hope dies last essay

Art By Annie Hill January 15, 2004

Book Review: Hope Dies Last by Studs Terkel

Despite its inspirational title, historian Studs Terkel’s new book, Hope Dies Last , is not an inspirational tract for the downtrodden. Terkel, who documents the oral histories of the “non-celebrated,” does not shy away from protesting the harsh realities facing so many. The activities, teachers, and humanitarians he interviews are often very specific about what they believe to be the failures of America to provide its citizens with justice and equality. In addition to his oft-asked question “What is America?” Terkel asks these men and women: How does hope work?

The book begins with Depression-era labor activists and moves through the history of the twentieth century, including the experiences of civil rights workers, teachers, community organizers, recent immigrants, economists, clergypeople, and 1960s idealists.

Terkel allows the interviewees to tell their own stories; he lets them speak without interjection or prodding. The pleasure a reader finds in his books is above all a narrative pleasure. Discovering that each person not only has a compelling story, but that she or he knows how to tell it, is enough to give hope to any reader. The interviewees’ insights on their experiences are the ones that matter, and what stands out most is their idea of hope as action, as a politically propulsive and personal force.

In his introduction, Terkel pays tribute to the 1930s labor activists whose stories open Hope Dies Last: ”They felt that what they did counted and that they themselves counted. Thus is was that out of the Depression, and during it, hope was springing forth.” A sense of personal worth, then, is entwined with the ability to effect social change.

And over and over, Terkels interviewees emphasize the importance of feeling that they matter. Tom Hayden, one of the drafters of the Port Huron Statement (the manifesto which in 1962 launched Students for a Democratic Society) and later a California state senator, makes a case for an existential sense of hope, arguing that people act in order to know that they truly exist. Clancy Sigal, a blacklisted screenwriter who had been a labor activist in the 1940s, describes being spurred on by the FBI’s attention, and the fact that his work was important enough to attract the hostility of the federal government. He explains that “J. Edgar Hoover validated my existence; he validated my beliefs for quite a long time.” Sigal hints at a strain of contrariness that seems common to many of the activists included in Terkel’s book.

Others focus on action itself. Gene LaRoque, a retired US Navy rear admiral who founded and directed the military watchdog group Center for Defense Information, has no interest in palliative hope: “Hope in my view is a wasted emotion. People hope to win the lottery when they buy a ticket. They hope to win it because there’s no chance. If we want a better world, we as human beings ought to do what we can to bring about the change.” Here hope is an activity, not a comfort.

Many activists stress the importance of experiencing hope in the present, rather than projecting it into a hypothetical future in which things will be better. As Quinn Brisben, a retired Chicago high school teacher, explains, “The one thing I know about utopia in advance is, I am not going to be satisfied with it. The important thing is to have dun while you keep working.” The never-ending, often demoralizing work of community activism requires not only tenacity but also the ability to find satisfaction in the moment.

But one person’s action means very little on an island of individual solitude or of social isolation. Many of Terkel’s interviewees describe finding sustenance in relationships with other people. Leroy Orang, who spent 19 years in prison for murders he did not commit, focuses not on his lost years, but on the faith he has gained in people of other races during his long fight to be cleared of the charges against him. And towards the end of the book, in which recent immigrants speak of finding hope and of America, the importance of finding connections between oneself and the larger society is made even clearer. Sam Osaki, a second-generation Japanese-American, feels the contradictions of living in a modern super-power whose power has been predicated on its inclusiveness. “We think the world whirls around us. And there are billions of other people. I think it’s great when you walk the streets and you see different shapes, sizes, and they’re beautiful,”

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Hope Dies Last

Studs terkel january 2, 2004.

Hope has never trickled down. It has always sprung up. That’s what Jessie de la Cruz meant when she said, “I feel there’s gonna be a change, but we’re the ones gonna do it, not the government. With us, there’s a saying, ‘La esperanza muere ultima. Hope dies last.’ You can’t lose hope. If you lose hope, you lose everything.” A retired farm worker, she was recounting the days before Cesar Chavez and his stoop-labor colleagues founded the United Farm Workers. Hope appears to be an American attribute that has vanished for many, no matter what their class or condition of life. The official word has never been more arrogantly imposed. Passivity, in the face of such a bold, unabashed show of power from above, appears to be the order of the day. But it ain’t necessarily so. It would be manifestly unfair to blame the troubles wholly on one administration. It has been the dark dividend of all our adventures since the cold war. But now, with the world’s hope, the United Nations, being constantly humiliated by our public servants, we are seeing enemies everywhere, even among our former allies. Thomas Paine’s vision of the American is being profaned. What he wrote in 1791 is on the button in 2003: “Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing. … In such a situation, man becomes what he ought. He sees his species, not with the inhuman idea of a natural enemy, but as a kindred.” Here is where the activists enter the picture. In the following pages are portraits of the inheritors of the legacy of those past. Activists have always battled the odds. It’s like a legion of Davids, with all sorts of slingshots. It’s not one slingshot that will do it. Nor will it happen at once. It’s a long haul. Tom Geoghegan is a lawyer in Chicago and author of Which Side Are You On? (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1991): Americans are beginning to realize at this moment that there’s a bigger world, and it’s committed to values that we don’t have. I feel the world is becoming a better place, but the big wild card is what the United States is going to do. The extent to which the world becomes a better place depends on the struggle between light and darkness in the United States. I think the world will become a better place no matter what happens in the United States, but it will happen more quickly or more slowly depending on how the battle goes here. You can go to extremes of hope and despair being in the United States. Years ago, when I went to Ireland for the first time, it rained and rained and rained. I was on a bus, and I said aloud to the old woman next to me, “Is it ever going to clear up?” “Oh,” she said, “we live in hope and die in despair.” She laughed. Where there is humor, there is hope. Ed Chambers is executive director of the Industrial Areas Foundation, which was founded by Saul Alinsky in 1940, and where he has worked since 1956. He is the author of Roots for Radicals (Continuum Publishing, 2003): It’s hard to get young men and women in this culture to drop the markets-driven vision. I’m a little bit discouraged, but I’m not quitting, I’m not giving up. I still got the hope that the next re-founder of Industrial Areas Foundation can take it into a better future. The purpose of life isn’t truth; the purpose of life is meaning. The struggle of meaning that keeps you going, and a hope that you are about to get something greater than anything you’ve got. If anything keeps me going, it’s building the future of these institutions on a broader base, so they can take on corporate America. That which you possess isn’t as great as that which you are about to possess. What keeps me going is that I realized, sometime in my forties or early fifties, I couldn’t just dig down inside myself and pump it out like in my thirties. Then I realized that I got my energy for this organizing work from other people, so the self must stay in connection with others, new others, others that have more talent and more vision and more power than you have. That energizes you and keeps you going. Without that, you will ossify. You can call it what you want. You can call it community, you can call it necessity. You’ve got to be in relationship with real people. I try to stay in touch with everyday, ordinary citizens. I don’t need celebs. The big power, you can’t have a relationship with. They don’t want you, they don’t need you. Pete Seeger is a folksinger whose most recent album, Pete Seeger and Friends , was just nominated for a Grammy: I tell people I think we have a 50-50 chance for there to be a human race here in a hundred years. They think that’s being pessimistic. No, I say, that’s being optimistic, because it implies that one of us might be the grain of sand that will tip the scales in the right direction. Imagine that there’s a big seesaw. At one end of it is a basket half full of rocks. That end is on the ground. At the other end is a basket one-quarter full of sand. And a bunch of us with teaspoons, we’re trying to put sand in that end. A lot of people laugh at us, they say “ Oh, don’t you see, it’s leaking out as fast as you’re putting it in.” Well, we say, “It’s leaking out, but we’re getting more people with teaspoons all the time. One of these days, you’re gonna see that whole basket with sand so full that this seesaw is going to go zoooom-up in the other direction.” And people will say, “Gee, how did it happen so quickly?” Us and our damned little teaspoons. Frances Moore Lappe, author and activist, is the author most recently of Hope’s Edge: A New Diet for a Small Planet (J.P. Tarcher, 2002). I came across a woman named Wangari Masai. Growing up in a small Kenyan village, she ended up becoming highly educated, the first female Ph.D. in biological sciences in East Africa. She became acutely aware of the encroaching desert. On Earth Day in 1977, she planted seven trees. Then she began to realize that it would take millions of villagers planting trees all over the country to begin to reverse the ecological decline. So she went to government foresters and said, “There have to be millions of people planting trees.” They said, “No, no, it takes foresters to plant trees.” That did not deter her. She started a nursery in her own house, growing little saplings. Her husband thought it made for a very messy house. He ended up divorcing her. That did not deter her. She ended up creating a village-based movement of women. There are now 60,000 of these tree nurseries, run by village women who have planted 20 million trees through Africa. I became a community organizer with the Welfare Rights Organization in the late ’60s. When I think back, that was my first experience of exactly what Wangari was doing in Africa: helping people see their own capacity not just to be victims, but to have the creative capacity to change their situation. My job was going door-to-door, talking to welfare mothers and drawing them into a group in which they could come up with strategies to change the welfare system. I never thought about this before, but just having someone there, a random young woman—what was I, 23?—listening to them and creating a space for them began to change their sense of possibility. Life is engagement, life is struggle. That’s what’s rewarding. The Latin root of power is posse, “to be able.” Power just means our capacity to act. I wanted to show people that we all have this capacity to affect the larger world. Lynn Siebert, a 23-year-old graduate of Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, is an organizer for the Service Employees International Union Local 880 in Chicago. Most of the time, I organize home child care providers. It’s not like there’s a shop floor, it’s not like somebody who’s going to go organize a factory. These people all work in their individual homes spread out all over the state. We take the union to them, going door-to-door. We’re organizing groups of people that were once thought to be unorganizable. It’s not what I originally saw myself doing, but it’s definitely what I’m happy doing now. I think a lot of people my age are doing this kind of work because they’re dissatisfied with how things are. We’re helping to mobilize a group of people, poor women of color normally, who aren’t thought of as political heavy-hitters. But by bringing these people together, they can have a voice, they can have a say politically. I wouldn’t be doing this work if I didn’t have hope. Bob Kelly is a building manager at Harvard University, who describes himself as “a glorified custodian.” When this living-wage campaign started, it was really run out of this building. I’d notice those students working nights and days; they’d be here running off copies and having meetings all night. They’d be here at 7:30 in the morning, going out postering. They were doing something that they would gain nothing from. You know what I mean? These were student volunteers, and all they were doing was getting the university to frown on them and maybe give them a hard time. And the risks that they put themselves through. I mean, like when they occupied the building there, they jeopardized their academic careers, and it wasn’t like they were going to walk out of there and have a raise themselves. What does it give you? Hope is what it gives you. Something happened here that I never saw before. The workers who did the work around the university, I noticed, got to like the students. Instead of, “We’re taking care of spoiled little rich kids,” it’s “Can you believe they’re doing this for us?” Things that never would have happened were it not for the students. Boy, people can surprise you. Greg Halpern was one of the student leaders in the Harvard Living Wage Campaign, which occupied the president’s office in 2001. I’d much rather be a naive fool than be cynical. I don’t mind being called a fool if I’m foolishly believing in a better world. It sounds cheesy, but why else be alive? Honestly. What else is there? It’s worth living to be happy, to have a nice house, to have a good marriage, and to raise kids, and I want to do those things. But the bigger questions … What’s the point in being alive if you’re not hopeful that you can do a little something to make the world a little better? The world is sometimes a really miserable place. The only thing you can do to make yourself feel a little better about the world is to try to make it a little better. And some people say, “Oh, that’s selfish, you’re trying to help other people to make yourself feel good.” But if you can make yourself feel better and help people at the same time, there’s nothing wrong with that.

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The Hope Dies For Last English Literature Essay

The symbolism is one of the most of import inclinations of the nineteenth century. It tries to acquire the thoughts while it besides wants to make a higher ethic and to show it. It is originated in France. The symbolism means the systematic usage of symbols, spiritual symbols for first. One of the greatest play from compound symbolism is the Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, Irish writer.

A whole symbol-system is running through the play. Everything is non what it seems ; everything has something deeper significance. The rubric aˆzWaiting for Godot ” already contains the all act of the work of art.

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The two chief characters are merely waiting for Godot, following to the main road, who will ne’er come. The inquiry is right: who is Godot? To get down from the spiritual symbolism, we can state, Godot is God. There are several cogent evidences for it ; the first is that the play was written in French for first and in this linguistic communication the ‘-ot ‘ postfix is a bantam which would explicate our theory. For 2nd, in Irish the ‘Godot ‘ agencies God. For now it is grounds that the significance of Godot can be something spiritual. Beckett had Irish beginning. In this instance, if the characters are waiting for God, the following inquiries can be: why do they wait for Godot and since when? We are traveling to cover whit these inquiries.

Harmonizing to Vladimir, they scheduled a meeting with Sir Godot, who could give replies for their inquiries, for the significance of the life and he could give them some nutrients, drinks and place, excessively.

On the other side, Godot can be the hope that ne’er comes. It would besides explicate the attitudes of the characters who are likely stateless paupers.

The clip and the topographic point are indefinable, because of the uncertainty which accompanies the whole narrative. The clip spent at that place seems ceaseless ; for the audience it is like the clip has merely stopped. The characters do n’t make anything ; they are merely speaking about nonmeaningful things and the doctrine. The yearss are go throughing by that we realise by the alterations of the environment. It has a large influence of the clip theory of Proust or Bergson that said: “ the clip is comparative. That we realise and feel differs from the concrete, definable clip ” . Maybe it has the chief function in this tragicomedy. The function of the clip symbolically is the compound of the neverendingness, unpredictableness, inability and nonsense.

