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Betsy Tobin is a novelist and playwright, born and raised in the American Midwest, now living in the UK. She is the author of five novels: Bone House, short-listed for the Commonwealth Prize and winner of a Herodotus Prize in America; The Bounce; Ice Land; Crimson China, a BBC Radio 4 Book At Bedtime and short-listed for Epic Romantic Novel of the Year; and Things We Couldn't Explain. She is the past winner of the London Writers' Competition for her short story 'Joyride'. In between books she also writes for stage and radio, and teaches creative writing for both First Story and Arvon. She lives in London and Wales with her family.
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Things We Couldn't Explain: Excerpt
Excerpt from Things We Couldn't Explain by Betsy Tobin (Accent Press - November 2014)
I used to think this was just an ordinary town. That was before strange things started happening here, things we couldn't explain. This is my home now, even though I've only spent a tiny portion of my life here. Sometimes a place works on you – it creeps inside and takes root and won't let go. And I guess that's what happened to me in Jericho. Because the stranger things get here, the more I want to stay.
According to my Latin teacher the city we're named after is one of the oldest in the world. He said that in ancient times Jericho was an oasis in the middle of the desert: a place of swaying palm trees and natural springs and fragrant orange groves, where people worshipped the moon. Mark Antony gave the oasis to Cleopatra, who claimed that the perfume from its persimmons drove men wild. But in the end the city was doomed. Mark Antony and Cleopatra both committed suicide, and Jericho was sold to Herod, a madman who murdered his own family. Later, it became the scene of one of the bloodiest battles in the Old Testament. When Joshua marched his army into Jericho, he told his men that nothing should be spared, not even the livestock. I've always wondered how a goat could be implicated in a holy war. Didn't anyone stop to question the wisdom of slaughtering animals? But faith is blind. I know that now, even if I didn't before.
The people who settled this town in the early eighteenth century were German Lutherans who came across the Allegheny Mountains by horse and cart. Later they were followed by Methodists, Baptists, Episcopalians, Catholics, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and last but not least, Jehovah's Witnesses. You wouldn't think a small town like this one could stretch to hold so many branches of one faith. You'd also be forgiven for wondering why each group insisted on worshipping their own version of the same God, but then Christians have never been much for compromise. I guess the first settlers chose the name because it was holy, or maybe they thought it was poetic – either way they decided to ignore its history. Maybe my family should have realised that a town with such an illustrious namesake might mean trouble. But if I hadn't moved to Jericho, I never would have met Annemarie. So I guess I have God to thank for that miracle. Or maybe I should thank the moon.
I was born sighted. In fact, the world was mine for more than five years. Sometimes I think I stored up a lifetime of pictures over that time, an endlessly revolving kaleidoscope of images that I will never get through, no matter how many times I turn them round and round in my mind. Ethan is convinced my world is brighter than his. He's decided that the world in my head is like some kind of pop-up greeting card: bigger, better, and more vibrant. But at the same time, not quite real.
Are my colours more dazzling than his? Maybe. I guess we'll never know. That suits me fine, though. I have a new plan for living, especially after the events of the past few months – sort of my own personal gospel. The idea I live by now is ambiguity. I love the sound of this word, the way all five syllables come crashing together to form a kind of vague suggestion. But even more I like what it means. 'Cause we'll never really know for certain what happened to me – whether it was God or the Virgin Mary or a crazy dance of my chromosomes. I can live with ambiguity, because it doesn't try to trap me with conviction. These days, what I really can't deal with is other people's certainty. I guess when it comes down to it, I choose darkness over light.
The world's been dark since I was five. I remember listening to Dr Paulson tell my mother that children adapt more easily to blindness than adults do. He said I was lucky to have been sighted for so long – that my mind would quickly learn to fill in the gaps. Looking back, I think it took me two years. By the time I was seven, I was rewired. It's true what they say about your senses: that when one is switched off, the others glow more brightly. Though I couldn't see, I grew more observant. I sensed things others didn't, and asked questions. People were tolerant – after all, I was an unlucky child whose genes had been blighted by some mysterious force before my birth. So they indulged me, and told me things they shouldn't. I learned to listen carefully, and to remember. Often it was the silences that told me most.
When I was ten I asked Dr Paulson to explain the reasons for my blindness. He hesitated, breathing hard through his nostrils, and I could sense his mind groping towards an answer. Finally he said that vision was like a lightning storm behind the eyes; except in my case, he explained, the storm was misfiring. Instead of sending millions of flashes from my eye to my brain, the nerves were flaring off into darkness, like tiny shooting stars that fade before they land. But when I asked him why my nerves had lost their way, he paused uneasily, then told me that God had deemed it so.
'God wants me to be blind?' I asked.
'God had a purpose when he took away your sight,' he said evasively.
'What purpose?'
He coughed uneasily, and I had the sudden image of a small mongrel dog crouched nervously at his feet. 'That's for you to discover. In time.' He rose, anxious to be free of me, and I listened as both he and the dog left the room.
Dr Paulson's words stayed with me. After that day I saw my blindness not as a punishment, nor as an affliction, but as a mystery that could be solved in an infinite number of ways. I still haven't discovered why God made me blind, but I've found out other things. Maybe that's why I don't mind going to church and listening to sermons. Even though they claim to preach the truth, we all know that deep down inside, religion is just one big leap of faith. Cora Lynn says God made me blind because He knew I wouldn't fail at it, like it was some sort of test of endurance or flexibility. I reckon she would know, since she's the closest thing I've got to a sister, on account of the fact that her mama helped look after me when I was small, and we've played together since we were babies. After I lost my sight, Cora Lynn made me tie a bandana around her eyes every time she came round to play, so that we could be even. But it wasn't because she felt sorry for me, it was because she was jealous: blindness made me special, and Cora Lynn wanted a piece of it. It was her idea when we were eight years old that we should stuff our ears with Ada's cotton balls and pretend we were Helen Keller, until one day Mama found us groping our way around the neighbourhood, completely deaf and blind, and went ballistic. These days when she comes around to visit, Cora Lynn sometimes puts the blindfold on again for old time's sake. 'Blindness is gonna be your ticket out of this town, Annemarie,' she always says. ''Cause it's what makes you divine.'
Apart from Cora Lynn, I spend most of my time with Ethan. He moved in next door a few years ago and after about six months started tutoring me in math. Ethan is in love with me – I don't need vision to see that. His longing has got so powerful I can taste it when he stands too close. Which he does a lot, lately. Sometimes we're like two magnets, pulling towards each other. Then just at the last moment, one of us flips and suddenly we're repelled. Just like that. I keep wondering why that happens. Is it God doing that? And what does He care about two seventeen year olds anyway? Even if one of them is blind.
And pregnant. I can't believe I'm saying those words. But they did the tests and I am well and truly with child. Which is pretty peculiar, considering I'm a virgin. Spiteful even. I wonder if the Virgin Mary felt this way? Dr Paulson says it could be possible. Sort of. He says that, medically, a woman might be able to conceive without a man. But it doesn't happen very often. 'Like every few millennia?' I asked. He didn't answer. In fact, he seemed a bit hazy on the details. Not to put too fine a point on it, Dr Paulson isn't exactly a rocket scientist. I reckon he scraped through some podunk medical school, then came back to practise in Jericho because it's the only place that would have him. When I asked him for specifics he mumbled something about X chromosomes and cystic tumours and said he'd get back to me. In the meantime, there's a team of geneticists from Park Shore Hospital who've decided that I'm some sort of medical phenomenon. And the local parish has launched its own investigation. If there's going to be a miracle around here, you can be sure the Church wants a piece of it.
That's why I decided to make this recording. Ethan calls it a diary, but I'm calling it my official version of events. Because I can already tell this story is going to spin like a pinwheel in a hurricane, with me right at the centre, stuck fast. Anyway I feel more comfortable saying things out loud than committing them to paper. The State of Ohio bought me a Braille typewriter last year, but there isn't much point in using it as no one can read what I've written afterwards. Most of the time it just sits in the corner of my bedroom watching me. Ethan gave me this tape recorder for Christmas. It's got four buttons: start, stop, rewind, and play, a microphone in one end and a tiny speaker in the other. So I can listen to what I've said and redo it if I haven't got it right. I know he's desperate to hear what's on the tapes. But there's got to be a part of me he doesn't see. I mean, he's got all the advantages, being sighted. He can come and go when he pleases, can watch me from his house whenever he likes. I know he does that, can sense it somehow. Sometimes I go to my window at night and wave at him. The first time he rang me up afterwards and asked me how I knew. Now he doesn't bother.
I don't know how I know, but I do – that and a whole lot of other things I shouldn't. Cora Lynn says that when God took away my vision he replaced it with second sight. But I think maybe it's in my blood. My grandmother used to talk to dead people, only she called them angels. When I was a little girl, she used to say: 'Move over, your angel wants to sit beside you.' I did as I was told, scooted over to make room, because I loved her and wanted to believe. But it wasn't easy, because her angels were quick to judge. When I'd ask for another slice of cake she'd frown and say, 'Your angel's shaking her head.' Towards the end she lost her marbles and Mama had to put her in a home. She died when I was six: about a year after I became blind. I don't think she ever realised I'd lost my sight. Though maybe her angels did.
But the real story started about four weeks ago, back in early June. One night a big storm rolled in, about an hour after I'd gone to bed. It was what Deacon Joe calls a humdinger – which is to say, the worst we'd had in years. There was no way I could sleep through it. The storm must have passed right through Jericho, because I could see the lightning flash behind my eyes and feel the thunderclaps deep inside my chest. I lay there and listened to it rage around us, until it eventually moved off and became nothing more than a grumble on the horizon. When it was finally over the silence was eerie, as if the lightning had swept away everything in its path. I was nearly asleep when suddenly I felt a presence in my room, as if someone was standing at the foot of my bed, and a small stir of air. I sat up, my heart racing, and instinctively pulled the covers up to my neck. 'Who's there?' I called out. My voice seemed to flit around the room like a sparrow. I waited, hardly daring to breathe, but after a few moments the presence faded and disappeared. Afterwards, I wondered if I'd dreamed it.
I fell asleep, but when I woke the next morning, I knew that something wasn't right. My belly felt like it was on fire – like someone had literally lit a torch in my womb. At first I thought maybe it was heartburn, and I remember crying out, then reaching for the bottle of water I always keep beside my bed and knocking it to the floor. I scrambled round on my hands and knees, and when I finally found it I drank the whole thing in one go, just trying to douse the flames. Eventually I calmed down, took some deep breaths, and the heat started to subside. I got up feeling rattled and decided the lightning must have touched my head. I dressed and forced down some toast, though my stomach was sliding around. Ethan was meant to be working at the gas station that day and since I didn't have much else to do, I decided to walk round. In truth, I just wanted to hear his voice. But God had other ideas.
