And in July 1863, it was the men of the 20th Maine who held Little Round Top and by so doing made certain the North's victory at Gettysburg, which meant that the South would never win, never become independent.
And that today the Republican Party my great-great-great-grandfather was a founding member of in Pennsylvania as a Quaker Abolitionist, has become the vehicle of the unreconstructed Southern Enemy is one of the great ironies of history, with the traitors claiming they are patriots by claiming the work of these men who would be as opposed to them today as they were back then.
TC, thank you for sharing your story. I found it interesting that Biden used Reagan’s words against the latest iteration of the unreconstructed Southern enemy.
I'm tired of people saying Biden is a bad speaker. He knows his history and he knows people. I like what he has to say and he continues to work for the good of all Americans, which is refreshing. Plus he has a sense of humor, not grievance.
Yesterday I posted the following: Our kind President cares about EVERY single person in this country. He stuttered as a youth and worked hard to overcome it, People still bully him if he mis-speaks one single word. He personally works with over 25 stutterers helping them overcome their struggle. Such a wonderful, caring man.
Have you listened to tfg speak in the last year? Lately he literally can't get through a sentence without confusing who is president, who was speaker of the House on Jan. 6, what country Orban is president of, on and on.)
Great and tragic ironies of history indeed, TC. And of course, the 18th Maine was reinforced by one of the most fascinating Renaissance men in American history, the fabulous and fabulously mustachioed Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.
They were also reinforced by 10 men of the 17th Pennsylvania, who were the survivors of a 20-mile run in their wool uniforms in the Pennsylvania summer heat and humidity. Among them was a 15 year old kid from Catawissa, Pennsylvania, Henry Thomas; he celebrated his 16th birthday atop the hill on the Second Day, and survived the war to marry late (PTSD did that in the postwar period) and have a daughter named Mary who was my father's mother and my grandmother, who lived with us till she died when I was 12. She was the teacher who taught me to read when I was 4 - phonics, just as "word (non) recognition" came along to start our slow decline. Henry himself lived to 96 and died when his son-in-law and grandson were helping him clean out the root cellar; when they told him they'd found four jugs of "corn squeezin's" he'd forgotten about, he started down the ladder and tripped, breaking his neck when he landed.
Thank You, Suessl. I have been spelling "Foto" as do the Spanish, Turks, Russians, Greeks & every other fonetic language since getting into fotografy in 1984. I have only been chastised once for that by an English purist in England. As Spock, my Phavourite Vulcan would say, there is no logic to spelling F with a PH.
My husband's last name begins with two lower case f's. Which, in Wales, signifies an F, because one F signifies a V. ;-) (every proof-reader's nightmare.) I am in sympathy with the space aliens!
Have you seen "Why Didn't They Ask Evans?" which is currently streaming on BritBox? One character's name is Henry Bassington-ffrench. I had never seen the "double f" used before so thank you for the explanation.
F and P are interchangeable across linguistic families: thus Pater or Padre and Father. Also V and B. The legacy of Ph fits into that story - and yes, we should go with Foto.
Yes, apparently V & B are interchangeable as in the Cyrillic alfabet B is pronounced V, and even in Spanish, Havana is spelled Habana. Speaking of Spanish, most everyone mispronounces "llama," calling it Lama instead of Yama. Double L in Spanish is pronounced as Y as in Guillermo (and surprisingly William).
My first post-college year was spent on The Rosebud Sioux Reservation in SD. I taught "English" to a small group of adults. I remember writing "ghiti" on the board, then asking what word did that spell, which is actually spelled another way, entirely. Answer: "fish." gh as in enough, i as in any short i, and ti as in tion (sh).
My kind students clearly did not know what the hell I was talking about. Nor could I blame them.
That, I believe was from George Bernard Shaw, a critic of the foibles of the English language as well as Shakespeare. (Good for a night but not for all time) His was "GHOTI" spelling FISH.
GH from enouGH, O from wOmen, and TI from ficTIon.
So by his reckoning ghonetic and ghotogragh would be more legit than with a PH.
There is logic to the ph sound f. It is based in Ancient Greece, and the Latin translation for phi. I was an Orton Tutor, and used to explain to my students, that English is a language not a subject. Therefore, some of our words have a base in other languages. It is no longer used. English is a very difficult language. For example, their and there, it can make u nuts.😂
Oh, I forgot to give a shout out to The Orton Society, if not for them, my brilliant dyslexic son, never would have learned to read or write. He was a math and science wizard. Taught me algebra, needed it to get my teaching degree. I taught Special Ed, for 25 years.
I once made the observation of how lucky I was to be born into this language and not have to learn it as a second language. Difficult doesn't even come close. Some of our words are nothing but Chinese Ideograms that have to be memorized as they have no connection to their spelling: (cough, though, people, Worchestershire, etc.) There, their, they're, I know the feeling. My grimace moment is when ppl interchange then & than - they are totally different words and yet I have a whole collection of published writers that used them wrong.
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that we don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
So sorry about Henry, but truth be told, I can think of worse ways to shuffle off the mortal coil than tripping while seeking some lovely "corn squeezin's".
I suspect William Holden would be somewhat envious of your great grandfather.
The stories of guys who survived combat one would think was nearly impossible, to die of humdrum accidents after the war - just the ones I know - could fill a book.
I don't have any long-lived guys in my family tree, but I did have a dear friend who fit that bill. He was one of the founding members of the tuba ensemble that I play in, a WWII Navy veteran, who called me one day and said "I found an old sousaphone in my barn; I'll trade you some sweat equity for it." Said sweat equity was to strip the lacquer off the valve set and rouge the bell. He tried to teach me how to weld brass, but showed me how to fix the holes I made instead...
He went to one of our concerts in the park on Sunday, was up on his roof on Monday when he started feeling "not quite right". Got himself off the roof, put the ladder away, and dialed for an ambulance. He ended up in the hospital with a badly twisted intestine, and when offered the choice of surgery to correct it that had a 30% chance of success and leave him with a colostomy bag the rest of his life, he said "Nope. I'm done." Got to talk to both kids, and died within about 15 hours.
I put together a group of 30 tuba and euphonium players to play at his service, playing four pieces, each written or arranged by a dear friend, three of whom played in the service.
He did his life : His Way. I hope to be able to "cash in" if I am not able to take care of myself. I say "hope" because the brain has to be able to make decisions.....
Oh, and BTW: I tell people my age because I think it's ridiculous. Born in '39, but I was 30 just last year!!
I read a biography of the late great bluegrass star Doc Watson, who was blind all his life. During one visit to his home, his biographer found him repairing a hole on his roof (!!!) when he was in his 80s!
How about this guy: "Paul Alexander, who died at 78, (this week) was paralyzed with polio at age 6 and relied on the machine (an iron lung) to breathe. Still, he was able to earn a law degree, write a book and, late in life, build a following on TikTok."
Judith, when I was a kid, there was a well-known young man in our small city who was in an iron lung (this was in the '60s.) He was a bit of a local celebrity because he'd written a book, using a wooden dowel to type the manuscript. I had the opportunity to visit him on a couple occasions as a Cub Scout and Boy Scout. I'll never forget the image of him lying there in the iron lung.
It's unbelievable to think that polio is making a comeback due to anti-vaxxers. How tragically stupid.
It was actually fairly common. If you consider that 2/3 of the men in the country participated directly in the war. The phenomenon then was called "reverie." Much of the social dislocation in this country can be traced to the undiagnosed/untrreated PTSD of the war. All these guys were having terrible dreams and were drugging themselves with alcohol; domestic violence is commonly associated now with PTSD, and boy was it common then. With any untreated problem, it spread through the generations as the children grew up thinking that was the way adults behaved, then married other survivors (birds of a feather, flock together) and repeated what they knew, and on and on.
In my case, most people of my generation with Civil War forebears speak of great-great grandparents. My civil war ancestors are my great-grandparents. There's a whole missing generation. The civil war kids were kids - 16-19 for Henry, 18-20 for Alem Cleaver and he spent nine months in the Libby Prison concentration camp, which "changed him forever." The fist Thomas McKelvey (I'm named for him) was older - a 26 year old history professor when the war began, but he experienced three of the worst battles and the Georgia-Carolinas campaign (which includes The March To The Sea). Henry Wiest was the youngest drummer boy on that march; after the war he became a buffalo killer and an Indian Fighter - I have a photo of him from 1882, when he is 32 and you can see the spider veins in his nose and he is no one you would cross; I consider him Patient Zero in the family because he had 11 children he infected with his insanity, and they have been propagating ever since and I am the only one who ever realized this. None of them married till 10 years or so after the war. Then their children repeated that, and then their grandchildren did (my mother was an unheard-of at the time 32 when she had me, the oldest kid), and - voila! - you lose 25-28 years.
Many of the social movements postwar were in reaction to the PTSD. There was virtually no prewar Temperance Movement, but it became widespread after the war, trying to find ways to get the men to stop drinking.
This is a whole avenue of history that has been ignored (if you think about it, public discussion of abuse and self-identification by victims only began to take hold in the 1980s after the TV movie "Something About Amelia" raised family incest publicly). And you add in to the Civil War the PTSD from World War II (I well remember the boys I knew who had the "scary" fathers; you only went to their house once). PTSD itself was never discussed till the Boomer Generation came home from Vietnam.
I’m saddened but not surprised your post didn’t receive more attention. As a country we are really struggling with mental health and will we ever deal with it
The disaster that was WWI also left an entire generation or three (parents, some of whom at least would have been alive if not have fought in the US Civil War, soldiers and nurses, children) scarred for life - at least, those that survived, and then survived the influenza epidemic. It seems we're condemned to repeat these terrors every generation or so, the legacy of the PTSD of the people who fought the prior war (maybe?), economic troubles (soldiers unable to find jobs after the war, the razing of an entire generation of young men meaning that generation of women unable to marry or have children, scandals such as Whiskey Ring, Credit Mobilier, Teapot Dome (although that was between WWI and WWII), etc.), and etc. Then half a decade or so of depression, and another war. Then another war, and another - they seem to be coming more frequently, as recently as the last few middle East conflicts. (I'm omitting the century or so, 1785 through 1915, of the various "Indian wars" - that list makes chilling reading. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States) Since we in the US at least are experiencing reasonable prosperity for the moment, and (I hope) the most recent crop of soldiers can get treatment for PTSD, is it reasonable to hope that in spite of Ukraine and Gaza, there will not be a world war inflicted on the current generation?
I've been starting to wonder if it's a twisted form of 'natural' population control, where humans generally evade other natural measures in animal populations, like disease or starvation. It's a theory.
In 1932, the birth of Alcoholics Anonymous became the beginning of some kind of recovery from the results of PTSD. As bad as the truth of what happened to people who participated in the wars, we now have hope!
Yes, and unfortunately AA is run by humans. The originator - Bill W - believed women couldn't be alcoholics (hate to tell him he was wrong), and then he 13th stepped every female alcoholic who ever came to him for help, and told members they should smoke. Sorry, I have no use for a "cure" with a 12% "cure" rate. All Bill W ever did was transfer his addictions from alcohol to tobacco (which will kill you worse than alcohol) and use his reputation to make things worse for the women who came to him for help. I have nothing to do with that organization and I never will.
This is a huge missing context in the history of our country. I'm married to the daughter of a WWII vet and she had really put a point on the 'children of vets' thing for me. All my grandparents emigrated from Ireland in the 20s. They had atrocious trauma histories, then came here and my paternal grandfather shipped out to the South Pacific. My father, as a young man, was adjudicated into the Army, but was injured in a pre -deployment jump accident and couldn't go. We would do well to be mindful of these dynamics. They seem to lend into this 'rigged individual' ethos that has left this country rent fifty different ways.
TC, you could embellish the story by disclosing that Henry darn well KNEW 'bout the corn squeezin's and wanted to retrieve them afore the son-in-law and grandson got 'em, but having already had a couple o' shots before comin' up the ladder, he was in no shape to attempt another descent. Even Fred Astair might not have survived an attempt to dance down the stair after a couple of slugs of corn squeezin's. And corn squeezin's are not to be confused with Mazola cooking oil.
It's very strange, my family is the only one I know that can document itself back to Peter Klebber, who arrived in the first year of the Pennsylvania colony. There was an old bible, in which the elder of each generation recorded the lives of the family in his time. My father recorded it all before he donated it to the Quaker Museum.
My family didn't emigrate to Canada until after the infamous potato famine. Most people associate this with the Irish, but it was more widespread than that, my ancestors were nearly all Scottish.
And as you probably know, after the Civil War, Joshua Chamberlain went on to serve 2 terms as Governor of Maine & also was President of Bowdoin College, his alma mater.
Your ancestor would indeed be horrified by what’s going on, and resolute in their determination to not let it happen.
Here’s a quote from author and scientist Primo Levi in his 1975 book “The Periodic Table.” I’m reading this now. Levi was also an anti-Fascist who was arrested and incarcerated in Auschwitz.
“Fascism was not only a clownish and improvident misrule, but the negator of justice; it had not only dragged Italy into an unjust and ill-omened war, but it had arisen and consolidated itself as the custodian of a detestable legality and order, based on the coercion of those who work, on the unchecked profits of those who exploit the labor of others, on the silence imposed on those who think and do not want to be slaves, and on systematic and calculated lies.”
It’s a good book, some real moments of brilliance… overall though I found it kind of choppy and not cohesive enough for the “element” titled chapters to pull it all together
Yes, it sounds all too familiar. And the problem with book burning and other current attacks on education and facts is that people are being denied the opportunity to learn from history.
