Blame It On Brooklyn

Monday, January 16, 2017

2017 Immigrant name changes

Why Sam Ting and Sean Ferguson Never Were: The Ellis Island Myth

Steven B. Zwickel, 2016

“…the idea that an entire family’s name was changed by one clerk—especially one at Ellis Island—is seldom supported by historical research and analysis.

“American name change stories tend to be apocryphal, that is, they developed later to explain events shrouded in the mist of time. Given the facts of US immigration procedures at Ellis Island, the … story becomes suspect. In the story, the immigrant arrives at Ellis Island and a record is then created by someone who cannot communicate with the immigrant, and so assigns the immigrant a descriptive name. {See the Sam Ting and Sean Ferguson jokes in the endnotes}

“In fact, passenger lists were not created at Ellis Island. They were created abroad, beginning close to the immigrant’s home, when the immigrant purchased his ticket. It is unlikely that anyone at the local steamship office was unable to communicate with this man. His name was most likely recorded with a high degree of accuracy at that time.

“It is true that immigrant names were mangled in the process. The first ticket clerk may have misspelled the name (assuming there was a “correct spelling”—a big assumption). If the immigrant made several connections in his journey, several records might be created at each juncture. Every transcription of his information afforded an opportunity to misspell or alter his name. Thus the more direct the immigrant’s route to his destination, the less likely his name changed in any way.

“The report that the clerk “wrote down” the immigrants surname is suspect. During immigration inspection at Ellis Island, the immigrant confronted an inspector who had a passenger list already created abroad. That inspector operated under rules and regulations ordering that he was not to change the identifying information found for any immigrant UNLESS requested by the immigrant, and unless inspection demonstrated the original information was in error.

“Furthermore, it is nearly impossible that no one could communicate with the immigrant. One third of all immigrant inspectors at Ellis Island early this century were themselves foreign-born, and all immigrant inspectors spoke any of three languages. They were assigned to inspect immigrant groups based on the languages they spoke. If the inspector could not communicate, Ellis Island employed an army of interpreters full time, and would call in temporary interpreters under contract to translate for immigrants speaking the most obscure tongues.

“Despite these facts, the Ellis-Island-name-change-story (or Castle Garden, or earlier versions of the same story) is as American as apple pie (and probably as common in Canada).

From “American Names” by Marian L. Smith, INS Historian <http://www.iabsi.com/gen/public/imm_names.htm#changing_names>

Changing Names

If most immigrants had official documents with their real names when they came to the US, when and how did they change their names? The short answer is that before 1906, the only legal way to change one’s name was to get a court order making the change. After 1906, most people changed their names when they became naturalized citizens. The long answer can be found at United States Naturalization and Citizenship https://familysearch.org/wiki/en/United_States_Naturalization_and_Citizenship#Naturalization_From_1790-1906.5B2.5D Of course, anyone could use an alias or nickname in daily life, but “When an immigrant’s new name no longer matched that shown on their official immigration record (ship passenger list), he or she might face difficulties voting, in legal proceedings, or naturalization”. <https://www.uscis.gov/history-and-genealogy>
After 1906, most people changed their names officially when they became naturalized citizens. When the INS was created in 1906, naturalization records were created to process naturalizations and keep track of immigrants in the United States. Copies of these documents are in the possession of the former INS, now United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). <www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis>

Searching court records

Searching for official court records of name changes can be daunting. The changes were made in both federal and individual state courts. If you know where your ancestor lived in the US, you can try finding the name change records in state archives.

Try searching online using [State Name] + name change records. This is what I found searching for records in New York State:

New York State Records of Name Changes

New York State Archives Record Series Cited ›http://www.archives.nysed.gov/research/res_topics_gen_naturalization_namehttp://www.archives.nysed.gov/research/res_topics_gen_naturalization_name

“Many immigrants to New York legally changed their names in order to simplify the spelling, or to adopt an American -sounding name. Prior to 1875 a change in a personal name could be accomplished through a special act of the Legislature. In addition, an 1847 statute authorized a court proceeding for the same purpose. Any person over age 21 could petition a county-level court to issue an order changing his or her name.

