In fact, as far as I know, he had no connection with any Jewish organization. He became the manager of the Laundry Workers because he was a laundry driver, and a rank and file leader. Simon had a remarkable sense of self-preservation.
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application/msword
Dublin Core
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Title
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Untitled
Creator
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Jacob Schlitt
Description
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"For a lot of years—say from before the turn of the century (the 20th) until the 1960s—there was a group of remarkable Jewish labor leaders leading what was known as the Jewish unions." (Fragment)
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2015-04
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application/pdf
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en
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For_a_lot_of_years—say_from_before_the_turn_of_the_century
AFSCME
ILGWU
Jewish Identity
Jewish Labor Committee (JLC)
Labor Movement
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Autobiographical writing
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
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HOW I HAVE BEEN OUTSMARTING EVERYBODY
Some time ago, I wrote a piece that I called “We Are Outliving Our Bodies.” I have been thinking about a similar piece, but a confessional, about how I have been outsmarting everybody. This is not a new thought. Perhaps it suggests a low opinion of myself, and a feeling that I have gone through life fooling people.
I have been successful at almost everything I have done, with a few exceptions (which must have been when I failed to fool someone.) As is my wont (what a phony phrase), I shall begin at the beginning, or at least my first memories of outsmarting folks.
School: From elementary school on, I saw it as a contest between the teacher and me-- the class struggle. The teacher was the boss and I was the worker. She (it was almost always she) gave us homework, which we had to do. I tried to do it as quickly as possible, listening to the radio at the same time. I turned in the homework, and most of the time I outsmarted the teacher, making her think I really learned the material. At the end of the term, I crammed and passed the final exams. I called it legitimate cheating. Of course, I listened, and participated in class, fooling everybody, including myself. There were subjects I liked, and teachers I liked, but I would never admit it. If I did, I would have been a traitor to my class (economic, not academic). This changed toward the end of high school.
In my senior year, it seemed that Stuyvesant was colluding with us, helping us prepare for the Regents Scholarship Exam. Exams are supposed to be a test of what you know. We were given lectures and material on lots of stuff we did not know, and engaged in cramming (legitimate cheating) to outsmart the exam. We were taught tricks on how to move through a multiple choice exam, which gave us an edge. I vividly remember handouts about literature. I learned about books I never read, but I was able to answer correctly questions about them as if I had read them. I was being taught “How to Outsmart Everybody” including the Regents Scholarship Exam.
My marks (not Marx) got me into CCNY, and I applied the lessons learned about outsmarting, over the next four years. Sure, I was smart. So was everyone else I knew. I had to be a little smarter to get a better grade, and I had to do it without cheating and without “brown-nosing.” So I did not make Magna or Summa. But I did get into the ILGWU Training Institute by outsmarting the Selection Committee, though I almost outsmarted myself. And I did get A in 29 credits out of 31, going for a Master’s in Education at CCNY while attending the Training Institute. By this time, I no longer saw the teacher as the boss. He (it was almost always a he) was also a worker, and was aware that I was carrying a double load. I actually missed class when I was out of state, organizing, and was given make-up assignments. I did not have to outsmart anyone.
Work. I feel as if I have been outsmarting people throughout my work life; as if I never was who I appeared to be. The years I spent with the ILGWU started in a yearlong class which was meant to turn us into the garment workers we were to organize and represent. True, the ‘50s were not the ‘20s and ‘30s, when the leaders and union staff rose up from the ranks. I was a college graduate, not a garment worker.
When I went to work for the Jewish Labor Committee, founded by Jewish, East European-born union leaders, I “outsmarted” my new employers into thinking I was “one of them.” Since I had worked for the ILGWU, and since the President of the ILGWU was David Dubinsky, who was the Treasurer of the JLC, I must be OK. I assume they assumed I was a YPSL, a member of the Young People’s Socialist League. I was not.
I learned “on the job.” I learned about the other “Jewish unions” and about the role the JLC played in rescuing Jews and Socialist labor leaders from the Holocaust. I became an authority on Jewish community relations, in the fight for equal rights and the role of minorities in unions. I fooled a lot of people. I edited the JLC’s publications, and represented the JLC at union conventions, outsmarting more people.
In my next job with the laundry workers, I outsmarted my new employer into thinking I was an expert in labor education. I even outsmarted myself. I continued to work with him in his role as chairman of the NY AFL-CIO Civil Rights Committee, but I also created classes for laundry workers and retirees, edited their newspaper and other publications, taught summer school programs, developed a scholarship program for children of laundry workers etc.
All this led to me being offered a job as Education Director of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Workers, by their new president, Jerry Wurf. I accepted, we moved to Washington DC, and within a year that job ended. Seems I wasn’t able to outsmart Jerry. As with everything I have already written and will still write, nothing is as simple as I make it sound, but it comes close.
With the help of a friend, I outsmarted the US Commission on Civil Rights, and managed to work for them for the next 21 years. One couldn’t ask for more job security than with a Federal job. Still, I managed to form a union among my fellow workers, perhaps outsmarting them into believing they needed a union to represent them. When the Commission decided to open a New England regional office, I outsmarted the agency’s director to appoint me to the position.
When our office was closed as a result of a major budget cut, I even outsmarted Governor Dukakis of Massachusetts (again, with the help of a friend) to appoint me to the Board of Review of the Department of Employment Security. I was not able to outsmart the new Governor (William Weld, a Republican). But for my final act of fooling people, I even outsmarted Attorney General Scott Harshbarger (or rather, his assistant) in hiring me as an Inspector in the Fair Labor and Business Practices Division, from which I retired, outsmarting the Commonwealth’s Retirement Board into providing me with a small pension.
Do I dare discuss my personal life? Was it a case of “outsmarting” Sylvia that led to our marriage, and did she finally figure me out, after 20 years, and decide that she will no longer be outsmarted? As I already said, nothing is as simple as I am making it.
Did I outsmart Fran, until fate outsmarted both of us? That is all I am going to say about my personal life. The wonderful thing about these pieces is that I can pick and choose what I want to reveal. Still, I maintain the premise: I have gone through life outsmarting most everybody.
11-15-14
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application/msword
Dublin Core
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Title
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How I Have Been Outsmarting Everybody
Creator
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Jacob Schlitt
Description
An account of the resource
"Some time ago, I wrote a piece that I called 'We Are Outliving Our Bodies.'"