Hey, TC ~ If you're ever "trending into Maine," come to Brunswick and I'll give you a tour of the Joshua Chamberlain House and Museum, where I'm a docent. It honors that other great Maine defender of a slave-free Union who valiantly commanded the 20th Maine Regiment that fateful day on Little Round Top!
Stand at the stone wall on Little Roundtop that Maine regiment lay behind, looking down at the Devils Den where the Alabama troops were, and think about what the command, “fix bayonets” meant. That courage blazes even today.
Well, Marj, if you ever get back, and are interested in Chamberlain, get in touch with the Pejepscot History Center, owners of the Chamberlain House Museum, make an appointment, ask for me, Peter Tenney, and I'll give you a tour! (Open regular hours June - October; private tours available November - May, by appointment.) https://pejepscothistorical.org
Oh yes. The Republican victory is driven by specious rhetoric. Of the Southern Strategy with Lee Atwater's 'How to be a Racist, Without Sounding Like One' leading to Leonard Leo's Supreme Court majority whose black robes barely hide their white sheets. And Reagan's and Gingrich's movement conservatism in bed with the religious right leading to Bush's Politics of Faith and Putin as the savior of Christian Nationalism. The Republican tragedy is that having introduced irrational habits of mind into politics to sell 'trickle down economics' they have spawned an electorate which swallows the notion of Trump as President RamboJesus. Whom cynics like Mitch McConnell et al are still hedging their bets on to deliver the money shot - even at the expense of upending a system which was reliably shoveling government benefits into their corporate troughs and private nosebags. Oh the quandaries of the Charles Kochs et al. And oh their faith that they can hollow out the foundations and be spared when the roof falls in.
"The Republican tragedy is that having introduced irrational habits of mind into politics to sell 'trickle down economics' they have spawned an electorate which swallows the notion of Trump as President RamboJesus."
You have a way with words. First time I've been moved to follow someone in long time.
Agree, having family members from the NYC brigade buried in Gettysburg makes this a sensitive topic for me. It drives me bonkers when draft dodgers Trump, and con men and women (uhhh Katie Britt are you listening) lie and say they are patriots. Really!!! And I have a bridge for sale!
Well.... I popped in to say Hi to a few, and came off with the first thing that crossed my mind from ancient memory that still functions somewhat. Then I thought, wait a minute, there were 2 different commanders of the Maine infantry on Roundtop; the first one got killed early on, then another took over and led the famous bayonet charge down Roundtop - our friend below mentions his name. Not fresh in mind the name of the dead commander and certainty of his origin, I went back in and edited. I should have just said in my edit... "and other Mainer's - bravo Maine and happy b'day." lol ~ Cheers TC !
I love this story...and the thread you inspired, TC! My family are Italian immigrants on both sides from the 1890's, so I am always fascinated by folks who can trace their family tree back so many generations. At 78, I find your 96 yr old grandfather a true inspiration! 💕
How about some UpToDate news about Maine's coming elections:
‘A new Maine poll shows former President Donald Trump ahead of President Joe Biden by 6 percentage points if the election were held today, with 30% saying they want another candidate or are undecided.’
‘The 63rd Pan Atlantic Research Omnibus Poll released Monday also asked Mainers how they feel about the economy, who they’ll likely support in Tuesday’s primary and how much they like prominent politicians.’
‘In the Trump v. Biden matchup, Trump earned support from 38% of those polled, followed by Biden at 32%, “another candidate” at 21% and undecided at 9%.’
‘Sen. Angus King, an independent up for reelection in November, has the highest net favorability rating at +32%, followed by U.S. Rep. Jared Golden at +20%, U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree at +19% and Republican Sen. Susan Collins at +6%.’(PUBLISHED 10:01 AM ET FEB. 27, 2024 IN SPECTRUM NEWS)
‘More broadly, the state has a history of electing both Republicans and Democrats and is seen as something of a swing state, depending on the race.’ (ABCNews)
‘Republican Susan Collins (first elected in 1996) and Independent Angus King (first elected in 2012) are Maine's current U.S. senators, making Maine one of seven states to have a split United States Senate delegation.’
‘The 2024 United States Senate election in Maine will be held on November 5, 2024, to elect a member of the United States Senate to represent the state of Maine. Primary elections will take place on June 11, 2024.[1] Incumbent two-term Senator Angus King, who is an independent but caucuses with the Democratic Party, was re-elected with 54% of the vote in 2018. He is running for a third term.’
Angus King has not announced whether he would support Bidden or Trump for the presidency but supported Biden in 2020.
'Susan Collins was one of seven Senate Republicans to vote to convict Trump on the impeachment charge of inciting insurrection during his second Senate trial in 2021. ‘
‘Collins said she didn’t formally endorse Haley at the outset of the race because she was friendly with other candidates like former Vice President Mike Pence, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) as well as with Haley and ‘“didn’t want to choose among them.”
‘She played a key role in crafting the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill that Congress passed in 2021, which Trump opposed. She was also one of three Republican senators who voted to derail Trump’s effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act in 2017.’
‘Collins made her remarks at a time when more and more GOP senators are lining up behind Trump’s campaign, including Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), who previously raised questions about Trump’s viability in a general election.’ (TheHill) See link below.
'Republican senator Susan Collins refuses to endorse Trump after Haley exit.'
'Ms Collins backed Ms Haley before she dropped out but declined to endorse either Mr Trump or President Joe Biden when speaking to The Independent on Wednesday. (The Indedpent, 3/6/24)
'Independent Sen. Angus King will be challenged from the right and left in upcoming election'
BY: ANNMARIE HILTON - MARCH 14, 2024 4:03 PM
'Former Maine Republican Party Chair Demi Kouzounas announced her plans to run in late January and will submit her petition signatures for the June primary to the Maine Secretary of State on Friday. David Costello, a Democrat from Brunswick, filed for his run earlier this week, according to the Secretary of State’s website.'
'__ A newly-announced Republican challenger to U.S. Sen. Angus King — former Maine GOP chair Demi Kouzounas — has a record of making conspiratorial statements about the pandemic, elections and the Jan. 6 insurrection, according to a review of her public comments. Kouzounas headed the state party from 2017 until she was ousted in early 2023 … (Maine Morning Star)
‘A self proclaimed “government reform advocate,” Costello is running to strengthen democracy and the economy by addressing climate change, inadequate health care, underperforming schools, among other issues. His campaign website says he wants to protect rights and freedoms — including women’s reproductive rights.’
‘In addition to his policy priorities, Costello outlines what he calls his reform agenda. This includes abolishing the electoral college and establishing a system of directly electing presidents that uses ranked choice voting in situations with more than two candidates. (Maine Morning Star) See link below.’
Susan Collins, despite some bipartisan work and some independence when McConnell doesn't need her vote, is reliably in McConnell's pocket. She'll play it close to the vest until folding at the last minute.
We split our electoral college votes. Clinton and Biden won CD1. Trump won CD2 twice.
Maine voters can be perversely independent. They elected self styled 'Trump before Trump' TeaParty Paul LePage governor by plurality twice. The first time third party political Pied Piper and now convicted child pornographer Elliot Cutler had an almost credible chance of beating the party candidates. Almost. It was a dangerous bet. The second time our Hancock County Democratic Committee, in predominantly conservative CD2, had the data to demonstrate that Cutler did not have the support to win but had enough support to split the vote and give LePage the win. Again. Cutler kept on with his self indulgence at the expense of Maine's most vulnerable residents.
The LePage plurality wins motivated Mainers to fight hard for Ranked Choice Voting. Which is how Jared Golden, probably the most conservative Democrat in the House, won and has held onto the seat. Despite Republicans doing all they can to overturn Ranked Choice Voting. The hero here is a Federalist Society Federal Judge who, contrary to almost all of that crew, actually upholds constitutional protections for voters. The constant threat to flip the seat Republican is leftish 'independent' voters who might not vote for Golden as their first or second ranking. Even with the House in the balance.
Even with the Senate in the balance, Costello's spoiler campaign may have the rhetoric to gain support, although realistically he's not promising anything Sen. King hasn't already achieved or supported. Costello may appeal to the 'change for change sakes' crowd and from those ignorant of the processes involved with effecting the big changes Costello is touting. And from those somehow entirely ignorant of Angus King's good record on civil rights, environmental protections, domestic and foreign policy.
Lin, thank you for your in-depth summary of the candidates, particularly Collins (current term ends on January 3, 2027) King, Golden and Costello, most of whom will be candidates in 2024. You have provided the level of background needed by Maine voters and all of us who support, protect and strengthen Democracy in the US! Being engaged citizens and voting are crucial now and always.
I refused to move to Maine until LePage was out of office, though we had wanted to for several years. I have met people that seemed otherwise sensible except for the incomprehensible support for LePage. When I asked it was usually for some staff help with getting around red tape for problems particular to them or their friends, perhaps a bit of selective whack-a-mole, to me.
I want a governor that takes the best care of all the people and though not as well informed on all of his actions, was opposed from the very first time I heard of his financing from people that wanted Private Profit Prisons in his first campaign.
I agree with Bernie Sanders and Angus King on the guns that Americans should have reasonable access to but am disappointed by finding out Maine had one of the biggest contributors to the 24,000,000 AR-15 or other similar assault rifles sold to the public, starting from the small Bushmaster Company in Wilton, Maine, 30 miles north of Lewiston. See https://www.propublica.org/article/how-bushmaster-made-ar-15-into-best-selling-rifle-us
That article made even my most ardent 2nd Amendment friends take pause. Another friend had suggested we could make a lot of money on their stock after Sandy Hook, but we both chose not to. Most friends sold off most of their unneeded guns to Law Enforcement Officers or people like Court Officers or State Dept types that may need personal protection a lot more than any of the rest of us. I split up the pieces of a 1911A1 willed to me by a brother-in-law since I had preferred that as a sidearm in Vietnam (traveling throughout most of Vietnam and Thailand in late '67 to '68), until my son could find a legitimate buyer (at a lot lower price than the $1,000 some friends said I could get for it.
I would never effectively sell my soul to make money the way Richard E. Dyke did.
'WASHINGTON (AP) — Mitch McConnell, the longest-serving Senate leader in history who maintained his power in the face of dramatic convulsions in the Republican Party for almost two decades, will step down from that position in November.'
With Mitch's power in the Republican Party much diminished by Trump, will Susan Collins grow her own thumb? Where will she land, under Trump's thumb as most elected Republicans have done?
'Mitch McConnell ramps up his criticism of Chuck Schumer in CNN interview'
'Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell ramped up his scathing criticism of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in the aftermath of the New York Democrat’s stunning call for a new leadership in Israel amid the brutal war in Gaza, underscoring the growing partisan divide over Israel – a rare issue that had long unified the two parties.'
'In an interview with CNN, McConnell said Schumer’s speech was a direct contradiction of US policy and called on the White House not to go down that road.'
“You can’t spend years hyperventilating about foreign interference in our democracy and then turn around and tell allies, particularly democratic allies, who their leader should be and when they should have elections,” McConnell said. “It’s just completely at variance with the way we typically operate in a foreign country, which is to deal with whatever government has been chosen in a democracy.”
'For a long time, Schumer has aligned himself with Benjamin Netanyahu, but broke with him Thursday on the Senate floor as he characterized the Israeli prime minister as an obstacle for peace.'
“As a lifelong supporter of Israel, it has become clear to me: The Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after October 7. The world has changed, radically, since then, and the Israeli people are being stifled right now by a governing vision that is stuck in the past,” 'Schumer said.'
'Asked if Schumer being the first Jewish Senate majority leader in US history – who has been outspoken on Israel for years – gives him the right to call for a change in leadership there, McConnell pushed back.'
“Just because he’s Jewish doesn’t give him a pass to advocate something that’s completely inconsistent with our past approach to democratic countries,” 'McConnell said about Schumer, whose speech he watched as it was delivered from his office in the Capitol.'
'McConnell rejected calls for conditions on military aid to Israel – something some Democrats have called for in an effort to tamp down civilian deaths.'
'In his speech, Schumer explained his deep misgivings about the toll on innocent people in Gaza.'
“I am anguished that the Israeli war campaign has killed so many innocent Palestinians,” he said. “I know that my fellow Jewish Americans feel this same anguish when they see the images of dead and starving children and destroyed homes.”
McConnell didn’t offer any criticism of the Israeli government, even as a growing number of Democratic leaders and voters have called for an immediate ceasefire.
“I’m not here to criticize our democratic ally and what they feel they need to do to settle things down. This is, if you’re looking for a parallel, what do you think we would do if we were attacked by the Mexicans or the Canadians? They have to live next door to this. Completely inappropriate for us to be dictating these policies for certainly the government of a democratic ally,” 'he said.'
'McConnell blamed the Biden administration for micromanaging the war in Gaza and said Schumer’s calling for “regime change” in the wrong country.' (CNN) See link below.
Seriously, McConnell?“ You can’t spend years hyperventilating about foreign interference in our democracy and then turn around and tell allies, particularly democratic allies, who their leader should be and when they should have elections.” You are trying to conflate the secret interference by Russia, ONE OF OUR ENEMIES, in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, with the US openly telling ONE OF OUR ALLIES that we cannot in good conscience support its position in a war, but that with policy (and controlling party) change, we can do so? Not buying it, Mitch.