In the scene the lone base is a tree. Equally little as of import it is ; it visualises the clip by altering its Crown. In the 2nd act some foliages are shooting which can symbolize the new hope for the reader that now everything will be solved, Godot will look, Vladimir and Estragon can go forth their “ footing ” ; evidently Godot ne’er comes and everything goes on. From another point of view the tree can be identified with the All Knowledge ‘s Tree from the Bible which is damaged by Adam and Eva so it lost its powers to assist the paupers. This scene with the two work forces and the tree can be an dry paradox of the Genesis. Two work forces are waiting for person, possibly God, to inform them. There is another spiritual significance of the tree ; sometimes the cross on which Jesus died is identified with a tree. Vladimir and Estragon want to hang themselves, but it is besides an absurd scene and the lampoon of the spiritual significances ; Jesus died for us, but who do Gogo and Didi dies for? For nil, I guess. However Gogo and Didi can be considered non as Jesus but as the two stealers crucified with Jesus. The one of them is saved but the other one is damned.

One of the characters is Vladimir ; he is the “ foreman ” of the two and the wholly contrast of Estragon. Vladimir is philosophical and he lives in the universe of the thoughts. His moniker is ‘Didi ‘ which can mention to the Gallic ‘dire ‘ ( to state ) verb. On the other side his name can mention to a prince of Kiev who introduced the Christianity in Russia. He has liberalness and he is more go-ahead. He believes in Godot ‘s coming, while Estragon, or as Vladimir calls him: Gogo, is more realistic and insular. He is a cave man. He did n’t retrieve anything about the understanding with Godot, but he even does n’t care about him at all ; he ‘s merely waiting at that place because of his friend, Vladimir. His name ‘Gogo ‘ can mention to the English verb ‘Go ‘ which could be replaced by the verb ‘act ‘ . It would be in relation with the narrative. In another manner it can be understood as Gogo is a Gallic adjective for individual who can be deceived easy.

The differences between them made their relationship common. Their personalities are wholly complementary. This phenomenon makes them inseparable. They ca n’t even kill themselves without each other ; they would experience lonely. They normally feel each other ‘s company as a charge but entirely they could non populate. It is besides proved by a metaphor by tarragon in the first act: “ My left lung is really weak [ aˆ¦ ] . But my right lung is sound as a bell! ” The weak left lung could be estragon and the other one is Vladimir, but both belong together and they help each other. All the same clip they have common animals, excessively: both are crude. If we take stock of the natural behave and poetical yesteryear of tarragon, or the wise thought and deep doctrine of Vladimir, we can state that their relation is like the poesy and the doctrine ; the complement of each other.

The other twosome is Pozzo and his slave, Lucky. They have “ talker ” -names, excessively. Pozzo is an Italian adjective which means: insane, loony, mad or irrational ; in the noun signifier it means wild adult male or huffy Canis familiaris. Pozzo is the Godhead on whom land Didi and Gogo are waiting. In this instance Pozzo can be understood as Godot ( as Gogo has already believed ) , even if it is incredible. Lucky, the slave on the rope tether, is happy in malice of his fate. His name is besides dry and self-contradictory.

The function of Pozzo and Lucky is really of import to the chief characters ; they keep the connexion with the universe by them.

The relationships of the two twosomes are different. While Gogo and Didi are friends, Pozzo and Lucky are in lord-slave relationship. Lucky depends on his Godhead. It changes in the 2nd act, when Lucky bring Pozzo on a rope tether that represents the insecurity of the systems and Torahs. Pozzo can be considered as the organic structure ( without feelings and intelligence ) and Lucky could be the symbol of intelligence. He ever speaks more than his Lord. The rope between them can be the symbol of dependance. They need each other, but in another manner than in the instance of Gogo and Didi.

The objects besides have significances. Estragon ever paddles with his boots, Vladimir with his chapeau. The differences appear once more: The boots of Estragon are excessively tight while Vladimir ‘s chapeau is excessively large. Hat is more elegant as its proprietor, Vladimir, excessively. The boots refer to poorer adult male. In the instance of Lucky, he ‘s transporting the baggage of Pozzo like he would tote the gravitation of the life.

The head besides has chief function in the tragicomedy. Tarragon does n’t retrieve if they had any understanding about a meeting with Mr Godot ; Pozzo and Lucky do n’t retrieve in the 2nd act if they have met Gogo and Didi and the small male child neither.

The individualities are lost, personality does n’t be any longer. It is proved by Estragon calls Catullus himself sometimes and they ( with Vladimir ) ca n’t detect or spell the name of Pozzo for foremost. The small male child calls Vladimir Mr. Albert that besides shows the humbleness of individuality.

These Acts of the Apostless move the narrative to gyrate so that the Acts of the Apostless go on once more in the same order in the 2nd portion. The chief characters stand under the tree in the terminal of the play merely like in the terminal of the first act. The small male child says the same things in both Acts of the Apostless that Godot postpone the scheduled meeting. The lone alterations are that Pozzo went blind and Lucky went deaf so that clip merely passed. Everything becomes dubious, the clip since they have been waiting for Godot ; the topographic point that they are in the same topographic point than the old or the personality. The deficiency of the information ; for illustration when the small male child answered shortly: aˆzYes Sir.It ‘s non my mistake, Sir. I was afraid, Sir. A good piece, Sir. Yes Sir. Yes Sir. Yes Sir. No Sir. Yes Sir. aˆz

The paupers spend the clip with stupid inquiries, doctrine and paddling their appliances, but they do n’t acquire closer to anything and the clip is merely ephemeral by. The inquiry is emerging: What are we waiting for in this life? The reply is much more complicated and everyone has to happen it entirely.

Vladimir wants to kill himself more times without success that wholly shows the weakness. In this instance the tree gets another function: the gallows.

To go on the list of symbols, the small male child is of import besides. He is the courier between Godot and the chief characters. He is besides the symbol of naivete and the deficiency of information. Answering the inquiry of Vladimir he describes Godot as God is described in the Holy Bible.

Dichotomy characterizes the whole play ; the twosomes, the construction of inquiries and replies, the dissensions and understandings in the conversations.

This work of art revalues the universe. The deficiency of the human relationships become typical, merely like the hopelessness, insecurity and the doctrine Nietczhe which says “ God is dead ” .

The chief subjects are the hope which is unbroken in Gogo and Didi, the dependence that they depend on each other to last the life or Pozzo depends on Lucky and vica versa. Lucky is physically tied to Pozzo by the fright of being abandoned. The following thing is the nonsense and the monotomy that all the occurrences start over and over once more. However the characters do n’t even seek to interrupt out of this state of affairs. They are merely drifting with the occurrences.

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Hope Dies Last

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Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/hope-dies-last

Studs Terkel has written 11 books of oral history, allowing ordinary Americans to tell their stories through him. Ray Suarez speaks with Terkel about his latest work, "Hope Dies Last," which looks at human perseverance in challenging circumstances.

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Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

RAY SUAREZ:

The book is "Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Troubled Times." The author is Studs Terkel. He's written 11 books of oral history, allowing ordinary Americans from all walks of life to tell their own stories through him. This latest book looks at how people survive difficult times in situations, and hold onto hopes. Studs, it's great to see you.

STUDS TERKEL:

Seeing you is wonderful, brings back memories of Chicago.

Well, this isn't quite an array of personalities and people from a bewildering set of walks of life. What's the connective thread that connects them all…

The connective thread is simply they are people brave, who are active, who are citizens in an open society called the United States of America. In short, they are activists, which is why we were born to begin with.

"Hope Dies Last," the title I got from an old Mexican farm worker. She helped Caesar Chavez organize the farm workers. Her name was Jesse Delacruz. She was retired at the time from Fresno, California, and she said to me once, "When times are troubled and we're bewildering, we have a saying in Spanish: Esparanza muera al ultimo, 'hope dies last.'" And in a sense, these people represent that idea.

These people are those to whom I pay tribute, activists they're called. And they've done stuff over and beyond their call of duty, which is something to be born, to live, to die. They're more than that. They want to have a meaning in the world. And as a result of their hope, the rest of us are imbued with a little hope. And they're a prophetic minority.

See, the people I've talked about are those who have been a minority, and you've been egged and tomatoed and beaten up, and later on that which they have worked for have come to pass.

There are many people in this book who have tremendous reserves of patience, good humor, and a kind of peace, some of them at the end of long lives of these struggles that you mentioned.

Very little anger, very little rancor, very little willingness to get back at anybody.

Well, I think… see, I think that's always a bit of bitterness in everybody to some extent. But they have something else, that hope, the idea that we are thinking people. See, who was one of the first guys we know to have hope when this country was being born?

It was Thomas Paine, who wrote "Common Sense." And Thomas Paine spoke of a new society, the United States of America where a cat can look at a king, a commoner can tell the king to "bugger off," or a guy can tell the president to "bugger off– if you're wrong, you're wrong."

And that's what this country was about. The nature of dissent being part of the nature of a person's being, if you feel the guy who is your chieftain is wrong. And so Tom Paine was one of the first.

He's the one who was saying– I'll try and paraphrase something he said in "Common Sense"– fear was pursued around the world, people were afraid to think, reason was equated with rebellion, until sometime people finally could find themselves, and find themselves and find that they are kindred to the rest of the world. And that was an inhuman idea that the rest of the world is the enemy that was surrounded by axes of evil rather than rather than axis.

And so this is what the country was about. We have to change the whole world to raise the world. And that's what these people in our time do. There were the abolitionists back during the slavery days. They took beatings. They were a hopeful people, too.

What keeps you at this? You've won many of the greatest awards and recognitions of men of letters and women of letters in this country, including the Pulitzer Prize, the humanities medal. You could kick back and just enjoy the compliments that I'm sure come your way every day as you make your way around Chicago by bus. Why keep at it?

If I did, I would check out tomorrow. When someone says, "When are you going to retire?" I say, "When you say that, smile." No, I check out while I'm working. For example, wouldn't it be dramatic if I were to check out… I'm 91 years old, right, I've had a pretty good run of it. If I were to check out right now, pretty good headlines tomorrow, it could make the show.

Definitely. You'd be the lead, I think.

But the point is, I have an epitaph all set for me: "Curiosity did not kill this cat." And basically that's what it is, I'm curious. Do I have diminished hopes to some extent? Yes, I do. My hopes diminish. But I'm quoting an old English journalist friend of mine, Jimmy Cameron, who said, "My hopes have diminished but my curiosity remains." And so my curiosity… my hope, by the way, is not diminished, but at the moment it's taken a whacking or two.

Are there some people who you think would really stick with the people who are watching this program if they got to know them, their stories that you'd want people to know out of this book?

I think out of this book would come… out of this book would come hope to a great many people, because they have it. Almost 10 million protested the preemptive strike, Feb. 15 of year 2003. That was a moment of hope. And those people who feel that are imbued with it, you see. This is the aspect of… what I'm worried about is a national Alzheimer's Disease. That is, there weren't no yesterday.

There was a Depression years ago, and the same ones who say there's too much regulation, too much big government, are the ones whose daddies' and granddaddies' butts were saved by government regulation after the crash of 1929.

They prayed to the government of Franklin D. and the New Deal, "save us," and it did. And so we have seemed to have forgotten that, or being not taught that. That's the part that gets me, this national Alzheimer's Disease. So all my books, certainly this one, tries to recreate a memory of what was, and what is, and what can be. Basically, that's what it's about.

The book is "Hope Dies Last." Louis Studs Terkel, always good to talk to you.

Thank you very much, Ray. Great seeing you again.

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Hope Dies Last

Studs terkel’s enduring conversation with america.

I n the late seventies, as a teenager growing up in a sheltered suburb of San Francisco, I stumbled upon a paperback that introduced me to people I’d rarely read about. The book’s title, Working (New Press), was inscribed diagonally in bold black letters across a scarlet cover, and inside were interviews with a hundred hardworking people, from a footsore waitress to a gas-meter reader dodging canines. The compassionate interviewer, Louis “Studs” Terkel, somehow got thick-skinned and bristly workers to reveal their inner feelings about their jobs.

Terkel was in his sixties and seemed impossibly old to me then, a relic from the bygone age of Wobblies, the Great Depression, and union battles. Now ninety-four, Studs (his nickname comes from his resemblance to the fictional character Studs Lonigan, from the novels of James T. Farrell) is still working and living in Chicago, near the shore of Lake Michigan. In 2005 he published And They All Sang: Adventures of an Eclectic Disc Jockey (New Press), a collection of archival interviews conducted during his forty-five years as a Chicago disc jockey. Just released in paperback, it includes conversations with gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, classical guitarist Andrés Segovia, jazz legend Louis Armstrong, and a young Bob Dylan.

On his radio show, Terkel mixed jazz, opera, folk, gospel, and blues. He’d become enamored of the blues during the Depression, when he first heard Big Bill Broonzy and other artists who brought the music of the deep South to the cities. Terkel remains partial to Big Bill’s definition of the blues: “Ain’t nothing but a good man feeling bad.”

In the 1960s, calling himself “a guerrilla journalist with a tape recorder,” Terkel began interviewing ordinary people and compiling their stories into books. His first, Division Street: America (New Press), published in 1967, was a groundbreaking look at the lives of Chicagoans, rich and poor, black and white. He followed it with another book in the same format, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression (Norton). In 1984 he won the Pulitzer Prize for The Good War (New Press), in which he talked to those who’d participated in World War II .

Terkel often edits out his questions, letting the interviewee do the talking, but his presence can always be felt. Compassionate and curious, he never judges his subjects, which is one reason why people open up to him so readily. He’s proud of helping readers understand the lives of people like waitress Dolores Dante, whom he interviewed for Working . “I’m never going to speak to a waitress again the way I did before,” a reader once told Terkel.