“Starting in 1861 and continuing through 1912, lists of names changed by the courts (stating the old and new names, date of change, and court ordering the change) were published in the annual session laws of the Legislature. The court order changing a personal name is recorded in the county clerk's office in the county where the person resides. The name changes published in the session laws are indexed in each volume.

“If you know the year in which a person changed his or her name, you can find name changes by the Legislature and the courts listed in:
General Index to the Laws of the State of New York, 1777-1901 (Albany: 1902), vol. 2, pp. 1309-87

HathiTrust Digital Library http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hl3jkj

or

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.35112203969532

Google Books https://books.google.com/books?id=cLIwAQAAMAAJ&dq

and in a supplement for period 1902- 1907 (Albany: 1908), pp. 469-567.General index to the laws of the state of New York, 1902-1907, ...New York (State) pp. 469-567.
HathiTrust Digital Library http://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hl3jkj orhttps://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?view=image;size=100;id=hvd.hl3jkj;page=root;seq=475;num=469 Google Books https://books.google.com/books?id=tmMSAAAAYAAJ&pg

Example page from New York State Archives

New Jersey Legal Name Changes, 1847-1947

https://wwwnet1.state.nj.us/DOS/Admin/ArchivesDBPortal/NameChanges.aspx

Naturalization records

You may be able to determine if a name was changed from naturalization records.

Because immigrants were allowed to naturalize in any court, they often selected the most convenient court. If they lived in New Jersey but worked in New York City, check the courts of New York City for the naturalization records. If an immigrant lived on the border of a county, they may have naturalized in the adjacent county because the courthouse may have been closer.

These online resources include naturalization indexes as well as digital images of naturalization records.

« Online Searchable Naturalization Indexes and Records—Free links to naturalization indexes and records arranged by state. Gives statewide indexes and records first, then gives the countywide indexes and records. Updated regularly and a great place to begin searching for naturalization records on the Internet. <www.germanroots.com/naturalization.html>
« FamilySearch Historical Records—Free website containing indexes and images of naturalization records. New databases are added monthly. Search by state. <www.familysearch.org/search/collection>
« Fold3.com—Paid subscription, but free access is available at the National Archives, at National Archives regional branches, and at Family History Centers that have Internet access. Contains digital images of some of the National Archives collections. Naturalization databases on fold3.com are under the “browse all” link. Under category, click Naturalizations 1700s - Mid 1900s. Use the “search within” box at the bottom of the screen to type in a name. An “advanced search” option that helps narrow down common names when more information is known about the ancestor.
« Ancestry.com—Paid subscription website but many public libraries will give you free access. Most of Ancestry’s naturalization records are found under Immigration and Emigration.

New York, County Naturalization Records (Family Search Historical Records)

If you know in which county your ancestor lived and when he or she applied for naturalization, you can browse through images in this collection by visiting the familysearch.org browse page for New York, County Naturalization Records, 1791-1980 at <https://familysearch.org/wiki/en/New_York,_County_Naturalization_Records_(Family_Search_Historical_Records)>

To begin your search it is helpful to know the following:

« The full name of your ancestor
« The approximate immigration and naturalization dates
« The ancestor’s residence

If you do not know this information, check the 1900 census and then calculate the possible year of naturalization based on the date of immigration. The 1920 census may tell you the exact year of immigration or naturalization. If your ancestor naturalized before 1900, check the census records to see when he or she first appeared in the census. This will give you a 10 year window in which they may have immigrated.

Example page from New York County Naturalization Records

Jewish Family Names

The name “Zwickel” is probably not my family’s original name. Before the Jews of the Austro-Hungarian Empire were “emancipated” in the mid-1800s, Jews were known only by their Hebrew names and as the son or daughter of a Jewish man. {Shmuel’s father was named Yitzhak, so he would be called Shmuel ben Yitzhak.} After emancipation, the Jews were required to take last names.

