The American Dream- Part Four- The Serbian

Good evening, America,

This week we conclude our exploration into the American Dream- that hard work can lead to prosperity.  We have looked into the impact of George Farragut, a Spaniard whose son fought in the Civil War and helped save the Union; Ayn Rand, a Russian with her own vision who bravely fought Communism through her writing; and Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan, who fought blindness for life. Today we take a look at another unlikely hero of America.

He was afraid of everything, it seemed. At least he was afraid of the strangest things- women with pierced ears, for example. He got sick around peaches and camphor (a chemical compound used as an itch relief and an antiseptic and in making plastics and explosives), hated to touch people’s hair, and had to calculate the cubic contents of all his food before he ate. He also counted his steps and hated germs. For him, everything had to be divisible by 3- even his apartment number. His name was Nikola.

He was born in Smiljan, Croatia, the son of a Serbian Orthodox priest. His brother, Dane, was the family favorite. Nikola was only second best. He was haunted by strange images in his mind, flashes of light, and his brother’s death. Nikola was brilliant, though. He wanted to be an engineer. He could imagine an invention and perform R and D on it in his mind without making physical models or plans, he said. He was especially adept at languages (becoming fluent in nine languages) and mathematics. His father wanted Nikola to become a priest. During a long sickness (caused by Nikola working himself to death in school), Nikola’s father promised his apparently dying son that he would enroll him in an engineering school if he survived. Nikola pulled through and went to the school. It was there in his second year, in physics class that he was introduced to electricity.
The electricity used in those days was DC, or direct current. It first occurred to Nikola in this class to harness alternating current. This was a new idea.

In 1884, after working in Hungary and France, he came to America. Here he got a job with Thomas Edison, the famous inventor.

Edison, the inventor of the light bulb, the phonograph, and the movie camera, was a proponent of DC. His company’s power was based on the use of DC power. He told the young Serbian that if he could renovate the motor that they used, he would be paid $50,000 (more than 1,000,000 in today’s money). Nikola figured out how to make the motor better and went to Edison. Edison said “You have a lot to learn about American humor.” Nikola realized that Edison had teased him, and he quit his job. Edison and the young man became enemies in the fight for the future of power.

Nikola, the brilliant but eccentric Serb is known to history as Nikola Tesla, most famous for inventing the Tesla Coil and having a rock band named for him. Among the general public, he is not as well known as Edison, Faraday or Marconi, but we owe more to him than we know.

Tesla designed, when he was a young teenager back in the old country, a motor that is the basis for all modern electric motors. He harnessed and advocated the use of AC current, which is the power used in batteries. If Edison’s stubborn adherence of direct currant had been followed by the rest of the country, there would have to be a power station every mile to sustain the country’s power demand.

Tesla dreamed of supplying power everywhere, and at his laboratory in New York he was working for it. Despite his brilliant vision, his dream was never realized. His funding from J. P. Morgan was cut, and his huge tower for the broadcasting of energy was never used. His plans for automobiles operating on electricity were shot down by the oilmen, who convinced automobile manufacturers and businessmen that cars should run on gasoline. Edison fought to convince the country that AC power was dangerous and that DC was much safer. One of his examples was the electrocution of elephants in demonstrations. Another example was the execution of criminals in the electrical chair, who were executed through AC. Another development of Tesla’s was the basis of the radio. However, Marconi is given for inventing the radio. The Serb everyone thought was a nutjob is almost forgotten. The brilliant inventor died, alone and penniless, in his apartment in 1943.
However forgotten, Tesla left the world with a brilliant motor, radio, and a dream of a WiFi system for power. Although largely ignored in his day, his plans for electric cars have been brought into reality- a car, based on his idea, has been named the Tesla, as has a popular rock band.

Tesla is an example of the American Dream- that things can be accomplished through work. Tesla came to America from Croatia, at that time part of the Austrian Empire, with nothing but his own ingenuity. He put his mind to it, and powered the world, even if we don’t remember him all that well.
So every time you flip a switch, turn on your laptop computer or iPod, would it be too much to say “Thank you, Mr. Tesla.”?

And since I wrote this on a laptop computer, I’ll say thanks, Mr. Tesla.

The American Dream- Part Three- The Opening Line

Good evening, America,

This week’s lesson is the third installment in the American Dream series. It’s about two people, one an adult, one a child, and how they affected each other and what place they have in America. It also is about a particular quote from a play and what that represents.

