DE•CON•STRUCT•ING HARRY When UW psychology professor Harry Harlow began exploring the social behavior of monkeys in

HARLOW PRIMATE LABORATORY, UW-MADISON LABORATORY, HARLOW PRIMATE the 1950s, he sent science in a novel and — even today — controversial direction. In her new book, Professor Deborah Blum writes that it was love that led Harlow down that path.

BY DEBORAH BLUM MA’82

arry Harlow did not step directly into studying ured that they’d just continue bundling the monkeys inside. love; there was no triumphant flourish of research That would keep the colony compact, no more than he could trumpets. In 1955, he had an entirely different house indoors. He could live with that. problem, more pragmatic, more urgent. It had to There was another, bigger hitch. No one really knew Hdo with importing monkeys. He was beginning to hate it. how to do what he wanted. There were no self-sustaining The monkeys that Harry studied in his UW lab were colonies of monkeys in the United States. Domestic breed- hard to get. They were expensive. They were often in terrible ing of primates was a brand-new, barely simmering idea. shape. Monkeys routinely turned up starving, battered in pas- Other people were talking about it; researchers from Cali- sage, seething with “ghastly diseases.” The hot-tempered, fornia to Connecticut were equally frustrated. But no one tropical viruses spread easily. The incoming macaques had any experience at breeding monkeys on the scale he infected cage-mates. Playmates sickened alongside monkey imagined. Only a few American scientists had even tried playmates. Macaque mothers passed diseases to their infants. hand-raising the animals in any systematic way, and that A laboratory with a new shipment of monkeys could more had been on a monkey-by-monkey kind of scale. Did this easily resemble a hospital than a research laboratory. faze Harry? Not really. So Harry was thinking about raising his own animals. It Harry and his university colleagues decided to was this decision that would, indirectly, lead him into the sci- approach the problem like the scientists they were. What to ence of affection. When it did — when he first started won- feed a baby monkey? William Stone, from the university’s dering if you can raise a healthy child, even a monkey child, biochemistry department, spent countless hours testing for- without love — the people working with him would think mulas. Years later, he would remark that “I can still smell the he’d gone crazy. monkeys as I recall sleeping at the primate lab on a four-hour Of course, they were used to Harry Harlow’s crazy schedule” in order to try out different recipes on the baby ideas. Starting a breeding colony in Madison struck plenty of monkeys. Stone eventually had so much data that he pub- people as evidence enough of lunacy. The Midwestern cli- lished a paper on the immune effects of feeding cattle serum mate, almost the polar opposite of the balmy Indian seasons, to newborn monkeys. Stone began with a baby formula of seemed an unlikely place to start raising tropical species. But sugar, evaporated milk, and water. He recruited students to Harry had been accommodating monkeys for years. He fig- hold doll-sized bottles to feed the monkeys. Every bottle was sterilized. The monkeys got vitamins every day. Their daily From “The Perfect Mother,” the sixth chapter of Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection, published September 2002 by dose included iron extracts, penicillin and other antibiotics, Perseus Publishing, a member of the Perseus Books Group. glucose, and “constant, tender, loving care.” The baby

20 ON WISCONSIN L OVE AT G OON P ARK monkeys were washed, weighed, and watched over con- cage, refusing to look up. “We had created a brooding, not a stantly. As the monkeys grew older, lab caretakers mixed breeding, colony,” Harry once said. fresh fruit and bread into their diet. And always, always, the How could the monkeys look so healthy and be so com- caretakers kept the animals apart from each other. Every pletely unhealthy in their behavior? They had a growing monkey in a separate cage. Every baby taken from its mother, number of sturdy, bright-eyed, bizarre animals in their cages. which is why someone needed to hold those baby bottles. Not all of the animals were so unstable. But enough were to Harry wanted no chances taken on the spread of those keep the researchers up at night. Harry was driven to making ghastly diseases. Everything was polished and cleaned and lists of possibilities. What was he doing wrong? Could it be disinfected and wiped to a glittering cleanliness. the light cycle; was the lab not dark enough at night? The There was a model for such practices, of course, in antibiotics? Perhaps the medicines were skewing normal human medicine, in the frantic efforts of early pediatricians development. The formula? It might be that evaporated milk to control disease in wasn’t such a good orphanages and thing. Maybe the All the little monkeys, including those in the Stone family, were hospitals. The Wis- baby monkeys were consin researchers absolutely, fanatically attached to those diapers. They hugged the getting too much mimicked perfectly, diapers fiercely. They would sit wrapped in the white cloth, sugar — or not had they realized it, enough. the very hospital clutch it desperately if someone picked them up. Around the lab, He and students policies that Harry an observer might be struck by the appearance of baby monkeys, and colleagues were Bakwin had been so in transit, with cloth streaming out behind them like a kite’s tail. talking it over as the furiously trying to coffee steamed, the undo in the 1940s. bridge cards shuf- Harry and his colleagues were inadvertently recreating fled, and the nights burned away in the lab. Harry’s research those isolationist pediatric wards. crew was still growing and, on the recommendation of his old By the end of 1956, the lab managers had taken more professor, Calvin Stone, he’d brought another Stanford grad- than sixty baby monkeys away from their mothers, tucked uate into his lab. His Stanford PhD barely off the presses, them into a neatly kept nursery, usually within six to twelve William Mason found himself immediately plunged into the hours after a monkey’s birth. Lab staffers fed the infant ani- problem of the not-quite-right baby monkeys. mals meticulously, every two hours, with the carefully Shortly after arriving, Mason was put in charge of rais- researched formula from the tiny doll bottles. And the mon- ing six newborn animals. These were all lab-made orphans, keys looked good. The little animals gained weight on that taken away from their mothers some two hours after birth. In formula. They were bigger than usual, heftier and healthier- Harry’s lab, the monkeys often had names instead of the num- looking. And they were purified of infection, “disease free bers that are standard in primate labs today. The oldest of without any doubt,” wrote Harry. But their appearance, he Mason’s orphans was Millstone, named by a lab tech because added, turned out to be deceptive. “In many other ways they the little monkey was such a noisy, clingy pest. The other five were not free at all.” infants also joined the Stone family: Grindstone, Rhinestone, The monkeys seemed dumbfounded by loneliness. They Loadstone, Brimstone, and Earthstone. A research assistant would sit rocking, staring into the air, sucking their thumbs. at the lab, Nancy Blazek, had feeding duties. Exhausted by When the monkeys were older and the scientists tried to the two-hour schedule, she took to bringing the little monkeys bring them together for breeding, the animals simply backed home with her for their nighttime bottles. away. They might stare at each other. They might even make Mason and Blazek spent hours with those monkeys and a few tentative gestures, as if each primate vaguely wished for they really got to know them. They wanted the babies to friendship. But the nursery-raised monkeys had no idea what grow strong and healthy. Mason planned to continue some of to do with each other. They seemed startled by the appear- the earlier studies on curiosity. Harry had established that ance of another animal, intimidated by the sight of such odd, monkeys were naturally curious. Mason wondered how early furry strangers. The monkeys were so unnerved by each that trait showed up. When did monkeys start to wonder other that many of them would simply stare at the floor of the about the world around them? Were they born asking

WINTER 2002 21 D EBORAH B LUM questions or did they pick up it up later? When it came to keys. She’d created a small nursery and written an insightful puzzles, at least, Mason and Blazek found that the Stone chapter on her technique for raising baby monkeys. Van babies were naturals. As soon as they were coordinated Wagenen had found that her nursery-raised monkeys bonded enough to work a puzzle, the little creatures were busy trying almost compulsively to the soft blankets lining their baskets. to solve it. The results reinforced a strong suspicion that She described their tight clutch as emotional dependency, curiosity was fundamental to the way these small primates noting that if the infant monkeys couldn’t cuddle, some of approached the world. them didn’t even develop proper feeding responses. “You There was something else about the Stone monkeys know of the debt I owe to you for the creation of the rhesus that caught the lab baby in the basket,” workers’ attention. Harry wrote her, late The researchers had So, if Harry was right, if they were looking at an odd, pathetic in his career. been lining the cages “The early research, kind of mother substitute in these blankets, then they were also with cloth diapers, which I conducted to provide a little looking at raising a revolution in psychology. If the baby according to your softness and warmth monkeys were telling them that there was something critical in directions, started against the floor. All me off in the field of the little monkeys, being touched, being held, and holding back, then they could primate affection.” including those in start rewriting the psychology books. And, indeed, the the Stone family, psychologists in his were absolutely, primate lab were fanatically attached to those diapers. They hugged the diapers beginning to wonder if there was a real message in the behav- fiercely. They would sit wrapped in the white cloth, clutch it ior of their baby monkeys. Perhaps the small animals had desperately if someone picked them up. Around the lab, an something to tell them about the needs of children. After all, it observer might be struck by the appearance of baby mon- wasn’t monkeys alone who clung to soft cloth. It was orang- keys, in transit, with cloth streaming out behind them like a utans, too, and other labs reported that baby chimpanzees des- kite’s tail. perately hugged blankets. Nancy Blazek and Bill Mason, There was already a hint about this cloth-obsession from watching the monkeys cling to the cloth, started wondering the nineteenth century, out of the diaries of a British naturalist about that need to hold on. There was that other primate to named Alfred Russel Wallace. The adventurous Wallace is consider in this idea. All of them knew that human babies, left best remembered now because he so nearly published a theory alone in a crib, also clutched their quilts and pillows and fluffy of evolution before Charles Darwin. As with Darwin, it was stuffed toys. But what did that mean? No one really knew. traveling that made the theory come to life. Exploring the Mason suggested to Harry that they run a test. He was oddly different and beautifully adapted species of each coun- thinking of a simple comparison between, say, a fat bundle of try also made Wallace think about the way nature tucks us cloth and something hard — wood or wire. The researchers into our niches. During a visit to Indonesia, Wallace had been could see what the babies preferred — if it was just the need given an orphaned baby orangutan. He wrote in his journal to hold onto something, anything, or if there was something that the little animal seemed to be constantly reaching for and especially meaningful about a soft touch. cuddling soft material, including (painfully) Wallace’s beard. And the idea just clicked for Harry. He liked it imme- Trying to help the baby and himself, Wallace made what he diately. He also thought there might be something even big- called a “stuffed mother” out of a roll of buffalo skin. He noted ger lurking there. Perhaps the differences between cloth that the little ape clung happily to the fat, fuzzy roll, no longer and wood only touched on part of the underlying question. grabbing for other material. The baby orangutan became frus- After all, babies don’t prefer to hold onto pieces of cloth to trated only when he tried to nurse. all else. They hold onto them when there’s no human — or And there was another more recent clue from a Yale monkey — available for cuddling. The soft bits of cloth University researcher famed for her meticulous comparisons might be a substitute for something that mothers do that’s of monkey and human anatomy. To do detailed analysis, missing. Today, of course, we would include fathers but this Gertrude Van Wagenen had needed a reliable supply of mon- was the 1950s and at this moment, in science and society