Date
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2014-11-15
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application/pdf
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HOW_I_HAVE_BEEN_OUTSMARTING_EVERYBODY
AFSCME
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Autobiographical writing
Text
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THEY HAVE TO HAVE IT
These days, you can’t pick up a newspaper without coming across a story about some sexual transgression on the part of a prominent political figure. Seems these guys just “have to have it.” The fact is, a great many men would like to “have it,” more than they are getting it. Most keep their sexual appetites under control. I would guess that sexual appetite, as with most traits, follows the bell-shaped curve.
What follows are brief portraits of four colleagues with whom I worked over a 20 year period. who had to have it, and went after it. Two were single and two were married. They displayed varying degrees of indiscretion, hitting on almost any attractive female they came across. They also were in positions of power. Was it Henry Kissinger who said: “Power is the great aphrodisiac?”
When I joined the ILGWU Training Institute in 1950, it was clear to me that one of the administrators, who was single, was one of those who had to have it. I am sure that early on, he hit on two of the women in the Institute. And I am sure that he was rebuffed. But being a part of an industry with so many young female workers, what a field day he had! He moved on from the Training Institute to the union’s southern region, and he continued to more than fulfill his sexual appetites.
During my time with the union, I had heard of many stories where male organizers were successful in organizing shops through romantic involvements with key female workers. This was not my experience, but I only organized one shop as an organizer with Local 38.
In 1956, I moved on to the Jewish Labor Committee. I soon became aware that one of the staff members, who had a very beautiful wife, was also one of those who had to have it. From the outset, I learned that when he went on out-of-town trips, he would be involved with a variety of women. He told me that when he checked into a hotel with a lady friend, he would use the name, Theodore Brown. He shared this information with me, in case there was an emergency and I had to get in touch with him. At conferences that we attended together, he spent a great deal of time at the bar in the evening, charming the ladies, and always arriving a little later to morning sessions. Still, there was, to all outward appearances, a warm and loving relationship between him and his beautiful wife.
I left the JLC in 1962, and went to work for the Amalgamated Laundry Workers Union. One of my closest friends there was a young business agent who represented the members working in the unionized laundries in upper Manhattan. He was happily married and lived in Queens. They had no children. From time to time friendships developed between workers and business agents. I suspect not more than one friendship per shop. My friend developed several friendships in several different shops, and one of those friendships resulted in the birth of a baby. The young woman left the laundry, and my friend created a second family. He would visit her and the baby regularly, and provided for them. At union functions, he and his wife from Queens, made a lovely couple. To all outward appearances, theirs was a warm and loving relationship.
In 1965, I went to work for the Field Services Division of US Civil Rights Commission. The director who hired me moved on to another agency, and was succeeded by a younger man who was from a prominent black family from Nashville, Tennessee. (There is a Middle School in Nashville named after his father.) He was handsome, bright, and gave the impression that he always got his way. And just like the administrator at the ILGWU Training Institute, he hit on every attractive woman he came across. He was the Commission’s playboy, a sharp dresser, and into all the fads—motorcycles, marijuana and the latest music. He made out like a bandit. For a while he had a steady girl friend, but the temptation to dabble was too great, and that relationship ended. He developed a reputation among the circle of young, attractive, African American women in D.C. as someone who couldn’t be counted on for a long-term relationship.
I tried not to sit in judgment of my four colleagues. I was neither critical nor envious. They all happened to fall on the extreme right of the bell shaped curve.
10-4-12
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application/msword
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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They Have to Have It
Creator
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Jacob Schlitt
Description
An account of the resource
"These days, you can’t pick up a newspaper without coming across a story about some sexual transgression on the part of a prominent political figure."
Date
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2012-10-04
Format
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application/pdf
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text
Language
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en
Coverage
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1950/1969
Identifier
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HAVING_TO_HAVE_IT
Career
Civil Rights
Dating
ILGWU
Jewish Labor Committee (JLC)
Sexuality
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Autobiographical writing
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HATS
Recently, David and I were going to participate in a labor demonstration at Walmart, and I asked David if he wanted to wear a cap with the name of a union on it. He said no. He was wearing his union (GEO) tee shirt and he felt that was sufficient. I kept looking for my “UNITE” cap, but then I realized I had given it to David, and he had left it in Ann Arbor. So I put on my UFCW tee shirt and we left without hats.
Which got me to thinking about hats and caps. First, the full name of the hatmakers union was “United Hatters, Cap, and Millinery Workers International Union.” It was one of the three “Jewish” needle trades unions. (The other two were the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America.) The “Hatters” had a long and distinguished history. They go back to 1885, when they were not a Jewish union. That came in 1934 when the United Hatters merged with the Cloth Hat, Cap and Millinery Workers, which was Jewish, and was founded in 1901, about the same time as the ILGWU.
One of the classic strikes in labor history was that of the Danbury Hatters in 1902. It ranks alongside the Lawrence Textile Strike, and the Dressmakers and Cloakmakers Strikes of 1909-10. About 240 hatters working for a large hat manufacturer in Danbury struck, and the employer brought in scabs. The union initiated a boycott of their hats, and the employer took to the union to court, charging it with conspiracy in restraint of trade, under the Sherman anti-trust act. After several years, the US Supreme Court ruled against the strikers, and awarded the company triple damages. To conclude the history lesson: The Hatters merged with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union in 1983, and they merged with the ILGWU in 1995 to form UNITE.
Where the garment unions were divided by sex (men’s clothing workers represented by the Amalgamated, and women’s clothing workers by the ILGWU), the workers who produced men’s and women’s hats (millinery) were represented by one union. In my day—the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s—there was a close political relationship between the hatters union and the ILGWU. Their leaders were democratic socialists (David Dubinsky and Alex Rose), and they came together in 1936 to form the American Labor Party (ALP). When the Communists captured the ALP in the early ‘40s, the ILGWU and the Hatters left and formed the Liberal Party. I realize this has nothing to do with the subject of hats, but I find it interesting.
Also, my first job was as a delivery boy for a small millinery shop on 38th Street off Fifth Avenue. It was the summer of 1942, I was 14 years old, and I was paid $8 a week. I assume the workers were union members. They made lovely felt hats with interesting trim—feathers, bows etc. I packed them in cardboard boxes with lots of tissue, and delivered them to nearby retail stores. This also has very little to do with the subject. While I am at it, in the early ‘50s, I was organizing custom tailors and alteration workers in the 57th Street and Madison Av. areas, and met Anne Draper who was organizing hat workers in the same area. Small world.