“Jews in most of Europe did not use surnames until forced to take them by the governments in power from about the time of Napoleon. Before Napoleon, Jews used patronymics (Israel ben Chaim, for example, meaning Israel the son of Chaim). The Napoleonic reforms gave Jews more equal treatment by government but required that they take permanent surnames. The central and eastern European Empires saw the advantages of permanent Jewish surnames in terms of better tracking for taxes and military service. They adopted this requirement in the early 19^th century, with less attention to granting more equal treatment for the Jews.”

“Most states required that the selected surnames be in the language of the state, or at least that the names not be Biblical in some senses. The language of the Austrian Empire and of the Germanic states was German. The secular language of the Jews of central and Eastern Europe was Yiddish, a language with substantial roots in medieval German. The language of the Russian Empire was Russian, a Slavic language. Thus the surnames of central and eastern European Jews sound Germanic or Slavic because they are.”

“Sometimes there was indeed a meaning that might translate from a Hebrew term, but in some areas only a limited number of specified names were available for Jews to choose from.

From a submission to Gesher Galicia SIG by Peter Zavon

My own family’s story: Zwickel = Little Beet?
Legend has it that one of our ancestors, desperately trying to avoid serving in the Russian Tsar’s army, slipped across the border from the Russian Pale of Settlement into Poland. He is supposed to have been hidden in a wagonload of beets (or to have had a shock of dark red hair). In either case, when he emerged from his hiding place, someone called him a “Zwickel” a common local term for “beet” and the name stuck. There may be some truth to that: the Yiddish word for beet is tzvik צוויק and the Russian and Ukrainian word for beet is tzv’kl свёкла. The Yiddish word tzviker ערצוויק means pair of tweezers.

But there are other stories, too:

In German, a “zwickel” is a term used in sewing to describe a gusset, a dart, or a pinched fold of cloth. By extension, it also means a “crotch”.

Wolfgang Zwickel says: The name Zwickel derives from the place where the house stood. In Bavaria, a Zwickel is a street, which is divided in two parts like an Y—a fork in the road.

Michael Cwikiel wrote: the Polish word ćwik means “capon” (a castrated rooster) also used as a nickname for an imbecile. Ćwikl would be a small capon.

Ellyn Randy Zwickel said that in her family’s version Zwickel means “twig” in Yiddish and that it is short for a longer name. Possible, but the yiddishdictionaryonline.com translates twig as tsvaygl or צווײַגל.

Jonathan Leavitt wrote: “the Zwickel family of Brooklyn was reportedly descended from a Jewish family named RAUCH (German for smoke) or RAUSCH (German for a state of intoxication or inebriation), which lived in Galicia (the southwestern region of Poland), which was part of the Hapsburg (Austro-Hungarian) Empire prior to World War I.” [1] His grandfather supposedly purchased the papers of a dead man named Zwikel and assumed his identity to avoid being drafted into the Austrian Army. The exact same story came from the descendents of Wolf Zwicker (whose name was changed from Zwickel to Zwicker by clerical accident after he came to New York).

The Russian Czar conscripted Jews for 25 years of service, during which they were brutally treated and many were forced to convert to Christianity. But the Zwikels, living outside the Russian Pale of Settlement (a region where Jewish life was tightly controlled by Russia) did not have to worry about being drafted into the Czar’s army. The Zwikels were subject to Austrian laws, not Russian. They were eligible for service in the Austrian Army. Service in the Habsburg army was a trial, but the term was short and training often lackadaisical. In short, it doesn’t seem like evading the draft was worth the effort. One can find anecdotes about Jews avoiding army service by fleeing the country or by bribing officials (or by their parents failing to register their births!), but no credible source describes the strategy of a Jew buying a dead man’s papers. The Rauch/Rausch story is possible, but unlikely.