When I got to the garage, I could hear someone in the back of the workshop banging on metal, so I wandered over to the doorway and stopped. All at once, the smell of oil made me woozy. I put a hand out to steady myself on the doorframe. 'Gabe, is that you?' I called out.
'Hey Annemarie.' His voice floated over from the far side of the garage.
'Where are you? Sounds like you're inside a box.'
'I'm over here under this chassis. Just trying to fix an oil leak. Boss reckons it's the carburettor, but I got a hunch it's back here somewhere.' I heard him fiddle with some tools for a moment. 'Yep, found it,' he said. 'Just where I thought it would be.'
'Gabe, is Ethan working today?'
'He went over to Youngstown to pick up some spare parts. He should be back soon.'
'Okay. Mind if I wait?'
'Sure. Nice to have some human company for a change.'
I smiled. I'd always had a soft spot for Gabe. I listened to him fiddle with the engine for another minute. 'Gabe, how'd you ever learn so much about cars?'
'I don't know. It's in my blood, I guess. I've always been good at fixing stuff.' I heard him slide out from beneath the car and rummage around in a box of tools, before disappearing beneath the car again. 'Engines aren't so hard, Annemarie. If you listen close enough, they'll tell you what's wrong.'
'I guess so.'
'Gabe Junior used to talk to 'em. He reckoned cars had feelings, just like we do. And that you had to sweet-talk 'em if you wanted them to behave.'
Gabe Junior died in a car accident when he was nine. One day he chased a ball into the road and got hit by a speeding BMW driven by a lawyer from Shaker Heights. The lawyer had been doing 50 in a 35m.p.h. zone, but he still managed to argue that Gabe Junior shouldn't have been playing with a ball so close to the road. The lawyer ended up with a fine and a suspended sentence, while Gabe and his wife Shona lost their only child. It could have happened to anyone, I guess, but it struck me as especially sad that it was Gabe Junior.
'Did you ever think about giving up cars and doing something different?' I asked.
'Yeah, I thought about it. Especially after the accident. But cars are what I know best.' He was silent for a minute. 'Besides, it's not the cars that are to blame, it's the people who drive them.'
'Yeah, I guess you're right.'
'Anyways Gabe Junior loved cars. I reckon he would have made a fine mechanic one day. Every night I stop by his grave on the way home from work and tell him so.'
'Gabe, did you and Shona ever think about having another child?' I asked. 'You know, after Gabe Junior died?' I heard him fiddle around in the toolbox some more, and for a moment I thought he wasn't going to answer.
'When Gabe Junior was born, Shona got a bad infection,' he said finally. 'Afterwards, the doctors said she couldn't conceive again.'
'Oh. I'm sorry.'
'That's okay. It was a long time ago now. Shona and I still count our blessings that we had nine years with Gabe Junior. That's more than some folks get.'
'Yeah, I guess so,' I said.
He came out from under the car again and walked over to me. 'You feeling all right, Annemarie? You look a little peaky.'
'Guess I woke up on the wrong side of bed. And the oil smell isn't helping, I gotta admit.'
'You wanna sit down?' He pulled up a chair and helped me into it. As soon as I did, I felt nauseous and tipped my head between my knees.
'Gabe? I might need a bucket,' I said, upside-down.
'Oh, Jeez.' He grabbed a bucket and thrust it into my hands, and I retched into it. After a moment, I sat back and lowered the bucket. I heard him take it and rinse it out at the tap in the corner.
'I'm really sorry,' I said weakly.
'You okay now? Here, take this.' He handed me a wad of wet paper towel and I wiped my face with it.
'Yeah. I'm a bit better.'
'You want a glass of water?'
'Actually I think I need to eat something. You got any food?'
'I got some peanut butter crackers.'
'They'll do.' I heard him rustle in a drawer and after a minute he put a packet of peanut butter crackers in my hands. I tore it open and stuffed one in my mouth. It tasted of heaven.
'Wow, Annemarie. Looks like you needed that.'
'Sorry,' I said, my mouth full.
'No problem. When Shona was pregnant, she couldn't get enough of those. Better watch it though. Shona put on thirty pounds during her first trimester. She looked like a warehouse by the end. But I doubt that'll happen to you, being so slight and all.'
I stopped chewing and swallowed a lump of cracker. 'Gabe, I'm not pregnant,' I said, my heart starting to rev like one of his engines.
'Oh.' He hesitated, and I could sense his confusion. 'Sorry, Annemarie. I just assumed …' His voice trailed off.
'That's okay.'
'It's just that you got that look.'
'What look?'
'Kind of shiny-haired and big-eyed, like you're sucking up air for two. Horses get it. And cows too. You know, in the spring.'
It isn't possible, I thought desperately. But a part of me already knew.
I didn't tell anyone at first. Not Cora Lynn, or even Ethan. I waited, and the following week I missed a period. By that point I wasn't exactly reconciled, but a part of me wasn't completely surprised. My life had never conformed to the rules, and this struck me as another instance of it veering off on a crazy detour that no one else was required to take. I figured I would have to tell someone soon, but I wasn't quite sure who to tell or even what to say. It wasn't a straightforward story: everyone except Ethan would assume he was the father. And I suppose I could have let them. But the thing is, I was raised on the Ten Commandments – they're part of who I am and lying isn't. So the problem was how to tell the truth. But truth's a slippery thing sometimes. And I had a feeling it might wriggle away from me if I wasn't careful. The truth is I was, and still am, a virgin. I realise that sounds suspicious, but you'll have to take my word for it. And Ethan's. Lord knows, we wanted to change that. We've been hovering round each other these past six months like flies to a cowpat. But something kept us apart. Ethan always said it was guilt, but now I think it was something else: some sort of intervention.
I decided to tell him first, but of course he got angry and accused me of two-timing. 'With who?' I asked. 'Deacon Joe?!' Deacon Joe is my step-uncle and he's the last person on the planet I would sleep with. Ethan knows this, but I could still feel him frowning, like a stubborn child who refuses to come out to play. 'Ethan,' I said, taking his hand, 'outside of school times, I am with you nearly every waking moment. When could I possibly sleep with someone else?'
'Annemarie, you can't conceive a baby without sex.'
'We don't know that,' I said. 'It might be possible. And anyway it's a bit of a moot point. 'Cause it's happened.'
'Have you been to a doctor?'
'You're the first person I've told.'
'Then how can you be sure?'
'I can't explain how. I just am.'
Ethan sighed. 'Look, even if I believe you, no one else will,' he said.
'Maybe not, but I guess we'll find out.'
'We should have done it months ago,' he said glumly.
'Don't you see?' I said. 'We weren't meant to. This is what has kept us apart. I don't know how, but it did. It was there all the time, waiting inside me.'
'Like a time bomb,' he said miserably.
'I think you're confusing creation with destruction.'
'If you say so.'
'Look, this might make things difficult for a while.'
'Like decades?' he asked.
'I'm just saying, things will probably get worse before they get better,' I warned, thinking of Mama and Deacon Joe. Ethan hesitated for a long moment.
'Annemarie,' he said finally. 'How could things possibly get worse?'
But once again, I knew. When I was a little girl I always identified with Miriam, child prophetess and rebellious older sister of Moses. When Miriam was seven she dreamed that her mother would give birth to a son who would one day lead the Jews out of Egypt. She persuaded her parents to defy the Pharoah's orders, and when the infant Moses was born they did not throw him in the river as commanded, but kept him hidden until the day his desperate mother placed him in a basket and left him in the bulrushes by the Nile. But it was Miriam who hid nearby to ensure that her prophecy would come true, and when the Pharoah's daughter stumbled upon the basket, it was Miriam who leaped out of the reeds and offered to find her a Hebrew wet nurse, thus contriving to reunite Moses with his mother. Even though Miriam was blessed with the power of a seer, she knew when to take matters into her own hands. She was stubborn, cunning and resourceful, and I decided that in the coming months I would have to be the same.
So the following Sunday evening I gathered them all together to break the news. We sat at the kitchen table, Ethan and I on one side, Mama, Ada and Deacon Joe on the other, and I felt like I was guest of honour at a war council. When I told them I thought I was pregnant, for an instant the room went eerily silent. Then I heard Deacon Joe's chair creak ominously as he leaned forward. 'You!' he snarled in Ethan's direction. 'Math, my ass!'
'Joe!' cried Ada.
'Ethan's not the father,' I said quickly.
'Honey, what are you saying?' Ada asked tentatively.
'If Ethan isn't the father, then who is?' demanded Deacon Joe.
'No one.'
'Annemarie, you are beginning to try our patience,' he said irritably. 'May I remind you of the ninth commandment?'
'Thou shalt not bear false witness,' I said.
'Precisely,' he said. 'Satan is the father of all lies.'
'This is not a falsehood,' I said. 'I swear it.' Deacon Joe took a deep breath and exhaled through his nostrils, and I could almost see them flaring. I turned towards Mama, desperate to know what she was thinking. So far she hadn't said a word, and I knew from experience that Mama's silence could be far worse than Deacon Joe's spoken condemnation.
'Annemarie,' Mama finally said in a flat voice, 'do you honestly think we're that stupid?' The air between us almost crackled with hostility.
'Mama, I do not think you're stupid. I swear to you, it's the truth.'
'Honey, lies are like snakes,' said Ada anxiously. 'They'll turn and bite you at the first opportunity.'
'I'm not lying,' I insisted. 'I don't know how it happened, but it did.'
'Annemarie, what exactly are you saying? That you conceived a baby all by yourself?' asked Deacon Joe.
'Yes,' I said. For a long moment no one said a word.
'I think we're done here,' said Mama.
Ethan was right. Despite all my protestations, they refused to believe me. In the end we had to call an arbitrary halt to the discussion, with the resolution that Mama would ring the doctor's office first thing in the morning. Before we got up Deacon Joe insisted on leading a prayer, so we sat around the table, all five of us, hands clasped, listening to him recite the prayer of the penitent. He carried on so long my bladder was nearly fit to burst, and when he finally finished I heard him rise, his chair groaning from the strain of it. Deacon Joe's not fat but he's what the clothing stores call 'plus size' on account of all those chicken buckets he's so fond of. Ethan says his hair is like a shiny metal helmet, as if someone buffs him up each night while he's asleep.
Later, long after Ethan had been sent home, and Mama and Ada had gone to bed, Deacon Joe came to see me in my bedroom. I heard him lumber heavily up the stairs. When he reached my door he didn't knock, just opened it and stood there for an eternal moment, his anger expanding like a balloon until it filled the room – by which time it felt like he was looming over me like one of those giant Thanksgiving Day Parade characters. In that instant I had a vision of him as Underdog, with sneaky eyebrows, floppy ears and a long blue cape flowing out behind him. Except he wasn't Underdog. He was Deacon Joe and he was hopping mad. He stood there for a long moment, radiating fury, then finally turned and clomped away down the hall. I wondered about the source of his anger: whether it was righteousness or jealousy, 'cause ever since Deacon Joe came into our lives he's been unhealthily fixated on me. He may be Ada's fourth husband (and therefore technically only my step-uncle) but he has involved himself in nearly every aspect of my upbringing. Mama and Ada look to him for advice on just about everything; I swear they'd let him choose what brand of menstrual pads to buy if they could.
It was Deacon Joe's idea that I be home-schooled. Up until he married Ada three years ago, I was mainstreamed at the local high school, though I only attended mornings. I guess I was relieved when Mama took his advice and withdrew me. Being at school with sighted kids was like throwing a man dying of thirst into the ocean. So much went on around me that my senses were on permanent overload. But I was never a partaker. Once I was back home, Deacon Joe took it on himself to oversee my education, which means that now I'm an expert on all things ecclesiastical. The first thing he did was mail-order a copy of The Talking Bible, all ninety-seven hours of it. Deacon Joe says the Bible has enough stories in it to last a lifetime and I've certainly heard them all, though I prefer the Old Testament for sheer entertainment value. Mama likes the classics, so I've listened to my fair share of those too: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Anything she could lay her hands on from the Ohio Blind Library. Ethan tutors me three times a week in math 'cause neither Mama nor Deacon Joe has a head for figures, owing largely to the fact that they never learned their times tables, though it's one of my best subjects. And Deacon Joe does history with me, which consists mainly of readings on his two favourite topics: World War Two and the Bible. Ask me something about the Luftwaffe or the Corinthians and most likely I'll know the answer. But that's about it. Deacon Joe doesn't set much stock in science, which is hardly surprising. Though I think he's beginning to realise that there's more to biology than just the birds and the bees.