22 ON WISCONSIN L OVE AT G OON P ARK alike, it was mother who represented what parents had to Zimmerman is laughing when he tells this story. He give a child. agrees that Harry was right about one thing — most of the So, if Harry was right, if they were looking at an odd, students fled from getting sucked into a project as mushy, as pathetic kind of mother substitute in these blankets, then they un-Wisconsin, as mother love. “In all honesty, nobody, no were also looking at raising a revolution in psychology. If the grad student, wanted to touch the mother surrogate project baby monkeys were telling them that there was something with a ten-foot pole. This was Wisconsin, and Harry could be critical in being touched, being held, and holding back, then of some help, but you had to get your thesis or dissertation they could start rewriting the psychology books. And the first past a committee, and to talk about love at the University of new sentence in that book might say that mothers themselves Wisconsin, where everything was numbers and statistics — I — with their soft arms and inclination to hold a baby close — think the first assumption was that if you took that one you’d were desperately important, and if that was right, then the never graduate. Watsonian, Skinnerian, Hullian view of the world could be “Well, I was already working with neonatal learning, nothing less than wrong. and nothing much was being done with the babies in the first ninety days of life, before they were ready for those experi- ments, and I thought, well, I have an investment in these arry used to say that the idea for a lab-built monkeys, so I made a deal with Harry. I would be the ramrod mother occurred to him on a Northwest Airlines for the mother surrogate project if he would let me have the flight between Detroit and Madison, looking out baby monkeys for my dissertation. And he thought that at the puffy, deceptively soft clouds blowing on would be a fair trade.” Hthe other side of the glass: “As I turned to look out the win- The airplane birth of the surrogate mother — the way dow, I suddenly saw a vision of the cloth surrogate mother Harry would tell it, full of drama and imagery — says a lot sitting beside me.” A lab-created doll of a mother, as decep- about Harry’s vision for the project. Here was science at its tively soft as those floating clouds, could be used as a way to most provocative — mother love at a time when British psy- see what a baby really wanted. It would be a comparison, as chiatrist John Bowlby could barely persuade his colleagues to Bill Mason suggested, but it would be a comparison using a join the words mother and love together. Here also was science mother figure, one that looked like a mother obviously with real potential to make a difference, to make people see enough that anyone could see that this was not only about families and relationships in a different way, a closer way. The monkeys. first challenge would be getting people to take it seriously. Harry Harlow had encouraged the students and That was going to take both solid research and, Harry employees in his lab to think for themselves. They didn’t hesi- suspected, all the skills at making an idea compelling that he tate in this case. They thought he was wrong. As far as Harry had acquired over the years, all the unflinching stubbornness could tell, his students thought that their major professor had he had learned while he wangled a laboratory from the Uni- left his head in the clouds: “My enthusiastic descent upon the versity of Wisconsin and persuaded his colleagues that maybe, laboratory was met by skepticism or lack of interest from one just maybe, monkeys were smarter than they thought. If he graduate student after another.” He was finally able, he said, wanted an attentive audience — and, oh, he really did — the to convince one of his newer graduate students, Robert Zim- surrogate mother was going to be a Harry Harlow production. merman, to give it a try. “But I’ll tell you one thing about His newly minted Stanford researcher, Bill Mason, was those damn airplane rides when we were on the surrogate stunned by how rapidly his small, neat idea became a show- project,” says Bob Zimmerman, now retired in Lansing, stopper. “I didn’t see it as a breakthrough or something really Michigan. “Every time Harry would fly somewhere — and he sensational,” Mason says. “It was a kind of demonstration went away every week because he was on all kinds of com- with a foregone conclusion.” There was Wallace, after all, mittees — he’d run into some shrink or somebody, and he there was Van Wagenen; everyone in the lab expected the would come back with some new idea about what we should monkeys to prefer the cloth. They worked out a kind of trial be doing with the surrogate. He’d always wonder when he balloon. Zimmerman teamed with another graduate student, came back, ‘Why don’t we have this? So and so said we Lorna Benjamin, and the two of them did a simple first test should have rocking, why don’t we have rocking?’’’ with two baby monkeys. Both the little animals flatly rejected

WINTER 2002 23 D EBORAH B LUM a wire object in favor of a cloth bundle. “It was unbelievably only needed bathing twice a week. The partial soundproofing clear, amazing,” Zimmerman says, and suddenly the lab crew meant that the child was undisturbed by doorbells and ringing began to wonder if Harry Harlow was going to pull this love phones — or the voices of her parents and sister. Debbie came stuff off after all. out for scheduled playtimes and meals: “One whole side of the From that first experiment, Harry wanted everything compartment is safety glass, through which we all talk and nailed, every detail noted, every possible criticism identified gesture to her during the day. She greets us with a big smile and answered. He insisted on two observers for every exper- when we look at her through the window,” Skinner wrote in a iment with the little animals, one student double-checking letter to a friend, emphasizing the advantages of raising your the other. He devised careful charts to score the monkeys’ baby in a box. He hoped that every mother would one day use behavior. Harry and his students filmed the experiments and a baby-tender. Skinner wrote once of being surprised when a then spent hours scrutinizing each frame, right down to the pediatrician suggested the box might be better used in hospi- clasp of the fingers on the cloth. “He was concerned it would tals, where it could save nurses much work. It could save be rejected out of mothers work, too, hand if we didn’t Here was science at its most provocative — mother love at Skinner replied. The nail it to the floor,” doctor laughed. Zimmerman said. a time when British psychiatrist John Bowlby could barely Mothers didn’t care Mason still persuade his colleagues to join the words mother and love so much about the remembers, with saved labor, he together. Here also was science with real potential to make admiration, Harry’s assured the psychol- skill at taking a long- a difference, to make people see families and relationships in ogist. Mothers dismissed idea — a different way, a closer way. The first challenge would be labored out of love. that mother love was “The universal a crucial part of a getting people to take it seriously. reaction, was, ‘What child’s development is this love?’ ” recalls — and persuading his colleagues to listen to him. “The domi- former grad student Leonard Rosenblum. “The only emotions nant position was that babies didn’t love their mothers or need studied in animals were negative — fear, loathing, pain. The them, that the only relationship was based on being fed,” idea that animals were motivated by love, what vague notion Mason says. “It sounds silly now but that’s what people was this?” Rosenblum makes a dismissive gesture, indicating thought. Harlow sensed people were beginning to ask ques- the disdain of the time. It’s been a long time since he was a tions. And it was damn right to ask questions, because the fledgling psychologist himself. He recently retired as director dominant position wasn’t true. These are facts — monkeys of a primate laboratory in Brooklyn, part of the State Univer- don’t just explore for food, they do it because they are curious, sity of New York system. Today Rosenblum is an internation- they have a drive to know. And they are social and they need ally known expert in developmental biology, an angular man to interact. Harlow had a great sense of when he could get with bright blue eyes and a slightly shaggy, silvery beard. He away with challenging the field. If he had misjudged that — if retains, though, the same intensity and lively humor and flair he had been younger, less skillful — it would have been a dis- for a dramatic turn of phrase that he had as a student in aster. People would have laughed.” Harry’s laboratory. Skillful or not, there was no doubt that Harry was yet “Remember,” Rosenblum says, “that behaviorism’s again on the wrong side of behaviorist psychology. B.F. Skin- beginnings, with John Watson, suggested that it was a great ner was now experimenting with boxes in which to raise not thing to dig holes in the backyard and let your kids fall in and just rats but young children. Skinner had built the first learn about life. So in psychology, love was smoke, mirrors, demonstration model for his younger daughter, Debbie. It bullshit, and that was exactly what everyone was telling was a crib-sized “living space” with sound-absorbing walls — Harry.” Of course, Harry was used to being told he was on a baby-tender, Skinner called it — with a large window and a the wrong side of an issue, the backside of the fence. He’d canvas floor. The air in the box was filtered and humidified, come to kind of enjoy needling the smugness of the main- and the baby stayed so clean in there that Skinner said she stream position. He simply began assembling his evidence.

24 ON WISCONSIN L OVE AT G OON P ARK

Beyond that, he started thinking about how to make that merman had gotten three offers from graduate schools, but evidence look really, really good. Bill Mason had proposed Harry had written “the most beautiful letter” about Wisconsin that they look at how monkeys might hold onto a bundle of and the land and support the school could offer. After Zim- cloth. And that was a start, said Harry, but they needed their merman was properly seduced, he remembers, Harry wanted surrogate to look like more than a bundle. It needed to have the letter back. It had worked so well, he wanted to try it on some personality. It needed a head and a face. If monkeys the next year’s crop of recruits. were going to look at this substitute mother, it needed to look Oh, that head was a challenge. “First, it had to be back at them. And it needed to look back at the human designed to be pretty nondestructive,” Zimmerman says. observers, too — it needed to mean something real to people, “Monkeys are very destructive creatures.” And then it had to as well. Harry wanted them all — not just psychologists, but have eyes. Mothers have eyes, Harry said. So what are we mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles and stepparents going to do for eyes? So I go to these dolls’ hospitals and and grandparents — to think about connection and affection. stuff, looking for eyes. If you’ve ever seen dolls’ eyes, they’re He wanted them to believe that emotions and relationships so fragile. And I said, ‘Well, we need something that’s a little were the proper purview of research. stronger, that can take a knocking around.’ Harry’s students still sometimes argue about the deci- “So this woman at the doll store says, ‘Well, they’re sion to put a head on the cloth mother. Mason considers the pretty expensive.’ head merely showmanship rather than necessary to testing “I said, ‘Price is no object.’ ” monkeys, who after all would happily cuddle with a diaper. Zimmerman is grinning again as he tells this story, dark Others consider it strategy. One such former student, Steve eyes crinkling at the corners. “So she says, ‘You must work Suomi, now head of primate behavioral research at the for the state.’ ” National Institutes of Health, still thinks of the head as a kind They kept shopping. They didn’t just want indestructi- of brilliant tactical move. “So it might not have been relevant ble eyes. They wanted eyes that were also repulsive to mon- to monkeys,” Suomi says. “But it was to the outside world, keys. Harry had warned Art Schmidt, the resident because once people looked at the surrogate like a mother — equipment-building genius, and Zimmerman that the cloth made a connection to human mothers as well — then you mothers could not have faces that monkeys obviously found could start talking about things like mother love.” attractive. “Because then someone could say, hey, your exper- And despite the fears by Mason, and even Bob Zim- iment had nothing to do with touch or being held — it’s just merman, that the head was going to get them laughed out of that it’s an attractive stimulus,” Zimmerman said. Critics psychology, Harry was absolutely determined. He had sud- might dismiss the cuddle effect and argue that the babies denly been given a first-class platform for his arguments. liked the way the face looked, and that was why they clung to He’d finally been elected president of the American Psycho- the softer body. “So we started fooling around with different logical Association. And he was going use that, he decided, to configurations of faces, and then we would see how the mon- pound the podium and make his argument. He was absolutely keys reacted.” They decided on bicycle reflectors for the eyes, sure of what he was going to argue. He even had a title. He which gave the face a bug-like stare. “Those are red bicycle was going to call his talk “The Nature of Love.” And as Zim- reflectors. The mouth was green plastic, curved in a half merman still remembers, “He came back into the laboratory moon smile. And the ears were a very hard black plastic that and said to me, ‘Bob, I have written one of the finest speeches Art Schmidt had hanging around the lab. The nose was ever delivered to the APA as president. Go get me the data.’ ” maple, painted black.” So they put a plain wooden ball on top of the bundled Schmidt and Zimmerman had even labored over what body. Harry still wasn’t satisfied. “It doesn’t have a face,” he kind of wood to use for the heads. They’d tried pine wood said. By this time, Bob Zimmerman had fully taken over the balls. But the energetic monkeys chewed the soft wood into project, and he was willing, if he had to, to put a face on the splinters. Zimmerman remembers complaining to Harry, say- surrogate mother. Harry had recruited Zimmerman from ing “Dr. Harlow, the monkeys are destroying the heads. As Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. Zimmerman was a tall, fast as we make them, they’re chewing ’em up.” lanky man with dark hair trimmed into a ruthless crewcut. And he remembers Harry looking at him, completely He was a promising and ambitious young psychologist. Zim- deadpan, and replying, “Children have been destroying their

