Did you know October 2 is the International Day of Non-Violence? Neither did I until stumbled on the informationduring my daily scrounging for something—any damn thing—to write about. My first thought was that it is such a good idea that it is no wonder it is obscure.
It’s one of those United Nations observances. Right away that makes it deeply suspect here in good ol’ U.S.A. where a huge chunk of the population is still convinced that UN black helicopters supported by the minions Barack Hussein Obama are poised to swoop down and rip the guns from the hands of patriots. But other UN holidays get better press even here—International Women’s Day, International Children’s Day, the International Day of Indigenous Peoples—to name a few examples.
Maybe it’s because it is still pretty new and hasn’t had a chance to catch on—it was first observed in 2008 after being adopted General Assembly on June 15, 2007. Apparently the ambassadors of several countries were asleep. After all protest—even non-violent protest—is not popular with a wide range of dictatorships and or with oligarchies posing as democracies. It’s law breaking and anarchy to most governments and only to be encouragedin the realms of one’s enemies. Take the U.S. which got giddy in support of various color coded non-violent revolutions where the old Soviet Union held sway or about, at least at first the Arab Spring until it threatened to spread to our Saudi and oil rich Emirates pals, but shovels riot gear and arms to dozens of repressive regimes when those being repressed are on our own shit list.
Around the world non-violent protest is often met by brutal state repression.
And in an era of militarized police, free speech zones, the general criminalization of dissent, suppression of and spying on Black Lives Matter protests and organizers, the targeting of the amorphous Antifa movement, the militarization of Federal police agencies into something with more than a passing resemblanceto a secret police, alleged Free Speech Zones safely caged away from political conventions and campaign rallies, and an Il Duce impersonator in the White House it is pretty clear that there is no commitment to respecting non-violent protest at home, either.
The very origins of the UN observance are, after all, suspect.
In 2003 Shirin Ebadi an Iranian lawyer, a former judge, human rights activist, founderof Defenders of Human Rights Centerin Iran, and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate met an Indian teacher, Akshay Bakaya in Paris. Bakaya brought her an idea that he said originated with his students—an international observance honoring non-violence as a tool for social change tied in some way to its greatest modern proponent, Mahatma Gandhi.
Nobelist Shirin Ebadi's. award has since been seized and stolen by the Iranian regime..
On January 30, 2004 while in Bombay, India for the World Social Forum, Ebadi first proposed that the date, also the anniversary of Gandhi’s assassination by Hindi extremists in 1948 be designatedas an international day of non-violence.
In tandem with South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Ebadi reiterated the proposal at the Satyagraha Conference at Delhi but changed the proposed date to October 2, Gandhi’s birthday which already was an Indian celebrationknown as Gandhi Jayanti. The conference had been cosponsored by Tutu and Sonia Gandhi, President of the Indian National Congress Party. The term satyagraha was coined and developed by Mahatma Gandhi and translates as insistence on truth or soul force. It is a philosophy and practice within the broader idea of non-violent resistance.
Bishop Desmond Tutu.
With the support of the ruling Congress Party, India brought the idea to the U.N. General Assembly, which acted with unusual speed adopting the proposal on June 15 of the same year. The resolution called on member states to commemorate October 2 in “an appropriate manner and disseminate the message of non-violence, including through education and public awareness.”
The first year celebration was marked by the issuance of a postal cachet by the United Nations Postal Administration in New York City which was used on all outgoing U.N. mailbetween October 2 and 31 of that year.
Since then celebrations in most countries outside of India and South Africa have been, at best, muted.
Perhaps that is because the Non-Violence promoted by the commemoration is not just a sort of vague warm fuzzy pacifism, but an active strategy for social change. The U.N. puts it this way:
One key tenet of the theory of non-violence is that the power of rulers depends on the consent of the population, and non-violence therefore seeks to undermine such power through withdrawal of the consent and cooperation of the populace.
There are three main categories of non-violence action:
protest and persuasion, including marches and vigils;
non-cooperation; and
non-violent intervention, such as blockades and occupations.
In the U.S, student-led gun violence protests, Extinction Rebellion, the Moral Monday movement, and Black Lives Matter among others have been inspired by the principles of Gandhian satyagrahaGee, that sounds like the last thing most regimes want tohappen as Shirin Ebadi herself found out after her criticism of Iranian persecution of the Baha’i, other Iranian minorities, and dissidents when the Ayatollahs literally stole her Nobel Prize, French Légion d’honneur, and other international awards from her Tehransafety deposit box. Her organization, the Center for the Defense of Human Rights was raidedand closed in 2008 and its employees threatened and harassed. Ebadi, her husband, and daughter were all targeted by the Revolutionary Guard and threatened with bogus charges. She was forced into exile in London in 2009 and has lived there ever since still threatened by the regime back home.
It is a sad tale echoed by the experiences of many others around the world.
Maybe today is a good day to dust off this neglected celebration….in the streets. Seems to me we now have plenty of reasons to do it….
Once again our heads split from the relentless assault of demoralizing news that hammers at our senses humanity and decency. Tuesday night the Residentcapped of a week of horrors with his bizarre but ominous blathering during the Presidential debate which climaxed by his instructions to his white nationalist/militia followers to “Stand down and Stand by” to rise up if the election, as expected does not go his way. The hot breath of fascism has never been felt so strongly on our necks. That comes on the heels of his push to nominate and confirm a Supreme Court Justice before the election who will side with him in any challengesto the vote’s legitimacy. His lackey Attorney General declared great American cities as “Anarchist Jurisdictions,” Climate change fueled wild fires continue to consume the West and the Coronavirus victim count continues to accelerate as Moron-in-Chief attacks science. You would not have to cast a stone far to hit any of a dozen other outrages. It’s a lot. I know, I know. And it can be demoralizing to the point of paralysis.
But, take heart!
Way back in 2013 I wrote a poem and posted it here. It was in the midst of a crisis that seemed at the time to be an overwhelming and immediate danger but in comparison to what we have endured lately seems downright quaint. As you may dimly remember back then the Republican Congress made good on its chest beating threats to let the government shut down rather than pass a routine raise in the Debt Limit because they were in a life-and-death struggle with Barack Obama over, you know, stuff. Experts—all of the folks who will proclaim that they know what they are talking about—were predicting dire consequences up to and including a world economic collapse that would make the Great Depression look like your mommy forgot to put a Twinkie in your lunch box.
It turned out that after a few days of tourists being turned away from the monuments and museums on the National Mall, and some needy folks had some checks delayed, the bankers who hold the paper on the Republican Party applied some judicious leverage and presto! A deal was worked out, the debt limit was raised, and everything got back, more or less, to normal, whatever the hell that is. President Obama once again holding no more than a pair of deuces took the pot from Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan who had, you should excuse the strained metaphor, a full house.
Of course neither I nor anyone else knew the ultimate outcome that day seven years ago. So I felt compelled to speak to the situation not with stunning and astute analysis buy with a damn poem.
In my introduction to the verse that day I wrote:
Political poetry has the shelf life of sushi on a pushcart in Phoenix in August. It has a long and noble history since the days when long satirical ballads were printed anonymously in partisan newspapers, through the righteous radicalism dripping with the blood of workers and peasants, to acid penned short pieces in the columns of Puck or The New Yorker. This is none of those, but read it fast before it evaporates from your screen.
It turns out that this one recycles usefully today. And may again in the future….if we have a future.
This Morning
October 1, 2013
The sun rose this morning
heedless of deadlines
of wails and curses.
But that doesn’t mean
we must sit idle
with Zen-like equanimity.
The dew on the grass
invites the first foot print.
The crystal air refreshes
our lungs.
The wind at our backs
pushes us to action.
What they have done,
is done.
What we will do
is yet unwritten.
We have but one resolve—
not to be pawns
on their chessboard
anymore.
Note—This is an apt time to be reminded of the horror of anti-Semitism, racism, nationalist supremacism, fascism, and Nazism. Don’t say it can’t happen here. Be prepared to fight to prevent it.
Seventy-nine years ago on September 29 and 30, 1941 most of the Jews of the Ukrainian capital of Kiev were transported to an isolated ravine named Babi Yar. Over the course of those two days we know by the meticulous records kept by the Nazis that 33,771 men, women, and children were shot and killed. It was the greatest mass execution of the Holocaustand as far as anyone has been able to determine the perhaps biggest single mass execution in all of history.
The Germans occupied Kiev on September 19. Within days the Nazi military governor, Major General Kurt Eberhard decided to eradicate the Jews of Kiev in retribution to partisan attacks on German soldiers. On September 25 posterswere put up in the Jewish quartercommanding Jews to report with their baggage, papers, and valuablesfor deportation on the 29th on pain of death.
S.S. commanders ordered to carry out the planned execution estimated that about 6000 would voluntarily show up and that they would have to conduct raids to secure the rest. But almost the entire population obeyedthe order.
Naked women and children in the ravine at Babi Yar moments before they were shot.
The Jews assembled as ordered near the Jewish Cemetery. They expected to be taken to rail yards for further transportation. They were continually re-assured that everything would be fine. They were loaded in trucks and driven down a long corroder lined with German troops. When unloaded they were told to strip all of their clothes. One of the truck drivers described the scene:
…they had to remove their luggage, then their coats, shoes, and over garments and also underwear … Once undressed, they were led into the ravine which was about 150 meters long and 30 meters wide and a good 15 meters deep … When they reached the bottom of the ravine they were seized by members of the Schutzpolizei [battalions of ordinary German Police mobilized for service under the SS] and made to lie down on top of Jews who had already been shot … The corpses were literally in layers. A police marksman came along and shot each Jew in the neck with a submachine gun … I saw these marksmen stand on layers of corpses and shoot one after the other … The marksman would walk across the bodies of the executed Jews to the next Jew…
Units of Ukrainian collaborators also assisted the S.S. in maintaining order among the Jews as they were led to the slaughter. Considering that the operation had to be conducted in such a primitive manor—as opposed the industrial gas chamberslater in use—it was remarkably efficient.
The Babi Yar ravine continued to be an execution site as long as the Germans remained in the area. Concentration camps were eventually constructed nearby. Victims included not only more Jews rounded up from smaller cities and villages, but Romani (Gypsies), Soviet prisoners of war, occupants of mental hospitals, Communists, Ukrainian nationalists, and hostages of every sort. Estimate run to 100,000 to 150,000 more executions in and around Babi Yar, most of them dumped in that seemingly bottomless ravine.
As Soviet forces closed in on the Germans in Kiev, they began systematically trying to destroy evidence of their crimes. In August and September of 1943 about 300 chained prisoners from the nearby concentration camp were put to work exhuming bodies from the gorge. The bodies were burned in makeshift crematoriums and the ashes scattered over surrounding farm land. It is believed that up to 90% of the bodies were disposed of in this way.
The identitiesof most of the dead remain unknown. Despite years of painstaking research Yad Vashem and other Jewish organizations has recorded the names of only around 3,000 Jews killed at those days Babi Yar and 10,000 killed in the area for the course of the war.
Following the war, S.S. commanders were sentenced to death and long prison sentences for their part in the killings.
The Soviet era monument to the victims of Babi Yar failed to acknowlege tha Jews were the first and most frequent targets or the executions that continued in the area through most of the war.Several monuments to various victims of Babi Yar have been erected there forming a kind of memorial park. The largest, a monumental statue to all Soviet Citizens and POWs killed, presumably including by not specifically mentioning the Jews, was erected in 1971. On the 50th anniversary of the killings a large Menorah was erected to commemorate all of the Jewish victims killed there during the war. It was damaged by vandals in 2006. There are two large wooden crosses, one for 621 Ukrainian nationalists shot in 1942 and another for two Orthodox priests executed for spreading anti-German propaganda. By a subway station a memorial to the children of Babi Yar was installed in 2001.
As the horror story of the two days at Babi Yar got out, the mass murder gripped the attention of the public and of artists. A censored version of the Russian/Ukrainian writer Anatoly Kuznetsov’s first hand memoirs, Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novelwas published in a Soviet literary magazine in 1956. In 1971 Kuzetsov defected to Britainand brought out with him his original manuscript on microfilm. It was published 1970 under the pseudonymA. Anololi. Expurgated text was insertedin the original Russian version and highlighted in bold face. The new edition became an international sensation.
The unexpurgated of English edition of Anatoly Kuznetsov’s book brought the atrocity to the attention of the world in 1971.
The best known literary memorial is the one by Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. In it he decried not only the original crime itself, but the Soviet policyof refusing to acknowledge that Jews were the special victims of the Nazis and its general encouragement of semi-official anti-Semitism. Written in 1956, the poem circulated in the Soviet Union via underground samizdat—copies, usually carbon-paper typescripts, surreptitiously passed hand to hand. Copies also found their way to the West where the poem was translated and reprinted to lavish praise. It was not until the beginning of the glasnost era that the poem was officially published in the USSR.
Yevtushenko developed an international reputation as a dissenter based on this and a 1961 poem denouncing the continuing vestiges of Stalinism. But dissident writers who were imprisoned in the Gulag have charged him with making many compromises with authorities pointing out that he continued to be a member of the Communist Party and was protected by top leaders. He only criticized what was safe to criticize, his critics said.
None the less Yevtushenko’s poem Babi Yarremains a powerful expression. Another Soviet era artist, composer Dmitri Shostakovich, set the poem to music in a movement of his choral Symphony #13 which premiered in Moscow in 1961 during a brief period of internal liberalization under Nikita Khrushchev.
Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko was literary lion and loyal Communist Party member when he learned of Babi Yar and circulated his famous poem secretly in underground samizdat in 1956, When it was later published in the West he was hailed as a hero dissident.Here is Yevtushenko’s poem:
Babi Yar
No monument stands over Babi Yar.
A steep cliff only, like the rudest headstone.
I am afraid.
Today, I am as old
As the entire Jewish race itself.
I see myself an ancient Israelite.
I wander o'er the roads of ancient Egypt
And here, upon the cross, I perish, tortured
And even now, I bear the marks of nails.
It seems to me that Dreyfus is myself.
The Philistines betrayed me - and now judge.
I'm in a cage. Surrounded and trapped,
I'm persecuted, spat on, slandered, and
The dainty dollies in their Brussels frills
Squeal, as they stab umbrellas at my face.
I see myself a boy in Belostok
Blood spills, and runs upon the floors,
The chiefs of bar and pub rage unimpeded
And reek of vodka and of onion, half and half.
I'm thrown back by a boot, I have no strength left,
In vain I beg the rabble of pogrom,
To jeers of “Kill the Jews, and save our Russia!”
My mother's being beaten by a clerk.
O, Russia of my heart, I know that you
Are international, by inner nature.
But often those whose hands are steeped in filth
Abused your purest name, in name of hatred.
I know the kindness of my native land.
How vile, that without the slightest quiver
The anti-Semites have proclaimed themselves
The “Union of the Russian People!”
It seems to me that I am Anna Frank,
Transparent, as the thinnest branch in April,
And I’m in love, and have no need of phrases,
But only that we gaze into each other's eyes.
How little one can see, or even sense!
Leaves are forbidden, so is sky,
But much is still allowed - very gently
In darkened rooms each other to embrace.
-“They come!”
-“No, fear not - those are sounds
Of spring itself. She's coming soon.
Quickly, your lips!”
-“They break the door!”
-“No, river ice is breaking...”
Wild grasses rustle over Babi Yar,
The trees look sternly, as if passing judgment.
Here, silently, all screams, and, hat in hand,
I feel my hair changing shade to gray.
And I myself, like one long soundless scream
Above the thousands of thousands interred,
I’m every old man executed here,
As I am every child murdered here.
No fiber of my body will forget this.
May Internationale thunder and ring
When, for all time, is buried and forgotten
The last of anti-Semites on this earth.
There is no Jewish blood that’s blood of mine,
But, hated with a passion that’s corrosive
Am I by anti-Semites like a Jew.
And that is why I call myself a Russian!
—Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Translated by Ben Okopnik
On September 29, 1650 Henry Robinson, a noted religious dissenter, philosopher, writer, merchant, and sometimes government official, opened the Office of Addresses and Encounters, a brand new and unusual business on Threadneedle Street in London.
At the office, for a modest fee of sixpence individuals and businesses could record their addresses, what services they could offer, and list what needs they might have. The poor could use the service without charge. Employers could offer jobs, and seekers find them. Real estate including country houseswas offered but lodgers could also find accommodations. Hard to find merchandise was matched with buyers. It is said that occasionally the lovelorn sought companionship or prostitutes discretely offered their comfort, leading some later historians to conclude that it was some sort of dating service.
Leave it to humansto make every sort of information exchange about sex.
Most commonly it functioned as what the Brits call a labour exchange or on this side of the puddlecall an employment service—the first in England.
In Paris Théophraste Renaudot, a physician, philanthropist, and journalist had operated the bureau d’adresse et de rencontresince 1630.
Robinson got the idea from his good friend German born Samuel Hartlib, another one of those geniuses-at-large. Today we might call both men public intellectuals. Hartlib had a grander vision for adaptingRenaudot’s idea to England. He wanted a much larger undertaking sponsored by the government as a central repository for all useful information. In addition to the exchange, he wanted a staff of the leading experts on every topic to be available to answer any question a member of the public might have—a kind of living encyclopedia or Google.
Not surprisingly no one at any level of government was interested in such a grand and expensive project. After the idea had been kicking around for a few years, Robinson decided to go ahead with the more modest core of the idea as a private enterprise. The project did not last long during the turbulent years of the Commonwealth which directed energies elsewhere. But it was long remembered and has been cited as the inspiration for various public information projects on both sides of the Atlantic.
Merchant class and gentle folk like these would have been the primary users of the Office of Addresses and Encounters, but mechanics and other laborers seeking employment could register at no charge as well.Robinson as a bright young man was educated at St. John’s College, Oxford and was admitted to membership in the Worshipful Company of Mercers, the premier Livery Company of the City of London, a kind of privileged trade association of general merchants especially exporters of wool and importers of velvet, silk and other luxurious fabrics. That made him a wealthy man.
Wide travel, especially to Holland which nurtured religious dissent, a spirit of tolerance, and unencumbered commercial business, made him a vocal advocate for all sorts of changein England. He began to write widely on economic matters—trade policy, interest rates, naturalization of foreigners, redistributionof trades from London center, and inland navigation. When Parliament and Cromwell came to power ideas that he advanced in his pamphlets influenced policy.
In recognitionRobinson was appointed to administrative positions, dealing with accountsand sale of former Crown lands, with farm rents, and acting as secretaryto the excise commissioners.
But Robinson is best remembered as a strong advocate of religious toleration. He believed that “no man can have a natural monopoly of truth.” Of course, he meant toleration within a range of Protestant beliefs—Catholics and Jews need not apply. He later fell out of favor with the Puritans for opposing the establishment of a new National Church based on Presbyterianism for fear that it would lead to religious persecution of dissenters.
Henry Robinson was a prolific writer and commentator and not stranger to controversy. This pamphlet published the year after he established the Office of Addresses and Encounters scolded him for his defense of the Levelers.Robinson was also a pioneer writer against censorship anticipating and informing the views of John Milton.
Robinson died at the age of 64 in 1664 after the Restoration had destroyed his public influence and put his personal safety at risk.
The odd, Coronavirus shortened 2020 regular season ended yesterday with the Chicago Cubs in first place in the National League Central and their Traditional rivals, the St. Louis Cardinals finished second despite starting the season with many Covid canceled games and ending with a grueling 11 double headers. If the baseball gods so ordain they could meet later in the playoffs. It’s now worth looking back at another remarkable season 22 years ago.
On September 27, 1998 St. Louis Cardinal slugger Mark McGwire smashed two out of the park to end the season with a record shattering 70 Home Runs. Big Mac had connected with 5 round-trippers in the last three games of the season ending a long race with Chicago Cub Sammy Sosa, who finished with 64.
Baseball had been enduring an attendance slump for years since the season ending 1994 Player’s Strike, which outraged fans. The long dominance of the National Football League in Television ratings and the surge of National Basketball Association popularityin the Michael Jordon era threatened Baseball’s status as the national pass time. Some sports journalists, in fact, confidently predictedthat Major League Baseball would shrivel in status, attendance, and broadcast ratings to the level of the National Hockey League, a perennial fourth place among major professional sports leagues.
But fans returned in droves as the home run race that year packed not only Bush Stadium and Wrigley Field, but ball parks wherever the rival sluggers appeared. The American League got its own boostfrom Seattle’s Ken Griffey, Jr., another potent slugger and fan favorite who started the season as McGwire’s acknowledged main competition in a race to shatter Roger Maris’s single season Home Run record of 61.
McGwire, who was Rookie of the Year in 1987 under manager Tony LaRussa with the Oakland A’s and hit a record 49 blasts in that first complete season, had followed his old manager to the Cardinals in 1997. He had suffered a couple of years in Oakland with injuries that kept him mostly benched and a fall off of home run production. But He came out of the gate strong in 1997, having bulked up his big frame with bulging muscles that he attributed to a rigorous work-out regime. He had slammed 34 homers for Oakland before being traded to the Cardinals on July 31 and finished the season with 58, tantalizingly close to Maris’s record.
Most sports experts believe that he would seek free agency and a long term deal in his native Southern California, but he opted to stay with LaRussa and the Cardinals for a hefty pay raise. As the ’98 season opened it was widely expected that it would be the year that he would pass Maris.
At the start of the season Griffey was in the middle of an amazing string of home run production that helped to propel his team to AL Championship Series in 1995, saved baseball in Seattle, and led to the construction of a new ballpark, now known as Safeco Field but popularly acknowledged as the House that Griffey Built. Because of his equally good defense, Griffey was touted as the best player in baseball. Many picked him to pass McGwire and win the long sought-after new record. Despite having fewer days lost to injurythan any in his career, and matching his own season high record of 56 homers, however, Griffey was essentially out of the race by late August.
Sosa, the Dominican born right fielder had come to the Cubs from the cross town rival White Sox in a trade before the 1992 season. He had a reputation as a speedy, scrappy playerwho could slap hits for average, leg out close calls, and hit with only occasional power. After his first season with the Cubs in which he hit only 8 homers, his production jumped. So did his size. Little Sammy Sosa bulked up noticeably year to year. From 1993 through ’98 his Home Run totals dipped below 25 only once. He finished the ’97 season with a very respectable 38. Despite having proven power, no one was picking him for a contender against McGwire the next year.
That was before Sosa went on an epic tear in the month of June when he hit an astonishing 20 homers in just 30 days, a feat never before accomplished or matched since. From then on Sosa was nipping at McGwire’s heels. The lead in the race switched hands several times as media interest soared. Sosa was given his nick name, Slamming Sammy, by Cubs broadcaster Chip Caray. Sosa last held the lead on August 19 when he hit his 48th, but later that day McGuire matched him and added another. He never relinquishedthe lead again.
The two were under intense press scrutiny, reminiscent of the frenzy shrouding the 1961 race between Maris and fellow Yankee Mickey Mantle. McGwire and Sosa may not have played on the same team, but they were members of two teams in the same division in the longest running and one of the most intense rivalries in baseball. Both men were gracious in praising the other. Neither seemed ready to wilt under the pressure.
Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire embrace after the Cubs/Cardinal game when McGuire passed Roger Maris's single season home run record.The high point of the season came on September 8 as the two teams faced each other at Bush Stadium. Everyone knew the record could be broken that day. McGwire had already matched Maris’s record. Not only was Baseball Commissioner Bud Seligpresent, but so were members of the Maris family. Television networks stood by to switch to live coverage should McGwire set the record. When McGwire hit the 63rd homer the stadium erupted in cheers he made his homerun trot. His entire team greeted him at home base. The game was stopped. Sammy Sosa came from the Cubs dugout to embrace his “brother” and seemed genuinely to share the joy.
McGwire went to the field box where the Maris family was sitting and acknowledge them. Then, in a photo op moment that left hardly a dry eye, he picked up his young sonin his own miniature Cardinal uniformand doffed his hat to the crowd. The stadium employee who found the ball quickly made sure that McGwire got it. The second homer of the day was just icing on the perfect cake.
When the season ended, Sosa, not McGwire, won the National League MVP because the Cubs made the playoffs that year and the Cardinals finished only third in their division. Sosa also topped McGwire in batting average, total hits, and on base percentage. The two shared the Sports Illustrated Athlete of the Year Award
Both players would go on to have good years. Sosa became the first player ever to hit more than 60 home runs in three seasons in his career. In 2001 Sosa hit 64 homers again, but trailed San Francisco Giant Barry Bonds who broke McGwire’s record with 73 homers.
McGwire’s production began to fall in 2000 and 2001 as he struggled with injuries. Despite still hitting a respectable 27 homers in 97 games, he decided to retire after the 2001 season. There were already rumors circulating about his possible use of steroids.
The cork found in Sosa's shattered bat ruined his reputation and destroyed his fan popularity.Sosa’s career also faltered after he was ejected from a game in June 2003 when a shattered bat in a game against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays was discovered to be corked. Sosa claimed that he had accidently picked up a bat he used for batting practice only. Despite the fact the when MLB tested 9 other of his bats, and another batch of his bats were tested by the Baseball Hall of Fame, none were found to be corked, both the press and the fans turned on him. His many accomplishments and club records were declared tainted. Despite leading the club to the National League Central Division Titlethat year and belting to homers against the Florida Marlins in the playoffs, fans did not warm up to him again.
The next year Sosa spent an extended time on the Disabled List after he injured his back sneezing in the locker roomsetting of persistent back spasms. The nature of the injury lead to speculation that the bulked up, muscle bound Sosa might be using steroids. Upon returning to the team he went into the worst slump of his career and into depression. When he packed his bags and left the Cubs club house before the end of the last game of the season, fans, press, and even fellow teammates with whom he had a contentious relationship denounced him. He was ignominiously traded to the Baltimore Orioles the next winter in a deal that made it clear the club was dumping him.
Sosa’s career never recovered. He spent unproductive seasons with the Orioles and Texas Rangers. The Cubs made a point of not retiring Sosa’s number. Instead they assigned it to pitcher Jason Marquis. Sosa got his revenge on June 7, 2007 when as a Ranger he hit one of the final homers of his career of Marquis. That hit also made him the only man in Major League history to hit a Home Run off of pitchers from every single active Major League team in his career.
After his exile Sosa further alienated many with his apparebt use of skin bleaching a la Michael Jackson.Despite abortive comeback attempts, Sosa played his last game in the majors that season. He never officially retired, but told reporters that he would go back to the Dominican Republic and placidly await his induction into the Hall of Fame—a statement that many in baseball took as arrogant. The Cubs have never invited him back to Wrigley Field for any honor. There are no plans to add his statue to the growing collection around the field. He is for all intents and purposes a non-person to the club and too many Chicago fans.
If that is a sad fate, McGwire’s was worse.
McGwire at his emotional admission of steroid use. The bulges clearly visible on his neck were physical evidence of the effects of the drug.In 2005 McGwire emotionally refuted charges by former Oakland team mate Jose Canseco that he seen McGwire take performance enhancing drugs before a Congressional Committee. Sosa also appeared, but declined to answer questions letting his attorney read a statement. Most commentators at the time did not believe the story because McGuire showed many of the symptoms of steroid use—in addition to packed on muscle mass, acne and depression.