“You can’t spend years hyperventilating about foreign interference in our democracy and then turn around and tell allies, particularly democratic allies, who their leader should be and when they should have elections,” McConnell said. “It’s just completely at variance with the way we typically operate in a foreign country, which is to deal with whatever government has been chosen in a democracy.” The U.S. was involved in dismantling MULTIPLE country's political systems, then walked away as tyrants took over. I've been watching a horrifying documentary series on Netflix, "Turning Point: "The Bomb and the Cold War" basically about our near constant state of war with Russia. I recommend you watch. Several episodes show how the U.S. got involved with other countries, then walked away, and the chaos that occurred in those countries as a result. (There are nine episodes, I've made it through 6. The magnitude of nuclear and hydrogen bombs is horrifying. I grew up in an area that was 'downwind" from testing sites of Nevada.)
There are massive protests occurring IN Israel over Netenyahu's 'leadership', his allowing genocide in Gaza. I think his days are close to an end (hopefully).
ELD, thank you for your documentary recommendations. I am familiar with the impacts of the US on the governance of the Philippines, Nicaragua, Chile, Iran... and list goes on.
'The centuries that followed the arrival of Europeans were years of tremendous upheaval, as the expansion of settler territory and the founding and growth of the United States resulted in Native American communities being moved, renamed, combined, dispersed, and, in some cases, destroyed.'
'These dislocations and changes took place across many centuries, and each individual episode was marked by its own set of unique circumstances, from public negotiations and careful planning to subterfuge and deceit; from declarations of friendship to calls for genocide; from disease, starvation, and bloodshed to perseverance, resistance, and hope in the face of persecution. But all were driven by the relentless expansion of European settlement and U.S. territory, and by U.S. government policies that relegated the independence and well-being of Native Americans to secondary status, if that.' (Library of Congress)
Question: What's the difference between Simon Rosenberg and a Goebbels-type big liar?
Answer: After Joe Biden took his Geritol and visited Congress, he turned into super-duper-man, at least for a few hours.
Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Super.
Super who?
Supercalifragilistic-super-fascist-liar.
Question: How many times can Biden take his super geritol?
Answer: Until his heart gives out.
Question: What happens to Biden at the big debate with Trump?
Answer: Get yourself a bowl of popcorn, either one could self-destruct. It's not quite the same as boxing, but if a pepped-up Biden collapaes onstage, you can bet that Super Simon will shovel up some happy copium.
p.s. It's not too late to replace Biden at the Democratic convention.
p.p.s. Did YOU vote for any of the money-grubbing whore-mongers at the DNC?
Do you have any verifiable facts to back up your comments about President Biden? Yes, he is over 80. And trump is 77. Wow, a staggering difference! President Biden has never been a great speaker, but he has served our country for decades with honor. If you don’t think so, please provide me with verifiable facts that show he has taken more than he has given. Likewise, show me verifiable facts that trump has done the same. They are both human and both make mistakes. But one has 89 indictments and the other has none - a verifiable fact.
We all must decide what verifiable facts and truth we want to depend on for our vote.
Sharon Tobin wants to enforce a pro-Biden group agenda without engaging with well-meaning Democrats who reject Biden. It's much simpler to just shut them up in this little echo chamber of Bidenista ego-stroking and toxic hate.
You don’t need to watch Fox or study Biden to realize its not about age or how sharp or well one enunciates but rather where one stands morally , ethically rand what kind of people are chosen to advise and help administer policies. I couldn’t care any less what Biden’s “visual” looks like as we saunter into our existential crisis. 4 years of governing without pleasing the kleptocrats has been perfect.
"Corporate Joe" Biden put the man who presided over the rise of brutal factory feed-lots in Iowa in charge of the Agriculture Department.
"Corporate Joe" Biden is ensuring that corporations have a plentiful supply of illegal aliens to hire, driving down the pay for unskilled labor and denying the American poor a living wage.
Biden the Vampire Liberal is sucking money from other countries with Unpayable Debt to fund Worthwhile Programs.
Biden is recklessly exploiting our captive proxy Ukraine to bleed Russia. In doing so, he has exposed the weakness of our military manufacturing sector and accelerated the process of global de-dollarization, while picking a fight with an opponent who has weapons (including hypersonic missiles and stealth-killing and satellite-killing missile defenses) that we can't effectively defend against.
And then there are Biden's glaring weaknesses as a candidate:
With Biden, Democrats have difficulty pointing to Trump's age and growing mental deficiency.
With Biden, Democrats have trouble going after Trump for his "penis finger" violation of Jean Carroll, because Biden did the same thing to Tara Reade.
With Biden, Trump has the immigration issue, which fires up his base and gets noticed by independents.
With Biden, Democrats have to squirm about Biden's complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
As is sometimes the case, John tends to significantly overstate his positions (Goebbels indeed!), but there's little question in my mind that Mr. Biden should have thought more practically about this second run. I believe that the mistakes he's made notwithstanding, he's done about as good a job as President as he could have, given our present political mess, but the possibility that the combination of the stresses of the modern presidency under any circumstances and the uncertainties of aging would make a second Biden presidency problematic cannot be ignored. I'm 'only' 79, and I've been fortunate to have maintained quite reasonable health all my life, but even if I'd ever thought of myself as presidential material (which I certainly have not), I have filled several positions of authority and decision making over the course of my life, and I'd be very leery of doing so again at this point. There are simply too many uncertainties associated with life at eight plus decades.
I'll certainly vote for him again if he decides to complete this run; the alternative is far too dangerous on many levels - but I'll do so with trepidation.
Except that Biden hasn’t ever left his trajectory. He didn’t retire and decide to come back to anything. He has kept himself in the game and active, AND this is what he prepared his whole life to do. He doesn’t need to be seen on a daily basis with the same energy as the SOTU. Can you imagine being called from within to be president at this time? I work in hospice and this with elders and I have zero doubt that Biden will be fine all the way through his second term. Not only because he has the best healthcare possible but because he is compelled, profoundly compelled to do the job.
And he has chosen knowledgeable, effective people to serve in his administration, not one of which has been arrested or indicted for scurrilous crimes - we must not forget that they are the executives who actually carry out the policies, and they are talented, intelligent, and decent people.
I profoundly hope you are right, but at the same time I'm not sure there is any job on earth which places so much stress on an individual, and that has to be a consideration. That is the chief cause of my concern. In addition to whatever situations confront him if he is re-elected, one must also factor in the possible reactions of the most die-hard Trump supporters if Trump loses. Four years of what will be unremitting stress of a kind most people cannot imagine is not a factor to be taken lightly.
I should clarify. Most of what a president does is out of sight of the public eye. Those who work most closely with Biden have a very different take than much of the public brouhaha.
John, once you start back down that Ukrainian proxy business, you lose credibility. Your continued defense of Russian aggression is untenable in any factual universe.
I'm not in favor of getting anyone banned unless they advocate violence in general or threaten people with violence or other forms of assault like doxxing. We should just ignore him. He appears to relish goading people, and to get a large charge out of provoking the biggest, angriest reaction he can get. People who take the bait give him the opportunity to escalate, for example by calling them 'fascists'. Deprive him of that entertainment. Don't take the bait.
Biden is sharp. He proved himself at the State of the Union Address.
I am looking forward to the big debate between Biden and Trump.
It will be interesting to see a man who has done an remarkable job in governing this country debate a criminal who has committed fraud, shared classified documents with our adversaries, cause the insurrection at the capital where people were killed etc. Frankly, in my opinion, I believe Biden's in better health then Trump.
Liz Cheney is as much a bought-and-paid-for Establishment minion as her evil father Dick Cheney. ("Heart transplants don't kill you, but they do kill the other guy.")
It may be reposting on Heather's part today -- but one part is fresh, still vital.
This is where Heather summarizes Lincoln at his most salient -- on "ordinary Americans standing together against the oligarchs of slavery."
Those oligarchs never went away (thus Heather's great "How the South Won the Civil War"). And they've gotten more powerful because, with the Powell memo of 1971, they finally did what the vulgar most needed to do. Killed off, stripped away humanities from schools.
America's greatest boon to having and keeping its democracy lay in a people with literacy that often and highly included reference to its best artists best in touch with working people and their communities. So many fine novels, memoirs, films, photographs, murals, music, live theater, and -- until the M.F.A. programs -- even poetry.
The commercial classes got rid of all that, marginalized it, got it set to neutered silos in higher ed, got it replaced by standardized testing perversions suffocating all K-12. And our most vulgar were finally perched as the new-style oligarchs they became. Not of slavery again, but of millions sunk in deadly minimum wage ghettoes. Outside decent health care. Reliant on tentacle car culture. Newly illiterate. Slaves to social media hate algorithms. For higher ed, obscenely reliant on predator banks and state legislatures who together abandoned the great legacy of the Justin Morrill land grant system of publicly well-financed, excellent public colleges and universities.
Or, do I err? Isn't it indeed oligarch slavery again?
Republicans want education restricted to job training. Heaven forbid we stray into insignificant and unpleasant details. such as slavery, and the politics behind it. Bush II's Sec. of Education wanted to rid the system of all liberal arts programs. "The Supply Side" wants reliable, disposable robots; flesh and blood if not steel and AI.
Questioning is problematical. It can get you killed in political systems Trump admires.
JL, years before I retired I counseled a student (one of many!) regarding his Univ progress (I worked for 40+ yrs in student fin aid) and, having reviewed his transcripts, noticed he was not making sufficient progress toward his degree at a level necessary to sustain aid (lots of aid “requirements”). I noticed that in his major—Natural Resources as I recall—he was getting C’s & D’s (and one or two F’s)….then I noticed his required electives in the “liberal arts” were all A’s & B’s. I asked him about this. He replied that he felt he needed a degree that he could “get a job in”. Hmmmm, understood that, but I asked him if he didn’t really enjoy it, or wasn’t really drawn to it, how would it be to do a lifelong career in it? I explained that a liberal arts degree could actually be a bonus for job seekers. I’d often refer students to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook (once just a copy in the Library, now online) to see what kinds of jobs were affiliated with his interests. Truly, IMHO, we need liberal arts degrees, technical degrees, trade apprenticeships, etc., as well rounded educational opportunities to those seeking them. Higher education can mean many things & a good liberal arts underpinning is a springboard & good foundation for any education.
I *knew* I couldn’t be the only college advisor who understood that a college education is NOT about getting a job (with the exception of engineering/computer science), it’s about learning how to think critically. How to find out about things. How to see more of the world and its people than just your own neighborhood, even if you can’t physically travel.
Sooz, one student I met with had come to Humboldt County (a very rural and mostly white/Native American/Hispanic population) from inner city Oakland. We discussed some personal issues that were impacting her studies and tried to problem solve them. She offered that she really enjoyed her classes at this rural Univ, so far and so different than where she was raised, and shared info on some of her classes. She said she had no idea that “white people” could be so cool (think expanding horizons for all students involved in coming together from disparate origins—one of the benefits of Univ educations!)….she dove into her studies and saw beyond—to a wider world—than she grew up in. I felt keenly, however, her sadness at going home and now being/seeing beyond, while honoring it, the culture she was raised in…she felt a bit lost in dealing with an expansive horizon that her family could not relate to. I have wondered how she made her way in this tumultuous world….it was such an engaging and insightful connection this many years ago.
Great article today by HCR. She is a fantastic writer and speaker. Really appreciate the comment about the student being accepted at Cal Poly Humbolt/Humbolt State University. Wonderful. It just jumped out that Humbolt County was described as "very rural." Since I live in Montana, my perspective on "rural" or "very rural" is a bit different. Humbolt County has a population density of 38 people per square mile. The federal definition of rural is generally 35 people per square mile or fewer. The feds also have a definition of "frontier rural," which is generally 7 people per square mile or fewer. The entire state of Montana has 7 people per square mile. Not a big deal. But just pointing this out.
Humboldt county CA is very rural, Oakland CA is not, being one of the Bay area’s larger cities (to this rural gal, they kinda blend together…hard for me to tell where one city ends & another begins!)—sorry if it was confusing.
I used all the Stay at Home Mom time to get a degree in Liberal Arts, English Literature, philosophy and all "the requirements" like history and math. I was very low income but never considered that I would use any of it to get a job. I thought that getting an education in order to get a job would be cheating myself. One thing I knew and that was that Shakespeare is very important. And, The King James Bible: one course textual criticism and one The literature of. Rutgers was $12.50 a credit. I could afford this indulgence.
I finally decided on sales but only in something men bought (it was the mid'70's) I did very very well.
I advised my son when he went to college to stick with liberal arts. I’ll forever be grateful to Dr. Johnston, my Humanities professor, for opening my eyes to a world I never knew existed.
I've found a certain joy as a teaching assistant in a Community College Aeronautics A&P program in getting kids from the least advantaged backgrounds into the more team related technical hands on courses first. We had them mixed in with retired engineers and even flight school owners/instructors who signed up for our courses during the Great Recession when they had so much down time. The mix introduced them to very objective topics and procedures that had to be done successfully every time, with enough personal reading to see if they could read what was supposed to happen then see if it did the way they interpreted what they read.
It was particularly unique that our college had coursework that included fabric covering where you had to know how to sew the fabric onto the structure with anti-chaffing tape to protect it and mix the chemicals for adhesives and coatings. The older flight school types including a Naval Academy grad, thought it was a total waste of time, especially since there were only 4 fabric questions out of 1600 in the pool of questions for the FAA written exams so only 1 question was usually in the set of questions that had to draw a minimum from each category.