In his 2001 book about death and dying, Will the Circle Be Unbroken? (Ballantine Books), he writes of his own experience with death: During the research for that book, Terkel’s wife and companion of sixty years, Ida, died at the age of eighty-seven. Not long afterward, a friend, trying to help Studs get over his grief, told him he should be happy, because he’d had so many good years with her. “Bullshit” was Studs’s response. He is grateful for his time with Ida, he writes, but he doesn’t believe grief should have a timetable.

Circle was published on the eve of Terkel’s ninetieth birthday, and many believed it would be his final book, a fitting coda to a career that had spanned more than half a century. But in 2003 the irrepressible oral historian followed it with Hope Dies Last (New Press), in which he urges readers to “keep the faith in difficult times.” Mixed in among the interviews with ordinary Americans are a few conversations with well-known figures, including folk singers Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie, and politicians Tom Hayden and Dennis Kucinich. Whether Terkel is interviewing laborers who weathered the Depression or left-wing activists who are fighting the Bush administration, the central theme of his work is hope. To listen to some of his interviews online, visit www.studsterkel.org .

I met Terkel on a brisk and sunny November afternoon at his home on Chicago’s North Side. He’d recently spent seven weeks in the hospital after a fall that had broken his neck but possibly saved his life: while he’d been hospitalized, doctors had detected a heart condition that was remedied with surgery. He appeared frail due to his recent medical troubles, but his voice remained fierce, and he spoke in staccato bursts about his political and artistic passions. We talked for two and a half hours, at the end of which he offered me “a touch of Scotch.” I offered him a gourmet chocolate bar that I’d brought with me from San Francisco. The chocolate was so tightly wrapped we had trouble opening it. “I can’t open half the things today,” he groused. Sensing another affront to the common man, he added, “It’s deliberate!”

STUDS TERKEL © AP Photo/Aynsley Floyd

Shapiro: [Setting up the recording equipment.] Have you ever lost an interview because of a technical problem?

Terkel: Sure. I’m known for my ineptitude. That’s the irony of the whole thing: they call me the “master of the tape recorder,” but I haven’t the faintest idea what I’m doing. I’m just learning the electric typewriter. And I don’t know what a computer is. You’ve got neocons and neoliberals: I’m a neo-Neanderthal. But my ingratitude to technology is the real irony, because were it not for technology, I wouldn’t be here talking to you right now. Eight weeks ago, at the age of ninety-three, I was in the hospital with a broken neck. While I’m there, my personal doctor and my cardiologist say, “Your whole valve is shot, and you’ve got about three months to live.” I’m ninety-three, so I say, “What the hell. Ninety-three. Let the damned thing ride.” But they say the odds are a little better than they were nine years ago, when I had a quintuple bypass. So I say, “OK, I’ll do it,” because I’m curious. My ego wants to know: what’s the world going to be like? It may be in terrible shape, but I want to be around . . . sort of.

So my ego got the best of me. And the next thing I know I wake up, and they’re pulling me out on a gurney, and the surgeon says, “It’s all over.” I say, “You mean I’m dead?” He says, “No, no, you’ve got about four more years.” Four more years. I’m ninety-three — I don’t need four more years! It sounds so Nixonian: four more years . Two! I’ll settle for two.

The other irony is, the same race — human, that is — that made those machines that extend life also did Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and God knows what else. And the great mind, the great heart of the twentieth century, Albert Einstein, is responsible for this; that’s the greatest irony of all. He found that E = mc 2 . Niels Bohr in Denmark took it up, and then Enrico Fermi split the atom, and then it went to J. Robert Oppenheimer in Los Alamos, and then to Paul Tibbetts flying that plane bearing his mother’s name: the Enola Gay . And then Sunday morning, August 6, 1945, a nice, sweet morning in Hiroshima, bang! And three days later, just to prove they were right, bang! Nagasaki. Well, Einstein tore his hair. He’d never dreamed the bomb would be dropped on someplace inhabited. His secretary thought he said, “Oh way.” She was not Jewish. “Oy vey” — that’s what he was saying.

If you drive across the country — I never drove a car in my life, by the way — and pass through, say, Missouri, you see these little hillocks, these little mounds, and they’re missile silos by the hundreds. And you know what’s in each one of them: enough to knock off Nagasaki and Hiroshima put together.

James Cameron — not the director but the journalist — chose the word refugee as the defining word of the last half of the twentieth century. Now, we had that word during the Depression. [Folk singer] Woody Guthrie sang of “Dust Bowl refugees.” But war to us was always elsewhere. We Americans were an exception. In World War II , the Axis and the Allied countries — every one of them was either bombed or occupied. But not the U.S. And then come these loonies in 2001. All fundamentalists are loonies, by the way, whether they be Islamic, Christian, or Judaic; if they have that belief that “my God is it, and no other,” then they’re loonies.

That day, September 11, we saw refugees in Brooks Brothers suits, in Gucci shoes, in fashionable Levi’s. The buildings were all empty. The skies were emptied, and the people went back and forth like the refugees in Bangladesh. My son and I were going to a law firm in Chicago. There were just four of us on the whole floor of the skyscraper where the lawyer had his office; every door of every office was open, and nobody was there.

We still haven’t gotten over that. We can’t believe that anyone would dare do this. We do it elsewhere — but that’s another thing entirely, because we’re special people.

Shapiro: You’ve just come out with a new book called And They All Sang .

Terkel: That was a phrase of [conductor] Leonard Bernstein’s. The subtitle tells what it’s about: Adventures of an Eclectic Disc Jockey — “eclectic,” of course, being the operative word. How it began: I went to the University of Chicago Law School, and it wasn’t for me. I went there dreaming of Clarence Darrow, and I woke up to Antonin Scalia. He [Scalia] taught there, by the way — not when I was there, of course: I graduated in 1934. Anyway, law school wasn’t for me. Corporations and such. So I was a rotten student. My parents ran a men’s hotel near the North Side on Wells and Grand, and I rode the streetcar to law school. There was a stopover where I changed streetcars in Bronzeville, which was a black community in the thirties. It was, of course, segregated, but, oh, there was a life there then that isn’t there now. I heard records in shops. They were called “race records,” on labels such as Okeh, Vocalion, Bluebird. And there I heard the blues singers: Big Bill Broonzy (my favorite), Memphis Slim, Memphis Minnie, and Tampa Red. So going to the University of Chicago Law School helped me get acquainted with the blues.

And then I graduated and got a job with the WPA [Works Progress Administration]. The WPA did what free enterprise couldn’t do. The free market fell on its ass in the big stock-market crash of October 1929. People didn’t know what had hit them. The wise men of Wall Street were going crazy. The WPA provided jobs for millions who were unemployed. And now they’re talking about privatizing everything! Privatizing is what killed us then. It was all privatized. We were saved by the government. There is no memory of this. We are suffering from a national Alzheimer’s disease. And this didn’t begin with Bush. Bush is the cartoon spirit; he’s a caricature. It began with Ronald Reagan.

Through that job with the WPA I met this guy who had a workers’ theater company called the Chicago Repertory Group. So I became an actor. We did Waiting for Lefty . Then the director told me there was work in radio soap operas. They were all the same script, and all had the same crooks: the bright one, the middle one, and the dumb one. I was always the dumb one. It was steady work.

Some producer liked my style, and I became a commentator on the air. Then I was in the war, but only for nine months stateside: I had a perforated eardrum. I wanted to join the Red Cross, but they wouldn’t let me in. I found out later on that the FBI had a dossier on me because of this repertory-group stuff, and because I was making speeches for the Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee. This was just after the Spanish Civil War. I was outspoken at rallies, especially for civil rights. Remember that [ FBI director] J. Edgar Hoover was as close to a thug as you could get.

I applied for a job at the FBI , a civil-service job: fingerprint classifier. I almost worked for the FBI . When the FBI asked for references, one of my law professors at the University of Chicago said, “Sloppy, slovenly, low-class Jew.” So Hoover’s response was “Take Louis Terkel off the payroll. He’s not our type of boy.” I like that. There could be a little chapter in my memoir called “I Was Almost an FBI Man.”

For the rest of the war I got a civil-service job with the Treasury Department counting “baby bonds.” In 1932 World War I vets had gone to Washington because they hadn’t gotten their bonuses, and they were tear-gassed by General Douglas MacArthur. The commissioner of police had said that under no circumstances would he drive out his old war buddies, but MacArthur did it. MacArthur’s two aides in doing it were [future president] Dwight D. Eisenhower and [future general] George S. Patton; isn’t that interesting? So then Franklin D. Roosevelt got in the White House, and the veterans got their bonuses, of course. And the New Deal Congress decided they deserved more than that, so they were getting “baby bonuses.” That’s the job I got: to count baby bonuses. I went nuts doing it, so I came back to Chicago.

[Jazz singer] Billie Holiday sang at my farewell party — she was a friend of a friend of someone who was in the repertory group. And I remember she was beautiful, with this gardenia in her hair, and she asked me [puts on Holiday’s voice], “What would you like to hear, baby?” Well, “Strange Fruit,” of course, but also “Fine and Mellow.” That was her theme. And she sang it. They had that in my FBI dossier.

Then I got a job as a disc jockey. I was playing records, and you could do anything you wanted then. I played [Italian tenor] Enrico Caruso. I’d loved Caruso as a kid. My father would buy one-sided Caruso records for two bucks a head — that’s like fifty bucks today. John Ciardi, the Italian American poet, said Caruso was about the potential in the human race. A singer could hit a certain note — that’s as far as you could go — but Caruso would go beyond that. It told us that human beings have possibilities, that all of us are better than we may be behaving at the moment.

Classical music is considered music for the upper classes. There is a guy in a wonderful oral history called Akenfield , by Ronald Blythe. And this guy is a working man — a very literate working man, but the classical symphonies are not for him. They’re a little beyond him. Then one day he’s caught in a torrential rain, so he rushes into this building, and it’s the lobby of a symphony hall. He hears music from inside and opens the door slightly, and it’s Mozart, and he’s transformed. That’s what Mozart had in mind; that’s what Brahms had in mind; that’s certainly what Bach had in mind. They wrote for the great many, not for the few.

So I’d put on a Caruso aria — say, “Ombra mai fu” from Handel’s Xerxes . Then came Louis Armstrong’s “West End Blues,” my favorite jazz record. I followed that with Woody Guthrie doing “Tom Joad,” a Dust Bowl ballad. Then a Brazilian soprano, and maybe a country song.

Shapiro: You could never do that today on a mainstream radio station. Every station has its own format, whether it’s rock, country . . .

Terkel: That’s right. So I played everything. I’m known as an oral historian, but I still consider myself a disc jockey. I’d play all these records: Andrés Segovia, followed by Ravi Shankar, then Dizzy Gillespie. And I’d interview musicians. Andrés Segovia told me this story: There was an audience of five thousand in Ann Arbor to hear him, one old man — I call him “old”; I’m ninety-three, and he was eighty at the time — with a guitar, a classical guitar, delicate, and they leaned over listening as he played a Bach transcription. After the performance, one of his admirers came up to him and said, “It was wonderful, but you play so softly. I had to lean forward and listen so hard.” “You know what I did next time?” Segovia said to me. “I played even more softly, so that he listened even more.”

I loved music as a kid. I never played an instrument, and I can’t carry a tune, but I’d hear that music, the music played by black bands — the patrons were all white, but the bands were black. And then folk music came about during the Great Depression. When I was an actor, I ran into this group called the Almanac Singers. They sang at labor rallies and traveled in a jalopy around the country. And that group had Woody Guthrie in it.

One day they came to Chicago Repertory. We were doing a play about a strike or something. I’d just gotten married, and my wife and I had a two-and-a-half-room place with a pulldown Murphy bed. I sent these guys back to my place about twelve o’clock at night to sleep. I write a note to my wife to send along with them. It says, “These are good guys. Put them up for the night.” Well, she’s asleep, and the bell rings about 12:30 at night, and she goes to the door. There are four guys standing there: A little, freckle-faced guy; that’s Woody. And a kid with a big, bobbing Adam’s apple; that was Pete Seeger. And a huge man from Arkansas named Lee Hayes. And one other. They were there for two weeks, sleeping on the floor together. And one night I woke up, and Woody was asleep, and in the wastebasket were about twenty crumpled pages, single-spaced, and, so help me, it was fantastic writing. And I threw it away, wouldn’t you know.

Now they’re talking about privatizing everything! Privatizing is what killed us then. It was all privatized. We were saved by the government. There is no memory of this. We are suffering from a national Alzheimer’s disease.

Shapiro: Around 1949 or ’50 you had your own TV show, but then you lost it.

Terkel: That’s right. Studs’ Place , it was called. It was all improvised. There was a plot, usually about ordinary people’s lives, but the dialogue was created by the cast. I was on the air on NBC in Chicago — the whole country wasn’t covered yet. And a guy came from New York, from NBC , and said, “We’re in big trouble. Your name is on all these petitions.” It was some civil-rights petition, and a couple more for the Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee. And he said, “Don’t you know that the commies are behind this thing?” And that’s when I got cute and said, “Suppose the communists come out against cancer. Do we have to come out for cancer?” And he said, “Not funny. All you have to do is say you didn’t mean it. It was a mistake. You were taken in by the commies, and you apologize.” I said, “But I am an Anti-Fascist Committee guy. I am for civil rights. I’m not going to take back that stuff.” And they fired me.

