About Connections: Love it or hate it, history is a map. Those who hate history think it irrelevant; many who love history think it escapism. In truth, history is the clearest road map to how we got here: America in the 21st century.
There is anxiety everywhere. There is disease, joblessness, hunger and a U.S. president who adopted the hashtag #overthrow. There is much to be anxious over. However, here is a solution: Trump should have a Big Block of Cheese Day at the White House.
The original Big Block of Cheese day was Feb. 22, 1837. Trump cannot hold it on its 184th anniversary, as he will no longer be in office or in the White House in February 2021. While that may be cause for celebration, Trump will have to hold it earlier. He hasn’t been doing anything constructive with his last days in office, and this might be fun. He could have a December or early January remembrance.
After all, Trump said Andrew Jackson, seventh president of the United States (1829-37), was his favorite. Perhaps that is because Jackson was the first president to shout an election he lost was fixed. That was in 1824. Perhaps it is because Jackson said, “no president should be guided by public opinion.” Eighty-one million voters can be wrong. Or perhaps it was the hair.
Anyway, Jackson was the first president to hold the Big Block of Cheese Day. Friend and admirer Col. John Meacham, a New York dairy farmer, sent Jackson a 1,400-pound block of cheese. So the president opened the doors of the White House and invited the public in to voice their opinions, ask their questions and by all means, eat cheese.
Now, poor Trump has a problem with accepting reality, and just maybe if enough Americans popped in, ate some cheese and echoed the same fact, it might aid him in recognizing and accepting reality. It is a useful part of mental-health treatment to encourage patients to check out their opinions and test their assumptions when struggling to let go of delusions and accept real life. Trump might be aided in coming face to face with truth and realizing it won’t kill him. Besides, he might like cheese. He looks like he likes cheese. We can refrain from offering tonsorial or haberdashery tips or tips on accessorizing; leave it for another day — first things first.
Back to the Big Block of Cheese Day: According to one contemporaneous report, that big block had “an evil-smell — an aroma that stretched for several blocks beyond the White House itself.”
It was cheddar, by the way, and only smelled as it aged. So once a president gets the cheese into the White House, he has to develop a plan to get it out. Trump is lucky. It’s easy. On his watch there are so many Americans facing hunger that the line to enter the White House and eat cheese might rival the length of lines at the food banks around the country. This is win-win: Hungry people eat; a man terrorized of the truth is helped to face it; and — after 1,423 days — the country witnesses something coming out of the White House about which they can smile.
There was another block of cheese — smaller, but more Berkshire. In 1802 the entire farming community of Cheshire, Massachusetts, banded together and created a 1,235-pound big block of cheese for President Thomas Jefferson. The citizens of Cheshire promised Jefferson that, of the 900 cows needed to create the block of cheese, “No Federal cow was used.” That is, no cow owned by a member of the Federalist Party provided the milk to create the gift for the Democrat-Republican president. Believe it or not, Berkshire was more divided then than now.
The trip from Cheshire to the White House was carefully documented. The 500 miles were traversed in winter first by sled, sleigh and then wagon from Massachusetts to the Hudson River. It was transferred to a sloop and sailed from New York City to Baltimore to Washington, D.C. Finally, it was put on a wagon to go from port to White House. The journey took three weeks.
The cheese was called “Mammoth Cheese.” It was accompanied by a minister. We know his name (Leland) and we know what he was called (“the Mammoth Priest”), but we do not know why he escorted the cheese. Possibly it was his congregation — the Cheshire Baptist Church — that produced the cheese. But no Baptist minister is called a priest. Be that as it may, the cheese and its minister arrived at the White House Dec. 29, 1801.
Oh, wait! If he hurries, Trump could celebrate the 219th anniversary of the first big cheese: Dec. 29, 2020.
Jefferson, it is said, was delighted. He hung a sign over the White House entrance that read, “The Greatest cheese in America for the greatest man in America.”
Now, Trump isn’t Jefferson, but he could say he was holding a Big Block of Cheese Day because he is a big cheese. His sign could read, “A Big Cheese for a Big Cheese.” That ought to do. Trump would like that, and it is a rare example of harmless humor from Trump.
Harmlessness from Trump would be a giant leap forward — a great thing to imagine. In the intervening 37 days, here is the question: Should we be worried? Is he a nuance and a distraction, or a threat to our stability and form of government? Will Trump find a way to overthrow the government by throwing out an election? Probably not now, but perhaps he won’t stop trying. So, what do we do? Face reality.
Trump is a loser at the polls and in the courts. He is not a leader of men but a tool of an organization weary of democracy and ready for an easier-to-manage oligarchy. There is disease, joblessness and hunger because they don’t care if the people are sick poor and hungry. Don’t mistake their aims and don’t forget their names.