Our philosophy was that it was a great equalizer in having few students of any background familiar with it. The kids with the least previous advantages built a lot of new confidence in being able to do as well or better than ones from any other more advantaged background.
By the time they had disassembled, inspected and rebuilt our bigger radial engines (not an FAA requirement) and run them on the test stand, they had levels of confidence in their abilities that no liberal arts students could shake when they started taking the liberal arts classes (they never would have signed up for without that level of confidence in their ability to learn).
It was a privilege to learn alongside them as I did my best to keep up with them.
P.S. The Naval Academy grad wanted a quick and easy course and complained to me one day that we were teaching 3 times what the FAA required. I looked at him in feigned horror, telling him, "Oh no, we're trying to teach them 9 times what the FAA requires!"
The FAA tests usually proved to be the easiest tests the students would have to take after making it though our courses. We had to have an 80% pass rate for students we certified as being ready for the FAA written exams, we had a near 100% pass rate on the initial exam, though some students had been too nervous and had to retake them after so many hours of remedial training and passed within the time limits that could still count as a 1st attempt to keep our pass rate among the highest, and our students sought out by employers that even included Disney Land who wanted very well qualified mechanics and problem solvers for maintenance on their rides.
We also seemed to have young women including from disadvantaged backgrounds that learned unshakable confidence in their newfound abilities, at least one of whom went on to work for NASA while I was there.
I ended up with a degree in Criminology because I was able to take ancillary courses that I was interested in (and could do well in) for my degree requirements; I (at the age of 20) knew that if I could take the courses I was interested in, I would do better. I could pick and choose from "humanities" (in this case, sociology, psychology, and philosophy) and the sciences (chemistry and biology) while also tailoring my writing requirements to those areas that I could do well, and blessed be, no freaking math.
I can tell you that the degree I got (at a college where I could also play music and letter in two sports without taking courses in music or phys ed) made me a far better cop than just about anything else I could imagine.
Ally, I was on the “10 yr no degree” plan….tapering from classes when I started working full time, maybe one a term. As a student, mjr Social Welfare/Sociology, I also took a lot of English & art history, auto shop (adjusting valves was a hoot), woodshop, welding, tailoring (I was already a proficient seamstress), psych, religions, philosophy, geology….few “hard” sciences (only what was required) & NO math (had a math trauma from a class in Jr High that took me from an A student to D student within the year)—I stopped taking classes when I could no longer fit it in & was only a couple of courses shy of my degree. That’s when my boss a the time said you are already excelling in a job you’d normally need a Master’s for…well, that made me feel better! & realized I really didn’t “need” to, either for employment nor for the “diploma”. Now, as a retired Univ employee, I take Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) classes overseen by the Extended Ed office on campus—the fun of learning w/o exams & usually no homework (or the fun kind!).
My son went to a top tier school and he got what we paid for - a solid well rounded ed. His advisor his junior year sat him down and asked him a similar question about one course he was taking that was taking way more time for preparation and hurting his other studies. Immediately he was dropped from the class and his college life improved as did his grades. He chose the school to get an education and he did. The school had great networks, which lead him to a great company where he now works. Good advising.
The order in which a particular student takes classes can make all the difference, too. What ever gives them the most confidence earliest seems to produce better results than the ones who sign up for, or are forced to take the ones most difficult for them, first.
My liberal arts degree in Political Science and History did not get me a job. My nursing diploma did that. The degree did give me critical thinking, a powerful desire to continue learning, and an appreciation of the complexity of good governance all of which I found helpful as I did my job.
In the mid 1960’s, i went to college for a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing. At the time, those majors were very easy to come across. I must say that over my nursing career, I have used what I learned in my liberal arts courses just as much as my nursing courses. No matter your job, when working with people, those courses are valuable!!
Humboldt at one time had BS majors such as Audiology, Nursing & Economics & Industrial Arts (became Industrial Tech)—-why oh why the Univ scrapped these programs I’ll never understand…..they are now trying hard to reinstate the Nursing BS program (never never never should have let it die on the vine in the first place!). Exposing students to a broad range of disciplines while studying for a tech or career-based degree (Nursing, Engineering, and many of the Natural Resource mjrs) really provides a “whole” well-rounded education.
JL I am reminded of an IBM ad from yesteryear THINK OR SWIM. Also, John Gardner, who, in writing about excellence, stated that, if we did not pursue it, we would have neither good philosophy or plumbing.
If we, as a nation, do not have an educated populous trained in critical thinking, then we will continue to experience the ‘false facts’ that are prevalent today in our country.
I still have my THINK sign from my years with IBM. I was told then my background in music and history made me a perfect candidate for the marketing jobs I held. I could translate from clients to tech folks, and my humanities background has served me well into a 3rd career.
Nancy The humanities and an ability to type have been major assets in my diverse careers. Being a MIT Sloan Fellow filled in some technical gaps, but without humanities (including economics) I would have been a fish swimming in shallow water.
Was it John Gardner that influenced Kennedy’s speeches? “ for too long and too often, we have replaced personal excellence with the mere collection material things…”. Or did the mindset/worldview/ culture change? Or was it suppressed after the sixties? How?
Ted I am not aware that John Gardner was personally involved with President Kennedy. [Ted Sorensen was a JFK alter ego and his top speechwriter.]
At that time Gardner had just published EXCELLENCE on education and was, I believe, still heading Carnegie.cHe was a Republican HEW secretary under Johnson, until he resigned in opposition to the Vietnam war. [As a Foreign Service Officer with boots-on-the-ground experience in Congo, I twice refused an ‘invitation’ from our ambassador in Saigon to join him—1965 & 1967.]
I first became where John Gardner and grad school I read speech that he wrote about creating meeting in the importance and power of that. I was inspired and read several of his books. “On Renewal” I think was the speech. He was LBJ s Sec of Edu and founded Common Cause?
In this context I must repeat the story of my professor of medieval language and lit, a multifaceted giant of a man. He got his PhD at Harvard at the age of 20 and bragged of getting out of Harvard “while it was still a university— the year before they put in the Business School.” That said it all to me. I’ve seen “Starving the Beast” and read “Democracy in Chains.” The Koch businesses continue to operate in Russia in spite of the ban. Need I say more?
Worse than questioning being problematical, J L, it gets, too, to the personal.
On the standardized tests, of course, it isn't. Standardized testing looks for skills in causality, in sequencing, in categorical correctness. Diane Ravitch in her great, 2003 "The Language Police," looked at how our elites stripped the personal out of everything -- as if the pinnacle of human achievement could be robotic -- that we perform superbly mechanically, humanly void, like those in Don Siegel's 1956 "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," who vaunted their freedom from humanity.
I think it's the personal that put's the life into education, and for that matter, into life. By personal, I'm not at all talking about self-centeredness, but rather the abundant connections between one's self and other's, in society, in relationships, in democratic governance, in the arts and the sciences, even in math. First of all, we have dependencies from the moment we are born, with respect to reciprocity with others, and with and upon the stardust all around us and of us. Education helps us to notice, and some degree comprehend, the nuances and connections that are consciousness. Good education is literally "consciousness expanding", and equips us with tools that we can personally apply, in grasping our circumstances, and in applying strategies with a better than random chance of improving our own lives and those of others. Such skills can and do become part and parcel of our own process, like the once laboriously practiced skill of reading, which is now automatic to the point that one almost can't help but read a prominently placed encountered sentence. The same is true, or can be true, of many other acquired skills. That's genuinely personal.
And those skills and expended consciousness impact any job, any relationship, any decision affecting our own extended impact on the present and the future.
Life is a gift. Education for successful and aware living helps to make the most of it.
Yes! Life is a gift. Education is the way that gift is expanded and passed on to others. It is no accident that human creativity started as a mash-up of art and technology unified as one thing. It is really that way still. What good is this gift of a life without the art that makes it worth living?
I am trained in the physical sciences (first career: Geologist), and medical science (third career: psychiatric RN). It has been my experience that creative artistry lies at the base of all scientific and artistic endeavors. To rid our education of the arts is to stifle much future progress in science, technology, and policy making.
You likely already well know how all our greatest scientists -- all -- in biographies, memoirs, letters, speeches, or testaments by others have cited some arts, some humanities, as key, central to their own greatest discoveries, achievements.
Your career sequence has been a grounded example of maneuvering through life with opportunities. I agree with what you say about creative artistry but what that means in practice for those committed and contributing one-of-a-kinds poses questions about practical living (earning money). Artist/practitioners whose work emerges on the leading edges of cultural change need to be received. The 'art world' is its own quagmire of hierarchies and bailiwicks. I'm not proposing a fix but pointing out how integrated and absorbing of uniqueness an adaptive culture must be for all to thrive.
Creativity in the building trades solves many a problem, major and minor. Any task that is resisting a standard fix. Some leaps of imagination change the world, and others save the day, or only minutes, but it all adds up and it tends to mount up quicker if you can imagine something "outside of the box" as well the practical process to get there.
Good taste is the enemy of creativity -Pablo Picasso. How do we keep the politics that occur in every human endeavor from becoming a stifling weight? Politics is after all, an art and a science.
Yes, J L, very good of you to distance the personal, or the individual, from "self-centeredness."
Any program that seeks humane essaying will caution that, as we allow the personal in us, from ourselves, we do so only in connection to similar perspectives from others.
Those others will let us respect whatever key differences illuminate our circumstances, theirs.
Schools could do this. It's a mean, vulgarized world -- this of our billionaires, their orange clowns, their more murderous Putins, the fossil fuel royals, the Clarences, the white domestic terrorists. Some day those in our schools will wake up and see how visions of the world as of actual people can compete with all the packagers, abstractors, standardized testers, and other profiteers off of grouping inhumanity.
The Christian "Great Commandment", in part, "love thy neighbor as thyself", the "Golden Rule", "Categorical Imperative", is all about transcending a self-absorbed view of what matters. That's what the word "love" really means, though we also use it to signal intense enjoyment, such as in "I love chocolate", but you consume chocolate, you don't regard its welfare. Love does not impose the personal, it bonds our awareness and concerns beyond what an acquaintance of mine calls "our punyverse".
Supposing education in the U.S. suddenly became enlightened and realized its obligation to teach the humanities, who is to decide which authors are worthwhile, which works of science remain viable, whose works of art represent the human spirit, whose interpretation of history is true? This is a question for Phil Balla.
The humanities used to be thought of as the product of dead white men.This belief is obviously not a workable one now. What is your real definition of humanities? On close examination, it would seem that it is entirely cultural which makes something of a problem in establishing curriculum.
My college, now bankrupt, featured a program created by Robert Maynard Hutchins for the University of Chicago, sometimes called "Great Books". It was basically explored the evolution of modern thought, begining with the writers of Ancient Greece. It highly Euro and US centrist, but was, I think, a substantive introduction to stages of development of modern intellectual thinking, which has influenced understandings held by societies, to some extent, around the globe and certainly here in the USA. We read the thoughts of some of the same texts that apparently influenced the US founders. We studied the development of directions of though in the sciences, the arts, sociology, psychology, law, etc, The curriculum was remiss to the degree it left out the contributions of non-Western societies, but I think it left us better prepared to appreciate them, nevertheless. The process was deliberately left open-ended, not tied up in a bow.
I think I see a similar methodology in many of Heather's contributions that illustrate that we can learn for today from acknowledging more than the emergent tip of the historical "iceberg".
Jean, I think the very first of the humanities curriculum must be logic and critical thought. Then the various histories - prehistoric development of humans, history of science and math, history of philosophies, history of religions and religious thought, history of politics and political thought. And those histories are world histories, comprising every culture of which we know at this time. All we can do is our best, with respect to presenting these histories with as little bias as possible, with declaring the nature of the inherent biases - and a solid grounding in logic and critical thought will help here. This is a vast undertaking, but that is precisely what "the humanities" is. And it must begin as early as grammar school, before the hormone ravages begin to show up in middle school.
Well, the just stripped the SAT of an essay requirement. (Maybe the prospects of sorting out the AI problem?) So now the test is ALL multiple choice and shorter.
Yes, pathetic, but typical of the cynical billionaires and worse-in-all-ways oligarchs.
The tests have taken over internationally -- partly because there's virtually no "real" test anymore, progwoman, that isn't also machine-graded.
At every level billionaires and oligarchs touch, purpose is to show how unnecessary, marginal, unwanted anything of the human is.
It's a drive, a mission, so to reduce the world to machines, assembly lines, and all the rest of the abstracted, numbered, humanly dead.
It allows mass death trips. Wars. Murders of irksome journalists, Bribes to anything with a Clarence on it. Huge war profits. And lies from all connected to this --lies because there's no truth element at all anymore. That goes when the human goes.
Prog Multiple choice is machine gradable. Essays require thinking humans to read vast numbers of essays. I recall some of my colleagues who would go down to ETS for at least a week to read essays.
Frankly, as a professor (1992-2013) I wonder how capable many teachers are to read and grade a massive pile of essays. Unless the graders are grounded in critical thinking, I fear for ‘creative’ students.
As a teacher (7th & 12th grade, 1955-1956) and over two decades as professor, I never used multiple choice. In college my students started every class writing a THINK essay. I (and many of them) found this helpful. Lots of reading!
I remain grateful to my high school history teacher, Frances Turnipseed, for insisting on discussion questions and short answers rather than multiple choice. Three years in her classes taught me not only plenty of facts but how to think about them. I hope your students remember you as fondly.
