Behind the Scenes Minis: Strikes and Dear Kurt

accessible in English. I feel like that episode would be best if we had a lot more detail about, like how it was organized and how it was planned, because it was not a situation where somebody said ladies were not working this day right then, and then like someone flipped a switch, the women didn't work that day. Like there's a whole organizing and planning effort, and the details of that I think do exist in icelandic so much in English, though, at least at this moment when we're recording.

So while this episode was something that I chose in part because we cannot do this one, I was also really interested in this on its own merits. To be very clear, I was really interested in how much of the focus was on workers in retail trying to organize because we still have a lot of workers in retail and a lot of workers in food service trying to organize today in the world that we're living in. And then also it being the last really major general strike

before Taft Hartley, I wanted to tell that story. Also, something I found frustrating and the research process of this was I found a lot of quotes from people who were active or were leaders in the other unions that went on strike to support the retail work during the general strike. I really did not find people talking to

those retail workers and their union leaders. I think I found at most one or two quotes that came up in the context of a documentary, and then when I went back to try to find them to be like, can I find out more about this person, I had lost track of where specifically I had found those couple of quotes, and everything else was primarily quotes from people in other unions who like that's part of the story too. But I do wish we had I had I had been able to find more things from the retail workers

whose strike really started this whole thing. I have a theory that had a lot more women in that one, right didn't the retail workers have more women, So it was probably like, we want to talk to menfolk, not the lab Well, so yeah, a lot of the when I did find like statements from the union, a lot of times they were statements from the attorney who was a man, or they were statements from management from the store who were men, or they were statements that were

sort of a statement from the union that did not name a specific person as a spokesperson. Right, So yeah, I like gender was specifically a part of it, and the fact that this was a union effort that was largely led by women was also something that made this, you know, really interesting story to me because a lot of the stories that we have told about labor rights and unionizing and strikes, a lot of those have been unions that were either primarily or exclusively men at the time.

So we've done a lot of strikes about railroad workers and auto workers, and we've talked about how all of those strikes were only possible because of the efforts of women, sometimes intentionally organized women's auxiliaries to do things like support the striking workers, keep everybody fed, keep everybody sheltered and clothed, and all of that while the strike was going on. But we have not had as many episodes that are like about the women themselves at their workplace organizing. Right.

The one thing I can think of off the top of my head is the London match Girls strike, which we have covered on the show before. Yeah, this is another one of those where I'm it makes me go, yeah, we haven't made any progress. Yeah, Yeah, I'm not laughing that we haven't made any progress. I'm laughing at the absurdity of the human condition. You know, We'll keep trying. Yeah,

we'll keep trying. Having been through the whole process of organizing a workplace and bargaining our first union contract, sometimes when I read about, you know, historical union efforts, sometimes

I'm like, yep, that feels so familiar. I will say that in the this wave of strikes that happened in the nineteen forties overall did not have as much violence as some of the earlier strike waves that we have talked about, Because we've talked a lot about ones in which the National Guard or some other force was like called out to deal with this strike and that it led to injuries and even deaths. Right, this one did not seem to have an escalation of violence, even though

there were some unfortunate parts of it. Yeah, I read or I got access to a paper that talked a little bit about why that is, and after reading it, I was like, I don't feel like I feel like this was kind of speculative in some of its reasoning about why this particular wave of strikes did not have

the level of violence that some earlier ones did. So I did not try to get into that in the episode itself because I did not feel like I had a good that becomes like a whole other sociology examination of like group behavior and leveraging of power that's not necessarily about the labor movement anymore, right, Right, There's some greater societal patterns involved. So yeah, I am glad that I got this one up to the top of my list. Me too. We had our live show from Indiana Comic

Con about Kurt Vonnaget this week. Yes, yes, oh, Kurt Vonneguet. Yeah, you blessing upon us all. Yeah, it was really really nice to revisit his work. In preparation for this, I finally got to see Robert White's documentary about him that he had been working on for decades on and off as they became close friends, which was very moving. Yeah, it was lovely. I'm now re listening to all of his stuff in order on audiobook, so it's just a

I'm in mckurt era apparently again. One of the things we mentioned going into that show was how a lot of people find Kurt Vonnegut as teenagers, right and how they really connect to him, And I mentioned it in the show when we record this. I haven't heard the final edit, so I don't know if it's still in there or not, but I will invoke a completely other

author in why I think that's the case. Okay, there was a great interview with shel Silverstein that I think ran on NPR a while back where he said someone asked him why do kids love your books so much? And he said, because I don't bs them, sure, like I'm straightforward with kids. I don't lie to them ever, I think he said bys but in the actual, you know, setout version, which would include swearing. And I think Kravoniget is the same like for teenagers that come to him.