So I wasn’t working for a while, but I was fairly well-known in town, and women’s clubs would hire me, pay me a hundred bucks a shot to talk about jazz and folk music and play some records. And at every luncheon they were threatened by this Legionnaire in town, a self-proclaimed lieutenant of Joe McCarthy [the anticommunist Republican senator from Wisconsin]. And he would call these women’s clubs up and warn them that I was a Red. Not one paid attention to him.

There was one elderly woman, very elegant, from an old-money family. She was so furious at this guy that she said, “Mr. Terkel, we are doubling your fee to two hundred dollars as a result.” So I had no other choice but to write to this guy. I sent him a ten-dollar check and said, “You’re my agent, it turns out. You got me an extra hundred dollars, so I’m giving you a 10 percent commission. Thanks very much. Keep it up.” I never heard back from him.

And then I got a job at WFMT , this remarkable Chicago radio station. Meantime, I knew Mahalia Jackson because I’d heard her record “Move On Up a Little Higher.” I’d never heard a voice like that before, so I went to the Olivet Baptist Church, where she was singing — all the churches claimed her, you know — and she and I got to be friends. I started playing her records on my radio show.

I’ve been credited with being the one who made Mahalia world renowned. What a sad commentary this is. Much of African America knew Mahalia’s stuff — she’d pack a ballpark in a black neighborhood — but no white guy knew her music. I was a white disc jockey, so I did play a role, no doubt. But people are giving me credit when they shouldn’t be.

Later, when CBS hired her for a network radio show, she said she would do it under one condition: that Studs Terkel is the host. So they trembled, but they did it. We were rehearsing when another guy from New York came in a half-hour before the show. He was very friendly and said, “Mr. Terkel, this is nothing, just a form for you to sign.”

I asked, “Does everybody get this?”

“No, no, this is just for you.”

“What is it?”

He didn’t say, so I read, “I am not and never have been . . .”

I said, “I’m sorry. I’m not going to do it.” And his voice was rising: “But you must.” I said, “But I mustn’t.” Mahalia heard this ruckus and said, “Is that what I think it is?” She knew about me. She said, “Studs, you’ve got such a big mouth, you should’ve been a preacher. What are you going to do? Are you going to sign it?”

“Of course not.”

“OK, then let’s rehearse.”

And the New York guy said, “Oh, Miss Jackson, Mr. Terkel.” He got very polite then.

Mahalia said, “He just said no — let’s rehearse.” The guy persisted. Finally she said, “I’m getting a little tired of this. You tell Mr. Big, or whoever it is, if they fire Studs Terkel, they can find another Mahalia Jackson.” You know what happened? Nothing. The show ran for twenty-six weeks, and nothing. What’s the moral? To say no! Say no to authorities you think are full of crap. Who the hell are they?

I think of the loneliness, the greed, the overwhelming arrogance of this administration and its stupidity, not knowing when to quit. They’ve won the game. Ninety-five percent of the pie is theirs; but they want a hundred. And that’s where they flopped it up: they didn’t know when to quit.

Shapiro: Let’s talk about your literary career, starting with Division Street: America in 1967.

Terkel: Well, way back in 1957 I did a book for children, Giants of Jazz (New Press). But the first of the interview books was Division Street: America .

Shapiro: You went out into the streets and interviewed the common people: not the politicians, not the authors, not the celebrities.

Terkel: That, of course, was the point. You know how that happened? My publisher, André Schiffrin, called me up; he had just finished a book, Report from a Chinese Village , by Jan Myrdal, describing the changes in a small village in China as a result of the Maoist revolution. So André said, “How about you do an American village during its own revolution: the civil-rights movement?” He meant, of course, Chicago. I said, “Are you out of your mind?” But I did it, and it turned out just right. It fell naturally into place.

And then about six months later Schiffrin called and said, “How about a book about the Great Depression? The young know nothing about this.” I said, “Are you out of your mind?” But I did the Depression book. And that’s how it started.

Shapiro: When you started work on Division Street , you were looking for a single street where you could find white and black, rich and poor. Did that street exist?

Terkel: There is a Division Street in Chicago, but I meant the title metaphorically. We’re on Division Street in this country; we’re split.

Shapiro: Are we more divided now than forty years ago?

Terkel: The answer is a paradox, a contradiction. We have more integration to some extent: the new black middle class. But as far as the greater black population, it’s probably worse than ever. The anti-affirmative-action people say to minorities, “You’ve had your chance.” Minorities can go into restaurants that they couldn’t go into before, but they haven’t got the dough to buy a meal. And we know what’s happening in New Orleans, obviously.

But are we more divided? That’s an interesting question. Yes and no. I think of the loneliness, the greed, the overwhelming arrogance of this administration and its stupidity, not knowing when to quit. They’ve won the game. Ninety-five percent of the pie is theirs; but they want a hundred. And that’s where they flopped it up: they didn’t know when to quit.

You wonder: How stupid are the American people? Are my books a hoax? Because the books say there’s a basic decency in the American people, and a basic honesty, and a basic intelligence. Am I wrong? No, because the cards have been stacked against the people from the beginning.

We talk about “assaults” these days. We talk about the “9/11 assault.” The most egregious assault right now is on our intelligence. Public TV is a big offender — look who’s been on there the longest: [conservative commentator] Bill Buckley. And who else has been on? John McLaughlin and Robert Novak and Mort Kondracke [all conservatives].

Shapiro: And meanwhile the liberal Bill Moyers —

Terkel: — was forced out of public TV . They say he’s too biased. And so you have to think that the American people can be pretty stupid. Or is it that we’re suffering from a national Alzheimer’s disease? We cannot remember yesterday, let alone what happened fifty years ago. In the thirties we saw the Great Depression bucked by the New Deal; of course the war played a role, but it was bucked mostly by the New Deal, by the government stepping in benignly. And now we have the catastrophe in New Orleans. Nothing was prepared, and there was no dough because it’s all going to Iraq and the war. The country has been betrayed by politicians ever since Reagan, and certainly with Bill Clinton and the “centrifying” of the Democrats — meaning castrating them. And the castrators are Bill Clinton and [Democratic senators] Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. They’ve got to go. Hope has to come from some candidate who says, “I am for withdrawal from Iraq now. We’ve blown it, and let’s see if we can recover peace and sanity in the world.”

Getting back to the national Alzheimer’s disease: Social Security — privatize it, and half my friends would be buried in potter’s field. If it wasn’t for Social Security, my God, I’d be in trouble, quite frankly. My books do OK , but healthcare costs . . . Think about this. We are the only industrialized nation in the world that does not have universal healthcare. We are also the only industrialized nation in the world that still has the death penalty. In these two cases, we seem to favor death more than life.

Shapiro: Especially those who say they are “pro-life.”

Terkel: As though we are anti-life. Are they pro-life for the boy who’s in Iraq? Are they pro his life, or do they want to keep on having these kids die?

The big shock for me was Ronald Reagan. It really began with him. What is the first big thing he did after being elected? In 1981 he broke the air-traffic controllers’ strike and blacklisted eleven thousand seasoned air-traffic controllers. That union was the most conservative union in the country. They backed Ronald Reagan 80 percent in the election. Now, what was the issue that caused the strike? They were striking for more psychiatric care, more counseling, because the work would wear them down. They also wanted more R & R . In the hands of one air-traffic controller rest the lives of thousands of passengers each day. In short, they were striking for more passenger safety. So they were striking on behalf of us. And guess what the poll result was: a majority of Americans applauded Reagan for showing up those guys.

So that tells me that we’re a dumb bunch of schmucks here, really, voting against ourselves. Or is there something else? If you’re fed banality and you’re fed trivia and you’re fed all the schlock — the sex and the crime and the overdose of food and everything else — something is bound to happen. It isn’t just people being dumb. The cards are stacked; the dice are loaded.

And yet, despite that, you always have this prescient minority that becomes the majority. The kids who protested the Vietnam War at the beginning had the crap beaten out of them by the jocks. Then the jocks finally discovered, “Hey, they were doing it for me.”

I’ll tell you a story about [peace activist] Dave Dellinger. Remember the Chicago Eight trial, with Abbie Hoffman and Tom Hayden?

Shapiro: You mean the Chicago Seven?

Terkel: Chicago Eight — the eighth guy was [African American activist] Bobby Seale. The oldest one, the strongest one was Dave Dellinger. He was a conscientious objector from World War II , and Dave Dellinger’s father was an ultraconservative lawyer in Worcester, Massachusetts. Dave’s father was just destroyed by Dave’s antiwar activities in the sixties. But Dave noticed one thing about his father: The family went out to dinner to celebrate a birthday, and the waitress was nervous and spilled soup on Dave’s mother’s dress. Dave’s father said, “Oh, no, it’s not your fault; it’s my fault.” He wasn’t within a hundred feet of her, but he took the blame. He never abused the people who were serving him. And so at the very end, as Dave’s father was dying, he said, “You know, Dave, about the Vietnam War: I think you were right; you were right all along that the decent thing was to oppose it.” And Dave said, “Dad, I learned about decency from you.”

And that’s the point I’m making in this book on music. Good music, no matter what it is — jazz and spirituals and blues as well as classical — if people hear it, they get it. But if, day after day after day, you hear schlock, it becomes your language.

Shapiro: You’ve called the Bush administration “a burlesque show, but not a funny one.”

Terkel: Well, it is. The burlesque show began with Ronnie Reagan. Not just that he was a class- Z actor, but there wasn’t anybody there. His stuff was written out for him on cards. They say, “Oh, he was brilliant.” What was brilliant about him? He read the gags that were given to him. You know he was voted — on the Discovery Channel, by two and a half million people — as the greatest leader we’ve ever had, over Abraham Lincoln! FDR was tenth. Tenth! He was below Oprah Winfrey. There you have it. That tells you right there we can condition people to believe anything.

Shapiro: The thing that strikes me about your work is that you get your subjects to share so much of their intimate life, their history, their feelings, their passions. How do you get people to be so forthcoming?

Terkel: I don’t know. There’s nothing mysterious about it. I spoke earlier of my ineptitude with mechanical things: I can’t drive a car. I can’t ride a bike. And I press the wrong buttons sometimes. I lost an interview with [choreographer] Martha Graham. I lost [English actor] Michael Redgrave. And I almost lost [philosopher] Bertrand Russell during the Cuban Missile Crisis in ’63. If I had lost that one, I would have put my head in the oven.

So I’ll be sitting there, and this person I’m interviewing says, “Hey, the tape recorder’s not working.” At that moment that person feels my equal, certainly; my superior, probably. But most important, that person feels needed. To feel needed is what every person wants, and they feel I need them because I’m inept. And I don’t do this as a gag. You know who Mike Royko was?

Shapiro: Sure, the Chicago columnist.

Terkel: Mike accused me of deliberately doing that. He said, “You son of a bitch, you deliberately . . .” But later on he discovered that I really am inept. He said, “You know what? It’s true. You are hopeless.”

The other thing I do is keep it simple: “What do you do? What is your day like?” Here’s a good example: a gas-meter reader in Working . I ask, “What is the day of a gas-meter reader like?” He says, “Well, it’s dogs and women.” And I say, “Dogs and women?” And then I realize the first is the reality, the second the fantasy. You’ve got to know that. “Well, let’s talk about the dogs first.”

“I don’t care for a pit bull,” he says. “I’ve got my flashlight ready. I don’t mind a wolfhound. It’s those little poodles, those Pekingese pups, I hate them. They gnaw at my legs.”

“Now, what about the women?”

“Oh, nothing’s happened. It’s just sometimes it’s summertime, and it’s hot, and a woman is kind of good-looking, and she’s lying there in the backyard on her stomach on the blanket, and she’s in a bikini. She’s getting the sun on her back, and she’s got the bra unfastened. So what I do is I creep up very slowly, very softly, and when I’m right near her, I holler: ‘Gas man!’ And she turns around. You know what, I’m bawled out an awful lot, but it makes the day go faster.”

A great moment for me was when I was interviewing this woman years ago. The housing projects were still new, and this was an integrated one. Poverty was the only common denominator among the residents. The woman had three little kids and was very pretty. She had bad teeth — no money for the dentist — but pretty. And I got out the mike — the mike wasn’t as ubiquitous as it is today — and the kids were jumping up and down. They’re five, six years old. So I say to the kids, “You be quiet, and I’ll play back your mommy’s voice.” I’m playing back her voice, and she’s listening, and suddenly she says: “Oh, my God, I never knew I felt that way before.” Well, that’s a big moment. That’s what I call a “bingo moment” — for her and for me.

So how do I do it? There is no one way. I sit down with a guy, and he might give me a cup of coffee, and I start talking. I sometimes mention something about myself as I’m talking to them. I’m just a guy who’s asking questions, and they forget about the mike.

We talk about “assaults” these days. We talk about the “9/11 assault.” The most egregious assault right now is on our intelligence.

Shapiro: You have interviewed celebrities like Louis Armstrong and Bob Dylan, and also so many ordinary people. Who has made the greatest impression on you?

Terkel: There isn’t any one in particular. Well, there was the ex-Klansman C.P. Ellis [who became a civil-rights activist and trade-union organizer]. His growth was phenomenal, his development and his epiphanies. He’s as good as anybody, I would say.

Shapiro: One of my favorite books of yours is Will the Circle Be Unbroken? What did you learn from working on that book about the process of death?

Terkel: I wrote that shortly after my wife died, but I’d started work on the book before she had become ill. I respect those who believe in the hereafter. I envy them. I don’t know if I wish there were a hereafter. I don’t believe there is; I must admit that. I think we’re ashes, and I’ll have my ashes and my wife’s ashes together. Those are her ashes there [pointing to an urn]. I’ll have my sons spread them and mine at Bughouse Square, next to Newberry Library [in Chicago]. And if it violates the ordinance, tough! What are you going to do about it? Dig it up?