Yes , you have an valid point. However, we had Presidents and civil rights leaders that were killed because they wanted change and equality for the people of this country. We can't be intimidated by fear. The majority of us in this country believe in Democracy. We must fight like hell to salvage it by motivating people to vote. The latter part of Heather's newsletter was a great example for all of us.
I cannot tell you how many damn times I have heard that. Some business owners want that because they think their tax dollars should be spent to support their business. Some other want critical thinkers and problem solvers. That is one reason why the top tier schools graduates - state and private - are sought after by the best companies and professions. There are a number of other schools where companies seek their grads because they are "job trained" which means they are focused on skills - not thinking.
Fundamentally, no error -- even if you're concentrating on a single aspect of the problem. For, if literacy in itself was a cure-all, we'd have been spared ten thousand ills throughout history...
No, the deliberate undoing of education and its replacement by Pavlovian conditioning is part of oligarchy's conspiracy against America. The plan to stifle the spread of freedom and create a large underclass -- a sort of social sump -- surmounted by a totally dependent herd.
I lived in South Africa as a kid and saw the beginnings of Apartheid's tight regulation-bound system of separate development, designed to keep the non-white majority in its place. This of course involved placing a cap on public education for that majority. Built-in inequality.
On the downside of literacy, I'd recommend readers to go to the work of David Abrams, starting with his book The Spell of the Sensuous.
Being literate does not equate to being a reader, and being a reader does not equate to reading and absorbing things that makes one a learner. Then there is the problem of innumeracy. We have a long way to go, but it is encouraging that we have come a long way over the past two centuries.
Thank you for your perspective from personal history, Peter, and the book recommendation.
I don't know it. Will check further. (I'm living in a small town in the mountains of Kyushu, Japan, so no local library with English books, and inter-library loan, for a few thousand miles.)
Exposure in Japan to Kanji characters may help you when it comes to the literacy aspect of this book, as may the fact of living in an out-of-the-way mountain area of Japan.
I've spent less than two months in the country, first, in Tokyo, on mission, in 1973, attending a big UNCTAD meeting, the second time, in the mountains of Kyoto prefecture, finding what I wanted to after that first happy contact with the capital.
I have gained much from my Japanese friend and his widow, both among my main teachers. A small shadow of envy. Once there, I never wanted to quit Japan...
Yes, Peter -- much good insight in the kanji side of life.
Having spent time here, as you have -- and in alignment with both the two very, very different Japans -- you can appreciate the wise, serene alternatives to modernity the older culture affords.
Nearly a half century ago (1977) I wrote my doctoral dissertation, "Appalachia and Detroit," which was my first attempt to pair modernity and its flux with things more rooted in what we might know as regionalism.
Some very wise people have cautiously been weighing these dynamics over the years, so I'm glad to see you, too, Peter, thus paying attention.
Tokyo and its inhabitants must have changed greatly since 1973, when I felt wonderfully relaxed and at home there. Yet, something of the same old and new atmosphere in Wim Wenders' delightful film, Perfect Days, even if no one in the film was wearing a yukata when out strolling in Shibuya.
But, regardless of familiarity with all things hitech, there's a huge change in Japan and throughout the Far East.
Back then, all calculations relating to prices and change were swift and mental -- sometimes involving an abacus. Now -- Craig Dupler, note -- it's all pocket calculators, yet I'm not aware of any time gain.
Re. literacy, in Franco's Spain around 1960, there were still many illiterates. But... these people had a fantastically rich vocabulary, folk memories to match it, knew not only songs but poems by heart, and could improvise witty coplas (couplets) on the spot.
Now, everyone can read and write, but most of that natural eloquence has gone down the drain.
Available on Amazon in Audiobook and Kindle. ....interesting...:
"In The Spell of the Sensuous David Abram draws on sources as diverse as the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Balinese shamanism, Apache storytelling, and his own experience as an accomplished sleight-of-hand of magician to reveal the subtle dependence of human cognition on the natural environment."
Under the New Normal Dispensation, all unauthorized thought is a crime, in the same way as hunting in a royal forest was punished as the criminal act of poaching. The land is to be a thought-free zone in which oligarchs enjoy a monopoly of thought, the latter of course being angled exclusively to maximizing THEIR wealth and power.
Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" traced the beginnings of Nazi ideology to the German ruling class's abandonment of the teaching of the humanities/liberal arts after the Franco Prussian war (circa 1870.) Reich said this more eloquently. I read it 60 years ago so it's a fuzzy reference.
Phil, according to many workers today, many of today’s oligarchs (and their minions) treat their employees as if they are so many beings whose only worth is how much money those employees make them. There are too many accounts of workers collapsing at work, only to have someone new at their desk the next week, if not the next day.
Yes, Mary -- as in the Bob Seger song, "Feel Like a Number."
And so many, many, fine, apt notes like this from many cultures around the world -- not just the U.S., and Putin's Russia, where so many predators rule.
Unfortunately, they almost have to. A problem made apparent by the garage where I got my vehicle inspected. When I asked about the Help wanted sign, I was told it had been up for 8 years since they couldn't hire new mechanics under 21 since insurance wouldn't cover them driving customer's cars. By the time they are 21, I suspect they have found other work and have little desire to start a career I know so many who have been able to start sooner in the military (a rather great pipeline in the past for people like me to get technical skills, and GI Bill benefits from).
I'd much rather have robust civilian technical education for all who can benefit from it, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds and able to advance into a more open middle class like we had in the 1950s and later (to me started back when my dad was given his start in the CCC).
Jim, the Houston area community colleges have associate degrees in Ford, Honda, Chrysler, GM, Toyota and nonspecific auto repair. The dealerships love the interns and the interns get valuable experience.
I don't know how it would work in Maine but the program I'd like to see (with my interest in Hybrids, Plugin Hybrids especially, and EVs), has a great looking example that can be found at https://www.weber.edu/automotive/j_kelly.html
Some industries seemed to just want enough training to certify just what they needed, without considering a more rounded and universally beneficial education for them. While some private profit schools had much more demonstrations and less hands on by every student, we had the reputation for students getting a lot more individual hands on experience, according to students I asked about why they came to us after quitting the heavily advertised private profit schools.
I can imagine the differences in student debt loads, too.
Straight talk, Phil. And this led to millions of deaths from Covid, instead of a few hundred. Because that meagerly educated nincompoop, declared, "no need for masks, vaccines -just inject yourself with chlorine bleach or swallow it! We have managed in 50 years to end up in the European middle ages with a handful of ignorant billionaires (formerly kings and aristocrats) and the rest of us serfs.
I've just been writing about the battle of Shiloh. It took place in an area about one mile to one mile and a half in diameter. Between the two armies, in forty-eight hours, there were 23,841 casualties.
General Ulysses S. Grant described the horror of the scene in his Memoirs:
"I could've walked across that field as far as the eye could see and never touched the ground, by walking on the bodies. It was at that moment I realized that this war could never—that the Union could never be preserved— without complete conquest of the South."
And this is the core problem of US democracy. The "South"—meaning the slave power that controlled and controls it to this day— was never crushed. The people we're fighting today are the (im)moral descendents of the slave power. And they're trying to make it illegal to even talk about slavery.
Virtually every Letter from Ms. Richardson warrants praise, because they are invariably instructive , usually of what history may teach us , and for other reasons.. But this letter, the one for March 15 and in large part a repost from a Letter published three years ago, is noteworthy for Ms. Richardson identifying the historical lesson expressly (which she does not usually do), removing any possibility that even a few of her readers would fail to pick up on it, the lesson being "[how] a group of ordinary people from country towns who shared a fear that they were losing their democracy could figure out how to work together to reclaim it."
Robert, yes! “We” can absolutely do this…now is the time to commit to a democracy and not be indifferent! To the ramparts! (Are smartphones—look away, look away now!—the new opiates of the masses?….just wondering.)
More of us( particularly parents of the future ) should consider very seriously what the cell phone is doing for us. It is isolating us and making any group power indistinguishable . Watch the streets. Watch the airports, watch your fellow shoppers at Cost co. Everyone in a tiny capsule of personal absorption. Talk directly to any one of these lone robots and many look at you in great surprise…… like huh, where did you come from? This set us up to not listen and to not hear. This sets us up to be singularly led!
Jamie Raskin, in an interview Friday evening at the 10:00 hour on MSNBC, said: "the Republicans are sleepwalking into fascism". He was referring to the ones who don't have the guts or the decency to put an end to Trump and his henchmen.
I don’t mind being called woke and using the word. Bill Maher seems to think it only describes elitist snobs with ridiculous positions, but it also, to me, just says someone who sees things that others ignore, on purpose, or attending to the Kardashians…
I think many of them are sure they’ll magically avoid the “real thing” of fascist politics, not being willing or able to see that the fascists will squeeze the pyramid of power more and more (or more likely simply shave it off and keep the assets for themselves) until it resembles the Lincoln Monument.
Trump supporters think, or hope, that they will be accepted in the next Trump presidency “rapture.” They chose to forget that Trump is only for himself, and not even really for the Republican Party that he rules.
I do believe that he attributed that to Liz Cheney - but be that as it may - consider trump’s statement/response to the question about loneliness: “nobody has been has been treated like Trump in terms of badly“ and he feels that he’s been treated worse than Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln. What a pitiful, pitiful … truly pathetically pitiful “man”!!!
He is correct, but I also must say they are doing so with full knowledge thinking they will do just fine. Just like the people who follow the Putins and Obrans of the world.
Sadly, the conservatives could have stopped this years ago, but they have been to busy cutting the regulators (IRS agents) that would prevent someone like trump from even standing on the steps of the court house except for being on trial. The conservatives have touted law and order which means more law for blue collar people, and less law and order for white collar people. It is why the wealthy continues to flaunt their noses at the justice system.
As a fellow Mainer, I really appreciated this post the first time around, and equally so this time around. The lessons of history come alive in your "Letters." As a retired academic, I am so deeply appreciative of your work. -- Although.... I find it hard to imagine that you really had a "... tongue-tied first date"
We call ourselves Mainers although we've only lived here for 20 years. When we first moved to Maine we were considered by the locals to be "from away." We moved to a small town in Hancock County next door to the Thorton Wilder estate. Of course, we didn't realize how many people from away there were in our community, some of them long passed, like Mr. Wilder and EB White to name one. There's something about Maine, that fosters writers to write here.
One of the first people we met in Maine had moved to the area from Seattle. He recalled an story that was in the local newspaper. It was an obituary of a lady that was born circa 1900. Her parents lived on Isle Au Haut and her mother was having a tough pregnancy. When she went into labor, her husband took her to the closest hospital, which was in Stonington a short boat ride from Isle Au Haut, where the baby was born. Both mother and baby were fine and after 3 days in the hospital the family returned to Isle Au Haut. This lady lived her entire life on the island passing away at the age of 98.
The obituary began, "Even though she was from away, we considered her one of our own."
It was at that moment I realized that even our 10 year old daughter would never be a true Mainer but would always be "from away."
It's never really bother any of us, In fact we laugh about it now and then. Just not with the native Mainers. We can't imagine living anywhere else, not just because of the rustic beauty of the place, but the incredible people that live here. It's always felt like home, more so than any of the nine other states we've lived.
Gary, It sounds like we live near you. We moved to Ellsworth, Maine in 1973, so we've lived here for 51 years. But I'm sure for many locals we're still "from away"!
It reminds me of Tim Sample's old joke: Just because your cat has kittens in the oven, doesn't make'em biscuits!
What a wonderful story. I am glad you found ME. I grew up in Portland and my wife in Orono (We met in college in MA). We moved away, eventually landing in CA. With three daughters and 4 (soon to be 6) grandchildren living in CA, we won't be moving back to ME. -- We still visit ME at least once a year and it really feels like coming home.
Dr. Richardson this was a perfect posting for tonight. I remember reading it the first time you posted it and thought it was great how you had made such an important piece of history so interesting. Tonight I read it and realized the gift you gave me, hope. I am almost 82 and have seen our country come through many terrible situations but today feels different. I am scared. Your understanding of the past and the present of our country is remarkable and your ability to share your knowledge and wisdom in a manner that it can help me renew my faith in our country is so needed and so appreciated. That being said, please take time for yourself so you can find peace and good health in your life.
I’m 66 and scared too. And yet I’m managing to muster the chutzpah - in no small part due to Dr. Richardson and our LFAA community - to advocate for US in the spirit of those 19th century hero’s from Main, and Lincoln.
Thank you Professor for today’s history lesson, giving meaning to the moral and political differences between slaveholders and the anti-slavers. You tell us about Representative Edward Dickinson working to “stop the Slave Power that was turning the government into an oligarchy.”
Emily Dickinson’s poem, “Hope is the thing with feathers” is more than a poem for children. It is a metaphor for the times of change and hope and possibility. Don’t we all need Hope?
From the Poetry Foundation, form changed to save space, this timeless poem:
Hope” is the thing with feathers by Emily Dickinson
According to Lincoln, "two principles -- right and wrong -- throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings."
Absolute monarchs, any sort of autocrats, and those who aim to be them.
I’ve always loved this story. I’ve read it more than once every time we come upon March 15th … maybe missing a year I don’t
recall… what I always feel is my first understanding of what and how you are gluing together “real time” stories from very long ago and making the moment I’m living in here & now, come to life, and hence “understandable” … Magic for me.!
As always I am one of many educated (BA, MSW, LCSW) folks who have very little understanding of how we ‘got here’ and your gifts bring ‘here’ to life with historical substance that I can remember and ponder over w pleasure.