McGwire has failed to win election to the Hall of Fame—once considered a first ballot shoe-in—in each of the years he has been eligible. In each year his total percentage of ballots cast for him has dropped. Many believe that he, like other super stars tainted by the steroid scandals like Barry Bonds and Roger Clements he will never make the cut. At least he avoided indictment.
In a 2009 deal with Major League Baseball to return to the game as a hitting coach for LaRussa and the Cardinals, McGwire finally did admit to steroid use, but claimed it was only to treat the injuries that had threatened his career in his last years at Oakland, and occasionally for other injuries later—including in 1998—but not to enhance his performance. He was not banned from baseball and was been a very successful coach for the Cardinals and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Today he keeps a very low profile, seldom speaking to the media, and almost never makes public appearances.
The following year in 2010 the Missouri State Legislature stripped its previous designation of a portion of Interstate 70 near Bush Stadium as Mark McGwire Highway and re-named the road for Mark Twain.
Sitting on top of the Acropolis, the stony high point of Athens, the Parthenon in all of its ruined glory is one of the most famous structures in the world, an iconof classic antiquity, and for the Greeks, the symbol of their cultural glory. But its current condition is not just the result of centuries of wear and tear or even of the earth quakes that shake the eastern Mediterranean. Here’s what happened.
The Parthenon we know today was the second—some believe the third—temple structure on that hill. The first was begun shortly after the Battle of Marathon about 490 BCE. It was a sanctuary for Athena Parthenos, the Virgin Athena. It replaced even older temple structures to other gods. Alas, the structure, sometimes called the proto Parthenon, did not last long and was not even finished when the Persians sacked the city and razed the Acropolis in 480 BCE.
Some believe that a second proto Parthenon was begun around 466 BCE and abandoned before completion, its foundation used in the present structure. This theory, propounded by German archeologist Wilhelm Dörpfeldaround 1890 is not now widely held.
Most believe the site was left vacant for 33 years, some say because of an oath sworn by the Greek allies before the Battle of Plataea in 479 BCE declaring that the sanctuaries destroyed by the Persians would not be rebuilt until Greece was safe from further Persian invasion. The Peace of Callias between the Greeks and the Persians in 450 BCE supposedly relieved the Athenians of their obligation. But in fact decades of war had emptied the city’s coffers. There was no money for public works on a grand scale.
A bust of Pericles inscribed "Pericles, son of Xanthippus, Athenian." A marble Roman copy after a Greek original from c. 430 BCE.The great Athenian leader Pericles relocated the seat of the Delian League, the alliance of more than 150 Greek city states which ringed the Aegean and Black Seas and which defeated the Persians, from the island of Delos to Athens and made the Arocopolis its de facto headquarters. Athens was then the preeminent power in that corner of the world, and like many a victor before him, Pericles was determined to show off that power and wealth in stone. He ordered the crown of the Acropolis leveled and the construction of a new temple to Athena. Construction lasted from 447 to at least 432 BCE.
We know that the architects of the new building were Ictinos and Callicrates and the sculptor Phidias was both the general artistic supervisor and the creator of the bas relief decoration, incidental sculpture, and the giant statue of Athena Parthenos that was the center piece of the interior. More on her later.
It was a massive project to build the temple which measured 228.0 x 101.4 feet at the base with 46 out and 23 inner Doric columns supporting a massive roof of marble tiles. The largest single expense in its creation was the transportationof tons of the stone from Mount Pentelicus, about 10 miles from Athens, to the Acropolis. The finished work is considered the finest exampleof Greek architecture ever built and inspired the later Romans and well as the classical revival architecture for public buildings that was popular in Europe and America for a century and a half.
Interestingly, although we call the Parthenon a temple, it was evidently not originally a place of worship—it was more of a public monument, a center for civic events, and perhaps more than anything a treasury. The Cult of Athena Polias, the civic protector of the city, worshiped nearby in the more ancient temple on the northern side of the Acropolis. Nor were there any know priestesses or rituals associated with the site.
A reproduction of the Statue of Athena Parthenos by Pheidias, the centerpiece of the Parthenon litterally clothed in the treasury of Athens.Phidias’s famous statue was not an object of veneration which must at all times be ritually attended, cleaned, and preserved. Which is probably a good thing because the statue was assembled on a wooden core, covered with shaped bronze plates covered in turn with removable gold plates, with the flesh of the goddess’s face and arms made from ivory. The gold, made from melted coins seized from enemies of Athens, weighed 44 talents—about 2,400 pounds. Importantly, the plate could be removed. Essentially, it represented a large portion of the treasury of the Delian League. The gold plates were removed at least once by Lachares in 296 BCE to pay his troops and were replaced by gilded bronze plates.
The trouble is, no matter how big and heavy you make your treasury by turning it into a monument, eventually someone will conquer you and haul it away. Which is just what happened. The Romans carted it away in the 5th Century C.E. It was reported in Constantinople before disappearing entirely. We know pretty much what the statue looked like, however, from copies, vase painting, carved gems, coins, and written descriptions.
The Parthenon itself stood and remained dedicated to Athena for nearly 1000 years. During much of that time it was painted in vivid colors, not at all the austere white that we imagine. We know that from the contemporary accounts of visitors to Athens and it has been confirmed by the recent archeology which using modern technology have identified tiny residue of paint. Undoubtedly it was re-pained after a major fire in the 3rd Centurydestroyed the roof, which was replaced by wood with clay tiles and pitched more steeply than the original, and damaged the great statue of Athena.
In an act of Christian triumphalism Emperor Theodosius II decreed in 435 AD that all pagan temples in the Byzantine Empire be closed. The Empire carted off many of the remaining treasures and the Parthenon was left open for further looting.
After that the building fell into other hands and was converted to other uses. Around 590 it was converted to an Orthodox Church known at different times as Church of the Parthenos Maria(Virgin Mary), or the Church of the Theotokos (Mother of God). Many physical alterations and additions had to be made to the building, pagan sculptures that could not be re-interpreted as Christian were removed and many were destroyed, Christian texts were carvedinto some pillars, and interior wallswere painted with icons. It became one of the four most holy Orthodox pilgrimage places.
The Fourth Crusade conquered Byzantium in 1204 and Athens fell under the sway of the Catholic Church, which tore out Orthodox iconography and renamed the building the Church of Our Lady. Other physical alterations were made, including the construction of a bell tower at the southwest corner. And so it remained for another 250 years.
Then it was time for the Catholics to exit the stage. In 1456, Ottoman Turks laid siege to Athens which was defended by a Florentine army which made its last stand on the Acropolis, holding out for two years before surrendering to the Turks. By the turn of the 16th Century they converted the building to a mosque, scouring it of graven images, both Catholic and pagan, and extending the old church tower into a minaret.
Despite all of these changes of hands, the basic structural integrity of the building was intact and much of the sculptural ornamentation, especially the friezeand pediments were well preserved. Several westerners visited the city, wrote detailed descriptions, and made drawings of the venerable building. Everyone who saw it was struck by its beauty.
In 1687 the Venetians, the dominant naval and military power in the Mediterranean, decided to retake Athens for the greater glory of the Church as part of its wider war against the Ottomans. Or maybe they just wanted to sack the city. Hard to tell the difference.
Francesco Morosini and his subordinate general, the Swede Count Otto Wilhelm Königsmarck laid siege to Athens. As the Catholics before them had done, the Ottomans fortified the Acropolis—and they made the Parthenon their main arsenal, filling it with hundreds of barrels of powder. In retrospect it was probably not thewisest idea to make the most visible target in the city into a literal powder keg.
Morosini seems to have been informed of how the Parthenon was being used by a deserter—or perhaps even by a Turkish agent in the belief that the attackers would never target such a historic treasure. They were wrong. Morosini pounded the city with artilleryfrom the surrounding hills. He did not spare the temple. A mortar roundpierced the roof on September 26, 1687 and exploded in the magazine.
An Italian representation of the bombardment of the Parthenon and attached Mosque by Venetian mortars in 1687 causing the Ottoman powder arsenal inside to blow up almost destroying the ancient temple.
The explosion was tremendous. Greek architect and archaeologist Kornilia Chatziaslani described the destruction:
. ...three of the sanctuary’s four walls nearly collapsed and three-fifths of the sculptures from the frieze fell. Nothing of the roof apparently remained in place. Six columns from the south side fell, eight from the north, as well as whatever remained from eastern porch, except for one column. The columns brought down with them the enormous marble architraves, triglyphs and metopes.
Three hundred defenders and civilians were killed outright. Stone fragmentsrained down like shrapnel over a wide area wounding hundreds more. Fires were ignited that burned much of the Acropolis and much of the city including many homes. Of course it finished off Turkish resistance. Morosini occupied the city in triumph.
Count Königsmarck would later claim that Morosini regretted the “accidental” destruction of the temple, but in his own report back to Venice the commander boasted of his lucky shot. The next day Morosini ordered the looting of the smoldering wreckage. His troops tried to remove sculptures of Poseidon and Athena’s horsesfell to the ground and smashed as they tried to detach them from the building’s west pediment. The victor had to content himself with lesser spoils. 21st Century Venetians with their sinking city may be all about preserving “our priceless architectural and cultural heritage”, but clearly in the 17th Century they didn’t give a rat’s ass.
Morosini held the city for less than a year, retreating when the Ottomans assembled a large army to dislodge him.
A late 18th Century European depiction of the ruined Parthenon and attached mosque.When the Turks returned they did not try to rebuild the nearly destroyed building. They did use some of the stone wreckage as construction materialelsewhere in the city and used smaller pieces as land fill. They also discovered there was a lucrative European market for antiquities and began to loot the ruins for their own profitand to allow visitors to cart of souvenirswhich were sometimes hacked from still standing components.
Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elginobtained a controversial permit from government to remove pieces from the Parthenon while serving as the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1799 to 1803. Through 1812, Elgin’s agents removed about half of the surviving sculptures of the Parthenon and carted them away to England where they found a prominent home in the British Museum.
Looted from the Parthenon, the so-called Elgin Marbles are proudly displayed in the British Museum. Despite decades of appeals and negotiations the Brits refuse to return what they stole.A war of independence restored Athens to Greek hands for the first time in centuries in 1832. For the Greeks the Parthenon was a great cultural symbol. They quickly leveled the minaret and razed the remaining portions of the mosque. They cleared the Acropolis of all Latin medieval and Ottoman buildings. But they had no money for further restoration or to prevent continued looting by western antiquity collectors and dealers.
The Greeks always protested the legitimacy of the Lord Elgin’s questionable deal—indeed the supposed permit documents from the Sultan have never been found. The Greek government has been demanding a return of their patrimony since 1975 when they began a comprehensive project to restore the Parthenon and the Acropolis. The British Government has steadfastly refused on the principle that they were stolen fair and squaredespite decades of rancorous negotiations.
The Parthenon today is threated by Athens, air pollution and acid rain whe eats away at the marble.There have been several attempts at not so much restoring the Parthenon, but cleaning and preserving it in its current state of ruin. Heavy air pollution and acid rain continue to do damage to the building and some predict may complete what the Venetians started.
The history of Rock and Rollis replete with firsts that really weren’t. Almost anyone will tell you that the first rock and roll song was Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley and the Comets recorded in 1954 and which shot to the top of the charts the next year. Wrong. It can only claim to be the first 1# hit and/or the first big hit by White artists covering a Black style.
Some musicologists claim that songs with key rock and roll elements were recorded by Black blues artists as early as 1939. But it took ten years and several technological and economic changes—the introductionof the 45 rpm single and the collapse of the viability of large touring big bands among them—for Black artists to break out with a new sound on the Rhythm and Blues charts. Two 1949 contenders were Goree Carter’s guitar driven Rock Awhile and Jimmy Preston’s Rock the Joint with a driving, blaring saxophone lead. In fact Rock the Joint was covered three years later by Bill Haley and his earlier band The Saddlemen becoming a minor hit.
Bu
Rocket 88 by Jackie Brenston & His Delta Cats--really Ike Turner and the Kings of Rythm--is one of the contenders for the title of first true rock and roll song.Another Black contender for first rock and roll record is Rocket 88 by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats—Ike Turner and The Kings of Rhythm under contract to another label working under a pseudonym—recorded by Sam Phillips at Sun Records in MemphisMarch of 1951.
By the mid-‘50’s, rock and roll was an emerging genre and picking up steam, but pop charts were still dominated by crooners, close harmony vocal groups—the doo wop sound would emerge from the street corners out of this genre—and even the surviving big bands. It took Elvis Presley to send it into thestratosphere. Presley was the super-nova of a group of Sun Records stars who would infuse Delta blues and gospel sounds into a tight, stripped down country sound. Presley’s first regional hit, That’s All Right Momma was recorded within months of Rock Around the Clock. Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash, all recording at Sun along with Presley would define what became known as Rock-a-Billy.
Chuck Berry was among the black artists who were kicking up early rock and roll to an intense new level with a driving, beat heavy guitar.
In 1955 Black blues based performers would drive the beat even harder and introduce a new guitar sound—Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard. And white acts were hard on their heels cleaning up lyrics and sanding off raw edges to make their sound acceptable to white teenagers—and their parents.
By 1957 rock and roll was a cultural steamroller. So why at this late date does a record by some kids from Lubbock, Texas barely out of their teens which went to No. 1 on September 24, 1957, rate as seminal in rock history?
Because the band, The Crickets, their lead singer and creative dynamo, Buddy Holly, and a smart record labelassembled at last all of the elementsthat would tie together the disparate roots of rock and propel it into a new era. That was the day that That’ll be the Day made it to the top.
Buddy Holly, in glasses, and his Lubbok, Texas high school buddies were The Crickets and the put the cherry on top of developing Rock and Roll.The Cricket’s line-up—lead, rhythm, and bass and drums—stripped awaysaxes, horns, stride or boogie-woogie piano, organ, and even the country fiddles and accordions that were part of earlier combos. This quartet arrangement soon became standard, capable of delivering a beat heavy, driving sound. The band could sing together in harmony or put Holly out front. They could take the themes of teen age love, the stripped down substitute for the raw sex of early black rock, and run with them in new and creative directions. Perhaps most important, they were the first white act to consistently write and record their own material instead of either adapting it from Black artists or using the talents of professional songwriters like those in the famous Brill Building. Within a few years bands, as opposed to solo performers, would dominate rock music and they would be expected to produce their own songs.
The Crickets were immediately influential. Within a year other acts were copying their formula. In the early ‘60’s John Lennon and Paul McCartney would acknowledge their debt by naming their band the Beatles, a tip-o’-the-hat to the Crickets.
Influenced by the Memphis Rock-a-Billies, Holly and high school pals were experimenting and making demos as early as 1954. Holly signed with Decca Records in 1956 and recorded several sides under his own name with the backing of Sonny Curtis, Jerry Allison and Don Guess in Nashville. These records were straight forward Rock-a-Billy and were only moderately regionally successful. One of those sides was a version of That’ll be the Day.
Holly was inspired to write the song after a trip to the local movie palacein Lubbock with his pals where they saw The Searchers. The words were something of a catch phrase for John Wayne’s obsessed character.
The Brunswick label for That'll be the Day by the Crickets. This version took almost six months to rise to #1 on the charts and change Rock and roll.In February 1957 producer Norman Petty brought Holly and his band, now consisting of drummer Jerry Allison, bassist Joe B. Mauldin, and rhythm guitarist Niki Sullivan to Clovis, New Mexico for a new recordings session for the Brunswick label. Because Holly was under contract as a solo to Decca, Petty decided to release the resulting recordings under a band name. After a brief consultation among the members, they settled on The Crickets after first toying with some “bird” names.
That’ll Be the Day was released in May with Holly’s name visible only in the fine print as a composer under the name of The Crickets, as would all of the subsequent successful releases from that session. It began its slow rise to the top. As it did so, Decca discovered that their artist was one of the Crickets. They were not overly alarmed, however, because Brunswick was a subsidy. They signed a new deal with Holly. The material recorded in Nashville would be released under his own name on Decca. Anything recorded with the band would be released as the Crickets. Subsequent solo efforts by Holly would go out on yet another subsidy label, Coral.
The Buddy Holly Center in his Lubbock, Texas home town commemorates the young musician's achievements.
As That’ll Be the Day was nearing the peak of its climb, Decca released the Nashville version under Holly’s name on September 7 as a B sideto Rock Around With Ollie Vee. It was not a hit, but made it to Holly’s solo LP.
Those with the greatest stake in theoutcome of the Civil War were those held in bondage. While the protection, preservation, and extension of slavery clearly the main motivation for Southern secession, Northerners were divided on abolition. As Abraham Lincoln understood in the early days of the conflict, he could only rally support for a war in defense of the Union. Only as the war dragged on was he able to sell freeing the slaves in the rebellious states as a war measure to damage the Confederate economy.
Despite this, whenever Union armies approached, slaves left their plantations to cross the lines. At first many were returned to their masters. Later many were impressed into work gangs for the Army. General Benjamin Butler declared them contraband of war, forfeited as property by masters in rebellion. Later men were enlisted into segregated regiments and sent into battle. Still, slavery was protectedin the Border States, an inducement for them to remain loyal. Finally, at war’s end slavery was abolished by Constitutional Amendment.
Most freed slaves were illiterate—teaching servants to read and write was, after all, a crime. Few were able, or had the means to comment on their condition in printed poetry, although a rich oral tradition of songs and tales was passed down. In the North and in pockets of the South, there was an educated elite of Free Blacks. These folks had the education and opportunity to commit literature.
One such educated woman was Francis Ellen Watkins, born on September 24, 1825 of free parents in Baltimore, Maryland. She was educated at the Academy for Negro Youth operated by her uncle and nurtured in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. While working as a domestic for a Quaker family, she was given access to their extensive library and began writing poetry that was occasionally printed in local newspapers. By 1845 she was able to publish a collection of verse, Autumn Leaves, later re-issued as Forest Leaves. Another collection, Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects, published ten years later drew critical attention and praise.
The second, expanded edition of her first collection.
After relocating first to Ohio and then to Pennsylvania, Watkins took to the lecture circuit in the 1850’s in support of abolition, women’s rights, and temperance.
Like other Black writers of the time, before and during the Civil War Watkins was not writing for her own people, but for a largely white audience. The purposeof her verse was to prove that people of color were capable of the same high and lofty sentiments as could be found in the pages of genteel magazines. To this end, she adopted the formal and sentimental style of the age.
Later Black critics would dismiss her work on this account although after the War she contributedto the growing Black press as well as writing for White audiences. In 1859 Watkins voiced her support for John Brown, personally comforted his wife before his execution, and even smuggled a letter to her hero in prison. It read in part:
In the name of the young girl sold from the warm clasp of a mother’s arms to the clutches of a libertine or profligate,—in the name of the slave mother, her heart rocked to and fro by the agony of her mournful separations,—I thank you, that you have been brave enough to reach out your hands to the crushed and blighted of my race.
The First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia was Harper's religious home after the Civil War.
On the eve of the Civil War Watkins married Fenton Harper, a widower with three children and moved with him back to Ohio where she bore a daughter. Her husband died in 1864 and she moved back to Philadelphia, which would remain her home the rest of her long life. There she joined the local Unitarian Church, grateful for its support in the causes of abolition and equal rights for Blacks in the South. She kept up that membership, although she also remained closewith her African Methodist Episcopal roots.
At war’s end she toured the South speaking to large crowds of Freedmen urging the necessity of education and the virtues of sobriety, marital fidelity, and faith.
Harperalso became a noted advocate for Women’s Suffrage. She campaigned in support of the Fourteenth Amendment, despite its failure to include women in its protections. A prolific writer, she frequently contributed articles to Black journals as well as poetry and stories to the popular press.
Among her books was the story of Moses in verse, The Story of the Nile published in 1869. She often returned to Moses in subsequent writing and helped popularize the metaphor of the Exodus story for the journey of Blacks to freedom. In 1872 Sketches on Southern Life Harper recounted tales of Reconstructionthrough the eyes of an elderly woman. She also wrote popular romance novelswith mixed race heroines.
Harper as a mature writer, poet, and activist.Harper became the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania Superintendent of the Colored Section of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union; (WCTU), helped found the National Association of Colored Women, and was activein the Universal Peace Union. Late in life she collaborated with Ida B. Welles in her crusade against lynching.
Harper died in 1911, unable to see women get the vote. Despite her contributions and accomplishments, her old fashion writing style led to her being largely forgotten. Her gravestonein Philadelphia was long since toppledand unattended before admirers recently erected a new stone.
Harper's original gravestone was re-set and this marker placed by her grave by members of the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia.Bible Defense of Slavery, written on the eve of the Civil War, was typical of her work. It was a scathing attack on the use of Christianity to justify slavery.
Bible Defense of Slavery
Take sackcloth of the darkest dye
And shroud the pulpits round!
Servants of Him that cannot lie,
Sit mourning on the ground.
Let holy horror blanch each cheek,
Pale every brow with fears;
And rocks and stones, if ye could speak,
Ye well might melt to tears!
Let sorrow breathe in every tone,
In every strain ye raise;
Insult not God’s majestic throne
With th’ mockery of praise.
A “reverend” man, whose light should be
The guide of age and youth,
Brings to the shrine of Slavery
The sacrifice of truth!
For the direst wrong by man imposed,
Since Sodom’s fearful cry,
The word of life has been unclos’d,
To give your God the lie.
Oh! When ye pray for heathen lands,
And plead for their dark shores,
Remember Slavery’s cruel hands
Make heathens at your doors!
—Francis Ellen Watkins Harper
How big a deal was the second Dempsey-Tunney Heavyweight Championship fight that was held at Chicago’s Soldier Field on September 22, 1927? Big. Huge. Gargantuan. Oh there had been fights with greater attendance—120,000 squeezed into Philadelphia’s Sesquicentennial Stadium 364 days earlier on September 23, 1926 to see Jack Dempsey defend his title against top contender Gene Tunney, his first title bout in three years. Tunney had stunned the nation by handily whooping the popular champ on points. Interest in the re-match was astronomical. Only 104,000 bodies could squeeze into Soldier Field—but they shelled out $2,658,660, about $22 million in today’s dollars. It was the first $2 million gate in entertainment history and a record that would stand for 50 years.
The fight attracted celebrities of all stripes, politicians, millionaire businessmen, and many of the best known writers in America. Fight promoter Tex Rickard boasted to a reporter before the bout with only a little hyperbole:
Kid, if the earth cam’se up and the sky came down and wiped out my first 10 rows, it would be the end of everything. Because I’ve got in those 10 rows all the world’s wealth, all the world’s big men, all the world’s brains and production talent. Just in them 10 rows, kid. And you and me never seed (sic) nothing like it.
In big cities around the countrycrowds gathered on streets to see round by round summaries of the action posted, just as they gathered for the results of World Series games.
Despite losing his belt decisively the year before, the draw as Dempsey, the famous Manassa Mauler, a brawling former hobo from out West who had become the People’s Champion.
Jack Dempsey was born in Manassa, Colorado on June 24, 1895, his father was a down-on-his-luck sometime miner and laborer who bounced from town to town, and job to job or job hunt around Colorado, West Virginia, and finally Utah. The whole family sometimes rode the rails and jungled up at hobo camps. When he was about 5 his mother convertedto Mormonism and cajoled her husband to join her. Jack was baptized at age 8, the age of consent in the faith. The connection to the Latter Day Saints brought the family to Salt Lake.
By the time he was a teenager Dempsey was helping to support his family by entering saloons and announcing, “I can’t sing, I can’t dance, but I can lick anyone in the house.” He was already a powerful puncher and could take a pummeling, too. He made a living from the bets on the bar brawls he almost always won and was soon fighting in amateur matches, then as a low grade pro on the club and smoker circuit. His early record is hard to keep track of because he boxed under his own name and as Kid Blackie.
From 1914 to early ’17 Dempsey fought 36 times under his own name mostly in Utah, Colorado, and Nevada, but with a trip to New York in 1916 as he gained a reputation. His record was 30 wins—most by knock-outs—six draws or no decisions, and just two losses.
With the outbreak of World War I, Dempsey got a good job in a California ship yard making real money without having to rely on his fists for the first time in his life. He would later be taunted as a draft dodger for not entering the Army. In fact, as we shall see, this was an issue in his fights with Tunney ten years later. Dempsey had actually tried to enlist but was rejected because of injuries associated with boxing. Whether or not he needed to box for the money, he loved the game and fought several times in California on weekendsincluding some bouts against nationally ranked fighters like Willie Mehan.
By 1918 he was well enough known to tour and fight about every two weeks in Racine, Wisconsin; Buffalo, New York; Milwaukee; St. Paul; Denver; Joplin, Missouri; Atlanta; Harrison, New Jersey; Dayton, Ohio; back to San Francisco for a rematch with Mehan (his only loss in this stretch); Reno; New Orleans; multiple times in Philadelphia and other Pennsylvania cities; New Haven. It was a brutal, grueling schedule, but after the loss to Mehan, he had ten straight victories all but one by a knock out. The boxing world was abuzz about the brawler from the west and Dempsey had earned his shot at the reigning champ.
Dempsey connects with the much larger champ Jess Willard in his upset win of the Heavy Weight Championship.Jess Willard, the Pottawatomi Giant, had been the final Great White Hope and the man who finally defeated the first Black Champ, Jack Johnson. He had held the title for four years, but had defended the title only once back in 1916 preferring to rake in purses from non-title bouts and appearance fees for exhibitions. He towered over Dempsey and outweighed him by almost 40 pounds. He was and remains the biggest fighter to hold the heavy weight belt.
But with a devastating attack and flurries of punches to the head, Dempsey knocked down the champ 5 times in the first round, battering his face into a swollen mess. Although there were no more knock downs, Dempsey dominated the next two rounds. Willard could not answer the bell at the beginning of round four. Dempsey was World Champ. The power of Dempsey’s punches was so terrific, charges of doctored gloves, bandage wraps covered in plaster of Paris, or even that he was clutching an iron spike in one glove were bandied about. All charges were disproved by witnesses who saw Dempsey’ hands unwrapped and by fight film showing him pushing Willard away in clenches with his glove open. Willard himself said:
Dempsey is a remarkable hitter. It was the first time that I had ever been knocked off my feet. I have sent many birds home in the same bruised condition that I am in, and now I know how they felt. I sincerely wish Dempsey all the luck possible and hope that he garnishes all the riches that comes with the championship. I have had my fling with the title. I was champion for four years and I assure you that they’ll never have to give a benefit for me. I have invested the money I have made.
The brawler defended his title five times over the next few years beginning against Billy Miski 14months later. Ray Brennan at Madison Square Garden gave the champ his toughest fight going 15 rounds before being KOed on body punches. His fight with French Champion and World War I hero Georges Carpentier at Boyle’s Thirty Acres in Jersey Cityresulted in the first million dollar gate and the Frenchman hitting the canvas in the fourth round. The fast-on-his-feetTommy Gibbons went 15 rounds in a fight at remote Shelby, Montana. Dempsey won on a decision. The Champ said, “Nailing him was like trying to thread a needle in a high wind.”
