Today is quite a historical moment in America. The first black candidate for president will be participating in a debate held at the University of Mississippi where the first black student was enrolled at a southern U.S. university in 1962 after horrible riots and much violence that injured over a hundred people. Times do change for the better in some ways.

I looked up James Meredith's biography because I didn't know what he'd done after those eventful ten days between September 20th and October 1st forty-six years ago. He finally got to attend classes, graduated, earned an MBA and became a stockbroker. Fascinating to discover also that he and the civil rights movement came to a huge parting of the ways, however, because he found it "insulting" and demeaning. I've heard that occasionally before but didn't realize one of the major figures saw it that way. Definitely food for research and thought. After graduating and earning an MBA he became a stockbroker and then moved to Jackson, Mississippi to run a small used-car lot. He still lives there, interestingly enough. I wonder if any of the commentators or either debater will mention him. . . .

Labels: history, reflections

The British government has proposed some earth-shatteringly major changes to accession to the throne of England. Among (of course I meant to say "amongst") them are that Roman Catholics could be king or queen and that the first-born child of a reigning monarch would be his or her heir regardless of its gender and that the Privvy Council's powers be limited especially where Scotland and Wales are concerned. These are astonishing changes to conventions that have been in effect since late in the seventeenth century (yes, that's over three hundred years ago), a mere snap of the fingers in the duration of the universe but a very long time in British history.

If he is in any way aware of such things, Henry VIII must be spinning in his grave like a router blade - his and Catherine's daughter Mary would simply have been his successor and oh so many heads wouldn't have needed to be felled.

Despite low approval ratings, Gordon Brown may have a permanent place in history, after all.

Labels: changes, history, U.K.

We should pause a moment to recognize and honor the enormous thing that has occurred today:

a black man is an elected nominee for the office of president of the United States of America

Only a few short decades ago, black people could not attend college with white people in many states of this country. Only a few short decades ago, powerful hoses were turned on black children as they walked to school. Only a few short decades ago, appallingly, some people made outdoor sport of chasing and shooting black people set to running through the woods like animals.

Now, in the spring of 2008, the large numbers of votes cast for Obama in every state of the union makes it evident that monumental change has occurred and, whatever you think of the merits of the person himself, it is an important and superb moment for humanity.

Sadly, many people perished in the struggle for human equality. It would be good if they all somehow know what has happened.

An ironic postscript is the fact that today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Jefferson F. Davis, President of the Confederate States of America.

Labels: 2008 election, anniversaries, history, people

I need to vent. Recently I read a blogger's diabtribe about best sellers and it reminded me of how frustrated I get when people act all high and mighty about what they read, or (more often) about what others read. Some people actually make apologetic excuses if you ask them what they're reading and it turns out to be a best seller. My father wouldn't let me read what he called "trash" (i.e., Nancy Drew and other popular novels) so I grabbed a flashlight and became a secret Nancy Drew reader. When he found me out, he took all the novels out of my room and made a deal with me that I could read one of my choices every time I finished two of his. The result of which was that I stopped reading for pleasure. My mother had me read aloud to her to surmount the onus of the requirement. Thus I read Ivanhoe, The Black Arrow, Christians Courageous, and Master Skylark and came to adore all of them.

My father was a noted professor and an avid reader. He read so quickly that he could polish off a small novel in a couple of hours without any trouble. So he read mysteries and spy stories the way some of us watch Shark or CSI. And yet, despite his passion for, and ability to wax thoroughly rhapsodic on the wonders of good mysteries and spy stores, he was an inveterate snob about best sellers, like the blogger I encountered the other day.

I fail to understand a snotty attitude toward best sellers. Despite that dreadful patch with my father which led to a period where I didn't read anything for pleasure, I now read voraciously and anything that strikes my fancy, both "good" and popular. I asked people why being popular *must* equate to being lesser but never get a satisfactory answer. Popular really isn't necessarily bad. In fact something being popular may mean it has some merit. Pasta is popular. Apples are well-liked. Blue jeans are hugely popular. Are any of these bad for people? Of course not. And as far as reading goes, not everyone can work up interest in the smells of a small pastry or a mother's shawl. Proust's prose is certainly graceful and stirs more qualitative and evocative images, more so than Danielle Steele. And Sartre demands responses from a reader, whether in agreement or not. And Shakespeare requires engagement. And Jane Austen wraps you in her arms. All of which is wonderful and unquestionably more refined and smart, more likely to enhance the reader's cleverness and perceptions of life and people than, say, Jackie Collins or John Grisham.

