If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen

Reevaluation of the Truman presidency

Kansas city being 'just' 250 miles away from us (let me help you out: 402 km), it was evident that our first trip would be to discover Dorothy's land. A couple of miles before you reach Kansas city, though, you stumble upon Independence, Missouri - a small but remarkable city, the hometown of Harry S. Truman. Independence is all about Truman - his presidential library, his home, the church where he married his wife. 

If you are not a history geek as much as we are, a reminder: Harry S. Truman was a US president between 1945-1953. And if you are not a history geek, probably that is all you know about him - that he was the president between Roosevelt and Eisenhower and he was the guy who dropped the atomic bomb. End of story. 

Not that I can blame anyone who didn't absorb more knowledge about Truman - unless dedicated specific effort to the case. His presidential heritage and image are very poorly maintained. (No, that's not because of the Presidential library - that is a great place, inspired me to write this post, you should go and visit.)

Truman himself was a small, thin man, looking as inspirational as a bookkeeper in Nebraska. (The only style part of his apparent was the Harry Potter-lookalike glasses.) 

His life was modest and simple - courted one woman for years before married her, got one child. That's it. No big scandals or pomp, millionaire parents or Ivy-league education. You struggle to create a narrative around his life for the pre-presidential years - you learn about a man who did farming, had interests in a zinc mine in Oklahoma, was a timekeeper for Santa Fe Railway and entered the military to serve in WWI. And then, somehow, he became the president of the US. 

Shortly after he did so, said the following statement to reporters: 'Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don't know if you fellas ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me what happened yesterday, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.' - not too comforting from a just-inaugurated war-time president. I can certainly relate to him - it is not easy to become a president after Roosevelt and in the middle of the biggest war mankind has ever experienced. But still, this sentence shadows greatly his capacity to lead and make hard decisions (and reveals his very direct, profane - yet deeply warm - style of communication).

This is the point where we all miss his grandeur - we know he dropped the bomb but fail to know anything else from the eight years during he served as a President. Just a couple of trivia - if it weren't for Truman, we didn't have institutions like the UN (he appointed Elanor Roosevelt as a member of the first General Assembly), the NATO and the Marshall plan - OECD in the long run. Truman was the one insisted on the Berlin airlift during the Berlin blockade. He recognized Israel as a state minutes after it claimed its independence. He led the country through the coldest years of the Cold War, in a midst of a foreign policy turmoil.

He created the National Security Council (NSC) and the position of the national security adviser - the must-have person in every presidential series since (like our favorite Nancy McNally). Among the regular attendees of the Council, you can spot the vice president - that is, I think, from his bitter experience to become a president with zero knowledge on foreign policy or national security updates. He was the one who established the CIA - as the world-class country ran without proper foreign intelligence until the start of WWII.

Of course, most people are familiar with these institutions and events - but we rarely connect them to the political insightfulness of Truman.

Truman was an organized man and created a greatly organized structure around him to foster his decision making. Basically, he is the one who created the system all the other presidents used to navigate in foreign policy or national security issues - and his system has been being intact until today. He was the transitional president under whose rule the USA reached its high status in the international scene - the 'leader of the free world'.

If this were not enough, Truman not only excelled in building up structures from chaos, he also found or kept in place the greatest people of his time  - a hugely important, yet most underestimated skill of politicians. Truman had Morgenthau, Marshall, Byrnes, Kennan - just to name a few of his staff. This list is like having a dream team in the 1950's. 

He didn't have an easy situation in domestic issues: end of war, troops coming home and they need to be disarmed and reintroduced into the civil society. The economy was transitioning from its wartime setup to a normal one - during the years '48-'50, civilians experienced shorts on many everyday essential products before the big economic boom started  (which is, by the way, also started during Truman's presidency).

Regarding his domestic policies, he was greatly progressive, should be in all the rooms where there is a Kennedy picture. (As it is usually the case with progressive presidents, he got a mainly conservative Congress to hinder his plans.) I will not discuss in great details how he was ahead of his time in a couple of issues - like housing, schools, civil rights for the minorities, and so on. He was so persistent on taking the progressive position that the Democratic Party almost split in the 1948 Democratic convention over the issue of civil rights.  (Finally, the debate did split the party, but only some 20 years later. Those southerners who walked away from Truman in the 1948 Convention were known as the Dixiecrats, whom would turn their back to the Democrats at the time of LBJ - over the same issue. Since then, Democrats haven't got a single vote back from the South.)