The most famous boxing painting, maybe the most famous sports painting of all time--Fripo knocks Dempsey through the ropes. Copies hung in hundreds of bars.The defense against another giant, Argentine Luis Fripo had to be held at the Polo Grounds, home of the New York Giants to accommodate the crowd. The 1923 bout was not a close fight. Dempsey had Fripo down multiple times. But Fripo could take a punch and came back to land a lucky one against Dempsey which sent him sailing through the ropes onto the ring side press table. The Champ got back in the ring and nailed Fripo in the second round. Probably the most famous sports painting of all time was by George Bellows showing Dempsey landing on that table.
After the Fripo fight Dempsey took an extended break from defending his title. He took time off to marry actress Estelle Taylor and appeared with her in a short runBroadway production called The Big Fight. He also had a nasty break up with his longtime manager Jack “Doc” Kearns that resulted in a bitter, expensive, and time consuming law suit. Mostly Dempsey was just enjoying the fruits of being Champ and one of the most famous and popular men in America.
Clowning around with Harry Houdini in a publicity shot with with Army recruits.But as time dragged on criticism mounted for his failure to defend the Title. The main reason seemed to be that the top contender, Harry Willis was Black. After first winning the Belt at a time when the wounds to the White American psyche from the dominance of Jack Johnson was still fresh, Dempsey had told a reporter that he would not allow a Negro to fight him for the championship. But then he publicly claimed to be willing to face Willis. And it may be true. Promoters and venues fearing race riotswere not eager to take the risk.
Enter a new rising contender, Gene Tunney.
Tunney was born on May 27, 1897 to Irish immigrant parents in New York City. He was big and exceptionally fast for his size and established himself as an amateur and club fighter as a highly skilled ring man. He is known to have lost only two fights. He enlisted in the Marine Corps and fought in France where he also became American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) Champion.
After the War he became a lumberjack in Ontario for a while, seeking solitude and recovery from what was likely combat caused post-traumatic stress syndrome before turning pro. Then he quickly moved up through the ranks beating top boxers including Carpentier and Gibbons. By 1926 he was a popular fighter tagged the Fighting Marine and a reasonable White alternative top contender. A bout with Dempsey was inevitable.
Gene Tunney became Dempsey's nemesis and then life long friend.Promoter Tex Rickard wanted to stage the bout in Chicago. But Dempsey got word the Al Capone was a big fan and was ready to bet big money on the fight. Dempsey was still stung by those early charges that his Title win against Willard might have been rigged in some wayand knew that gambling and fight fixing were eating away at public support. He insisted the fight not be held in the Windy City. Instead the two fighters met in Philadelphia.
This time public sentiment had swung to Tunney both because of Dempsey’s long lay-off and because charges that he was a draft dodger were resurrected and compared to the challenger’s status as a war hero and veteran. Many boxing experts thought Dempsey would be rusty and that Tunney was a technically more proficient fighter.
It turned out that those experts were right. Tunney out fought Dempsey for 10 rounds and won a unanimous decision. It was Dempsey’s graciousness in defeat and a widely reported quip to his wife, “Honey, I forgot to duck,” that help him win back the admiration of the fans.
After contemplating retirement, Dempsey came back to win a bout with another top contender, Jack Sharkey at Yankee Stadium in 1927 for the right to face Tunney again.
As the challenger, Dempsey could not keep the fight out of Chicago. And as he feared, Capone bragged about putting down $50,000 of his own money on him. The public followed, betting heavily on the challenger.
As champ Tunney got sports first million dollar pay day, while Dempsey was guaranteed about half of that. During negotiationson the terms of the bout, someone from Dempsey’s camp insisted on using the new but optional rule that required fighters to retreat to a neutral corner after a knock down before a count could begin. It is a mystery why Dempsey’s people would make such a request since their fighter’s aggressive style including standing over prone opponents ready to slam them as they struggled to their feet. This was highly effective, and a deterrent to a groggy fighter even considering getting back up. They also agreed to a larger than standard ring, an advantage to the mobile Tunney and a disadvantage to Dempsey who liked to pin his opponents in a corner and pummel them with a flurry of blows.
Once again Tunney dominated the fight. He was well ahead on points in the seventh round when Dempsey recoveredand unleashed a torrent of hits sending Tunney to the canvas. For what seemed like several seconds, Dempsey loomed over Tunney as the referee tried to push him away and told him to retreat to a neutral corner. It was as if he forgot or never knew the rule. The count did not begin until Dempsey finally did. On the count of nine, Tunney got up and closed on Dempsey. The round ended but in the next round he dropped Dempsey for a count of one—but the referee began that count before Tunney reached the corner. The Champ outscored Dempsey through the final two rounds and won a unanimous decision.
Tunney is down but the ref won't start the count until Dempsey goes to his corner. At the end of the famous Long Count, Tunney got to his feet and pummeled Dempsey.The fight became celebrated in boxing lore for the Long Count. Just how much extra time Tunney had to recover was controversial. The official time keeper had the total time Tunney was down as 14 seconds. In a film of the fight a clock was superimposed that recorded Tunney’s time on the floor as 13 seconds, from the moment he fell until he got up. But most of the public never saw that film until years later when the ban on interstate transportation of boxing films was lifted. But at the time the public imagined a much longer break for Tunney and sympathy swung to Dempsey who some thought was robbed.
Neither of the fighters saw it that way. After the fight, Dempsey lifted Tunney’s arm and said, “You were best. You fought a smart fight, kid.” Tunney later said that he had picked up the referee’s count at two, and could have gotten up at any point after that, but waited until nine for obvious tactical reasons. Dempsey said, “I have no reason not to believe him. Gene’s a great guy.”
Dempsey may have lost the fight, but he emerged as a beloved hero.
Tunney defended his title just once and then retired undefeated in 1928 at the request of his wife, wealthy socialite,Mary “Polly” Lauder. He and Dempsey became great friends and were close through the rest of their lives. The couple had several children including former Democratic Senator John V. Tunney of California. He died at age 81 on November 7, 1978 in Greenwich Hospital in Connecticut.
Jack Dempsey and his famous New York restaurant were featured in MGM's Big City in 1937 with Spencer Tracy and Louise Rainer. Dempsey and other sports legends including Jim Thorpe, former White Hope Jim Jeffords, and popular wrestler of the day Man Mountain Dean joined Tracy in a climatic street brawl between independent and union cab drivers. Don't ask....
Dempsey enjoyed along retirement and became the proprietor of a popular New York night club. He made several films, usually playing himselfincluding Big City with Spencer Tracy and Louise Rainer and appeared on several top radio programs. He fronted several charities, including one to raise money for his friend Joe Lewis when he was down on his luck.
Lt. Commander Jack Dempsey of the U.S. Coast Guard during World War II.During World War II he finally put the old draft resister canardbehind him by enlisting in the Coast Guard and rising to the rank of Lt. Commander. Although he spent much of his time selling War Bonds and making moral boosting visits to the troops, Dempsey also instructed sailors in self-defense and saw sea duty and action aboard the attack transport USS Arthur Middleton for the invasion of Okinawa.
In 1977 he wrote an autobiographyDempseyin collaboration with his daughter Barbara Lynn.
On May 31, 1983, Dempsey died of heart failure in New York City at age 87 with his second wife Deanna at his side. His last words were “Don’t worry honey; I’m too mean to die.”
Almost Jack, almost.
On September 22, 1950 the world was surprised when an American diplomaton loan to the United Nations was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. It was not that his achievement was unworthy—brokering the thorny negotiations that led to an armistice agreements between Israel and the Arab States ending a bloody war that began when Israel declaredits independence—it was because Ralph Bunche was an African-American.
Bunch was born in Detroit, Michigan on August 4, 1904 (some sources place the date a year earlier.) His father was a barberserving an exclusively white clientele—and thus probably passing himself off as white in his work. Some of his ancestors had been free since before the American Revolution. His mother was an accomplished amateur musician. Also in the house hold was his maternal grandmother, “Nana” Johnson who had been born into slavery but was also capable of “passing.” Despite their fair completions the family strongly identified as Black and lived in that community.
Both parents were in fragile health and the whole family relocated to Albuquerque, New Mexico in hopes of improvement. Both however soon succumbed—probably to tuberculosis. Bunche, his two sisters, and his grandmother moved to Los Angeles.
Bunche as a UCLA graduate.
To help support the family Ralph sold newspapers and held numerous side jobs, including laying carpets, and being a house boy to a film actor while he attended Jefferson High School. Despite the time lost to work, he excelled as both a student and an athlete. He was valedictorian of his graduating class, and earned athletic scholarships to the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA.) While the scholarships paid his school expenses, he earned his personal expenses by working as a janitor. He competed as a varsity basketball player on league championship teams while also competing in debate and writing for the campus newspaper. In 1927 Bunche graduated summa cum laude and valedictorian with a major in international relations.
His accomplishment was a matter of great pride in his South Los Angeles neighborhood. The community raised $1000 by subscription to supplement a scholarship so that Bunche could continue his education at Harvard. He completed his Masters in political science in just a year. He began teaching at Howard University, the nation’s most prestigious Black institution in the fall of 1928. For the next six years he alternated terms at Howard and back at Harvard where he pursued his Doctorate. He was named Chair of Howard’s Department of Political Science, a title he held until 1950 despite numerous absencesto conduct research or in war time or diplomatic service.
He received many honors and distinctions as a scholar. The Rosenwald Fellowship in 1932 and 1933 enabled him to conduct research in Africa for a dissertation comparing Frenchrule in Togoland and Dahomey. The resulting paper won the Toppan Prize for outstanding original research in the social sciences in 1934. A fellowship from the Social Science Research Council from 1936-37 enabled Bunche to do postdoctoral research at Northwestern University, the London School of Economics, and the University of Cape Town in South Africa.
Bunche as a young Scholar.As he was becoming the acknowledged leading academic on African affairs and European Colonialism, he began to forcefully expound his sometimes controversial views. His influential 1936 pamphlet A World View of Race argued, “…class will some day supplant race in world affairs. Race war will then be merely a side-show to the gigantic class war which will be waged in the big tent we call the world.” From 1936-40 Bunche was contributing editor to a leftist academic journal, Science and Society: A Marxian Quarterly.
It was inevitable that with his credentials and expertise Bunche would be called upon for service during World War II. He began as a senior analyst on colonial affairs at the Office of Strategic Services (OSS.) There his knowledge of French possessions helped provide information that kept most of the sub-Saharan colonies in Free French hands and available as support for eventual action in North Africa. He also provided insight on Nazi attempts to turn South African Boers against the British Empire.
In 1943 Bunche moved to the State Department where he served under Alger Hiss as Associate Chief of the Division of Dependent Area Affairs. There he worked not only on African issues but as a leader of the Institute of Pacific Relations, and the Anglo-American Caribbean Commission.
Bunche was active in preliminary planning for the Dumbarton Oaks Conversationsheld in Washington D.C. in 1944 and as an adviser to the U.S. Delegationfor the Charter Conference of the United Nations in 1945. He participated in the drafting of the Charter. He worked closely with Eleanor Rooseveltin the creation and adoption of the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights.
Given his role in the birth of the institution, it came as no surprise when UN Secretary-General Trygve Lie asked to “borrow” Bunche from the State Department in 1946. He was placed in charge of the Department of Trusteeship to oversee the numerous dependent areas that were placed under UN Trusteeship following the war. It was delicate work, balancing the demands of former colonial masters and the growing anti-colonial nationalism of countries straining at the “transition” process to self-government.
In June, 1947 Bunche was assigned to work on the seemingly intractable problem of confrontation between Jewsand Arabs in Palestine. He soon moved from assistant to the UN Special Committee on Palestine to Principal Secretary of the UN Palestine Commission, which was charged with carrying out the partition approved by the UN General Assembly. When the original partition plan was droppedamid intense fighting between Arabs and Israelisin early 1948 the UN appointed Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte as mediatorfor the conflict with Bunche as his chief aide. Count Bernadotte was assassinated in Jerusalem four months later on September 17 by the Zionist group Lehi. And Bunche was catapulted to chief mediator on Palestine. It was, theoretically a “temporary” appointment.
The peace negotiations were tough, delicate, shirtsleeve work.For eleven months Bunche conducted ceaseless negotiation from his headquarters on the island of Rhodes. Israeli negotiator Moshe Dayan later reported on Bunche’s unorthodox style. He often conducted one-on-one talks with the parties over supposedly casual gamesof billiards. He generally kept the parties apart as much as possible since their mere presence with each other in the same room inflamed passions and tended to harden positions. He shuffled the parties in an out getting little concessions here and there from both parties until he could finally bring them together to sign the 1949 Armistice Agreements made successively between February and July between Israel and its neighbors, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordon, and Syria. No party got what they really wanted, but all parties got what they could live with—at least for a while.
His accomplishments made Bunche an instant celebrity. He was greeted in New York City by a ticker tape parade and his adopted home town of Los Angeles declared a Ralph Bunche Day. He was awarded the Spingarn Prize by the National Association of Colored People (NAACP) in 1949. He was awarded 30 honorary degrees over the next three years. He could not keep up with requests for speeches. And all of this only intensified with the announcement of the Nobel Prize.
Of course, Bunche was not without critics. His participation in the avowedly Marxist academic publication, his endorsement of National Negro Congress in the ‘30’s, and his close association with accused traitorAlger Hiss did not go unnoticed. He was somewhat protected by the enormous prestige of the Nobel Prize—and the fact that he was no longer at the State Department. But he was subjected to an investigation by a Loyalty Board into American diplomats working at the United Nations in 1953 and had to personally appear and refute each of 14 spurious chargesagainst him. Although he had the support of President Dwight Eisenhower, it was a painful and humiliating experience for him.
Bunche with Ralph Abernathy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Coretta Scott King on the March from Selma to Montgomery.Many also did not appreciate his loud public support for Civil Rights causes. Academically, he had participated in the groundbreaking research on American race relations by Swedish sociologistGunnar Myrdal and often spoken out about the absence of scientific evidence for differentiations among the races. He publicly supported actions by both the NAACP and the Urban League. He endorsedthe campaigns of non-violent civil disobedience of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and participated in the 1963 March on Washington. Controversy around him probably cost him appointment as Secretary of State or Ambassador to the United Nations under John F. Kennedy.
The beneficiaries of his greatest achievement have not looked kindly towards him in recent years. Palestiniansand Israelis have hardened even more toward one another after years of ongoing conflict and bloodshed. Both wield their own oft revised views of historyas cudgels. And both sides now feel that Bunche “sold them out” and blame the ongoing conflict in not getting everything they demanded in those tense negotiations. Compromise and compromisersare no longer welcome in either camp.
For his part, the indefatigable Bunche resumed splitting his time numerous educational commitments, lecturing, and undertaking more missions for the United Nations. From 1955 to 1967, he was Undersecretary for Special Political Affairs and from 1968 to his death was Undersecretary-General. In 1960 Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld appointed him as his special representative to oversee the UN commitments in the war torn Congo and he served similarly during conflicts in Cyprus, Kashmir, and Yemen.
The U.S. Post Office honored Bunch with a 1982 stamp.Bunche found time to teach at Harvard from 1950-52, serve on the New York City Board of Education from 1958-64, serve as a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers from 1960 to 65, as well as being a board member of the Institute of International Education, and a trustee of Oberlin College, Lincoln University, and New Lincoln School.
Bunche died, evidently of exhaustion, on December 9, 1971 at the age of 68.
This is another one of the calendar poems inspired by random, or not so random, coincidences of dates, usually discovered as I am in a mad scramble for a blog entry topic. It first appeared in 2013 but the calendar serendipity is annual.
Tomorrow will be the first day of Autumn but here in McHenry County sky will be an opal haze from the drifting smoke of Western wildfires. Many of us are still hunkered down in our homes and may be cheated of glory march of the season. We are bombarded with terrible news.
This year low grade wars bubble underneath American consciences in all of the old battle grounds of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. The Saudis bomb and starve Yemen. The Israelis bomb Gaza whenever they get the itch and raze Palestinian homes and villages at will. The Turks shoot the Kurds and the Russians still are at undeclared war with Ukraine. China crushes democracy in Hong Kong. And thanks to Trump’s whim to end Obama’s Iran nuclear deal and Kim Jung Il’s erratic sabre rattling the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has re-set the Doomsday Clock to just 100 minutes to midnight.
An American made aircraft drops American made bombs on Yemeni civilians.Among its grander visions which must have seemed distant even to the founders of the Day of Peace, was at a call for an annual one day cease fire of on-going hostilities. I can recall no armies ever standing down, but perhaps I missed something.
The rapid deterioration of the environment—melting ice caps, rising seas, hurricanes, heat waves, fires, droughts, and famine—also displacesmillions creating international migration crisis, destabilizing governments, and creating conflict over scarce and vanishing resources—the perfect recipe for war and more war.
And here at home we seem teetering on the edge of Civil War.
No wonder this old piece is still relevant.
The well intentioned gather at a Peace Pole.International Day of Peace/Autumnal Equinox Eve
September 21, 2013
The immanent equinox advertises itself
this morning with crack crisp air,
elderly maples beginning to rust at the crown,
a touch of gold on borer doomed ashes,
mums and marigolds,
hoodies up on dog walkers in shorts,
all under a prefect azure sky—
you know the one from the Sunday song
reminding “skies everywhere as blue as mine.”
The globe teeters on the edge of equanimity,
ready to balance for an instant between night and day,
seasons, yesterday and tomorrow,
a perilous, promising, moment.
The poor creatures swarming over its surface,
fancying ourselves somehow its masters,
alas, bereft of any balance….
From the Wishful Thinking File,
institutional division—
Festooned with doves and olive branches
brave words on blue banners,
a speech here, a lovely little vigil there,
an earnest strumming of guitars,
litanies sung, mantras chanted,
kind hearts and gentle people…
The creatures go about our brutal business,
blithely ignoring it all—
proclamation and equinox alike.
—Patrick Murfin
In American letters there have been figures who nurtured the writers who became the voices of their generations. There was the Sage of Concord, Ralph Waldo Emerson himself and his circle of acolytes and admirers. William Dean Howells presided at The Atlantic and hobnobbed with Mark Twain and fostered the realist novelists who lifted the genre from genteel diversions for ladies and epic adventure yarns to a mirror of American life. Ezra Pound in London and Paris and Harriet Monroe in Chicago nurtured a brood of modern poets. These folks were writers themselves who mentored and encouraged other writers, most often through periodicals that they edited or controlled.
But the man who revolutionized the American novel and made it the preeminent literary force of the first half of the 20th Century was not himself a writer. He held a previously obscure position—manuscript editor for a publishing house—and transformed it into a discoverer of new talent and an active partner with authors in shaping their books for the public eye. In the process he became the most famous editor of all time—Maxwell Perkins.
Perkins was born into the perfectly respectable WASP upper middle class on September 20, 1884, in New York City but was raised in the leafy bedroom suburb of Plainfield, New Jersey, a place of large homes and expansive lawns. His parents could afford to send him to a prestigious prep school, St. Paul’s in Concord, New Hampshire and on to Harvard where he studied economics in preparation for an expected career in banking or a brokerage house.
But at Harvard Perkins fell under the sway of Charles Townsend Copeland, a famous teacher of literature who ignited a passion for reading.
Upon graduation Perkins worked briefly as a reporter on the New York Times perhaps dreaming that it might be a stepping stone for a career as a writer. But it was not a good fit. In 1910 at age 26 he joined the distinguished—and stuffy—publishing house of Charles Scribner’s Sons as an advertising manager. Scribner’s was the home of genteel giants of American fiction—Edith Warton, Henry James, and John Galsworthy who chronicled the lives of the American elite.
It took Perkins four years to reach his goal—moving to the editorial department where he became a manuscript reader and junior editor. It was here that his talents shone, particularly what came to be described as his exquisite tasteand his eagerness to discover new talent that would break the bonds of convention. That did not always make him popular with his superiors, but he shepherded enough good work to profitable publicationthat he could keep his job.
F. Scott Fitzgerald.Perkins’s breakthrough came in 1919 when a manuscript landed on his desk that had been rejected with scathing comments by all of the company’s other readers. The Romantic Egotist by a very young writer named F. Scott Fitzgerald was indeed rough. But Perkins discerned talent. For nearly two years he worked closely with the writer, guiding him through two complete revisions while continually advocating for the book with his bosses.
His approach would set a pattern. He became not just a proof reader and style critic, but a friend and mentor to the young author, encouraging him, listening to his self-doubts, advising him on his tempestuous romance with a wealthy belle named Zelda, lending him money, and when necessary sobering him up. Much later Roger Burlingame, a writer who came under his tutelage described Perkins’s unique approach, “He never tells you what to do. Instead, he suggests to you, in an extraordinarily inarticulate fashion, what you want to do yourself.”
Despite all of his work, it looked like Scribner’s would finally reject the book. At a last, desperate conference, Perkins appealed to the company’s sense of self-preservation, warning that if a talented writer like Fitzgerald was lost to them, he would find a publisher elsewhere, have a great success, and other promising young writers would follow him, “Then we might as well go out of business.”
Scribner’s held its own and published the re-titled This Side of Paradise was published in 1920 with the boast that the author was the youngest ever issued by the house. It became a best seller, a popular sensation, and the company’s biggest seller of the year.
Perkins continued to work with his wunderkind, bringing to publication the even bigger success of the Great Gatsby and then holding his hand through years of writer’s block, self-doubt, and heavy drinking, extracting from thewreckage what he could. They remained personally and professionally close right up to the writer’s death.
Ernest Hemingway.Fitzgerald helped Perkins find his next discovery, when he wrote from Paris in 1924 recommending his friend and drinking companion Ernest Hemingway. The short novel the expatriate writer sent to New York with its terse language and shocking themes, required less editorial tinkering than Fitzgerald’s but did take a lot of cajoling to get his bosses, who were shocked by the use of curse words and sexual tension, to get the company to release A Sun Also Rises.
Hemingway also became a close friend to his editor—and often had him attend to various business aspects of his sometimes messy life in addition to work on his manuscripts, even seeking his help in securing his house in Key West. It was said that the first person Hemingway visited each time he was in New York was Maxwell Perkins. After Perkins died his old friend dedicated The Old Man and the Sea to him—just one of 68 books dedicated to him by grateful authors.
Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Perkins together remade the image of Scribner’s elevating it to undisputed first position among major American publishing houses. And they were just getting started.
In 1927 Perkins came upon the greatest challenge of his career—the wildly talented and prolific Thomas Wolfe who presented him with thousands of typewritten manuscript pages. Wolfe was everything Hemmingway was not—lush in his language, devoted to detailed and evocative description of scene and place, sprawling, undisciplined, and deeply emotionally attached to every sentence he wrote.
Thomas Wolfe.Together, with Wolfe fighting him every inch of the way, the two extracted a long memoir novel, Look Homeward Angel from the original submission. The book was published in 1929 to huge popular and critical acclaim. And there was more than enough material left over to seed a second novel. As Perkins struggled to keep a limit on the new book, Wolfe kept sending him more and more new pages. Eventually the editor prevailed and Of Time and the River was published in 1935.
By that time Perkins was a publishing legendand probably the only book editor who was a public figure in his own right. The epic struggles of getting Wolfe’s latest book to publication had become the stuff of New York literary circle gossip and critics were beginning to give Perkins as much credit for the book as the author. It was a bitter pill for any writer, particularly one as insecure as Wolfe. He broke with Perkins and Scribner’s to prove that he could do without them. Wolfe’s next two novels, The Web and the Rock and You Can’t Go Home Again were published posthumously. They were fine work, but Perkins’s disciplined handwas obviously missing.
Despite the rupture of their professional relationship, Perkins and Wolfe remained personally close. Wolfe, descending deeper into alcoholism, still considered his old editor his best friend.
Taken together those three literary giants have come to define Perkins in the public mind. And they would be a sufficient career achievement for anyone. But the editor discovered, nurtured, and refined the works of many others. In fact the list is staggering.
Take Ring Lardner. He was already a popular sports writer whose baseball yarns had a fallowing. But previous collections of columns had failed and Lardner did not consider himself a serious or literary writer. Perkins urged him to rework his stories and arranged them. Then he came up with an intriguing title that virtually announced confidence, How to Write Short Stories. The collection was published in 1924 and cemented Lardner’s reputation.
In 1938 Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning The Yearling based on a story idea suggested by Perkins. In the post war years he discovered the South African novelist Alan Paton and Cry the Beloved Country became an international sensation.
The mature legend at work at Scribner's.In the late 40’s with his health failing, Perkins continued to turn up new talent. He uncovered James Jones, one of the first important novelists of the World War II generation. Rejecting his first submission, Perkins suggested the idea for From Here to Eternity based on his conversations with the author. He worked on the early drafts of the manuscript but died before its publication and huge success.
The fruit of his final discovery did not ripen for nearly 20 years. He signed Marguerite Young to a publishing contract in 1947 on the basis of a 40 page extract. She did not finish her massive novel, Miss MacIntosh, My Darling until 1964 when it was published to huge critical acclaim.
Other writers Perkins edited include Sherwood Anderson, Erskine Caldwell, Taylor Caldwell, Marcia Davenport, Martha Gellhorn, J. P. Marquand, and Edmund Wilson.
Perkins died on June 17, 1947 in Stamford, Connecticut. Scribner’s was never the same without him.
In 1978 Max Perkins: Editor of Genius by A. Scott Berg became a best seller and made Perkins, the publishing industry legend, something of a popular hero. Other appreciations have been published since as well as several volumes of his correspondence including books dedicated to the letters to and from Fitzgerald and Hemingway.
Colin Firth as Perkins and Jude Law as Wolfe in Genius.
In 2016 the film Genius focused on the relationship of Perkins and Wolfe with Colin Firth as the editor and Jude Law as the tortured writer. It also featured Nichole Kidman as Wolfe’s lover Aline Bernstein and Laura Linley as Perkins’ wife. Although well reviewed, the cerebral film sank in the multiplexes where superheroes and sci-fi epics dominated the screens.
When I was cracking open an American history text in Cheyenne about 1965 African-Americans were covered in generous page or so in the 400 page tome. The contents can be summed up thusly—Harriet Tubman, Fredrick Douglas good for a short paragraph each; Lincoln frees the slaves and everyone is happy; uppity Blacks and carpetbaggers wreck horrible vengeance on the defeated South; Booker T. Washington establishes the Tuskegee Institute and one of his teachers, George Washington Carver invents a thousand things to do with the peanut and saves the economy of Georgia. The latter two, Credits to Their Race, got by far the most ink and even their pictures in the book.
Washington was the Black man Whites loved, and the one they anointed as the spokesman for the race. And why not. In order to grow his school in the hostile soil of the post-reconstruction South, Washington made a series of compromises, not the least of which was refusing to advance arguments for the restoration of black suffrage or challenging White authority in any way. Instead, he advocated that Blacks educate themselves—particularly in useful pursuits like agriculture and teaching—work hard, elevate their moral behavior, and prove themselves to Whites for years before pressing for expanded rights.
It was a song even Southern Democrats yearned to hear from Black folks, and it enabled Washington to gather financial supportand endowments from some of America’s wealthiest men to grow his school into a major institution in just a few years.