WINTER 2002 25 D EBORAH B LUM parents for years.” The researchers decided to use hardwood face.” It’s that absolute sureness that this is my mother, that for the heads. They settled on maple croquet balls, near rock- she’s here, that makes everything all right. like in their construction. The baby doesn’t attach to just anyone, and John Bowlby and Harry Harlow and a growing army of others n point of fact, babies do chew on their parents, pull were going to make that undeniably clear. There’s an actual their hair, gnaw on their ears, drool on their shoulders, relationship here that matters; the baby recognizes this one and throw up all over their shirts. Zimmerman points special person as the one. Later studies at Wisconsin showed out that if you watch a baby monkey with its natural that monkeys definitely did not admire the face dreamed up Imother, the little guy will tug on fur, nibble on ears, yank and by Zimmerman and built by Schmidt. They preferred a dog’s pull — all in affection. They’ll do the same thing to a father face to the bug-eyed, green-smiled version of a mother. But to monkey, given a chance. And this is not destruction at all — Harry, the antipathy also made a critical point. The infants it’s curiosity, touch, feel, and the infinite security of being held might not like the mother’s face, he said, but they loved the by someone who will put up with all that tugging and chew- mother. She could have a blank face, a bug face, any face that ing. But monkeys and babies — as Bowlby had been trying to they knew well — as long as she had mom’s face. To a baby, say — indulge in those behaviors only with someone they mother’s face is always beautiful, he said: “A mother’s face love and trust. that will stop a clock will not stop a baby.” One of the surrogate mothers in Harry’s lab had a head The nature of love project was absolutely, beautifully but no face. The head was just a blank ball of wood. A baby straightforward in its design. monkey arrived a month early. Schmidt and Zimmerman had Art Schmidt built — as Bill Mason had first proposed not yet perfected the — not one but two, smiling mother face. “surrogate mothers.” Harry wanted them all — not just psychologists, but mothers So they put the ani- The first was a cloth mal in with the face- and fathers and aunts and uncles and stepparents and grand- mother. She had that smiling face on a less cloth mother. parents — to think about connection and affection. He wanted “To the baby mon- round head and a key, this featureless them to believe that emotions and relationships were cylindrical body. face became beauti- the proper purview of research. The cloth mother ful, and she fre- was made from a quently caressed it with hands and legs,” Harry said. That block of wood, cov- lasted for about three months. “By the time the baby had ered with sponge rubber, and sheathed in tan cotton ter- reached ninety days, we had constructed an appropriate orna- rycloth. A light bulb behind her back radiated heat. You mental cloth-mother face, and we proudly mounted it on the could call her an ideal mother, Harry said, “soft, warm, and surrogate’s body. The baby took one look and screamed.” tender, a mother with infinite patience, a mother available The little monkey huddled in the back of the cage, rock- twenty-four hours a day, a mother that never scolded her ing in dismay. After several days, the infant solved the prob- infant and never struck or hit her baby in error.” The other lem. She marched up and rotated the head 180 degrees so mother had a squared, flattish face with two dark holes for that the blank back of the ball faced forward. The scientists eyes and a frowning mouth. Beneath that scowling visage was turned it back. She turned it again. They turned it. She another cylindrical body, also warmed by a light bulb, but this turned it. “We could rotate the maternal face dozens of times time made of wire mesh. It was perfect for climbing, but wire and within an hour or so, the infant would turn it around 180 mother had not a cuddly angle to her. She was metallic all the degrees.” Within a week, the baby resolved the problem way through. entirely. She took the head off and rolled it into a corner of There were eight baby monkeys in the study. Each was the cage and ignored it. And she was willing to repeat this; caged alone except for its surrogate mothers. The monkeys calmly, Harry said, and with infinite patience. He knew were allowed to choose their parent. Every monkey was exactly what such behavior represented. Bowlby’s theory pre- watched over by cloth mom and wire mom. It would have dicted that one of the ways that a baby bonds to a particular been a simple preference test except for one twist. For four of mother comes from its recognition of “the particular mother’s the monkeys, there was a milk-bottle attached to the cloth

26 ON WISCONSIN L OVE AT G OON P ARK mother. The other four had a “barren” cloth mother. It was neat, astonishingly clear graphs labeled “Fed on Cloth Mother” wire mom who held the bottle. This made each monkey’s and “Fed on Wire Mother.” The graphs track how much time choice a test of the prevailing theories of motherhood. If the baby monkeys spent with each mother in a typical twenty- touch was nothing special, if the infant-mother relationship four-hour period. What makes the charts so remarkable is how was based on food, then the bottle-holding surrogate should alike they are. By the age of six months, both groups are spend- be chosen whenever she had the food advantage. Neither ing pretty much all their time, about eighteen hours a day, with wire mom’s stiff body nor cloth’s mom’s pillowy one should the cloth mom. The wire-fed monkeys hustle back to the other make a difference. The infant monkeys should go for the bot- mother for food but they eat fast. The charts show that they tle-holding mother. And if they did? Well, that would have spend no more than an hour a day on wire mom. Mostly the been the end of Harry Harlow’s love studies. baby monkeys, each and every one, are sleeping on cloth mom. Instead, it was clear to Harry — hell, it was clear to Or cuddling. Or tucking their bodies close against her when everyone — that being fed formed no relationship at all for they are startled. Or just stroking her. The graphs seem to have these baby monkeys. The mother love study suggested that invisible writing running through them, saying that food is sus- the wire mother could have been dripping with milk, stand- tenance but a good hug is life itself. ing in puddles of the stuff, and the baby monkeys wouldn’t have cared for her. Cloth mom, on the other hand, was a Deborah Blum, a professor of journalism and mass communication, won the Pulitzer baby monkey magnet. Prize in 1992 for her coverage of primate research as a reporter for the Sacramento Bee. In the published paper that followed, there are two small, Her previous books are The Monkey Wars and Sex on the Brain.

A Conversation with the Author Because the process of writing a book can be as fascinating as the book itself, Michael Penn, senior editor for On Wisconsin, talked to Deborah Blum about researching Harry Harlow. In a candid discussion, the UW journalism professor acknowledges mixed feelings about Harlow — and the mixed reception she fully expects her book will receive. For the full text of the interview, visit www.uwalumni.com/onwisconsin.

MP: What drew you to Harry as a subject? day, I said to myself, you know, Harry wonderful models for human beings. DB: If you’ve spent a lot of time talking Harlow’s all over this, and no one knows And when you get into the love and con- to scientists and living in science, really it. He’s disappeared. And wouldn’t it be nection and relationship part of his work complicated, fascinating, kind of hyp- interesting to combine the two — to take — which is really what my book is about notic, mesmerizing personalities are the story of someone I thought was a — you see that he’s working with mon- rare. And he was all of those things. genuinely fascinating person with some- keys only to hold that mirror up to us. A completely challenging person. thing that I thought was genuinely Completely fascinating. fascinating science? MP: The research with the cloth mother was But what really brought me back to really the launching point into that area for him was that I started thinking about MP: Do you see it, as much as it is a book him, wasn’t it? writing a book about kids — how do we about monkeys and primate research, as a DB: Yeah, it really was. It really began parent, what are the mechanics of giving book about human behavior? there. In his early curiosity and intelli- your children what they need, so that DB: I don’t think there’s any doubt that gence work, he had found that monkeys they turn out whole and happy and Harry Harlow felt that was all that it that didn’t do well socially didn’t do as strong, which is what every parent was about. Early on, he did some really well on the lab intelligence tests. There wants. And when I started looking at the beautiful work on intelligence and were some odd, mysterious connections research on parenting, I started seeing curiosity in monkeys. But he saw that between being socially grounded and Harry in there. It was like his shadows as leading him, I think, where he wanted having a foundation of security and were in all this modern research. One to go, which was that these animals are looking smart. And in a funny way,

WINTER 2002 27 that’s one of the things that pushed him toward his cloth mother work. HARLOW PRIMATE LABORATORY, UW-MADISON With the cloth mother work, he showed that babies — and to him they were babies, not just baby monkeys — need to be touched, and they need to cuddle, and they need all of that security and warmth that being cuddled gives you. You could stand here in the twenty- first century and say, “Yeah, so, don’t we all know that?” But in fact, that was a revolutionary study. When I talked to his students, a lot of them talked about how much guts it took for Harry to do that study. He thought it was fascinating science, but it took a lot of courage. It went absolutely against the established psychology of the time.

MP: Love wasn’t considered science? DB: Love wasn’t science. Scientists didn’t use the word. I tell stories of him arguing with psychologists that love should legitimately be part of what they study.

MP: Where did his experiments with the cloth mother take him? “Harry used to say that for each of those two dozen monkeys — probably in the whole history of the lab there were two dozen monkeys that went into his more extreme experiments — DB: The cloth mother studies said that there were a hundred kids or a thousand kids who needed help, and that’s where he had his babies need to be hugged; they showed eyes. That was the prize. He knew some people hated those experiments. I don’t think he ever said that he saw them as animal cruelty, but he acknowledged that some people would see that a baby who’s hugged is more secure, them as cruel. But he would say, ‘Here’s why I think it’s worth it.’ “ more curious, more social, more adept. But after Harry showed that, he went on to say that the cloth mother, for all those the positive part of relationships, but the Just to give you an example of what warm, cuddly moments — she was just a bad part, too. people hate — people who love animals statue. She didn’t teach; she didn’t inter- hate this work — he built a series of act. And in the end, although touch was rejecting mothers. These were surrogate important, it turned out to be only part MP: And that’s one of the things that makes mothers like the cloth moms, except that of what you needed to grow up whole him problematic for people today. Why was he they were very ill-tempered surrogate and healthy and strong. willing to push the envelope with damaging mothers. They would shake the baby So he just went to the logical next relationships? really hard until its teeth would chatter. step. Well, what else do you need? Do DB: To some people — especially peo- Baby monkeys don’t like to be cold, and you need an interactive mother? Do you ple who don’t like animal research — it’s some of these mothers were [rigged to need the company of others? Will the unjustifiable research. These were such be] really cold. Or they would throw company of others compensate for a smart, social animals, and Harry Harlow the baby across the cage; they would be mother who rejected you? Will a mother did something that many scientists don’t spring-loaded and would bounce the who gives you everything compensate do, which was that he was completely monkey off when it came close. Or there for the friends you don’t have? If you’re forthright about what he did and what was one that had blunt-tipped brass Harry Harlow, and you’re interested in he found. He never fudged. He never knobs that would bump hard enough all of those questions and where they used jargon. He wrote very straightfor- against the baby that the baby would let take you in relationships, eventually wardly when monkeys suffered. And so go. What they found when they built you’re going to want to look not only at there was no missing the consequences. those models was that there was nothing

28 ON WISCONSIN that would make the baby not come at it and say, “Now wait a minute. This MP: That story isn’t necessarily wrong, but back. No matter how hard the mothers is crossing my personal comfort line. it’s just one-sided? rejected the baby monkeys physically, I didn’t even know I had a personal DB: It’s just one-sided. Because I the baby monkeys always came back. comfort line. But this crossed it.” wouldn’t deny that there are ethical Those experiments made people go issues, and I won’t tell you that I look back and look again at abused kids, and MP: Did he pay a price for his stance on at his experiments and say, “Oh, I love instead of saying, as they had been, that animal research? reading about this. Bring on more!” children who keep going back to abusive DB: Huge. And that was one of the rea- I’m a parent, and the first time I read parents were self-destructive, they sons I became more and more intrigued the rejecting mother study, it made started to say, “This is a trap for this with writing the book. me cry. I’m reading it, and I’m going, child.” They started to understand that When I started writing the book, “How could anyone do this? It feels children have this bond, heart to heart, I would say to people, “I’m writing a so cruel.” that pulls them back. A mother who biography of Harry Harlow,” and they There’s no way to look at Harry slaps her child around is what that child would say, “Who?” That began to be Harlow without acknowledging these has, and the child will always choose really intriguing to me — how could ethical issues. I think that they speak to her. Always. someone who died only twenty years who we are and the decisions we make ago have fallen off the radar screen so about species we have power over. He MP: So Harry helped define unconditional fast when his work was so important? made decisions that I think did wonder- love. I asked a lot of people about this. ful things for the rest of us. He helped DB: Harry helped define unconditional I think some of it was because of the produce a more enlightened generation love. To understand how to help those animal rights issue and because he was of parenting, helped redefine the way we children, you first have to have that defi- as unpolitically correct as it gets. He had study connection and relationships. All nition. You have to understand just how a tin ear for social change. He believed of those things — they’re great for us. strong love is. His work just got right in in saying what he thought, no matter Were they great for monkeys? No, they people’s faces and forced them to see it. what. He loved to provoke and bait peo- weren’t great for monkeys. You have to It forced psychology to change. ple — that was part of his personality. accept those shadows in his work Harry used to say that for each of He attracted animal activists to [other because they’re there. those two dozen monkeys — probably in researchers]. There are people who the whole history of the lab there were would say, “Animal activists came hunt- MP: Are you prepared for the fact that this two dozen monkeys that went into his ing me down, and I know that’s because book could be a fire starter, reinvigorating all more extreme experiments — there were they connected me with Harry Harlow.” those debates about Harry? a hundred kids or a thousand kids who People started backing away from DB: Yeah, I thought about that in a real needed help, and that’s where he had his him. They wouldn’t cite him, they cowardly way. I have thought to myself, eyes. That was the prize. He knew some wouldn’t mention him, and they didn’t there’s not a single animal activist who is want to be connected to him. So he starts people hated those experiments. I don’t going to like this book. This book, in the disappearing [from the scientific litera- think he ever said that he saw them as end, acknowledges that there’s this ethi- ture]. While scientists are really stepping animal cruelty, but he acknowledged cal cloud associated with Harry Harlow, back from him, the only people really that some people would see them as but that once you move through the describing him loudly and publicly are cruel. But he would say, “Here’s why I cloud, there are still these great results. the animal activists. They’re perfectly think it’s worth it.” I’m comfortable with that position, but comfortable trashing him. And so it has I do expect people to be angry. become a spin thing — the whole image I also think I’m right. I’ve worked MP: You make the point in the book that, of him was that of this psychologist who my way through this issue, read ten because he did these experiments, we don’t ever went gunning for baby monkeys, instead thousand Harry Harlow papers, talked have to do them again. of the psychologist who helped drive this to lots of people, sat up too many nights, DB: We shouldn’t. You can’t read his enormous and influential revolution and I’m perfectly comfortable sort of studies without seeing his baby monkeys about who we are and how we feel. planting my heels here and saying, “This as children in trouble. You really can’t. is where I stand.” He forces you to see it that way. Which, MP: So what you’re saying is that the story of course, didn’t do him a lot of good in that’s out there about Harry is largely being MP: You sound like Harry. terms of his relationship with the animal dictated by the animal rights activists who DB: Yeah, I do. So I guess he did rights community, but it did make a lot burn him in effigy? influence me. of the people he was working with look DB: Right.