Forever your student and admirer. Gratefully and joyously!
The horrendous murder of Elijah Lovejoy led to one of the first speeches by the man from the State that bears his name in its motto today, as he so eloquently decried the murder, and in so doing became nationally prominent.
A slight correction---while the Kansas/Nebraska Act of 1854 sent an uppercut across the jaw of the Missouri Compromise, it did not render it invalid. Henry Clay, the Great Compromiser, supported both. The first firmly, and the latter less so. It was the dreaded 1857 Dred Scott decision that rendered the death knell to the Missouri Compromise, and virtually armed the cannons that would later fire upon Fort Sumter.
Finally, I love the "Cedar, beware the Adze of March!" quote from Heather that I had never heard before. That is so cool.
Not nearly as cool, but as kids learning famous Shakespearean lines, we learned why Julius Caesar died on March 15th. Whenever someone was asked to read the passage in "Julius Caesar" when Caesar is killed, instead of declaiming "Et tu Brute", some wise ass kid, myself included, would mouth off with "Ate two burritos"!
I'd argue the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska act was more important since it lit a fire that started the "anti-Nebraska" politicians from old parties fragmenting (Whigs, Northern Democrats, Know-Nothings, etc, to form the Opposition Coalition that became the majority in the 34th Congress, elected in later 1854, not that long after the passage of the inflammatory act. There were not even any candidates identified as Republicans when they were seated in 1855, the first House member identified as a Republican was George T Hodges (R) seated December 1, 1856 to replace the deceased James Meacham (O) of the Vermont 1st District.
Oops, fixed the No Nothings phonetic spelling to Know- Nothings as I also reworked a spreadsheet on the 34th Congress to see how people in various parties changed.
The parties listed for the the duration of the 34th Congress include the 3 Senate Classes, with Class 1 beginning their 6 year term in the 2 years of the 34th Congress. Class 2 had 4 more years to serve before their 6 years ended (after beginning with the 33rd Congress).
Class 3 only had the 2 years of the 34th Congress to serve before they finished their 6 years (beginning with the 32nd Congress).
The Wikipedia article on the 33rd Congress shows Democrats ended with 155 seats, Independent Democrats with 1, Free soil with 3, Whigs with 74, and the Independent Party with 1.
That (33rd) link shows the Democrats starting the 34th Congress down 76 seats at 79, while the Opposition Coalition supposedly started at 154. That doesn't quite jibe with the entry for the 34th Congress that says Democrats started with 82 seats instead of 79 and ended with 156 seats instead of 155. The numbers for the Opposition "Caucus" vs "Coalition" in the 33rd link show a start at 154 vs the 34th entry putting the start at 151.
It seems the only Whigs left were 8 Senators who served all of the 34th Congress (4 from classes 2 and 3, and 4 who started their 6 year terms in Class 1 along with the 34th Congress House members. Back then Senators were selected by State Legislatures which may explain how 13 or 14 Senators that served some portion of their 6 year terms are listed as Republicans at various dates though most didn't start with the 34th Congress (8 were still listed as Whigs who likely voted with Republicans.
Hannibal Hamlin is uniquely identified as starting the 34th Congress as a Democrat, before being identified as a Republican on June 12, 1856. Lincoln, himself didn't change from Whig to Republican around the time Hannibal Hamlin did in 1856 (over half way through the 34th Congress).
Thanks for that, Jim. In my childhood neighborhood in L.A., the local public library was the John C. Fremont library. As you know, Fremont was the first Republican candidate for President, losing somehow to James Buchanan in spite of his fame and the celebrity allure of his beautiful wife Jessie Benton Fremont, the daughter of Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton.
LINDA FORCE Daniel ; Love your comments - I always wonder about Julius and being stabbed with a dozen swords by senators. Is there any analogy in today's world?
I can't think of any modern analogy. Then again, I can think of a former President currently seeking a return to the White House he so fully disgraced, that I wouldn't mind having his own Ides of March on the Senate floor.
Thank you so much Heather. First, I’m tearing up reading this story in a lovely breakfast room in Porto, Portugal. People here remember dictatorship … Salazar … and they take the politics of the former Prez very seriously indeed.
Which brings me to a comment on the putrid swamp that the GOP’s become: look at their ages. Not a one remembers what it means to be a nation at war, none remember (or know or care to know) what life was like before Social Security (only 10% of the population “retired” 90% worked till they dropped dead), clearly they don’t remember what is was like to have widespread child labor, no minimum wage laws, no 40 hour work week … I could go on.
The dirtydiaperssmallhands party is enthralled with the past because they have No F***ing Idea what they are talking about.
They might as well be the party of Plague, Pestilence & Poverty.
No matter when we were born our necessaries are to get the education that we deserve, through high school at least however we can. Public education should be high on everyone's list. We have to overcome the naysayers who are afraid of, or lazy about or whatever it is, the prospect of using our brains the best we can, to become and grow into our adult citizen selves, abiding by our Constitution and our constitutionally based laws. Democracy demands it.
They also live up to the epithet of RHINO. Truly, Republicans in name only, while Democrats are now the champions of Democracy envisioned by the original Republicans.
Fred, u r 100% correct. I wish MSM would stop calling MAGA “conservatives.” They aren’t conserving nothing! Not the constitution, not American traditions, not small government & not fiscal prudery!
I SO admire Pence for speaking truth to MAGA…..this is twice, so far, that he has done something that I admire…he found his bedrock principle and is sticking to it. Wish more R’s had his “cojones” to stand for the truth and democracy. 👍
For myself Barb, I'm just not willing to give him much credit wise. Dick Cheney for instance came out today rebuking tfg in no uncertain terms. With both men, far too much water has passed under any proposed bridge in my mind. I have a modicum of 'respect' for their words and actions - at select times (few), but that's about it.
A modicum is significant to my mind, since I considered both pond scum. I will appreciate any sane action, and wish a Bush or two had an urge to do something courageous since they helped create the path to our quagmire
This whole period has made me root for some people I dislike intensely, including Dick Cheney. One of the worst of the worst, responsible for thousands of deaths. Yet here he is doing one good thing. Yes Pence has done 2 good things. My cynical self suggests that Mother said "If you endorse that horrible man, you'll be sleeping on the couch till kingdom come. "
And in July 1863, it was the men of the 20th Maine who held Little Round Top and by so doing made certain the North's victory at Gettysburg, which meant that the South would never win, never become independent.
And that today the Republican Party my great-great-great-grandfather was a founding member of in Pennsylvania as a Quaker Abolitionist, has become the vehicle of the unreconstructed Southern Enemy is one of the great ironies of history, with the traitors claiming they are patriots by claiming the work of these men who would be as opposed to them today as they were back then.
TC, thank you for sharing your story. I found it interesting that Biden used Reagan’s words against the latest iteration of the unreconstructed Southern enemy.
I'm tired of people saying Biden is a bad speaker. He knows his history and he knows people. I like what he has to say and he continues to work for the good of all Americans, which is refreshing. Plus he has a sense of humor, not grievance.
Yesterday I posted the following: Our kind President cares about EVERY single person in this country. He stuttered as a youth and worked hard to overcome it, People still bully him if he mis-speaks one single word. He personally works with over 25 stutterers helping them overcome their struggle. Such a wonderful, caring man.
Have you listened to tfg speak in the last year? Lately he literally can't get through a sentence without confusing who is president, who was speaker of the House on Jan. 6, what country Orban is president of, on and on.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YofSo-GTN4
I agree wholeheartedly! He is a wonderful man and the people’s President.
Great and tragic ironies of history indeed, TC. And of course, the 18th Maine was reinforced by one of the most fascinating Renaissance men in American history, the fabulous and fabulously mustachioed Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.
They were also reinforced by 10 men of the 17th Pennsylvania, who were the survivors of a 20-mile run in their wool uniforms in the Pennsylvania summer heat and humidity. Among them was a 15 year old kid from Catawissa, Pennsylvania, Henry Thomas; he celebrated his 16th birthday atop the hill on the Second Day, and survived the war to marry late (PTSD did that in the postwar period) and have a daughter named Mary who was my father's mother and my grandmother, who lived with us till she died when I was 12. She was the teacher who taught me to read when I was 4 - phonics, just as "word (non) recognition" came along to start our slow decline. Henry himself lived to 96 and died when his son-in-law and grandson were helping him clean out the root cellar; when they told him they'd found four jugs of "corn squeezin's" he'd forgotten about, he started down the ladder and tripped, breaking his neck when he landed.
The fact that phonics begins with a p is why aliens fly right by us.
Thank You, Suessl. I have been spelling "Foto" as do the Spanish, Turks, Russians, Greeks & every other fonetic language since getting into fotografy in 1984. I have only been chastised once for that by an English purist in England. As Spock, my Phavourite Vulcan would say, there is no logic to spelling F with a PH.
My husband's last name begins with two lower case f's. Which, in Wales, signifies an F, because one F signifies a V. ;-) (every proof-reader's nightmare.) I am in sympathy with the space aliens!
Have you seen "Why Didn't They Ask Evans?" which is currently streaming on BritBox? One character's name is Henry Bassington-ffrench. I had never seen the "double f" used before so thank you for the explanation.
F and P are interchangeable across linguistic families: thus Pater or Padre and Father. Also V and B. The legacy of Ph fits into that story - and yes, we should go with Foto.
Just make sure Frodo is there as well.
Yes, apparently V & B are interchangeable as in the Cyrillic alfabet B is pronounced V, and even in Spanish, Havana is spelled Habana. Speaking of Spanish, most everyone mispronounces "llama," calling it Lama instead of Yama. Double L in Spanish is pronounced as Y as in Guillermo (and surprisingly William).
My first post-college year was spent on The Rosebud Sioux Reservation in SD. I taught "English" to a small group of adults. I remember writing "ghiti" on the board, then asking what word did that spell, which is actually spelled another way, entirely. Answer: "fish." gh as in enough, i as in any short i, and ti as in tion (sh).
My kind students clearly did not know what the hell I was talking about. Nor could I blame them.
Hope,
That, I believe was from George Bernard Shaw, a critic of the foibles of the English language as well as Shakespeare. (Good for a night but not for all time) His was "GHOTI" spelling FISH.
GH from enouGH, O from wOmen, and TI from ficTIon.
So by his reckoning ghonetic and ghotogragh would be more legit than with a PH.
There is logic to the ph sound f. It is based in Ancient Greece, and the Latin translation for phi. I was an Orton Tutor, and used to explain to my students, that English is a language not a subject. Therefore, some of our words have a base in other languages. It is no longer used. English is a very difficult language. For example, their and there, it can make u nuts.😂
Oh, I forgot to give a shout out to The Orton Society, if not for them, my brilliant dyslexic son, never would have learned to read or write. He was a math and science wizard. Taught me algebra, needed it to get my teaching degree. I taught Special Ed, for 25 years.
Of course you did Fylis :)
I once made the observation of how lucky I was to be born into this language and not have to learn it as a second language. Difficult doesn't even come close. Some of our words are nothing but Chinese Ideograms that have to be memorized as they have no connection to their spelling: (cough, though, people, Worchestershire, etc.) There, their, they're, I know the feeling. My grimace moment is when ppl interchange then & than - they are totally different words and yet I have a whole collection of published writers that used them wrong.
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that we don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
--James D. Nicoll, 1990
I'm sure that has to be one of a 'few' factors, for sure
Suessl !
🤣
HA!
Ha-ha, Suessll !
😂
Wow! That is so cool, TC!
So sorry about Henry, but truth be told, I can think of worse ways to shuffle off the mortal coil than tripping while seeking some lovely "corn squeezin's".
I suspect William Holden would be somewhat envious of your great grandfather.
I laughed out loud. that was truly sad, that he went like that.
With the promised land in sight!
Love the term "corn squeezing" and I did smile at your story, TC.
The stories of guys who survived combat one would think was nearly impossible, to die of humdrum accidents after the war - just the ones I know - could fill a book.
Thank you for your story.
He was 96!....He had no problem taking on a ladder! He should have just let his young kinfolk bring it up.
I'm sure he was like every other long-lived guy in my family tree - thought he was 30 years younger than he was.
I don't have any long-lived guys in my family tree, but I did have a dear friend who fit that bill. He was one of the founding members of the tuba ensemble that I play in, a WWII Navy veteran, who called me one day and said "I found an old sousaphone in my barn; I'll trade you some sweat equity for it." Said sweat equity was to strip the lacquer off the valve set and rouge the bell. He tried to teach me how to weld brass, but showed me how to fix the holes I made instead...
He went to one of our concerts in the park on Sunday, was up on his roof on Monday when he started feeling "not quite right". Got himself off the roof, put the ladder away, and dialed for an ambulance. He ended up in the hospital with a badly twisted intestine, and when offered the choice of surgery to correct it that had a 30% chance of success and leave him with a colostomy bag the rest of his life, he said "Nope. I'm done." Got to talk to both kids, and died within about 15 hours.
I put together a group of 30 tuba and euphonium players to play at his service, playing four pieces, each written or arranged by a dear friend, three of whom played in the service.
He did his life : His Way. I hope to be able to "cash in" if I am not able to take care of myself. I say "hope" because the brain has to be able to make decisions.....
Oh, and BTW: I tell people my age because I think it's ridiculous. Born in '39, but I was 30 just last year!!
Lovely story, thanks.
Just like my 96-year-old Mom, who insists on climbing the ladder herself!