There was a time when no one, male or female, left their house without a head covering. Outdoor crowd pictures, from the turn of the century into the ‘30s and ‘40s, showed everyone with a hat. Even before my Bar Mitzvah in 1940, my mother demanded that, when I go to Shul, I wear a hat. And it had to be a felt fedora (which she called a “kupelich”), not a cap or a yarmulke. Somehow, hats have fallen out of fashion. The only person wearing a fedora these days is Paul Solmon reporting economic news on Public TV. I have two great fedoras but I don’t wear them. Hasidim and some other Orthodox Jews wear big black fedoras. They are cooler than the big fur hats, “shtreimels,” which Hasidim wear on special occasions. Orthodox women also wear hats.
When it is cold, I wear a cap. I have a brown cap, and two gray caps. I recently gave the brown cap to David. I used to buy caps in Filene’s basement, but it doesn’t exist any more. Many years ago, I was visiting my friend Sol in Phoenix, wearing a gray cap, which he admired, so I gave it to him. In return, he gave me a really neat cowboy hat. When I was in London, I bought one of the gray caps. The other gray cap, I bought on sale at the Gap. Of course it was made in China.
I never wore wool knitted hats, although I always bought them for my kids. Seeing grownups wear them, made me think that their mothers dressed them, insisting that they put on their mufflers and mittens and button up. They make sense if you are hiking or skiing or working outdoors, but not for office workers walking around town.
Finally, I have a closet shelf full of baseball caps. The only ones with union labels are the ones with union names on them. My Boston Red Sox caps are all knock-offs. They sell for $5 outside Fenway Park. The official Major League Baseball (MLB) caps, sold at the official MLB store cost five times as much, and there quality isn’t five times as good. I wear Red Sox caps when going to a ballgame or when I am on vacation and want people to know I am from Boston.
Though I am sure it is not required, professional golfers wear a variety of hats and caps, and many professional tennis players wear caps as well. Unfortunately, they tend to advertise different products.
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application/msword
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Hats
Creator
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Jacob Schlitt
Description
An account of the resource
"Recently, David and I were going to participate in a labor demonstration at Walmart, and I asked David if he wanted to wear a cap with the name of a union on it."
Date
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2012/2013
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application/pdf
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text
Language
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en
Identifier
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HATS
American Labor Party (ALP)
Clothing
David
ILGWU
Labor Movement
Socialism
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Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Autobiographical writing
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document
A DOCTORAL CANDIDATE
1951 was a very busy year for me. My mother died in March, I graduated from the ILGWU Training Institute in May, and received an MA from CCNY in June,. I had two summer jobs, one in July and one August. In September, I was admitted to the NYU Graduate School of Art and Science, and I started work as an organizer for Local 38, ILGWU. And in December, Sylvia and I married.
Having just found my NYU class notes, this piece will describe my graduate school experience that began in September 1951, ended in January 1954, and resumed again in February 1956. What follows is another example of chutzpah, at which I was becoming more and more proficient.
I enrolled in graduate school to keep out of the army. I was not the only one attending school as a way of avoiding the draft. There must have been thousands of us. We were in the midst of the Korean conflict, which did not have the same draw as World War II. It troubled me to realize the inequity between those who were able to go to college and those who weren’t. It was the poor and those not in a position to get college deferments, who made up the bulk of our armed forces then. Paying tuition was the cost of avoiding the draft. It was unethical; it was a violation of the idea that we all must serve. I was troubled when I equated my behavior to that of corporations that violated laws, and when they were caught and fined, wrote it off as a cost of doing business. I wrote off my tuition payments as the cost of remaining a civilian. If I remember correctly, tuition at the time was $20 a credit.
As a full-time graduate student, I carried four three-credit classes each semester. My earliest classes began at 4:15. The other classes started at 6:15 and 8:10. My classes met one day a week. I would try to group my classes so that I would have two classes an evening, twice a week. Clearly, NYU tried to accommodate graduate students who held full time jobs. But most of the other graduate students who worked full time jobs did not carry 12 credits. Classes were usually two semesters long, beginning in the fall session and continuing in the spring. I am sure the NYU Graduate School must have had classes during the day as well. It was a highly regarded university, although, at CCNY, we used to say that when a student dropped out of CCNY and went to NYU, he raised the academic standing of both schools.
My life pursuing a PhD at NYU wasn’t much different in terms of “setting” than Stuyvesant or CCNY. Each institution was located in Manhattan. Stuyvesant’s campus was 15th Street. CCNY’s campus was Convent Avenue, and NYU had Washington Square Park. I commuted to each school, and at each school I did whatever I could get away with. In fact, I was a more serious student at Stuyvesant and CCNY. I felt like a fraud at NYU. Most of my classmates were committed graduate students. They studied, they spent a great deal of time in the library. I was not committed; I did not study; I was almost never in the library. In fact, I never really learned my way around the school. All I knew was how to get to the buildings which housed my classes.
I started out by noting that I was motivated to write about my NYU experience after finding the notes that I took in class over the five semesters. (A definition of notes: something that goes from the instructor’s notebook to the student’s, without passing through the mind of either.) Where I previously took notes in the usual 8 1/2x11 inc notebooks, I kept all my notes in a small (3 ½ x 6 inch) pocket note book. I wrote with a fountain pen, and the script was quite small. Fortunately, my handwriting was better then than it is now. I may have used a pocket note book so that I would not be seen as a “student’ while working as an organizer. It slipped inconspicuously in my pocket.
If my high school and college experience was frenetic, life was even more frenetic going to NYU. I frequently left for work around 7 am to arrive before 8 am at the shop I was “organizing.” I would try to speak to the workers. and hand them leaflets as they were entering the shop. When everyone was in, I would go to the union office, and plan the rest of the day. I also did the reading for my classes at work. Many of my classmates read in the university library. I rushed from my job to class, and I rushed from class to home, with no library stops.
Majoring in labor economics, I met several other students taking the same courses. Two of them, who were also working for unions, became good friends: Ed Schneider of Local 91, ILGWU, and Tom Donahue of Local 32B, BSEIU Ed went on to become the manager of Local 91, and Tom moved on to the AFL-CIO as an assistant to President George Meany, and then was elected Secretary-Treasurer.
Reading my newly discovered notes, I began to question whether I really learned Business Cycles with Otto Nathan, or Labor and the State with Emanuel Stein, or The Collective Labor Agreement with Herman Gray. For the five semesters that I went to graduate school, I did the least that I could get away with. I was an active participant in the labor classes, but that was because I knew the material, and I managed to pass the tests.