W. E. B. Dubois, founder of the NACCP, was Washington's harshest critic and rival for Black leadership. When Washington was criticized for meek submission to Jim Crow, he turned around an mocked the pretensions of the Black intellectual elite for preferring esoteric studies over practical vocational education that could lead to a slow but steady economic rise. The white establishment and press was unanimous in proclaiming Washington a model "credit to his race" and wringing their hands over Dubois's confrontational militancy.
Of course his consistent conservatismwould eventually draw the scorn of more aggressive Black leaders like W. E. B Du Bois, author of The Soul of Black Folks and a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). That criticism would be echoed by new generations of Black activists and the scholarswho emerged from the Black Studies departmentsof American Universities since the 1960’s.
It was on September 19, 1881 that a small Normal School for Colored Teachers opened its doors—or door, it only occupied one run-down shack—to students for the first time in Tuskegee, Alabama.
The previous year a local Macon County Black political leader, Lewis Adams, agreed to abandon his traditional allegiance to the Republican Party and support two White Democratic candidates for the Alabama legislature. It was one of the last elections in which Blacks, supported by the continued presence of Federal troops under Reconstruction were able to vote in substantial numbers. Thanks to the re-capture of state and local governments by Democrats, the era of Jim Crow was about to strip Blacks of almost all of their Civil Rights.
Whatever reason Adams had for “selling out” to the Democrats, he was rewarded with a $2000 appropriation to found a new Normal School. Samuel Armstrong, President of Virginia’s Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, the successful model for the new school, was asked to recommend a principal with the full expectation that the candidate would be White. Instead, Armstrong recommended a 25 year old Black graduate of Hampton—Booker T. Washington.
Booker T. Washington as the young Principal of Tuskegee.Washington had been born a slave in Hales Ford, Virginia April 5, 1856. Like many plantations children, his father was white, but never identified. He was just nine years old when the Civil War ended. After emancipation his mother Jane resettled in West Virginia where she at last could legally marry her long time husband a freedman Washington Ferguson. The boy took his step-father’s first name for his last.
As a youth he worked in local coal minesand in a salt furnace saving a small amount of money to travel to Hampton Institute for an education. He worked his way through that school and then enrolled in Wayland Seminary, a Baptist theological school, in 1876. He abandoned the pursuit of theministry and returned to Hampton, where he had been an outstanding student, to teach.
July 4, 1881 is usually sited as the foundation date for the new school. But classes did not actually begin until September. Washington took the reins of a school with just enough money to pay him and a couple of instructors for one year. The legislative grant had not covered either land or buildings. The ramshackle old church that the founders had secured was obviously unsuitable for a lasting institution.
Washington showed the skillful administrativeand fundraising abilities that marked his career by securing a loanfrom the White treasurer of the Hampton Institute to buy a plantationon the outside of town. He opened the school there in 1882.
By 1888, just seven short years after moving to the plantation location, the Tuskegee Institute was famous. It encompassednearly a dozen buildings on over 540 acres had more than 400 students enrolled. How did Washington accomplish this astonishing transformation?”
Two ways. First, he was a relentless fund raiser and not afraid to directly approach the richest and most influential men in the nation for support. He knew just what to say to them to tug at what charitable heartstrings they might have while assuaging any fear that they may be abetting a Black uprising. Eventually his list of donors grew to include steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, and Central Pacific Railway tycoon Collis Huntington. He enjoyed political support and protectionboth from Alabama White Democrats and national Republicans like William McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt, who would famously invited him for dinner at the White House.
Tuskegee was literally built with the labor of its students.
Secondly was the labor of his students. Students were expected to work and work hard, in exchange for their education. It both fit in with Washington’s philosophy that work was ennobling and provided him the hands that built his buildings, tended the farm that produced the food that was eaten, engaged in numerous crafts, cooked and served, cleaned and catered to his every whim.
Students were roused from their beds at 5:30 and kept running between classes, chores, study time, and prayer until 9:30 at night. Except for the Sabbath, which was expected to be devoted to services, Bible reading, and reflection, there was no free time, no recreation. Washington feared that idle hourswould tempt his students into crap games, drinking, chasing women, and general debauchery which would ruin them, and worse, bring disgrace upon the school and the race.
Despite the rigorous demands, ambitious students from across the South got to Tuskegee any way they could get there. They found dedicated and gifted teachers like Olivia Davidson, the vice-principal who became Washington’s second wife, and Adella Hunt-Logan an English teacher and school librarian who also became a leading Black women’s suffragist. Programs in agriculture and the “useful manual arts” prepared them for life in the South.
The school became one of the first in the South to educate women as teachers and added a School of Nursing in 1892. Eventually all courses of study were open to co-eds.
Within a few years graduates were spreading over the South, improving Negro schools and founding new ones. Agricultural extension activities brought modern farming techniques to Blacks who were able to hold on to their land and avoid being knocked back down to the semi-slavery of share cropping.
By 1890 the White Democratic counter-revolutionwas complete across the South. Blacks were once again disenfranchised. Jim Crow and the reign of terror of the lynch mob crushed Black hopes and expectations. In less than ten years from its founding, the social climate that had given birth to the school changed. Former Southern White allies, who had seen the school as a balance against more threatening Black advancement, now were turning on it and regarding it with suspicion.
Washington was keenly alert to the dangers. He took the opportunity provided by an invitation to give a speech at the opening of the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta to put forward the much publicized Atlanta Compromise in which he, on behalf of Southern Black leadership pledged explicitly to accept White rule, refrain from agitation on the franchise and other issues in exchange for a White guarantee to support Black education and some degree of fairness before the law.
Washington's cautious conservatism earned praise, support, and dollars from the White establishment. Pictured here with R. C. Ogden, William Howard Taft, and Andrew Carnegie, one of Tuskegee's most important benefactors..
The unwritten compromise—Washington preferred the term accommodation—secured the safety and future of the Tuskegee Institutes, although white promises of fair treatment in the courts proved completely illusionary. It also generated even more generous donations from Northern industrialists and benefactors which now expanded to include John D. Rockefeller, Henry Huttleston Rogers, George Eastman, and Elizabeth Milbank Anderson.
Another rich man, Julius Rosenwald of Sears, Roebuck and Company became a leading member of the Tuskegee Board and funded a project which would build 500 schools in rural Black communities which would be designed by Tuskegee architects, built by student labor, and staffed by its trained graduates.
Despite these accomplishment, Washington’s “meek submission to White rule” drew the scorn of a new generation of Black leaders, including Du Bois, many of them highly educated and based in the North.
Washington spent more and more of his time on speaking tours and on fund raising, but kept a close grip on the management of the school as principal. The work load was visibly taking a toll on his health. On November 14, 1915 Washington died at the school of congestive heart failure.
He left behind a sprawling, modern campus, a wide extension system, and an endowment of over $1.5 million. He was laid to rest on the campus.
During World War II the school became the training center for the famed Tuskegee Airmen who became the most decorated fighter unit of the the war.
His school endured, even thrived. It adapted over the years to new demands, adding departments preparing its students in many new areas. It is now Tuskegee University. The school famously became the training sitefor the Tuskegee Airmen, the Black World War II fighter pilots who became legendary over the skies of Europe.
It has also had its troubled moments, most infamously as the home of the Syphilis Study, conducted for the U.S. Public Health Service from 1932–1972 in which 399 poor and mostly illiterate African American sharecroppers became part of a study on the natural development of syphilis without treatment. While some participants received treatment, a control group did not and the disease was allowed to run its fatal course over many years causing both needless suffering and risking the continued infection of new victims. After the study was revealed President Bill Clintonissued a formal apology on behalf of the nation.
Tuakegee's participation in the infamous Federal Syphilis Study for over 40 years in which hundreds of poor Black men were allowed to go untreated as a control group to compare with those getting medical care was a low point for the school.But just as Washington would have, the University used the case to raise money to open a new National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care, devoted to “engaging the sciences, humanities, law and religious faithsin the exploration of the core moral issues which underlie research and medical treatment of African Americans and other underserved people.”
Today Tuskegee University is one of the flagship schools served by the United Negro College Fund and still one of top historically Black universities in the country. There are more than 4000 students in 35 bachelor’s degree programs, 12 master’s degree programs, a 5-year accredited professional degree program in architecture, 2 doctoral degree programs, and the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine program.
The campus, including to original building, Washington’s home The Oaks, the graves of Washington and George Washington Carver and the Carver Museum are a National Historic Site. Moton Field, home of the Tuskegee Airmen, is a second designated Historic Site.
Graduates of the Institute and University have included such notables as Amelia Boynton Robinson, Civil Rights leader and the first Black woman to run for office in Alabama; Lionel Richie and the rest of The Commodores; author Ralph Ellison; Air Force General “Chappie” James, the first Black to reach four star rank in the armed services; super star radio host Tom Joyner; former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin; Dr. Ptolemy A. Reid, former Prime Minister of Guyana; Betty Shabazz, activist and widow of Malcolm X; and actor, comedian, and producer Keenan Ivory Wayans.
The Coronavirus has not slowed social justice activism in McHenry County. On the contrary from late spring though the summer mostly youth led marches, rallies, and programs have been held all over the county in support of Black Lives Matter, responsible policing, confronting white privilege, challenging hate, and in support of immigration justice and ending the use of McHenry County Jail as a Federal Immigration Detention facility. The actions have been creative, uniformly non-violent, and heedful of the need for masks and social distancing for the protection of participants and public alike.
And now the folks from Standing Up Against Racism—Woodstock are planning a fresh event that is different from anything else yet. The Sit-In For Healing & Hope will be held on Woodstock Square this Saturday, September 19 from 3-5 pm.
Organizer Amanda Hall describes the event:
Healing begins as we embrace each other and celebrate the beauty in our differences and our equality. Unite with us in our efforts to make an impact in our community and bring forth necessary change. Come hear about our different initiatives, personal stories about individuality, enjoy local musicians and get more involved. This is a family friendly event. Please wear masks and social distance.
The afternoon will feature music by Just Ted & Amy! “just a girl singing songs you love with a sweet soulful twist and a guy lucky enough to be able to assist her” and Rotten Mouth, “a four-piece dirty/grove rock bandthat guarantees to bring all of their jamtastic energy to every song they write.”
Speakers will reflect from personal experience on Black Lives Matter, police violence, immigration justice and ending the ICE contract with McHenry County Jail as well as other issues. Featured speakers will include Eva Baker of McHenry County Progressives and Families Belong Together, Venerable Bhante Sujatha of Blue Lotus Buddhist Temple, Amanda Hall, Dean Meyers, Tomas Soto-Garcia, Rob Mutert, Tony and David Bradburn, Sam Cortina, Lisa Arvanites, Sandy Davil, Shyann Kivley, and Fredy Brooklyn. Your scribe, Patrick Murfin will also speak on behalf of the Compassion For Campers program for the homeless and unhoused.
The afternoon will also feature literature tables, opportunities to connect and become involved with local action groups, and vendor tables that reflect the inclusive values of the event.
Standing Up Against Racism—Woodstockis an organization that believes:
…in being allies in the Black Lives Matter movement, and demands equality for all Black, Indigenous, and People of Color committed to provide a safe place to educate ourselves, and find effective ways to spread knowledge to the community. We believe in taking ideas into action with the commitment of dismantling systemic racism in Woodstock. We seek to amplify BI-POC voices, and work to uplift our community to feel safe and welcoming to all.
The group sponsored the Light Up the Night Bike Ride Against Racism last Sunday in Woodstock.
Also co-sponsoring the event is Warp Corps whose mission is:Suicide and substance abuse prevention through engagement. Through the engagement of each individual’s organic passions, we believe we can create better opportunities for future generations. Focusing specifically on adventure sports, music and art, our vision is to create a facility that engages people in these positive outlets.
On September 17, 1683 Antonie van Leeuwenhoek wrote a letter to the Royal Society in London describing animalcules—tiny one celled animals invisible to the naked eye now known as protozoa. In doing so he inadvertently founded a new branch of science—microbiology.
Leeuwenhoek was an unlikely scientist. At the time most scientific investigation was the sole providence of gentlemen who had the education, leisure time for investigation, and the fortune to support the cost of their work. He was neither a gentleman or particularly well educated. He came from a family of tradesmen or what the English called skilled mechanics. His father was a basket maker and his mother’s family were brewers. They were from Delft, a reasonably prosperous small city in the Netherlands province of South Holland.
As a young man Leeuwenhoek became a draper. He also worked as a surveyor, wine assayer and as a municipal official. His occupations made him comfortable, if not wealthy and he was a respected member of the community. He was friends with and almost the exact contemporary of Delft’s most famous resident the painter Johannes Vermeer and was an executor of his estate when the master died in poverty in 1675.
His commercial success allowed Leeuwenhoek the time to pursue his growing interest in science. An avid reader, he had read Robert Hooke’s illustrated book Micrographia. Hook was working with primitive compound microscopes using two lenses. But the technologyof he these devises was primitive and could only magnify objects 20 to 30 times. Around the mid-1660’s he began to grind lenses in an attempt to create more effective instruments.
My high school science text credited Leeuwenhoek as the inventor of the microscope. As you can see, he was not. Compound microscopes had been around for nearly 40 years. His devices had single lenses, but the quality of the lenses was so high that he was able to achieve documented magnification of over 200 times. And evidence from his detailed observations indicates that some of the devices that he constructed may have neared a power of 500.
One of van Lueeuwenkhoek's deceptively simple but effective microscopes.Leeuwenhoek’s breakthrough—and a closely guarded secret in his life time—was not discovered until 1957 when scientists discovered that he used finely drawn thread of molten glass to create perfect small spheres which became his lenses. The small lens would be set in a brassor silver plate in front of which would be a pointed rod on an adjustable screw which would hold the object being studied. Leeuwenhoek, working in the brightest natural light, would hold the devise close to his eye.
Leeuwenhoek constructed at least 500 different devices, only a handful of which still survive. He often crafted new microscopes specifically for the specimens he wished to examine.
A Dutch edition of the book Sequel of the letters written to the widely renowned Royal Society of London.He made careful, extraordinarily detailed written observations of what he saw. These observations are so clear modern scientists can often identify the exact species of microbehe was observing. Since his drawing skills were poor, he later also hired a professional illustrator to make drawings to be enclosed in his letters to the Royal Society and other scientists.
His correspondence with the Royal Society continued for more than 50 years through his final illnesses. The Society frequently published his findings translated from Dutch to English or Latin in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, the most important scientific journal in the world at the time.
Among his main discoveries were infusoria, the unicellular animals in pond water now mostly classified as protists; bacteria from the human mouth; vacuoles, important structures in the cells of plants, fungi, and some protia; spermatozoa; the banded structure of mussel fiber; and the blood flow in capillaries.
Leeuwenhoek commissioned a professional artist to illustrate many of his observations for the Royal Society including these animalcules.
In his later years Leeuwenhoek was famous. He was visited by William of Orange and other notables who he let make their own observations with his equipment. He even presented a microscope to Peter the Great of Russia when he was invited to visit the Tsar’s ship.
Active to the end, he died in Delft in 1723 at the age of 90.
In 1981 Leeuwenhoek’s original specimens, sent to the Royal Society were discovered in a remarkable state of preservation along with many of his hand written notes in Dutch.
His life and work is a testament to the talent and persistence of a common craftsman.
Note: Versions of this have run previously in this blog, but we are posting it again as a public service. Mexico has a real history and tradition that is deeper than a taco and tequila festival from Gringos.
Quick, what’s Mexican Independence Day? If you answered Cinco de Mayo, you’d be wrong. That is a minor provincial holiday in Mexico that has become a celebration of Mexican pridein the United States. It celebrates the victory of the Mexican Army over the French Empire at the Battle of Puebla in 1862, during the French invasion of Mexico. The correct answer is Diez y Seis de Septiembre—September 16—which commemoratesEl Grito de Delores, the rallying cry which set off a Mexican revolution against Spanish colonial rule and the caste ofnative born Spaniards who ran roughshod over the people in 1810.
Early in the morning of that fateful day Padre Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a respected priest and champion of the Mestizos—mixed Spanish and Indian blood—and the Indios. Both classes were held in virtual serfdom by a system in which native born Spaniards—Gachupines—held ruthless sway. Hidalgo had for sometime been part of a plot by Criollos to stage a coup d’état by Mexican born Spaniards who were the middling level officers and administers of the system.
The Criollo plot was to take advantage of resentment of the impositionof Joseph Bonaparte on the Spanish throneby Napoleon to declare Mexican independence within a Spanish Empire under Ferdinand VII, considered by the Spanish people as the legitimate heir to the throne. But Ferdinand was held in France by the Emperor, so if it had succeeded the plot would have created a de-facto republic. The Gachupines, who had accepted Bonaparte, would be driven out of Mexico.
Plotters decided on a date in December to stage their coup. In the meantime they were quietly trying to line up the support of Criollo officers and by extension the Army. But the plot was betrayed and orders were sent out to arrest the leaders, including Hidalgo.
The wife of Miguel Domínguez, Corregidor of Queretaro (chief administrative official of the city of Queretaro) and a leader of the plot, learned of the pending arrests and sent a warning to Hidalgo in the village of Delores near the city of Guanajuato, about 230 miles northwest of the capital of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, Mexico City. The late in the evening of September 15, Hidalgo asked Ignacio Allende, the Criollo officer who had brought the warning, to arrest all of the Gachupines in the city.
It was apparent to Hidalgo and Allende that the Criollos had not had time to solidify their support in the army, and indeed that many Criollo officers refused to join. The revolution would inevitably be crushed. Sometime in the early morning hours of September 16, Hidalgo made a fateful decision—he would call on the mestizo and Indio masses to rise up.
At about 6 A.M. Hidalgo assembled the people of the pueblo by tolling the church bell. When they were together he made this appeal, which he had hastily drafted:
My children: a new dispensation comes to us today. Will you receive it? Will you free yourselves? Will you recover the lands stolen by three hundred years ago from your forefathers by the hated Spaniards? We must act at once… Will you defend your religion and your rights as true patriots? Long live our Lady of Guadalupe! Death to bad government! Death to the Gachupines!
This is the famous Grito de Delores which sparked the revolt. Runners went out to nearby towns carrying the message. The long oppressed people flocked to the cause armed with knives, machetes, homemade spears, farm implements, and what few fire armsthat they could take from the Gachupines.
Indios, Meztizos, and Criollos on the march in this mural by Juan O'Gorman.
With Hidalgo and Allende at their head, the peasants began the march on Mexico City. Along the way they acquired an icon of the Virgin of Guadalupe—Mary depicted as a dark skinned Indian—which became the banner of the revolt.
Along the way a regular Army regiment under the command of Criollos joined the march, but the swelling ranks of peasants—soon to number up to 50,000, was out of control by any authority.
The first major battle of the war began at Guanajuato, a substantial provincial town, on September 28. Local officials rounded up the Gachupines and loyal Criollos and their families and made a stand in the town’s fortified granary. Hundreds of peasants were killed in wild frontal assaults on the position until rocks thrown from above caused the collapse of the granary roof, injuring many. When a civil official ran up a white flag of surrender, the garrison commander countermanded the order and opened fire on the native forces coming forward to accept it. Scores were killed. After that there was no quarter. With the exception of a few women andchildren, the 400 occupants of the granary were massacred. Then the town was pillaged andlooted, with Criollo homes faring no better than the native Spaniards.
Of course Hidalgo had unleashed an unmanageable and ferocious anger among the people. Along the march any Gachupines unfortunate enough to fall into the hands of the rebels were brutally killed, as were any Criollos who sided with them—or were simply assumed to be European born. The revolt was not just a national one—it was a virtual slave revolt with all of the attendant horror that implied.
Word of the fate of Guanajuato mobilized forces in Mexico City and caused most wealthy Criollos to side with the government or try to remain neutral.
Hidalgo and his closest supporters later abandoned the army and returned to Delores. He was frightenedand disillusioned by what he had brought about. A year later he was captured by Gachupine forces and hanged.
It took 11 years of war to finally oust the Spaniards. A triumphant revolutionary army finally entered Mexico City on September 28, 1821, issued an official Declaration of the Independence of Mexican Empire, and established a government of imperial regency under Agustín de Iturbide.
But Mexicans mark the beginning of the struggle—the Grito de Delores—as the true anniversary of independence.
The usual colorful and exuberant celebration in the Plaza de la Constitucion was cancled and replaced with a muted on-line ceremony this year due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
Eventually the church bell from Delores was broug ht to the capital. Customarily each year on the night of September 15, the President of Mexicorings the bell at the National Palaceand repeats a Grito Mexicano based upon the Grito de Dolores from the balcony of the palace to the hundreds of thousands assembled in the Plaza de la Constitución. At dawn on September 16 a military parade starts in the Plaza passes the Hidalgo Memorial and proceeds down the Paseo de la Reforma, the city’s main boulevard. Similar celebrations are held in cities and towns across Mexico.
But this year President Andrés Manuel López Obrador perform the Grito but in front of a select number of invited guests at the Palace with the subdued ceremony telecast due to the Coronavirus pandemic which has hit Mexico hard. Heavily armed troops patroled the Plaza and other gather spots across the county to prevent crowds from assembling.
St. Ann's Episcopal Church in Woodstock.
The Faith Leaders of McHenry County and Compassion for Campers will continue to distribute camping gear and supplies to the homeless. St. Ann’s Episcopal Church, 503 W. Jackson in Woodstock, will host the next distribution on Tuesday, September 15from 3:30 to 5 pm. More offerings are scheduled in Crystal Lake, McHenry, and Woodstock in September and October.
“The unhoused in McHenry County continue to need camping gear as we head into the fall months,” according to Patrick Murfin of Compassion for Campers. “Indications are that many will still require such aid as we go into the colder months.”
This week the Ridgefield-Crystal Lake Presbyterian Church volunteers will also be on hand with items and box lunches.
Distribution of supplies will be drive through/walk up with face masks required, social distancing observed, and no gathering. Among the supplies available while they last will be tents, sleeping bags and pads, tarps, camp stoves, coolers, mosquito repellent, sun screen, hygiene products, other sundries, and non-perishable food.
Donations can be made by sending a check made out to Tree of Life UU Congregation with Compassion for Campers on the memo line to the church at 5603 West Bull Valley Road, McHenry, IL 60050. Compassion for Campers is a dedicated fund and no donations to it can be used by Tree of Life for any other purpose. The church absorbs all administrative expenses so 100% of donationswill be used to aid the homeless.
For more information contact Patrick Murfin at 815 814-5645 or e-mail pmurfin@sbcglobal.net.
On September 15, 1858 two new Concord Coaches, one in Saint Louis, Missouri and one in San Francisco, California set off in opposite directions two cross more than 2/3s of the continent. They were inaugurating a new contract with the Post Office for transcontinental mail service operated by the Butterfield Overland Mail. It would take 23 days for the California service to arrive at its eastern terminal—two whole days before its projected time. The west bound route would make similar time. Both traveled the indirect Ox bow route that dipped south to cross Indian Territory and kitty-angle across Texas before heading west along the Rio Grande River and through the rugged mountains and deserts of the New Mexico Territory. It would actually clip a corner of Mexican Baja California before turning north traversing much of California via its central valley before finally reaching San Francisco Bay.
That route added almost 900 miles to a more northerly route via the Kansas and Nebraska Territories past Ft. Laramie, through the South Pass, into Mormon Utah, across the punishing Nevada deserts, and over the fromitable Sierra Nevadas to California.
When President James Buchanan ordered Post Master General Aaron Brown to establish an overland mail route to the West Coast in 1855 most people expected that the northern route would be picked. It was already in use as the Oregon and California Trails by immigrant wagon trains and would later be followed by the Pony Express, the transcontinental telegraph, and eventually the transcendental railroad.
But John W Butterfield, a 55 year old Utica, New York businessman had other ideas. He was already and experienced operator of various transportation companies including regional stage coach lines in Upstate New York, plank roads, steam boats on Lake Ontario, ferries, and even his home town street railroad.
When Butterfield heard about the upcoming mail contract, he determined to win it despite having no personal experience in the West. And he knew just how to go about it—by exploiting the rising sectional tensions that were already straining the Union.
Tying gold rich California to the East was a high priority national objective. Other than trusting a letterto and immigrant wagon train on a riskymonth’s long crawl across the continent, communications with the Golden State meant the long voyage all the way around Cape Horn by clipper ship. Theoretically an overland mail service could drastically cut either time. But Northern and Southern interests were at odds. The South still had hopes making California a slave state by referendum or failing that splitting the state and taking half. It had similar objectives in expanding slavery into New Mexico Territory. A northern route would tie San Francisco more tightly than ever to New York and New England banking and business interests who already dominated the ocean trade.
Butterfield proposed his southern route—more over a southern route that even avoided the well-established Santa Fe Trail which had its head in Bloody Kansas and was subject to the abolitionists who settled there. He presented his bid to Post Master General Brown, a Tennessean and ardent Southern partisan.
A map showing the West as it was in 1858 and Butterfield's Ox Bow southern mail routes.
Butterfield knew his man. Brown announced that he would not entertain bids using the northern route because it was subject to being closed by snows. It was a plausible excuse. Certainly snow could and did close the immigrant trails on the high plains, the Rocky Mountains, and especially at Donner Pass over the Sierra Madres. But as we will see the longer southern route posed its own dangers and even it could be closed by snow in the New Mexico mountains. Since Butterfield was the only one to offer a bid on the Southern route, bingo, he was awarded the lucrative contract.
Although Butterfield was an experienced hand at stage lines, this was far bigger than anything he had ever attempted and required an enormous infusion of extra capitaljust to get off the ground. He would need to supply 250 Concord Stagecoaches and 1800 horses and mules and find or build 139 relay stations. In addition he would have to employ 800—almost all men but including some women cooks at relay stations.
For the necessary capital, Butterfield tuned to a number of partners and investors including William B. Dinsmore, William G. Fargo, James V. P. Gardner, Marcus L. Kinyon, Alexander Holland, andHamilton Spencer. All were eager to share in the proceeds of the $600,000 annual mail contract plus income from express freight and passengers.
It was a near miracle that most of the infrastructure could be put in place from the official bid requests in March of 1857 to the mid-September 1858 effective starting date of the contract. And that included shipping some of those Concord coaches from their New Hampshire manufacturer to San Francisco by sea.
Reporter Waterman Ormsby.New York Herald reporter Waterman L. Ormsby was the only passenger to ride the entire 2,812 mile journey from St. Louis to San Francisco. Like other passengers who booked the entire trip, he paid a $200 fare—about $5,525 in today’s currency. He describedthe experience succinctly, “Had I not just come out over the route, I would be perfectly willing to go back, but I now know what Hell is like. I’ve just had 24 days of it.” It was a bone jarring ride over rugged terrain exposing the passengers to blistering heat by day, sometimes freezing straw pallets on the floor or beds jammed with as many as six men. Food was often awful. And passengers often had to help hitch and unhitch teams as well as switching luggage and freight between coaches.
The coach from the West Coast arrived at its destination with 6 passengers, some of whom were picked up along the way.
