Civilian pilot Eugene Burton Ely at the controls of his Curtis bi-plane. He had been flying for about six months. When a young, self-taught pilotnamed Eugene Burton Ely left the deckof the U.S. Navy cruiser USS Birmingham in a primitive stick, bailing wire, and canvas winged Curtis pusher biplane on November 14, 1910 he barely escaped with his life and his aircraft intact but raised the curtain on naval aviation . Ely, a 24 year-old Midwesterner from Iowa, may seem like an unlikely aviator.   But in those early days of aviation, he was not untypical of the kind of daydreaming tinkerers and speed enthusiasts who were drawn to the new opportunities in the sky. He was born in the farming community of Williamsburg, Iowaon October 21, 18...

During a lull in the post-attack chaos in Paris a stunned survivor surveys the carnage. Note— Six years ago on unlucky Friday the 13th the terrorist attack on Paris nightspots teeming with attractive young people including those getting down to a loud American death metal band both shocked the world and set off a controversy over the relative worth of some victims vs. those from swarthier or more remote parts of the world and internet bickering over the propriety of selective grief.  On the next Sunday I scribbled a poem before church services which I read to semi-stunned silence.  This is the post I put up reflecting on the terror, telling that story, and, of course, the poem. Coordinated ISIS shootings and bomb blasts left 130 peop...

“I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over.   Out on the edge you see all kind of things you can’t see from the center.” —Kurt Vonnegut Kurt Vonnegut was born on Armistice Day, November 11, 1922 in Indianapolis, Indiana. He would go on to become a veteran of another warand the experience shaped him as a human being—one of the great iconoclasts of his time, and a confirmed pacifist. His death on April 11, 2007 at the age of 84 was, as he predicted, not an emphatic period at the end of a long life, but a mere semi-colon (he despised semi-colons.)   He died of a brain injury sustained after slipping and falling in his Manhattanapartment several days earlier.   It was the kind of comic, anti-heroic departur...

  This year for Veterans Day instead of my usual post on the history and meaning of the observation the World War I Armistice on November 11, 1918 I thought I would resurrect an old chestnut that I first read as a Chalice Lighting to open services at the old Congregational Unitarian Congregation in Woodstock, Illinois about 2000.   I read it subsequently when the congregation movedand was renamed the Tree of Life UU Congregation in McHenry.   It was included in my 2004 Skinner House collection, We Build Temples in the Heart. It was based on the memories of a boy from Cheyenne in the 1950s.   Reviewing it now, I am struck that the World War II is fast fading away.   In not too many years the last of them will gone, just as I remember...

A real dodo, Senator Ted Cruz is furious with Big Bird for getting his Fauci Ouchy.  Guess which one laid an egg. Big Bird is in trouble .   Again.   It seems that in a recent Sesame Street segment  he was vaccinated for the Coronavirus even though real six -year-olds —his perennial age—are not yet approved to get it.   But that minor anomaly was not what caused Texas Senator and buffoon Ted Cruz’s head to explode .   It was that the large ambling avian got the shot at all— proof , he claimed, that the PBS staple was just a propaganda shill of the Biden administration and a tool for brainwashing toddlers and their mommies .   He smelled a whiff of conspiracy in the air.   On cue the whole Repugnant messaging machine sprin...

A year before the strike dockworkers loading and unloading goods--mostly bales of cotton--on a New Orleans wharf.   New Orleans was always an anomaly in the South, hell it was unique in all the United States for many reasons.   It was a cosmopolitan cityruled by the French or Spanish for most of its historyand had a part of the US for only 89 years in 1892.   Many of its inhabitants were Creole, a term which originally had simply meant Europeans born in the New World, but in New Orleans had also come to infer those of mixed racial heritage.   The city was long the home not only of slaves, but of a large, and sometimes quite prosperous, Free Black population.   Free Blacks, slaves and their descendants mixed with the European popula...

A Soviet era propaganda image glorifying the October Revolution. November 7 and 8 represent one of the most important events of the 20th Century and arguably a fulcrum point history—before things were this way, after quite another.  That presents a significant challenge for a blogger who trades in history.  On one hand the October or Bolshevik Revolution on November 7, 1917—October 25 under the old Orthodox calendar is too big toignore.  On the other the tale is so epic and complex that a wordy son-of-a-bitch like me with a tendency to digress and go off on tangents to explain every detail couldn’t confine myself to a manageable post. That a problem because Americans in general know damned little about what happened beyond that ...