In the evenings, Ethan reads me poetry. I like Emily Dickinson best, even if she was just a lonely old spinster scribbling away in the attic. I've always thought that she and I had something vital and romantic in common, 'cause up until now we both led an imagined life. According to Emily, exhilaration is the breeze that lifts us from the ground, and leaves us in another place whose statement is not found. I wondered how she knew what exhilaration felt like; or whether she only dreamed of being lifted from the ground. Now I feel as if I've reached that other place she writes about, because reality has finally got more interesting than my wonderings. Lord only knows what Emily Dickinson would make of my life.
The day after the war council, I went to see Dr Paulson. Mama wanted to come with me but I told her that if I was old enough to gestate, I was old enough to have a conversation about gestation. Besides, I didn't exactly want her peering over his shoulder when he did the examination. After Dr Paulson had taken some blood and urine samples, I sat in silence while he fiddled with the results for a few minutes. Then he came over and sat down heavily in a chair. 'Well, Annemarie,' he said with a sigh, 'normally I would offer my congratulations. But in your case, I guess it better be condolences. It would appear that you are indeed pregnant.' He took a deep breath and exhaled. 'In order to accurately date your pregnancy, it would be helpful to know exactly when intercourse took place.'
I hesitated. 'Didn't Mama speak to you?'
'Your mama briefly outlined the situation, yes.'
'Then you'll know there was no date,' I said. He hesitated.
'Annemarie, are you completely sure you understand the question?' he asked. 'Your mama suggested I might need to explain a little more fully.'
'I know what intercourse is,' I said, mortified. Though in truth, it wasn't a word I'd ever spoken aloud. Deacon Joe referred to it as fornication, as in: After midnight, only fornication happens. 'And I would definitely remember if it took place!' I added.
'You know,' Dr Paulson said carefully, 'saying something didn't happen, won't alter what did.'
'I can't tell you what I don't know.'
'Ah. Well, that's a different proposition altogether. And you don't know because … it happened more than once?' he asked.
'No! Lord, no! I already told you. It didn't happen!'
'Fine,' he said curtly. I heard him open a drawer and take out some papers. 'When was the date of your last period?' he asked.
'The tenth of May,' I said.
'You're certain about that?'
'Yet you don't know the date when relations took place?'
I sighed. 'No,' I said. Any further denial seemed pointless.
'Blind or not, a girl with your smarts ought to know better,' he said summarily, standing up. 'Guess it's time for us to take a look.'
I undressed and stretched out on his examination table while he poked and prodded my abdomen with his hands. And I couldn't help but think how funny it was that doctors always fall back on touch to tell them what they need to know.
'As far as I can tell,' he said, 'you seem to be about six weeks pregnant. Which would suggest intercourse took place in late May. Would that be about right?'
'If you say so,' I said.
'You ever had an internal examination before?' he asked.
'Internal?'
'Gynaecological.' He pronounced it guy-knee-co-logical.
'No, sir.'
'Well, we should probably do one now,' he said a little unwillingly. I had the feeling he didn't warm to this part of the job. The idea of an internal exam made me feel queasy, but if I was going to give birth I reckoned I'd have to get used to other people's heads stuck between my thighs. And anyway, I was hardly in a position to argue. He placed my feet in two cold metal brackets at the base of the bed, then instructed me to take a deep breath and relax. It was the first time I'd ever had what Mama calls my 'sacred parts' on display, and I was terrified. As I felt him gently probe, I squeezed my eyes closed and tried to picture angels flying overhead. Small cherubic faces floating in the clouds. And then I felt his fingers cease, and there was a long moment of silence.
'So the two of you did not have relations?' he asked carefully.
'That is correct.'
'There was definitely no …?' He stopped himself.
'Definitely not.'
'And yet … you do seem to be pregnant.' He sounded genuinely confused at this point, as if thinking aloud.
'You mean, I may not be?'
'I didn't say that. It's just … unusual, given the presentation.' He made me sound like a layer cake.
'So is it possible?' I asked cautiously.
'Is what possible?'
'Is it possible to get pregnant without having sex?'
'Well, theoretically, there has to be an egg. And there has to be sperm. And the two have to come together.' He paused. 'Did you all even have sex education at school when you were younger?' he asked, clearly irritated.
'Sort of.'
'Then I guess you weren't paying attention that day,' he said.
'I guess not.'
He cleared his throat, and I heard the snap of latex as he pulled off his gloves. 'Why don't you haul your clothes back on and I'll see you outside,' he said coldly. And before I could climb out of the stirrups, I heard the door open and close, leaving me alone in the silence, splayed like a frog.
Not surprisingly, I was intact. Or, in the words of the Bible, undefiled. My mind floated back to Deuteronomy, and the fate of the wife whose token of virginity was not in evidence on her wedding night. And the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she may die. But I was not such a transgressor. And the proof was there for him to see. So why did I feel the stain of Dr Paulson's disapproval all over me? Both for being pregnant in the first place, and for the peculiar failures of my anatomy now that I was with child.
I knew at once from Mama's tone of voice when I came through the front door that there'd been a telephone conversation. He must have called her as soon as I left his office. Lord only knows what he said to her while I was tap-tap-tapping my way home. 'Well?' she asked.
'Well what?'
'What did he say?'
'He said that I'm pregnant. Which I already knew.'
'What else did he say?'
'He said the presentation was unusual.'
She hesitated. 'He told me it was peculiar,' she admitted.
'Well, that is what I have been trying to explain.'
'Annemarie, you need to be straight with me. Did you or did you not have sex with that boy?'
'I did not.' I felt her eyes on me as she digested my words.
'Well, you must've done something,' she said finally. ''Cause babies don't just fall from the sky.' She sounded defeated, which was the way I felt too. We stood there in pained silence for a minute, ringed by her dismay.
'I'm tired,' I said. 'They say early pregnancy does that to you. But maybe you don't remember.'
'I remember it all, Annemarie. Especially the ring on my finger.'
'You are not exactly a poster queen for marriage, Mama.'
'That may be, but it's not me we're speaking of,' she said.
There was nothing more I could say. I turned away from her and started up the stairs, retreating to the holy sanctity of my bedroom.
And the truth shall set you free, I thought wearily.
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text:
How to Calculate Media Value
By: Jack Stone
BrianAJackson/iStock/GettyImages
How to Calculate Advertising Value
Calculating the value of media coverage is one of the tools companies use to gauge their return on investment from public relations activities. Unlike advertising, which is purchased, media value is print, electronic and non-traditional news coverage resulting from editorial content generated via press releases, interviews, photos, video and special events. The simplest way to generate raw data is by using the advertising value equivalency (AVE). This involves determining what editorial coverage in traditional media would cost, if it was purchased as paid advertising.
Print Media Value
Measure the editorial content--headlines, copy, relevant photos, graphics and pull quotes--by using a pencil and ruler to square them into blocks. The blocks should be as large as possible and separate the content being measured from advertising and other stories in the publication.
Convert the blocks of editorial content into column inches using a ruler and calculator. A standard column inch is two inches wide (1.83 inches wide with a .17-inch gutter) by 1-inch deep. To calculate the number of column inches for each editorial block, measure the width and divide by two, then multiply by the depth. Repeat for all blocks and add together for the total number of column inches.
Review the advertising rate card and multiply the total column inches against the cost per column inch for the AVE. If the cost per column inch is not available, determine the number of column inches by dividing the width of a full-page ad by two and multiplying by the length of a full-page ad. Then divide the cost of a full-page ad by the total number column inches for an estimated cost per column inch. Here's an example: Company ABC has two blocks of editorial content coverage in the local newspaper. One block is 10 inches by 6 inches and the second is 8 inches by 5 inches. Take the 10-inch width and divide by 2. That's 5. Then multiply by the 6-inch depth. That's 30 column inches. Now take the 8-inch width and divide by 2. That's 4. Then multiply by the 5-inch depth. That's 20 column inches. Add the amounts from both blocks together for a total of 50 column inches. The rate card shows a cost of $240 per column inch. Multiply $240 by 50 for a total media value of $12,000. This would be your AVE.
Radio and Television Value
Record the length of editorial content such, as a news story or interview on radio or television. Multiply the number of full minutes by 60 and add any additional seconds for total seconds of airtime. Use a stopwatch.
Review the advertising rate card and calculate a per second value by dividing the cost by number of seconds. For example, if an advertisement costs $90 per 30 seconds, divide 90 by 30 for a $3 per second value.
Multiply the total seconds of airtime by the per second value for an AVE of on-air editorial content. Here's an example: WXYZ conducts an on-air interview lasting three minutes and five seconds with a company executive. The cost of a 30-second ad is $120. Multiply 3 minutes by 60. That's 180. Add the five additional seconds for a total of 185. Divide the $120 ad rate by 30. That's $4 per second. Multiply 185 by $4 for a total media value of $740.This would be your AVE.
Public relations is subjective. In addition to the monetary return on investment, organizations should also assess intangible items such as the tone of the article, how the company is portrayed, and if key themes and messages were delivered.
"Measuring the Value of PR"
Marketing Metrics Made Simple.com: Advertising Value Equivalency
InstituteForPR.com: Advertising Value Equivalency
Jack Stone started his professional career as a military journalist in 1988 and has served as staff writer, photographer, editor, and content manager. His work has appeared in several print and online publications, including "Airman Magazine," and Defense.gov. Stone has an Associate of Applied Science degree in public affairs and a Bachelor of Science degree in workforce education.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Happy February! This past weekend was very busy for me. I finished up report cards for my students, added some new additions to the blog and I traveled to Southern Virginia to be with family and celebrate my niece, Savannah's 1st Birthday. We had such a wonderful time together.
My new addition to the blog is called The Weekly 5. Every Monday, I will be sharing five finds that I discovered over the previous week. These finds might be a new blog to read, recipe to try, app to download, item to buy or friend to follow. I am very excited to be sharing these weekly discoveries with you.
1. Nunuco Design Company- This European company creates beautiful watercolor designs and implements them into paper goods and iPhone cases. I bought my NDC case last Spring and it is still in perfect condition. I love that they have a variety of designs and offer a monogram option!
2. Gimme Some Oven- This is a great food blog that I found last week. The recipes on Ali's blog are fresh, easy, and quick, which I love! I tried the Chicken Alfredo Baked Ziti and added broccoli into the mix. Delicious!
3. The Odyssey- I'm really excited about this one, because my sister, Samantha, is now a writer for Odyssey. I have linked her first published writing. This is an amazing social platform that allows thousands of writers to contribute about topics that matter to them. I see a lot of Facebook friends sharing these topics daily.
4. Ashley Brooke Designs' Coffee Mugs- So these are probably my most favorite thing to drink my coffee, tea and hot chocolate out of. I love the "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm" design she has in her Valentine's Day collection.
5. Southern Living Magazine's Instagram- If you are not following, Southern Living Magazine's Instagram, you should. I love that I can find delicious recipes, home décor ideas and travel inspiration all in one feed.
Love the new addition-Weekly 5! It's awesome!