Two coaches in each direction were scheduled each week of the contract. There were actually two eastern terminals—St. Louis and Memphis, Tennessee with the two routes converging at Fort Smith, Arkansas on the border of Indian Territory. On the eastern legs depending on the weather and the navigability of rivers, mail might go part way by river boat down the Mississippiand then up the Arkansas River and might use rail service across part of Arkansas. In dry weather the entire rout in eastern Arkansas might be made by coach. From Fort Smith west, it was all coach service.
Almost immediately the dangers and drawbacks of the southern route became apparent. The trip across notoriously violent Indian Territory exposed the coaches to Indian attacks, stock raidsat way stations, and prowling outlaw gangs. Even more dangerous was the transit of Texas which was subject to raids by the Comanche, Southern Pawnee, and Kiowa and the Apache in New Mexico. On the long trip up central California there were more highwaymen. The trips became so dangerous that Butterfield had to appeal for Army protection.
The tiny ante-bellum Regular Army was spread thinly across the West. Much of it was stationed in Kansas trying to keep a lid on the virtual civil war between pro and anti-slavery forces. Shortly after taking office in 1860 the War Department assigned part of the 9th Cavalry based far to the north at Ft. Laramie under the command of Lt. Col. William O. Collins. He detached troopers to escort coaches between Independence, Missouri and Sacramento, California. This amounted to an effective subsidy of the service worth tens of thousands of dollars.
It was no surprise that the service was not profitable. On top of that the newly formed Pony Express in 1860 offered faster service for the mails. In March of that year Butterfeild’s partners foreclosed on him and ousted him from the business. Eventually via William Fargo most of the company’s assets, like those of the short lived Pony Express, ended up under the control of the Wells Fargo Company.
A year later in March of 1861 the Congress cancelled the Overland Mail contract in anticipation of war breaking out, which it shortly did with the attack on Fort Sumter in April. The last runs were on June 30, 1861. A new northern route known as the Central Overland Pacific Route began service between St. Joseph, Missouri and Placerville, California.
Meanwhile George Henry Giddings tried to keep the old route open for the Confederacy between Texas and California. The Rebel government was particularly hopeful that the coaches could supply California gold to their cash strapped Treasury. But California was soon firmly in Union hands and the Confederates destroyed stations west of Tucson. Except for local service the southern overland service ceased in early 1862.
In California Wells Fargo continued to operate coach service to gold camps and expanded service to the silver mines in Nevada until railroad service rendered it obsolete in the late 1860’s.
This Concord stage coach in service in the late 19th Century was pretty much identical to those operated on the Overland Mail route.Old Overland Stage stations were the sites of four Civil War battles—The Battle of Stanwix Station, the Battle of Picacho Pass, the Second Battle of Mesilla, and the Battle of Pea Ridge. They were also the sites of Confederate battles with the Comanche in Texas and Union fights with the Apache in New Mexico.
Stage coaches continued to serve shrinking routes in the West into the early 20th Century until they were all replaced by either railroads or motor coach service.
Wells Fargo kept getting richer and more powerful expanding to a vast express service and, of course, a fat bank.
A 1958 Overland Mail centennial commemorative First Class U.S. Postage stamp.
Movie icon Grace Kelly became Princes Grace of Monaco. |
On September 14, 1989 the former Grace Kelly, Princes of Monaco, died of injuries sustained in an automobile crash in the Principality. That was 62 years to the day that dancer Isadora Duncan died in a bizarre open car accident not far away on the Riviera in Nice. They were nearly the same age at death—the Princes was 53, Duncan 50. Both were cultural icons.
Aside from being American performing artists of striking personal beauty living in Europe, however, the two could hardly have been more different.
Princess Grace was raised in Philadelphia high society, into which her wealthy Irish Catholic family had managed to crash. She had a fabulously successful, if brief movie career in which she was tagged as an “ice princess” for her cool blonde beauty. She remained a devoted Catholic and consented to marry into one of the oldest royal families in Europedespite hardly having met the groom, Prince Rainier.
Princess Grace's wrecked Land Rover at the bottom of a mountain hairpin turn. |
Duncan, on the other hand, had been a wild bohemian and had rejected every constraint of conventionalitythe Princess embraced. She publicly took lovers of both sexes. It must be noted, however, that despite Grace Kelly’s aloof reputation in Hollywood, she apparently took most of her leading menas lovers. But she was chaste and discretecompared to the dancer.
Of the two, however, Isadora Duncan was by far the more interesting.
Isadora Duncan in one of her Greek inspired dance costumes. |
On September 14, 1927 Isadora Duncan, the American born mother of modern dance and an avant-garde icon died in Nice, France when her signature long flowing scarf became entangled in spokes of wheel on the open automobile in which she was riding. She broke her neck and died instantly. She was only 50 years old. Her legions of admirers thought her end fittingand symbolic.
Duncan was born on May 26, 1877 in San Francisco, the youngest of fourchildren. Her father, Joseph Charles Duncan, was a successful mining engineer turned bankerand a local patron of the arts and her mother came from an influential California political family. Despite the promising beginning, Joseph Duncan was disgraced in a banking scandal shortly after Isadora’s birth and her mother divorced him and relocated the family to Oakland where the family lived in dire, if genteel, poverty.
Isadora--already a wild child. |
Isadora was wild and rebellious and dropped out of school. She and her sisters were consumed with dance and they helped support the family by giving lessons in their home. By the age of 18 in 1895 she found herself in Augustin Daly’s prestigious New York City theatrical troop as a dancer. Daly had fostered the careers of many stage notables including Sarah Orne Jewett, John Drew, Jr., Maurice Barrymore, Fanny Davenport, Maude Adams, and Tyrone Power, Sr. and was noted for his unorthodox settings of Shakespearian cannon such as casting Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a woman.
Despite the seemingly ideal situation for a young dancer, Duncan became disillusionedby the restrictions of conventional theatrical performanceand went to London in 1899 in search of artistic purity. Within a year she was in Paris, then the undisputed cultural capital of Europeand brimming with energy and innovation. She tried immersing herself in the thriving bohemianlife of the Montparnasse but found the poverty of the artist’s life depressing. But she was young, extremely attractive, and entirely unconventional in her sexual life. It was not too hard for her to find loversand supporters who helped her move in 1909 to a large and comfortable apartment at 5 rue Danton where she also maintained a second floor dance studio.
Vaslav Nijinsky in a bas relief adorning a new Paris theater in 1913.Although they were never dance partners, Isadora was paired with Russian ballet super star
It was there that she and her adoring pupilsbegan to discard the conventions of classical ballet, which she described as “ugly and against nature.” Despite her contemptuous aversion to “commercial exhibition” in the pursuit of “pure art” the private recitals she put on with her students made her famous almost overnight. Within a couple of years artistsand sculptors were using her and her flowing movements as a model. She was immortalized in a bas relief over the entrance to the new Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in 1913 and painted as one of the Muses in an interior mural.
Duncan danced barefoot and her performances were loosely choreographed to allow her to capture the moment of the music. She said that she used images from Grecian potteryshe found in museums as an inspiration for both her on-stage look and the fluidity of her lines.
Isadora's grace and fluidity of line and motion were captured in this photograph. |
Despite her distaste for public performances, economic circumstances often made it essential that she tour, although she was often careless of dates and commitments. She appeared across Europe, and Latin America, and returned to America for a controversial tour in 1916.
By that time, Duncan’s private life was attracting as much attention as her dance. She was always open about her devotion to the idea of Free Love and was openly bi-sexual. She had two children out of wedlock—Deirdre, born in 1906 and fathered by theater designer Gordon Craig, and Patrick, born May 1, 1910 by Paris Singer, a son of sewing machine magnate Isaac Singer. The children and their nanny were killed in a freak accident in April of 1913 when the car in which they were riding rolled into the Seine when the chauffergot out to re-start the engine with a hand crank.
Twenty years older than Isadora the great Italian actress Eleonara Duce offered her solace--and perhaps a love affair--when the dancer was grieving the death of her children. |
Devastated, Duncan spent months on the island of Corfu with her siblings recovering from an apparent break down. Soon after she spent weeks at a seaside resort with another avant-garde icon, actress Eleonora Duse, nearly 20 years her senior and with whom she may—or may not—have had a lesbian relationship.
Duncan remained a committed teacher. In cooperation with her sisters she founded a famous school in Grunewald, Germany, where the Isadorables, her most celebrated troupe of pupils, were formed. They had started training with her and her sister Elizabeth Duncan as children in 1909, but Duncan later adopted the six girls in New York in 1916. Thereafter they performed using her last name. With Duncan frequently absent, however, Elizabeth took the troop in a direction from which Isadora disagreedand, worse, allowed them to perform in commercial venues. Eventually this caused a rift with Elizabeth and with her brother, who arranged independent performances by the girls in the United States. Five of the girls remained in the US and performed together as the Isadorables for some years rising to considerable fame despite their original mentor’s disdain.
Isadora with her students, adopted daughters, and performance troupe, the Isadorables. |
Duncan was an outspoken political radical as well as an artistic one. In 1922 she went to the Soviet Union to establish a new, revolutionary schoolin the homeland of the classical ballet. She was aided by the most loyal of the former Isadorbables, Irma Duncan. While in Russia she met, fell in love with, and actually married poet Sergei Yesenin, eighteen years her junior despite her knowing only six or seven words of Russian and he no English at all. Duncan soon became disillusioned when the elaborate promises of support for her school by the State failed to materialize. By 1923 she was back in Paris with Yesenin in tow and Irma left in charge of the Moscow academy.
Isadora with her abusive and alcoholic husband, the Russian poet Sergei Yesenin. |
Duncan resumed touring to support herself. But Yesenin went into frequent alcoholic rages and destroyed the contents of several hotel rooms, although he was never known to harm Isadora herself. The public scandalovershadowed her performances. Within a year Yesenin went back to Russia, where he continued his dissolute ways, took another wife without divorcing Duncan, and died of drink in 1925 at the age of 30.
In 1925, her reputation as a performer damaged by her own drinking and sexual escapades, Duncan made a final tour of the United States. In Boston, of all places, she came to the stage swathed only in a red banner. She exposed her breasts and proclaimed. “This is red, and so am I.” In Hollywood she became one of the many lovers of playwright Mercedes de Acosta, who reprinted passionate love lettersin her scandalous autobiography Here Lies the Heart, published in 1960.
Duncan’s final years were plagued with financial woes as her erratic behavior and advancing age cut into her performance opportunities and her public drunkenness alienated many friends. She split her time between Paris and the Riviera, often leaving un-paid hotel bills in her wake. Friends, including F. Scott Fitzgerald who she met in Paris, tried to encourage her to finish the autobiography which she had been working on for some years in the hope that the income might bring her some stability. The book, My Life was published in 1927.
An illustrated newspaper account of Isadora's death had all of the celebrity gossip of a breathless Access Hollywood Report. |
Unfortunately, Duncan did not live to earn an income from the book. On September 14, 1927 she climbed into an open Amilcar roadster with handsome French-Italian mechanic Benoît Falchetto at the wheel. Her friend Mary Desti later told the press that Duncan’s final words were “Good bye, friends, I’m off to glory!” Much later she would admit that she censored Duncan’s actual words which were, “I’m off to love!” apparently for a night with Falchetto. As they sped away, Duncan’s scarf became enmeshed in the rear wheel. She was nearly decapitatedby the force and yanked from the car. She died instantly.
Duncan’s creative legacy lives on in almost all modern dance. The last and most famous of the Isadorables, Maria-Theresa Duncan preserved much of Isadora’s most famous choreography which is still performed by troops around the world. In 1977 Maria-Theresa co-founded the Isadora Duncan International Institute which continues to preserve her legacy.
Vanessa Redgrave as Isadora |
In 1968 her life was celebrated in a dazzling wide screen color epic, Isadora starring Vanessa Redgrave for which she won the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival. Both Duncan’s and Redgrave’s personal radicalism prevented similar honors from the Motion Picture Academy. In fact, the whole production was so “drenched in Red” in the words of one critic that the cast included a rare screen appearance of Ronnie Gilbert of The Weavers in a small role. Depite being a hit and stirring a revival of Art Nouveau and modern dance that influenced the wider culture through the‘70’s, the film almost vanished and has seldom been seen since.
The story of Duncan’s life and death has inspired writers and artists to this day. Carl Sandburg in his poem Isadora Duncan wrote:
The wind? I am the wind.
The sea and the moon? I am the sea and the moon.
Tears, pain, love, bird-flights? I am all of them.
I dance what I am.
Sin, prayer, flight, the light that never was on land or sea?
I dance what I am.
It may have been the most famous—and wildly romantic—elopement since Romeo and Juliette. The bridewas a lovely but disabled spinster who happened to be perhaps the most famous living English poet at the time. Her dashing beau was six years younger, of an inferior social class and just establishing himself as a poet of note in his own right. They courted in secret—he contrived to visit her in the sick room to which she was mostly confined—and on September 12, 1846 ran off to be wed at St. Marylebone Parish Church inLondon then fled to sunny Italy in imitation of two of their mutual heroes—Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Her fatherdisowned her. Her beloved brothers shunned her. But the couple lived happily and productively—each writing some of the best verse of their lives—until her frail health gave out at age 55.
Such is the tale of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning who celebrated their love in poetry—she in Sonnets from the Portuguese which included Number 43 beginning with the lines “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways” and he in the poem One Word More with which he concluded his collection Men and Women.
The story also inspired literary work. Virginia Woolf’s Flush: A Dog’s Life saw the story through the eyes of Elizabeth’s beloved spaniel. The hugely successful play The Barretts of Wimpole Street by Rudolf Besier became the signature vehicle for American actress Catherine Cornell and was made into a popular 1934 MGM film starring Norma Shearer, Fredric March, and Charles Laughton. In 1957 the director of that film, Sidney Franklin, remade the movie in Britain with Jennifer Jones, Bill Travers, and Sir John Gielgud using the original film script.
Fredric March and Norma Shearer were the lovers in MGM's 1934 release of The Barretts of Wimpole Street.
Elizabeth was born on March 6, 1806, the eldest of twelve children, to a family that had made an enormous fortune in Jamaica in sugar, mercantile trade,manufacture, and slaves over the previous 150 years. She personally believed that she had some Black ancestry although none was ever documented. She was raised at Hope End near Malvern Hills in Ledbury, Herefordshire, the country estate of her father, Edward Barrett Moulton Barrett. She was educated at home and benefited by sharing a tutorwith her oldest brother, giving her access to education beyond most girls. She was extremely precocious reading novels at six and learning Greek to read The Iliad shortly after.
Her love of all things Greek led her, at age ten, to write her own epic in the style of Homer, The Battle of Marathon which so delighted her father that he had 50 copies privately printed. She became a prolific, even compulsive, poet and her mother carefully preservedall of her work in scrapbooks which are said to represent the largest collection of juvenilia of any English writer.
Elizabeth’s interests as a child were wide. She took religion seriously both as a matter of faith and philosophic speculation. Her family were devout Dissenters and reading of sermons and tracts exposed her to the most liberal opinion in England. In her early teens she had absorbed Mary Wostoncraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women. She was entranced by Lord Byron and the Greek Revolution which inspired her first published poems, Stanzas Excited by Reflections on the Present State of Greece in The New Monthly Magazine andThoughts Awakened by Contemplating a Piece of the Palm which Grows on the Summit of the Acropolis at Athens in 1821.
But about this time her happy adolescencewas dealt a severe blow—she came down with a serious illness inflicting excruciating pain in her brain and spine and sometimes rendering her incapable of walking. Two of her sisters had the same condition, but ultimately recovered. Elizabeth would regain some strength but be a semi-invalid the rest of her life.
The exact cause of this condition has never been diagnosed with certainty. Speculation has run wild. Polio was suspected. In the early 20th Century it became fashionableto dismiss her ailment as female hysteria, a form of hypochondria said to affect creative women with “over active imaginations.” But those who knew or observed her had no doubt her suffering was real.
She began to rely on laudanum for the painand later graduated to morphine making her a life-long addict. Some believe reveries from the drug contributed to the vivid imagination she employed in her maturing poetry. On the other hand, dependency contributed to her general weakness and after she developed a separate respiratory ailment—likely tuberculosis—in her twenties would have made that condition worse.
Still, she was an extremely attractive young woman as recorded in portraits made of her at the time and descriptions of family and friends. She was small and delicate with large, expressive brown eyes and a dazzling smile readily offered. She wore her nearly black hair in long ringlets divided by a center part which framed her heart shaped face. She maintained that hair style through her life, long after it had gone out of style.
When she was 22 she lost her devoted mother. An aunt moved in to supervise the children, including the now adult Elizabeth. Where her mother had encouraged her literary career, the aunt found it unseemly. They clashed. The family left beloved Hope End and moved three times in the next few years before settling in a London town house, first in Gloucester Place and ultimately to that famous address, 50 Wimpole Street.
Elizabeth’s condition relieved her of the domestic duties expected of her sisters, as well as the sometimes demandingsocial obligations of a wealthy young woman. She spent much time in her room devoting herself to wide ranging reading and study, voluminous correspondence, and, above all, writing. But she was hardly a recluse. She could, and did leave the house, and regularly received visitors, including many admirers of her growing literary reputation. She was witty and charmingbetween bouts of serious illness.
In fact in London she was able to meet—and impress—a wide circle of the English literary establishment, introduced by her cousin and close friend John Kenyan, including William Wordsworth, Mary Russell Mitford, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Alfred Lord Tennyson and Thomas Carlyle.
Through the 1830’s and early ‘40’s Barrett’s literary output was astonishing. Much of her work was social commentary. Unlike other popular female poets of the era, she had little patience for art-for-art’s-sake poetry. She meant to instruct and uplift, not merely to decorate. In the early 1830’s she became a passionate abolitionist and her popular poems like The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point and A Curse for a Nation were said to have helped swing public opinionbehind the Emancipation Act of 1833 which abolished slavery in the colonies.
But this activity put a strain on her relations with the father she adored, whose income relied on slavery. And indeed after emancipation, the family’s fortunes waned dramatically. Her father was forced to sell his country estates. While the family was never reduced to poverty, their circumstances were reduced—and the incomefrom Elizabeth’s literary output was surely welcome.
Later in the decade she turned her attention to child labor in The Cry of the Children published in 1842 and actively—by pen—campaigned in support of the Ten Hour Bill advanced by Lord Shaftsbury. In addition to her original verse Barrett also contributed translations and essays to popular magazines.
The Seraphim and Other Poems in 1838 was her first mature collection of poetry followed by Poems in 1844. She was one of the most popular, and widely respected poets in England, and the American edition of Poems re-titled A Drama of Exile, and other Poems was just as popular and influenced Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Dickenson whose life in some ways echoed hers.
It was that 1844 edition of Poems that led Robert Browning to write a fateful fan letter.
Robert Browning as a young man.
Browning was born less extravagant circumstances than his beloved on May 7, 1812 in London, but it was hardly poverty. His father, also named Robert had a sinecureat the Bank of England that paid £155 a year—a very comfortable middle class income. Other than class Robert and Elizabeth shared remarkably similar backgrounds and upbringings.
His father was also a scion of a land and slave holding colonial Caribbean family with holdings in St. Kitts, but youthful experience on the plantation left him revolted by slavery. He became an abolitionist, which cost him his inheritance on his father’s side. There was also rumored to be slave ancestry in the family. Robert’s mother was the daughter of a German ship owner and a Scottish mother who brought a modest incomeof her own to the family and was a devout Dissenter.
The elder Browning was a bibliophile who filled his home with a library of over 1000 volumes. When his son rebelled at the tedium of school, the library became his education. He was literary almost by osmosis. At age 12 he completed a manuscript of poetry which he angrily destroyed when he could find no publisher for it. He was soon fluent in Greek, Latin, French, and Italian. He entranced by the Romantics, especially Shelley in imitation of whom he dramatically renounced his mother’s fervent Protestantism for a noble atheism.
Barred from Oxford or Cambridge by his family’s non-conformist religion, Browning enteredUniversity College London at age 16 to study Greek. He left after one year and refused all entreaties by his father to pursue someremunerative career. He declared his intention to dedicate himself to literature. His noble sacrifice to this end was to remain in his father’s household until he was 32 and eloped with Barrett. His indulgent father accepted the situation and even underwrote some of his largely unsuccessful publications.
In 1833 he privately published—on the largess of his aunt and father—Pauline, a fragment of a confession, a long poem in appreciation and imitation of Shelley. The book attracted a few positive reviews but sold almost no copies. Only anonymity spared the author deep public humiliation. Years later, in 1850, Dante Gabriel Rossetti stumbled on the work in the British Museum and connected it the by then established Browning. The author heavily revised the poems for inclusion in his later collection.
He fared better with Paracelsus published in 1835 after a brief visit to St. Petersburg as the companion to a French/Russian aristocrat and diplomat. The poems were cast as monologues of a 16th Centuryalchemist and sage and were meditations on an intellectual trying to find his role in society. The esoteric subject matter did not sell well with the general public, but found an appreciative audience among the London literatiincluding Wordsworth, Charles Dickens, John Stuart Mill, and Tennyson. At least it gained him admittance to the fringes of literary society.
After turning his hand unsuccessfully to playwriting, Browning went to Italy for the first time in 1835 where he found the inspiration for his ambitious Sordello, a long poem in heroic couplets, the imaginary biography of the Mantuan bard spoken of by Dantein the Divine Comedy. The book was both dense and obscure. Tennyson complained he could only understand the first and last lines. The effort was ridiculed in the literary press, and an abject failure that nearly sank Browning’s reputation.
From 1841 to ’44 Browning slowly recovered his reputation with the modest publication of a series of eight pamphlets—we would call them chap books today—assembling work that had been published in various journals as well at the texts of his plays. The plays impressed no one, but the poems which he styled dramatic lyrics, drew admiration.
Such was the modest state of Browning’s career and reputation when he eloped with the far more celebrated Barrett.
The couple first resided in Pisa where they weathered the anticipated storm created by their scandalous elopement. Of course they expected her father’s reaction. He disinherited his daughter, as they knew he would. But he went further, severing all connection to what had once been a close and loving relationship. When the press paintedBrowning as a cad, seducer, and fortune hunter, even Elizabeth’s beloved and once supportive brother turned against her. None would ever deign to receive or acknowledge her husband.
Italy in those days was something of aparadise for exiled Brits. The climate was salubrious, the people warm and friendly, the food a delight and adventure to English palatesraised on boiled beef, and the expenses low. The couple and the nurse Elizabeth had brought with her were able to live simply but comfortably on her independent income derived from her mother’s estate and her earnings as a writer. Better yet, the sunshine and fresh air—not to mention happiness—improved Elizabeth’s heath.
The following year the couple settled into apartmentsin Florence, which they would make their home the rest of their time together. Both were writing productively—Elizabeth completing the love poems that became known as Sonnets from the Portuguese. The title had a double meaning—the sonnets were composed in a somewhat unusual Portuguese style and Browning had made a pet name of calling her My Portuguese for her dark hair and eyes. Barrett was contributing poems to London journals, the notoriety of the elopement probably helping to gain interest in more popular publications. Yet the critical reception of these pieces was wildly divided.
After suffering miscarriages Elizabeth, now 43 years old, successfully gave birth to a son, Robert Wiedeman Barrett Browning, whom they called Pen. Their joy was unbounding and the boy doted on.
Elizabeth with her beloved son Pen when he was about 11 years old.Meanwhile Elizabeth was preparing a new edition of her Poems. Robert insisted that she include Sonnets from the Portuguese which she had considered private. When the new edition was published in 1850 it created a sensation. Whatever fame and admiration Elizabeth had enjoyed previously, it was now magnified. And so was the public view of the story of her and Robert’s elopement—it was transformed almost immediately to the stuff of high romance. Victorian audiences were thrilled.
When Wordsworth died that year so high was her star that she was seriously in the running with Tennyson to be named successor as national Poet Lauriat.
While in Florence the couple regularly socialized with the large English expatriate community there and entertained a stream of distinguished visitors from Britain and the United States which included William Makepeace Thackeray, sculptorHarriet Hosmer, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Margaret Fuller, and the female French novelist George Sand.
In 1855 Browning finally had a breakthrough in his own career with the publication of the two-volume Men and Women, a collection of dramatic monologues in verse, the form for which he would become best known.
Elizabeth was even more active. She produced Casa Guidi Windows in 1851 and her 1857 epic novel in verse, Aurora Leigh which was considered by many critics the greatest long form poem of the Victorian era.
Elizabeth also took note of social developments in England, and as she had done with abolitionism and child labor, composed poetic commentaries including Two Poems: A Plea for the Ragged Schools of London and The Twins.
Meanwhile Elizabeth became passionately involved in Italian politics, casting her lot with Giuseppe Garibaldi, his Red Shirts and their ambition to drive foreign influence out of Italy and create a unified kingdom. She composed a short book of poems, Poems before Congress in support of the cause. Back home in England these created an uproar in the Tory press, which denounced her as a fanatic.
In 1860 Elizabeth’s health began tocollapse. After winter in warmer Rome, the couple returned to Florence. There on June 21, 1861 she died in her husband’s arms “smilingly, happily, and with a face like a girl’s. … Her last wordwas … ‘Beautiful.’” So beloved was she in her adopted homes that shops closed down for her funeral. She was buried in the famed Protestant English Cemetery of Florence, last resting place of several notables.
Elizabeth's elaborate tomb in Florence still attracts pilgrims.Grief stricken Browning and his son returned to London, although he frequently visited Italy. He edited and supervised a posthumous collection Last Poems published in 1862.
In subsequent years Browning’s own reputation as a poet soared with the long blank-verse poem The Ring and the Bookbased on a Roman murder-case from 1690s. Later works included Balaustion’s Adventure, RedCotton Night-Cap Country, Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in Their Day and Asolando, coincidentally published on the day of his death. Perhaps his best loved individual poem was his re-telling of The Pied Piper of Hamlin.
Robert Browning in maturity--at long last a revered poet in his own right.
Browning died full of honors, at last one of the most admired English, poets on December12, 1889 at his son’s home in Venice. He was laid to rest in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey next to Tennyson.
A sheriff's posse of 100 men opened fire on an orderly march of Slavic miners at Lattimer, Pennsylvania shooting most of them in the back as they fled 120 years ago today. |
Regular readers of this blog may be getting sick of the accounts of labor massacres and atrocities that fill these daily missives far too often. And Lord knows I get tired of writing about them, especially about the ones from various coal fields across the country and spanning decade after decade with numbing monotony. But someone must tell the stories of all of those who died and sacrificed, just as those of us living today need to make sure those sacrifices were not in vain.
So here is another one. Not the oldest by far, but from way back before the turn of the 20th Centurythe memory of which has been dimmed in the light of subsequent celebrated battles. But it was key in opening up some of America’s oldest anthracite fields to unionization and the dawning of justice.
By the 1890’s the coal fields of Pennsylvania had been providing the fuel for the Industrial Revolution in the Northeast for decades—fuel for the vast and expanding network of railroads tying the nation together, for iron and steel blast furnaces, for the generators that were illuminating the great cities, even for the homes of many residents, rich and poor. And for just as long the battle between miners and bosses over wages, hours, safety, and clean and affordable housing for mine families it was equally intense. Native born coal diggers and colliers from England, Ireland, Wales, and Scotland had gradually overcome their mutual suspicions and increasingly united with a strong sense of solidarity and militancy.