I am very moved by people who speak of out-of-body experiences. These are good, decent people, and they may have had some adventure. I had an adventure, quite frankly, when I broke my neck. I was in the hospital for seven weeks, and I had these dreams. To this day I ask my son, “Are you sure such-and-such didn’t happen?” I thought all this was real stuff, but it wasn’t. It was my imagination. So these people who speak of leaving the body — I don’t laugh at them. It’s their belief. If it gives anybody solace, I say let it go. If you say, “Naw, there ain’t no such thing,” you break their hearts, especially people who have had a hard life.

It’s their right; it’s their life. If I want the plug pulled, it’s my right. I’m pro-choice when it comes to death, just as I’m pro-choice when it comes to life. Quite frankly, they’re connected.

So basically that book is about life. I can’t talk about death unless I talk about life. Death is when life comes to an end. Now, we all want to live life. But I would just as soon kick off in a year. Why ninety-four? Winston Churchill is given credit for a lot of quotes, and this is one: “Who would want to live to be ninety? Everybody who’s eighty-nine.” That’s basically true.

Shapiro: Just one last question: Are you still hopeful about this country?

Terkel: You know what, whether I want to be or not, I have to be. It’s as simple as that.

Culture and Society
Art and Creativity
Social Justice

Michael Shapiro

Correspondence

Studs Terkel excoriates President Ronald Reagan for firing the striking air-traffic controllers in 1981. These workers were not fired because of their demands, as Terkel implies. They were fired because they broke the law by going on strike. Federal employees are forbidden by law from going on strike for any reason.

You asked in your renewal letter why I decided not to renew my subscription. The answer is in the letter itself, in which you write, “Come back! All is forgiven!” as though you were not a magazine soliciting subscriptions but a family expecting loyalty.

As a cozy New Age family, The Sun regularly invites all its members to express whatever they feel (as long as they aren’t mean to their brothers and sisters), whether or not the expression contains literary merit, original thought, or new information. It’s the sort of dynamic found in twelve-step programs and group-therapy sessions.

The cultlike message of your renewal letter is that readers of The Sun are a sacred in-group, and everyone else is cast into outer darkness. Consider the sentence “Or maybe you’ve been flirting with other magazines: making eyes at that fashion rag, or taking home the latest copy of that financial journal.” Are those the only two choices — embracing the prevailing social order of unfettered capitalism and soulless materialism, or subscribing to The Sun ? What about “other magazines” like the Nation and Mother Jones , which offer better-presented, better-researched, and more-timely information?

If you want me back as a subscriber, I suggest you leave topics such as self-mutilation to the psychotherapy trade journals and seek personal testimony from those who were once swept up in the revolutionary hopefulness of the 1960s; or from veterans of the war in Iraq or Iraqi civilians; or from feminists in Islamic nations. Perhaps you could publish stories from, rather than about, those who work on farms or in minimum-wage jobs; or stories from nonwhites about the relationship between poverty and race; or stories from teachers and students about the struggle to obtain an education in underfunded, overcrowded schools. I’d like to hear from former gang members and people in the prison system; from Jewish Israelis who believe Israel has a right to exist; and from Palestinians who have something to say about what the devil is going on in that corner of the Middle East.

Your publication once offered a unique combination of social conscience, new information, and lively writing. The closest you’ve come in recent years is Michael Shapiro’s interview with the amazing nonagenarian activist Studs Terkel [“ Hope Dies Last ,” November 2006], a blast of life and color on pages that are increasingly moribund with depression, confusion, and guilt.

What’s with all the explanatory brackets in an otherwise enjoyable Studs Terkel interview [“ Hope Dies Last ,” by Michael Shapiro, November 2006]? This first one made me do a double take: “[folk singer] Woody Guthrie.” Then came “[conductor] Leonard Bernstein,” followed by “[ FBI director] J. Edgar Hoover.” Why not explain what FBI stands for, as well?

After reading about “[jazz singer] Billie Holiday” and “[Italian tenor] Enrico Caruso,” I wondered why it was assumed that we already know who Mozart and Brahms were.

The only brackets I actually could appreciate were “C.P. Ellis [who became a civil-rights activist].” At the end of the interview, I particularly enjoyed Terkel’s concluding quotation from Winston Churchill — but who was he?

After we’d both read the interview, my husband and I had a good laugh thinking of identifications you might use in the future: [German politician] Adolf Hitler; [early English playwright] William Shakespeare; [marine marksman] Lee Harvey Oswald; [carpenter and medical miracle] Jesus Christ.

It’s true, many of our readers don’t need help identifying Woody Guthrie and Billie Holiday. But not every Sun reader has the same cultural background: Some are immigrants. Some are teenagers. Some don’t have televisions. A person who’s famous to one may not be known to another. We also hope that writing from The Sun will endure, and future generations may not remember Leonard Bernstein, or J. Edgar Hoover, or even [British cigar aficionado] Winston Churchill.

[ Sun senior editor] Andrew Snee

Also In This Issue

November 2006.

Killing Time

Field notes, no camping on city streets, related selections.

from The Grapes Of Wrath

October 2003

It’s Her Choice

Katha pollitt on the struggle over abortion rights, send to a friend.

Speeches > Kevin J Worthen > The Process and Power of Hope

The Process and Power of Hope

Kevin j worthen.

President of Brigham Young University

September 8, 2020

Welcome to the new school year—one unlike any other we have experienced. As we start the year, we face some challenges and problems that have never been encountered before on this campus, as evidenced by the unique setting for this devotional. The circumstances in both the world and in our personal lives sometimes seem daunting and difficult, especially in the midst of a pandemic. Each of us may wonder from time to time why we have to deal with such challenges and problems.

Pandora’s Box

Ancient Greek mythology includes a story intended to answer the question of why there are problems and evil in the world. It concerns the desire of Zeus, the king of the gods, to exact revenge on Prometheus for stealing fire from the gods and giving it to humans. In Hesiod’s well-known version of the story, Zeus created Pandora 1 and presented her to Prometheus’s brother Epimetheus. Pandora brought with her a jar, which, due to a translation error in the sixteenth century, is now commonly referred to as a box. The jar contained what one ancient poet called “countless plagues.” 2 Prometheus had warned his brother not to accept any gifts from Zeus, but Epimetheus ignored him and accepted Pandora, who immediately opened the jar, scattering its contents throughout the world. Thus, wrote the same poet, the earth and seas are “full of evils.” 3

I am not sure that this is the root cause of the present coronavirus pandemic, but this story—and the use of the term “Pandora’s box” to refer to a multitude of problems and evils—is widely known today. What is less well known is that, according to the earliest written record of the myth, there was one item in Pandora’s jar that did not escape. That item was hope. As one early version of the story put it, “Only Hope remained there . . . under the rim of the great jar, and did not fly out at the door; for . . . the lid of the jar stopped her, by the will . . . of Zeus.” 4

The early poet did not explain why hope remained in the jar, and scholars have vigorously debated that issue for centuries. Some have suggested that Zeus trapped hope in the jar because he was so angry with Prometheus that he wanted to make sure humans had no access to hope and he wanted to eliminate any thought that there was a chance things might improve. 5 Others, including one leading twentieth-century scholar, believed just the opposite: that hope was kept in the jar so that it was always available to humans: “The general sense of the story . . . is that because of Pandora the world is full of ills, but we have one good thing to set against them, Hope.” 6

That same optimistic view of hope finds expression in a variety of cultures and languages. In many English-speaking countries, we say, “Hope springs eternal,” 7 reaffirming eighteenth-century poet Alexander Pope’s belief that the impulse to hope against all odds is embedded deep in our souls.

A traditional Russian saying is “Hope dies last,” which, as one Russian explained, means that as long as you are alive, you have hope: “You live even if everything is very, very bad around you because if you have hope . . . you can survive.” 8

Reflecting the same view from the opposite end of things, the Middle Ages poet Dante introduced his travelers to the gates of hell with the stern warning, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” 9 As Elder Jeffrey R. Holland recently observed, “Truly when hope is gone, what we have left is the flame of the inferno raging on every side.” 10

An Anchor to Our Souls

Modern and ancient scripture, 11 along with modern and ancient prophets, 12 echo the central importance of hope in our lives. Indeed, scripture identifies hope as one of the three essential celestializing characteristics, firmly centered between foundational faith and exalting charity. However, despite its place in that elite company, hope often gets less attention in Church talks than do its surrounding compatriots. At times it seems that we view hope as more of a grammatical connector between the two better-known bookends of faith and charity than we do as an eternal empowering concept whose development is equally central to God’s plan for us.

So today, at a time and in a circumstance in which we might struggle to understand what hope looks like—and even more to know how to draw upon its power in our everyday lives—I would like to spend a few minutes talking about hope, with the hope that my remarks will enhance both our understanding of and our ability to draw strength from this key gospel concept.

Part of the reason why our understanding of the concept of hope seems less developed than other essential gospel characteristics is that the word hope has so many meanings in so many different contexts that its central significance sometimes gets lost. For many in today’s society, hope seems to be just a weak form of positive thinking. When answering such questions as Will I get a 4.0 GPA this semester? Will she accept my invitation for a date? or Will I realize my dream of being the first person on Mars? the common, usually hesitant reply of “Well, I hope so” seems more like a confession that whatever meager optimism we possess is justified and probably outmatched only by our naivete.

However, at other times—and in other settings, especially in the gospel context—hope takes on a much more affirmative and certain role. According to scripture, hope can be “an anchor to [our] souls.” 13 It can make us “sure and steadfast.” 14 The right kind of hope can purify us. 15 Nephi informed us that “a perfect brightness of hope” 16 is an essential part of the process by which we achieve eternal life. Hope is so central to our eternal progress that, according to Moroni, “man must hope, or he cannot receive an inheritance in the place which [Christ] hast prepared.” 17

As Elder Neal A. Maxwell once observed, the hope described in scriptures—what he called “real” or “ultimate” hope—“is much more than wishful musing. It stiffens, not slackens, the spiritual spine. Hope is serene, not giddy, eager without being naive, and pleasantly steady without being smug.” 18

So one step in better understanding hope is to focus on the gospel-centered concept of hope and not the more wishy-washy, weak form of Pollyannaish positive thinking to which the world sometimes limits its meaning.

But even then there is a challenge, because the scriptures themselves appear to convey somewhat inconsistent views of the role of hope in our eternal progress. Some scriptures seem to indicate that we have to have hope before we can have faith, while others—paradoxically—seem to indicate that we have to have faith before we have hope.

For example, on the one hand, the Joseph Smith Translation of the book of Hebrews indicates that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for,” 19 suggesting that faith follows hope, with faith being the celestial affirmation that what one hoped for is in fact true. Mormon seems to suggest the same idea in his sermon in Moroni 7. Mormon asked, “How is it that ye can attain unto faith, save ye shall have hope?” 20 clearly implying that hope must precede faith.

On the other hand, in that same sermon, Mormon informed us that “without faith there cannot be any hope,” 21 suggesting that hope comes after faith, confirming what appears to be the progress from faith to hope to charity that both Mormon 22 and Paul 23 suggested is the proper order of celestial development.

So does hope come before or after faith? Is it a predecessor or a product of faith? Let me suggest that the answer to all of these questions is yes. Hope comes before and after faith. It is both a predecessor and a product of faith.

One possible resolution of this apparent dilemma is to consider the possibility that there are two types or manifestations of hope—one more developed than the other. The Guide to the Scriptures describes hope as both “the confident expectation of and longing for the promised blessings of righteousness.” 24 Let me suggest that “longing for the promised blessings” describes a pre-faith kind of hope, while “confident expectation” describes a post-faith kind of hope, the hope that is created after faith comes into the equation.

Let’s call this pre-faith longing for the blessings “nascent hope”— nascent being defined as something that is “beginning to form [or] grow.” 25 Nascent hope comes into being by our choice, by the exercise of our agency. We must first want to believe—or, to use the words of Alma, “desire to believe.” 26 If we choose to have at least this much hope—enough hope to desire to believe—God can then engender faith in us by giving us an assurance that what we hope for or desire is truly possible. That spiritual assurance of the nascent form of hope is what Paul defined as faith in Hebrews 11: an “assurance of things hoped for.” This faith can then lead to a stronger kind of hope, a more mature hope—the “confident expectation” that the Guide to the Scriptures describes and that Moroni called “a more excellent hope.” 27 The process might work like this:

1. We begin with nascent hope, which comes into being when we exercise our agency to desire or long to believe.

2. Once nascent hope is formed, we can then receive the spiritual assurance or confirmation that what we desire is true, which is the essence of faith. 28

3. That confirmation of faith in turn creates a stronger, “more excellent” form of hope.

Aaron’s instruction to the king of the Lamanites in Alma 22 seems to outline this kind of process: Aaron said to the king, “If thou desirest . . . and call on [Christ’s] name in faith, believing . . . , then shalt thou receive the hope which thou desirest.” 29 First the king had to exercise his agency by desiring to believe—by choosing to hope that the joy and blessings about which Aaron had testified were really possible. He then needed to pray for spiritual confirmation. The spiritual assurance he received as a result of his prayer, which was faith, then engendered a deeper kind of hope, “a more excellent hope.” 30

This is not a one-time, linear process that we can perfect through a single event but a repeating pattern that builds on itself. It is an iterative process in which faith and hope combine over and over to increase both our faith and our hope. As this process repeats itself, the lines between the two concepts grow faint. As Elder Neal A. Maxwell put it, “Faith and hope are constantly interactive and are not always easily or precisely distinguished.” 31

With this model in mind, it is important to remember that it is not faith in the abstract nor faith in general that turns our less developed nascent hope into the more mature, more durable, and “more excellent” hope. It is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the constant exercise of faith in Christ that transforms what would otherwise be merely wishful thinking into the kind of hope that becomes an anchor to our soul. We have to plant our desires, our hope, in Him.