                         Elijah P. Lovejoy shortly before his death. He was by almost all accounts, a difficult man to like.  Opinionated to the point of bigotry on innumerable subjects.  A totally humorless religious zealotconsumed with the conviction of his own righteousness—and the sinfulness of just about anyone who did not agree with him on everything, down to the comma placement.  But such men—and women—often are what is needed to begin moving the fulcrum of history.  When Elijah P. Lovejoy was cut down in a hail of bullets defendinghis precious printing press from an Alton, Illinois mob on November 7, 1837 he became the first important martyr of abolitionism and helped galvanize the infant movement. Lovejo...

Almost everyone in America will revel in an extra hour of sleep tomorrow morning.  It happens every year, no matter how many announcementsare made on the TV news, radio, newspapers, and now by cute Facebook memes.  And some folks who did fiddle with their time pieces get it wrong—is it spring forward, fall back or the other way around? Anyway, here is a heads up to set your clocks back tonight before you got to bed.  Or if you are a stickler for accuracy wait until 2 am Sunday to set them back to 1 am. It’s vexing.  And some think, foolish.  Take to oft quoted bit of folk wisdom usually ascribed to some Native American sage—Daylight Savings Time is like cutting a strip off the bottom of the blanket and sewing it to the top and...

A Rutgers student later painted this imagined view of the first official college football game. According to historians of American sports the first official college football season got underway on November 6, 1869 when teams from Rutgers College, now Rutgers University, and the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University, got together on the Rutgers campus for a rough and tumble game of football which was sanctionedand approved by both colleges.   It was a short season.   The next game was played by the same teams at Princeton one week later.   Season over.   Just two teams and two games. The Queensmen of Rutgers won the first game by a score of 6-4 but the New Jersey Tigers came back in the re-matchto win 8-0.   The anal reten...

  There are many Festivals of Light celebrated by religions and cultures around the world including Christmas, Chanukah, and Winter Solstice observances familiar in the West.   But none are more colorful or enjoyed with such gleeful abandon a Diwali, the Hindu festival of the victory of light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance.   In most of the Northern Hemisphere the five day holiday began this year on November 4, although some Indian states and Hindu diaspora communities start on November 5.   In the Southern Hemisphere it is observed in the Spring. During the celebration, temples, homes, shops, and work places are brightly illuminated.   In most of India the climax of the festival occurs on the third day ...

  A popular image of Guy Fawkes assembling barrels of gun power for his plot against Parliament and King James I.   Tonight is Bonfire Night across the Puddle,traditionally a rowdy celebration of the day Guy Fawkes got caught trying to blow upParliament on November 5, 1605.  Originally celebrated on the first anniversary as an official Thanksgiving Day for delivering the King and Parliament from the Catholic plotters, it became an annual official holiday until that statuswas finally dropped in 1859 because of the virulent anti-Catholic toneof the celebration.  Traditionally effigies of Fawkes were burned on bonfires.  Later fireworks also became popular along with considerable public revelry and occasional outbreaks of vandalismai...

The colorful fishing port of Dingle, County Kerry, Ireland has lots of pubs to lure lovers of Irish music . My wife Kathy, the luckiest human on Earth, won a trip to Irelandat a drawing last week during Irish Books, Arts & Music (IBAM) festival at the Irish American Heritage Center in Chicago! Previously she has won $30,000 on a lottery scratch off a few years ago, a big flat screen TV, a quality original oil painting, innumerable rafflesand 50-50 drawings.  And she stays ahead playing scratch offs spending no more than 20 or 30 a week.  I win jack shit.  Our sea-side "cottage" is much larger and more modern that the Murfin Estate stateside. This time the prize was a week at a “cottage” on the sea just outside of Dingle—a beauti...

Note — Just five years ago yesterday as the U.S. was about to slide into disaster, the thrilling victory of the Chicago Cubs in the World Series ending a 108 year drought lifted my heart and generations of the most faithful fans in baseball.  Since then, were have endured tough times and this past season a promising team stacked by beloved players, most of them veterans of the 2016 triumph sputtered out mid-season and were dealt away in a fire sale.  Heart breaking.  But there were glimmers of hope among the replacements and Cubs fans are every ready to hope for next year.  This is the blog entry I posted the morning of the day after the game. The morning after everything changed.  Barrels of ink have already been spilled.  More ...

The IWW relied on street meetings like this one in New York state to organize workers.  When Spokane, Washington authorities tried to shut them down in 1909 they sparked a legendary Free Speech Fight. I didn’t start out to be probably the greatest landmark battle for free speech and free assembly in Americanhistory.   It grew out of the practical, if militant concerns of a labor union trying to establish itselfin an all important local industry—the lumber trade of the Pacific Northwest. But on November 2, 1909 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) launched a Free Speech Fight in the streets of Spokane , Washington.   Before the first day was out 103 workers trying to mount a literal wooden soap box on Stevens Street had been h...