WINTER 2002 29 30 ON WISCONSIN SEVEN DAYS ON THETHE REZREZ

Last summer a team of University of Wisconsin- Madison student and alumni volunteers spent a week in Browning, Montana, on the Blackfeet reservation. They endeavored to make a difference — both on the reservation and in their own lives.

In the tiny village of Heart Butte, in themselves, and to give aid where it’s northwestern Montana, stands a rare deeply needed. And mending fences is BY JOHN ALLEN example of a metaphor made literal. just what they did, digging eighteen- Tucked in an out-of-the way corner inch-deep holes in the rocky soil (or, as PHOTOS BY MICHAEL of the Blackfeet reservation, Heart Butte John Vasudevan x’02 puts it, “more like FORSTER ROTHBART is one of the sites where UW-Madison soily rock”) so they could string chain sent a SALA — Service and Learning link fence around a playground. Adventure — team last summer. The They spent a week on the reserva- students and alumni who took part in tion, and in that time they learned a little this journey had come to mend fences of the physical strain of construction. — to learn about the Blackfeet and They learned some of the difficulties that

30 ON WISCONSIN the Blackfeet face in life. And they labor at a variety of gained insight into their own preconcep- locations, including tiny tions about themselves and others. Heart Butte. “It was,” says Sarah Baker-Siroty The SALA team I x’02, “a different kind of education.” joined was the largest of The fence-menders were one of the 2002 groups — the three teams that SALA sent out in its one that strung fence in inaugural year. Sponsored by several Heart Butte. It included UW-Madison organizations, including six students and fourteen University Communications, the Wis- graduates, as well as fac- consin Alumni Association, the Wiscon- ulty adviser Gary Sande- sin Union, the Morgridge Center for fur and his spouse, Kathy. Public Service, and the Office of the Though Sandefur isn’t an Chancellor, the program aims to give expert on the Blackfeet, he travelers something more than sightsee- is a professor of sociology ing. Offering a combination of volunteer and American Indian stud- service and educational programming, ies, and he’s a registered it creates teams out of people who have member of the Chickasaw little in common except a present or past Nation. He knows more connection with the UW, teams that than a few things about work together and learn about the reservations, and could genuine lives of their hosts. add context to what volun- “What defines this as unique to UW- teers saw and heard. Madison,” says Patrick Strickler, direc- As organizers hoped, The Blackfeet reservation sits on the High Plains, where the Rockies meet the prairie, tor of University Communications, “is chemistry developed between students creating a striking backdrop. While driving that connection of alumni and students. and alumni. “The energy of the young near Browning, Kathy Sandefur saw a small SALA brings together people who have folks is infectious,” said Lindalea Lud- cloud dissipate in the bright sun. “It took just a few seconds and it had vanished,” she the freedom to travel with younger wick ’67. And Hannah Baker-Siroty x’02 says. “The mountains are so dramatic, so people in the student body. Both groups found inspiration in working beside solid, so intimidating. The cloud, like Brown- can learn from the exposure.” those she would usually think of as “pro- ing, is so delicate, so precarious, so fragile.” SALA organizers worked with a fessors, coaches, parents — people who service travel company called Global would be so distant in another setting, Volunteers to put together three trips in but here they are friends, partners. 2002 — two to Blackfeet country and “People did such fabulous things, PEAKS AND VALLEYS one overseas, to Ireland’s Glencree Cen- and by doing them, we all helped each tre for Reconciliation. The Centre works other become better people,” she says. Sometimes the earth plays tricks on us. to heal the rifts caused by the conflict in “I was so moved watching Elinor Sometimes the surface is so beautiful Northern Ireland, and the SALA volun- [Gbede MS’73]. She is so hard core.” that there are no words for the view. teers painted and did maintenance work Through the course of their week on Glacier [National Park] is one of those so that those who run the facility could the reservation beginning in late July, places. There is serenity there. Peace. be free to focus on their mission. members of the SALA team found more And mountain goats. The teams that worked with the than lessons about history and culture. From the journal of Sarah Baker-Siroty x’02 Blackfeet stayed in Browning, Montana, “Interacting with this wonderfully the reservation’s largest town. Global unique culture,” says Vasudevan, “has n Monday evening, after the vol- Volunteers has extensive contacts in the helped me redirect my focus and concen- unteers had put in their first day Browning area — the company’s co- trate less on the details that separate of work, Michele Gran took sev- founder, Michele Gran, spent ten sum- and aggravate, and more on the needs eral of them hiking on a tumbled mers of her childhood living and working and feelings that strengthen common Opyramid of blasted stone called Divide in the nearby community of Saint Mary. human bonds.” Mountain. Divide stands on the eastern With the aid of Gran and her company, The team had seven full days on the edge of the Rockies, a dozen or so miles the SALA team stayed at the local Head reservation, and the following seven sto- from Browning and just visible on the Start facility, camping out more or less ries explore a little of what the volunteers horizon on a clear day. If you were to on the floor and performing manual discovered. stand on Divide’s peak and look to the

WINTER 2002 31 west, you’d see Glacier National Park. camp isn’t a major tourist attraction. To the east, sloping away on the Great But Browning’s Museum of the Plains LABOR PAINS Plains, you’d see the Blackfeet reserva- Indian is, and it features a map showing There just isn’t a lot you can control on tion. The real estate to the west, all the diminishing lands held by Native an Indian reservation. deeply cut valleys and everlasting snow Americans. The Blackfeet once ranged Michele Gran fields, is some of the most beautiful and over all the land east of the Great highly valued in America. The real estate Divide, from the Yellowstone River he day we arrived in Browning, to the east isn’t. north well into Canada. Now their U.S. our Global Volunteers representa- Standing on Divide showed many of reservation stretches for only about two tive, Michele Gran, gave one very the volunteers Montana at its best. “It’s million acres, bordered on the west by clear warning: be wary of expecta- the closest thing to heaven I’ve ever Glacier National Park and on the north Ttions. No matter how good our volunteer experienced in my life,” says Jennifer by Canada. intentions were, we were under the Cinelli x’04. “My breath was deep, my Life in Blackfeet country, even with- direction of our Blackfeet hosts and brain alert, my body like a feather.” out Meriwether Lewis and his guns, can should respect their goals and follow But 196 years earlier, when the be harsh. According to members of the their decisions — even if we’d like things Blackfeet made their entry into U.S. Blackfeet Tribal Business Council, the done more aggressively. history, the scene was far from heavenly. reservation’s governing authority, unem- “There’s a different style of organi- Meriwether Lewis, the first official ployment stands at 71 percent, though zation around here,” she said. “There will American representative to make contact some residents put the rate as high as 80. be times when keeping a sense of humor with the Blackfeet, thought of those Alcohol and substance abuse are a deeply might be really useful.” “irregular and broken” mountains as destructive force in the community — in For the most part, the SALA team an obstacle, not a destination. just the first half of 2002, alcohol-related found the physical labor “extremely Lewis was tramping through Black- auto accidents took the lives of thirteen of rewarding,” in the words of Elinor feet country on his way home from see- the reservation’s teenagers: the reserva- Gbede, who spent much of the week ing the Pacific, and he was having a bad tion’s total population is 8,500. doing manual labor at different Head time of it. His partner, William Clark, In only one week, the SALA team Start facilities around the reservation. had taken a different route, and now couldn’t hope to make even a dent in any “You could see immediate results.” rivers weren’t flowing the way Lewis of these problems. The goal, rather, was Over the course of the week, volun- wanted them to. His chronometer had for volunteers to provide a little commu- teers did landscaping, painting, mainte- broken. It was raining. And, having nity service, to learn about themselves nance, and food service. They dug come with his own preconceived and others, and to experience the world postholes, set up fences, tore out weeds, notions about the Blackfeet, he was outside of middle-class, Midwestern shoveled, and hauled gravel. At a local desperately anxious not to meet any. Madison. Or, in the words of Gary senior center, they pulled up potentially “A vicious, lawless, and rather an aban- Sandefur, simply “to help, to learn, and hazardous tile in anticipation of a federal doned set of wretches,” he called them, to have fun.” inspector’s arrival. They traveled as far believing “they would steal our horses if they have it in their power and ... will “However small an impact we made in the community, we know they’ll never forget those rocks,” says Jennifer Cinelli (left). “I mean, the paint wouldn’t come off the kids for days. most probably attempt to rob us of our It’s definitely not coming off those rocks.” arms and baggage.” He and several companions stopped at a site they called Camp Disappoint- ment, and they were soon bitterly disap- pointed indeed. Very shortly, Lewis and company ran across a small Blackfeet hunting party. Diplomatically, they all decided to share a campsite for a night. Undiplomatically, a scuffle broke out over weapons. Two Blackfeet ended up dead, one shot through the stomach by Lewis himself. Two centuries later, Browning now lies just a few miles from the spot Lewis had named Camp Disappointment. The

32 ON WISCONSIN Left: Gary Sandefur, a professor of sociology and American Indian studies, provided not only cultural and historical background, he also gave the group its mission: “To help, to learn, and to have fun.” Above: Sunrise in the foothills — even at the end of July, the mornings are cold enough to put frost on a car’s windshield.

announced we had to leave, [the kids] all then the outreach worker didn’t even reluctantly groaned and looked at the pile want to try it. Comparatively, the manual of colored rocks that were drying in the labor was gratifying. You could see the sun with little faces of total happiness.” results of your labor. But at the clinic, But Gran’s warning wasn’t entirely in sometimes it seemed like we were vain, as Alex Barton ’98, a Chicago mar- spinning our wheels.” keting executive, and Jen Imm, a phar- macy graduate student, discovered. They went to the Browning diabetes clinic to help draw up marketing plans. Diabetes, FOUND LESSONS particularly Type II, is a widespread prob- You cannot be disappointed by some- away as Babb, near the Canadian border, lem on the reservation, affecting perhaps a thing you didn’t expect. Even if you to tear down a swing set that a safety thousand residents. And yet at the clinic, don’t reach your expectations or goals, inspector said was too large for its there are only four regulars who show up chances are you’ll end up better off playground. consistently for treatment. than you started. When they were working together, “We have to get people in before From the journal of John Vasudevan x’02 says John Vasudevan, tasks “that they need amputations,” said one clinic appeared to be futile and difficult slowly worker. “Because once we start chopping, ometimes the most frustrating changed to possible and rewarding.” they’ve only got about two years left.” work can lead to unexpected When there were too many volun- Barton and Imm expected that discoveries. One of the projects teers and not enough work, two of the they’d be targeting various populations that Michele Gran had been most students, Jennifer Cinelli and Caty in need of service, planning a mailing Senthusiastic about stalled, but it offered Patton x’05, created their own activity, campaign, or drawing up some sort of an education in modern reservation encouraging local children to paint rocks time line. politics nonetheless. as a beautification project. “Very quickly, we had to lower our Gran had hoped to use the UW’s It was “a pivotal point in some kind expectations,” says Imm. “All we got highly educated, professional volunteers of self-realization,” says Patton. “I wanted accomplished was to type up a protocol as an example of the sort of long-term to do it all day — sit there and play, for making a form letter on Microsoft benefits that her company and SALA laugh, and make a mess. And when we Word from an Excel spreadsheet. And could offer the Blackfeet.

