Linda Annala, B.A., M.Ed., C.A.G.S.

Contributing Writer

When you watch a play on the stage, that’s a scene unfolding before your eyes (for others who can hear: sound). The performers work hard to keep the same old lines and doing them perfectly each time. However, there are LOTS of tasks being done ‘behind the scenes’ if you will.

Stage-hands such as electrical engineers, costume matrons, curtain drawers, scenery painters/movers, and multitude of little but NECESSARY jobs to be done at the right time in the right place following the right scene of an act of a play.
But the funny thing is: The performers do take most of the credit as they bow to applause and encores, and if the applauders continue much longer, they continue to bow and look very gratified! But do these ‘behind the scenes’ workers come out and take the applause too? Rare, but possible.

Sometimes it’s necessary to be in ‘behind the scenes’ at some functions, gatherings, parties, conferences and the like. These ‘behind the scenes’ people or ‘gofers’ are invaluable in many ways because they are the ones that keep the event going evenly and without too much disruption. For example, at a hotel meeting room you would find neatly arranged tables and chairs with carefully positioned agendas, folders and writing utensils. Even a carafe of ice cold water with ‘glasses’ piled up sitting on a square plate or tray or positioned around the carafe on a tray. These little things are usually done by ‘behind the scenes’ workers, even the event planners!

In real life people are either performers or stage-hands. Not all people perform and take credit for what they have accomplished, but also give credit to these deserving ‘stagehands’ as they worked behind the scenes.

At a festival or an event involving food, you may notice these ‘behind the scenes’ cooks and chefs and gofers working hard at their assigned tasks of preparing the meal and keeping it hot such as Catfish Fry or Crawfish Boil. Many times these ‘behind the scenes’ people do not participate in the event or be performers because the meal has to be taken care of! When you realize what is happening, do take a moment out of your ‘busy partying’ time and go to these ‘behind the scenes’ deserving people and tell them ‘thank you,” or “the food was really good, delicious,” or whatever adjectives you like.

Now, let us retrace the early beginnings of our nation, the United States of America. For about a century and a half the colonists along the East Coast of the 13 colonies from New Hampshire down to Georgia were being controlled by Britain as the king, George II wanted more money, fame and power during the overseas trading days.

Behind the scenes were these early American colonists who managed their own enterprises of agriculture such as tobacco, cotton, wheat, corn, sugar cane, livestock and the long list of products and enterprises. They were the ones who worked hard doing lot of necessary business and work to support themselves, their plantations or farms and their towns, regional centers and the colony.

‘Behind the scenes’ would go like this during the early days of settlement. The colonists, entrepreneurs or settlers didn’t have those fancy “home builders” and “construction workers for hire” so they jumped in and cooperated in community efforts such as “Barn-raising”, “Homestead-raising”, and the like. They even cooperated on planting and harvesting at appropriate times because they all knew the value of cooperation and getting bigger and richer harvests at due time.

Today we do not see much of these friendly cooperative spirits in our society. If we needed help, we have to pay for hired help and that doesn’t always come through on time or as planned on a such and such date. This is a sad change from the friendlier and cooperative days of settlers and colonists to mega companies who pay little and try to squeeze more from their hired help.
This was the case when the overseas European powers began to vie for more riches, fame and glory at the expense of natives living in the Americas, then eventually Americans.

Some colonists began to realize that they were sitting on a huge tract of land with unknown boundaries extending to the West. They felt they deserved to maintain sovereign control over their own affairs in the colonies and territories. They began to see some unwanted actions by the British governors, soldiers and representatives. Such actions involved taxing more on the colonists on top of taking away their most valuable cargo back to Britain and other ports of call around the known world.
Several notable colonists began to do the necessary “behind the scenes” work to bring about a much needed and welcomed changes in their colonial status to a national entity.

Founding Fathers

Benjamin Franklin, a distinguished leader in Philadelphia, owned and ran a printing business among other things. If it weren’t for his printing equipment and reams of paper or rolls of newssheets and the eternal supply of black ink, the colonists would not be aware of what’s happening in other colonies except through the rumor mills. With words indelibly printed in black ink on white newssheet, the colonists read the same information for themselves. With these pamphlets circulating along the East Coast, particularly the famous cherished document called “The Declaration of Independence” as penned by Thomas Jefferson; several people organized their own militias and kept a close watch on those Redcoats (the British Army).