I had hoped that I would continue getting away with doing the minimum. I took every graduate labor course that NYU gave, but then my “advisor” Prof. Emanuel Stein, caught up to me. He knew that I was working full time and taking 12 credits, but he also expected me to do the work that the courses demanded. Further, he expected me to take the more difficult, theoretical. economics courses. If I was going to get a PhD., I had to know more than labor relations, labor history. I took a couple of tough courses the next semester. They required work, and I didn’t give them the work they required. I skipped the final exams, and I received incompletes. It was the beginning of the end. I threw in the towel in January 1954, and was drafted later that year.
It felt strange, reading my notes, 60 years after taking all those courses. It felt even stranger, and embarrassing, realizing that I was unable to understand much of what I had written. All those facts. All those numbers. All those dates. All that jargon. I believe someone said that education is what is left after all the facts are forgotten. Anyway, I never claimed to be an economist.
I was amused to discover, as I worked my way through all those notes, that there were notes from the spring 1956 semester—on the same 3 1/2 x 6 inch, six hole note paper. I had done the same nefarious act in February 1956 that I had committed in August 1951. I conned the NYU Graduate School authorities into believing that I intended to resume my studies for a PhD. However, instead of keeping out of the army, I used NYU to get out of the army 90 days sooner. This too is described in another piece. I lied to the army, and I lied to NYU. I was supposed to serve 24 months and be discharged May 31, 1956. Instead I served 21 months and was discharged February 29. Again, I found a job with the ILGWU, this time with Local 99. I completed one more semester, and resigned. A few months later, I resigned from Local 99 and accepted a job with the Jewish Labor Committee. During that strange period, again taking classes at NYU, and working for the ILGWU, it felt as if very little had changed. As the months dragged on, I became more and more unhappy with Local 99. Looking for another job, I put a resume together, and under the heading “Education,” I listed a BS and an MA from CCNY, and five semesters of study toward a PhD at NYU. Pretty impressive.
(Going through my notes, I began wondering, why am I keeping them? I concluded, in order to write this. Now that it is written, I can throw them out. It will be difficult, but I will do it.)
Revised 10-10-12
Original Format
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application/pdf
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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A Doctoral Candidate
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jacob Schlitt
Description
An account of the resource
"1951 was a very busy year for me."
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2012
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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text
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en
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The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1951/1956
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
A_DOCTORAL_CANDIDATE
City College (CCNY)
Education
ILGWU
Labor Movement
NYU
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Autobiographical writing
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document
Reunions
I don’t know why, but I’m a sucker for reunions. Some people I know, could (or is it “couldn’t?) care less. But me, I love them. Curiosity? Nostalgia? Loyalty? School Spirit? A feeling of indebtedness? Maybe all of them.
I believe my first effort to pull together a reunion was in December 1951, less than a year after the graduation of the ILGWU Training Institute. There were 34 of us, and we were assigned, as organizers, to different ILGWU offices across the country. Since almost all of us were from New York, I thought that they would be coming home for the holidays. I wrote and called my colleagues and organized an evening reunion at my office on West 46th Street. I saw it as an opportunity to compare notes with regard to the work we were doing and the compensation we were receiving. About a dozen showed up. We all found it useful, and agreed to keep in touch.
Twenty five years later, I got the bug again, and organized a 25th Anniversary Reunion of the Class of 1951 Training Institute. This required a lot more work. It was 1976 and I was working for the US Civil Rights Commission in Washington. I contacted ILGWU President Sol C. (Chick) Chaiken to explain what I was planning, and to get his OK. I thought the best place for such a reunion would be Unity House, the union’s summer resort in the Poconos. He went along and asked Gus Tyler to work with me. I pulled together the addresses of as many of my classmates as I could locate, contrived a “Reunion Committee” and wrote to everyone. We held the reunion over the Memorial Day weekend, and managed to get a respectable group together. A good time was had by all.
Not one to give up on a good thing, in 1991, I set about to pull together a 50th Anniversary Reunion. I chose the Memorial Day weekend again, but there was no more Unity House. In fact, there wasn’t much left of the ILGWU. It had merged with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers , which had earlier merged with the Textile Workers. The union now called itself UNITE. Using the same approach, I contacted the union’s president; this time it was Jay Mazur. For the reunion’s location, I suggested the union headquarters, 1710 Broadway, where we had all started 50 years before.
I persuaded Jay to allow us to use the Union’s large conference room, and he even provided breakfast for us. He was invited to address the opening of the reunion and was delighted. Jay was a graduate of the Training Institute a few years after us. This was his last year in office. He was to be succeeded by the Amalgamated’s Bruce Raynor, who joined us the next day. My friends came through: Irv Weinstein, Dan Jordan, Nick Bonanno, Martie Berger, Aileen Hernandez, Jim Amos, Mimi Brin, Lou Brin’s widow, and Hal Etkin. Several sent their regrets, and described what they had been doing for the past 50 years, which were read to the group. I had asked Stan Aronowitz and Ron Bloom to serve as discussion leaders. We pulled it off. But there is not going to be another one.
I feel a profound loyalty to all the schools I attended: PS 62, JHS 52, Stuyvesant High School and City College. I don’t feel the same way about NYU, which I attended for 2 ½ years, the same amount of time that I went to junior high school. Possibly because I was going after work, was really not committed, and was attending in order to keep out of the Army.
Whenever I learned that Stuyvesant or CCNY were having class reunions, or some special event, I would try to get there. It became more difficult after I moved out of New York, but there were several occasions when I went to New York for the celebration. It usually required my convincing my friend Bob to go, and we would meet and go together. Neither of us had attained BMOC (Big Man On Campus) status, so we didn’t go for recognition. Just for one or morel of the reasons stated above.
When Stuyvesant High School closed its building on 345 East 15th Street and moved to a brand new facility at 345 Chambers Street, not only did Bob and I go, but we convinced several of our friends who went to Stuyvesant, to go as well. When, the CCNY class of 2009 graduated, and the school celebrated the reunions of classes that graduated in 1939, 1949, 1959 etc., I couldn’t resist. I drove down, got together with Bob, and we joined about 20 others to celebrate our 60th Reunion. We had our picture taken, were given fake straw hats emblazoned with “City College of New York,” and had seats of honor for commencement.
Next year is 2012. It will be 70 years since we graduated from Junior High School 52. I think it would be nice to arrange a reunion of our 9BR class. I suspect there may be a half-dozen of us still alive. We could expand the reunion to include the entire graduating class. The average age would be 84. Why not?