Learn about Nelson Mandela, South Africa's first black President, and enjoy our colouring page and printables for kids.
Nelson Mandela real name was Rohlihlahla Mandela. He was born in July 1918 and wasn't called Nelson until he started primary school and his teacher gave him Nelson as a Christian name.
Now the whole world knows Nelson Mandela as the first black South African to be elected President of South Africa (1994-1999) and a brave man who endured 27 years in prison with dignity.
Nelson's parents couldn't read or write, and he was the first in his family to attend school at age seven. His father died when he was about nine, and he was sent to live with Jongintaba, the king of the Thembu, his people, and treated as their son. Christianity became a significant part of his life, as did the history of native African culture.
Nelson went to University at Fort Hare and later the University of Witwatersrand. He made many friends of all colours and nationalities, but was the subject of racism. Nelson became increasingly politically active, joining the African National Congress (the ANC) in 1944 and helping to form the ANC Youth League. At the time in South Africa there were many things that the blacks were not allowed to do, including vote and own property, and the ANC wanted to change that. This policy was called "apartheid" and the African National Congress was anti-apartheid. Although the cause was good, unfortunately, over the next 15 years the struggle became increasingly militant and violent, and Nelson Mandela, who became more powerful within the ANC, agreed at the time that the violence was necessary.
In 1962 Nelson was captured and imprisoned for five years for encouraging the country to strike; the following year he was charged with trying to overthrow the government, and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Nelson spent his many hard years in prison studying when he could and keeping in touch with the ever-increasing disharmony in South Africa, which threatened to break out into civil war. All over the world people began to campaign for his release and the "Free Nelson Mandela" campaign was started. In 1990 South Africa's President de Klerk met Nelson and arranged for him to be released - a very moving event which was broadcast on televisions all over the world.
After his release, Nelson and de Klerk worked together to end violence in the country and restore order, and Nelson was elected President in 1994, serving for one term.
After his presidency, Nelson Mandela focused on charity, setting up the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund and Nelson Mandela Foundation to fight poverty and HIV/AIDS. He won the Nobel Peace Prize (in 1993) and the US Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Learn to draw Nelson Mandela with our step by step tutorial!
Here's a simple colouring page of Nelson Mandela to print for the kids.
Here's a fun cartoon-style poster of a young Nelson Mandela in one of his trademark shirts, designed to appeal to younger children.
Write about Nelson Mandela using this simple writing page, available in colour or black and white.