Workers organized locally at first. Sometimes they simply struck with no permanent organization, with predictably disastrous results. Later they would walk out as Knights of Labor lodges or skilled workers would down tools as members of craft unions. Irish miners had organized in the secret society known as the Molly Maguires which they had brought with them from the old country and waged a guerilla war of bombings and assassinations against mine bosses in the 1870’s that was finally smashedby the infiltration of Pinkerton spies into their midst.
There were major strikes across the state in 1875, walkouts in conjunction with the nationwide uprising of the laboring classes remembered as the Great Railway Strike of 1877, and another major strike wave in 1887. Each time facing the use of the company thugsknown as the Pennsylvania Coal and Iron Police, as well as local law enforcement, and the State Militia, the strikes had been broken and the miners had to return to work.
In the face of rising demand for coal and the rising militancy of their English speaking workforce, coal operators turned increasingly to recent immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe. Displacedand illiterate German, Polish, and other Slavic peasants were hired in large numbers and assigned the hardest and most dangerous jobs in the mines. These greenhorns, disparaged universally as Bohunks, were used as scabs to break strikes. Naturally English speaking miners resented them and the bosses did everything they could to keep their workers squabbling among themselvesfor scraps and crumbs.
Then one of the reoccurring national panics and depressions of the early 1890’s actually made things worse than ever. Thousands lost their jobs, bosses cut wages as much as 25% across the board, and increased rents in company owned housing. Corners were cut in an already dangerous industry. More than 30,000 miners had been killed outright in Pennsylvania alone since 1870, not counting those who escaped immediate death only to linger with what became known as Black Lung in the 20th Century.
By 1897 much of the nation was recovering from the Panic and wages were generally once again on the rise. But not in the coal fields. Instead the bosses, acting in concert, conspired to impose a new round of wage cuts along with rent increases and price boosts at company stores where most miners were compelled to buy their necessities. The bosses were confident that no matter what action militant English speakers might take, that their loyal and passive immigrant work force would, as before, willingly break any strike.
But two things were different this time. First the American Federation of Labor (AFL) had somewhat reluctantly given the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) permission to ignore craft divisions and enroll all mine workers, skilled and unskilled alike into one union similar to the inclusive lodges of the fading Knights of Labor. Secondly those Bohunks were just as fed up as English speakers and were ready to overcome their resentments of second class treatment and even persecution to support them. UMWA organizers in the field like John Mitchel encouraged and welcomedthem.
UMWA organizer John Mitchell made his mark in Pennsylvania. |
Under the circumstances, it did not take much of a spark to set off a conflagration.
Things were tense around the region due to the latest rounds of wage cuts in early August of 1897 when the Honey Brook Division of the Lehigh and Wilkes-Barre Coal Company laid off its mostly English speaking workers at its strip mines, cut the pay of the remaining workers, and raised rent for housing in company towns. Then the company consolidated several mule barns causing most teamsters a much longer and uncompensated commute, usually on foot. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back for about 35 teenage mule skinners who walked off the job on August 14. By the next day most of the strip mine workers joined them. Then, to the astonishment of everyone, the Bohunks who were mostly confined to dangerous jobs as underground miners joined the effort instead of providing scabs.
Within two days the strike had spread to more than 2,000 workers and near-by operations. The UMWA, which had been organizing in the area for years with few members to show for it, suddenly swelled when the strikers joined in mass. Unable to break the strike, owners capitulatedon August 23 and agreed to several concessions including payment for overtime, bringing wages upto the regional average, allowing miners to see their own doctors when injured, and no longer forcing miners to live in company-owned housing. It seemed a sweeping victory.
Naturally, such success spawned other actions. On August 35 youthful breaker boys at the A.S. Van Wickle Co. in Colerain struck for higher wages as well. When the company attempted to use Slavs as scabs, they joined the strike instead. The strike spread to two other nearby coal works and the company quickly agreed to raise wages ending the walk out after only three days.
Workers were emboldened by the new spirit of solidarity in the field which was bridging old hostilities and grudges. And the bosses were just as alarmed by the new developments. Determining among themselves not to continue to allow workers to “extort” wage boosts and concessions from them, employers began to beef up their forces of mine guards—plug-ugliesand petty criminals swept up from the streets of Pittsburgh—and plan for a new round of battle.
It did not take them long to get what they wanted. Van Wickle and other companies soon reneged on the promises they had made. On September 1 they announced that pay raises would go to only a few skilled workers—English speakers—and made vague promises to the Slavs to treat them better in the future. Neither set of miners were inclined to accept the greatly reduced offer. The strike resumed on September 3 when 3,000 miners marched on mass to four operations shutting them down. Day by day there were more marches and more closures as the strike spread.
Luzerne County Sheriff James F. Martin organized a heavily armed posse. |
The Coal and Iron Police and mine guards were ineffectual at stopping the marches. The companies turned to Luzerne County Sheriff James F. Martinwho established a posse of about 100 English and Irish citizens—businessmen, clerks, middle class citizens—to prevent any further marches from occurring. Still, day by day the strike spread and by September 8 nearly 10,000 were out and growing daily. Owners attempted to convince the Sheriff of Schuylkill County arrest several thousand miners who had assembled near Pottsville and had forced a mine to shut down, but that officer refused.
Sheriff Martin, however, was made of sterner stuff. He had a public proclamation printed in the local papers warning against “unlawful assembly, tumult, and interference with the peaceful operation of any mines or mining equipment.” He even signed it as High Sheriff, an old country designation sure to inflame the passions of English and Irish miners.
On Friday September 10 400-500 Slavic and German miners assembled for a march on the mine owned by Calvin Pardee at Lattimer. Martin knew they were coming and deployed his posse around the entrance to the mine, including posting sharp shooters on high ground and behind a line of coal cars. Witnesses later testified that the special deputies were joking about the number of strikers they would kill.
Unarmed and marching in an orderly fashion behind a color bearer with the Stars and Stripes, the march arrived at the gates at 3:45 pm. Sheriff Martin stepped into the road to confront them. He ordered the men to disburse then attempted to grab the flag from the color bearer. A struggle ensued and the marchers surged forward. The posse opened fire. Marchers immediately turned to flee, but firing continued for several minutes. And not just random fire, but carefully aimed shots meant to bring down individuals. Nineteen strikers died on the scene. Fleeing marchers dragged as many of the wounded as possible with them, but some were left on the ground and at least some of these may have been executed where they lay. Virtually all of the dead and wounded—who numbered anywhere from twenty to nearly fifty—were shot in the back, some multiple times. Many of the wounded were afraid to seek medical help.
The shooting set off a round of rioting by strikers and their families in the area. Martin called for the assistance of the Pennsylvania National Guard and on September 11 2,500 troops of the Third Brigade, including artillerywere deployed. A mass meeting of was held on September 12 to raise money for the victims. Slavic leaders tried to urge restraint but tempers were too short to be easily assuaged.
On the 12th miners went hunting for Wilkes-Barre Coal Company Mine Superintendent Gomer Jones, and destroyed his home when they could not locate him. On the 20th women armed with rolling pins led about 150 boys on a charge on the gate of the McAdoo works but were turned back by the guard.
Slowly, the strike and marches petered out. By September 29 the Guard was withdrawn. Miners drifted back to work. It seemed that the owners, once again, had won by the application of brute force under the color of law.
But there was plenty of public indignation at Sheriff Martin and his goons. The Sheriff and 73 of his deputies were indicted and placed on trial in conjunction with the shooting. The Sheriff and his witnesses testified that his men shot in self-defense when a mob attacked him. This was contradicted by numerous victims, and witnesseswho asserted that there was no attackand that victims had been shot while trying to flee or disburse. Even a key defense witness let slip that the shooting began not because of an attack but because “we were afraid that they would attack.”
To the surprise of virtually no one, the men were all acquitted.
Despite the temporary setback, outrage over the shooting helped UMWA organizers like John Mitchel to sign up more than 10,000 new members in Pennsylvania over the next three years. In epic strikes in 1900-’01 the UMWA was able to win and enforce major concessions across the Keystone State coal fields. Mitchel, the advocate of uniting miners across ethnic divisions, rose the Presidency of the union in 1897. The Pennsylvania fields became the bedrock upon which the union was built, soon challenging bosses from West Virginia and other Appalachian states, to Illinois and far off Colorado.
The Lattimer Massacre Memorial and adjacent Pennsylvania State Historical Marker. |
A handsome monument to Mitchel inscribed, “Champion of Labor, Defender of Human Rights” has long stood outside of the Lackawanna County Courthouse in Scranton, Pennsylvania. But for many years there was no monument to the dead miners, whose bodies were unceremoniously dumped in anunmarked slit trench the location of which has been lost. It wasn’t until 1972 that the United Labor Council of Lower Luzerne and Carbon Counties and the UMWA finally erected a small memorial on the site of the shooting.
Because of the miracle of the World Wide Web a writer now has at his or her fingertipspretty much the accumulated knowledge, wisdom, lore, and artistic production of human kind as long as he/she can figure out the right search term in Google. This has made writing a regular blog like mine immeasurably easier. I can do at least a cursory research of any topic and generally put together an entry that can fool most people into believing that I know what I am talking about in a few hours.
It was not always so. Not so many years ago any article of average blog post length was the equivalent of a semi-major college paper and required sometimes days of research both at home and in librariesand the production of copious notes. For a lone wolf writer without a research department at his or her beck and call and without copy editors the kind of daily production I now attempt would be impossible.
Let’s revisit those quaint times. We will begin with resources kept at hand, preferably within arm’s reach of the writer’s trusty manual typewriter—that’s a whole other story. Here are some of the basics upon which I relied.
· Dictionary. I used my mother’s old blue-bound Webster’s Complete Collegiate Dictionary for years until it literally fell apart. I replaced it with a fat red paper back with tiny print—The Miriam-Webster Dictionary. Both invaluable tools, but you often need to actually know how to spell something to successfully look it up—a draw back for a writer who never met a spelling test he couldn’t flunk. Roget’s Thesaurus was a must to avoid using the same word in a sentence two or three times.
· Stylebook. A must for any writer, I dabbled in the AP stylebook, the standard of newspaper journalists, but generally followed an old friend from college—The Elements of Style by William Skunk and E. B. White, the now dated Bible of more formal writing. Despite the scorn of modernists it has firmly anchored me to such requirements as the Oxford comma and two spaces after a periodending a sentence. However for narrative writing, both factualand fiction and of course poetry, I untethered my ship from any style anchorin the service effect.
· Almanac. These amazing versatile single volumes were a cornucopia of statistical, geographic, historical, biographical, and odd-ball assorted facts. There were options available, but I preferred The World Almanac and Book of Facts which I purchased annually even when the $5.00 or so cover price for the paperback at the drug store seemed like an enormous sacrifice. It also contained several nice, shiny pages of color platesincluding The Flags of the World and the United States, and a basic Atlas. Each new edition also included noted obituaries and longer articles selected by the mysterious whimof the editors.
· Encyclopedia. A must-have, but a forbidding expense unless you were willing to settle on a twenty to thirty year outdated version offered at a garage sale for about a penny a pound. Door to Door salesmen were still pitching the World Book, Book of Knowledge, and even the gold standard Encyclopedia Britannicaon monthly payments that would stretch into the next millennia. I had to settle on the basic but serviceable Funk and Wagnall’s Encyclopedia which I bought one volume a week as a premium offer at Dominic’s Supermarket in Chicago. I also swallowed hard and subscribed to its Annuals which I kept getting for ten years or so to more or less keep the set current. Anything I need greater detail on required a library visit to the temple of the Britannica.
· Atlas. I had an enormous National Geographic World Atlas with that publication’s elegant and detailed maps and which included maps of the solar system and universe. A treat for the eyes, but unwieldy. I also had a more manageable Funk and Wagnall’s atlas from Dominic’s and for a time a relief globe of the world I had in high school. The trouble with atlases and globes is, alas, that in the turbulent modern world geographic boundaries, place names, countries, and empireschange continually.
· Bible. Even if you are not writing specifically about religion, the Good Book was an essential reference and a key to much history, philosophy, and literary references. There were even then numerous available translations, but then—and even now—I stubbornly used the King James Version of the Bible with the Words of Our Lord in Red Letters. This is a choice mocked by biblical scholars who regard it an unreliable second or third hand translation from the original Hebrew and Aramaic to Greek and Latin. But it is the edition I grew up on and as a poet I admire its majestic passagesand cadences. So many modern translations grate on the ears.
· American History. I needed a fairly comprehensive single volume U.S. history source. Perhaps I would have been better served with James and Mary Beard’s New Basic History of the United States, but I chose The Oxford History of the American People by Samuel Eliot Morison published in 1965. Morison was a Boston Unitarian most noted as a Naval historian, but his book took into good account religious, cultural, artistic, and technical aspects of American history as well as the usual parade of Great Men, politics, and wars. Later Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States provided a much needed bottom up view of history and took into account the real lives of ordinary people.
· Telephone directories. Modern life was impossible without them and they were magically delivered to your door annually. In Chicago there were two enormous tomes—the White Pages and the H.H. Donnelly Yellow Pages.
· Miscellaneous. The Book of ListsBy David Wallechinsky, Irving Wallace, and Amy Wallace was both a fun discovery and turned out to be a goldmine of trivia and obscurity—right up my alley.
· Wish I had. The reference I did not have and most wish I did was Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. Oh, what countless hours of searching that might have saved me.
A writer also had to be versed in current affairs and periodicals were they key.
· Newspapers. I was always at newspaper junkie. Back in the day I regularly got both Field newspapers—the Chicago Sun-Times in the morning and the Daily News, home of Mike Royko and famous for its worldwide pool of correspondents. Alas, the News folded, Royko moved to the Sun-Times which also had Roger Ebert, Bill Mauldin, and a descent selection of op-ed columnists. But when we moved to Crystal Lake more than thirty years ago I switched to the Chicago Tribune which offered reliable home delivery, despite its odious editorial policy. Since then both papers have suffered deep cuts to reporters and editorial staffs, but the Sun-Times has been reduced to a mostly pitiful shell. For local coverage out here in the boonies, our local daily, now known as the Northwest Herald provided essential community coverage despite various deficiencies. But few suburban areas in this country still have the luxury of a daily paper.
I had been reading Time regularly since at least 1963 when it crowned Richard J. Daley as the Mayor of the City that Works.
· Magazines. A newsweeklywas a must. I had been subscribing to Time since high school. Henry Luce was a reactionarybut you could be well informed if you kept in mind built in bias. Time was still considered the most comprehensive alternative to the more liberal Newsweek or even more conservative U.S. News and World Report. I read Time weekly for so many years that my regular readers might notice the influence of some of its somewhat peculiar style in my own writing. This is not a point of pride. For more left leaning news and analysis I sporadically subscribed to The Progressive, The Nation, and In These Times often depending on deals offered by Publisher’s Clearing House so that my wife could enter the sweepstakes with a clear conscience. In the same way I sometimes received childhood treasureThe National Geographic and handsome hard-bound American Heritage.
If none of these resources proved fruitful it was off to the Library. In Chicago sometimes the old branch library at Fullerton and Sheffieldby the L would suffice before it was torn down to make room for DePaul tennis courts. But often if meant a trip the glorious and inspiring old Main Libraryat Michigan and Madison where working in the elegant main reading room was a pleasure. Later, however, it meant a trip to the dismal and depressing warehouse where the stacks were moved and kept for years before the Harold Washington Library finally opened. That sucked the joy out of the trip.
In Crystal Lake it most often meant a 45 minute walk each way to the library. Nice folks and a very well informed Reference Desk. It meant combing the endless drawers of the card catalog with a slip of paper and a stub of a pencil in hand to note my discoveries then searching the shelves for them. Of course scanning the shelves often tuned up unexpected discoveries and I often went home with unintended books. Often olderor more obscure books were unavailable locally, but I could often get them after a few days wait through the state-wide inter library loan system. I remember finally getting a copy of the first volume of Henry Adams’s The History of the United States in the Jefferson and Madison Administrations in just such a way.
Of course sometimes even greater depth was required. But access to university and specialized libraries was often difficult or impossible without academic credentials, verifiable employment with a recognized publication, or sponsorship by an established scholar. All mostly insurmountable hurdles for an independent scribe without a degree or pedigree. Even if permission could be obtained it usually involved travel to the institution. That was tough when I sometimes barely had bus fare.
Locating an out of print books without haunting used bookstores was a real challenged particularly in specialized areas like labor history. The book was likely out there someplace, but damned if you could find it. After the Industrial Workers of the World ran out of copies it took me 15 years to run down a copy of the book I co-authored—The IWW—Its First 70 Years: 1905-1975. Copies were out there languishing on the shelves of obscure radical book shops and used bookstores from San Francisco to Timbuktubut I had no way of knowing where.
Of course, all of that was then, the very quaint then dimly remembered by a grizzled few. Tomorrow thanks to the blessing of the gods, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and Bill Gates I will compose and post a blog entry probably without getting off my ass in a tenth the time the same piece would have required if I had researched and written in back in the Stone Age. So it goes.
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Anna Marie Robinson age about 6. |
Anna Mary Moses and two surviving daughters. |
Grandma Moses's early work like Early Spring on the Farm were evocative of Currier and Ives prints. |
Grandma Moses's 1952 autobiography. |
At her best as in this panoramic scene of a village fair, Grandma Moses's paintings are alive with people, action, and color. |
The Post Office's 1969 Grandma Moses commemorative featured Fourth of July from the White House art collection acquired during the Kennedy administration. |
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The press coverage of the Lawrence Strike labeled this photo "immigrant worker types" purposely dehumanizing women strikers. |
National Guard cavalry, perhaps the Harvard unit, on duty during the Lawrence strike. |
The true heroes of Little Rock these nine students endured violence, harassment, constant threats, and soul crushing hatred. |
The gauntlet run by 15 year old Elizabeth Eckford after she was turned away from Little Rock Central on the first day of school was terrifying. |
Paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division escort the Little Rock 9 after they arrived at school in a military convoy. |
The tsunami following the mega quake off the coast of Japan in 2011 crashes ashore. Two huge but virtually undetected powerful silent quakes preceded the cataclysm. |
In the days preceding the tsunami two powerful creeping deep quakes along the deep Japan Trench but no one on land felt or noticed them. |
Trump's Nuremberg moment using the White House as a backdrop for his televised Republican National Convention nomination acceptance rant. |
Armed militia members, 3%ers, and Proud Boys in Coeur d' Aline, Idaho to intimidate Black Lives Matters protesters. |
A lone Black Lives Matter demonstrater amid the flames on the first night of Jacob Blake protests in Kenosha. |
Kyle Rittenhouse, new pin-up boy of the Alt-Right in action in Kenosha |
Horst Wessel leads his SA Stormtroopers in a 1929 Nuremberg rally. |
The camping gear distibution will take place in the First United Methodist Church in McHenry Paraking lot located at the rear of the church on West John Street seen here. |
Stocking the camping gear at an early event at the First United Methodist Church in McHenry. |
The March was the brain child of labor and Civil Rights leader A. Phillip Randolph. |
Charlton Heston, Harry Bellefonte, novelist James Baldwin, and Marlon Brando added star power to the March. |
Peter Paul & Mary were among the notable entertainers who performed. They led the crowd in Pete Seger's anthem If I Had a Hammer. |
The hundreds of thousands of ordinary folks who showed up for the March for Jobs and Justice were just as important as any of the movement heavies and celebrities. |
Community peace maker Jacob Blake was shot in the back seven times while his sons witnessed the atrocity from the back seats of his van. |
The delegates caucus. |
"Mistah Chairman, I Rise to a point of order!" |
A Women's Equality Day banner celebrating the centennial of the certification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. |
National Women's Party protesters at their daily vigil at the White House gates. After the U.S. entered the Great War, President Wilson ordered the women arrested and jailed. |
Lucy Burns, Paul's closest friend and accomplice in custody at the brutal Occoquan Workhouse where the NWP prisoners were abused and force fed. |
Alice Paul toasts the triumphant banner draped at National Women's Party Headquarters in Washington after the final ratification of the 19th Amendment. |
Paul was author and life long champion of the Equal Rights Amendment. The quote comes from a psychiatrist's evaluation notes when she was jailed for her White House protests. |
Alice Paul at her home and former NWP Headquarters Belmont House in Washington in 1972. She never stopped campaigning for the Equal Rights Amendment. |
Sir John Herschel and his fantastic apparatus before it allegedly ignited his observatory. |
In 1835 it did not even need screaming headlines to attract readers to the Sun's fantastic story on the front page of its August 25 edition. |
The Eruption of Vesuvius by Edward Turner, early 19th Century. |
Vesuvius today still looms over the ruins of Pompeii and 18 towns at its base that comprise the "red zone." It is still active and one day may well bury the city again. |
Sexually explicit frescoes like this so shocked Catholic sensibilities that ruins were ordered reburied or walls were plastered over to prevent them from corrupting the morals of those why laid eyes on them. |
Rapidly falling ash quickly buried victims and preserved many of their bodies in the final moment of their lives as they were overcome by the hot, poisonous gasses. Plaster castings like this one are on display in Pompeii. |
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Paspoort or immigration photos of Sacco and Vanzetti from 1908. |
Sacco and Vanzetti became associated with Luigi Galleani's Italian anarchist group which advocated violent direct action and "the propaganda of the deed." |
Anarcho-syndicalist and IWW leader Carlo Tresca organized the first legal defense movement for Sacco and Vanzetti with the IWW's General Defense Fund. His long time partner Elizabeth Gurley Flynn organized the International Labor Defense (ILD) that had ties to Marxism and Communist Parties. |
Even the conservative American Federation of Labor (AFL) joined the legal defense and wide-spread protests. |
This demonstration in Paris is typical of those held around the world.. |
The IWW and its General Defense Committee had been leading members of the broad movement to free Sacco and Vanzetti. |
The massive funeral procession in Boston. |
Woody Guthrie wrote and performed a whole album of songs about Sacco and Vanzetti. |
The Sacco and Vanzetti Memorial plaque in Boston |
This probably fanciful depiction of the balloon bombing of Venice show bombs carried by multiple balloons exploding over the city raining shrapnel down on the population. |
Austrian inventor and artillery officer Franz von Uchatius. |
Inflating a Union Army Balloon during the Civil War. Photo by Mathew Brady. |
The United States has become the world leader in the use of attack drones. In 2016 President Barack Obama acknowledged that there had been substantial civilian death in our military attacks in Libya, Somalia, and Yemen but he and his successor have continued their use. The U.S. also supplies drones to surrogates and allies including Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey who are even more indiscriminate and make no pretense of not targeting civilians. |
Redwoods burn in California's Big Basin State Park near Santa Cruz. |
A California inferno. |
Fire and floo,Fire and f;ood. |
A Dutch view of New Amsterdam nine years after it was conquored by the English and renamed New York> note the militia drilling. |
A map shows early Jewish migration routes and settlements in the New World including Sephardi Portuguese Jews from The Netherlands at Recife, Brazil and Dutch Caribbean Islands like Curauo. |
Barsimson frequently got the best of his nemesis Governor Peter Stuyvesant by going over his head to the Governors of the Dutch West India Company. |
A 20th Century illustration of Barsimson on night watch on the walls of New Amsterdam. |
Crews tried to dig fire breaks to contain the 1910 fire but high winds carried embers from tree top to tree top jumping the lines and sometimes trapping the fire fighters. |
The Big Blow Up was actually sores of fires that burned out of control in and and around several National Forests in Idaho and adjacent states. |
Members of the Army's all Black 25th Infantry Regiment on fire duty with Forest Service Rangers. |
Wallace, Idaho in ruins after the the 1910 Big Blow Up. |
Legendary Forest Ranger Ed Pulaski outside of the cave where he sheltered and saved most of his crew as it was over run by a firestorm. |
Many of the 1910 Forest Service firefighters were teen age high school and college students recruited as summer employees. |
A Forest Service historical Marker commemorates the Great Fire of 1910. |
A Colonial rider on the Old Post Road makes a delivery in a village along his route. |
Benjamin Franklin kept his lucrative post as Colonial Post Master General even during his long residence in London as a Colonial agent. This portrait was done shortly after his arrival in England in 1757 |
This anti-Jackson cartoon lamented the spoils system which made the Post Office a political plumb. |
Young Abraham Lincoln was appointed Post Master of New Salem, Illinois under a Whig administration and operated out of his small grocery store until it failed. |
Rural Free Delivery (RFD) was a boon to countryside residents and voters did not forget that it was a Republican administration that provided it |
Urban mail men like these in the 1890s carried not only letters and publications in their pushcarts but all sorts of packages and other items directly to homes and businesses. |
Letter carriers return to work after a 1971 Postal Strike that gave Richard Nixon leverage to dump the Post Office Department and replace it with a quasi-public corporation meant to run like a business and turn a profit. |
Post Boxes being removed in Portland and around the country mostly in Democratic cities and strongholds. |
Protests in support of the Postal Service and against sabotaging the election are spreading across the country |
The names and contact info for members of the USPS Board of Governors who could fire Post Master General DeJoy and block his destructive rampage. Could, but probably won't. |
Senate Minority leader Chuck Blasted Trump and Republican Majority Leader Mich McConnell for trying to steal the election by destroying the Postal Service and Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the House back into session to deal with the emergency. |
The secure lock box at the McHenry County Administration Building is suppored to recieve mail-in ballots that are hand delivered to avoid uncertain mail delays. Now a suit in Federal Court is trying to challange counting mail-in ballots that do not have postmarks. |
Will we have to take to the streets like the citizens of Belarus to get rid of our would-be dictator?. |
Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act. Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, behind the President was the administration point person for the Act. |
The fears of some Republicans in this 2005 cartoon were justified--George W. Bush's support of Social Security privatization helped cost him re-election and punished Congressional Republicans. |
Even before his first run for the Presidency, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was sponsoring legislation to save Social Security without reducing benefits or raising retirement age. |
Republican/Libertarian and Ayn Rand fan boy has long set his sights on destroying Social Security. With his brother Koch family PACS and Dark Money fronts fuel new attacks on the system with the help of other billionaire oligarchs. |
A poster promoting the 1939 Amended Social Security Act |
Black workers heavily employed in agriculture, domestic service, seasonal and casual labor were largely excluded from Social Security coverage. Women of all ages were disadvantaged by having their benefits tied to their husband's earnings. |
Ida Mae Fuller receives first Social Security check.in 1940. |
The Black press supported the distinguished service of the 25th Infantry whose members were framed for the alleged Brownsville Raid. |
Newspaper accounts whipped up a frenzy against Black troops for an alleged assault on a white woman. |
Theodore Roosevelt, who largely owed his political career to the Buffalo Soldiers who served alongside the Rough Riders at the Battle of San Juan Hill and who did much of the hardest fighting that day, had been warmly supported by most Blacks. That changed when he scapegoated the 25th Regiment to shore up white support. |
Roosevelt approved of slanderous attacks on Senator Joseph B. Forster for demanding justice for the Ft. Brown troops like this racist cartoon. |
A recent edition of the book by John D. Weaver that revived interest in justice for the troops. |
Dorsey Willis finally got his pension. Survivors of other victims did not. |
Sirius is the bright star on the nose of the constellation Canis Major. |
Every bit as ominous as it looks the leading edge of a deracho closes in on a shopping center. Time to post those shopping cart warnings.... |
Two poets doing heavy lifting on an oppressively hot August day in Chicago's Logan Square neighborhood. Ira S. Murfin and The Old Man entertained pigeons, passed out drunks, and loyal captive family at a free public reading we optimistically advertised as Two Poets, No Waiting. |
The Old Man addressing the Abolish ICE in McHenry County Protest on behalf of the Tree of Life Social Justice Team. I called not just for abolishing ICE but also the Department of Homeland Security. |
The public enterance to the fortress like McHenry County Jail. The Immigration Detention facility occupies the entire fourth floor.. Several demonstrations and vigils have been held by the jail over the years. |
Rev. Dan Larsen helping to lead McHenry County's first immigrant justice march from Woodstock Square to the County Government complex with Magier Rivera and Carlos Acosta in 2007. |
The Illinois Minuteman Project was an active anti-immigrant hate group. It's local leaders became McHenry County Republican Party right-wing mainstays. |
Usually considered Charles Bulfinch's masterpiece the Massachusetts State House on the crest of Beacon Hill in Boston looked like this in 1827 shortly after its completion. It still dominates the old city, its dome now shining with gold gilt. |
Bulfinch in the early 19th Century. |
Bulfinch's New North Church, now St. Stephen's Catholic Church, over looks a plaza featuring an equestrian state of Paul Revere. |
The elegant simplicity of First Church, Unitarian in Lancaster, Massachusetts show how the Federalist style grew out of neoclassic design. |
Bulfinch's reconstruction of fame Faneuil Hall which had been the cradle of the Revolution in Boston included adding third story, widening the building and moving the coupla from the center of the roof to one end. The ground floor became a bustling market place. |
The Old State House in Hartfoed, Connecticut seen year in an early 1950s color postcard. |
He still had time for important commissions including the Old State House in Hartford, Connecticut in 1796 and the Massachusetts State House in 1798. The later, constructed on the crest of Beacon Hill overlooking the Common, is often considered his masterpiece. The impressive front façade is dominated by a colonnaded pediment sitting atop an arched stoa and flanked by arched windows. It was surmounted by a dome caped with an acorn which was originally painted light grey to resemble marble. The wooden dome leaked and in 1802 Bulfinch had it covered in copper by Paul Revere who had perfected a method of producing copper in large sheets. The dome was famously gildedwith gold in 1874 then painted over during World War II supposedly to prevent light glinting off its surface from becoming beacon to German bombers. It was re-gilded at great expense in 1994 and gleamsagain over the city.