WINTER 2002 33 “We can continue to send teams to informally with others who were also In the rural West, rodeos are about dig holes,” she says, “but little by little, waiting in hope of seeing the council. as commonplace as high school football we want to build up our competencies One of these was Pat Schildt, a Blackfeet games in the Midwest. The one in East in other areas.” And so she asked Gary entrepreneur who operates a convenience Glacier was nothing out of the ordinary Sandefur to speak to the members of store in Browning. He told us about the — local kids rode various surly beasts for the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council way the council works, the rise and fall of an audience of their parents, friends, and to their influential vice chair, various tribal enterprises, and the diffi- neighbors, and us. We tried to blend in. Jimmy St. Goddard. St. Goddard’s culties of running a business in Browning “It was obvious that we were authority had expanded considerably these days. Even with such high unem- tourists from Wisconsin,” says John after recent tribal elections in which he ployment, worker turnover remains a Vasudevan x’02, “because of our absolute and like-minded candidates had swept problem. One of the first things Schildt obnoxiousness.” the old administration out of office. The does for new employees, he says, is to Still, it was a friendly sort of obnox- former chair, Earl Old Person, had give them an alarm clock, maintaining iousness. We simply tried to play along. presided nearly continuously since the that many of them may have difficulties When little children were auctioned off, 1940s, and now St. Goddard and the adapting to a fixed schedule. we bought one, even before we learned new chair, William Talks About, “You can learn a lot talking to peo- exactly what we were buying. The small promised big changes. ple like this,” says Sandefur. “They’ll tell boys and girls rode sheep in the night’s At first the council was receptive. you all sorts of things that you’d never opening event. Winning children would They listened to Sandefur and asked him hear from official sources. It’s a real edu- split their earnings with their “owners,” to return for a more formal discussion. cation about the way things work on a sixty-forty. We took a bath on the deal. Gran asked Sheryl Facktor ’85, an attor- reservation.” “We bought a boy named Alonzo ney and investment banker, and me to Skunkcap,” says Sarah Baker-Siroty accompany him. Beginning on a Tues- x’02. “I knew he wouldn’t win. But who day, Sandefur, Facktor, and I staked out RODEO ever heard of such a thing as buying a St. Goddard and the council. We sat out- Stopped at the Western Curio Store and little boy?” side their chambers in Browning. We I got a cowboy hat, all in preparation Rain sent most of the volunteers chased them to a meeting in Heart Butte. for the rodeo in East Glacier. home early, but those who stayed saw From one day to the next we waited, but From the journal of Lindalea Ludwick ’67 the full range of rodeo experiences: bar- always we were deflected — the council rel racing, hog tying, and riding sheep, was either in closed session or St. God- he Montana trip may have been steers, and broncos. And tragedy. “One dard was deep in meetings. Gran would dedicated to service and learning, bucking bronco bucked so hard that have to court the council without us. but adventure played more than a finally his rider fell off,” says Elinor But though we never got in to speak small part. One evening, many of Gbede. “Then the horse fell over.” to the councilors, we found something Tus drove to East Glacier to take in one of The response of the rodeo crew was else, instead. We found a chance to talk Montana’s great traditions: the rodeo. swift and professional. They huddled over the rider, and after a tense pause, he stood up, to a round of relieved applause. Then it became apparent that the horse wasn’t able to get up. The crew drugged it and quickly dismantled a gate to use as a travois. Then they dragged it out of the arena to await a vet. Rumor had it the horse had broken its back. That’s rodeo life. One Blackfeet woman we met, Maria Wagner, cata- loged the injuries her sixteen-year-old son had received riding steers a month earlier: stepped on, gored, dragged, stunned, fifteen stitches in the face. He

At an area rodeo, the volunteers experienced a little local culture, including “buying” a young sheep rider. “I knew he wouldn’t win,” says Sarah Baker-Siroty, “but who ever heard of such a thing as buying a little boy?”

34 ON WISCONSIN was back in the arena that night. nology, and she prefers the term “native” “Well,” she says, “is he a boy?” to refer to the people whose ancestors predate Columbus. “Sometimes I say Indian myself, but we’re native.” BY ANY OTHER NAME “Indians” are who white people were INDIAN TIME looking for when they found us. With Indian time, the day is taken at a Margaret Yellow Kidney leisurely pace, appointments and dead- f you asked Browning residents lines have less urgency, and people rarely what the best thing about their question a sudden change in plans. town is, they’d likely say it’s the From the journal of John Vasudevan x’02 Indians. I The Indians are the boys basketball ndian time is one of those concepts team at Browning High School. Actually, that I’d heard a lot about. It had every team at Browning High is called often been mentioned by both Gran the Indians, but the boys basketball team and Sandefur in the meetings before is special. The squad has won Montana’s Ithe SALA team left for Montana. But I Class A state tournament for two years didn’t really understand it — I hadn’t Climbing on Divide Mountain offered volun- really experienced it — until I spent a teers a solid lesson in team-building. “I have running, which makes them a hot ticket. everyone here to thank for motivating me to In politically correct Madison, hav- morning in the lobby of Browning’s be a better person,” says Caty Patton, “to ing an Indian for a mascot would be Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) office. strive to that next pointy rock.” unthinkable. Some of the volunteers, like I — along with the rest of the SALA Lauralyn Schellin ’61, MS’62, who’s seen team — was supposed to hear a lecture opened a door for him, and said: “Sorry Native American names removed from from the BIA supervisor, Cliff Hall, on about that — I know you absolutely, many places near her home in Oregon, the history of relations between the positively have to be somewhere before were surprised to see “Browning Indi- Blackfeet and the federal government. 10:30.” ans” plastered on walls and T-shirts. But We had an appointment with Hall at He looked at me, shrugged, and in Browning, the term Indian is used 9:30, but when we arrived — after an said, “Not in this town, I don’t.” almost universally, and it doesn’t seem to eight- or ten-block walk through the That’s Indian time. bother anybody. Montana morning chill — we found he Not much. But then there’s Mar- was out, possibly inspecting irrigation garet Yellow Kidney, a nurse at Brown- works. The receptionist told us he’d be ing’s Head Start, who has a different back soon, or maybe in the afternoon, DOG DAYS take on the issue. Though not Blackfeet and we could wait if we wanted. We did, We found a dog. He’s beautiful. herself — she was born to a white father for twenty minutes or so, before deciding From the journal of Hannah Baker-Siroty x’02 and a Chilcotin mother on a reserve to head back to the Head Start facility. in British Columbia — she is deeply A couple of us stayed behind to help lackfeet country is a perilous involved in the traditional life of the photographer Michael Forster Rothbart place. There are many natural Blackfeet. Her father-in-law, Buster pack up his camera and equipment. By hazards: there are bears and Yellow Kidney, was a renowned figure in the time we were ready to go, news coyotes and very cold nights — Bon mornings even at the height of sum- the Native American traditional spiritual arrived: Hall was in the building. We community until his death in 2000. sent word to Head Start to tell everyone mer, you might find frost on a car’s wind- Margaret and her spouse still carry on to turn around. Michael began replacing shield. There are mountains to fall off of his work at sun dances and sweat lodges, photographic equipment, and I stood and canyons to fall into. And, too, there and she came to discuss traditional prac- around in the BIA lobby, waiting so I are unnatural predators: vandals, aggres- tices with the volunteers one morning. could conduct the team back to sive panhandlers, and the drunk drivers The details of native culture are impor- Hall’s office. who make the roads a terror. tant to her. As I stood there, contemplating my These are scary enough, but they’re “I’m what’s called a ‘breed,’ ” she shoes, a Fed Ex driver bumped into me. nothing when it comes to real danger — says. “With my father’s people, I’m a I felt guilty, because he was overloaded the sort of thing that can catch you off squaw. With my mother’s, I’m a white with packages, and I was basically just guard, throw your whole life into turmoil man’s child.” So she’s clear on her termi- an obstacle. So I jumped out of the way, Continued on page 65

WINTER 2002 35 Seven Days on the Rez panhandler’s claim of ownership seemed playing outside of Wippert’s trailer, a van Continued from page 35 noncommittal at best. So the team took pulled up. In the van was a little girl, and and leave behind nothing but wreckage. Ralph in — and immediately changed his on that little girl’s mind was her missing They’re nothing, that is, compared name to Montana, Monty for short. dog. It turns out that Two Socks was an to the dogs. There must be hundreds of As the days passed, the dog grew imposter. He was actually named Cinna- them, wandering stray, some technically from a sort of mascot to a distraction. mon, and he came from Great Falls, owned, others nomadic, abandoned, or He chewed on Caty Patton’s sleeping though no one seemed to know how he’d completely feral. These animals are a bag and devolved various socks into traveled the 128 miles to Browning. He menace, because dogs — and this has balls of yarn. His name changed again, went home shortly before we did. been proven by science — are cute. first to Madison, then to Rusty, back to For many of the travelers, the Especially to college students and alumni Madison, and then to Two Socks, after attraction of SALA had been the oppor- who think of themselves as socially the eponymous beast in Dances with tunity to see life on a reservation, but responsible people. To a traveling group Wolves. Two of the students, Hannah and what they took away was connections — of such tender-hearted creatures, a stray Sarah Baker-Siroty, phoned their par- and not just with canines. “This trip was puppy is an albatross, a barnacle, an ents to ask if they might bring him home an opportunity for me to extend myself implacable parasite. You’ll never get rid with them. beyond my classmates, to connect with of it. And Browning, Montana, is the But it soon became clear that no one people other than my peers,” says Han- capital of stray puppy country. The on the SALA team could give Two Socks nah Baker-Siroty. “It was amazing to be Blackfeet love dogs, and they don’t like a permanent home, so we prevailed upon on a trip with such varying ages and life leash laws. Darrell Wippert, a maintenance and pursuits. We all have a great deal to It took less than forty-eight hours security worker at the Head Start facil- teach each other.” for the SALA team to be captured by a ity, to take him in. Wippert said he local pup. The panhandler who intro- would, as a last resort. John Allen is associate editor for On Wisconsin. In 2003, duced — then abandoned — him said his At the end of the week, fate inter- SALA will return to Browning and will also send a team name was Ralph. Ralph looked healthy, vened. As Ralph-Montana-Monty- to Beards Fork, West Virginia. For more information, call WAA’s travel department at (888) WAA-TRAV (922- though he had no tags or collar, and the Madison-Rusty-Madison-Two Socks was 8728), or visit uwalumni.com/travel.

Shopping the Alumni Store — for the holidays or any day — adds up to great deals for UW alumni and friends:

• Exclusive Badger merchandise

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at uwalumni.com/store.