10-18-11
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
application/msword
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Reunions
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jacob Schlitt
Description
An account of the resource
"I don’t know why, but I’m a sucker for reunions."
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2011-10-18
Format
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application/pdf
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text
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A language of the resource
en
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1951/2012
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Reunions
City College (CCNY)
Elementary School (P.S. 62)
Friends
ILGWU
Junior High School (J.H.S. 52)
Memory
Stuyvesant High School
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Autobiographical writing
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document
My Life as a Writer
As I write these pieces, surveying my life, it occurred to me to look back on my life as a writer. Calling oneself a writer strikes me as pompous, if not delusional, if you are not a serious writer, or if you do not earn your living as a writer. I am neither, but I have been writing since my schooldays.
In elementary and junior high school, we all had writing assignments and I always tried to be original or funny, and most of the time I received a good mark and a complimentary note: very original, or very funny. In Junior High School, we had a literary magazine, “The Knowlton Herald,” and I joined the staff and wrote a couple of stories and a couple of poems. They were childish, something a 13 year old would write. My mother was pleased, and I was proud. Phil Alexander, who was a year behind me, wrote epic poems, which blew me away. He was a writer!
In high school, I tried keeping a journal. Calling it a journal sounded more grown-up than a diary. After a few months of the same repititious—“I got up, had breakfast, caught the train to school, met X, had a test, went to work” etc, the entries became more infrequent. (However, when the computer entered my life, I resumed these jottings.)
One of my new high school friends, Maurice Dunst, was the editor of Stuyvesant’s literary magazine, “The Caliper.” He was aware of my interest in writing and encouraged me to write something, suggesting a “how to…” piece. I came up with an article about graphology: how to tell someone’s personality through his handwriting. I did some research, got a writing sample from a friend, analyzed it, and voila!, my article was published. A couple of pieces in one’s junior high and high school magazines do not make you a writer.
I thought briefly about writing for my high school and college newspapers, but I worked after school, and the papers demanded a great deal of after-school time. Many of the students who wrote for them were interested in careers in journalism. I wasn’t. While in high school, I met a neighbor, David Futornick, who fantasized that we could be song writers. He would write the music and I would write the words. We tried it for a few months, and gave it up. “I’m rolling along, singing a song…”
I wrote lots of papers in college. So did everyone else. In my senior year, I was president of the Economics Society and editor of the Journal of Social Science. I was in a position to take a paper that I had written for an Economics class on the Incandescent Lamp Cartel, and adapt it for the Journal. And I did, footnotes and all.
In 1950, I entered the ILGWU Training Institute, and its classes required writing many short papers on a variety of labor-related topics. I enjoyed writing them. During this period, Irv Weinstein and I became friends, and we noted that we both liked to write. Irv asked me a question which still intrigues me: “Do you write because you have something to say, or because you want to see your name in print?”
In March 1951, my mother died. I was organizing in Cleveland. I flew home, found her will, and made arrangements for her funeral. In her will she wrote, “In the event that my son JACOB should prove to be a writer, I would like him to use the name Goldstein or Tsirelson.” I realized how my mother held writers in such high regard. To her, being a writer makes you immortal.
After the Training Institute, I went to work as an organizer for Local 38 of the ILGWU. I became a writer of leaflets. I would draft new leaflets almost every week, and distribute them to the workers at Bonwit Teller, Tailored Woman, Elizabeth Arden, Mainbocher etc. Not only did I write them, I would also design them, do the art work, and run them off on my own mimeograph machine. And make home visits at night. All for $60 a week. (It was 1952.) I also felt a close connection to the staff of “Justice,” the union’s newspaper, and over the three years that I was at Local 38, I wrote a few pieces about the local for the paper.
In 1956, when I went to work for the Jewish Labor Committee, I was delighted to learn that part of my job included editing “Labor Reports,” a monthly news service to the labor press. I felt very important. “Labor Reports” consisted of short news stories which I gathered over the course of a month, an editorial, a quiz called “Test You Labor IQ,” a cartoon by Bernie Seaman, and a column by either Alton Levy or Harry Gersh. A few weeks before going to press, I would call Bernie and Al or Harry and suggest a few ideas. I, a 29 year old “pisher,” was suggesting ideas to three of the best in the business. I was also given the responsibility for editing all of the JLC’s English publications. I loved it. A story about my editing: In an article by Israel Knox, which we were to publish, Knox wrote about the Yiddish writer, Avram Liessin. I had never heard of Liessin, and assumed that he meant Avram Reisen. I sent Knox the corrected copy, and he called me, and gave me a lesson in modern Yiddish literature.
During the six years at the JLC, I wrote lots of speeches, pamphlets, articles, minutes of meetings, and countless letters. Nothing that I would call really creative writing, but I enjoyed putting words on paper. I was dimly aware that I was surrounded by the last generation of Yiddish writers: Jacob Glatstein, Chaim Grade, and Isaac Bashevis Singer, who would drop by the JLC’s dining room (ess tzimmer) from time to time. The Garden Cafeteria on East Broadway had closed, so they came uptown to the Atran Center at 25 East 78th Street.
In 1962, I left 78th Street for 160 Fifth Avenue, the Amalgamated Laundry Workers. As the Education Director, I also assumed the mantle of editor of the union’s newspaper. When the Amalgamated Clothing Workers (ACWA), our parent union, celebrated its 50th Anniversary two years later, we sponsored a concert of the New York Philharmonic and I wrote the program insert. It summarized the history of the laundry workers union and contained reproductions of paintings of laundry workers. And when a new contract was negotiated, I put together a booklet explaining its provisions, something that had never been done before.
We skip to the US Commission on Civil Rights where I worked from 1965 to 1986, starting as a Field Representative and ending up as a Regional Director. It was our responsibility to provide information to the Commissioners on the status of civil rights in the States in which we worked. Each State had Advisory Committees which undertook investigations, held hearings, and wrote reports to the Commissioners. The reports were published and disseminated across the State. Over the 21 years with the Commission, I wrote a lot of reports. I also wrote monthly regional office reports for the Commissioners.
My next job was that of “Member” of the Board of Review of the Massachusetts Department of Employment and Training. We reviewed and issued decisions concerning unemployment insurance appeals. I was one of three members appointed by the Governor. After we made our ruling, a senior staff member would write the decision, to which all three members would affix their signatures. However, when I differed from my two colleagues, I would write a dissent. That was fun. I also became the poet laureate of the Board. When staff retired, I would write a poem in their honor. That was also fun.