Bulfinch's redesign of the U.S. Capitol building which had been damaged by the burning of Washington in the War of 1812 included finishishing the two winks, connecting them with central portion including the Rotunfs, the western portico and the low wooden dome.. The building looked like this until work began adding the larger cast-iron dome shortly before the Civil War. |
Bufinch designed the first home of All Souls Unitarian Church in Washington. |
While in Washington he also designed All Souls Unitarian Church of which he was a charter member along with such luminaries as President John Quincy Adams and Vice President John C. Calhoun. He also found time to work on commissions for distant projects, although he could not personally oversee the construction as was his preference. These included the State House in Augusta, Maine in 1829. He thus had his hand in the construction of three state capital buildings plus his significant changes and improvements to U.S. Capital.
This plaque adorns Bulfinch's birthplace home. |
Voted best looking picket line of 1919--Actors' Equity on strike. The militance of women actors was a major factor in the success of the strike. |
Aging matinee idol Edwin Booth, seen here in 1889, lent his name, prestige, and home to the founding of Actors Equity. |
Actors' Equity strike leaders John Cope, John Stewart, Frank Gillmore, and Francis Wilson lead a New York City march. |
Comedy star Marie Dressler, center, formed Chorus Equity which joined the actors on strike preventing producers from mounting all-girl reviews to keep their theaters open. Broadway star Ethel Barrymore, far right joined their picket line. |
The actors knew a thing or two about publicity and he press. Their well oiled Press Office kept reporters fed with the latest strike news and human interest stories. At right is Ned Sparks who became a celebrated MGM contract player wirh his cigar chomping, sardonic, and deadpan persona in scores of pictures. |
The current Actors' Equity logo. |
The mushroom cloud over Hiroshima August 6, 1945. |
While no one seems to be paying attention, the Doomsday Clock is set closer to midnight than ever before. |
The devastation in Hiroshima. |
Voting rights demonstrations across the South, often brutally suppressed, like the first attempt of a march from Selma Alabama where young John Lewis had his skull fractured and the deaths of White civil rights workers pressured Lyndon Johnson to act and ultimately gave him the leverage to get an act through Congress. |
The Rev. William Barber in the red stole has been a leading voice for the "Civil Rights Movement for our times" and demands to end the GOP rampage of voter suppression laws. Seen here before his arrest with other faith leaders in Washington. |
Lyndon Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Among the witnesses are Senate Co-Sponsor and Republican Minority Leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. , Benjamin Hooks and Rosa Parks. |
The deaths of a white minister and a white woman volunteer during the Selma Campaign spurred Congress to action on the Voting Rights act in a way the vastly more numerous murders of Black activists like Jimmy Lee Jackson had ever done. White privilege thus leveraged the landmark act. At least the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) recognized the sacrifice of Jackson along side UUs Rev. James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo in the memorial plaque that hangs in their Boston headquarters. |
Lincoln's Income Tax proposal was bitterly opposed by Democrats and mocked in the press. Here he is not only depicted as a court fool, but his exaggerated nose is meant to suggest that he was a "greedy Jew." |
Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase conceived the Income Tas plan. |
New Yorkers line up to pay the first Income Tax in 1862. |
This wealthy tax payer paid a whopping $889 in Income Tax in 1884 and all he got was this lousy receipt. |
James Butler Hickok had been made semi-legendary as Wild Bill in the penny press and dime novels. As a genuine celebrity his death was breathlessly covered by the popular press. |
A young Hickok in his early Kansas and Missouri days is flanked by his parents. He idolized his abolitionist father who gave him his first pistol as a boy to guard the family barn, an Underground Railroad station. |
Hickok's 1865 gunfight with Davis Tutt in Springfield, Missouri is considered the first recorded quick draw, stand up gun fight in Western history. His amazing kill shot at 75 feet made him instantly famous. |
Hickok in his days as a Cavalry Scout around 1869. |
Hickok in buckskins. He liked to wear his bone-handled Navy Colt pistols butt forward and tucked into his belt rather than holstered. Despite the cumbersome arrangement he could get them out with speed and fire with accuracy...until perhaps his eyesight began to fail. |
A publicity photo for the show Buffalo Bill Cody put together in 1873. After a few months on stage, Hickok came back west temporarily flush. Left to right Elisha P. Green, Hickok, Cody,Texas Jack Omohundro, and Eugene Overton. |
Hickok with his long locks shorn and sporting a goatee with his new Cheyenne family. Circus proprietor Agnes Thatcher Lake, was better looking than the formal photographer's frown of the period would indicate despite being Wild Bill's senior by 15 years. Her daughter Emma, on whom Hickok reportedly doted, is center. |
Hickok's assassin Jack McCall miraculously was acquitted by an illegal Deadwood jury. He would not be so lucky when real law got a hold of him. |
Calamity Jane at Wild Bill's grave after it was moved to Mt. Moriah Cemetery. She peddled picture post cards of this to tourists for drinking money. Later she would be buried next to Hickok "as a joke"--and as an added tourist attraction. |
Older Baby Boomers like me will remember the long running TV show Wild Bill Hickok staring heart throb Guy Madison and Andy Divine as comic sidekick Jingles. Absolutely nothing in the series was remotely like the life of the real teamster/spy/scout/lawman/actor/gambler/drunk. But we can all imitate Divine gargling out "Wait for me, Wild Bill!" |
Astronomer Maria Mitchell from an 1851 portrait by H. Dassell. |
Mitchell as a young woman. |
Mitchell's certificate of election to the Aerican Academy of Arts and Sciences. |
Mitchell in middle age. |
Mitchell with her Vassar students in 1878. |
An early souvenir post card ot the Maria Mitchell Memorial and Observatory on Nantucket Island. |
The short-lived Federal League offered players an escape from from bondage to the National and American Leagues. It's collapse indirectly let to the Supreme Court case which ruled that Major League Baseball was exempt from the provisions of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act handing unprecedented power to owners over players. |
A proven anti-labor union buster and the presiding judge in the Blsck Sox Scandal trial Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was picked as the powerful first Commissioner of Baseball. He was the owners' creature from the begining. |
Curt Flood and Players Association Executive Director Marvin Miller. |
These two New York Post stories reflected the heavy economic impact of the strike and the disappointment of fans. |
Pirate picher Luis Tiant reads about the end of the strike. |
The Baseball Hall of Fame's Twitter announcement of the election of Marvin Miller in December 2019 on his eighth appearance on the ballot. |
The Arc de Triomphe today on the Place de Charles de Gaulle. |
The Arch of Titus in Rome was the inspiration for the Arc de Triomphe. |
The wood and canvas mock-up of the Arc for Napoleon's entry into Paris in 1810. |
The Bourbon Louis Philippe I, King of the French, completed Napoléon's Arch to promote national unity, French glory, and to appeal to the Paris mob. It worked--for a while. |
The Prussian Victory Parade of 1871, |
Flying through the Arc to celebrate victory in World War I. |
Charles de Gaulle's 1944 victory walk. |
Modern French power is still on defiant display annually at Bastile Day Parade, the oldest and one of the largest annual military parades in the world. |
Behind drummers the NAACP's James Weldon Johnson and W.E.B, Du Bois, center, lead the Silent Parade in New York City in 1917. |
The 1917 East St. Louis Race Riot spurred African Americans to new action. |
Journalist and anti-lynching crusader Ida B Wells came to East St. Louis to investigate and report for the Chicago Daily Defender. |
Black nationalist Marucs Garvey used the East St. Louis race riots to promote his vision of an independent Black nation as a refuge from rampant White racism and violence. Many were receptive to the message. |
Portraits by Laura Wheeler Waring |
Women in the march wore white for the innocence of violence victims but the clothes were also an echo of Suffrage marchers. |
The men of the Parade. |
Blck Lives Matter marches like this one are a legacy of the Silent March. |
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A shore-end cross section of the innovative cable that made thie connection possible. The copper wire was wound and insulated with hemp. |
The SS Great Eastern was one of the largest and most celebrated steam packets plying the Atlantic before she was converted to a cable layer and sailed to even greater fame. |
The completion of the cable was celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic. |
The powder magazine of the Negro Fort explodes killing nearly everyone inside. Note the fort flies a British ensign and, ironically, the red flag of no quarter. |
Black troops of the Corps of Colonial Marines drilling. Those at the English Fort may not have been so completely uniformed, but they were well trained. |
The Black and Native defenders of the Negro Fort watch the approach of U.S. Navy Gun Boats. Their inexperienced cannon fire would be useless against the boats. |
A Topographical Engineers map show Fort Gadsen which Jackson ordered built in 1818 and the footprint of the destroyed Negro Fort just behind it. |
After victory at New Orleans General Andrew Jackson moved into Spanish East Florida itching for a fight. |
John Quincy Adams as Secretary of State. |
George Catlin captured Native American culture just before it was wiped away like this council of Northern Plains Indians and tepee village. Amazing detail in costume, decoration on the tepee, cultural symbols such as the central tribal staff and bundles, smoking, and the scalps hanging from the tripod. |
Catlin--early work, a lithograph of Buffalo Harbor. |
From the first trip with William Clark--Blood chief Buffalo Bull's Back Fat. |
Mandan Sun Dance Lodge. |
George Catlin by William Fisk. The artist often wore the shirts and other clothing from his collection of Native outfits and artifacts. |
One of the most famous images--Chief Four Bears of the Mandan in all of his magnificence. |
Clara Catlin circa 1840 by George Linen |
Dramatic action in Attacking the Grizzly |
Chief Osceola, bane of he U.S. Army Regular Dragoons in the Florida Seminole Wars. |
ICE prisoners in McHenry County Jail receiving pastoral care through the Jail Ministry of the Interfaith Committee for Detained Immigrants. |
Militarized Federal secret police including Homeland Security ICE and CBS agents in Portland |
Abducting people off the streets is exactly what ICE is trained to do. |
Homeland Security troops attack protesters in Portland. |
Demonstrations like this peaceful candle light vigil in 2018 out side the immigrant detention unit in McHenry County Jail could be declared a riot and attack on a Federal facility subject to attack by Homeland Security troops. |
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The Eastland on a better day sails from her Chicago River dock under the State Street Bridge on the way to the open waters of Lake Michigan in a vintage 1908 postcard. |
Survivors and rescuers mingle on the side of the ship minutes after it rolled. |
Family members search for loved one laid out in a makeshift morgue at the 2nd Regiment Arsenal nearby. |
The Eastland was re-floated and salvaged and became the Navy's U.S.S. Wilmette, a gun boat and training vessel in service on the Great Lakes until 1947. |
As a young reporter Carl Sandburg covered the disaster. As a poet and a Socialist, he saw the disaster as part of a larger catastrophe suffered by the working class. |
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The Lazarus summer home in Newport, Rhode Island. |
Henry George was a major inspiration for Emma. |
The manuscript for the poem The New Colussus was offered in this auction catalog to raise money for the Statue of Liberty pedestal. |
The memorial plaque on the pedistal of the Statue of Liberty was affixed there in 1903. |
Emma never got her own stamp, but her portrait adorned the First Day Cover for a Statue of Liberty stamp. |
The Statue of Liberty in New York harbor, 1910. |
The Jewish Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island. |
The Jewish Exile from Spain, 1492. On her mother's side Emma Lazarus was descended from the Sephardic Jews. |
Patrick Murfin hosted the Light for Libery rally last summer at the McHenry County Jail, just one of many protests against the immigrant detention center there. |
The movement to Abolish ICE is growing all over the county with actions like this one recentyl in New York City. |
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Hemingway in an Italian military hospital in his Red Cross ambulance corps uniform with Agnes von Kurowsky, the lovely nurse eight years his senior he fell madly in love with. |
Hemingway and his first wife Hadley--young, in love, and at large in Europe. |
Hemingway in Paris with the fresh head scar from the freak accident when he pulled his bathroom skylight frame down his head. In later years he would encourage people to assume that the scar was related to his war wounds or a hunting accident. |
Happy years in Key West--Hemingway with wife Pauline and a marlin. |
Hemingway at the Battle of Teruel in the Spanish Civil war. Not just a war corespondent, he was a passionate Republican partisan and in the heat of the moment could not resist joining the battle. |
Another war, another woman--Hemingway and third wife Martha in Idaho shortly after their marriage. |
Hemingway's war corespondent credentials from SHAFE--Supreme Headquarters Allied Forced Europe. |
Hemingway with Veronica "Rocky" Cooper, fourth and final wife the former Mary Walsh, and his pal Gary Cooper in Idaho. |
Despite the severity of their injuries, Hemingway was much amused by the erroneous reports of his death in his second plane crash in two days. |
Life's famous cover portrait of Hemingway--perhaps the most iconic image of him, but not one he would have chosen. He would prefer to have been remembered as a swashbuckling writer and adventurer, not a pensive old man. |
SEIU President Mary Kay Henry at a health care workers' action. |
This call for the San Francisco action shows participating organization. |
Critical medical workers demanded a safe working environment, sick leave, and a living wage at a Chicago area hospital. |
McDonald's has long been a target of the Fight for $15 and a Union campaign of the SEIU and of other unions including the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW.) |
Mrs. Stanton reads the Declaration. |
A young Elizabeth Cady Stanton about the time of the convention. |
Quaker Lucretia Mott was already a senior activist in the Anti-Slavery movement. Seen here with her supportive husband James in 1842. James took the chair for the second day of the convention. |
Abolitionist Fredrick Douglass helped publicize the Convention in his newspaper the North Star and spoke forcefully in support of the Declaration and Resolution, helping to sway the support of most men in attendance. He and Stanton became life long friends and collaborators, each supporting the others work. In today's movement lingo the recognized intersectionality. |
The Wesleyan Chapel as it appears today, its exterior restored by the National Park Service. |
Stanton's position with her partner Susan B. Anthony as the most important senior leaders of the Suffrage Movement was endangered by her open avowal of radical Free Thought. Her 1876 history of the Women's movement helped establish the Seneca Falls Convention the foundational moment of the movement and remind readers of her pivotal role. |
First Wavesculpture group by Lloyd Lillie depicting 20 Seneca Falls convention attendees including Mary Ann and Thomas McClintock, Lucretia and James Mott, Jane and Richard Hunt, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, Martha Wright and 11 anonymous participants representing men and women who attended the Convention. |
Paramedics attend a victim of the 1984 McDonald's massacre in San Ysidro, California as a stunned SWAT Team member surveys the carnage. Mass shootings were not unheard of in 1984, but they were far from common. The 1966 Texas Tower shootings by Charles Whitman at the University of Texas in Austin is often considered the first modern mass murder targeting random victims. 16 were killed and 30 wounded on campus that day. But the sniper attack would be rare until the Las Vegas shooting in 2017 with 59 dead plus the shooter. Most incidents with multiple deaths—three or more—were the result of family killings, street gang activity, organized crime wars, or in connection with a crimelike robbery. What happened at a San Ysidro, CaliforniaMcDonalds on July 18 of 1984 was something very different—the deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman in U.S. history until being surpassedseven years later by the Luby’s Cafeteria shooting in Killeen, Texas where 23 people plus the gunman died. James Huberty--a deceptively mild-mannered looking killer. 41 year old James Huberty was originally from Ohio where he had a relentlessly sad childhood and youth. He was crippled by polio and wore leg braces for several years leading to being bullied in school. The family was hyper-religious and he was raised in a particularly severe Methodist household which never spared the rod in punishment of his childhood sins. When his father moved to a farm his mother abandoned the family to become a Pentecostal missionary in Tucson, Arizona. Huberty was emotionally devastated by his mother’s abandonment. His father would laterrecollect finding his son slumped against the family chicken coop sobbing. With few friends, he was an indifferentand inattentive student. His only interest or hobby was practicing endlessly with a target pistol. By his teens, Huberty was something of an amateur gunsmith. He was described by the few that knew him as sullen, resentful, and prone to fits of rage. He did become fixated on death. After graduation from Waynedale High School in Apple Creek, Ohio he kicked around in local odd jobsbefore trying his hand as a sociology major at Malone University in Canton. The experience at the Quaker school was not a good one. He quickly dropped out and enrolled at the Pittsburgh Institute of Mortuary Science. He graduatedwith honors in 1964 and earned his funeral director’s and embalmer’s licenses. In early 1965, Huberty married Etna Markland, whom he had met while attending Malone College. Shortly after his marriage, he found work funeral home in Canton. Although proficient at embalming, hiss introverted personality made him ill-suitedto dealing with members of the public, causing minor conflicts with his superiors. He worked in this profession for two years before opting to become a welder for a firm in Louisville where he worked for two years before securing a better-paid position at Babcock & Wilcoxin June 1969. Although reclusive and taciturn, Huberty’s bosses considered him a reliable worker. He willingly took overtime, got promotions and by the mid-1970s was earning a very comfortable income of between $25,000 and $30,000 per year enough for Huberty and his wife to move into a three-story home in an affluent section of Massillon, Ohio. In the winter of 1971, this home was destroyed in a fire. Despite the set-back James and Etna bought another house on the same street and later built a six-unit apartment building on the grounds of their first home. Daughters Zelia and Cassandra were born in 1972 and 1974. The family seemed to be doing well, even thriving. But Huberty still suffered bouts of depression and fits of anger and a history of domestic violence, frequently slappingor punching his daughters, holding knives to their throats, and beating his wife. The police were called on multiple occasions. Etna tried but failed to persuade him to seek counselling for his anger, but he refused. She learned that she could somewhat mollifyhim and calm him by doing card readings for him with reassuring messages. Huberty inscribed this Polaroid with the chilling caption "I'll give you 100 yards" while holding an AR-15 assault rifle. It was recently posted appreciatively on a web site for mass murderers and serial killer fans. The deadly efficiency of his killing spree was admired. Huberty was also amassing a personal arsenal of guns and ammunition. He picked fights with neighbors over the slightest perceived slights and his oft repeated mantra was “I believe in paying my debts. Both good and bad. He became a conspiracy theorist and self-proclaimed survivalist who believed an escalation of the Cold War was inevitable and that Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reaganand the whole U.S. government were conspiring against him. In many ways he was the prototype of the paranoid and angry White man that became familiar in more recent mass shootings. Things really fell off a cliff when Huberty lost his job in the 1982 recessionwhich he blamed on mysterious, dark forces. He threatened to commit suicide. The following year in dire economic straits he sold the apartment building for $150,000 and the family home for $12,000 in cash plus assuming the balance of the mortgage. With the money as a nest egg, Huberty put most of the family’s possessions except for his gun collection into storage and drove the family to Tijuana, Mexicowhere he thought the family’s resources would last longer. Although his wife and daughters adjusted well and socialized with their new neighbors, Huberty who spoke no Spanish and refused to learn. He was also unable to find a job. After just three months he moved the family across the border to San Ysidro, a poor mostly Latino district of San Diego. They first lived in an apartment complex with otherwise all Latino tenants. He got some Federal job training funds for security guard training, which appealed to him because he would be able to carry a weapon imagined he would command respect. After getting a job as a condominium development guard in April 1984 he sent for the family’s possessions in storage and rented a two bedroom apartment for $400 a month. On July 10 everything fell apart when Huberty was fired from his job because of his poor work performance and mental instability. Even Huberty seemed finally to ready to acknowledge his mental problems. He admitted them to his wife and even tried to make an appointment to see a counselor on July 17 but was unable to connect. The next morning he took his family to the San Diego Zoo but told his wife, “Well, society had their chance.” After returning home he outfitted himself in camo pants and kissed his wife good-bye telling her that he was “going hunting—for humans.” He had said similar things before so she was not unduly alarmed. But this time he armed himself with a 9mm Browning HP semi-automatic pistol, a 9mm Uzi carbine, a Winchester 12 gauge pump-action shotgun and had a box and a cloth bag filled with hundreds of rounds of ammunition for each weapon. After driving around perhaps scouting other targets, he pulled up to the McDonald’s restaurant just a few hundred yards from his apartment. The San Ysidro McDonald's was virtually indistinguishable from the chain's other 1980's restaurants He strolled into the busy eatery filled with mostly Latino patrons and employees at 3:56 p.m. Huberty first aimed his shotgun at a 16-year-old employeenamed John Arnold. As he did so, the assistant manager, Guillermo Flores, shouted: “Hey, John, that guy's going to shoot you!” but when He pulled the trigger, the gun failed to fire. As Huberty inspected his gun, the manager, 22-year-old Neva Caine, walked toward the service counter of the restaurant in the direction of Arnold, as Arnold began to walk away from the gunman. Huberty fired his shotgun toward the ceiling before aiming the Uzi at Caine, shooting her once beneath her left eye. She died within minutes. He then turned his shotgun on Arnold wounding him in the chest and arm, before ordering “Everybody on the ground.” Huberty called in the restaurant as “dirty swine, Vietnam assholes” and claimed that he had “killed a thousand"” and that he intended to "kill a thousand more.” 25-year-old Victor Rivera, tried to persuade Huberty not to shoot anyone else and was promptly shot fourteen times. As staff and customers tried to hide beneath tables and service booths, Huberty turned to six women and children huddled together. He first killed 19-year-old María Colmenero-Silva with a single gunshot to the chest, then fatally shot nine-year-old Claudia Pérezin the stomach, cheek, thigh, hip, leg, chest, back, armpit, and head with his Uzi. He wounded Pérez's 15-year-old sister Imelda once in the hand and fired upon 11-year-old Aurora Peña with his shotgun. Peña—initially wounded in the leg—had been shielded by her pregnant aunt, 18-year-old Jackie Reyes. Huberty shot Reyes 48 times with the Uzi. Beside his mother's body, eight-month-old Carlos Reyes sat up and wailed. Huberty shouted at the child, then killed the baby with a single pistol shot to the center of the back. Huberty then shot and killed a 62-year-old truckernamed Laurence Versluis, before targeting a family seated near the play area of the restaurant who had tried to shield their son and his friend beneath the tables with their bodies. 31-year-old Blythe Regan Herrera had shielded her 11-year-old son, Matao, beneath one booth, as her husband, Ronald, protected Matao's friend, 12-year-old Keith Thomas, beneath a booth directly across from them. Thomas was shot in the shoulder, arm, wrist, and left elbow, but was not seriously wounded; Ronald Herrera was shot six times in the stomach, chest, arm, hip, shoulder, and head but survived, his wife, Blythe, and son, Matao, were both killed by numerous gunshots to the head. Nearby, three women had also attempted to hide beneath a booth. 24-year-old Guadalupe del Rio lay against a wall; she was shielded by her friends, 25-year-old Gloria Ramírez, and 31-year-old Arisdelsi Vuelvas Vargas. Del Rio was hit several times but was not seriously wounded, Ramírez was unhurt, whereas Vargas received a single gunshot wound to the back of the head and died of her wound the next day. At another booth, Huberty killed 45-year-old banker Hugo Velázquez Vasquez with a single shot to the chest. The first of many calls to emergency services was made shortly after 4:00 p.m. notifying police of the shooting of a child who had been taken to a near-by Post Office on San Ysidro Boulevard. The dispatcher mistakenly directed responding officers to another McDonald's two miles from the San Ysidro Boulevard restaurant. This error delayed the imposition of a lockdown by several minutes, and the only warningsto civilians walking, riding, or driving toward the restaurant were given by passers-by. Shortly after 4:00 Lydia Flores, a young woman, drove up to the pickup window. She noticed shattered windows and gunfire, before “looking up and there he was, just shooting.” Flores reversed her car until she crashed into a fence and she hid in some bushes with her two-year-old daughter until the shooting ended. At approximately 4:05 p.m., a Mexican couple, Astolfo and Maricela Felix, drove toward one of the service areas of the restaurant. Noting the shattered laminated glass, Astolfo initially assumed renovation work was in progress and that Huberty—striding toward the car—was a repairman. Huberty fired his shotgun and Uzi at the couple and their four-month-old daughter, Karlita, striking Maricela in the face, arms and chest, blindingher in one eye and permanently rendering one hand unusable. Her baby was critically wounded in the neck, chest and abdomen. Astolfo was wounded in the chest and head. As Astolfo and Maricela staggered away from Huberty’s line of fire, Maricela gave their baby to her husband. Astolfo handed the shrieking child to a young woman named Lucia Velasco as his wife collapsed against a car. Velasco rushed the baby to a nearby hospital as her husband assisted Astolfo and Maricela into a nearby building. All three members of the Felix family survived. The body of 11 year old Omar Hernandez lays by his bicycle outside the McDonald's. Three 11-year-old boys then rode their bikesinto the west parking lot to buy sundaes.