On Monday 28th November we held a joint School Council meeting with the Governors of the School. We invited them so we could find out more about what they kindly do for us. They answered all our questions and they found out what we do as a School Council. We have decided to work even more closely together in the future.
This week we are holding a special assembly to tell the whole school about our meeting.
Aims: Your school council is here to help YOU!
Lockington school have had a action packed year so far with lots of activities.
We would like your ideas so come on don't be shy see a member of the school council or put your ideas in the box in your classroom.
So as well as being a channel for children's views being aired and acted upon, they have broadened their remit by undertaking fund raising activities - all credit to them!


text:
Two Feared Dead As Thugs Disrupt APC Governorship Campaign Flag-Off In Lagos (Video, Photos)
According to eyewitnesses, two people were killed after a group of thugs disrupted APC's gubernatorial campaign flag-off in Lagos today.
The flag-off of the All Progressives Congress campaign in Lagos on Tuesday ended abruptly as violence broke out mid-way into the well-attended programme.
In the same violence MC Oluomo, a popular NURTW chieftain was stabbed in the neck whe the thugs disrupted the APC's gubernatorial campaign flag-off which was holding at Skypower Ground Ikeja, Lagos.
It was further gathered that the hoodlums suspected to be members of the National Union Road Transport Workers (NURTW) turned up at the venue with guns, daggers and other dangerous weapons, engaging one another in a bloody factional fight.
The situation sent panic across the campaign ground as party members ran in different directions to avoid being hit by bullets being fired.
Security operatives had a hectic time controlling the situation.
Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, who was making a speech, had to leave the stage abruptly and was escorted out of the venue with his deputy, Mrs Idiat Adebule, the APC governorship candidate, Mr Babajide Sanwoolu, and other prominent members of the party.
Several people were injured in the violence, including two journalists who sustained bullet wounds.
NAN correspondent who was at the venue could not ascertain if there was any loss of life as of the time of filing this report.
In the ensuing confusion, many people were dispossessed of their phones, money and other valuables by opportunistic pick-pockets and other criminals.
NAN reports that a large number of party faithful were seen trekking to their various homes as there was a heavy vehicular traffic in the area because of the violence.
In the ensuing confusion, many people were dispossessed of their phones, money and other valuables by opportunistic pick-pockets and other criminals. NAN reports that a large number of party faithful were seen trekking to their various homes as there was a heavy vehicular traffic in the area because of the violence.
Dele Momodu who shared a video from the scene wrote;
What manner of politics is this? This happened just now in Lagos…watch video below.
https://www.facebook.com/withinnigeria/videos/648433942225472/


Grown on the iconic island of Java, the name of this bean has become synonymous with coffee. Like many other Indonesian varietals, this bean is low in acidity and produces a rich, buttery brew with a sweet, fruity aroma. It does not contain the same earthiness indicative of most Indonesian coffees however. Featuring a broad, smooth body and dried apricot finish, this bean has complex flavor notes and soft finish. You can't claim to love coffee until you've tried this distinctive bean!