I suspect this spurred me on to writing poems for special occasions, celebrating family and friends: birthdays, Bar Mitzvahs, weddings, anniversaries etc. I usually patterned the meter after a well known poem, though lately I have been doing sonnets. My friend Bob said there was a word for such a person. I was afraid he was going to say something like a bore, or a boor. He said it was applied to Oliver Wendell Holmes, so it couldn’t be bad: an occasional poet.
My last job before I retired in 1997, was Inspector with the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Fair Labor Division. Each inspection required the submission of a written report. I tried to raise the quality of those reports, but I don’t think it was appreciated. What I did do to fulfill my need to write was to initiate a Division Newsletter, which I edited. The director was delighted. I was delighted. The staff didn’t care much, one way or the other. When I retired, the director wrote a lovely tribute, and I wrote a farewell poem.
From time to time, the spirit, or a news item, moved me to write a letter to the editor. One was printed in the New York Times, and I basked in my 15 minutes of fame. On the strength of that I sent a few items to the Times’ Metropolitan Diary. It wasn’t published. Getting into the Jewish Advocate or the Brookline Tab is easy.
When I retired, I discovered the Brookline Adult Education program’s class “Telling Your Story.” I knew immediately that it was for me. I had been telling my story (and my mother’s story), orally, most of my life. Now, I will be motivated to write it down and make it available to the world, fulfilling my destiny as a memoirist.
10-4-11
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
application/msword
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
My Life as a Writer
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jacob Schlitt
Description
An account of the resource
"As I write these pieces, surveying my life, it occurred to me to look back on my life as a writer. "
Date
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2011-10-04
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application/pdf
Type
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text
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en
Identifier
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My_Life_as_a_Writer
Adolescence
Career
ILGWU
Jewish Labor Committee (JLC)
Writing
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Autobiographical writing
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document
BUSINESS CARDS
I still remember the thrill I felt when I was given my first box of business cards. It was September 1951, and I had been hired by Local 38 of the ILGWU as an organizer at $60 a week. I was a graduate of the union’s Training Institute, I had gotten my Master’s in Education from CCNY, I had worked as a substitute teacher in the New York City school system for $16 a day (which comes to $80 for a five day week), and I was starting graduate school at night at NYU. Up to that time I had never had a business card. When I was in high school, and met someone for the first time, I would very formally say, here is my card, and hand him a playing card, usually a jack.
I now had my very own business card. It had my name in the center, in capital letters, and beneath my name, in smaller letters was my title: “Representative,” supposedly more impressive than “Organizer.” In the lower left was the name of the union: Ladies Tailors. Custom Dressmakers and Alteration Workers Union Local 38, ILGWU, A F of L, and in the lower right, the address: 117 West 46th Street, New York, 36, NY.” The phone number was in the upper left: PLAZA 7-3575-6, and in the upper right was the printing trades union label, called the bug. I was very proud to have my own business card with my name on it. The prestige was worth the difference between what I was being paid, and what I would have made as a teacher. (I never realized that I could have had a business card printed, with “Teacher” under my name.)
I must have had 500 cards, and I gave them out to my friends and family, people I ran into at meetings and conferences, weddings and Bar Mitzvahs, and to workers I was trying to organize. I am sure it impressed them. It is 60 years later and I still have a bunch left.
When I returned from the army and went to work for another ILGWU local, the manager automatically ordered a box of business cards for me, but without consulting me. I was shocked when he handed me the cards. The layout had the name of the union in the center. In big letters: “LOCAL 99” and under it: “INTERNATIONAL LADIES GARMENT WORKERS UNION Affiliated with AFL-CIO.” In the upper left was the local’s seal, in the upper right the local’s phone number, in the lower right the local’s address, at the bottom, the union bug, and in the lower left, in small letters, was my name, “Jack Schlitt.” and below my name: “Representative.”
I have always objected to anyone calling me Jack, and here it was on my business card! I asked if it could be redone. I was told no. I did not give them out to friends and family. I have a lot more of these business cards left.
Not only did I not like the card, I wasn’t crazy about Local 99, and within six months I started looking for, and found, another job—with the Jewish Labor Committee, and was given another business card. This time, my name JACOB SCHLITT was back in the center in big letters, and under my name was my new title “Field Representative.” This one I could distribute with pride.
For all the years that I carried a business card, I have been troubled by the term, especially since I have been associated with labor, non-profit and government organizations all my working life. Why do I have to call it a “business” card? I associate business with exploitation, capitalism, profit-making. Even when I worked for a union, I knew I couldn’t call it a “union” card. It would be confusing. But I couldn’t think of another term. When I looked up “business” in the dictionary, the first definition was, “The occupation, work or trade in which a person is engaged.” I’ll buy that. And “business card” was defined as, “A small card printed or engraved with a person’s name and business affiliation, including such information as title, address and telephone number.” After reading that, I felt better.
Over the years, I have accumulated lots of business cards, all printed by my employer. That is, until I came to the US Commission on Civil Rights. Seems the federal government (or just my agency?) doesn’t print business cards for its employees. But I could get them printed by myself, and they would provide the awesome government seal. And that is what I did. I found a union printer, designed my own card, and had them printed at my own expense. It really wasn’t very expensive.
When I went to work for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I was again treated to a very pretty business card, printed by my agency. It was in blue ink, and my name and title were centered, and in the upper left hand corner was the State seal in blue and gold. What it did not have was the union bug. You can’t have everything.
Then I retired. After a while, I felt there was something missing from my wallet: A business card. For months, I kicked around different ideas for a card. How should it be laid out? What kind of stock? What font? Where can I find a union printer? The biggest question for me was: What title to give myself? I had gone from “Representative” to “Director” to my last job “Inspector.” How do I define myself? What word or words would go under my name? The following were some of the ideas I kicked around: husband and father (this was before I became a grandfather); meeting attendee; retiree; observer; thinker; commentator; multi-organization member; contributor; former representative- director-inspector; elder statesman; has-been. I was unable to settle on one. I intended to keep working at it.
One day, checking my e-mail, I came across an offer that was too good to refuse. Five hundred free business cards. You had a choice of two layouts. Send in your name; it would go on the top right in bold. Your address would go in the center on the right. You have three lines on the bottom for phone number; cell phone and e-mail address. A pretty design was on the left. Perfect! Neatly printed on the back in very small type was: Business Cards are FREE at www.vistaprint.com. A very small price to pay. I ordered them. They are in my wallet. I give them out at the drop of a hat. But there is no title under my name. And again, no union bug.