And I recently found a Yiddish-English dictionary that has a definition for viklen - וויקלען\VIK-len\ Verb \ Past Participle: Geviklt, meaning:

1. To wrap, swaddle.
2. To wind, spin (with the reflexive particle zikh [זיך]).
This word is the root of the word tseviklen (צעוויקלען) - to unroll, unfurl, deploy; as in the expression “Az men hot a kind in vikl, zol men shoyn avekleygn a tsvikl” Already when the child is in diapers, one should start keeping it in check (lit., one should apply a safeguard [to it]).

Conclusion

I have no idea where my family name came from.

Sam Ting and Sean Ferguson

A visitor to New York’s Chinatown was puzzled when he came across a building with the sign “Mendl Plotnik’s Laundry.” He walked into the shop and found that everyone working there was Chinese. So, he went up to the old Chinese gentleman behind the counter and asked, “How this place got a name like “Mendl Plotnik's Laundry?” The old man answered, “Ah...everybody ask me that. It name of owner.” Looking around, the visitor asked, “Is he here?” “It me," replies the old man, “I am Mendl Plotnik.” “Really? You're Chinese. How did you get a name like “Mendl Plotnik?” “Simple", said the old man. “Many, many years ago I came to this country. I stand in line at “Documentation Center of Immigration.” Man in front of me was Jewish man from Poland. Lady at counter look at him and say, ‘What your name?’” He say, “Mendl Plotnik.” Then she look at me and ask, “What your name?” I say, “Sam Ting.”

When Moishe emigrated to the US, he was told by his fellow shipmates that his Yiddish name would not work in America and he needs a new name for himself — one with an American sound. They suggest "Edward Montgomery."
When Moishe arrived at Ellis Island and he is summoned before the clerk, he is in a highly-nervous state and unable to recall his new name.
“Name”, asks the clerk and then, trying to be helpful: “nomen?”
Moishe is stuck, “Ah, ah — och, shoyn fargesn!” (he has “already forgotten”). The Ellis Island clerk promptly writes down the newcomer as “Sean Ferguson.”

[1] In the late 1700s, Poland was absorbed by Russia, Prussia, and Austria. In 1772, during the 1^st Partition of Poland, Austria seized all of Galicia. Galician Jews were compelled to adopt German sounding surnames on July 23, 1787, during the reign of Joseph II, (Empress Maria Theresa’s son) following the introduction, in 1781, of the first genuine reforms in Central Europe—Judenreformen und Toleranzpatent (Jew-reforms and Edicts of Tolerance).

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

I am Certain, I Think, About Uncertainty

May, 2003

Steven B. Zwickel

In 2003, someone in Guangzhou, China sent me a long email by mistake. It started out like this:

2002 My Political Rant

Steven B. Zwickel

November 18, 2002

What should we do when public servants put their own self-interests before those of the public? It seems that our elected representatives are caught in an endless cycle of fund-raising and campaigning that has plunged our whole system into a pit of corruption. They need help to escape this trap and to restore confidence in government.

Our representatives run for reelection for a variety of reasons. Some want to continue in office to press legislation on certain issues. They feel that public service is a noble calling that enables them to act as advocates for the issues that are important to them. Many of them see themselves as professional politicians and the process of getting reelected is a way of continuing their careers. All of those who run for reelection do so because they can, because there is no limit to the number of times a person can run for an office in this state.

The more times a politician gets reelected, the more seniority he or she acquires. In the legislature, seniority leads to an increase in power. The lure of power is a strong incentive to run for reelection.

This desire to get reelected is the root cause of all the problems our legislature has had in the past few years. When legislators have to worry about getting reelected, they can’t act on their principles—instead of doing what they think is right, they do what is popular. They try not to take positions on controversial issues, because these votes may be used against them in an election campaign. Even if a legislator has a strong opinion, he or she dare not express it, lest they give ammunition to their political opponents when they come up for reelection. This is why our legislators actually prefer inaction to action. No wonder so little gets done! And no wonder there is so much hoopla when a bill is enacted.