text:
Published April 23, 2019 at 04:51PM
News of Record for April 24, 2019
12:29 a.m., suspicious circumstances — A person at a North Washington Street shop said they were staying in the store due to break-ins and someone tried to get in.
10:45 a.m., suspicious circumstances — A woman waved a lighter around while under an overpass on Stockton Road.
1:01 p.m., suspicious circumstances — A person carried a "musket-style pistol" on Stockton Road.
5:37 p.m., animal complaints — A person on Fairview Lane said a dog was tied to a tree in the area, but it had a bowl of water.
2:42 p.m., suspicious circumstances — A person said the door to a South Washington Street restaurant was left unlocked although they were closed.
8:17 p.m., miscellaneous harassment — A man at a South Shepherd Street property asked someone repeatedly if they could come over and went into their backyard without permission.
9:37 a.m., vehicle theft — A blue motorized moped was stolen from a Sanguinetti Road property.
2:53 p.m., public peace, fight, disorderly conduct — A customer at a Mono Way dispensary said he ground marijuana into the carpet with his foot after the owner refused to give him a refund.
5:58 p.m., theft — A person on Child Road said her son took her wallet and her cat.
1:58 a.m., Jamestown — A person on Ninth Street said they heard multiple gunshots and could see smoke in the area.
9:59 a.m., Jamestown — A person on Wigwam Road said a woman dancing on the side of the street was either on drugs or having a mental issue.
10:38 a.m., Groveland — A person on Ferretti Road yelled at his kids for 20 minutes and used the "f-word" multiple times.
7:18 p.m., Mi-Wuk Village — A juvenile crashed his bike on Sierra Park Road but denied assistance though he seemed dazed.
9:29 p.m., Sonora — A person stood on the edge of a bridge on Wards Ferry Road and a passerby said it seemed strange.
9:20 a.m., Soulsbyville — A transient man showed up at a Community Drive house and threatened to kill people.
11:58 a.m., Sonora — A person on Hess Avenue said she was confronted by a person with a videotape who said she could do it because she can do anything she wants to.
9:03 p.m., Jamestown — Aerial fireworks were seen on Reservoir Road.
11:22 a.m., Sonora — A chainsaw and a weed trimmer were stolen from an Oakwood Court property.
2:51 p.m., Moccasin — Two trailers were stuck on Old Priest Grade.
4:49 p.m., Mi-Wuk Village — A person at a Highway 108 realty office said someone made numerous threats toward businesses in the area.
7:56 p.m., Sonora — A person on Mount Brow Road said his neighbor's dog came through his fence and attacked his dog.
7:30 p.m., Sonora — Jason Charles Hagworth, 28, of the 1700 block of Willowbrook Drive, Merced, was booked following an arrest on Highway 108.
1:41 a.m., Jamestown — Colbi Robin Eads, 25, of the 11400 block of Tulloch Road, was booked following an arrest on Highway 49.
6:21 p.m., Sonora — Susan Diane Hacklet, 46, of the 24400 block of Dapple Gray Lane, was booked following an arrest on Kewin Mill Road South.
7:56 a.m., Sonora — John Paul McQueary, 54, of the 21800 block of West Crystal Falls Drive, was booked on suspicion of inflicting corporal injury following an arrest at his home.
9:49 p.m., Sonora — Christopher John Wilson, 52, of Sonora, was booked on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, inflicting corporal injury and attempting to commit a state specific crime following an arrest on the 10600 block of Highway 49.
9:43 p.m., Long Barn — Dillon Charles Winn, 31, transient, was booked on suspicion of inflicting corporal injury following an arrest on the 25900 block of Long Barn Drive.
12:08 p.m., Sonora — Jamie Marie Huisman, 32, of the 22200 block of Parrotts Ferry Road, Sonora, was booked on suspicion of violating the terms of his post release supervision, bringing alcohol or drugs into jail and misdemeanor charges possession of a narcotic controlled substance and possession of a controlled substance paraphernalia following an arrest at his home.
7:39 p.m., Tuolumne — Joseph Mondell Thomas, 45, of the 18600 block of Cedar Street, was booked on suspicion of possession of a controlled substance for sale following an arrest on the 18400 block of Tuolumne Road.
11:45 p.m., Jamestown — Malissa Rosebud McCarthy, 38, of the 17900 block of Seco Street, was booked on suspicion of possession of a specific controlled substance while armed with loaded firearm, possession of a firearm while a felon or addict, carrying a loaded firearm with intent, possession of a controlled substance for sale, abusing or endangering the health of a child and criminal conspiracy following an arrest on the 18300 block of Main Street.
11:45 p.m., Jamestown — Addam Joseph Smith, 20, of the 18300 block of Main Street, was booked on suspicion of possession of a specific controlled substance while armed with loaded firearm, possession of a firearm while a felon or addict, carrying a loaded firearm with intent, possession of a controlled substance for sale, willful cruelty to a child and criminal conspiracy following an arrest on the 18300 block of Main Street.
10:17 a.m., Mountain Ranch — People argued on Jesus Maria Road.
3:10 p.m., Arnold — A trailer was broken into on Linebaugh Road.
9:05 p.m., Mokelumne Hill — A firearm was discharged on Andrew Lane.
11:50 p.m., Copperopolis — A noise complaint was issued on Iroquois Circle.
10:20 a.m., Hathaway Pines — Suspicious circumstances were reported on Cedar Drive.
11:00 a.m., Wallace — A disturbance was reported on Highway 12.
12:57 p.m., Murphys — A commercial alarm sounded on Big Trees Road.
7:19 p.m., Copperopolis — People fought on Beaver Road.
7:46 a.m., San Andreas — A Gold Hunter Road resident said someone stole jewelry from them.
1 p.m., Burson — A vehicle in a Highway 12 drive was determined to be a delivery can with mechanical difficulties.
1:50 p.m., Murphys — A dog was left in a vehicle on Main Street, but the vehicle and the dog were gone by the time a deputy arrived.
12:50 a.m., Unknown — Juan Manuel Delo Santo Perez, 39, of the 2100 block of Coaly Avenue, Escalon, was booked following an arrest on Highway 4.
8:40 p.m., Angels Camp — Michael Edward Bartholow, 49, of the 23000 block of Lazy Z Lane, was booked following an arrest on Highway 49.
3:55 a.m., San Andreas — Richard Cecil Adams, 41, of the 5500 block of Amos Lane, Burson, was booked on suspicion of inflicting corporal injury, false imprisonment with violence and criminal conspiracy following an arrest on Jeff Tuttle Drive.
11:50 a.m., Valley Springs — Lucretia Lee Brown, 57, of the first block of Laurel Street, was booked on suspicion of inflicting corporal injury and misdemeanor charges battery following an arrest at her home.
Obituary: Helga Anker, survivor of WWII in eastern Germany, 1933-2019
Former Christian school coach to challenge sex charges
Goat deaths prompt reports of mountain lions
Rap legend Snoop Dogg gives boost to Tuolumne County clothing brand
Cancelled Pitbull concert to be rescheduled for Aug. 4


text:
\section{Introduction}

Think of a situation where a company has invested a lot of resources into training a proprietary machine learning model and are now giving their customers access to query the model via a paid API\@.
In this case, the company would like to protect its trained model as intellectual property, both because of the need to recoup the sunk cost of building it and also because releasing the model in full could expose privacy-relevant information about the training data.
However, recent work has shown that it is possible for an attacker to extract enough information about the proprietary model by simply observing its inputs and outputs, such that the attacker can essentialy forge an identical copy of that model.
This procedure is called \emph{model theft}, where an attacker, without access to some model, can copy the model by observing input and output to it and then train an own model to mimic the inaccessible model's behavior.

We focus on the work of~\cite{papernot2016practical} that crafts adversarial samples against a black-box classifier.
An adversarial sample~\citep{szegedy2013intriguing} is an input sample to a classifier model that has been perturbed in a manner imperceptible to a human, but fools the classifier into assigning a wrong output label with very high probability.
In this context, \emph{black-box} means that the attacker does not have access to the internals of the model to be attacked, but can only observe its outputs to given inputs.
Such internals, especially gradient computations, are required by modern methods to craft aversarial samples.
However, by using the property of \emph{transferability}, meaning adversarial samples crafted for some model trained on some data are also likely to be adversarial samples for a second model trained on the same data, the authors can successfully attack the classifier without the needed internal access.
They do this by training a substitute model, for which they do have internal access, and then use this substitute to craft adversarial samples for the model to be attacked.
This one particular example of model theft, with the end goal to use the copied substitute model to generate adversarial samples for the black-box.

More than simply observing input and output,~\cite{papernot2016practical} introduce a method called \emph{jacobian data augmentation} to speed up the process of model theft.
Much like the construction of adversarial samples, the authors carefully craft input samples to the black-box model such that they will gain maximal information about the model's decision boundaries from the label response.
This allows them, after starting with just a tiny labeled seed set (150 examples), to successfully attack the black-box model after a relatively short time.
The authors discuss several strategies to counter their attack, focusing mainly on methods known to protect against adversarial samples, but do not find any of them to be successful in fully averting their attack.

In this work, we present a method to reliably counter such black-box attacks based on model theft.
As such, throughout the discussion, we shall view the world from the eyes of the defender.
Thus \emph{our} model is the black-box to be attacked and the \emph{attacker} is training a substitute, possibly using jacobian data augmentation to do so.

Where as all previously proposed countermeasures focus on meddling with the inputs to our model, we focus on changing its outputs.
Since the attacker is actively using our outputs in training the substitute, this channel of information provides us with the opportunity to launch a counter-attack by predicting wrong labels to throw off the substitute training.
In a sense, we perform a variant of \emph{training set poisoning} for the attacker, but rather than poisoning the input data, we poison the labels.