[29] Hearing someone yell from across the street, all three hesitated, before Huberty shot the three boys with his shotgun and Uzi. Joshua Coleman fell to the ground critically wounded in the back, arm, and leg. Omar Alonso Hernandez was on the ground with multiple gunshot wounds to his back and had started vomiting and David Flores Delgado, received several gunshot wounds to his head. Coleman survived; Hernandez and Delgado both died at the scene. Huberty next noticed an elderly couple, 74-year-old Miguel Victoria Ulloa, and 69-year-old Aida Velázquez Victoria, walking toward the entrance. As Miguel reached to open the door for his wife, Huberty fired his shotgun, killing Aida with a gunshot to the face and wounding Miguel. An uninjured survivor, Oscar Mondragon, later reported observing Miguel cradling his wife in his arms and wiping blood from her face, shouting curses at Huberty, who then approached the doorway, swore at Miguel, then killed him with a shot to the head. Approximately ten minutes after the first call had been, police arrived at the correct McDonald‘s. The first officer on the scene, Miguel Rosario, rapidly determined the location and cause of the actual disturbance and relayed this information to the San Diego Police Department as Huberty fired at Rosario’s patrol car. Officers deployedimmediately imposed a lockdown on an area spanning six blocks from the site of the shootings. The police established a command post two blocks from the restaurant and deployed 175 officers in strategic locations. These officers were joined within the hour by several SWAT team members, who also took positions around the restaurant. As Huberty was firing rapidly and alternating between firearms, police initially were unaware how many individuals were inside the restaurant. Because most of the windows had been shattered by gunfire, reflections from shards of glass provided an additional difficulty for police focusing inside the restaurant. Initially, police were concerned the gunman or gunmen may be holding hostages, although one individual who had escaped told them there was a single gunman present in the premises, holding no hostages and shooting any individual he encountered. At 5:05 p.m., all responding law enforcement personnel were authorized to kill the perpetrator if they could get a clear shot. The bodies of employees. Several survivorslater reported observing Huberty walk toward the service counter and adjust a portable radio, possibly to search for news reports of his shooting spree, before selecting a music station and further shooting victims as he danced to the music. Then Huberty searched the kitchen area, discovering six employees and shouting: “Oh, there's more. You’re trying to hide from me!” One of the female employees screamed in Spanish, “Don't kill me! Don't kill me!”before he opened fire, killing 21-year-old Paulina López, 19-year-old Elsa Borboa-Fierro, and 18-year-old Margarita Padilla, and critically wounding 17-year-old Albert Leos. Immediately before Huberty had begun shooting, Padilla grabbed the hand of her friend, 17-year-old Wendy Flanagan, before the two began to run. Padilla was then fatally shot. Flanagan, four other employees and a female customer hid inside a basement utility room. They were later joined by Leos, who had crawled to the utility room after being shot five times. When a fire truck drove within range, Huberty opened fire and repeatedly peppered the vehicle with bullets, slightly wounding one occupant. Hearing a wounded teenager, 19-year-old Jose Pérez, moaning, Huberty shot him in the head; the boy slumped dead in the booth. Pérez died alongside his friend and neighbor, 22-year-old Gloria González, and a young woman named Michelle Carncross. At one point, Aurora Peña, who had lain wounded beside her dead aunt, baby cousin and two friends, noted a lull in the firing. Opening her eyes, she saw Huberty nearby, staring in her direction. He swore and threw a bag of french fries at Peña, then retrieved his shotgun and shot the child in the arm, neck, and jaw. Aurora Peña survived, although she would remain hospitalized longer than any other survivor. At 5:17 p.m., Huberty walked from the service counter toward the doorway close to the drive-in window, affording a 27-year-old police SWAT sniper Charles Foster on the roofof the Post Office directly opposite the McDonald’s an unobstructed view of his body from the neck down through his telescopic sight. Foster fired a single round from a range of approximately 35 yards. The bullet entered Huberty’s chest, severed his aorta just beneath his heart, and exited through his spine sending Huberty sprawling backwards onto the floor directly in front of the service counter, killing him almost instantly. Hublerty's deadly Uzi lay on the floor surrounded by spent rounds near his body. So many rounds had been expended from different firearms within the restaurant, police were not completely certain the sole perpetrator was deceased. Entering the restaurant approximately one minute later, a police sergeant focused his gun upon Huberty as he noted the movements of a wounded girl. When asked if the deceased male was the suspect, the girl nodded her head. The entire incident had lasted for 77 minutes, during which time Huberty fired a minimum of 257 rounds, killing 20 people and wounding as many others, one of whom was pronounced brain dead upon arrival at hospital and died the following day. Seventeen of the victims were killed inside and four in the immediate vicinity. Only 10 of those inside were uninjured—six of whom had hidden inside the basement utility room. Survivor Wendy Flanagan, right, and a co-worker are led from the building by police. McDonald’s temporarily suspended all television and radio advertisements in the days following the massacre. In an act of solidarity, arch-rival fast food chain Burger Kingalso temporarily suspended all forms of advertising. Huberty's body was cremated on July 23, 1984. No religious service was held. His ashes were returned to his widow, and later interred in his home state of Ohio. In the weeks following the massacre, Huberty’s wife and daughters received numerous death threats, forcing them to temporarily reside with a family friend. All three would attend counseling sessions for over nine months. Etna Huberty and her daughters initially relocated from San Ysidro to Chula Vista, where Zelia and Cassandra enrolledin school under assumed names. One year later, the family moved to the town of Spring Valley. The front page of the San Diego Union the day after the attack. Because of the sheer number of victims, local funeral homes had to use the San Ysidro Civic Center to hold wakes for each victim. The local Catholic parish, Mount Carmel Church, was forced to back-to-back funeral masses in order that each of the dead could be buried in a timely manner. Several police officers who responded to the scene of the massacre suffered symptomsincluding sleep deprivation, loss of memory, and guilt in the months following the incident. A study commissioned by the National Institute of Mental Health and conducted by the chief psychologist of the San Diego Police Department in 1985 concluded several officers suffered post traumatic stress disorder as a result of the incident. So, presumably did many survivors and witnesses. In assessing the Police Department’s response, an inquiry reported that for the most part responding officers had acted appropriately given the information they had. When the Police Chief was asked if the murders were hate crimes against Latinos, he denied it saying Huberty “hated everybody.” The San Ysidro McDonald's massacre prompted the city of San Diego to assess the tactical methods by which they responded to incidents of this nature and the firearms in the possession of responding officers. The police department increased training for special units and purchased more powerful firearms in order to better equip law enforcement to respond to scenarios of this magnitude. One officer reported feeling inadequate because he had only been armed with a .38 caliber revolver. “The time had come where you had to have a full-time, committed and dedicated, highly trained, well-equipped team ... able to respond rapidly, anywhere in the city.” A high ranking police official reported. Thus the massacre helped build the momentum to heavily armed, armored, and militarized police. Although the company initially planned to quickly re-open the busy restaurant, they quickly bowed to public pressure and had the building leveled and deeded the land to the city on the condition that no other eating place could be built there. The Massacre memorial is decorated with flowers and pictures of the dead on the anniversary of the shooting every year. A permanent memorialon the site was formally unveiled on December 13, 1990 consisting of 21 hexagonal white marble pillars ranging in height from one to six feet; each bearing the name of one of the victims. The memorial was designed by a former Southwestern College student Roberto Valdes, described his inspiration for the design: The 21 hexagons represent each person that died, and they are different heights, representing the variety of ages and races of the people involved in the massacre. They are bonded together in the hopes that the community, in a tragedy like this, will stick together, like they did. On each anniversary of the massacre the monument decorated with flowers and it has become a pilgrimage spot during annual Day of the Dead observances with candlesand offerings brought for the victims. |
Charlotte Corday in the tumbril which bore her to the guillotine, by James E. McConnell. |
Mademoiselle Corday as portrayed by François-Séraphin Delpec. |
Jean-Paul Marat by Jean Francois Garneray--a remarkably ugly little man. |
The Death of Marat by David. |
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Marat/Sade on stage in London with Patrick Magee, Glenda Jackson, and Ian Richardson directed by Peter Brook in the 1967 Royal Shakespere Company film version. |
1995 headlines tell the shocking story of the heat wave disaster that hit Chicago in July. |
There are many easily found press photos of the heat wave like this one of paramedics loading an elderly victim into an ambulance. But almost none show Black victims. Back then newspapers and television seldom covered news in the Black community unless there was a riot. That included Black murder and other crime victims or positive community news. Systematic racism erased Blacks from the colective memory of the disaster for years. |
A body being loaded in to an emergency refrigerated trailer outside the Cook County Medical Examiner's office. |
A priest reads prayers over the caskets of 41 unclaimed victims of the 1995 heat wave before they were covered by a bulldozer. |
Chicagoans sleeping in the park on a hot night in the 1950's |
Chicago Police mass in Lincoln Park before violently pushing Yippies and other protestors out of the park after the new curfew. |
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The first smelter at the Copper Queen mine in the 1880's. |
These Arizona Rangers were among the forces to violently quell a "labor disturbance" in the mining district in 1903. |
Hard rock mining was arduous and dangerous work. Here a three man crew operates a jackleg--a pneumatic drill--on a rock face. |
Cochise County Sheriff Harry Wheeler was the primary organizer and general of the Deportation commanding over 1000 special deputies, company guards and gun thugs, and vigilantes. He ruled as a virtual military dictator in Bisbee for months after conducting kangaroo courts, more deportations, and a general reign of terror. |
The morning of the sweep of strikers and sympathizers the local paper ran this headline, an example of how all local levers of power and authority were cooperating in the operation. |
Wobbly deportees are loaded into cattle cars. Note white arm band on vigilante guard. |
IWW local leaders and members defiantly convened a meeting in the Columbus, New Mexico stockade. |
The mines have been closed for years, but Bisbee thrives as a tourist destination and as a home to artists and old hippies--a liberal island in a very conservative state. |
John Quincy Adams became the first President ever photographed when he sat for this daguerreotype as a member of the House of Representatives shortly before his death. |
Famous parents and a daunting legacy--John and Abigail Adams. John Quincy admired and respected his distant father but bitterly resented his mother who was never satisfied with him and whose sharp tongue made it abundantly clear to him. |
John Quincy Adamst age 10--his father's aide and errand boy in Europe |
John Quincy Adams 1797 by John Singleton Copley about to leave to become Minister to Prussia. |
Louisa Catherine Adams, a cultured and accomplished wife. |
John Quincy Adams, center, at the signing of the Treaty of Ghent ending the War of 1812. |
Secretary of State John Quincy Adams at the globe presents Monroe Doctrine to President James Monroe, left and the Cabinet in this historic painting by Allyn Cox in Great Experiment Hall in the U.S. Capitol. |
Echo 1 sits fully inflated at a Navy hangar in Weeksville, North Carolina. The Mylar gasbag inflated from a satellite "egg" in orbit and simply bounced microwave signals back to earth. It was an easily spotted by the naked eye bright object moving across dark skies. |
A Thor/Delta rocket blasts off from Cape Canaveral with Telstar I . |
The podium was empty. President Kennedy was not ready when the Telstar hook-up was achieved early. Engineers scrambled and put up a Cubs game from Wrigley Field in his place. |
The British band The Tornados's guitar driven instrumental hit was an example of the cultural fascination with space technology. |
The Rev. Jonathan Mayhew--a religious and political radical and visionary of old Boston. |
Puritan firebrand Rev. Jonathan Edwards appalled Mayhew. |
Boston's Old West Church called Mayhew to its pulpit.. Its working class members responded to Mayhews radicalism. The steeple shown was torn down by the British during the Seige of Boston in the American Revolution in part to prevent it from being used to signal Colonial troops in Cambridge and in part as punishment for being Mayhew's pulpit of rebellion. |
Mayhew's words inspired the Sons of Liberty, seen here burning copies of the Stamp Act. They were "read by everybody" recalled John Adams. |
Powerful Lt. Governor Thomas Hutchinson blamed Mayhew's sermon for the mob that burned down his house. |
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Not quite yet Ziegfeld Girls---the first Follies chorus line performed at the Jardin de Paris on the roof of Oscar Hamerstein's theater in 1907 |
The Follies featured many great stars but the biggest of all was Will Rogers seen here in 1915 with the girls from the late night frolic on the roof--a version of the show with much racier material and flashes of nudity. |
For many years photographer Alfred Cheney Jonhston made artistic publicity shots of every Ziegfeld Girl--and nude shots for the boss's personal collection and to be discretely shared. Many future stars were included This is Mae Clark, who went on to star in silent films and early talkies and is best remembered for getting a grapefruit smashed in her face by James Cagney. |
Florenz Ziegfeld and another one of his brightest stars Eddie Cantor who by this time--about 1930--was Hollywood's biggest musical comedy star. |
The Great Ziegfeld stared MGM's most bankable screen couple--William Powell and Myrna Loy--was one of the biggest hits of 1936, and took home the Academy Award for Best Picture in a year when its competition included certified classics like Dodsworth, Libeled Lady, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, San Francisco, The Story of Louis Pasture, and A Tale of Two Cities. Austrian born Louise Rainer walked away with the first of her two Oscars for her roll as Anna Held. |
Just one example of the near ubiquitous 2020 presidential election maps in circulation. Others show Florida and even Texas possibly in play for Democrats. |
In George Washington's second term his Federalist supporters took to wearing black rossettes inspired by the decoration on the tri-corn hats of Revolutionary War officers. |
Members of the Republican Clubs supporting the French Revolution sported tri-color cockades. The Clubs became the nucleolus of Thomas Jefferson's Democratic Reublican Party. |
The original illuminated election map in 1976 with the NBC election central set, John Chancellor, David Brinkley, and Tom Browkaw. |
The 2000 NBC election map during the brief period the network called Florida for Democrat Al Gore. All three networks used blue for Democrats that year. |
Nosebleed seats at Comiskey Park for the All Star Game went for just a buck plus tax, affordable to many ordinary stiffs even in a Depression year. Note—Sadly there will not be a Major League Baseball All Star Game this summer. Baseball fans are holding our breaths and crossing our fingers that the announced 60 game shortened season starting later this month and being played in empty ball parks will actually come off as the Coronavirus rages unabated across the county. Perhaps it is selfish of us to cling to that glimmer of hope, but what can we do. Well, we can recall the origin of the mid-summer tradition. Give credit where credit was due. It was all Arch Ward’s original idea. He was the sports editor and principle baseball writer for the Chicago Tribune, the 800 lb. gorilla of Second City and Mid-Western newspapers. Why not, he suggested, stage a mid-summer exhibition game featuring the biggest stars of the American and National Leagues to coincide with the Century of Progress—the World’s Fair on the Lake—in 1933. At first the two leagues, which had, at best, an uneasy relationship with each other were reluctant. But the Depression was cutting into attendance at all but a handful of ballparks and Ward and his supporters soon convinced owners that the national attention could boost ticket sales. It also helped that Ward was a crony of Tribune owner Col. Robert R. McCormick and a political powerhousein the Republican Party and hyper-conservative circles on his own—views fervently shared by most owners. Chicago Tribune reporter and promoter of the first All Star Game, Arch Ward even eventually got his own baseball card. The concept of All-Star teams was not unknown. Back in the earliest days of the National League Albert Spaulding toured nationally and even internationally with hand selected squads in the off-season. Various star players were still assembling all-star teams—usually made up more of cronies than a full squad of actual stars—and barnstormingagainst local teams. And the chance to see Big Leaguers in tank towns and back waters did bring out fans in droves. Now a lot of those same small town fans would be flocking to the big city for the fair. Otherwise there was scant play between the two leagues except in spring training where many teams saw each other in the Florida Grapefruit League. Except, of course, for the goofy Cubswho trained in far off Catalina Island, California for no good reason except that the Wrigley family owned property there. Sometimes in cities with teams in both leagues—Boston, New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Chicago—inter-city exhibition games were scheduled, usually at the end of spring training or after the regular season was over. More than 49,000 fans jammed Comiskey Park for the 1933 All Star Game. In the days when players tended to spend all or most of their careers with one team, even the players were unfamiliar with each other unless they had played with or against each other in the minor leagues. Players for the exhibition game, which was expected to be a once-in-a-life-time extravaganza, were selected in a system that somehow combined the choices of each league’s managers with a fan poll conducted not-too-scientifically or reliably by the Tribuneand a handful of other newspapers. The results were predictable. The power house of an American League team was dominated by the heart of the New York Yankee line-up. The American League team under Philadelphia manager Connie Mack was a heavy hitting power house long on home run hitters and dominated by the princes of baseball—New York Yankees sluggers Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Ben Chapmanin addition to hurler Lefty Gomez. The starting squad also included two members of the White Sox—Jimmy Dykes and Al Simmons, both new to the team that year from a trade with the Philadelphia Athletics. The National League, by contrast, still relied on small ball—slap hitting, singles, doubles, steals and aggressivebase running, bunt and sacrifices, working the count for walks. Pitching was aggressive, brush backs and intentional bean balls a part of the game. The whole style of play was aggressive, rhubarbs with umpires and bench clearing brawls were common. The team, while talented and suited for such play, did not feature the kind of legends-in-the-making on the American roster. Veteran Giants manager John McGraw fielded a team that included Pepper Martin, Frankie Fritche, and Jimmie Wilson all of the league dominating St. Louis Cardinals along with starting pitcher Bill Hallahan. The Cubs placed no players among the starters. Their biggest star, catcher Gabby Harnett and short stop Woody English were reserves along with pitcher Lon Warneke. The scrappy National League featured small ball specialists. Since the game was to be played at the White Sox home of Comiskey Park, the umpires were from the American League. And that made a difference, too, because umpiring styles were very different between the two leagues. American umpires squatted behind enormous inflated chest protectors behind the plate. That caused them to have a high strike zone friendly to sluggers. Sluggers whaling away also reduced walks. National League players were used to umpires with padded chest protectors worn discretely under their wool suit coats. That enabled them to get down low behind the plateand their strike zone was low—from the knees to just above the belt, barely. They called more balls working the count up and causing hurlers to throw more pitches. With huge national advance publicity, fans flocked to standing-room-only Comiskey Park and milled around on the streets outside. In downtown areas of major cities fans gathered to watch play-by-play coverage flashed on electronic scroll signs just as they did for World Series games. Millions hunkered by their radios as the game was broadcast nationally by both the NBC and CBS radio networks. Cameras from all of the major Newsreel companies ground away from the grandstand roof. The press box was jammed to overflowing scores of sportswriters from every major and most minor cities plus national magazines. As for the game itself, it was not quite the American League blowout almost everyone expected. A White Sox bat boy greets Babe Ruth at home after his first ever All Star /Game home run. The Babe even made a rare stellar defensive play later in the game. In the bottom of the second the American League got on the board when pitcher Hallahan issued one-out walks to Jimmy Dykes and Joe Cronin. Two batters later, pitcher Lefty Gomez singled home Dykes for the first run. In the bottom of the third, after a walk to Charlie Gehringer, Babe Ruth famously hit the first home run in All-Star Game history, putting the AL up 3-0. Hallahan was chased from the game after walking Lou Gehrig immediately afterward, and was replaced by Cub Lon Warneke. General Crowder replaced Gomez to start the fourth inning. In the sixth, Warneke hit a one-out triple and scored on a Pepper Martin groundout. Frankie Frisch followed with a home run to bring the NL to within a run, but after a Chuck Kleinsingle, Crowder would escape the inning without giving up any more damage. Cronin led off the bottom of the sixth with a single. After advancing on a bunt, he scored on an Earl Averill single to extend the lead to 4-2. Crowder would be replaced by Lefty Grove in the top of the seventh, while Warneke was replaced by Carl Hubbell in the bottom of the inning. The NL looked to have a chance in the top of the eighth. With Frisch on first with two outs, Chick Hafeylined a shot to right field that looked like it could be home run, but Ruth, in rare defensive acrobatics, reached over the wall to catch it, denying the NL a chance to tie the game. Grove retired the side in order in the ninth to secure the American League's victory. All in all an exciting, if kind of old fashion, baseball game that left fans satisfied and wanting more. And more they got. The game became an annual event and, as predicted, raised interest in baseball and ticket sales across the country. |
Students march for the vote circa 1968. |
Indiana Senator Birch Bayh rushed a proposed Constitutional amendment through his sub-committee an on to adoption by the Senate. |
The official Joint Resolution of Congress submitting the 26th Amendment to the states fro ratification |
Richard Nixon signed the Amendment as a witness surrounded by Congressional pages. |
A screen save from MTV's first Rock the Vote campaign in 1990. |
Youth leaders if the March for Our Lives have extended their activism to Vote for Our Lives. |
Congress Voting Independence by Edward Savage circa 1800. |
The committee to draft an Independence resolution at work. Left to right Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Livingston, and Roger Sherman. |
The Declaration of Independence as first printed and circulated as a broadside. |
The emergency of an already underway revolutionary war necessitated some cooperation among the former colonies as advocated by this famous political cartoon. But the reluctant snake was not really whole or healthy. |
Many historians credit Lincoln's Gettysburg Address for re-establishing the Declaration of Independence as a foundational national document and identifying it to with an indivisible nation. |
A widely circulated anti-globalism meme. |
On July 3, 1886 inventor Karl Benz rolled his latest creation, the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, a light weight three wheeled carriage powered by an internal combustion engine of his own design onto the streets of Manheim for its first public demonstration. There had been self-propelled road vehicles since Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot’s lumbering Fardier à vapeur, a heavy cart built to haul artillery for the French Army in 1769. Since then dozens of steam powered vehicles had been built and/or proposed. By the 1880’s Amédée Bollée of Le Mans was producing large, multi-passenger coaches and de Dion & Bouton were turning out light weight tri and quadricycles. But Benz’s gasoline powered Motorwagan is considered the first modern automobile and the direct ancestor of all that came that came after. Benz's heiress wife Bertha financed her husband's inventions and we a shrewd businesswoman in her own right. Benz, a successful engineer and developer of stationary engines for industrial applications, was financed by his heiress wife Bertha, a womanof strong mind and keen intellect in her own right who would be deeply involved in advising her husband on business matters. Benz’s German patent dated from his application on January 29 of that year. Key to the tricycle was the light weight gasoline powered two-stroke piston engine that he had patented back in 1873. The version he mounted on his Moterwagen was a 954 cc single-cylinder four-stroke engine with trembler coil ignition which produced 2⁄3 horsepower (hp) 250 rpm, producing about the same power as a modern walk-behind self-propelled lawnmower engine. But it was powerful enough to propel the very light vehicle built on a tubular steel frame with thin wood panels. Each of the three wheels, specially designed by Benz, had wire steel spokes and hard rubber tires. The freely rotating single front wheel was steered by a tiller by a driver seated in front of the engine. A museum replica of the Patent Moterwagan The engine drove the two rear wheels with a chain drive on both sides. A simple belt system served as a single-speed transmission, varying torque between an open disc and drive disc. A large horizontal flywheelstabilized the engine power output. That first put-putting prototype strikes us as not quite finished. There was an open crankcase. Into which oil dripped from an open pan on critical moving parts. Similarly there was neither a sealed gas tank as we know it or a carburetor. Gasoline (or another suitably combustible fluid) dripped from a small reservoir into a basin of soaked fibers that supplied a vapor to the cylinder by evaporation. There were also no brakes. But Benz was not finished tinkering. Over the next year he built two more improved models. By the time of his Model 3 Moterwagen, it was powered by a new 2 hp engine capable of getting the vehicle up to a dizzying 10 miles per hour. It also had a real carburetor, gas tank, and manually operated brakes on the rear wheels. All of these prototypes were all well and good, but perhaps Mrs. Benz was a trifle anxious for her investment to start paying off with sales. She recognized that the public interest had been piqued, but was far from convinced that the Moterwagen was a practical means of transportation. The shrewd and intrepid Bertha realized something more dramatic need be done. Bertha Benz and her teenage sons posed for a photo, seen here tinted, recreating the beginning of her historic drive. In early August 1888 supposedly without her husband’s permission—some historians doubt this claim—she gathered up her two sons, ages 15 and 14 and took the Model 3 out for a spin. A trip actually, all the way from Mannheim to her mother’s home in Pforzheim, a trip of about 60 miles which took her through the streets of Heidelberg and Wiesloch. The sight of a woman and two children zipping through the streets in a noisy, smoky contraption with no horse naturally attracted considerable attention. Bertha was not only the driver and navigator, but the mechanic as well. When the carburetor clogged, she had no problem clearing it with her hat pin and she used her garter to insulate an exposed wire. When fuel ran low and no gasoline was available she purchased ligroin, a petroleum ether related to benzene, at the Wiesloch municipal pharmacy. Later when the wooden block of her brakes wore down, she found a cobbler to nail strips of leather on them, thus inventing brake pads on the fly. Bertha made it safely to her mother’s by evening and sent husband a famous telegram explaining her whereabouts and how she got there. The next morning she drove home. She had proved the automobile was a reliable transportation option and that it could even be operated by an unsupervised woman. And as she hoped, the trip generated sales. Afterwards her husband, at Bertha’s suggestion made brake pads standard equipment and added a second gear for aid in climbing hills. An early ad for the Patent-Motorwagen featured an illustration of Benz at the tiller. Over the next few years until 1893 about 25 Moterwagens were built and sold before Benz moved on to more sophisticated models. Three years before Karl Benz died in 1929 he mergedhis Benz & Cie company with Gottlieb Daimler’s Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft to form what would become Mercedes-Benz. Bertha Benz’ investment paid off. When she died at age 95 in 1944 she was a very wealthy woman indeed. The route she took on her memorable 1888 drive has been named the Bertha Benz Memorial Route. |
Cecil, the majestic and photogenic lion in happier days with one of his harem and as a victim of a feckless dentist with a bow. |
The meme that caught my attention and got me thinking about this. |
Sandra Bland and her violent arrest for apparently being an insufficiently submissive Black woman. Days later she was dead in a Texas jail. |
The execution of Samuel Dubose for not having a front licence tag. For a moment it looked like an officer would be held accountable. But nope. |
This Landmark book for young adults and a Classic Comic Book both fired my boyhood hero worship of Theodore Roosevelt. |
Col. Theodore Roosevelt 1st Volunteer Cavalry after his brevet from Lt. Col. |
Legendary Arizona lawman Bucky O'Niell was captain of a troop of Rough Riders raised in the West and including cowboys and veteran Indian fighters. |
300 pound Regular Army Major General William Shafter was the commander of V Corps in the drive to capture Santiago. He was an indifferent to incompetent senior officer. |
An Unreconstructed former Confederate, Major General of Volunteers Joseph Wheeler (left) was in command of the cavalry in the Santiago campaign. Seen here with Lenard Wood who was brevetted to Brigadier General of the 2nd Brigade, and Col. Roosevelt of the Rough Riders. |
Tough veteran Buffalo Soldier cavalrymen. |
Buffalo Soldiers advance on the Hights. By the end of the battle Black units, Rough Riders, and other white cavalry units were thoughly mixed and fighting side-by-side. |
Shortly after the battle, Roosevelt posed with his Rough Riders atop San Juan Hill. The Buffalo Soldiers who had fought with them were notably not included. |