Christ Is the Author and Finisher of Our Hope

Because of His atoning sacrifice, Christ has the power to transform all our righteous desires into reality. Our role is to believe in Him and His gospel and teachings enough that He can work with us and that we allow Him to shape our desires so that our will aligns with His.

Thus, if we want to strengthen our hope, we must focus more on the Savior, especially when we feel hopeless. One of the simplest but most powerful ways we can do that is to follow His example by serving others. When we find ourselves struggling to find hope, we should reach out to someone in need, as the Savior constantly did. As we do so, our focus will shift from ourselves to others, and we will begin to have desires for their well-being. That hope can then be coupled with the assurance that Christ can help them and that He can do so through us. This addition of faith to our righteous desires can transform our small, nascent hope into an enduring, powerful, more excellent form of hope that can change us—and others. Christlike service is often the seedbed of hope, on both sides of faith. Thus, just as Christ is “the author and finisher of our faith,” 32 He is also the author and finisher of our hope.

While we all ultimately want to develop the more excellent hope that comes from exercising faith in Christ, we should not ignore or underestimate the power and importance of the less mature, less developed form of hope that I have called nascent hope. Such budding hope is important both because it is the indispensable first step in the process and because, at times, it is all we can muster.

There will be times, maybe even in the year to come, when the gap between where we are and where we want to be seems so vast as to be unbridgeable. There will be times when our hope is so small that it appears to be of no significance. In those moments—when it feels like all we can do is hang on to the last shred of hope we have—please be assured that that can be enough.

This is illustrated—literally—by a painting by the nineteenth-century English artist George Frederic Watts. The painting is entitled Hope. Prior to Watts’s painting of the subject, most illustrations of hope typically featured a lively young woman holding a flower or an anchor. 33 Watts’s portrayal of hope departed from that norm. Watts himself described the painting as “Hope sitting on a globe, with bandaged eyes playing on a [small harp] which has all the strings broken but one out of which . . . she is trying to get all the music possible, listening with all her might to the little sound.” 34 Her dress is threadbare; she appears to be exhausted, worn out. She is seemingly barely holding on. And yet she is holding on, trying her best to get music from what she has left: one single string.

Watts painted the picture shortly after his young granddaughter had passed away, which may account for this less glorified portrayal of hope. 35 While his exact intended message is somewhat ambiguous—and still somewhat debated today—the positive impact of the picture has been widespread. One of Watts’s biographers wrote:

A poor girl, character-broken and heart-broken, wandering about the streets of London with a growing feeling that nothing [good] remained . . . , saw a photograph of [the picture of Hope ] in a shop-window. She recognized at once its message. When she had saved a few coppers, she bought the photograph, and, looking at it every day, the message sank into her soul, and she fought her way back to a life of purity and honour. 36

In the early years of the twentieth century, prints of the painting circulated widely. President Theodore Roosevelt displayed a copy at his home in New York. 37

Decades later, Martin Luther King Jr. referred to the painting in his “Shattered Dreams” speech, noting that it was an “imaginative portrayal” of the truth that we will all “face the agony of blasted hopes and shattered dreams,” reinforcing his main point that “in the final analysis our ability to deal creatively with shattered dreams and blasted hopes will be determined by the extent of our faith in God.” 38

As Watts’s portrait of hope demonstrates, there is more power in our desires than we may think. In the long run, our desires will determine our destiny. 39 While it may not seem like much, the smallest form of hope—the smallest desire to believe—can be the first step in a miraculous process through which God can exalt us. So if at times you cannot see clearly or really not at all, if you can play only one note and that note sounds out of tune—if all you can do is hang on to one thread and hope it holds, then hang on and hope. That will be enough to start the process. If you then turn to the Savior and sincerely ask for His help, He will take what little you have to offer and turn it into magnificent, exalting hope, which can be an anchor to your soul.

As we begin this new school year, let me conclude by sharing four of my hopes for you in the coming year:

Firs t, I hope that each of you stays safe and healthy. We are in the midst of a pandemic, and that requires that we do some things differently. Most important, we must be willing to adhere to the safety guidelines and directions to which each of us has agreed to comply. If we are to continue on with any face-to-face instruction, every one of us will need to be more vigilant in washing our hands, wearing a mask, social distancing, and avoiding gatherings where those things are not observed.

Second, I hope that each of you discovers or rediscovers the joy of discovery and that you more fully experience the enlightenment and energy that come from learning truth through study and faith. As hard as it may be to believe at times, learning can be an exhilarating, edifying experience, even when—or maybe especially when—it is exhausting. It can be joyful, particularly when it is facilitated by the Holy Ghost.

Thir d, I hope that each of you feels fully a part of the BYU community and that every one of you feels you belong here at BYU. As I mentioned at the recent university conference, I hope that we can each develop “a loving, genuine concern for the welfare of” 40 all of God’s children, regardless of their race, gender, sexual orientation, or other distinguishing feature, each of which is secondary to our common identity as “beloved spirit [children] of heavenly parents.” 41 I hope we can learn to have difficult conversations without being difficult, because those kinds of conversations, held in love, will be necessary if we are to be a true Zion community.

Fourt h, and most important, I hope that in the coming year each of you can feel in greater measure God’s love for you individually. At those times when you wonder if there is any reason to hope, when you wonder if anyone cares—or if anyone should care—I invite you to ask God what He thinks of you—what He really thinks of you. I know that can seem to be a frightening endeavor since you know that He knows better than anyone all your faults. But if you are truly sincere, you will be pleasantly surprised by His response, because He loves you much more than you can imagine.

You may feel that you do not have enough hope to generate faith, but I can assure you that the Lord has enough love to let you feel His charity. His love for you is perfect—not because you are perfect, not because you got admitted to BYU, not because you aced a test, and not because your parents are proud of you, but because you are you and you are His. If you feel that love more fully, you will find more hope in every circumstance and in all you do. My greatest hope for you is that you experience that kind of hope through God’s love in this coming year. That you may do so is my prayer and my hope for you, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

1. The oldest surviving version of the Pandora story was written by Hesiod, without giving her name, in his poem The Theogony (c. 700 BC). He again told the story in Works and Days (c. 700 BC). In The Theogony, Zeus was assisted by Hephaestus and Athena in creating and preparing Pandora. In the later, more detailed version, other gods were also involved. See Wikipedia, s.v. “ Pandora .”

2. Hesiod, Works and Days, line 100.

3. Hesiod, Works and Days, line 101.

4. Hesiod, Works and Days, lines 96–99.

5. Philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche argued:

Zeus did not want man to throw his life away, no matter how much the other evils might torment him, but rather to go on letting himself be tormented anew. To that end, he gives man hope. In truth, it is the most evil of evils because it prolongs man’s torment. [“On the History of Moral Feelings,” section 2 of Human, All Too Human (1878), paragraph 71; see also Wikipedia, s.v. “ Pandora’s box ”]

6. Martin Litchfield West, commentary, in Hesiod, Works and Days, ed. M. L. West (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 169. As one Renaissance poem put it:

Of all good things that mortals lack, Hope in the soul alone stays back.

[Gabriele Faerno, “Spes,” fable 94 in Fabulum Centum (1563); see also Wikipedia, s.v. “ Pandora’s box ”]

7. Alexander Pope, “An Essay on Man” (1733–1734), Epistle I, line 95.

8. Anna, in Jarrett Zigon, “ Hope Dies Last: Two Aspects of Hope in Contemporary Moscow ,” Anthropological Theory 9, no. 3 (September 2009): 262. Jarrett Zigon, a contemporary anthropologist, concluded that there is in Russian identity “a definite and unbreakable relationship between living a human life and having hope” (Zigon, “ Hope Dies Last ,” 262).

9. Dante Alighieri, “Inferno,” The Divine Comedy (c. 1310–1320), canto 3, line 9.

10. Jeffrey R. Holland, “ A Perfect Brightness of Hope ,” Ensign, May 2020.

11. See, e.g., Ether 12:4 , 32 ; Hebrews 6:19 ; 1 John 3:2–3 ; 2 Nephi 31:20 .

12. See, e.g. Ether 12:32 ; Holland, “ Perfect Brightness ”; Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “ The Infinite Power of Hope ,” Ensign, November 2008; James E. Faust, “ Hope, an Anchor of the Soul ,” Ensign, November 1999; Neal A. Maxwell, “ Hope Through the Atonement of Jesus Christ ,” Ensign, November 1998.

13. Ether 12:4 ; see also Hebrews 6:19 .

14. Ether 12:4 ; Hebrews 6:19 .

15. See 1 John 3:2–3 .

16. 2 Nephi 31:20 .

17. Ether 12:32 ; emphasis added.

18. Maxwell, “ Hope .”

19. JST, Hebrews 11:1 .

20. Moroni 7:40 .

21. Moroni 7:42 .

22. See Moroni describing his father’s sermon “concerning faith, hope, and charity” ( Moroni 7:1 ).

23. See Paul, who said, “Faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity” ( 1 Corinthians 13:13 ).

24. Guide to the Scriptures, s.v. “hope,” churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/gs/hope?lang=eng ; emphasis added.

25. OED Online, oed.com, s.v. “nascent.” It is also defined as “in the act of being born or brought forth.”

26. Alma 32:27 .

27. Ether 12:32 .

28. See Alma 32:21 : “If ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true ” (emphasis added).

29. Alma 22:16 ; emphasis added.

30. While not necessarily agreeing with my analysis, Elder Holland may have been describing the same thing when he noted in his most recent general conference talk that through faith the pre-1820 “desires [of the righteous] began to be clothed in reality and became, as the Apostle Paul and others taught, true anchors to the soul, sure and steadfast” (Holland, “ Perfect Brightness ,” paraphrasing Hebrews 6:19 and Ether 12:4 ).

31. Maxwell, “ Hope .”

32. Hebrews 12:2 .

33. See Nicholas Tromans, “Hope”: The Life and Times of a Victorian Icon (Compton, Surrey: Watts Gallery, 2011), 11; see also Wikipedia, s.v. “ Hope (painting) .”

34. George Frederic Watts, letter to Madeline Wyndham, 8 December 1885, now in the Tate Archives, Tate Britain, London; quoted in Mark Bills and Barbara Bryant, G. F. Watts: Victorian Visionary: Highlights from the Watts Gallery Collection (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press in association with Watts Gallery, 2008), 220; also quoted in Tromans, Victorian Icon, 70; see also Wikipedia, s.v. “ Hope (painting) .”

35. See Bills and Bryant, G. F. Watts, 220; see also Wikipedia, s.v. “ Hope (painting) .”

36. Henry William Shrewsbury, The Visions of an Artist: Studies in G. F. Watts, with Verse Interpretations (London: Charles H. Kelly, 1918), 64.

37. See Wikipedia, s.v. “ Hope (painting) .”

38. Martin Luther King Jr., “Draft of Chapter X, ‘Shattered Dreams,’” 1 July 1962 to 31 March 1963 (based on a sermon preached in Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama, 5 April 1959), Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University, kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/draft-chapter-x-shattered-dreams .

39. See Alma 29:2 : “God . . . granteth unto men according to their desire”; Enos 1:12 : “The Lord said unto me: I will grant unto thee according to thy desires, because of thy faith”; and D&C 11:17 : “According to your desires . . . , even according to your faith shall it be done unto you.”

40. The Mission of Brigham Young University (4 November 1981). See Kevin J Worthen, “ How to Act While Being Acted Upon ,” BYU university conference address, 24 August 2020.

41. “ The Family: A Proclamation to the World ” (23 September 1995). See Worthen, “ How to Act .”

See the complete list of abbreviations here

Kevin J Worthen, president of Brigham Young University, delivered this devotional address on September 8, 2020.

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Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Difficult Times

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Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Difficult Times Hardcover – November 3, 2003

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Print length 320 pages
Language English
Publisher New Press, The
Publication date November 3, 2003
Dimensions 7 x 1.75 x 9.5 inches
ISBN-10 1565848373
ISBN-13 978-1565848375
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Publisher ‏ : ‎ New Press, The; First Edition (November 3, 2003)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1565848373
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1565848375
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.55 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7 x 1.75 x 9.5 inches
#5,211 in United States History (Books)

About the author

Studs terkel.

Studs Terkel (1912-2008) was a free spirit, an outspoken populist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, a terrible ham, and one of the best-loved characters on the American scene. Born in New York in 1912, he lived in Chicago for over eight decades. His radio show was carried on stations throughout the country.

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What happens when hope is lost, a tribute to shane lopez.

Posted July 27, 2016

“The tiny ripple of hope you set in motion can change the path of someone's life,” said Dr Shane Lopez , Gallup’s Senior Scientist in Residence and one of the world’s leading researchers on hope when I interviewed him several years ago . They were words that stayed with me, and as I shared Shane’s research and tools around the world, I’ve been privileged to see just how much change these ripples are capable of creating.

Never have we needed Shane’s insights on hope more than we need them now.

Reading our newspapers recently is like waking up in some kind of Orwellian nightmare. Treaties and alliances that stemmed centuries of bloodshed in Europe are being torn up. A man who takes pride in spreading lies, hatred and fear across borders is about to be elected the leader of the free world. And children innocently celebrating a national holiday outside a lolly shop are mown down and killed in cold blood in the name of God.

But perhaps, most dismaying of all, is that while shock is shared and tears are shed, it seems most of us are willing to accept that this is just the fate of our world.

Is this really what we’re willing to settle for? Is this how we want our children to grow up?

“When we choose hope, we define what matters most to us,” Shane told me.