But does this mean that we effectively sacrifice part of our API's classification accuracy?
After all, our non-malicious customers are paying for the most accurate classification we can offer and degrading our output labels would be of great disservice to them.
To avoid this, we introduce the only deviation of our setup to the one considered by~\cite{papernot2016practical}.
Where as the previous authors attack black-box models where only the binary output label is observable, we focus on the setting where the attacker can observe the output label distribution.
We do this for two reasons:
First, this is generally how modern classifier APIs operate, giving not one, but the top $k$ output labels, each one with some percentage score.
Second, this allows us to counter a model thief by changing our output label distribution such that the effective class prediction (the argmax) remains unchanged while the distribution itself changes only minimally and any non-malicious consumer remains unaffected.\footnote{Naturally, an effective defense against our counter-attack is therefore for a model thief to simply re-binarize the output label distribution and revert to the original black-box attack method. While this is certainly true, consider that an attacker can train a substitute much more effectively when matching the output label distribution than when simply matching the binarized labels, so defending against our counter-attack, though possible, can be very costly.}

So how do we change our output label distribution to prevent black-box attacks?
For this, consider the fact that to the defender, the attacker's substitute model is also a black-box that can be attacked using the exact same method:
Train a substitute model for the attacker's substitute model, call it a counter-substitute, and use it to craft adversarial examples for the attacker.
However, there are several problems with this approach.
First, we need to counter the attacker's substitute while it is still in training, meaning that the model itself is non-static and we have no way of knowing how far along in training it is.
Second, we would like to counter any incoming attack from any variety of model, so it is not enough to simply have a single substitute model as we need to consider entire families of them.
As a consequence, it looks like our only option is to maintain a huge zoo of substitute models, using different architectures and training each one from multiple initializations for varied amounts of progress up to convergence, remember all these models and then try to counter-attack all of them.

Here is where we have a trick up our own sleeve.
Consider the following question:
What is the attacker's single objective?
To copy our model.
Therefore, what is the single best counter-substitute to any attacker's substitute model?
Our model that they are trying to copy.
By crafting adversarial samples \emph{to ourselves}, we can reliably throw off any attacker attempting model theft without having to do any of the additional work of training approrpiate counter-substitutes.
Our method is deceptively simple, can be plugged into any existing classifier and delivers effective protection against model theft with minimal overhead and without affecting its ordinary use.

\section{Method}

\subsection{Adversarial example crafting}

In this work, we focus mainly on the \emph{Fast Gradient Sign Method} proposed in~\cite{goodfellow2014explaining}, both because it is widely used and because~\cite{papernot2016practical} found it to be very effective amongst the methods they explored for performing black-box attacks.
Given a model $F$, a cost function $c$, and an input-output pair $x, y$, the Fast Gradient Sign Method constructs an adversarial example for $x$ as
\begin{equation}
    x^* = x + \epsilon~\text{sign}(\nabla_x c(F, x, y))
\end{equation}

This maximizes the cost function $c$ while constraining the adversarial perturbation to $\|\bullet\|_\infty \leq \epsilon$.
Note that the Fast Gradient Sign Method can be computed easily using a single pass of backpropagation and therefore creates minimal overhead.

\subsection{Generating the counter-attack}

In order to effectively counter a model thief, we must first define what exactly this means.
What we want is to counter the thief while they are training their substitute model.
They do this training by using some gradient descent method on the weights of their substitute model given the input-output pairs from our model.
Therefore, to throw off the thief's training procedure, we should focus on maximally messing up their training gradients.
Since gradients tend to get smaller in magnitude as one approaches a cost function's optimum, our goal should be to perturb our output label distribution in such a way that an attacker's training gradients will be of very large magnitude.

Formally, given a model $F_\theta$ with parameters $\theta$, a cost function $c$, a given input $x$ and our (true) predicted label distribution $y_x$, our adversarial counter-attack generation process is as follows:
\begin{equation}
    y_x^* = y_x + \epsilon~\text{sign}(\nabla_y \|\nabla_\theta c(F_\theta, x, y_x)\|_2)
\end{equation}

Of course, in our case, the model $F_\theta$ would be our own classifier, since, as explained above, it is the best counter-substitute for any model thief's substitute model.
By varying $\epsilon$, we have a direct handle on how much of an impact this corruption will have on the quality of our final output.
We have found values as low as $\epsilon = 0.003$ are already enough to mount a successful counter-attack.\footnote{Note that, in general, this procedure will not yield a normalized output distribution, which is only partly relevant, since common APIs classifying among many different class labels usually don't output the full label distribution, but only a handful of top scoring labels.
In case normalization is important, we describe a number of normalization methods that we have found to not interfere with the counter-attack in the Appendix.
One can also easily come up with advanced methods for creating adversarial samples that take the normalization and positivity requirements of the output into account when crafting the samples.
}

\FloatBarrier
\section{Experiments}

\subsection{Setup}
Our experimental setup is akin to~\cite{papernot2016practical}, except that we don't attack an actual public API, since we're now in the shoes of the defender.
Thus, our defending model is a simple 3-layer CNN and we attack it using a variety of substitute models, all using somewhat different architectures.
Table~\ref{tbl:models} shows the model architectures used.
This, again, is done akin to~\cite{papernot2016practical}, where we switched out few architectures because we found some of their proposed architectures to not work in our setting.

We train our defending model on MNIST, achieving an accuracy of roughly 99\%.
Results on further datasets are given in the Appendix.
As in the original work, the attacker is given 150 labeled samples of the true data in order to perform bootstrapping and has to perform dataset augmentation to obtain more samples.
We perform 6 rounds of data augmentation, each one doubling the substitute model's available dataset in size.

We use the CleverHans library~\citep{papernot2016cleverhans} to generate all adversarial samples.
For each experimental setting we report means and one standard deviation over 10 repetitions.

\begin{table}[ht!]
    \centering
    \begin{tabular}{cccccccc}
        \toprule
        ID & Conv & Conv & Conv & FC & FC & FC & S \\
        \midrule
        X & 64 & 128 & - & - & - & - & 10 \\
        Y & 64 & 128 & 128 & - & - & - & 10 \\
        A & 32 & 64 & - & 200 & 200 & - & 10 \\
        F & 32 & 64 & - & 200 & - & - & 10 \\
        G & 32 & 64 & - & - & - & - & 10 \\
        H & 32 & - & - & 200 & 200 & - & 10 \\
        I & - & - & - & 200 & 200 & 200 & 10 \\
        J & - & - & - & 1000 & 200 & - & 10 \\
        K & - & - & - & 1000 & 500 & 200 & 10 \\
        L & 32 & - & - & 1000 & 200 & - & 10 \\
        \bottomrule
    \end{tabular}
    \caption{Substitute model architectures used for the attacker. \emph{Conv}: Convolutional layer. \emph{FC}: Fully connected layer. \emph{S}: Softmax layer.}
    \label{tbl:models}
\end{table}

\FloatBarrier
\subsection{Results}
Figure~\ref{fig:bars} displays the results of our experiments.
As can be seen, our proposed counter-attack successfully prevents model theft from all considered substitute model architectures.
Moreover, it corrupts their training procedure so much that they degrade to little more than random guessing, which is impressive, considering that most of them achieve a baseline accuracy of above 60\% simply after training on the provided 150 seed examples.

Further, Table~\ref{tbl:true} shows the fraction of our outputs where the top prediction remains unchanged.
Namely, even when defending against all substitute architectures, over $99.9\%$ of the time our classifier will still return the same label as being most likely than it would have returned if it hadn't defended.
This means that our counter-attack is extremely effective while leaving our non-malicous customers largely unaffected.

\begin{figure}[ht!]
    \centering
    \begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\textwidth}
        \centering
        \includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{ext_jpg/4}
    \end{subfigure}
    \begin{subfigure}[t]{0.49\textwidth}
        \centering
        \includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{ext_jpg/6}
    \end{subfigure}
    \par\bigskip
    \begin{subfigure}[b]{0.49\textwidth}
        \centering
        \includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{ext_jpg/5}
    \end{subfigure}
    \begin{subfigure}[b]{0.49\textwidth}
        \centering
        \includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{ext_jpg/7}
    \end{subfigure}
    \caption{Results on MNIST. \emph{Top Row:} The black-box classifier's accuracy on adversarial samples generated using the attacker's substitute model. When not defending (left), the classifier suffers severe degradation in performance compared to its baseline accuracy. However, when actively defending (right), the performance loss non-existent or at most minimal across all attack architectures.
    \emph{Bottom Row:} The substitute model's accuracy on test set data. When not defended against (left), the substitute models are able to achieve respectable performance by performing model theft on the black-box model. But when the defender is performing our proposed counter-attack (right), model theft is no longer possible and the substitute models degrade to slightly above random guessing.}
    \label{fig:bars}
\end{figure}

\begin{table}[ht!]
    \centering
    \begin{tabular}{crr}
\toprule
ID & Argmax unchanged \\
\midrule
X &    0.999 (0.001) \\
Y &    1.000 (0.000) \\
A &    0.999 (0.001) \\
F &    0.999 (0.001) \\
G &    0.999 (0.001) \\
H &    1.000 (0.001) \\
I &    1.000 (0.000) \\
J &    1.000 (0.000) \\
K &    1.000 (0.000) \\
L &    0.999 (0.000) \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
     \caption{Results on MNIST. Fraction (mean and standard deviation) of outputs where the argmax of the adversarial output distribution is equal to the uncorrupted output distribution. Note that for well over $99.9\%$ of outputs, our top prediction remains unchanged.}
    \label{tbl:true}
\end{table}