9-8-11
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
application/msword
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Business Cards
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jacob Schlitt
Description
An account of the resource
"I still remember the thrill I felt when I was given my first box of business cards."
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2011-09-08
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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text
Language
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en
Coverage
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1951/2011
Identifier
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BUSINESS_CARDS
Career
Federal Government
ILGWU
Jobs
Retirement
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2e2cf9b375281ba9ae68665dd4bea1cd
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Autobiographical writing
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document
My Life in Art
When I was in elementary and junior high school, I don’t remember art classes. (I remember music, but no art.) Kids today bring home reams of artwork, but not then. In junior high school, there were shop classes: wood shop, metal shop and print shop. I had all three. There must have been a print-making class since their work appeared in our literary magazine, The Knowlton Herald. They did linoleum cuts, and some of the art was very impressive. I didn’t take it, and I still have trouble understanding how you cut away material to make a picture. My son Lewis can do it.
Whatever drawing I did at the time, I did on my own, usually in class, like doodling. I would draw the back of the head of the person in front of me, and I would draw the classroom. The heads were easy, but getting the perspective of the room was much harder.
I should mention that there was art in our little apartment, which I simply took for granted. A French watercolor of a young woman in a field. Two small oils of a Dutch interior. And a marble bust of a woman on an ornate marble stand. There were hand painted plates from Limoges, and lots of cut glass. My mother had collected them in the ‘20s. I assumed every home had them.
My first exposure to clay was in summer camp, and right away, I loved the feel of it-- holding the clay and shaping it into different forms—animals, the human figure, and heads. I liked making heads and working the clay into ears, eyes, a nose, a mouth, a chin. Clay had a water base and hardened. We were also given plastiline (sometimes called plasticine), which had an oil base and stayed soft. At camp, it was part of “arts and crafts.” I don’t remember any instruction. The counselor was usually involved in teaching the kids how to make lanyards.
No arts and crafts in high school, though there were mechanical drawing and shop classes. And though there were studio art classes at CCNY, it never occurred to me to take one. We had “art appreciation” or art history, and learned about art from Egypt, Greece and Rome to the present day. I went to the art museums—the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Non-Objective Art, which became the Whitney Museum. A friend, Phil Bernstein, introduced us to the art galleries on 57th Street, and, as a college student, I felt I knew art. And I also knew the artists I admired the most: Michelangelo and Rembrandt. About this time, I started collecting art books—usually remaindered, and cutting out the art reproductions from Life magazine.
In my late teens and 20s, I tried my hand at pencil drawing, interiors and landscapes—trees and fields and buildings. After my mother died, I remember sitting in bed late at night, listening to music, with a book of art reproductions and a small drawing pad on my lap, using a conte crayon, copying paintings and drawings. I was amazed at how much time it took--- how quickly the time passed, and how much more I saw in the work of art by trying to copy it. The exercise was therapeutic, and some of my drawings were pretty good.
In 1951, I went to work for Local 38 of the ILGWU, and learned that the union, as part of its educational program, had an after-work sculpting class. I asked if I could take the class, and was told I could. It was held in the studio of Arturo Sofo, at 134 McDougal Street in Greenwich Village. I still remember the excitement I felt when I first walked into the studio: a large room filled with sculpting stands, plaster casts of various pieces of sculpture, boxes of plastiline, and shelves with students’ work. And 10 to 12 garment workers, young, middle-aged and old, men and women, who wanted to express themselves through sculpting. Our teacher was Arturo Sofo, a short, wiry man in his 50s, bald, always with a black beret. He was a respected sculptor, and a wonderful teacher.
For all of us, on entering the studio, the problems of the day were forgotten. We became sculptors. But first, Sofo had to tell us how to go about it. There was a lot to learn. What tools to get; how to build an armature; the proportions of the human body—skeleton, muscles; how to see and to translate what you see into a piece of sculpture. I went back to the Metropolitan Museum to look at those Greek statues (and Roman copies) again. Our first assignment was to copy the half size plaster cast of the Venus de Milo. Once we did that, we could go on to anything else. I found a sculpting stand, built an armature, put down a base of plastiline, and started to pile more plastiline on the armature. Eventually, it began to take the shape of a torso. Sofo would come over, look at it, and point out where I was going wrong. I would look at my figure, look back at the plaster cast, and, hopefully, see my mistake. I was learning what the human figure was like. It was great. I completed my first piece.
When a piece was completed, it was cast in plaster by an associate of Sofo’s who was a “master caster.” Sofo did not have the facility in his studio to do casting. When the piece was cast and returned to us, we would finish it, filing away the seam where the pieces were joined, and then giving it a patina. Sofo showed us how to paint the cast so that it would look like bronze or marble. I was pleased with my Venus, and then went on to do a head of Sylvia. Since I could not have Sylvia posing each week, I had photographs taken of her—front, sides and back—and had them blown up to life size. I built the armature, and worked from the photographs. When I completed it, and it was cast, and I gave it a marble-like patina, My second piece of sculpture. Way to go.
After I completed Sylvia’s head, I was ready to tackle Michelangelo. I had a book with photographs of Michelangelo’s Tomb of the Medici. I picked out one of a seated figure. It looked doable. An old man with his right hand on his heart and his left hand at his side, draped in a toga, It was hard, sculpting the face and hands, but I did the best I could. It still sits in a place of prominence in my home. I love when people admire it, and look surprised when I tell them I did it. When I visited Italy, I went to the Tomb of the Medici with great anticipation to see my “old man.” It is true that it is one of the smaller pieces, but there it was. I stood in front of it, transfixed. I foolishly told a guard that I made a copy of it, and he said casually that Michelangelo did not sculpt it. It was done by an assistant. He really knew how to hurt a guy.
I loved those two years of sculpting in Sofo’s studio. However, it came to an end in 1954 when I was finally drafted. Though I wasn’t sure what I would be doing in the Army, or where I would be assigned, I thought I might have the opportunity to sculpt, so I bought 10 pounds of plastiline from Sofo and took it along with me, just in case. There was a wood shop at Fort Dix, so I built a sculpting stand, and took that along as well. From Fort Dix in New Jersey to Camp Rucker in Alabama to Camp Gordon in Georgia, I shlepped those 10 pounds of plastiline and the sculpting stand. A year and a half, and I never took the wrappers off the plastiline.