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WINTER 2002 65 edge that ultimately can influence deci- allowed survey researchers to rely on Your Opinion, Please sions that affect our daily lives. random-digit dialing. James Sweet, an emeritus professor Furthermore, surveys are growing of sociology at UW-Madison, says public- more popular among market researchers, opinion surveys have scientific and practi- political parties, and interest groups — all SPENCER WALTS cal value: “To take one example, most of whom may be less interested in accu- people think it’s useful to know what are racy than in, say, moving merchandise or the problems of health access — to sam- inventing support for parochial positions. ple the whole population and get a sense The profusion of surveys and sales pitches of what’s going on.” disguised as surveys all reduce the pub- The same applies to myriad other lic’s willingness to answer legitimate How do you questions. How satisfied are people with researchers. public schools? Is government ignoring Survey researchers are uncertain how know what the health needs of the elderly? Do peo- to assess their difficulties, but they are ple believe what they read in the newspa- virtually unanimous in taking the problem per? Has the Enron scandal eroded trust seriously. “Response rates have declined,” people think in business? How many people favor war confirms Kenneth Goldstein, a professor with Iraq over a diplomatic solution? Did of political science who is trying to learn — unless candidate Slippery N. Slimey win due to about people who do not respond to polit- slick ads, a clever choice of running mate, ical polls. or popular positions on bread-and-butter Nora Cate Schaeffer, a professor of you ask? issues? sociology who teaches survey design, Whether the subject is health or agrees that response rates are going politics, surveys are the bedrock of social down, but says, “It’s a hard problem to science. study because you have to hold so many By David Tenenbaum things constant: the study design and the MA’86 sampling method.” Many people blame Roadblock Ahead growing public cynicism, but Schaeffer nd yet, survey research is getting says that’s not been proven. tougher — do-not-call lists are only One tactic that is gaining approval for Athe latest hassle. Even though these improving response rates, Schaeffer says, lists exempt legitimate survey researchers, is paying respondents. Fortunately for not everybody who signs up may know budgets, payments must be moderate, that. So when another call comes in from since higher fees might coerce low-income a university researcher, for example, the people to cooperate against their better recipient of the call may feel especially judgment. frustrated. Then again, the lists could More commonly, however, actually make life easier for researchers, researchers mount a “sales pitch” during explains G. Donald Ferree, associate the initial thirty seconds of a call. The director for public-opinion surveys at the goal is to gain the respondent’s trust, by University of Wisconsin Survey Center. explaining that the only way to know how ou know the script. It’s dinner. lish do-not-call lists. By the time the list survey researchers are exempt. So before Those who don’t mind participating in people really think and act is to contact Your family members are gath- goes into effect on January 1, 2003, the you hang up on a researcher (or on this surveys — and so have never bothered random samples and ask. ered around the table, perhaps state expects that as many as one million article), you may be curious to know why to sign up on the no-call lists — may be Reaching randomly chosen individu- the only time they will be people will have signed up via phone or the work is so important. quite receptive to legitimate calls. als or households is the only basis for reli- Ytogether all day. The salad is dressed, Web site. Two agencies, the Federal Let’s start with what these researchers Nevertheless, other new obstacles able survey research. If the sample is too and the hot dish is being passed. Trade Commission and the Federal are not doing. They are not selling any- arise from technology. A so-called small, richer or poorer, whiter or more Communications Commission, are thing. They are not gathering your per- “privacy manager,” for example, allows female than the group as a whole, results Ring. Ring. considering a national no-call list. sonal information to sell it. They are not only preselected numbers to ring through. will be misleading. If rich people have Surprised? No. Everybody knows But even if you’ve joined the list, even trying to interrupt dinner. In fact, The increasing use of cellular phones, more call-blocking gadgets, they will be that dinnertime is telemarketing time. you may still get calls from strangers. legitimate researchers will practically beg unlisted numbers, and multiple numbers underrepresented in a survey that dials The pitiless ringing of telemarketing Although telemarketers are prohibited you to specify a better time to talk. at one residence all undermine the notion phone numbers at random. phone calls has led Wisconsin, along from calling you, political pollsters, Essentially, they’re trying to find out that each household has one phone num- Equally important is a good response with twenty-seven other states, to estab- non-profit organizations, and legitimate how Americans think and act — knowl- ber — an assumption that, until now, has rate. If fewer than roughly 60 percent of

ON WISCONSIN 36 WINTER 2002 37 SPENCER WALTS

randomly chosen subjects actually find out who we are and how our lives researchers have much lower require- cohabiting relationships end in complete the survey, researchers will be are changing. This is the woman’s third ments. For example, Goldstein says, the marriage, and that a large share forced to guess the opinions of the rest interview. I ask Kris Hansen ’96 if she overnight polls that news organizations of marriages are preceded by a of the sample. There may be systematic could be kidding. Hansen, a veteran use to analyze the state of the electorate period of cohabitation,” Sweet reasons why people do not respond: If all interviewer who supervises the phone often get only a 10 to 15 percent response. says. Cohabitation, in other Republicrats are irate at the press, they room at the Survey Center, thinks she’s “There is so much polling going on, so words, may substitute, at least may not answer a newspaper’s political being truthful, although some people do much direct marketing,” he explains. temporarily, for marriage. survey. If all Demicans are incensed at lie; several years back he talked to a kid You might think pollsters could use The implications for policy- the federal government, they may reject who claimed to be an eight-hundred- statistical manipulations to compensate makers concerned with the a government health survey. pound amputee. for low response rates, but Goldstein state of the American family Surveys commonly inquire about Hansen and I overhear other inter- says that can’t be done without knowing are complex, Bumpass says. economics, politics, and feelings. In viewers reaching wrong numbers, discon- about those who did not respond. “You While one-third of all children Wisconsin, the university’s Badger Poll, nected phones, and suspicious people. can be a smart statistician and take a are born to unmarried moth- which was established last March, exam- They encounter sudden hang ups or peo- good random sample, but you will have ers, 40 percent of unmarried ines all three realms simultaneously. Res- ple who might want to talk — tomorrow. a problem if the 10, 20, or 50 percent mothers live with a man, idents are asked how they think things Sooner or later, one of the interviewers is of the population who talk to you are meaning that a surprisingly are going now, and how they expect bound to reach a “painter” or a “neigh- different from the sample as a whole,” large number of kids are living them to be going in the future. “It’s bor” who claims not to know the resident. he says. with two parents. intended to examine every facet of life This may be a tactic, Hansen suspects, to Goldstein’s work embodies the signif- On the other hand, the in Wisconsin, to be the poll of record for dodge bill collectors. icance of survey research. He has studied start-and-stop nature of the state,” says Ferree, the poll’s director. Again and again, the interviewers are non-response in political polling — a cohabitation may impose a Ferree says the poll will assess flummoxed by caller ID, call waiting, or major factor in the conflicting predictions higher number of stressful optimism and pessimism. Once similar a privacy manager. over the Florida 2000 presidential ballot. Instead, he worked through contacts How’s Your Family? transitions on these children. So despite surveys are carried out elsewhere, it will Against the wave of protective elec- He thinks exit polls may help compen- in three large Chinese cities to look at the fact that the divorce rate has been be used to compare the attitudes and tronics and human skepticism, the cen- sate for difficulties with response rates. the correlation between participation he World Wide Web is about stable for a long time, family life has feelings of Badgers to residents of other ter’s main tool is human relations — “One neat thing about exit polls is that in private leisure activities — once the the only subject absent from the become increasingly unstable. By focus- states. The first three polls have shown smart, articulate interviewers (mumblers you can see who you didn’t talk to,” he exclusive province of the Communist TNational Survey of Families and ing on marriage, “we are missing these that Wisconsinites are high on their state: need not apply) who believe in their jobs says. “If you hang up the phone, I know government — and individualistic Households, the big kahuna of survey transitions in and out that are occurring 24 percent say it’s one of the best or a and can explain the importance of survey nothing about you. But if I see you in attitudes. Early results, he says, show research at UW-Madison. James Sweet in the real world,” Bumpass says. “How very good place to raise a family, and research. John Stevenson, the Survey person, I know your approximate age, “clear, statistically significant signs that and colleague Larry Bumpass, also a we think about social policy with respect another 38 percent consider it better Center’s associate director, says people race, and sex.” That data, he says, can those who participate more in market- professor emeritus of sociology, initiated to familial change has to be informed by than most states. tend to cooperate with a survey if they adjust opinion polls. If exit polltakers sponsored leisure activity show a greater the survey in 1987, and they continue to this reconceptualization of what family consider the topic interesting or impor- find that 45 percent of voters in a certain degree of endorsement of what I’d char- direct it. life is really like out there.” tant, and if they trust the researchers to district are African-American, but only acterize as individualistic values,” Pan Members of thirteen thousand In this case, the research is produc- Making Cold Calls do something useful with the informa- 30 percent of poll respondents were says. They tend to agree, for example, randomly chosen households were inter- ing an accurate picture of family life as o get an idea of how university tion. This is simple “social exchange African-American, they can weight their that “pursuing individual happiness is viewed in person in 1987 and 1988, and the twenty-first century begins, and it’s a researchers are dealing with these theory”: if you treat people with respect, results to improve accuracy. the goal of life.” again in 1992 through 1994. The third vitally important picture in a world with challenges, I visited the UW Sur- they feel a reciprocal obligation to be Meanwhile, journalism professor round, now under way, is the first to use do-not-call lists. T phone interviews. Data from these exten- vey Center, which employs about 180 respectful. Those factors, he says, give Sharon Dunwoody is researching a “The argument from our research is interviewers (mainly part-timers), and a “huge advantage” to the academic Foreign Lands highly individualistic realm — the sive interviews, Bumpass says, “are being that the boundaries of family life have eavesdropped on the phone. The center researchers who are the center’s clients, n China, a key challenge to survey World Wide Web. Ever since distributed with identifying information blurred, that you really misrepresent contracts with university and govern- an advantage that is reflected in response researchers is avoiding government UW-Madison initiated The Why Files, an removed, to researchers all over the family life if you treat it as beginning at ment researchers to perform dozens of rates that often exceed 70 percent. interference. Surveys by foreign online science magazine, seven years world. Hundreds of people are working marriage,” says Bumpass. “To argue that I with them, even as we speak.” surveys each year. Indeed, every so often, we hear the universities require Chinese government ago, Dunwoody has been trying to over- a mother and father living with a child Deep into a long telephone interview, magic words: “Sure, I have time to approval, and sometimes the accompani- come the Web’s “quick-click” mentality Sweet and Bumpass, for example, become a family when they get married a woman from New York State is giving answer your questions now.” ment of government minders. Zhong- of instant gratification in her quest to have used the data to cast a new light does not ring true. They already are a an odd series of answers. She “never” dang Pan PhD’90, an associate professor understand Web users. Her surveys on family structure, especially regarding family.” socializes with friends, family, neighbors, of communication arts who has surveyed show that even regular Why Files users marriage, divorce, and cohabitation. As you listen to the phone ring, just or church groups. Ditto for people from The Rate of Response in his native China, knew such an are willing to answer only a handful Many surveys indicate that people are remember this: that kind of insight is work. And all this even though she he positive responses reflect not arrangement would discredit his results. of simple questions. Eventually, Dun- marrying at older ages, but Sweet says important. And it’s something you can claims she’s not disabled. luck, but skill. Hansen says inter- “We didn’t want the questionnaire to be woody expects to learn more about Web they ignore how families actually form — only learn with a well-designed survey. The interview is one of thousands viewer training focuses on getting censored by the government, and didn’t users “in the same way we find out who and thus may mislead anyone trying to T understand who is taking care of chil- for the National Survey of Families and response rates that meet the needs of want the government to supervise our does a lot of other things: traditional David Tenenbaum is staff writer at The Why Files Households, a groundbreaking effort to university researchers. Other survey field operations,” he says. surveys.” dren. “We know that a large share of (http://whyfiles.org).

38 ON WISCONSIN WINTER 2002 39 He’s the country’s only academic expert on beets — an enthusiastic horticulturist who can’t say enough about this thoroughly unappreciated vegetable.