Okay, I know I can't get around the subject much more, we need to talk about the bomb, to put it into the narrative of his presidency. Let's start with the recognition of the fact that he was a vice president for just three months when Roosevelt died, during which period he rarely interacted with the President - obviously not knowing much about his wartime plans. (He wasn't even the first choice of Roosevelt for the VP position, but for the credit of Roosevelt, his first choice was also brilliant.)

Truman dropped the two bombs in August 1945 - when he was being a president for four shallow months. (In some other jobs, you are still on probation in the fourth month.) No, I am not saying this as of lessen the significance of his decision. I am just putting the frames in which I am aiming conclude regarding his act. 

The bomb is a controversial issue, to say the least - it fostered decades of academic and popular debates. J. Samuel Walker said in a 2005 article a perfect summary about the subject: 'The fundamental issue that has divided scholars over a period of nearly four decades is whether the use of the bomb was necessary to achieve victory in the war in the Pacific on terms satisfactory to the United States'. Those who support the decision argue that it led to a Japanese surrender - and saved lives by quickly ending the war. Those who are against is, usually argue with the moral angel - that atomic bombing is immoral and it was unnecessary from a military point of view. 

My personal opinion is that dropping the bomb had (and still has) obvious moral consequences, but someone at some point in those years would have dropped it anyway. I don't condemn Truman's act, I don't see it as a mistake or an immoral, evil thing. Don't get me wrong: this should never, ever happen again, and I probably wouldn't have been in favor of it if anyway present at the decision. But I respect that he made a decision, and can accept it. For me, this is the real meaning of leadership: these hardest moments when you have to choose between two or more wrong options, when you put yourself on the edge of the known things on Earth - and let history judge you later on. Face a moment like that and survive it - that's real leadership.

Truman faced the decision in a way that no other President had to - partly because after him every other President had the experience, what happens as a consequence of such an act. The weight of this decision had fallen on him at the dawn of the atomic era -  I don't think that anyone ever wanted to be in his shoes for those moments.

One of the most famous phrases the world inherited from Truman is the title of my blog post today - 'if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen'. He was reportedly using this phrase years before his presidency. I have goosebumps when I think of this, as it seems to me that this sentence is just the perfect metaphor of the turn of events in which he had to perform, and also of his attitude how he saw leadership. And we can all just be very grateful for the way he saw it.

Photos by David Dorosz, all but one were made about the displayed items of the Truman Presidential Libary. 
The Truman picture from 1945 is from the archive of the Truman Presidential Libary and Museum.

TOP 10 best thing in the States (after a month) - part 2.

This post is the second part of a list that we have written as a tool to help us battle our cultural shock. The two criteria for anything to get into this list were a) that we have experienced them first-hand in US soil and b) we also liked them. If you missed the first part of the list, click here. 

5. Being casual

I remember some family stories that tell about a time when some Hungarian soldiers (POWs I assume) met their Americain counterparts during one of the Word Wars. These are not really stories, rather frozen pictures of the moment my ancestors first met Americans: all nailed down how the Americain camp and army lacked the German (Prussian) level of discipline (which is a good thing, I am certain). I remember one picture particularly: American soldiers were standing lazily next to a wall (or similar) chewing bubble gums, looking very approachable and friendly in a carefree way.

I long forgot that bedside story of my childhood, but since I arrived, I've kept remembering it. People seem to be more relaxed here that in the Old Continent. You have the impression they don't stress much over little things. Casual and cool are the best ways to describe their approach to the things of life. The same applies to their relationship with status. Relatively high-status people are having a conversation with you as if none of the difference existed. They don't expect extreme politeness or other schemes of formality. Many times they ask you to 'drop by and say hello' - something that in Hungary would come across for you as a great honor, and here you feel it's just business as usual. 

I am not saying that status is not important in this country - but it seems to have a different manifestation than in countries with a strong authoritarian/feudal heritage.

The casual way appears also how they communicate with you - somehow more to the point, with less stress how to express everyday requests. There is still small talk of course, and all the other fittings of a conversation. The difference rather comes once it's over, you have a much clearer sense where you stand (and what you have to do) - compared to, say, the feeling you have at the end of a conversation with a British.

4. The New York Times

We originally intended to buy a Wahington Post, but every time I went to the local grocery shop called Straub's, all the Washington Posts were gone. So, I bought a New York times instead, and this has become a weekly habit. 