\FloatBarrier

\section{Conclusion}
We have shown that black-box attacks based on model theft can successfully be averted by generating adversarial output label distributions that cause a model thief's training gradients to explode.
The generated perturbations do not influence the ordinary use of the black-box model, in particular they do not change the top ranked label in the vast majority of cases.
Future work can extend our method by finding a counter-attack method in the case of binary labels, finding systematic ways for the attacker to avoid being affected by the counter-attack without losing efficiency, as well as defining an adversarial sample generation procedure that incorporates the normalization and positivity constraints on the model outputs.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


text:
1301.0 - Year Book Australia, 2000
Two great Commonwealth Statisticians (Feature Article)
The Sydney hailstorm (Feature Article)
Climate and the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games (Feature Article)
Who are DFAT staff? (Feature Article)
There's no place like home (Feature Article)
Support for older people (Feature Article)
Income Support Payments in Australia (Feature Article)
First Home Buyers (Feature Article)
Suicide (Feature Article)
Detection of skin, breast and cervical cancers (Feature Article)
Educating and Training Australia's Workers (Feature Article)
Crime and safety (Feature Article)
Sporting Australians (Feature Article)
A hundred years of agriculture (Feature Article)
Reforms in the Australian electricity and gas industries (Feature Article)
Stadium Australia (Feature Article)
Gambling in Australia (Feature Article)
Real time: computers, change and schooling (Feature Article)
Implementation of System of National Accounts 1993 (SNA93) in Government Finance Statistics (Feature Article)
Knowing Our Nation - live read radio scripts (Media Release)
Paralympian launches Australian Year Book for 2000 (Media Release)
EDUCATING AND TRAINING AUSTRALIA'S WORKERS
Gaining a qualification for a predetermined career is not a guarantee of lifelong employment. To keep pace with a changing work environment (see Australian Social Trends 1997, 'Changing industries, changing jobs', pp. 93-98), and to help in both getting and keeping a job, many workers study for an educational qualification or participate in training at various times throughout their working lives. This training is often informal while on-the-job, but also includes more formal training, both in and outside of the workplace. Some workers choose to gain an initial or extra educational qualification through studying at a TAFE or business college, or at a university; others begin their studies after being retrenched or having decided on a career change (see Australian Social Trends 1997, 'Education and employment', pp. 84-87).
It is also in the interests of employers to have skilled workers. Many employers assist their staff to develop their skills by arranging training within the workplace or supporting employees to gain qualifications at an educational institution.
The 1997 Survey of Education and Training showed that 4 million wage and salary earners held a post-school qualification (54% of all wage and salary earners) - almost 2.1 million held a higher education qualification (28% of all wage and salary earners), and a further 1.8 million (24%) held a skilled or basic vocational qualification. Women were more likely than men to have a higher education qualification (32% compared to 24%), and less likely to have a vocational qualification (19% and 29%) (table S4.1).
S4.1 WAGE AND SALARY EARNERS, Level of Educational Attainment and Enrolment,
Selected Years
Higher education(a)
Vocational qualification(b)
All qualifications(c)
'000
With post-school qualifications
Enrolled for post-school qualifications
(a) Comprises higher degree, postgraduate diploma, bachelor degree, undergraduate diploma or associate diploma.
(b) Skilled or basic.
(c) Includes persons whose level of post-school qualification was not stated or inadequately described.
Source: Unpublished data, 1997 Survey of Education and Training; Education and Training Experience, Australia, 1997 (6278.0).
Recent education trends
The proportion of wage and salary earners who had a post-school qualification increased between 1989 and 1997 from 47% to 54%. Since 1993, the increase in proportions has been more substantial for those with a higher education qualification (from 24% to 28%), than for those with vocational qualifications (from 23% to 24%). The trend towards higher education qualifications looks set to continue, with more enrolments in higher education courses than in vocational courses. In 1997 there were just over one million workers enrolled for a post-school qualification. Over two-thirds of these were enrolled for a higher education qualification, and just over one-quarter for a vocational qualification - similar proportions to those for all students1. Some of these were full-time workers undertaking part-time study, such as apprentices or mature-age university students, and others were full-time students with a part-time job, such as young people studying at university.
The likelihood of workers undertaking studies, whether for a first or subsequent qualification, varied according to their occupation, partly because some occupations have requirements for formal qualifications while others do not. In general, those in more highly skilled occupations, for example professionals, were more likely to be involved in study or training courses, and to have received employer support, than those in less skilled occupations, such as labourers and related workers.
One in six workers (16%) had studied for a post-school qualification in 1996 - more commonly professionals (21%) and elementary clerical, sales and service workers (19%) (table S4.2). Of those who had studied, 61% of the elementary clerical, sales and service workers had studied for a bachelor degree or higher. This suggests that many of them were full-time university students working part-time in lower skilled jobs until they had completed their studies.
S4.2 WAGE AND SALARY EARNERS, Study or Training Undertaken by Occupation - Selected Years
Training(a)(b)
Studied for a post-school qualification
Total who did any study or training(c)
Occupation in 1997
Managers and administrators
Associate professionals
Tradespersons and related workers
Advanced clerical and service workers
Intermediate clerical, sales and service workers
Intermediate production and transport workers
Elementary clerical, sales and service workers
Labourers and related workers
Total in 1997
(a) In the 12 months prior to the relevant survey.
(b) On-the-job training undertaken, or in-house or external training courses completed.
(c) People may undertake more than one study or training course; therefore components may not add to total.
Recent training
In addition to any formal qualifications they might have, many workers receive training while employed. This may be in-house or external training courses, or on-the-job training - the most common type. In 1997, 74% of workers had received on-the-job training during the previous 12 months - similar to the proportions in 1989 (72%), but lower than in 1993 (82%). Those in more highly skilled occupations, such as professionals, were most likely to have received on-the-job training (90%), and those in less skilled occupations, such as intermediate production and transport workers, the least likely (58%).
Participation in external training courses (those undertaken while not working or with other attendees working for a different employer) was less common, with one in five workers receiving this type of training in the previous 12 months (21%). However, this represented a strong increase in external training course participation since 1989, when the participation rate was 10%. It may partly reflect the trend towards outsourcing and contracting of many of the functions previously provided in-house. Levels of participation in in-house training courses were nevertheless similar in 1997 (34%) and 1989 (35%).
Support for education and training
People enrolled to obtain a post-school qualification may support themselves during their studies, but often obtain additional funding to pay for their education and living expenses. Of all workers enrolled in a post-school program of education in 1997, 24% received financial support from an employer, 18% from family and 16% from government (through payments such as AUSTUDY or the Youth Training Allowance).
Full-time study for a post-school qualification is more commonly undertaken by younger workers (78% were aged 15-24 years in 1997), who usually support themselves with part-time work and/or government and family assistance. Full-time students were generally more likely to receive support from family and from the government than part-time students. In 1997, 32% of workers studying full-time for a post-school qualification obtained support from the government and 39% from family members. On the other hand, students studying part-time, many of whom will have worked for some time, were more likely to have received support from employers (35%) (table S4.3).
Training for a skilled vocational qualification generally occurs while a student is employed in the field in which the qualification is being attained (often as apprentices or trainees). As a result, workers enrolled in these courses were much more likely to have received employer support (63%) than those enrolled for a bachelor degree (13%). Similarly, people undertaking post-graduate studies usually do so in order to progress further in their chosen career. These courses are generally undertaken by older workers (84% were aged 25 years or more), who were more likely to have received support from their employer (36%) than from other sources.
The 1997 Survey of Education and Training also found that those enrolled for a post-school qualification who received financial support from their employer were most likely to have received support in the form of fee payments (62%) or paid study leave (50%).
Workers can also improve their skills through undertaking training courses that are related to their employment. Employers are more likely to provide support for courses where the relevance to the skills their staff need is more obvious. Of the 1.5 million workers who undertook external training courses in the 12 months prior to the 1997 Survey, 59% (12% of all workers) received employer financial support.
S4.3 WAGE AND SALARY EARNERS ENROLLED FOR POST-SCHOOL EDUCATION(a),
Source of Financial Support(b) - 1997
Study status
Higher degree and postgraduate diploma
Associate or undergraduate diploma
Skilled vocational
Basic vocational
Total(c)
Source ofSupport
Other(d)
Did not receive support
(a) Where more than one post-school qualification was enrolled for, details were collected about the most recent.
(b) People could report more than one type of financial support, therefore components may not add to total.
(c) Includes persons whose level of post-school qualification enrolled for was not stated or inadequately described.
(d) Comprises support from government, family members, union or professional organisations, other and not known.
Source: Unpublished data, 1997 Survey of Education and Training.
Access to education and training
In general, actual or intended involvement in study for an educational qualification or in work-related training differs little between men and women, but decreases with increasing age. In 1997, 94% of workers aged 15-24 years had undertaken some study or training in the 12 months prior to the survey, compared to 73% of those aged 45 years and over. In contrast, the proportion of workers who received employer financial support for external training courses increased with age, up to the 35-44 age group.
Apart from the differences by age, certain groups of people, such as Indigenous Australians or those with a disability, can experience special difficulties in gaining access to education or training opportunities.
Indigenous Australians commonly have had lower levels of participation in post-compulsory education than the rest of the community (see Australian Social Trends 1996, 'The education of Indigenous people', pp. 75-78), and in 1997 this was reflected in the lower proportions of Indigenous workers with a post-school qualification (35%) compared to all workers (54%) (table S4.4). Indigenous workers, however, were just as likely as all workers to have undertaken some training or study in the 12 months prior to the 1997 survey (84% and 83% respectively). They were also more likely to be intending to enrol for a post-school qualification in the three years following the survey (22%) than all workers (16%). These results are, in part, affected by the younger age structure of Indigenous workers, with younger workers being more likely than older workers to participate in study or training courses.
Workers without post-school qualifications undertook less study or training courses than those with post-school qualifications (78% versus 88%), and received less employer support for external training courses (7% and 17% respectively). They were also less likely to intend to enrol than those who already held a post-school qualification (13% compared to 20%).
Overseas-born workers whose first language was not English were just as likely to have a post-school qualification as all workers (55% and 54% respectively). For workers who immigrated as adults, this reflects both the immigration selection process, which in part favours those with post-school educational qualifications, and also their older age profile compared to the Australian-born population, giving them more opportunity to have completed a qualification. Overseas-born workers whose first language was not English participated in in-house or external training courses (22% and 14% respectively), but not to the same extent as the general population of workers (34% and 21%). In association with this lower participation in training courses, a lower proportion of overseas-born workers (8%) received employer support for training than all workers (12%). It is not clear whether the lower employer support for training courses is a cause or a consequence of the lower level of participation.
Having a disability did not seem to affect the level of training or education participation of workers, possibly because those who were able to find employment had lower levels of disability than those who were not able to get a job (see Australian Social Trends 1997, 'Employment of people with a handicap', pp. 104-108).
S4.4 WAGE AND SALARY EARNERS, Indicators of Education and Training Experience and Intentions - 1997
Undertaken some study or training(a)
Had employer financial support for external training
Enrolled for post- school qual. but not completed(b)
Intends to enrol for post-school qual.(c)
Selected population groups
* 9.1
Without post-school qualifications
3 422.0
English not first language(d)
Persons with a disability
Persons aged 15–24 years
All wage and salary earners
(a) In the 12 months prior to the 1997 survey.
(b) In the last five years.
(c) In the next three years.
(d) For persons not born in Australia.
The main source of data for this review is the ABS Survey of Education and Training, a household survey conducted during the period March to May 1997. Some time series data are also provided from the 1993 and 1989 surveys of education and training.
Wage and salary earners (more commonly referred to as 'workers' in this review) are persons aged 15-64 years who had worked as wage and salary earners in the 12 months prior to the surveys (March to May 1997, April to May 1993, or March to July 1989). Persons aged 15-20 years and still at secondary school are excluded in this review.
Post-school education is defined as a course of study through an educational institution, since leaving school, for which an award is conferred upon completion.
Training courses are activities undertaken to obtain, maintain, or improve work-related skills, conducted at a designated time, in a structured format. On-the-job training, and study for an educational qualification, are excluded.
On-the-job training refers to activities undertaken to improve job skills, such as:
asking questions of co-workers or colleagues;
self teaching;
being shown how to do the job; and
watching others work.
A skilled vocational qualification requires two to four years' study and is for work in a higher skilled trade or craft. A basic vocational qualification requires one semester to one year's study for those wanting to work at the operative level in various fields (see Australian Social Trends 1999, 'Education - definitions and references', pp. 80-81).
Australian Bureau of Statistics 1998, Education and Training Experience, Australia, 1997 (6278.0).
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text:
Tag: Presidential History
Wendell Willkie: The Dark Horse
Wendell Willkie, circa 1940. Image courtesy of History.com.
This blog post is an expanded version of Nicole Poletika's original marker review essay, which can be viewed here.
The presidency of the United States is seen by many as the ultimate prize in American politics. It has been held by lawyers, philanthropists, and even actors. The State of Indiana has been at the center of presidential history, claiming Hoosier Presidents Benjamin Harrison and his grandfather, William Henry Harrison. However, one year sticks out more for what didn't happen than what did: 1940.
That year, Hoosier natives Wendell Willkie and Paul V. McNutt, came very close to winning the presidency but ultimately lost, in their own ways, to Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR). This is the first of two blogs dedicated to the Indiana men who ran for the highest office in America.
Wendell Willkie's childhood home in Elwood, Indiana. Image courtesy of Indiana Memory.
The IU Debate Team, 1916. Willkie is front row, center. Image courtesy of Indiana University, Bloomington.
Wendell Willkie, the 1940 Republican Candidate for President, was born in 1892 in Elwood, Indiana. Willkie attended Indiana University, where he became friends with another budding young student, Paul V. McNutt. When McNutt was the President of the Student Union, Willkie was the President of the Jackson Club, a Democratic leaning political group. Their paths continued to cross throughout the rest of their lives. Willkie received his law degree from Indiana University in 1916. In 1929, after practicing law in Akron, Ohio for the Firestone Tire Co, he provided legal counsel for The Commonwealth & Southern Corporation, a large public utilities company, of which he later became president.
As company president, he fought against FDR's federally funded New Deal program to establish the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which intended to provide employment to the many jobless during the Great Depression. Willkie opposed the TVA because it would directly compete with The Commonwealth & Southern Corporation and because he opposed both governmental and private monopolies. While Willkie lost, he gained notoriety as "the most articulate, vigorous spokesman for the business community."
Willkie, as president of Commonwealth and Southerm, receives a check from TVA administrator David E. Lilienthal for the purchase of the Tennessee Electric Power Company. Image courtesy of Indiana State Library.
After gaining the attention of Republican politicians with his outspoken belief in free enterprise, Willkie was nominated as the Republican presidential candidate to run against FDR in 1940 in what was described by the Indianapolis News as "one of the most dramatic events in American political history." Despite never holding political office, much like modern Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Willkie was nominated after the sixth ballot was taken at the Republican National Convention. He defeated well-known political figures such as Governor Thomas E. Dewey and Senator Robert A. Taft. It was here that he earned the campaign moniker of "Dark Horse," since his candidacy was such a political upset. Republicans sought a fresh candidate to represent the party as World War II intensified abroad and Americans became more determined than ever to avoid war at home.
Around this same time, his IU colleague and friend Paul McNutt, dropped out of consideration for the Democratic nomination, giving in to Roosevelt's desire for an unprecedented third term. Had McNutt been nominated, both major party candidates for President would have been from the State of Indiana.
The official notification ceremony of the Republican presidential nomination for Wendell Willkie, Elwood, Indiana, August 17, 1940. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Wendell Willkie at the notification ceremony for his presidential nomination, Elwood, Indiana, 1940. Image courtesy of Indiana Memory.
"Wings for Willkie" campaign button, circa 1940s. Image courtesy of Indiana Historical Society.
Despite a well-fought campaign, Willkie lost the election to Roosevelt in a landslide, earning only 82 electoral votes to Roosevelt's 449. He also lost the popular vote by nearly five million. Many commentators thought that his progressive position on civil rights and support of liberal internationalism alienated him from his party. Voters also struggled to identify his position on major causes because he covered a wide range of issues briefly.
Lard sculptures of Franklin Roosevelt and Wendell Willkie in the Agriculture and Horticulture Building at the 1940 Indiana State Fair. Image courtesy of Indiana Historical Society.
Even though he lost the presidential election in 1940, Willkie and FDR became friends and political allies, as they held similar views on foreign policy and civil rights. In particular, Willkie, both during and after the campaign, went against many in his party with his support of FDR's policy to dispatch war aid to Britain in 1940, as opposed to fighting abroad or remaining isolated from the war. Historian Justin H. Libby describes Willkie's support of war aid as the "forerunner of the bipartisan policy."
Willkie's support for aid eventually gained favor among the general public, allowing FDR to pass the Lend-Lease Bill in 1941, which postponed U.S. involvement in the war. He also served the President by traveling the globe as a U.S. emissary to observe the war abroad and meet with foreign leaders, reporting on his experiences. As an internationalist, Willkie worked for "world peace," presenting a bipartisan resolution to the Republican National Committee in 1942 that was eventually passed.
African American veteran Isaac Woodard at the Wendell Willkie memorial building in New York, circa 1946. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.
On the home front, Willkie avidly defended the rights of African Americans and publicly advocated for the improved housing, education and health of black citizens. He was widely concerned with the treatment of African Americans in the Armed Forces, arguing in various articles that they should be afforded the same freedom at home that they fought for abroad.
In his 1944 article "Citizens of Negro Blood" for Collier's Magazine, Willkie stated that World War II "has made us conscious of the contradictions between our treatment of our Negro minority and the ideals for which we are fighting. The equitable treatment of racial minorities in America is basic to our chance for a just and lasting peace." He appealed to political figures to strengthen anti-lynching measures and to eliminate state poll taxes that often prevented African Americans from voting. Willkie ultimately brought attention to the struggles of all minority citizens, arguing in the New York Times that they were "rich assets of democracy."
One World by Wendell Willkie. Image courtesy of Doerrbooks.com.
In 1943, Willkie wrote about his experiences traveling the globe in his best-selling book One World. He described his trip, in which he traveled with Army and Navy officials to over half a dozen countries. His observations, made during a period before the United States frequently worked and communicated with other countries, has been described as "extraordinarily perceptive and statesmanlike." It spent four months on the New York Times bestseller list and was an influential text on the future United Nations.
Willkie sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1944, but dropped out of the race in April after a poor showing in the Wisconsin primaries. Constant comparisons to FDR, his liberal stance on civic and international issues, and general independence from other Republican members resulted in the loss of party support.
Wendell Willkie memorial at the Indiana State Capitol. Image courtesy of Wiki Commons.
Willkie died October 8, 1944 and was buried in East Hill Cemetery in Rushville, Indiana. President Roosevelt issued a statement honoring Willkie as "one of the great men of our time." In addition to the memorial erected at his gravesite, memorials to Willkie were dedicated in Elwood and in the State House Rotunda in Indianapolis. The Willkie Memorial Building, created to serve as a center for the Freedom House and other causes he supported, was dedicated in New York on the first anniversary of his death. Willkie, with the support of Eleanor Roosevelt, helped established Freedom House in 1941 as an organization that could "strengthen human rights and civil liberties in the United States." As of 2016, the Freedom House still advocates for human rights.
Wendell Willkie's ambitions for the White House never materialized, but his influence on American politics can still be felt, especially in his stances on international relations, civil rights, business, and foreign policy. His friendship and support of Franklin Roosevelt, even after losing to him, benefited the country during wartime. Willkie was a results man; he believed deeply in the power of institutions and people to get the job done right, whether in politics or in business. His bipartisanship and amiable demeanor earned him respect from leaders all across the country. In the end, the "Dark Horse" became a statesman on par with almost any President.
Check back for Part 2 to learn about another prominent Hoosier who had his eyes set on the White House: Governor Paul V. McNutt.
Author Justin ClarkPosted on May 17, 2016 January 27, 2017 Categories 20th century, Great Depression, Political history, World War IITags American History, Franklin Roosevelt, Hoosier History, Indiana, Indiana History, Paul McNutt, Politicial History, Politics, Presidential Elections, Presidential History, US History, Wendell Willkie, World War II


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