By Michael Penn MA’97 Photos by Jeff Miller

40 ON WISCONSIN om Robbins once wrote National Agricultural Statistics Service. while locked in war with England, was that stories about beets lead Goldman estimates that table beets — the shut off from overseas sugar imports, inevitably to the devil. These variety grown for human consumption, as and the whole country sunk into sugar days it’s probably more true opposed to those grown for animal fodder withdrawal. Napoleon issued a challenge that stories about beets lead or sugar processing — are grown on only to French scientists to come up with a Tinevitably to Irwin Goldman. about eight thousand acres of land in all new way to produce the sweet stuff, and, Goldman PhD’91, an affable, forty- of the United States, an area that could fit because nothing galvanizes the French ish associate professor of horticulture inside the boundaries of Lake Mendota. more than a threat to cuisine, they did. with peppery brown hair and wire-rim Figs (14,000 acres), turnips (11,500), They turned to the forgotten work of a glasses, is no Prince of Darkness, not radishes (14,600), and macadamia nuts French botanist, who two hundred years even a close surrogate. But he does know (17,800) are all more widely cultivated. earlier had derived a sticky, sweet syrup a lot about beets. As part of his faculty Even the lowly lima bean lays as much from beets. Now, all but a very few beets research, he grows beets, breeds beets, claim to American soil. grown in the United States are destined and studies beets. Heck, he even eats About two-thirds of that paltry beet to become sugar, not entrées. beets. In fact, you won’t find anyone in crop ends up processed, ultimately to It was a little more than a century this country who can tell you more about appear in cans and jars. These are your later that a UW-Madison professor the fleshy roots than Goldman. grandmother’s beets — the mushy stuff named Warren Gabelman turned his aca- No, really — you won’t. Don’t even that wrinkles the noses of many a child demic attention to the vegetable, forming bother trying. Goldman is not merely the — and the market for them, never huge UW’s beet lab nation’s pre-eminent expert on beets, he’s to begin with, is steadily shrinking. In in 1949. the only expert. 1977, American farmers processed about As far as anyone can tell, no other two pounds of beets for every American, professor in the United States is cur- but now that figure is down to below “I have a research rently working with the much-maligned seven-tenths of a pound. vegetable (at least not the humanly edi- Beets haven’t always had such a role, but I also like ble version of it). “There are a few people sorry lot. They’ve been around for more in private industry,” Goldman says. than two millennia, and for most of that to popularize these “But,” he adds somewhat sheepishly, “I time, they’ve been considered a valuable do have the only publicly supported table food source, critical to the survival of things as much as beet research program in the country.” many cultures through the ages. It’s In academia, where professors are believed that ancient Greeks first culti- II can.can. I’dI’d lovelove toto seesee often like wolves, traveling in packs and vated wild beets, which grow throughout working collaboratively, that’s pretty the Mediterranean region, for their more people grow to remarkable. Most food crops — every- green, leafy tops. Some historians relate thing from alfalfa to zucchini — draw a anecdotes about Greeks offering beet appreciate them.” fair amount of research buzz. There are greens to the god Apollo on a silver plat- usually hybrids to test, genes to splice, ter at the temple of Delphi, which must and markets to explore. If you took all mean they didn’t think beets were all that the people who research a crop such as bad. Neither did the Romans, who col- Gabelman, corn, for instance, you could probably fill lected beet greens for food and medicine. now an emeritus professor up a fleet of buses. But the nation’s beet For centuries, beets gave sustenance of horticulture, had been working on braintrust can’t even use the carpool lane. to both farm animals and farmers as they hybrid crops, which in post-World War “There is very little interest out spread throughout Europe, especially in II America were just starting to make there,” Goldman concedes. “It’s a very the northern and eastern parts of the their way onto the farm. Corn hybrids underappreciated crop.” continent, where the stored roots kept were doing wonders, increasing yields ••• families fed during long winter freezes. and profits for farmers, and Gabelman Few vegetables have been as picked at In parts of Russia, Hungary, and Poland, imagined that they would have the same and picked over, as picked on and ruth- beets were more than food — they were advantages for other crops, too. Hardly lessly pickled, as the beet. Beets give survival, the linchpin of existence. They anybody was breeding hybrid vegetables liver and Brussels sprouts a run for their became part of the culture. Some Russ- back then, and he had his choice of money as the food most reviled by kids, ian women even used beet pigment to foods to work with. He selected three and not many adults like them, either. rouge their cheeks. crops that he thought might be valuable As a food crop, beets don’t even make During Napoleonic times, beets took to Wisconsin farmers — carrots, onions, the list of 133 commodities tracked by the a significant detour. In 1812, France, and beets.

WINTER 2002 41 Influencing Gabelman’s choice was Beets, admittedly, are an acquired the fact that Wisconsin already had a large taste. Their high sucrose content makes canning industry, and beets were grown by them powerfully sweet, but that sweet- many farmers who fed those factories with ness comes with an earthy bite — a soil- fresh produce. It’s still true today that no like flavor caused by concentrations of state cans more beets than Wisconsin, geosmins, chemicals that leach into beets and of those eight thousand acres of beet- from the soil. You can find the same growing land, about four thousand are in chemical influences in spinach (a close the square formed by Madison, Milwau- relative of beets) or some types of corn. kee, Lake Michigan, and the Illinois border. Fans love that flavor, and extol its virtues The lab thrived, and Gabelman suc- of solidity and connectedness to the earth. ceeded in releasing a series of commer- Detractors say beets just taste like dirt. cially viable hybrids. One of the varieties There’s also the bleeding. Red beets — named, appropriately enough, Big (there are gold and even candy-striped Red — gave rise to the type of beet most beets, as well) contain reservoirs of inky widely grown around the world today. pigment, which is legendary for its ability In fact, since virtually every table beet to spill at the slightest provocation. derives from some kind of hybrid, and Many cooks complain that a kitchen since for decades Gabelman’s lab was the where beets have been prepared ends up only one making hybrids, you could say resembling a crime scene, with red stains every beet, everywhere, has Wisconsin on just about every surface. (Goldman parentage. Even exotic varieties, such as hastens to add that the pigment is water new golden beets, are Badger red inside. In one of the UW’s beet fields, Goldman gives soluble and washes off easily.) his two-year-old daughter, Aviv, a beet that After Gabelman retired in 1991, the he has carved into the shape of a flower. And let’s not forget the coolness beet lab might have disappeared without The professor dismisses the notion that kids deficit. The beet is often portrayed as a much notice, given how few people paid and beets don’t mix. In fact, he says his two relic of a bygone era of huddled masses young children actually enjoy them, both as attention to the crop. But researcher food and as art. and winter stews. In the modern day D. Nicholas Breitbach, who has worked of year-round produce markets, where with the lab for more than three decades, fresh vegetables can be flown in from kept things going until Irwin Goldman valuable nutrient, which is found in both Chile, no one needs root cellars or their arrived two years later. Then a fresh- beet greens and their roots. He has also hearty stock. “They’re perceived as faced assistant professor just two years helped show that the pigment of a red old-fashioned,” Goldman says. past his doctoral studies, Goldman car- beet, betalain, is rich in the antioxidants Students who come to work in ried on the breeding work and launched that battle the effects of aging. Goldman’s lab are often hesitant to new inquiries into the mystery of the The lab still runs by Gabelman’s embrace the beet. They may love study- beet. He now maintains beet plots at five tripartite mission, and there’s plenty of ing it, but many still won’t eat it. Gold- different farms around the state, and he work being done on carrots and onions, man tries to win them over, teaching and his graduate students slice up enough as well. But Goldman doesn’t mind play- them how to get past their can-based beets in a year to keep a Russian restau- ing favorites. “When students come in, beet phobia and sample newer and more rant in business. Every new hybrid they they catch on to the fact that I like beets creative ways of preparing beets. He grow gets carted back to the lab, where it the best,” he says. “And it’s true. I love shows them how to roast beets in the is carved apart and analyzed in an ongo- onion and carrot, too, but beet — there’s oven, which he says seals in their natu- ing quest to unravel the secrets those something very compelling about work- ral sweetness and nicely complements scarlet juices conceal. ing with it.” their earthiness. “It’s interesting — here we are with ••• “They’re just fantastic. The flavors all the tools of modern science,” Gold- Goldman didn’t set out to become an and colors are just intense,” he says. “It man says, “and we still don’t really know ambassador of beets. He did his doctoral takes a while to cook — you have to put what happens when you eat something work on pea breeding, and initially, he a little bit of time into it, but it’s the best as basic as a beet.” was mostly interested in the relationship way to do it.” In 1997, Goldman was the first between vegetables and nutrition. But he In fact, Goldman may spend more researcher to quantify folic acid in red was born to the job, if for no other rea- time beating the drum for beets than beets, demonstrating that breeding and son than for the simple fact that he liked breeding them. But he doesn’t mind. “I harvesting can increase amounts of the beets even before he studied them. have a research role, but I also like to

42 ON WISCONSIN popularize these things as much as I can,” he says. “I’d love to see more peo- ple grow to appreciate them.” Color Me Red There are signs that beet percep- tions are coming around. Farmers’ markets and community-supported agriculture arrangements are beginning to reintroduce consumers to vegetables they may have forgotten, Goldman says. The supercharged red “People are rediscovering them,” he of a Wisconsin high-pig- says. “Their connections with vegetables ment beet stands out in are changing.” comparison to one of the golden beets grown A staple of ethnic foods and salads by UW researchers. The for years, beets are making a comeback pigment from beets as a nutritious spike of flavor for many developed at the UW has been used to color dishes. Saveur magazine has done a full- Kool-Aid, Jell-O, yogurt, color spread. NBC’s Today Show recently and ice cream. featured a beet bruschetta. And at Madi- The compelling nature of a beet begins — and some would say, ends — with color, and color is son restaurant L’Etoile — where propri- at the root of Wisconsin’s connection to beets. etor Odessa Piper is described as a “beet Beet red is a profound, unapologetic red. While cheery people get apple red or rosy red, queen” — the frequently changing menu we only get beet red in the hottest of moods. It takes the fire of anger or embarrassment or often features beets prominently. frustration to bring us to beet. That reddest of red was the muse for Tom Robbins’s 1984 book “Beets are very hot right now,” says Jitterbug Perfume, which contains the most convincing literary paean to a beet ever crafted. John Navazio PhD’94, a beet breeder “The beet is the most intense of vegetables,” he begins. “The radish, admittedly, is more and manager of Seed Movement, a seed feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent, not of passion. Tomatoes company in Iowa City. “They fly under are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are the radar. The mainstream population deadly serious.” If Robbins liked beets eighteen years ago, he’d love them today. Thanks to UW horticulture doesn’t necessarily eat beets. But there professor Irwin Goldman, they’re getting redder by the day. Wisconsin’s lab now breeds beets is a significant subset of Americans who that have as much as five times the pigment of normal red beets and are so deeply saturated really embrace them. Anyone who sells with dye that they look black. beets at a farmers’ market can tell you The experiment began in the late 1970s, when food science professor Joachim von Elbe it’s a very popular vegetable with that ’59, MS’60, PhD’64 visited a beet canning facility. An expert in food colorings, von Elbe was subset of people who are very food- called in to help the plant figure out a problem with its beets. Because of its tendency to spill conscious and very health-conscious.” out when sliced, natural beet color doesn’t hold up well to the canning process. It goes run- Suddenly, Goldman is hip. His ning out all over when the raw vegetables go through the cutting machines. Most canners today use artificial coloring to re-create beet red in the can, and von Elbe had been assisting phone is ringing. A few weeks ago, he with getting the color right. As he walked around the plant, von Elbe saw ruby rivers every- received a message from a Los Angeles where, flows of deep-hued beet juice running away from all the machinery and down the Times reporter, asking to interview the drain. He thought, “My God, this is red! Maybe we ought to be using this!” professor about his favorite subject. He Von Elbe went to colleague Warren Gabelman, and the two began a program to breed responded within five minutes. “I’d love beets exclusively for pigment. Now, von Elbe has retired from the university and runs a to!” he told her, cheerily. “There aren’t company marketing high-pigment beets for use as natural dye. enough people who want to talk Back in Goldman’s lab, Veronica Gaertner ’01, a master’s degree candidate in horticulture, about beets!” works at a countertop stained thoroughly scarlet, collecting and analyzing the dye from the Later, he explained to me why he increasingly purplish beets they’ve raised. She holds out a jar of beet dye and instructs me to smell it. There is no beety odor. She assures me that there’s no lingering taste, either. appeared so eager. “Beets are a rare Gaertner says there are drawbacks to studying something as unusual as beets. “There treasure,” he said, “and nothing makes aren’t many papers about them. As a student, it’s a little harder to find concrete research that’s me happier than being able to tell not from 1970,” she says. But the intrigue of the overlooked beet — and its potential uses — people about them.” outweighs the struggles. “Breeding for pigment is really only thought about [at Wisconsin]. I don’t think any other place is breeding beets, let alone breeding them for pigment,” she says.

Michael Penn, senior editor of On Wisconsin, refrained “I think it’s neat to be working on something with such Wisconsin history.” from sampling any beets during the writing of this So far, the converted beet juice has been used to color Kool-Aid, Jell-O, Yoplait yogurt, story, and continues to do so, purely in the name of and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. Although the dye is about twice as expensive as synthetics, the objective journalism. professors are hopeful that further breeding will make it an economical choice. — M.P.