As our American history tells us of several notable incidents such as Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride through Concord and Lexington and down to the shot that was heard around the world, the American Revolution was ON and READY to significantly change our lives forever: past, present and the future.
These events were actually a lot of ‘behind the scenes’ work being done to build the foundation for a nation, being knit together by several leaders who made good presentations or oratories to sway the people standing in town squares, churches, schools or at parks why this or that idea was worth fighting for. These gatherings were held in Philadelphia and in other cities and several notable leaders met and discussed many important issues.

This August assembly of farmers, plantation owners, mill and factory businessmen and the idealists and statesmen who were good with words, ideas and oratorical skills blended and became the underpinnings of what we know today as the Legislative branch of the United States of America: The Congress!
Some statesmen were appointed as diplomats, ambassadors or foreign ministers to represent America overseas to France, England and some other countries.

Meanwhile, as you would not pick this up from a straight American history book, a parallel panorama was unfolding to make today’s America the Beautiful and the Bountiful. From Nova Scotia through the 1755 Expulsion of the French-speaking people known as Acadians from their farmland they tilled to for about a century.
The greedy British wanted to claim the lands which are present day Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and the Maritime Provinces. These Acadian families were torn apart by forcibly shipped to 13 something sailing vessels with sealed sailing orders for respective captain to go to a specific port of call along the East Coast. Some Acadians fled on foot dodging the British soldiers and traveling in the backwoods of Canada and America.

These Acadians were scattered along the 13 English -speaking colonies, but as soon as they arrived at a bustling port city, they were left on their own due to language barriers. Some decided to go further inland; some decided to search for their lost kin. Eventually the word that many French-speaking people were converging in Louisiana territory.
By 1764, several Acadian families came to settle in Attakapas, now present day St. Martinville. This had contributed to our country a rich blend of diversity and cultures as we see America today! Other peoples came from Europe to settle in different parts of present-day Louisiana such as New Orleans, The German Coast, North Shore and other regions. West Indies islanders came along to settle in Louisiana on plantations!

As you look around wherever you go, you will see a lot of visible signs of presence: buildings, transportation carriers, infrastructure projects such as roads, sidewalks and driveways with strategically positioned traffic lights; poles supporting miles and miles of power lines; safety precautions such as painted white lines, tire bumpers and shakers, and the street signs made out in much bigger letters.

These projects took place because there were scores of people in a dusty office buildings usually located in or around government or municipal complexes with Department of Highways and Transportation.
These highly educated and degreed people write up grants to ask Uncle Sam for monies to give them a chance to make major improvements to a town or city’s roadways. These people have degrees in engineering, construction work and grant/report writing. We often do not see these people running and jumping up and down on the completed roadway projects except on once-upon-an-occasion celebration and ribbon cutting ceremonies to commemorate a completion of a highway or transportation project.

Even a burly construction worker who works long days in building a new edifice building here and there. He sweated out a lot carrying or hauling heavy pieces of material or equipment to do his job to create a new building.

Once that project is completed, the construction worker would take his family and visiting relatives and drive by saying, “I see that Transportation Authority Building over there on your right, off the Interstate service road?” Uncle Max pointed out, “I helped build that back in summers of 1960-62.”

Uncle Max would brag about his contributions in his construction work as a carpenter. Uncle Max, son of Scandinavian immigrants, learned his carpentry trade while in the armed forces during the World War II. He even built his own ranch one-story style home for a couple of summers and his family moved in there and stayed for about 20 years. It was a well built home that Uncle Max was proud of! Aunt Val kept most of the ladies and young children and their hairdos looking very well dressed, neat and presentable.

Aunt Val, an immigrant from Northern Europe, the wife of Uncle Max, often did her family’s coiffures either at home or at the shop she co-owned. These women in her family were in style during these years! That’s ‘behind the scenes’ work that both ‘Uncle Maxs’ and ‘Aunt Vals’ did for their small rural communities in the heartland of America.

Also ‘behind the scenes’ throughout in modern day America, we often do not realize the extent of these underpinnings of power in people’s lives. Such examples are: Agencies, organizations, networks and corporations are run by power hungry top bosses who try to keep themselves in the spotlight at the expense of other people they sought to serve.