It feels like an adult in the literary world who is very direct and does not mess around and tells the truth, even through very fantastical stories. Yeah, which is very it's very nice to have to not unpick like, oh, the allegory of blah blah blah, which is not to say any of that is bad in literature, but when you're a teenager to be like, oh, this is a very decorated literary person and he's just directly telling me what is going on right on and sharing some very

real truths, it's very refreshing. Yeah, yeah, I loved it. I did not happen to discover Kurt Vonnegut as a teen, and I could not one hundred percent confidently tell you whether it was college or immediately post college, like in very early twenties, very first living on my own land.

But I don't think I was a teen. I don't remember reading any Vonnegut in high school, but I do remember by the early twenties years, like I vividly remember reading Slaughterhouse five for the first time and just being enraptured by what I was reading. Yeah. Yeah, I carried around a copy of Kat's Cradle I think for two

years straight in high school. Now I am like it was always in my per to the point that it was like a joke because it was one of those small size, mass market paperbacks, like the famous cover that everybody sees that's just the the the orange with the art on it. And then I also had the similar series Breakfast Champions, also jangled around in my purser backpack most of the time, and then Slaughterhouse Five for quite

a while. One of the things I love about his work is how he how interconnected A lot of it is.

It's not none of the words that we would associate with someone who is creating a whole fictional world, like a George R. R. Martin or you know, even a George Lucas or even a you know, I'm forgetting the name of the woman who wrote the Twilight books because those are not my jam But anyway, like that idea of like world building and like we're putting together this entire world and everything, and his did that, but nobody was ever really talking about it, all right, And part

of it was I think also that he self inserted quite literally, right in some ways, Billy Pilgrim is his self insert and Slaughterhouse five as he works through the trauma of having gone through the war. But then there are a lot of times where it's like, Hi, it's Kurt. I bet you're wondering why I wrote this this way, let me tell you, And and I think that is

wildly charming. Yeah. I had a discussion with someone during the convention, like over dinner one of my friends, where we were debating over whether some of the things that Kurt Vonnaget said in his lifetime come off as sexist or not. Okay, and I see how many could be interpreted that way. He would talk a lot about whether women were pretty or not, blah blah blah, and like you know how he was secretly in love with almost every woman he worked with. But it never felt disrespectful

in the way that I associate sexism with. And it was never super crass, you know what I mean. It was never like so I feel like no, but but but I see where people could get that way, and I'm not gonna you know, yeah, yeah, ever, you know,

tell somebody they're wrong for their interpretation. We did not talk about in the episode that we recorded it Indiana Comic Con because you have limited time, you know, even more so like when we record our show, if we run long, fine, I cannot run long when you have more panelists coming into the room. The room, Yeah, I

get the heck out of there. So we didn't get time to talk about Ida Young, which is a pity, and I feel like she just would have merited more time than a quick This is a person, but she was a person that Kurt vonna Get invoked many times in interviews as being the person who raised him and gave him his sense of morality and his ideology about always caring about others. And that was a black woman who was the housekeeper in his family home and the cook.