When I returned to New York after my discharge, I returned to the ILGWU and to Sofo’s studio. It was wonderful being back, and I graduated to bas-reliefs. I did a bas-relief of my daughter Carol, and when the Jewish Labor Committee received a grant to establish the William Green Memorial Library, I sculpted a bas-relief of William Green for the library, both under the watchful eye of Arturo Sofo. By the late 50s, the ILGWU and Sofo came to a mutual parting of the ways. Sofo sold his wonderful studio and moved to Oswego New York, and the ILGWU was making major changes as well.
The sculpting stand and the plastiline were now in the basement of our apartment house in Brooklyn. One of our neighbors, Henry Zelwian, was a real artist. He taught art at Boys High School. Henry was a serious painter of landscapes, still life and portraits. We bought a wonderful painting of the flatlands in Brooklyn from him, and he did a portrait of Sylvia. She was now immortalized in plaster and oil.
We continued visiting art museums and galleries, and after we moved to Brooklyn, we added the Brooklyn Museum to our museum-going. It had some great sculpture by Lachaise and Maillol.. And we would take Carol, and then Lewis, and would push Martha in a stroller. The move to DC meant no more New York Museums, but we now had the National Gallery and the Phillips and the Corcoran, and then the Hirschhorn. I took a sculpting class at the Corcoran, which turned out to be a class where you assembled found objects and called it sculpture. I kept an open mind, but it felt like a children’s class to encourage creativity.
Turns out that my children were creative. Carol as a dancer and later, a photographer, Lewis as a print-maker and Martha as a potter. Whenever we went on vacation, I took a sketch pad along, and would sketch the cabin in which we stayed, and the landscape. And I took lots of pictures. As the kids got older, I bought each of them a 35mm camera—a Pentax K-1000--and they all became good photographers. For a while, I took photography seriously, learned how to print and enlarge my photographs, and thought about setting up a darkroom, but didn’t pursue it.
In 1979, when I moved to Boston, I found the Boston Center for Adult Education, and their sculpting class. The Center was located on Commonwealth Avenue in the Back Bay, only a few blocks away from my apartment on Beacon Street. That same feeling—forgetting the troubles of the day—returned when I entered that studio. The instructor was a talented young woman who graduated from Boston University with a Master’s in Fine Arts. Our class differed from Sofo’s in that we worked in clay, which was fired. And we had live models! Did I have a good time! Not only was there the thrill of creating “a work of art,” but I could look at naked ladies at the same time. Occasionally, our instructor brought in a male model. Oh well.
It was in this class that I began to learn about the importance of understanding the skeleton, and the body’s proportions—head, torso legs, arms. The model stood, or was seated, on a platform, which rotated, and the students did their best to reproduce the pose. It was important to work on the whole figure, constantly turning the model and your piece. I tended to work quickly, and usually completed a figure in one session. When our instructor had enough pieces, she would have them fired. After a couple of years, I accumulated a lot of pieces, and began to give them away to my children and friends. When Fran and I married and we moved to Brookline, I continued to take classes, but after a year or two, I gave it up.
In our new home, I set up a workshop in the basement, and finally took the plastiline out of its package. I made a few small figures (without a model) and left them on the sculpting stand, gathering dust. When David was around five, I suggested that he might like to play with the plastiline, and we tried sculpting animals together. We did it a couple of times. A few years later, Fran enrolled David in a children’s art class at the Museum of Fine Arts taught by Leila Rosenthal, and a few years after that, David graduated to her father, Ralph Rosenthal’s sculpting class. Coincidentally, I took an adult class with Ralph which I enjoyed very much. It was a new experience, sculpting a piece, and then breaking it up. I returned to sculpting from photographs. No models. In fact, Ralph encouraged his students to use their imagination. David spent several years with Ralph, and enjoyed sculpting (as I did) and made some fine pieces. I get a kick out of the fact that all my children have surpassed me in their artistic endeavors. I refuse to take credit for their accomplishments. I believe it is their talent, not my genes.
After I retired, I learned about the Evergreen Program at Boston University. For $20 you were able to take any class at BU that you could get into, limited to three classes. I couldn’t believe it. Looking over their catalog, I felt like a kid in a candy store. What an opportunity to take all those college classes that I could never fit in. Flipping the pages, I found the School of Fine Arts, and there they were: classes in sculpture! Three hour studio classes twice a week. Wow! I then looked for another class—in English, history, art or music appreciation, religion, economics--that I could take either before or after the sculpting class, and registered for both of them. I followed this routine for several years. The prices kept going up, traveling to and from BU was getting harder, and I took every sculpting class they gave, at least two times.
In my first sculpting class in Sofo’s studio, I was the youngest person among a group of older garment workers. Now, I was clearly the oldest person in a class of undergraduates. But I was finally getting the hang of it. If you are going to be a sculptor, you must learn how to use the tools of your trade: the material you will be sculpting—clay and plaster--and the utensils you will use to sculpt them. It took me a while to understand how to work the clay so there were no air holes, and how to keep the clay wet from one week to the next. How to mix plaster so that it is not too thick or too thin. How to build an armature. How to make a mold, and how to take it apart. How to repair a plaster cast if there is a break. How to finish the cast. I used many of the same tools that I bought when I was in Sofo’s class, tools for both clay and plaster. I made a few bas-reliefs as I did with Sofo. I did lots of torsos and figures from life, as I did at the Boston Center.
But I began to feel that, not only was I not improving, I was actually regressing. I reluctantly concluded that “liking to sculpt” is not enough. I seemed unable to progress beyond the fundamentals. With each piece, I had to relearn what to do. Someone said that art is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. I had neither. And it was getting harder to get to my sculpting class at BU.
The Brookline Senior Center started a drawing class. I signed up, and attended for a couple of years. The instructor was very encouraging, but I could see that my work left something to be desired. Something was missing in both my sculpting and drawing, and that something was talent. You’ve got it, or you don’t. I will “potchke,” from time to time, as the spirit moves me, recognizing that I am no artist. I will devote most of my creative energies to writing my memoirs, recognizing that I am no writer.
“Fish gotta swim. Birds gotta fly. And I’ve gotta write this stuff ‘til I die.”
January 31, 2010
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
application/msword
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
My Life in Art
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jacob Schlitt
Description
An account of the resource
"When I was in elementary and junior high school, I don’t remember art classes."
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2010-01-31
Format
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application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Language
A language of the resource
en
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
My_Life_in_Art
Army Service
Art
Boston
Childhood
Children
Family
Hobbies
ILGWU
New York City