It also explains why all the candidates sound alike. They conduct polls to find out what the majority of voters think and then they try to please everyone. They all sound alike because they all base their campaigns on telling us what they think we want to hear. This is called “pandering” and it is a good indication of how rotten our political system has become. Our representatives no longer stand for anything.

The current system encourages politicians to avoid trying anything new. New ideas may be controversial and they can fail, so politicians have learned to avoid them. They have discovered that it is much safer to run on a platform that opposes new ideas. It is harder to defend an idea and to campaign in favor of doing something. It is the height of absurdity when campaigns become contests to see which candidate can come out against more things.

Perhaps the worst example of how our system has become dysfunctional is the political gridlock surrounding the issue of taxation. The candidates—every single one of them—promise to curb spending and cut taxes. If they are so absolutely determined to cut taxes, why haven’t they done so? The reason they have not cut taxes is because they can’t. They know it would be impossible to maintain the level of services we get from government if taxes were cut. We expect roads to be fixed, snow to be plowed, crooks to be caught and sent to jail, schools and libraries to be open and working, and cutting any of these would make the voters very angry.

The same legislators who can’t cut taxes can’t raise taxes either. All of them have pledged to never, ever raise taxes. This foolish oath, if taken seriously, means that, when the unknowable, unforeseeable, and uncontrollable come to pass (as they surely will) we can expect no help from the state. They are powerless to raise taxes, even in an emergency! In the recent budget crisis, any sane person would have (reluctantly, I think) concluded that a small tax increase would save the ship of state from deficits. Not one voice was heard in the legislature proposing this solution. The legislators know that a vote in favor of any tax hike is “political suicide”—something career politicians must avoid at all costs. Instead, they used the tobacco settlement windfall, which temporarily (at least until after the next election) solved the problem without raising taxes.

Are the voters opposed to tax increases? Of course we are. We don’t want to pay more taxes, but we aren’t stupid, either. Had the legislators raised taxes to balance the budget, we would have griped and complained, but I think we would also have recognized the importance of paying for all the things we want, and have come to expect, from the state. When taxes need to be raised, we need legislators who are not afraid to do the right thing.

Our politicians are constantly raising money to pay for the TV, radio, and newspaper ads for the next election. This need for money caused the scandals we have seen splashed all over the news. The need to raise money for campaigning has led some good people astray. Too many elected officials have given in to temptation and become deeply beholden to big campaign contributors and a lot less sensitive to the needs of their other constituents.

Who wins when a large donor’s interests conflict with those of the community? Can a politician afford to say “no” to a wealthy contributor? By saying “yes” and taking the money, he or she can more easily ignore the will of the public, because a big campaign warchest can be used to buy lots of ads that will put a positive “spin” on things. In other words, if you raise enough money, you can screw the public and later on persuade them that you actually did the right thing.

We have an elected body whose members are more concerned with getting reelected than with doing what is necessary to keep our state going. On some issues, like taxes, they seem to be completely immobilized. Their self-interest requires them to chase money in underhanded and illegal ways and to accept contributions knowing that they may have to vote against their consciences and against the best interests of their constituents. How can we get them out of this mire? Can anyone reform our state government?

The argument may be made that the legislators can reform themselves—that they can pass legislation that will solve these problems and end the abuses. If they could have, they would have. They can’t do it. They can’t reform themselves: they have too much at stake, they are too partisan, and they are much too much attached to power.

We, the people, will have to reform our own political system. We need an end to partisan gridlock. We need to stop the endless fund-raising and campaigning. We need to hold a convention, as described in Article XII, §2 of the State Constitution to put things right. And it needs to be a convention of the people, not of the politicians.