I read a biography of the late great bluegrass star Doc Watson, who was blind all his life. During one visit to his home, his biographer found him repairing a hole on his roof (!!!) when he was in his 80s!
How about this guy: "Paul Alexander, who died at 78, (this week) was paralyzed with polio at age 6 and relied on the machine (an iron lung) to breathe. Still, he was able to earn a law degree, write a book and, late in life, build a following on TikTok."
Judith, when I was a kid, there was a well-known young man in our small city who was in an iron lung (this was in the '60s.) He was a bit of a local celebrity because he'd written a book, using a wooden dowel to type the manuscript. I had the opportunity to visit him on a couple occasions as a Cub Scout and Boy Scout. I'll never forget the image of him lying there in the iron lung.
It's unbelievable to think that polio is making a comeback due to anti-vaxxers. How tragically stupid.
I love this story. Marrying late due to “PTSD.” ❤️ #Gettysburg
It was actually fairly common. If you consider that 2/3 of the men in the country participated directly in the war. The phenomenon then was called "reverie." Much of the social dislocation in this country can be traced to the undiagnosed/untrreated PTSD of the war. All these guys were having terrible dreams and were drugging themselves with alcohol; domestic violence is commonly associated now with PTSD, and boy was it common then. With any untreated problem, it spread through the generations as the children grew up thinking that was the way adults behaved, then married other survivors (birds of a feather, flock together) and repeated what they knew, and on and on.
In my case, most people of my generation with Civil War forebears speak of great-great grandparents. My civil war ancestors are my great-grandparents. There's a whole missing generation. The civil war kids were kids - 16-19 for Henry, 18-20 for Alem Cleaver and he spent nine months in the Libby Prison concentration camp, which "changed him forever." The fist Thomas McKelvey (I'm named for him) was older - a 26 year old history professor when the war began, but he experienced three of the worst battles and the Georgia-Carolinas campaign (which includes The March To The Sea). Henry Wiest was the youngest drummer boy on that march; after the war he became a buffalo killer and an Indian Fighter - I have a photo of him from 1882, when he is 32 and you can see the spider veins in his nose and he is no one you would cross; I consider him Patient Zero in the family because he had 11 children he infected with his insanity, and they have been propagating ever since and I am the only one who ever realized this. None of them married till 10 years or so after the war. Then their children repeated that, and then their grandchildren did (my mother was an unheard-of at the time 32 when she had me, the oldest kid), and - voila! - you lose 25-28 years.
Many of the social movements postwar were in reaction to the PTSD. There was virtually no prewar Temperance Movement, but it became widespread after the war, trying to find ways to get the men to stop drinking.
This is a whole avenue of history that has been ignored (if you think about it, public discussion of abuse and self-identification by victims only began to take hold in the 1980s after the TV movie "Something About Amelia" raised family incest publicly). And you add in to the Civil War the PTSD from World War II (I well remember the boys I knew who had the "scary" fathers; you only went to their house once). PTSD itself was never discussed till the Boomer Generation came home from Vietnam.
I’m saddened but not surprised your post didn’t receive more attention. As a country we are really struggling with mental health and will we ever deal with it
I sent This post to one friend and three relatives
The disaster that was WWI also left an entire generation or three (parents, some of whom at least would have been alive if not have fought in the US Civil War, soldiers and nurses, children) scarred for life - at least, those that survived, and then survived the influenza epidemic. It seems we're condemned to repeat these terrors every generation or so, the legacy of the PTSD of the people who fought the prior war (maybe?), economic troubles (soldiers unable to find jobs after the war, the razing of an entire generation of young men meaning that generation of women unable to marry or have children, scandals such as Whiskey Ring, Credit Mobilier, Teapot Dome (although that was between WWI and WWII), etc.), and etc. Then half a decade or so of depression, and another war. Then another war, and another - they seem to be coming more frequently, as recently as the last few middle East conflicts. (I'm omitting the century or so, 1785 through 1915, of the various "Indian wars" - that list makes chilling reading. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States) Since we in the US at least are experiencing reasonable prosperity for the moment, and (I hope) the most recent crop of soldiers can get treatment for PTSD, is it reasonable to hope that in spite of Ukraine and Gaza, there will not be a world war inflicted on the current generation?
Why do we do this to ourselves?
I've been starting to wonder if it's a twisted form of 'natural' population control, where humans generally evade other natural measures in animal populations, like disease or starvation. It's a theory.
In 1932, the birth of Alcoholics Anonymous became the beginning of some kind of recovery from the results of PTSD. As bad as the truth of what happened to people who participated in the wars, we now have hope!
Yes, and unfortunately AA is run by humans. The originator - Bill W - believed women couldn't be alcoholics (hate to tell him he was wrong), and then he 13th stepped every female alcoholic who ever came to him for help, and told members they should smoke. Sorry, I have no use for a "cure" with a 12% "cure" rate. All Bill W ever did was transfer his addictions from alcohol to tobacco (which will kill you worse than alcohol) and use his reputation to make things worse for the women who came to him for help. I have nothing to do with that organization and I never will.
This is a huge missing context in the history of our country. I'm married to the daughter of a WWII vet and she had really put a point on the 'children of vets' thing for me. All my grandparents emigrated from Ireland in the 20s. They had atrocious trauma histories, then came here and my paternal grandfather shipped out to the South Pacific. My father, as a young man, was adjudicated into the Army, but was injured in a pre -deployment jump accident and couldn't go. We would do well to be mindful of these dynamics. They seem to lend into this 'rigged individual' ethos that has left this country rent fifty different ways.
OMG .......
TC, you could embellish the story by disclosing that Henry darn well KNEW 'bout the corn squeezin's and wanted to retrieve them afore the son-in-law and grandson got 'em, but having already had a couple o' shots before comin' up the ladder, he was in no shape to attempt another descent. Even Fred Astair might not have survived an attempt to dance down the stair after a couple of slugs of corn squeezin's. And corn squeezin's are not to be confused with Mazola cooking oil.
Bears assisted living.
Let us know when your book is in print!
What a fascinating family you have TC. Great informative history.
It's very strange, my family is the only one I know that can document itself back to Peter Klebber, who arrived in the first year of the Pennsylvania colony. There was an old bible, in which the elder of each generation recorded the lives of the family in his time. My father recorded it all before he donated it to the Quaker Museum.
My family didn't emigrate to Canada until after the infamous potato famine. Most people associate this with the Irish, but it was more widespread than that, my ancestors were nearly all Scottish.
Good for you bringing this forward Fay. There's too much "ignored" history.
Wow! What a story! I'm really enjoying all this history.
What a visual TC. The poor man must have been quite quenched.
Thanks for sharing…Though he lived a long life, what a sad ending to his life…
TC, you gotta tell us more about this on TAFM.
What is TAFM?
Jocelyn,
Sorry about that. It is his substack That's Another Fine Mess:
https://tcinla757.substack.com/
Thanks!
Excellent addition, TC. Thank you.
And as you probably know, after the Civil War, Joshua Chamberlain went on to serve 2 terms as Governor of Maine & also was President of Bowdoin College, his alma mater.
Googled his image, and you weren't kidding! FABULOUS furry lip!
Astute observation!
Your ancestor would indeed be horrified by what’s going on, and resolute in their determination to not let it happen.
Here’s a quote from author and scientist Primo Levi in his 1975 book “The Periodic Table.” I’m reading this now. Levi was also an anti-Fascist who was arrested and incarcerated in Auschwitz.
“Fascism was not only a clownish and improvident misrule, but the negator of justice; it had not only dragged Italy into an unjust and ill-omened war, but it had arisen and consolidated itself as the custodian of a detestable legality and order, based on the coercion of those who work, on the unchecked profits of those who exploit the labor of others, on the silence imposed on those who think and do not want to be slaves, and on systematic and calculated lies.”
Sound familiar?
another author and book for my TBR list
It’s a good book, some real moments of brilliance… overall though I found it kind of choppy and not cohesive enough for the “element” titled chapters to pull it all together
Yes, it sounds all too familiar. And the problem with book burning and other current attacks on education and facts is that people are being denied the opportunity to learn from history.
Ryan..yes, thank you for this quote from Primo Levi's courageous writings.
This is an inspiring summation, Many Thanks.
Hey, TC ~ If you're ever "trending into Maine," come to Brunswick and I'll give you a tour of the Joshua Chamberlain House and Museum, where I'm a docent. It honors that other great Maine defender of a slave-free Union who valiantly commanded the 20th Maine Regiment that fateful day on Little Round Top!
Stand at the stone wall on Little Roundtop that Maine regiment lay behind, looking down at the Devils Den where the Alabama troops were, and think about what the command, “fix bayonets” meant. That courage blazes even today.
Brunswick ME is one of my favorite places. Haven't been in years.
Well, Marj, if you ever get back, and are interested in Chamberlain, get in touch with the Pejepscot History Center, owners of the Chamberlain House Museum, make an appointment, ask for me, Peter Tenney, and I'll give you a tour! (Open regular hours June - October; private tours available November - May, by appointment.) https://pejepscothistorical.org
Thank you!
Oh yes. The Republican victory is driven by specious rhetoric. Of the Southern Strategy with Lee Atwater's 'How to be a Racist, Without Sounding Like One' leading to Leonard Leo's Supreme Court majority whose black robes barely hide their white sheets. And Reagan's and Gingrich's movement conservatism in bed with the religious right leading to Bush's Politics of Faith and Putin as the savior of Christian Nationalism. The Republican tragedy is that having introduced irrational habits of mind into politics to sell 'trickle down economics' they have spawned an electorate which swallows the notion of Trump as President RamboJesus. Whom cynics like Mitch McConnell et al are still hedging their bets on to deliver the money shot - even at the expense of upending a system which was reliably shoveling government benefits into their corporate troughs and private nosebags. Oh the quandaries of the Charles Kochs et al. And oh their faith that they can hollow out the foundations and be spared when the roof falls in.
"The Republican tragedy is that having introduced irrational habits of mind into politics to sell 'trickle down economics' they have spawned an electorate which swallows the notion of Trump as President RamboJesus."
You have a way with words. First time I've been moved to follow someone in long time.
"You have a way with words" is exactly what I thought and was going to write myself before I saw you beat me to it.
Ha. Blush. ThankYou
"...Leonard Leo's Supreme Court majority whose black robes barely hide their white sheets."
A perfect turn of phrase, lin•.
"Whose black robes barely hide their white sheets..." Great line.
Agree, having family members from the NYC brigade buried in Gettysburg makes this a sensitive topic for me. It drives me bonkers when draft dodgers Trump, and con men and women (uhhh Katie Britt are you listening) lie and say they are patriots. Really!!! And I have a bridge for sale!
Beg pardon TC; the 20th Maine. *edit, in fairness, the 18th also.
You are right, I have 18 going on in my mind with part of my next book. I think I will go make that change :-) (DONE)
Well.... I popped in to say Hi to a few, and came off with the first thing that crossed my mind from ancient memory that still functions somewhat. Then I thought, wait a minute, there were 2 different commanders of the Maine infantry on Roundtop; the first one got killed early on, then another took over and led the famous bayonet charge down Roundtop - our friend below mentions his name. Not fresh in mind the name of the dead commander and certainty of his origin, I went back in and edited. I should have just said in my edit... "and other Mainer's - bravo Maine and happy b'day." lol ~ Cheers TC !
I love this story...and the thread you inspired, TC! My family are Italian immigrants on both sides from the 1890's, so I am always fascinated by folks who can trace their family tree back so many generations. At 78, I find your 96 yr old grandfather a true inspiration! 💕
How about some UpToDate news about Maine's coming elections:
‘A new Maine poll shows former President Donald Trump ahead of President Joe Biden by 6 percentage points if the election were held today, with 30% saying they want another candidate or are undecided.’
‘The 63rd Pan Atlantic Research Omnibus Poll released Monday also asked Mainers how they feel about the economy, who they’ll likely support in Tuesday’s primary and how much they like prominent politicians.’
‘In the Trump v. Biden matchup, Trump earned support from 38% of those polled, followed by Biden at 32%, “another candidate” at 21% and undecided at 9%.’
‘Sen. Angus King, an independent up for reelection in November, has the highest net favorability rating at +32%, followed by U.S. Rep. Jared Golden at +20%, U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree at +19% and Republican Sen. Susan Collins at +6%.’(PUBLISHED 10:01 AM ET FEB. 27, 2024 IN SPECTRUM NEWS)
‘More broadly, the state has a history of electing both Republicans and Democrats and is seen as something of a swing state, depending on the race.’ (ABCNews)
‘Republican Susan Collins (first elected in 1996) and Independent Angus King (first elected in 2012) are Maine's current U.S. senators, making Maine one of seven states to have a split United States Senate delegation.’
‘The 2024 United States Senate election in Maine will be held on November 5, 2024, to elect a member of the United States Senate to represent the state of Maine. Primary elections will take place on June 11, 2024.[1] Incumbent two-term Senator Angus King, who is an independent but caucuses with the Democratic Party, was re-elected with 54% of the vote in 2018. He is running for a third term.’
Angus King has not announced whether he would support Bidden or Trump for the presidency but supported Biden in 2020.
'Susan Collins was one of seven Senate Republicans to vote to convict Trump on the impeachment charge of inciting insurrection during his second Senate trial in 2021. ‘
‘Collins said she didn’t formally endorse Haley at the outset of the race because she was friendly with other candidates like former Vice President Mike Pence, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) as well as with Haley and ‘“didn’t want to choose among them.”