But any reading stimulates the imagination. Babies read Pat the Bunny - a humungous best seller, by the way - and move on to Eric Carle and 1001 Tales and Madeleine and libraries-ful of wonderful fantastic books. If they're lucky, they proceed to Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew and Cherry Ames and Judy Blume and eventually Norton Juster and Tolstoi. What matters is that their imaginations are stirred. If one adult likes so-called trashy romances and another prefers history and biography, is either a better person? Possibly more aware of facts and events, which is useful and good to know, but beyond that?

I'd love to know what any rare readers of this page read and what they think about best sellers.

Labels: books, history, reading, reflections

Even a casual observer of history knows that Winston Churchill was interesting. But it takes alert bloggers, in this case blog friend Laura, to find and cite people like Elizabeth Nel who was Churchill's last wartime secretary. A Canadian, Nel improbably worked with and was devoted to Churchill. She wrote Winston Churchill by his personal secretary, which was published in 1958 and revised this past year and is being republished this month. She is also the subject of this interesting obituary in Friday's U.K. Telegraph.

Learning about otherwise unknown but utterly important and vital people is exactly why there are many devotees of well-researched and well-written obituaries in places like the Guardian, the U.K. Times, the N.Y. Times and others. They present a fascinating and vivid history of the world, one person and one event at a time. Such as Elizabeth Nel.

Labels: books, headlines, history, people

It had to happen eventually, I suppose, although I was beginning to wonder if she'd discovered an elixir akin to Dorian Gray's painting. Brooke Astor made it to 105 but died on Monday, alas. There are several interesting pieces in the NY Sun, if you want to catch up on your reading about her.

She was particularly quotable, saying things like "Money is like manure, it should be spread around" and "People expect to see Mrs. Astor, not some dowdy old lady. I don't intend to disappoint them" by way of explaining her always fashionable appearance. If you don't know about her, reading her life story is like reading the history of the last century. The events (the Titanic, among others, figured importantly in her life), the monumental technological and social changes, not to mention the changes in what's considered proper for a woman both in and outside the home. Fascinating, personal and personable, urbane, witty, sharp, fashionable, on and on. . . . And, like me (ahem) she wore big comfy shawls long before the current trend.

Incidentally, the photo here (from one of the NY Sun articles) is when she was 85. Yes, 85. What genes she must have had. (And what clothing designers!) She and Kitty Carlisle Hart used to dye each other's hair, as recently as the 1990's, and loved to talk about how much fun they had doing it. Can you imagine?!

Last year, William Buckley wrote an article, also in the Sun, about Mrs. Astor's philanthropy and the battle wrought by her son and grandson. (About which I'll write, no doubt several times, but after her funeral on Friday. It's intriguing and, let's face it juicy, but it seems ungracious to dwell on it until a few moments and sufficient pause to pay our respects have passed.) Buckley succinctly wrote that "[s]he sent money everywhere, not least to blighted parts of the city where John Astor amassed the fortune that five generations later she was spiritedly dissipating. But in 1983 she resolved to train her energies and focus her philanthropy on the world of books." Which is why so many owe her a debt of enormous gratitude and appreciation. People like her are rare, and they leave a large black empty hole when they are gone.

Labels: celebrities, headlines, history

Laura who muses reports on an Australian news service article that says Winston Churchill is being dropped from basic history courses about World War II for ages 11-14 in the U.K. The news item says that "traditionalists" will be "aghast" but, to me, it's appalling to read that "Adolf Hitler, Mahatma Gandhi, Joseph Stalin and Martin Luther King have also been dropped from the detailed guidance accompanying the curriculum." Please tell me how one learns about the twentieth century without these figures??

A few years ago I read an article in my local (fairly small town) newspaper about D-Day that included the phrase "Adolf Hitler, Chancellor of Germany during World War II." I remember thinking that was absolutely absurd. I went around for several days saying things like "Adolf Hitler? Would that be the dry cleaner or the ice cream truck driver or the programmer or the Chancellor of Germany" and cracking myself up because of course one needn't explain who HE is. Shows what I know, apparently. I guess the world should expect a whole generation, soon, who don't know fundamental facts. So what IS taught about the twentieth century if it doesn't include major figures? It happened. That's that. Quick and easy.