Let’s start by putting a clause in the Constitution limiting how much money anyone can contribute to a candidate. Make it a percentage of the salary for the office—say 1%—or use any formula, as long as it is applied fairly to all office seekers. This amendment needs to be airtight; there mustn’t be any loopholes. Let’s get rid of “deniability” as a defense. We can permit a candidate to make one “mistake”, but two violations of the law and you go directly to jail. Let’s treat candidates the way we are (finally) treating CEOs. They must be held personally accountable for what their campaigns do and they should be required to sign off on an outside audit.

It is also time to get rid of the career politicians whose pettiness, sneakiness, and partisanship got us into this mess. We need term limits. Other states have them and we would not be the first to try them out. Opponents of term limits argue that it means “throwing the good out with the bad” and that the end result is a terrible “loss of experience” when senior legislators are forced out. Needless to say, all the opponents of term limits are career politicians (and their backers) who have a lot to lose. Service in the legislature was never intended to be a full-time job, much less a career. Reelecting a batch of “experienced” politicians means bringing back all the old animosity, greed, and personality clashes that led to gridlock in the first place.

Term limits would free our elected representatives to devote their time in office to doing the job at hand instead of spending it fund-raising and campaigning. They could increase or decrease taxes as needed, regardless of how popular such a move might be. They could do the “right” thing and tell the special interests and big donors to take a hike.

We, the people, have to do a better job, too. More of us have to vote and all of us need to know more about the issues. But, we can solve the problems we face—in fact, we are the only ones who can do so.

More than 225 years ago, Tom Paine insisted that there comes a time when reform can’t be left to the politicians; when the people themselves must act. That’s why the authors of the Wisconsin State Constitution put in Article XII—so that we can do what needs to be done ourselves. Now, we must do it.

2016 Baby Boomers and TV

Steven B. Zwickel

May, 2016

I got caught a while back by some click bait on-line that promised me a listicle of ten TV shows that were most influenced the Baby Boomers. I read the list and I don’t agree with it at all.

Baby Boomers, for those who don’t know, are a huge group (nearly 80,000,000 people) who were born in the 20 years after WWII, about 1946 to 1964. (I have written this piece so people who are not Baby Boomers can follow it). It was an era marked by the “Generation Gap” and adolescent “alienation”, terms used to describe how teens came to distrust adults and to challenge the values they were raised with.

I divide the Baby Boomer (BB) generation into two groups— older and younger. Older BBs are those who were old enough to understand the events of November 22, 1963. Younger BBs did not. The two groups had different experiences growing up and the impact of TV was different on the two groups. Television changed in an attempt to attract younger BBs and to win back older BBs. The older BBs drifted away from TV in the 1960s and spent more time pursuing other interests (think sex, drugs, politics).

TV was different in the 1950s-60s, when the BBs were growing up. The target audience for most shows was the whole family, and advertisers were terrified of offending viewers. This meant that there were strict rules about content and language—no discussion of personal issues, no sex, no swearing.

The networks filled prime time—the hours between dinner and bedtime—with family fare and that is when most people watched TV. No one watched much TV in summer—it was all re-runs, except for baseball games (which were played in the middle of the afternoon until the TV people persuaded the owners to move games to a later time when more people could watch on TV). Up until the mid-1960s, we watched TV shows in black and white—few people could afford color TV.

The listicle I disagree with contained soap operas. I don’t know who was influenced by the soaps. And, as I remember it, the BBs were in school all day and it was only stay-at-home moms who watched the soaps.

The listicle also included the Tonight Show, but in the 1950s, few people stayed up late to watch TV because most had to get up early for work or school. Tonight started in the mid-50s and didn’t really become an institution until Carson took over in the early 1960s.

The listicle mistakenly included Sesame Street, which came along in 1969, long after the older BBs were toddlers. We did have TV shows for kids, but most had little-to-no educational content. The exception was Ding Dong School with Miss Frances, which only ran for a few years in the 1950s. Other shows for kids were the Mickey Mouse Club, Wonderama (both started in 1955) with people like Captain Video, Sandy Becker, Bill Britten (Bozo the Clown), and Sonny Fox. Total slapstick was found on another show that started in 1955 called Lunch with Soupy (Sales), but only preschoolers and sick kids who were home at mid-day got to see that show.