After all, hope was what powered the first African-American man to be elected President of the United States. Hope was what inspired 195 countries to sign the world’s first accord on climate change . And hope is how extreme poverty has fallen for the first time to below ten percent of the world’s population.

“Hope is created moment by moment through our deliberate choices,” Shane wrote in his best-selling book Making Hope Happen . “It happens when we use our thoughts and feelings to temper our aversion to loss and actively pursue what is possible.”

Yes, at this moment in history it seems that Britain will leave the European Union, that Donald Trump may become President and that terrorists believe killing innocent people is the only way to be heard. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have the power to hope for something different.

You see Shane also taught us that hope is contagious . He suggested that we are each the best chance of spreading hope in the world by:

Modeling hope and treating others with the kind of love, compassion and kindness you want for yourself.
Caring enough to support others who are in need of help.
Becoming a Super-Empowered, Hopeful Individual who believes the future can be better than today, and you can make it happen, despite the obstacles in your way.

After all, as Shane observed, “How we think about the future - how we hope - determines how well we live our lives.”

Unfortunately, just when the world most needs his work, Shane recently passed away. And while it would be easy to believe that today the world has a little less hope in it, Shane himself would tell us to get off the sidelines of life and start spreading more hope. He was a wonderful leader, researcher, teacher, friend, husband and father who will be greatly missed.

I urge you today, in memory of Shane, and for the people that you most care for, to create a tiny ripple of hope and help build a future that is better than where we currently find ourselves.You can savor more of Shane’s work at his site www.hopemonger.com and in his wonderful book Making Hope Happen .

Vale Shane Lopez.

Michelle McQuaid, Ph.D., is a workplace well-being teacher translating research from positive psychology and neuroscience into practical strategies for health, happiness, and business success.

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Janis Paige, star of Hollywood and Broadway, dies at 101

FILE - Bob Hope and Janis Paige hug during the annual Christmas show in Saigon, Vietnam, Dec. 25, 1964. Paige, a popular actor in Hollywood and in Broadway musicals and comedies who danced with Fred Astaire, toured with Bob Hope and continued to perform into her 80s, has died Sunday, June 2, 2024, of natural causes at her Los Angeles home, longtime friend Stuart Lampert said Monday, June 3. (AP Photo, File)

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NEW YORK (AP) — Janis Paige, a popular actor in Hollywood and in Broadway musicals and comedies who danced with Fred Astaire, toured with Bob Hope and continued to perform into her 90s, has died. She was 101.

Paige died Sunday of natural causes at her Los Angeles home, longtime friend Stuart Lampert said Monday.

Paige starred on Broadway with Jackie Cooper in the mystery-comedy, “Remains to be Seen” and appeared with John Raitt in the smash hit musical “The Pajama Game.”

Her other films included a Hope comedy, “Bachelor in Paradise"; the Doris Day comedy “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies” and “Follow the Boys.”

In 2018, she added her voice to the #MeToo movement, alleging an assault when she was 22 by the late department-store heir Alfred Bloomingdale, who died in 1982.

“I could feel his hands, not only on my breasts, but seemingly everywhere. He was big and strong, and I began to fight, kick, bite and scream,” she wrote. “At 95, time is not on my side, and neither is silence. I simply want to add my name and say, ‘Me too.’”

Paige’s big break came in wartime when she sang an operatic aria for servicemen at the Hollywood Canteen. MGM hired her a day later for a brief role in “Bathing Beauty” — she spoke two lines in the film, which starred Esther Williams and Red Skelton — then dropped her.

This image released by Sony Pictures Classics shows Franka Potente in a scene from "Run Lola Run." (Bernd Spauke/Sony Pictures Classics via AP)

The same day, Warner Bros. signed her and cast her in a dramatic segment of the all-star movie “Hollywood Canteen.” Her contract started at $150 a week. “I earned more per week than my mother had made in a month during the Great Depression,” she recalled in The Hollywood Reporter in 2018.

Her salary rose to $1,000 weekly as the studio kept her busy in lightweight films such as “Two Guys from Milwaukee,” “The Time, the Place and the Girl,” Love and Learn,” “Always Together,” “Wallflower” and “Romance on the High Seas,” which marked Doris Day’s film debut.

Meanwhile, she had changed her name from Donna May Tjaden, adopting her grandfather’s name of Paige. She took her first name from Elsie Janis, famed for entertaining troops in World War I.

Paige’s contract expired in 1949, at a time when studios were unloading talent because of the inroads of television. “That was a jolt,” she remarked in 1963. “It meant I was washed up at 25.”

She took her talents to Broadway, where she starred in “Remains to Be Seen” (her role would be snatched by June Allyson for the screen adaptation), and starred as Babe opposite Raitt as Sid in the original production of “The Pajama Game,” directed in 1954 by George Abbott. (Doris Day would take her role in the film version.)

MGM producer Arthur Freed caught her nightclub act at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles and offered her a part opposite Astaire in “Silk Stockings,” also co-starring Cyd Charisse. The film is famous for her and Astaire spoofing the newfangled movie gimmicks in the Cole Porter number “Stereophonic Sound,” including swinging from a chandelier.

“I was one mass of bruises. I didn’t know how to fall. I didn’t know how to get down on a table — I didn’t know how to save myself because I was never a classic dancer,” she told the Miami Herald in 2016.

In May 2003, Paige resumed entertaining after a long absence. She opened a show she called “The Third Act” at San Francisco’s Plush Room. She told stories about Astaire, Frank Sinatra and others and sang tunes from her films and stage musicals.

Chad Jones, reviewer for the Alameda Times-Star, commented that at 80 “the charming Paige shows a vitality, verve and spirit that performers half her age would envy.”

Paige grew up in Tacoma, Washington. Her father deserted the family when she was 4, and her mother eked out a living at the Bank of Tacoma.

“We always had enough to eat,” Paige told the Saturday Evening Post in 1963, “but nothing to spare. My mother worked so hard. And she used to keep saying that she wished I’d been born a boy, so I could help out more. I always wanted to be a success for her, to make up for my father.”

After leaving Warner Bros., she turned to TV, starring in a 1955-1956 TV series, “It’s Always Jan” and playing recurring roles in “Flamingo Road,” “Santa Barbara,” “Eight Is Enough,” “Capitol,” “Fantasy Island” and “Trapper Jon, M.D.” On “All in the Family,” she played a diner waitress who becomes involved with Carroll O’Connor’s Archie Bunker.

Paige replaced Angela Lansbury in the New York production of “Mame” in 1968 on Broadway and toured with the show in 1969. She also toured in “Gypsy,” “Annie Get Your Gun,” “Born Yesterday” and “The Desk Set.” Her last time on Broadway was in 1984’s “Alone Together.”

She also supplied glamor for Hope’s Christmas visits to Cuba and the Caribbean in 1960, Japan and South Korea in 1962, and Vietnam in 1964. She sang in clubs with Sammy Davis Jr., Alan King, Dinah Shore and Perry Como.

In 2020, her autobiography, “Reading Between the Lines: A Memoir,” was published, recounting her connections with Frank Sinatra, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, David Niven, Henry Fonda, Clark Gable and Lucille Ball.

She had two brief marriages, to San Francisco restaurateur Frank Martinelli and to writer-producer Arthur Stander. In 1962 she married songwriter Ray Gilbert, who won an Oscar for the song “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Da” from Disney’s “Song of the South.” He died in 1976, and she assumed management of his music company.

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

Janis Paige, Musical Star of Broadway and Hollywood, Dies at 101

J anis Paige, one of the last remaining stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood, died Sunday of natural causes at her home in Los Angeles, longtime friend Stuart Lampert said Monday. She was 101 years old.

Her numerous stage productions include "Gypsy" and "Annie Get Your Gun," and she appeared in movie musicals opposite Doris Day including "Romance on the High Seas" and "Please Don't Eat the Daisies," Bob Hope in 1961's "Bachelor in Paradise" and Fred Astaire in 1957's "Silk Stockings."

On Broadway, her starring role as Babe in the 1954 production of "The Pajama Game" led to an Esquire magazine cover, but Doris Day nabbed the role for the 1957 movie. Likewise, when it came time for the film adaptation of musical "Remains to Be Seen," June Allyson took over the part played by Paige on Broadway.

After catching her nightclub act at the Ambassador Hotel in L.A., producer Arthur Freed cast her opposite Astaire in "Silk Stockings," a musical remake of "Ninotchka."

The actress was born Donna Mae Tjaden in Tacoma, Washington, on Sept. 16, 1922. She got her start as a singer at the famed Hollywood Canteen club during World War II. She later appeared in the 1944 film of the same name, which featured A-listers Joan Crawford, Bette Davis and Barbara Stanwyck catering to U.S. troops.

Paige went on entertain soldiers in person at Hollywood-adjacent training ground Camp Roberts and was chosen as the Air Force's "Black Widow Girl" pin-up by P-61 Black Widow pilots.

The actress later accompanied Bob Hope on several USO tours during the 1960s and performed in nightclubs with Sammy Davis Jr., Dinah Shore and Perry Como.

On TV, she starred in her own sitcom, "It's Always Jan," from 1955 to 1956, playing a widowed nightclub singer. She guested on series from "The Fugitive" and "Columbo" to "Night Court" and "The Love Boat." She had a recurring a role on "Eight is Enough" as Vivian, the flamboyant sister of main character Tom (Dick Van Patten) and played Minx Lockridge on 106 episodes of the NBC soap "Santa Barbara."

Her final TV appearance was in a 2001 episode of CBS legal drama "Family Law."

The post Janis Paige, Musical Star of Broadway and Hollywood, Dies at 101 appeared first on TheWrap .

Johnny Wactor, 'General Hospital' actor, fatally shot at 37 during suspected theft attempt

Johnny Wactor , best known for his role as Brando Corbin in " General Hospital ," was shot and killed in downtown Los Angeles. He was 37.

Wactor was shot dead early Saturday morning during an attempted catalytic converter theft in the downtown area, per a news release from the Los Angeles Police Department.

Officers responded to a radio call of an assault with a deadly weapon and shooting in the 1200 block of Hope Street in Los Angeles around 3:25 a.m. local time. Upon arriving at the scene, LAPD "discovered the victim, identified as John William Wactor, suffering from an apparent gunshot wound," the news release read.

Wactor was transported to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead by Los Angeles Fire Department personnel.

In a statement to Variety Sunday, Wactor's talent agent, David Shaul, called the actor a "spectacular human being" who was a "real moral example to everyone who knew him."

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"Standing for hard work, tenacity and a never give up attitude. In the highs and lows of a challenging profession he always kept his chin up and kept striving for the best he could be," Shaul said in a statement. "Our time with Johnny was a privilege we would wish on everyone. He would literally give you the shirt off his back. After over a decade together, he will leave a hole in our hearts forever."

TMZ was first to report Wactor's death.

'Such a bright soul': Johnny Wactor's ex tells killer 'you shot the wrong guy' in emotional video

Johnny Wactor was shot 'without provocation' as suspects stole his car's catalytic converter: LAPD

According to local TV station KTLA , LAPD said Wactor saw three individuals stealing the catalytic converter from his vehicle and that when he confronted them, they turned around and shot him.

The actor's mother, Scarlett, told ABC7 on Sunday that her son was leaving work at a downtown rooftop bar when the incident happened and that Wactor initially thought his car was being towed, so he approached the person to ask if that was the case. When the masked suspect looked up, however, the suspect opened fire at her son, she said.

In the news release from LAPD Tuesday, officers add that Wactor's vehicle was raised up with a floor jack as the three individuals attempted to steal the catalytic converter. "Without provocation, the victim was shot by one of the individuals," LAPD said. "The three suspects involved were wearing all dark clothing and driving a dark colored sedan."

The suspects are still at large, police say. Central Bureau Homicide is investigating Wactor's case.

Wactor's mother, Scarlett, told Fox News Digital in an interview that authorities are planning an autopsy and the actor's family will bring him back to South Carolina for funeral services.

"What I'd like for everybody to know is that they took a great human being. It is leaving a very large hole in me and his brother's lives," Scarlett said of her son. "We just buried my husband, their dad, four years ago. And he was very loved by his friends, his families. He lived life to the fullest, he chased his dreams, (and was) a very optimistic, positive person."

She concluded: "I hope they catch them, and I hope there’s justice for Johnny. That’s all I can hope and pray for. I will see him again. But down here on earth, it’s going to be a very, very long road without him for me and his brothers."

Johnny Wactor played Brando Corbin on 'General Hospital', made his debut in 'Army Wives'

Wactor appeared in the ABC daytime soap as Brando Corbin between 2020 and 2022. But he made his acting debut on television in the Lifetime drama series "Army Wives" (2007).

His other television roles include "Hollywood Girl" (2010), Siberia" (2013), "Agent X" (2015), "Vantastic" (2016), "Animal Kingdom" (2016), "Criminal Minds" (2017), "NCIS" (2019), "The OA" (2019), "Westworld" (2020), "The Passenger" (2020) and "Station 19" (2023).

The actor also worked on several short films including "The Grass Is Never Greener" (2010), "GoldenBox" (2011), "Anything for You, Abby" (2019) and "We Won't Forget" (2021).

He also appeared in feature films, most notably 2016's "USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage," starring Nicolas Cage, Tom Sizemore and Thomas Jane. Wactor was also credited in films such as "Menthol" (2014), "Trapper's Edge" (2023) and "Supercell" (2023).

Wactor is survived by his mother, Scarlett, and brothers, Lance and Grant.