Labels: history, huh?, schooling

Ironically enough, today is both the day after Saint AG appeared in DC and is the 104th anniversary of a drought at Niagara Falls. Have you ever been there? do you realize the amount of water that had to have dried up!? I find it impossible to believe that humans' electronic and other energy usage during the last hundred years has been worse than all the coal and other putrid wastes expelled during the previous hundred years. And I can't believe that this warm cycle is worse than any other ever in the universe if it was so hot and dry in 1903 that Niagara Falls had too little water.

Labels: headlines, history

There've been two earthquakes in Indonesia, headlined on bbc and foxnews websites. Since "only" about 70 are dead, that must explain why it's not mentioned at all at cnn.com which is featuring a nasty little story about a pilot who crashed himself and his daughter into his mother-in-law's house, nor at nyt.com which leads with stories about Bush disagreements and the Libby trial and tucks the earthquake story halfway down the page. Sometimes it's more evident than usual how carefully pre-selected the news is according to each outlet. Makes you wonder how close is the connect between what we hear happens and what really happens.

Labels: headlines, history

Thanks to alert, cunning and sly rare reader CGHill, one learns and must include amendments (emendments, actually) to Nice fact on former Vice Pesident Charles Gates Dawes and from his U.S. Congress entry:

1) Dawes was actually Calvin Coolidge's Vice President. (Coolidge had replaced Warren G. Harding, who died in office in 1923; Coolidge ran for reelection in 1924 and picked Dawes as his running mate.) The two, however, did not get along.

2) Dawes wrote the melody of the song in 1912; he titled it simply "Melody in A Major." Carl Sigman put words to it in 1951 (the same year Dawes died). Tommy Edwards, who got the biggest hit out of it, cut it twice: a fairly conventional pop record in '51, a R&B smash in '58.

2a) Just for the heck of it: Dawes shared the 1925 Nobel Peace Prize for his plan for World War I reparations from Germany, a plan which proved to be seriously buggy.

Going to prove that Wikipedia is, as people often say, not reliable, and that Dawes was even more interesting than I thought. Several on-line sources have my father being Arturo Toscanini's son, for logical though mistaken reasons, so you'd think I'd know better than to take anything there at face value.

And two additional lovely facts: (1) that he was inaugurated 82 years ago today, and (2) that he left office four years later, 78 years ago today. Fabulous.

Labels: history, people

Listened to Greta Van Sustern's interview with Nancy Pelosi tonight. Greta can be a good interviewer when she gets away from missing blond girls and is quiet and relaxed with the interviewee. Nancy P. was downright relaxed and less phony than usual, even complimentary to GW Bush, particularly about his "gracious" remarks about her father during the State of the Union - which I thought was extremely touching, too. I think Nancy actually likes GWB although she often disagrees with him. Wouldn't you rather work with people you like even if you disagree with them? Day-to-day will be better and more will get done well, seems to me. Besides, our government isn't actually run by one person but by three functions, so this could work out just fine.

Labels: history, politics

Miscellaneously musing Laura makes note of a post by Captain's Quarters mentioning the idea of a Guiliani / Gingrich team. The difficulty would be that they each have - er - difficult first marriage issues but maybe that's not so important in the wake of Kennedy, Clinton, Newsom, etc., etc. It could make it a more serious and historically aware campaign, by far. They're not "polibrities", at least, and they certainly evidence more intelligence than the others milling around at the moment.

Labels: history, politics

Laura of Miscellaneous Musings cites several pieces about Hillary, all by Brits, interestingly enough. A few days ago I expressed the hope that people remember what she really is like (here). Are their memories so easy to dismiss? Am I almost alone in remembering how furious everyone was during the last months of Clinton's second term? The vitriol, the disgust, the anger . . . . I wonder if eight years is too long to be president, or at least too long when there's no chance of revving up again for a third term. The active person begins to become the former president around year 5.5. You know how you prepare for something big in your life? Like when the last child is about to leave for college and you know your life will change significantly so you begin to pick little fights with each other and then it seems partly a relief when the moment actually comes? I think this may be like that, a bit. It might be good to remember that those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it. Keep that thought.

Labels: gwb, history, politics

It's the 168th anniversary of the coronation of Queen Victoria, the great-great-great-great-grandmother of Princes Harry and William. She was only 18 and two years away from marrying the love of her life, Prince Albert. She continued to reign for 63 years, 216 days - the longest in British history and an astonishing career of any kind. Awesome, interesting woman.