Well into the 1960s, radio was much more influential than TV. Radio was the source of the BBs music, which was a key part of the BB culture. And most families had a single TV, which was watched by everyone, while teenagers had their own portable “transistor” radios on which they listened to “their” music.

In the 50s and 60s, Hollywood movies were in a period of decline. The big stars of the 1940s were fading and the quality of the scripts and productions was weakened by the blacklisting of many writers. Attendance in movie theaters fell off and, to save the industry, movies wound up being shown on TV. NBC started the trend in 1961, with NBC Saturday Night at the Movies and the other networks followed until there were movies on TV just about every night of the week.

My list of the TV shows that most influenced the older BBs.

These are not the most popular shows, but the ones I think were most influential. I Love Lucy was extremely popular, but not influential. For contrast, not everyone watched Watch Mr. Wizard (starting in 1951) with Don Herbert, but those who did were influenced by it and became a lot more interested in science than they might have been.

1. Evening News. The networks started boosting their news coverage right around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and TV news really took off at the time of the Kennedy assassination in 1963. It was something everyone watched. We knew Huntley and Brinkley (Chet Huntley and David Brinkley on NBC ), even if we couldn’t tell them apart. We trusted “uncle Walter Cronkite” (CBS Evening News 1962–81). The networks’ coverage of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War had huge influence on how the BBs saw the world and their future role in it.

2. Variety shows. People today talk about an event “going viral” on the internet, but the BBs grew up in an era where the whole country watched an event and it became a shared cultural experience. Weekly variety programs, like The Ed Sullivan Show (1948 to 1971),The Perry Como Show (1955-59), and a dozen others not only created a shared culture, but they gave exposure to performers from every field. We saw comics, opera singers, Broadway shows, jazz bands, magicians, puppeteers, and everything else.

3. Rebel heroes. Walt Disney was so completely mainstream and conservative it’s hard to believe how much influence his TV shows Walt Disney's Disneyland (1954–1958) and Walt Disney Presents (1958–1961) in promoting rebels as heroes. These were anthology shows, running multi-week series, often about a single historical character. History, in this case, meant action, and the characters were rebels like Davey Crockett, Daniel Boone, and Francis Marion. This was TV for boys and it gave young BBs the powerful message that it is OK for men to rebel against authority, especially when the authority is in the wrong.

4. Career shows. The BBs were told that they could be anything they wanted to be, and TV played right along. We had Perry Mason (1957-66), who made us want to be lawyers; Ben Casey (1961 to 1966) and Dr. Kildare (1961 to 1966), who made us want to be doctors. The Man from UNCLE (1964-68), Mission: Impossible (1966–1973), Checkmate (1960-62), The Wild Wild West (1965-69), and I Spy (1965 to 1968) made us want to be detectives and secret agents. I have no idea how many people chose careers based on these shows, but they certainly made BBs consider them.

5. Westerns. These “oaters” were a TV staple of every BBs childhood and most had interchangeable plots and characters. Their significance lies in how they promoted a cultural norm they called the “Code of the West” or the Code of the Cowboy. The Code was never stated overtly, but it was implied by the cowboys’ (good and bad) conduct. It was a code of honor that required a man to fight for his property, his woman, and his dignity. Real men used guns. The worst thing a man could be was a coward. If you must fight, you follow the rules (kicking, biting, and sucker punches are for cowards, but see Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid [1969] for a hilarious take on this part of the Code). When you hear politicians talking about how women need to be protected, they are reciting part of the Code. It is still with us.

6. Bonanza. I grouped the other westerns together, but Bonanza (1959 to 1973) was in a league of its own. The all-male cast took on topical issues like sexism and intolerance. The Cartwrights stood up for people of other religions, races, and ethnic groups. Not all the scripts were first-rate and some of the plots were sappy, but the show gave a whole new perspective to the BB audience that they didn’t get from the other westerns.