Another example might be: The ubiquitous chain store that has a supercenter in almost every town, village and a slew in a city! They stock up cheap on stuff and supplies and passing on their savings to the consumers but pay their employees slightly at or over the minimum wage per hour. This is a difficult concept to grasp because we like to buy things at a bargain price, but do we really realize the workers are not getting their “fair pay” as a result of the money-saving techniques?
Additional example is: The big money makers are the ones who either make products or provide services. They receive handsome sums of money. One mode is to sell products at outrageously high prices at any given stores or pharmacies. They may pay the referring professionals a commission for making the sale possible.

This is entirely ‘off-limits, 100% privately held secrets, behind-the-scenes’ scenarios that the public do not know or little if they don’t read the news and in-depth articles. Another mode is for the service providers to receive blocks of money from paying agency or state entity, and paying the minimal rates for their ‘on-the-ground employees’ working their behinds off providing services and running all over the place to keep their jobs!

The merry middlemen get some nice sums of money to play with and do whatever they like, under the guise of ‘privacy laws’ and if you don’t ask around how much such and such product cost, or such or such service cost, you wouldn’t know the difference between the blocks of money the service/product agency pay out and the middlemen who serve as contractors.

There is a need for serious in-depth investigation into those murky ‘behind-the-scenes’ practices. If a person cite specifically the entities involved, would anyone know what he or she may be set up for? Gobs of lawsuits for libel, slander and fraudulent stories. Such observations have to be written in a way that readers can take notice and be much more observant and cautious in what they are purchasing or receiving services.

Now back to America the Beautiful and the Bountiful, we Americans are so patriotic that we would DIE for our country if someone so ever dare to transgress against one of our highly held goals such as freedom of doing what we think is best; the ability to lead fruitful and happy or productive lives, and raising more proud Americans to pass on the lineage of either immigrants or descendants of immigrants.

After all, we the USA, are the immigrant descended peoples from world over. The democracy here in America is the oldest thriving political concept ever to exist; therefore, we celebrate the most famous and the noisiest holiday of all: The 4th of July! How do we do this?

Doing these famous Fourth of July fireworks throughout the proud, independent and freedom loving Americans, we seldom see the ‘stagehands’ doing the pyrotechnics on the ground setting a firework off at regularly timed shooting into the night skies. It is a very dangerous work to be involved with fireworks and worse with colossal superb fireworks that major cities host every year on Fourth of July.

This year's celebratory tone is a bit unusual for two reasons: NASA's space shuttle Discovery was launched today at 2:38 PM EDT after two delays due to bad weather conditions. Also, (tongue in cheek), a country joined us in test firing some MEGA "Fireworks" off from its country. The long range missile, capable of reaching the United States of America by 9,320 mile range. This could mean this long-range missile could either hit the West Coast or the East Coast. However, within the 35 seconds of North Korea's launch at 2:33 PM EDT, five minutes before Discovery's launch, this missile fell into the Sea of Japan... So much for their fireworks along with 4 other shorter range missiles fired at 3 PM and 4 PM our East Coast time which also fell into the sea. However the 'behind the scenes' people, sacrificing the observance of the Fourth of July Fireworks in Washington and elsewhere are now at work furiously dialing phone numbers to their counterparts in other countries to resolve this problem. Even the United Nations based in New York City, facing the East River and offers superb window views of the Macy's Fourth of July fireworks, is calling a special session on 4th of July to discuss this serious matter of 'extra fireworks' we did not anticipate on our Independence Day. Patriotism: Tomorrow?

This year commemorates the 230th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence. The signatories, the Founding Fathers, if alive and doing well today would be so proud to be called Americans and join in the festival celebrations of this Independence setting day! You wonder who these people were? Just look at most of the bill denominations such as George Washington on the ubiquitous one-dollar bill, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin to name a few. Even some coins bear these advocates of freedom and independence to this day!

Fighting these wars in the past was unpopular even then but necessary because Americans wanted to keep their independence intact and preserve all these freedoms they fought so hard during the American Revolutionary War of 1776. Freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of worship, freedom of choices, freedom of freedoms! To preserve these precious, hard-fought freedoms, we need to work constantly to ward off any detractors who would like to take over this country and take away all these freedoms we take for granted.
Hence the behind the scenes work in fighting wars overseas! There is a strong correlation between keeping America the Free and keeping these freedom haters at bay and keeping them from our shores of America the Beautiful and the Bountiful! To read more of these hard-fought freedoms, they are contained in our “Bill of Rights” in the first ten amendments to our present-day US Constitution.

See you in lazy dog days of August!