Labels: anniversaries, history

Today, the day before the 62nd anniversary of Battle of Normandy, it is appropriate to note that in a month, on July 17th, we can also observe the 103rd anniversary of Harry S. Bingham IV's birth. Who is that, you ask? Well, he is a thoughtful and decent man, someone we should all know about and emulate (h/t and thanks to Wide Awake Cafe). He is the kind of man who made June 6, 1944 possible.

Bingham's flashy biography includes a mother, Alfreda Mitchell (granddaughter of Charles Tiffany, the founder of Tiffany & Co.) and a father, Hiram Bingham III (U.S. Senator and governor of Connecticut, an archaeologist who discovered the lost Inca city of Machu Picchu in Peru in 1911 and upon whom Steven Spielberg modeled Indiana Jones). Bingham graduated from Groton, Yale and Harvard Law, and entered the foreign service third in his class, serving first in Peking, China. By 1936 he was a U.S vice-consul in charge of visas, in Marseilles, France, putting him right where one Varian Fry found him in August 1940.

A month earlier, the French Government had surrendered to the Nazis, dividing France into two zones, one including Paris and administrated by Nazis and the other administered by the French at Vichy. The U.S. had not yet joined the War and did not do so until late 1941, and was for the time being intent on maintaining good relations with the Vichy government.

Fry, an American journalist determined to save all European intellectuals from the Naziis, was a volunteer with the Emergency Rescue Committee (now the International Rescue Committee) founded by German author Thomas Mann to raise funds and obtain U.S. visas for Jews, anti-Nazi Germans and others in France or concentration camps. When he arrived in Marseilles, Fry joined forces with two vice-consuls, one of whom was Harry Bingham, and eventually Bingham issued visas and travel documents that saved an estimated 2,500 lives. Among them were painter Marc Chagall, Nobel prize-winner Otto Meyerhof and philosopher Hannah Arendt. At one point he arranged for novelist Lion Feuchtwanger to be smuggled out of an internment camp disguised in women's clothing and then hid Feuchtwanger in his home until he could get him out of the country.

Unfortunately the State Department's desire to work with the Vichy government at the time led to its actively discouraging Bingham. He resigned from the foreign service and never wrote about his WWII work nor told any of his eleven children about it. A few years after his 1988 death his youngest son, William, found a bundle of letters and other documents behind a fireplace in the family home, revealing the amazing story. It took much letter writing and other efforts until 2002 when Secretary of State Colin L. Powell presented Bingham's children with a "Courageous Diplomat" award, praising Bingham's "constructive dissent." The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies and Wally Findlay Galleries International, among others, joined the celebration that took place in the Rayburn House Office Building and included Chagall's granddaughter, Bella Meyer, and two recipients of Bingham-procured visas, one of whom said, "There were never enough visas, but somehow, when a Martinique-bound boat became available, Bingham produced 800 of them in 48 hours."

And on May 24 of this year, "Hiram Bingham IV, a U.S. diplomat whose unselfish actions in saving Jews from the Nazi Holocaust cost him his diplomatic career, was honored by the U.S. Postal Service in a commemorative stamp."

Labels: anniversaries, france, history

-events today in Washington, DC.
-3:00 p.m. the national moment of silence in remembrance

Seablogger recommends Christopher Hitchens' reflection on Memorial Day. Furthermore, Alan Sullivan's own post this morning is thought-provoking on several fronts - his father, Abraham Lincoln, George Bush, the Civil War, Saddam Hussein, to name but a few. Don't miss either.

Everett Alvarez was the first American p.o.w. in Vietnam. His book, Chained Eagle, details his experiences as a p.o.w. in Vietnam from August 5, 1964 until February 1973. C-Span broadcast his recent appearance at the Library of Congress and what an upbeat, humorous, somewhat wise man he is. May we all accept and learn from our own travails as he has.

The President delivered a rousing and thoughtul commencement address at West Point on Saturday.

DADvocate writes affectingly about his former landlord and WWII veteran, Tex McDonald.