“She’ll live.”

A girl was born in 1880 in Alabama that would become a hero. She wasn’t anything different when she was born, but when she was two she became very sick. She survived, but the fever took her sight and hearing away, leaving the girl, Helen, in a world of darkness in a time when handicapped and mentally ill people were hidden from society. She lived in Alabama, which at that time was barely recovered from the Civil War. Treatment for her, which her mother wanted, would be impossible to find in the South.

Enter Annie. Annie was in a situation similar to Helen. She was a former student at the Perkins School for the Blind. She was sent to the South to deal with Helen. Annie herself was blind, but had surgery done that had restored some of her sight. Annie was a blind, strong Northern woman going to the South, to face a child who had no knowledge of the outside world. She had a fight ahead of her- a battle for respect, trust, and a child’s life.

It was hard. Helen was violent and didn’t understand the world- deprivation of two senses destroyed her perception of the world. Annie never gave up. Finally, through spelling words into Helen’s hand and introducing her to basic concepts, Annie taught Helen about the unifying factor of life- language.

People who have use of all five senses take for granted understanding words and what they mean. Helen did not have this ability, and it wasn’t until she was six that she could communicate with the world effectively and understand what the world was saying to her.

In 1886, Annie Sullivan taught Helen Keller the meaning of language.

Helen had lived in a world of darkness, and without Annie, would have for the rest of her life. But she didn’t. She became a famous speaker, writer, and an inspiration to many. She survived what is believed to be scarlet fever or menigitis, but that was just the first battle in her war.

One of the most famous portrayals of Helen and Annie is the 1957 teleplay/play and movie The Miracle Worker by William Gibson. The opening line is “She’ll live.” spoken by the doctor. The opening scene has the doctor and Helen’s parents standing over a cradle. Helen did live, as the doctor said.  it may just be speculation, but the opening line may be more than an indication of Helen’s survival. Helen survived the fever and then six years in complete darnkness. Anne Sullivan brought her out of it and taught her in the face of incredible odds. Helen lived a full life, learning to write, and later, to speak- first in English, then in French.

Helen Keller didn’t just survive, she lived. Hers was a time that was hopeless for people with handicaps or mental illness. As an adult, Helen fought for the rights of people like her, like children born with congenital blindness, who were hidden from society. Helen and Annie both fought a long war, and never gave up, even when things looked too hard. Life is full of struggles. In fact, as the lives of these two incredible women prove, life is not complete without them. We make the decision to give up or rise above them. Our fights may not be as serious or hard as that of Helen and Anne, but we can learn from them.

Thanks, Anne, for saving Helen, and thanks, Helen, for living.

The American Dream- Part Two- The Russian

Good evening, America

This week I’m continuing the series on the American Dream and its meaning. Today we read articles in the paper about people’s faith in the American Dream dying. Last week I wrote about a Spaniard and his son’s contribution to America. This week the subject is another unlikely hero.

Nye snova, Not again. There was another demonstration in the streets of Petrograd.  Alissa was fed up of these. The country, which was already terrible, was going downhill fast. First there was the oppressive, mystical country of the Tsars. Now the communists were fighting for power. Alissa hated all this and at  the moment was trying to ignore it and read her magazine.  Her mother had given her a boy’s magazine from France with exciting stories. Her favorite was about Cyrus, a British adventurer.

This time it wasn’t just a demonstration. There were Bolsheviks in her father’s pharmacy. Her family, the Rosenbaums, were mostly- non-practicing Jewish Bourgeois, who owned the building that her father,  Zinovy Zakharovitch, worked in. And now…

Alissa listened to the communists talking to her father. Her sisters Natasha and Nora really didn’t care about what was going on. They were real girly, into clothes and all that. Alissa liked politics, and she had her own political stance. Earlier that year she had watched a man walk into the street with a sword and drop it in the street. It was Aleksander Fyodorovich Kerensky, the leader of the Bloodless Revolution. Alissa approved of him, but she hated the Bolsheiviks.

Soon, the Rosenbaum family escaped Petrograd and went to the Crimea, where Alissa finished school. Eventually she went back to the city of her birth, but it was now called Leningrad. There she went to university, studying philosophy. She was especially drawn to Aristotle. once she got into a discussion with her teacher, a Platonist, and he asked what philosophy she held. She replied that it was not in the books, but someday it would be.