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Woman mayor shot dead in Mexico day after Claudia Sheinbaum's historic presidential win

Updated on: June 4, 2024 / 3:06 PM EDT / CBS/AFP

The mayor of a town in western Mexico was killed on Monday, the regional government said, barely 24 hours after Claudia Sheinbaum was elected the Latin American country's first woman president . Officials said the mayor's bodyguard was also killed in the attack.

The Michoacan state government condemned "the murder of the municipal president (mayor) of Cotija, Yolanda Sanchez Figueroa," the regional interior ministry said in a post on social media .

The murder of the woman mayor comes after Sheinbaum's landslide victory injected hope for change in a country riven by rampant gender-based violence .

mayor-mexico-296659308-378648297717697-8859836174983317922-n.jpg

Sanchez, who was elected mayor in 2021 elections, was gunned down on a public road, according to local media, with one outlet reporting she was shot 19 times outside of a gym.

According to a statement from the Michoacan attorney general's office, Sanchez's bodyguard, identified as Jesús V., was also hit by the gunfire and died. The office said that they were attacked by gunmen inside a white truck who opened fire "from the moving vehicle and then escaped."

Her Facebook profile says she is "defined by my preparation and the desire to make Cotija a better place to live."

Authorities have not given details on the murder, but said a security operation had been launched to arrest the killers.

The politician was previously kidnapped in September last year while leaving a shopping mall in the city of Guadalajara in the state of Jalisco, which neighbors Michoacan.

Three days later the federal government said she had been found alive.

According to local media reports at the time, the kidnappers belonged to the powerful Jalisco Cartel - New Generation (CJNG), who allegedly threatened the mayor for opposing the criminal group's takeover of her municipality's police force.

Michoacan is renowned for its tourist destinations and a thriving agro-export industry, but is also one of the most violent states in the country due to the presence of extortion and drug trafficking gangs. In March, three farmers were killed by a bomb apparently planted in a dirt road in Michoacan -- just days after Mexico's outgoing president acknowledged that an improvised explosive device killed at least four soldiers in what he called a "trap" likely set by a cartel.

Election marked by bloodshed

At least 23 political candidates were killed while campaigning before the elections -- including one mayoral hopeful whose murder was captured on camera last week. Alfredo Cabrera's death came just one day after a mayoral candidate in the central Mexican state of Morelos was murdered .

The week before that, nine people were killed in two attacks against mayoral candidates in the southern state of Chiapas. The two candidates survived.

Last month, six people, including a minor and mayoral candidate Lucero Lopez, were killed in an ambush after a campaign rally in the municipality of La Concordia, neighboring Villa Corzo.

One mayoral hopeful was shot dead last month just as she began campaigning.

Around 27,000 soldiers and National Guard members were deployed to reinforce security on election day.

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Pope Francis used an offensive slur for gay men during a discussion with bishops, sources say

Pope Francis used an offensive slur for gay men in a closed-door discussion with Italian bishops last week, two sources who were in the room told NBC News.

The pontiff's use of the derogatory term, first reported by Italian media, led the Vatican to apologize Tuesday “to those who were offended.”

The reported comment came at an assembly of bishops held behind closed doors on May 20. The group was discussing the issue of admitting homosexual men into seminaries when Francis used an Italian term that represents a vulgar way to refer to a gay person, the sources said.

Francis reiterated that gay men should not be allowed to train in seminaries as priests, according to Italian media, which said that his use of the slur left some in the audience surprised given the pope’s track record of a more welcoming approach toward the LGBTQ+ community.

The Vatican responded to the reports Tuesday, saying the pope was “aware of articles that recently came out about a conversation, behind closed doors, with the bishops.”

“As he has had the opportunity to state on several occasions, 'In the Church there is room for everyone, for everyone! No one is useless, no one is superfluous, there is room for everyone. Just as we are, everyone,'” Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said in a statement.

“The pope never intended to offend or express himself in homophobic terms, and he extends his apologies to those who were offended by the use of a term, reported by others,” Bruni added.

The political gossip website Dagospia appears to have been the first to report on the alleged incident, citing multiple “shocked” bishops who took part in the bishop conference.

One of Italy’s largest newspapers, Corriere della Sera, quoted several unnamed bishops suggesting that the pope may not have been aware of how offensive the word is in Italian.

Vatican veteran reporter and author Gerry O’Connell also suggested that the pope’s remark was “a gaffe on the part of the pope, rather than a slur,” as a nonnative Italian speaker.

The alleged comment came as a surprise to many as Francis, 87, is known for having more liberal views than many of his predecessors when it comes to the LGBTQ+ community, as well as on other issues such as the role of women in the Catholic Church and the environment .

Last December, he formally approved allowing priests to bless same-sex couples because people seeking God’s love and mercy shouldn’t be subject to “an exhaustive moral analysis” to receive it.

Pope Francis during a mass at St. Peter's basilica at the Vatican on May 19, 2024.

In August, he also said that the Catholic Church is open to everyone , including the gay community, and that it has a duty to accompany them on a personal path of spirituality but within the framework of its rules.

Francis set the tone at the beginning of his papacy in 2013 when he made an off-the-cuff remark to reporters that won over many critics who had dismissed the church as close-minded. “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge him?” he said.

An instruction issued by the Vatican under Francis’ predecessor, Pope Benedict, in 2005 ruled that those who “practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called gay culture” cannot be admitted into the seminary or holy orders.

Yuliya Talmazan is a reporter for NBC News Digital, based in London.

Matteo Moschella is a London-based reporter for NBC News' Social Newsgathering team.

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COMMENTS

Is 'hope dies last' an established idiom? : r/EnglishLearning
The direct translations "hope dies last/hope is the last to die" or "while I breathe, I hope" don't really carry the same weight or effect that "hope springs eternal" does. ... mypurplehat • This comes from a poem by Alexander Pope called "An Essay on Man." The full phrase goes like this: Hope springs eternal in the human breast ...
Book Review: Hope Dies Last by Studs Terkel
In his introduction, Terkel pays tribute to the 1930s labor activists whose stories open Hope Dies Last: "They felt that what they did counted and that they themselves counted. Thus is was that out of the Depression, and during it, hope was springing forth.". A sense of personal worth, then, is entwined with the ability to effect social change.
Hope Dies Last
Hope Dies Last Last week Guy McPherson had some terrifying things to say about the future of the planet on Thom Hartmann's radio program. He said we are experiencing such a rapidly warming planet that it was difficult for him to imagine a habitat for human beings in the not too distant future.
ESSAY: The Great Studs Terkel, Immortalized on Canvas, in His Hometown
He really loved Mahalia. Studs was an early champion of Toni Morrison, and she is part of the assembly. There are emblematic figures -- a mine worker, a navy man, and a protester marching for "Jobs & Freedom.". In the corner is Andrew Patner, biographer of I.F. Stone, radio host, and writer, who knew Studs since childhood, and died too soon ...
Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Difficult Times
Perhaps most telling is the section in Hope Dies Last about "Enronism". The last sentence of John Kenneth Galbraith's section included: "I entered the world of politics at a time when there were Fith Amendment Communists, and I've reached the age of ninety-four, when there are Fifth Amendment capitalists." Both books well worth the read.
Hope Dies Last
Hope Dies Last. Studs Terkel January 2, 2004. Farm workers harvest tomatoes in Florida. Hope has never trickled down. It has always sprung up. That's what Jessie de la Cruz meant when she said ...
The Hope Dies For Last English Literature Essay
The chief subjects are the hope which is unbroken in Gogo and Didi, the dependence that they depend on each other to last the life or Pozzo depends on Lucky and vica versa. Lucky is physically tied to Pozzo by the fright of being abandoned. The following thing is the nonsense and the monotomy that all the occurrences start over and over once more.
Hope Dies Last
The book is "Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Troubled Times." The author is Studs Terkel. He's written 11 books of oral history, allowing ordinary Americans from all walks of life to tell ...
Hope Dies Last : Keeping the Faith In Troubled Times
"The value of Hope Dies Last lies not in what it teaches readers about its narrow subject, but in the fascinating stories it reveals, and the insight it allows into the vast range of human experience." —The A.V. Club "Very Terkelesque—by now the man requires an adjective of his own." —Margaret Atwood, The New York Times Review of ...
Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith In Troubled Times|Paperback
An alternative, more personal chronicle of the "American century," Hope Dies Last is a testament to the indefatigable spirit that Studs has always embodied, and an inheritance for those who, ... I read Emerson's essay on self-reliance when I was in the fifth grade. She read all the English poets, and from that I started my own exploration ...
Hope Dies Last
But in 2003 the irrepressible oral historian followed it with Hope Dies Last (New Press), in which he urges readers to "keep the faith in difficult times." Mixed in among the interviews with ordinary Americans are a few conversations with well-known figures, including folk singers Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie, and politicians Tom Hayden and ...
The Process and Power of Hope
Alexander Pope, "An Essay on Man" (1733-1734), Epistle I, line 95. ... that there is in Russian identity "a definite and unbreakable relationship between living a human life and having hope" (Zigon, "Hope Dies Last," 262). 9. Dante Alighieri, "Inferno," The Divine Comedy (c. 1310-1320), ...
Hope Dies Last : Keeping the Faith in Difficult Times
Hope dies last." You can't lose hope. If you lose hope, you lose everything.Jessie de la Cruz, retired farm worker Studs Terkel's marvelous oral histories have hitherto dealt with specifics, as he puts it "the visceral stuff the job, race, age and death." While Terkel's chosen theme here, the incandescence of hope, might at first appear elusive ...
Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Difficult Times
And Hope Dies Last is still a Studs Terkel book, full of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author's brand of blue-collar, rabble-rousing, union-card-waving brand of broad shouldered Chicago liberalism that makes the current wave of political writers seem a bit green and petty by comparison. For all of their success in selling books that accuse one ...
Symbolism In Hope Dies Last
Symbolism In Hope Dies Last. 896 Words 4 Pages. Organizations seek of symbolism from the edifices they work in to their mascots, colors, and products. That some company names have become words, ie Xerox, scotch tape, coke, attest to the power of symbolism. Meaning, belief, and faith are central to symbolism not what happened but what it mean ...
An Essay on Man: Epistle I
By Alexander Pope. To Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke. Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things. To low ambition, and the pride of kings. Let us (since life can little more supply. Than just to look about us and to die) Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man; A mighty maze! but not without a plan;
What Happens When Hope Is Lost?
Yes, at this moment in history it seems that Britain will leave the European Union, that Donald Trump may become President and that terrorists believe killing innocent people is the only way to be ...
Hope Dies Last: The Autobiography of Alexander Dubcek
This is the autobiography of Alexander Dubcek as well as an account of Czechoslovakia's journey towards freedom. Unanimously elected chairman of the federal assembly, following the collapse of the communist party in 1989/90, Dubcek was a dedicated communist who, in 1968, revolted against Soviet domination, was ousted from power by Brezhnev, spent 20 years in "inner exile", and finally - as a ...
hope dies last
exact ( 10 ) "For every person, of course, hope dies last," Navalny said. 1. The Guardian. Many more will come, hoping to make it somehow, at all cost, as hope dies last. 2. The Guardian. The grand spirit of the Iraqis is undeniable and will not be extinguished, because, always, hope dies last. 3.
Hope dies last: Two aspects of hope in contemporary Moscow
Abstract. The concept of hope has, for the most part, been neglected by anthropologists. Recently, however, hope has been analyzed by two prominent anthropologists who view it either as a passive attitude or a future-oriented stance toward a good. My research in Moscow, Russia, suggests that hope is not so easily conceived.
Amy Ettinger, writer of life-affirming essays on dying, succumbs to
JTA — Amy Ettinger, an author and creative writing instructor who chronicled the last months of her life in articles for the Washington Post, died March 20 from cancer at her home in Santa Cruz ...
"Hope dies
"Hope dies - Action begins" ... Over the last several years, the United Kingdom has seen a wave of environmental movements demanding action on the climate crisis. ... This essay - Part II - reconceptualizes the past five centuries as the Capitalocene, the 'age of capital'. The essay advances two interconnected arguments.
Janis Paige, star of Hollywood and Broadway, dies at 101
FILE - Bob Hope and Janis Paige hug during the annual Christmas show in Saigon, Vietnam, Dec. 25, 1964. Paige, a popular actor in Hollywood and in Broadway musicals and comedies who danced with Fred Astaire, toured with Bob Hope and continued to perform into her 80s, has died Sunday, June 2, 2024, of natural causes at her Los Angeles home, longtime friend Stuart Lampert said Monday, June 3.
Janis Paige, Musical Star of Broadway and Hollywood, Dies at 101
Janis Paige, one of the last remaining stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood, died Sunday of natural causes at her home in Los Angeles, longtime friend Stuart Lampert said Monday. She was 101 ...
'General Hospital' actor dies at 37: Johnny Wactor shot, killed in LA
Officers responded to a radio call of an assault with a deadly weapon and shooting in the 1200 block of Hope Street in Los Angeles around 3:25 a.m. local time. Upon arriving at the scene, LAPD ...
Woman mayor shot dead in Mexico day after Claudia Sheinbaum's historic
The murder of the woman mayor comes after Sheinbaum's landslide victory injected hope for change in a country riven by rampant gender-based violence. Sanchez, who was elected mayor in 2021 ...
Weekend Edition Sunday for June, 2 2024 : NPR
Jon Lampley, a veteran of Stephen Colbert's talk show, releases his debut album. by D. Parvaz, Ayesha Rascoe, Ryan Benk. 7 min. Searching for a song you heard between stories?
Pope Francis used offensive slur for gay men; Vatican apologizes
Pope Francis used an offensive slur for gay men in a closed-door discussion with Italian bishops last week, two sources who were in the room told NBC News. The pontiff's use of the derogatory term ...

Book Review: Hope Dies Last by Studs Terkel

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