7. Annual Events. Everybody watched: Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Miss America Pageant, The Oscars, the Olympics, the Jerry Lewis Telethon. For many years, these gave all of us a sense of being part of a common culture, but for the BBs in the 60s, they also came to symbolize the influence of corporate America. These shows were on the other side of the Generation Gap—for older people—and irrelevant to the many social, economic, and political changes the BBs were experiencing.

8. Star Trek. Thousands of words have been written about the little show (79 episodes in just three seasons 1966-69) and its impact on viewers. For BBs, who grew up watching the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions on TV, Star Trek was “reality” TV. Space travel was real and we truly believed that some day we would be able “to boldly go” where no one had gone before. We were inspired.

9. Music. TV had a strained relationship with music. Radio was perceived to be TV’s biggest competitor for the BB audience and it was a real struggle for TV to lure teens away from the Top 40 Hit stations. Musical tastes changed very rapidly from the mid-50s to the mid-60s when rock ’n roll was replaced by Rock. Just before the British Invasion (the arrival of the Beatles), the networks tried shows featuring songs the whole family could enjoy. Thus, we had Hootenanny (1963), Shivaree (1965), Hullaballoo (1965), Shindig! (1964), and the granddaddy of them all, American Bandstand (starting in 1952 and featuring the ageless teenager Dick Clark from 1956-1989). Bandstand concentrated on rock ’n roll dance music from the Top 40, but the others brought folk music and protest songs into the BB’s lives. Some were silly, some terribly dated, and others were truly sappy. But these songs and the people who sang them (Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, and many more) became an important part of the BB hippie counterculture.

10. Topical humor. The majority of the comedies in the 50s and 60s were sitcoms, and most of them were predictable slapstick and fairly low-brow. The sit-com scripts and acting ranged from mediocre to awful. We watched them because we liked the characters and every once in a while they were funny, but they were not really influential.

The listicle included The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis because the author believes that the character of Maynard G. Krebs (Bob Denver) engendered the beatnik/hippie/flower children counter-culture. I can’t imagine anyone seriously emulating Maynard.

Many of the other sitcoms relied on what passed for irony—kids are so much smarter than their parents and other dumb grownups. The show may have been called Father Knows Best, but it was clear that, like most TV dads, father was an oblivious idiot.

But, there were some smart comedy shows, based on topical humor, like Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (started in 1968) and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (started in 1967) and those were influential. These shows made fun of authority figures and disparaged “serious” politicians and leaders, especially those who were seen to be liars. The BBs heard that it’s OK to rebel against people who haven’t earned your respect. The lesson that was not learned was how to disagree respectfully with others and the result of that was more than a decade of political and social chaos.

These shows, taken together, form a pattern of sorts. The view of the world they promoted was cynical and distrusting and I think it got worse as the younger BBs moved through adolescence.

It’s not fair to generalize, but I will do so anyway. The older BBs responded by dropping out and becoming anti-establishment. They became the flower children and the Hippies. The younger BBs were more focused on beating the system and moving up into the establishment. They became the Yuppies —Young, Upwardly-mobile, Professionals.

Blame It On Brooklyn

Monday, January 16, 2017

2017 Immigrant name changes

Why Sam Ting and Sean Ferguson Never Were: The Ellis Island Myth

Read more about how family names were Not Changed at Ellis Island

Changing Names

Searching court records

New York State Records of Name Changes

New Jersey Legal Name Changes, 1847-1947

Naturalization records

New York, County Naturalization Records (Family Search Historical Records)

Jewish Family Names

My own family’s story: Zwickel = Little Beet?

Conclusion

Sam Ting and Sean Ferguson

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

I am Certain, I Think, About Uncertainty

2002 My Political Rant

2016 Baby Boomers and TV

Theater Programs are No Longer Interesting

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