She was right. When she was twenty, she applied for a student pass and came to America, working her way up in the Hollywood studios, even meeting Cecil B. deMille, and a young man named Frank, who she married.  Alissa worked as a screenwriter and also wrote a play, called The Night of January 16th, which proved popular with its clever plot and ending that could change every night. But her real forte was in books. Her first published novel in America was We the Living, about the Soviet Union. She published it, and all her writing, under her new name that she had chose- Ayn Rand.

Ayn Rand is best-known for her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Her philosophy of Objectivism, based on reason, egoism and laissez-faire capitalism has gained a huge audience. Her characters Kira Argounova, Equality 7-2521, Howard Roark and John Galt are well-known. Rand is also hated by many who say that her philosophy of ‘selfishness’ is garbage. She certainly seems nasty in the beginning, but no wonder. She was twelve as the Communists took power in Russia in 1917, the beginning of the Bolshevik Revolution, the Russian Civil War, and the Soviet Union. She knew the effects of Communism firsthand. She was not about to stand back and let Communists spread their lies in America.

Rand is a good example of the American Dream in practice because she refused to believe what the government told her. She wanted to think for herself, and knew that America was the place for it. She also knew that she had to fight for the American Dream, and she did, working hard and achieving a good life with her husband, friends and cats. She was very thankful for America, a country where you could think on your own. Her philosophy was based on thinking things through, working, honesty, and not bowing to expectations. These things didn’t exist in Russia, the country she hated.

Ayn Rand said that “Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision.” She was one of them, and it’s those who step down the new roads armed with their vision that make history. That may very well be the answer to her question “Who is John Galt?” John Galt is who ever is brave enough to take that first, scary step, just like Ayn did, towards something great.

Who is John Galt? Thanks for the answer, Ms. Rand.

The American Dream- Part One- The Spaniard

Good morning, America.

A young man stood on the dock in a strange land. He had spent all of his life hoping to go on some great adventure, and here he was.

Jorge had grown up on the island of Menorca, in the Balearic Islands off the coast of Spain. Like everyone else on his island, he was a sailor. It got boring, though, the predictable life of trade on the island. Jorge wanted some adventure, and that was exactly why he had moved to America. He had been around the Americas, through the Caribbean, but now he was making it his home.

One problem- America was just beginning a war with its parent country, the British Empire under King George III. America at that time was a disorganized group of thirteen colonies with nothing in common. Most people in these colonies did not even want to rebel. It was this country that Jorge found himself. He had learned to hate the British, who had long controlled the Balearic Islands. He joined the South Carolina navy as a lieutenant- fighting in Savannah and was captured at the Siege of Charleston in 1780.

Jorge Ferragut was later released on prisoner exchange, and he joined the army, fighting as a volunteer at Wilmington and at the Battle of Cowpens. After the war, Jorge settled down in Tennessee, Anglicized his name to George Farragut, and married an Irish-American named Elizabeth Shine. They had several children.

Their second son was named James Glasgow Farragut, in honer of a Scottish friend of George.  Mrs. Farragut died when James was eight, and a friend of the family, a Captain David Porter, took James to sea, where the boy changed his name to David. David Farragut would eventually live in Virginia, and was living there when the Civil War began in 1861. Then, he decided that he would not abandon the country he had defended for years in the navy, and so he went north. He became the premier naval officer of the war, and the first Admiral in the US Navy. His father had taught him to love and be faithful to his country, and that education was part of what saved America.

George Anthony Magin Farragut was an immigrant who joined America at a time of crisis and believed that it could be a great, free country. He fought for that goal, and saw it established. He taught his children to love America, and his son did indeed. In another time of crisis, one that would decide the fate of the country, David Farragut ignored the taunts and threats of old friends and family and stayed loyal to the flag. At the Capture of New Orleans (1862) and the Battle of Mobile Bay (1864), he proved a brilliant commander. Mobile Bay helped Lincoln win a second term, which probably secured the future of America. George’s love and faith in America paid off.

George Farragut is just another example of the American Dream- Securing a future for posterity and making sure they understand it. It’s one thing to love freedom, but another thing to establish it, and fight for it.

Thanks, George.