Okay, I have to say, I have had a crush on foreign newspapers since a long time. I purchased an unreasonable amount of French ones when I lived in Brussels in 2013. But even before, I remember collecting a Saturday edition of  the Guardian from a trash bin in London (I was 19 and on a budget trip). Since coming of age, I was truly passionate about any type of printed foreign daily or weekly - and I visualized my coming life as surrounded by great pieces of journalism. 

So imagine me getting my hands on a New York Times. Every single morning I get out of my bed, do my breakfast and coffee, get into the armchair. I pull my legs up and indulge in all the different articles. Certainly, I do appreciate great journalism (during the history of the paper, they had a record number of  117 Pulitzer Prices). But my cravings in the morning come from a deeper layer. Just touching and smelling the paper makes me happy and joyful. The paper is like a passport, a living piece of history: I don't feel like an outsider for those moments (hours) when I am reading. (Also helps me tolerate "the thing" Americans keep calling coffee.)

(Coincidently, our first US TIME magazine just arrived yesterday, as a result of transferring our Hungarian address delivery to our St. Louis home - another nice example of fast, and no-hassle customer service).

3. The Americain home

The typical, middle-class (and upper-middle class) Americain home is a stable source of delight and pleasure for me. First, for its practical setup - Americans seems to have inbuilt storage places for problems Europeans use furniture. E. g. take your bedroom, my European friend, where you probably have a wardrobe as a piece of furniture. Here we store our clothes in two small rooms, dedicated specifically for this purpose.

In the bathroom - you would purchase a cabinet in Europe, whereas here I have a door with a shelved space behind to hide everything there. This is also the solution at the front door: one extra door for hiding shoes, umbrellas, coats, and various other objects. 

The marvelous thing about these tiny surprise places that they already calculate with your need to hide things. Furthermore, you don't have to dedicate extra space from the bedroom, bathroom, whichever room to store things that you obviously need to store. I love that someone (the architect, probably) was smart enough to think ahead. You also don't have to acquire an advanced level of  'IKEA's smart space saving solutions' course, measure everything three times and spend days to find the exact piece that fit into your home. Skipping that part of moving in saves energy, space, time and money. Just wonderful. 

The second great thing about the Americain home is how big and spacious it is. I especially love their concept about the bathroom -  it's a private place belonging to each bedroom, as if an attachment. I really appreciate this privacy of the homes. Therefore the ads in real estate magazines describe houses as of how many bedrooms and bathrooms are in. 

And then, say, you walk into a Container store - or to any other organizational heaven. If you are like me and appreciate a nicely and neatly organized space, you'll get addicted. (Dave banned me out of those stores for the sake of our budget.) These companies offer solutions to problems you long have given up on or never knew you had it. In the US, there are people who could make a living out of giving organizational tips to your home. 

And I don't even dare to mention the neverending options how to decorate your home (Halloween is coming) - if furnishing and home décor a true passion of yours, then the USA is your heaven.

2. A gallon of milk

Compared to its lack of significance, it's funny it ended up on ranking two of this list. Milk here comes in forms of a gallon and a half  (one gallon is 3,76 liters).

So, the two of us are great milk drinkers. In one single day, we are able to drink a liter of milk without much difficulty. I love the taste of it and cannot imagine a day without putting it to at least my coffee. (Please Readers, just accept the fact that we love milk, and do not start the diet debate.)

When we were doing grocery back in Europe, where milk usually comes in a liter, the shout 'I go and take care of the milk' meant that I walk to the dairy products and buy 10-12 pieces of it. 

Here, two pieces cover our weekly consumption. No more morning when I realize there is no milk, although my coffee is done. Logistics of them are much easier - you carry two pieces instead of five times that amount. The bottle itself is also more ergonomic to carry, and it's translucent - I have a much better sense how much I have left. 

1. The squirrels 
They are tiny, furry, and abnormally cute. And they are everywhere! In the trees, in the grass, in the parking lots, in the university buildings. During my afternoon jogs, they jog along with me on the trees. Based on my experience, they are not only present in St. Louis, also accommodated in Iowa fields and Kansas City as well. Since I 've met them, I don't need my daily dose of  puppies or cats on Facebook - they easily provide the local cuteness factor. Obviously, American squirrels got used to the presence of cars and humans, they are much less fearful than their European counterparts  - but it is still difficult to take a photo of them. (Dave relentlessly trying to catch them, though.) When we asked locals about their presence, they just shrugged, saying, squirrels are everywhere in this country.

Photos by David Dorosz and www.pestworld.org