And her name was Ada Young. And she even in the Vonnegut Museum and Library, which is in Indianapolis and is a really lovely space. There's a whole area that's just about Ida's influence on him and how important that was. And I really love that she gets included in that story. And like I said, there's not enough time and a short thing to like go down the rabbit hole of

who she was and whatnot. So I want to do more research on her and see what I can find, because you know, surely she had a life outside of the Vonna Get home. I always marvel at how in interviews he would say all of the horrible things that happened to him were fine, they didn't really bother him. And I'm like, have you read your own books? Maybe yes they did, They're on the page. Yeah, there's a really good interview in that Whitey documentary, which is pretty

easy to get a hold of. I think I found it on Amazon Prime, but there are other places you can find it as well, where he's talking about some of those experiences and he's saying the words of like it's fine, it was all fine. It didn't really bother me at the time, but his eyes like tell a whole other story. He kind of gets the thousand yard stare and he looks very morose for a moment before

he picks up and makes a joke. And I'm marvel that he never cared to let on that his whole life was kind of like his whole career really was him dealing with trauma with trauma and the only way he knew which was to write about it as like another person's event, just its own sociological fascination. YEAHR Vonniet, I love you. I unlike what happens sometimes when one of us has done an interview and the other one

was not there for the interview. This is a case where I actually have listened to the episode before coming in here to record the behind the scenes. I really enjoyed listening to this. I enjoyed how clearly you and Brian are both talking about someone who's work you love so dearly. Yeah, and we're also interested in, like telling the truth of his story as a person. I liked

it a lot. Yeah. I mean, he's a fun one to talk about because he was such a character and I certainly would not say he you know, he was a human, Like I said, there were discussions about whether or not the things some of the things he said were sexist at the con, but he he was so focused on wanting to find ways to teach people the ideas of like loving your fellow man should be your highest calling. Ever that he's a nice one to talk

about in that regard, Yeah, there's no surprise. Oh and he actually, you know, was a racist and kicked people like, there's none of those So he's a nice you know, it's always nice when someone that you admire turns out to not be a monstrous jerk. I have some issues with what happened with him and Jane, sure, but that's not my marriage to have issues, So I don't know.

I wasn't there. Yeah, it's fascinating to watch interviews with his kids, right and have them talk about him, and how you know they we mentioned it in the show that like his daughters were like, I had no idea what he went through in the war until he published Slaughterhouse Five. We just didn't know. He just came home

and there's a mention of him. I think I mentioned it in the episode as an aside, and one of the biog that I read where it was like he tried to tell someone immediately after he got back from the war about a man that had been shot for allegedly I think he took something that he shouldn't have or whatever, and he just couldn't and he never talked about it with anybody ever again other than through his typewriter, which is pretty right fascinating. I spent an unconscionable amount

of money in the Vonnegut Library and Museum gift shop. Yeah, he said. I don't know if that made it into the final cut of the of the episode or not, because that I have not heard. I've only heard the raw audio of the panel, but I was very I was like, what all did Holly buy? I bought many T shirts. I bought a pint glass that has the quote about I have a problem with alcohol and the

telephone at night. I bought a really beautiful book that his daughter Edith has put together that's the love letters between him and Jane from the nineteen fouries when they were when he was at war and they were very young, which is really beautiful. I haven't gotten very far into it yet. I got a pen, I got a pack of cards I got. I feel like I bought other

things that I'm not remembering. I was just very grabby, handsy because we also I was trying to be conscious of time because we did have to get over there in the morning, look around, get back to the convention center, and you know, we had multiple panels that day that we had to do, so I was trying to drag my feets. But what a delight. I want to go back and spend more time there because it's lovely and they have a cute cafe in there. They have like

a little lounge where they do book events sometimes. It's a very cool space. So highly recommend to anybody that's in the area and is interested in Vonnegut, or even if you're not, you're just curious. They do a lot of fun interactive things there, like prompts that are based on the writing of Vonnegut, to like get kids involved in expressing themselves. And it's just a cool space. I love it, so kudos to the people that run it. I think that's it. I've probably waxed rapsotic enough. O.

Dear Kurt Vonnegut, I love you. I hope you know. I hope if there's an afterlife. I hope if you're on trel Fammador right now, you feel that people love you since you experienced time, apparently in different ways than the rest of us. I like to think of him

out there somewhere, just not here. If you are headed into your weekend, I hope that you can take time to read something that you love, or visit a museum that might delight you and spark ideas in your mind and just make you feel a little more at peace with the world if you do not have time off. I really hope everyone abides by Vonaget's ideology of training people kindly. We all need it. Everybody be cool to one another. It's the only way we're going to get through.

We will be right back here tomorrow at the classic episode and on Monday with something brand new. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.