George Washington's granddaughter was married to Robert E. Lee, the eventual leader of the Confederate Army; Lee refused a commission to the Union Army saying he couldn't possibly fight against his beloved State of Virginia; during the Civil War, the US government (the 'North') appropriated Lee's wife's 11,000 acres and home in Arlington because they wanted to bury soldiers there; although Mary Lee died before she made a decision about what to do, her son sued the government for unlawful seizure; the Supreme Court ruled in his favor and awarded him a significant amount of money; he promptly deeded the land back to the US for burying soldiers and others. PBS last evening re-aired the National Geographic's portrait of Arlington National Cemetery and it is being aired around the country today, as well, at various times. If only for the details about the intense training of the amazing guards, it's more than worth watching. Both historically and emotionally engrossing, it is another fascinating and complex piece of our story.

Via Dadvocate, GM's Corner with some marvelous photos and all of Rudyard Kipling's poem, Tommy.

DevraDoWrite's reprise of a wonderful essay about Taps.

Labels: great link(s), history

I always have conflicting feelings on Memorial Day. One part of me mutters about how ghastly war is. Killing in the name of religion or nationality is simply flat-out nuts and wrong. Another part of me counters that nothing else has been as successful in making political or government changes. Remember our own radical demand for self-government. Every Memorial Day weekend I ponder alternatives to war, and maybe I've missed it, and I loathe it, but I have never heard of an effective or practical non-military way to achieve results like those sought by disputants in altercations such as The War of the Roses or the American Revolution or World War II. Have you?

Here are my links about the occasion. I'll add more as the weekend goes along, so let me know yours.

-Wide Awake Cafe's "Remembering C.C."
-Wizbang's tribute and collection of links
-LeShawn Barber's tribute
-Chuck Simms' "Where Have All the Heroes Gone?"
-Isaac Asimov's essay on The Star Spangled Banner
-Rogers Wade's tribute
-Ralph Bennett's "Go and Find a Soldier's Grave"

On this Memorial Day weekend on 2006, while we enjoy our days off, if we are fortunate enough to have them, and our barbeques and our family get-togethers, if we are fortunate enough to have them, let's take a few moments off and on over the days, to send thoughts of thanks to the soldiers who have made it possible for us to enjoy our time and food and families.

Labels: history, reflections

May 1st traditionally is a big deal day politically and socially in many countries. In England, Germany, France, Spain and China, it's "Labor Day". In America, it's "Law Day" which was set up to balance/counter the really big Soviet Union May (Revolution) Day. And, of course, it's famously the beginning of spring, new life, all that.

So it's no surprise that today is the day for immigration activism across the country. (Nor that 12:16 is the time since December 16th was the day that Congress made illegal aliens felons as opposed to "not legal".) No matter how you word it or what you think, however, the point (made quite succinctly and clearly by Dadvocate) is that "immigrants aren't the problem, illegal immigration is, uncontrolled crossing of our borders is". In my opinion, there are no simple or obvious solutions on either side. But if you want to be part of the solution, call your Congressional representatives and your Senators (follow the links to yours).

Labels: anniversaries, france, history

No matter what your point of view, since we live in a participatory democracy, if we contact our governmental representatives about Monday's demonstration and the immigration issue altogether, the decisions have more than a whispered prayer of being what "we the people" would like:

contact your U.S. Senators
contact your Congressional representatives

Labels: history

I don't want to shock or upset anyone but a speech that President Bush gave yesterday at the Woodrow Wilson Center in the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington DC differs significantly from what news outlets are reporting. It is well worth reading in its entirety (here). It was a better speech, a more carefully reasoned speech and a more interesting speech than one would expect from what one hears about it. Among other things, partly in defense of our being in Iraq at all, he pointed out that

"We were not in Iraq in 1993, when the terrorists tried to blow up the World Trade Center in New York. We were not in Iraq in 1998, when the terrorists bombed our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. We were not in Iraq in 2000, when the terrorists killed 17 American sailors aboard the USS Cole. There wasn't a single American soldier in Iraq on September the 11th, 2001, when the terrorists murdered nearly 3,000 people in the worst attack on our home since Pearl Harbor."

On this day of free and inclusive elections in Iraq, it is also worth joining in Mr Bush's call to

"honor [those who have died in Iraq] by acknowledging that their sacrifice has brought us to this moment: the birth of a free and sovereign Iraqi nation that will be a friend of the United States, and a force for good in a troubled region of the world."

Supporters, opponents and those of us who are perhaps unsure about the war - all of us - should pause for a moment today and wish them well as "the story of freedom . . . in the Middle East" takes a giant step forward.

Labels: gwb, history, politics