WINTER 2002 43 THE Code-breaker

Meredith Gardner Joseph Sullivan AND THE G-Man BY CANDICE GAUKEL ANDREWS ’77 Decoding messages to decipher Meredith Gardner and Joseph Sullivan used their UW education spied for the Soviets in World War II. threats to our national security American counterintelligence was able to identify only about one hundred from outside sources and find- to expose Soviet spies and bring criminals to justice. of these Soviet agents. But even that ing the dangers already here, accomplishment was remarkable. There wasn’t a single agency of the American living insidiously among us: government that the Soviets hadn’t these endeavors now make up pies, secret codes, and a highly (“I thought you were just a legend!”) the first representing E and the third L. infiltrated. the headlines of our daily lives. protected anonymity: it’s the They married in 1943. “I had never come across a three-letter In 1972, Gardner retired from the stuff of a John Le Carré novel. That same year, Gardner received a meaning in the spell code,” he later NSA, and his work remained unknown Meredith Gardner and Joseph S Although there are no movies that chron- surprising order: he was reassigned to recalled, according to an obituary in the for years. According to his son, Arthur Sullivan were heroes of these icle the intriguing career of Meredith examine telegraphic traffic involving the London Telegraph. “Then I said, ‘Ah, but Gardner MA’70, “I had no idea of his kinds of battles, but their work Knox Gardner MAx’40, he pulled off Soviet Union, America’s ally. The U.S. they anticipate sending a lot of English job when I was growing up. He took one of the greatest U.S. counterintelli- government, concerned that Stalin might text, and the most common word in the his promise of secrecy very seriously. I did not involve modern-day gence coups of the last century. make a deal with Hitler and get out of English language is the.” didn’t know until much later what he terrorists. Instead, one fought A native of Okolona, Mississippi, the war, began to monitor Soviet diplo- The name of Liberal’s wife was did.” Word got out in 1987, when former enemies from without in the Gardner attended graduate classes in the matic communications. The Soviets were “Ethel,” one of the key clues that led agent Peter Wright referred to Gardner German department at the University of aware of the situation, but because their to the uncovering of Julius and Ethel in his autobiography, Spycatcher. 1940s; the other, a generation Wisconsin and was a TA between 1938 cables were in code, security did not Rosenberg, who were arrested in the But no one paid much attention. It later, fought enemies within. and 1940. An exceptional linguist, he concern them. summer of 1950 and were charged with wasn’t until 1996 that Senator Daniel Both died during the same was fluent in German, Old High Ger- Gardner began his task by studying conspiracy to commit espionage. At their Patrick Moynihan, as chair of a U.S. man, Middle High German, Sanskrit, out-of-date Soviet code books, probably trial, the prosecutor implied that they commission on government secrecy, week in August. Latin, Greek, Lithuanian, Slavonic, stolen by FBI agents, to try to figure out had stolen the secret of the atom bomb became aware of the cryptography and Spanish, French, Italian, and Russian. the current codes. In the fall of 1946, he and given it to the Russians. campaigned for it to be revealed. Fifty He moved to Washington, D.C., early in made an important breakthrough. He In fact, while the Rosenberg trial was When Blanche Hatfield went to work for the years after their labors, Gardner and agency that employed Meredith Gardner, she World War II to work as a civilian for determined the ciphers used for English unfolding, Gardner broke into the most introduced herself to the linguistic legend. his colleagues were honored at a formal the Army Signal Intelligence Service letters, allowing him to spell out proper explicit message he would ever read. It They were married a few years later. ceremony in Washington sponsored by (ASIS), a predecessor of the National names. pointed to two Los Alamos physicists as the NSA, the CIA, and the Center for Security Agency (NSA). He was first In a telegraphic message sent two the ones who had given away the blue- Democracy. Senator Moynihan intro- assigned to decode intercepted German years earlier, Gardner found a list of prints for the bomb: nineteen-year-old delicate health, does not work.” The duced Meredith Gardner as an unsung telegrams, but then amazed his col- names: Hans Bethe, Niels Bohr, Enrico Harvard graduate Theodore Hall and a word work was KGB jargon for espionage, hero of the Cold War. leagues when he also mastered Japanese Fermi, Edward Teller, and others — refugee from Hitler, Klaus Fuchs. Neither which would explain why Ethel was not Gardner told the Washington Post in in a few months. the scientists who worked on the atomic knew the other was a Russian spy. given a cover name. 1996 that he attributed his success to his At the same time that Gardner was bomb inside America’s most secret loca- This evidence was kept out of court, Julius and Ethel were executed in logic, linguistic skills, and “a sort of mag- beginning his career at ASIS, a young tion, Los Alamos, New Mexico. The however, because it would have revealed the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison pie attitude to facts, the habit of storing UW-Madison graduate student named message was the first hint that there the fact that the United States had man- on June 19, 1953. Michael Meeropol things away that did not seem to have Blanche Hatfield MA’42 was hearing might be Soviet spies working at the aged to break the Soviet code. PhD’73, one of the Rosenbergs’ two any connection at all.” Son Arthur says, about Gardner’s expert reputation in atomic weapons plant. It was time to Gardner had supported the death sons, says that “Mr. Gardner was con- “He had a love of detail and a love of her German classes. After graduating, call in the FBI. penalty for Julius, but not for Ethel. vinced that my mother was wrongfully knowledge in general.” she, too, went to work for ASIS to help A few months later, Gardner came Unbeknownst to the court, Gardner convicted and executed, but because Karen Fischer, who works at the decode German messages. Gardner’s son upon a reference to an agent in six had decoded another KGB message that what he did was super-secret, he could UW-Madison Division of Continuing and daughter say that their mother knew separate messages with the code name indicated that Ethel was not a spy like not speak out. As I understand it, he Studies, is the sister of Gardner’s daugh- Gardner worked there, sought him out, “Liberal.” The only clue to his identity Julius. Gardner said, in an interview expressed tremendous remorse for this.” ter-in-law and met Gardner in his later and promptly approached him with lay in the name of his twenty-nine-year- broadcast on NOVA in February 2002, Gardner and the other code breakers years. “If he heard a word pronounced what she thought was a clever pickup old wife. Gardner determined that the “[The message said] she knows about ultimately found cover names for more differently,” she says, “he’d trace the line — “Ich dachte, Sie wären eine Legende!” name contained three groups of letters, her husband’s work. In view of her than three hundred Americans who roots of the word and how the different

44 ON WISCONSIN WINTER 2002 45 the Sterling Hall bombing. “He easily fig- ured out how they [the bombers] blew it up — how the explosives worked — and solved the case in no time,” says Gerald. Sullivan played football for Wiscon- sin for a time, but quit when he decided to enter law school. After graduation, he got a job with Standard Oil in Green Bay. When a fellow alum suggested that Sullivan join the FBI, which offered a starting salary well above what he was making, he jumped at the chance. The FBI put Sullivan to work track- ing down Nazis in Venezuela. “No one

WISCONSIN CENTER FOR FILM AND THEATER RESEARCH, IMAGE ID WCFTR-4249 RESEARCH, FILM AND THEATER CENTER FOR WISCONSIN was supposed to know he was an FBI agent,” Gerald says. “He had to get a day job with an oil company down there and then do his spy work at night. He was sent to find the Nazis, but he found the Communists were a bigger problem.” In the early fifties, Sullivan joined the FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Division, pronunciation came about. He had an The character that which kept an eye on the KKK and other Gene Hackman endless curiosity and a quick mind.” (second from left, violent organizations. After heading Gardner spent his retirement doing above) played in bureau offices in Houston and Alaska, the most difficult crossword puzzles he Mississippi Burn- Sullivan was promoted in 1963 to the ing was loosely could find, in the London Times, and based on Sullivan position of major case inspector. traced his Scottish ancestry “almost back (left). Author In June 1964, he received word that to the Bible,” says Fischer. He died on Tom Clancy called the FBI had been authorized to investi- Sullivan “the August 9, 2002, in Chevy Chase, Mary- greatest lawman gate the disappearance of three civil land. In his obituary, the Washington Post America ever rights workers near Philadelphia, Missis- gave him the credit he so long deserved produced.” sippi. Sullivan flew to Meridian and made when it stated, “Within the intelligence it his home for the next nine months. community, Mr. Gardner was said to In the tense social climate of the have been a living legend.” Throughout his thirty-year FBI 1960s, the Johnson Administration was career, he was the man the bureau sent determined to track down the murderers. oseph Aloysius Sullivan ’38, when there was pressure to solve a case, Within weeks of arriving in Mississippi, LLB’41 seems to have been on and solve it soon. Author Tom Clancy Sullivan was visited by FBI Assistant J the scene at every defining event refers to Joseph Sullivan as “the greatest Director Al Rosen, then by FBI Director of the turbulent sixties and seventies. lawman America ever produced.” J. Edgar Hoover. Sullivan’s investigation Whether it was the search in 1964 for Sullivan was born in Montreal, even received full assistance from the mil- three missing civil rights workers Wisconsin, and raised in nearby Hurley. itary, which sent busloads of sailors from depicted in the film Mississippi Burning According to his brother Gerald Sulli- the Meridian Naval Station to aid in the (Gene Hackman’s character was loosely van ’41, to finance his UW-Madison search for bodies in the insect-infested based on Sullivan in the 1988 movie); the education, Joseph worked summers in swamps of east-central Mississippi. Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination in a Montreal iron ore mine. “It was there According to the “Famous Trials” 1968; the murder of United Mine Work- that he learned about explosives,” says Web site maintained by the University of ers reformer Jock Yablonski in 1969; the Gerald. Missouri-Kansas City, when the attempt Kent State killings in May 1970; or the Little did Joseph know that this to recover the bodies failed, Sullivan bombing of the Army Math Research knowledge would play a large role some concluded that he “would ultimately Center in Sterling Hall at UW-Madison thirty years later in solving what was solve this case by an investigation rather in August 1970, he was there — almost a until then one of the most destructive acts than a search.” But residents of the real-life Forrest Gump. of domestic terrorism in U.S. history — Continued on page 64

46 ON WISCONSIN The Code-breaker and the G-Man Continued from page 46 Mississippi town of Philadelphia were tight-lipped. “They [the Klan] owned the place. In spirit, everyone belonged to the Klan,” Sullivan said. The local residents even took sport in sending the FBI agents on wild goose chases. Eventually, the site continues, Sulli- van developed informants who led him to uncover the facts. The key informants were members of a neighboring Klan, causing Sullivan to observe that if the Philadelphia Klan had “carried out the murders on their own, they would have almost certainly gotten away with it.” By 1970, Sullivan’s reputation in the FBI could be summed up in two words: effective and incorruptible. When, at 3:40 a.m. on August 24, Madison was When Sterling Hall was bombed in 1970, the rocked by an explosion so powerful that FBI sent Sullivan to investigate. It took him it damaged twenty-six buildings, awak- less than a week and a half to solve the case. ened residents thirty miles away, and killed thirty-three-year-old graduate stu- dent Robert Fassnacht, the FBI sent the Joseph liked the way he was portrayed man they knew they could count on to in the film Mississippi Burning, Gerald get the answers. says, “He felt it was pretty accurate. Sullivan returned to Madison, where But Gene Hackman’s character was too he had started his own life’s journey violent. Joseph wasn’t violent.” more than thirty years before. Less than After retiring from the bureau in a week and a half after the act, his inves- 1971, Sullivan worked in security for tigation had pieced together what had the airline industry and as a private happened. Sullivan believed the bombers security consultant. In 1995, he formed had filled a Ford van with about two the World Training Institute in New thousand pounds of ammonium nitrate York, a nonprofit organization that does soaked in aviation fuel. He put four consulting and training for the business people on the FBI’s most wanted list. community. “People in Madison knew Joseph Sullivan died at age eighty-five on was there to investigate the bombing,” August 2, 2002. On August 9, the Wall says Gerald. “When my brother walked Street Journal ran an obituary titled “The down the street, students would yell Gentle G-Man.” It noted, “Most people things at him and throw things. But who knew Joe Sullivan knew little of Joseph never reacted. He kept calm.” his heroics, however, because he never Although he dealt with danger for spoke of himself. The Reverend William most of his career, Sullivan was most M. Shelley of Manhattan’s St. Agnes proud of his nonviolent approach to his Parish, who said Sullivan’s funeral Mass work. “Here he was — this big man who this week, said the homeless in his soup had played football and who had worked kitchen were astounded to learn that the in Wisconsin iron mines,” says his gentle man who mopped their floors had brother. “He was very authoritative. He been a top G-man.” never struck anyone, he never fought with anyone, and he never pulled his gun Candice Andrews is an editorial associate for On out. No one argued with him — not even Wisconsin. A former story analyst for Paramount Pictures, she has also written television scripts for a the mobsters.” In fact, when asked if Hollywood production company.

64 ON WISCONSIN