‘She played a key role in crafting the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill that Congress passed in 2021, which Trump opposed. She was also one of three Republican senators who voted to derail Trump’s effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act in 2017.’
‘Collins made her remarks at a time when more and more GOP senators are lining up behind Trump’s campaign, including Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), who previously raised questions about Trump’s viability in a general election.’ (TheHill) See link below.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4426835-collins-wont-endorse-trump-2024/#:~:text=Sen.,Republican%20Party's%20nominee%20for%20president.
'Republican senator Susan Collins refuses to endorse Trump after Haley exit.'
'Ms Collins backed Ms Haley before she dropped out but declined to endorse either Mr Trump or President Joe Biden when speaking to The Independent on Wednesday. (The Indedpent, 3/6/24)
'Independent Sen. Angus King will be challenged from the right and left in upcoming election'
BY: ANNMARIE HILTON - MARCH 14, 2024 4:03 PM
'Former Maine Republican Party Chair Demi Kouzounas announced her plans to run in late January and will submit her petition signatures for the June primary to the Maine Secretary of State on Friday. David Costello, a Democrat from Brunswick, filed for his run earlier this week, according to the Secretary of State’s website.'
'__ A newly-announced Republican challenger to U.S. Sen. Angus King — former Maine GOP chair Demi Kouzounas — has a record of making conspiratorial statements about the pandemic, elections and the Jan. 6 insurrection, according to a review of her public comments. Kouzounas headed the state party from 2017 until she was ousted in early 2023 … (Maine Morning Star)
‘A self proclaimed “government reform advocate,” Costello is running to strengthen democracy and the economy by addressing climate change, inadequate health care, underperforming schools, among other issues. His campaign website says he wants to protect rights and freedoms — including women’s reproductive rights.’
‘In addition to his policy priorities, Costello outlines what he calls his reform agenda. This includes abolishing the electoral college and establishing a system of directly electing presidents that uses ranked choice voting in situations with more than two candidates. (Maine Morning Star) See link below.’
https://mainemorningstar.com/briefs/independent-sen-angus-king-will-challenged-from-the-right-and-left-in-upcoming-election/
From Maine.
Susan Collins, despite some bipartisan work and some independence when McConnell doesn't need her vote, is reliably in McConnell's pocket. She'll play it close to the vest until folding at the last minute.
We split our electoral college votes. Clinton and Biden won CD1. Trump won CD2 twice.
Maine voters can be perversely independent. They elected self styled 'Trump before Trump' TeaParty Paul LePage governor by plurality twice. The first time third party political Pied Piper and now convicted child pornographer Elliot Cutler had an almost credible chance of beating the party candidates. Almost. It was a dangerous bet. The second time our Hancock County Democratic Committee, in predominantly conservative CD2, had the data to demonstrate that Cutler did not have the support to win but had enough support to split the vote and give LePage the win. Again. Cutler kept on with his self indulgence at the expense of Maine's most vulnerable residents.
The LePage plurality wins motivated Mainers to fight hard for Ranked Choice Voting. Which is how Jared Golden, probably the most conservative Democrat in the House, won and has held onto the seat. Despite Republicans doing all they can to overturn Ranked Choice Voting. The hero here is a Federalist Society Federal Judge who, contrary to almost all of that crew, actually upholds constitutional protections for voters. The constant threat to flip the seat Republican is leftish 'independent' voters who might not vote for Golden as their first or second ranking. Even with the House in the balance.
Even with the Senate in the balance, Costello's spoiler campaign may have the rhetoric to gain support, although realistically he's not promising anything Sen. King hasn't already achieved or supported. Costello may appeal to the 'change for change sakes' crowd and from those ignorant of the processes involved with effecting the big changes Costello is touting. And from those somehow entirely ignorant of Angus King's good record on civil rights, environmental protections, domestic and foreign policy.
Lin, thank you for your in-depth summary of the candidates, particularly Collins (current term ends on January 3, 2027) King, Golden and Costello, most of whom will be candidates in 2024. You have provided the level of background needed by Maine voters and all of us who support, protect and strengthen Democracy in the US! Being engaged citizens and voting are crucial now and always.
I refused to move to Maine until LePage was out of office, though we had wanted to for several years. I have met people that seemed otherwise sensible except for the incomprehensible support for LePage. When I asked it was usually for some staff help with getting around red tape for problems particular to them or their friends, perhaps a bit of selective whack-a-mole, to me.
I want a governor that takes the best care of all the people and though not as well informed on all of his actions, was opposed from the very first time I heard of his financing from people that wanted Private Profit Prisons in his first campaign.
I agree with Bernie Sanders and Angus King on the guns that Americans should have reasonable access to but am disappointed by finding out Maine had one of the biggest contributors to the 24,000,000 AR-15 or other similar assault rifles sold to the public, starting from the small Bushmaster Company in Wilton, Maine, 30 miles north of Lewiston. See https://www.propublica.org/article/how-bushmaster-made-ar-15-into-best-selling-rifle-us
That article made even my most ardent 2nd Amendment friends take pause. Another friend had suggested we could make a lot of money on their stock after Sandy Hook, but we both chose not to. Most friends sold off most of their unneeded guns to Law Enforcement Officers or people like Court Officers or State Dept types that may need personal protection a lot more than any of the rest of us. I split up the pieces of a 1911A1 willed to me by a brother-in-law since I had preferred that as a sidearm in Vietnam (traveling throughout most of Vietnam and Thailand in late '67 to '68), until my son could find a legitimate buyer (at a lot lower price than the $1,000 some friends said I could get for it.
I would never effectively sell my soul to make money the way Richard E. Dyke did.
'WASHINGTON (AP) — Mitch McConnell, the longest-serving Senate leader in history who maintained his power in the face of dramatic convulsions in the Republican Party for almost two decades, will step down from that position in November.'
With Mitch's power in the Republican Party much diminished by Trump, will Susan Collins grow her own thumb? Where will she land, under Trump's thumb as most elected Republicans have done?
'Mitch McConnell ramps up his criticism of Chuck Schumer in CNN interview'
'Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell ramped up his scathing criticism of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in the aftermath of the New York Democrat’s stunning call for a new leadership in Israel amid the brutal war in Gaza, underscoring the growing partisan divide over Israel – a rare issue that had long unified the two parties.'
'In an interview with CNN, McConnell said Schumer’s speech was a direct contradiction of US policy and called on the White House not to go down that road.'
“You can’t spend years hyperventilating about foreign interference in our democracy and then turn around and tell allies, particularly democratic allies, who their leader should be and when they should have elections,” McConnell said. “It’s just completely at variance with the way we typically operate in a foreign country, which is to deal with whatever government has been chosen in a democracy.”
'For a long time, Schumer has aligned himself with Benjamin Netanyahu, but broke with him Thursday on the Senate floor as he characterized the Israeli prime minister as an obstacle for peace.'
“As a lifelong supporter of Israel, it has become clear to me: The Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after October 7. The world has changed, radically, since then, and the Israeli people are being stifled right now by a governing vision that is stuck in the past,” 'Schumer said.'
'Asked if Schumer being the first Jewish Senate majority leader in US history – who has been outspoken on Israel for years – gives him the right to call for a change in leadership there, McConnell pushed back.'
“Just because he’s Jewish doesn’t give him a pass to advocate something that’s completely inconsistent with our past approach to democratic countries,” 'McConnell said about Schumer, whose speech he watched as it was delivered from his office in the Capitol.'
'McConnell rejected calls for conditions on military aid to Israel – something some Democrats have called for in an effort to tamp down civilian deaths.'
'In his speech, Schumer explained his deep misgivings about the toll on innocent people in Gaza.'
“I am anguished that the Israeli war campaign has killed so many innocent Palestinians,” he said. “I know that my fellow Jewish Americans feel this same anguish when they see the images of dead and starving children and destroyed homes.”
McConnell didn’t offer any criticism of the Israeli government, even as a growing number of Democratic leaders and voters have called for an immediate ceasefire.
“I’m not here to criticize our democratic ally and what they feel they need to do to settle things down. This is, if you’re looking for a parallel, what do you think we would do if we were attacked by the Mexicans or the Canadians? They have to live next door to this. Completely inappropriate for us to be dictating these policies for certainly the government of a democratic ally,” 'he said.'
'McConnell blamed the Biden administration for micromanaging the war in Gaza and said Schumer’s calling for “regime change” in the wrong country.' (CNN) See link below.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/15/politics/mitch-mcconnell-interview-schumer-reaction/index.html
Seriously, McConnell?“ You can’t spend years hyperventilating about foreign interference in our democracy and then turn around and tell allies, particularly democratic allies, who their leader should be and when they should have elections.” You are trying to conflate the secret interference by Russia, ONE OF OUR ENEMIES, in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, with the US openly telling ONE OF OUR ALLIES that we cannot in good conscience support its position in a war, but that with policy (and controlling party) change, we can do so? Not buying it, Mitch.
“You can’t spend years hyperventilating about foreign interference in our democracy and then turn around and tell allies, particularly democratic allies, who their leader should be and when they should have elections,” McConnell said. “It’s just completely at variance with the way we typically operate in a foreign country, which is to deal with whatever government has been chosen in a democracy.” The U.S. was involved in dismantling MULTIPLE country's political systems, then walked away as tyrants took over. I've been watching a horrifying documentary series on Netflix, "Turning Point: "The Bomb and the Cold War" basically about our near constant state of war with Russia. I recommend you watch. Several episodes show how the U.S. got involved with other countries, then walked away, and the chaos that occurred in those countries as a result. (There are nine episodes, I've made it through 6. The magnitude of nuclear and hydrogen bombs is horrifying. I grew up in an area that was 'downwind" from testing sites of Nevada.)
There are massive protests occurring IN Israel over Netenyahu's 'leadership', his allowing genocide in Gaza. I think his days are close to an end (hopefully).
ELD, thank you for your documentary recommendations. I am familiar with the impacts of the US on the governance of the Philippines, Nicaragua, Chile, Iran... and list goes on.
'The centuries that followed the arrival of Europeans were years of tremendous upheaval, as the expansion of settler territory and the founding and growth of the United States resulted in Native American communities being moved, renamed, combined, dispersed, and, in some cases, destroyed.'
'These dislocations and changes took place across many centuries, and each individual episode was marked by its own set of unique circumstances, from public negotiations and careful planning to subterfuge and deceit; from declarations of friendship to calls for genocide; from disease, starvation, and bloodshed to perseverance, resistance, and hope in the face of persecution. But all were driven by the relentless expansion of European settlement and U.S. territory, and by U.S. government policies that relegated the independence and well-being of Native Americans to secondary status, if that.' (Library of Congress)
ThankYou Hancock County Democratic Committee. I do not speak for them. But they work for all of us. Mostly as volunteers.
https://hancockdems.org/
TC, that is indeed one of the great ironies of history.
Thank you TC, very enlightening post.
A shining light showing the way in these very dark times, all by illuminating the past. We all needed this tonight. Thank you.
Question: What's the difference between Simon Rosenberg and a Goebbels-type big liar?
Answer: After Joe Biden took his Geritol and visited Congress, he turned into super-duper-man, at least for a few hours.
Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Super.
Super who?
Supercalifragilistic-super-fascist-liar.
Question: How many times can Biden take his super geritol?
Answer: Until his heart gives out.
Question: What happens to Biden at the big debate with Trump?
Answer: Get yourself a bowl of popcorn, either one could self-destruct. It's not quite the same as boxing, but if a pepped-up Biden collapaes onstage, you can bet that Super Simon will shovel up some happy copium.
p.s. It's not too late to replace Biden at the Democratic convention.
p.p.s. Did YOU vote for any of the money-grubbing whore-mongers at the DNC?
Been watching Fox again?
John,
Do you have any verifiable facts to back up your comments about President Biden? Yes, he is over 80. And trump is 77. Wow, a staggering difference! President Biden has never been a great speaker, but he has served our country for decades with honor. If you don’t think so, please provide me with verifiable facts that show he has taken more than he has given. Likewise, show me verifiable facts that trump has done the same. They are both human and both make mistakes. But one has 89 indictments and the other has none - a verifiable fact.
We all must decide what verifiable facts and truth we want to depend on for our vote.
Please do not enable the troll.
The person you're responding to is an RFKjr supporter -- you know, the Make American Government Anti-vaccination candidate.
???
I'm not an RFK supporter.
Excuse us for thinking that you sound insane enough to be one.
Peter Wood, you seem to be trapped in an either-Trump-or-Biden mentality. Both are unfit.
Beyond that, you may take an interest in my reply to Mitch Moncrief:
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-15-2024/comment/51772916
I wouldn't waste any more time on you.
Is that what does it? I stopped reading as soon as I saw the signpost.
Please do not enable the troll.
Sharon Tobin wants to enforce a pro-Biden group agenda without engaging with well-meaning Democrats who reject Biden. It's much simpler to just shut them up in this little echo chamber of Bidenista ego-stroking and toxic hate.
Please do not enable the troll.
I don't need to watch Fox to see the Goebbels-style Big Lie that Biden is mentally fit to be President.
You don’t need to watch Fox or study Biden to realize its not about age or how sharp or well one enunciates but rather where one stands morally , ethically rand what kind of people are chosen to advise and help administer policies. I couldn’t care any less what Biden’s “visual” looks like as we saunter into our existential crisis. 4 years of governing without pleasing the kleptocrats has been perfect.
Please do not enable the troll.
I know you’re right but I still have hope that most people have some decency and if presented w non-alternative facts epiphanies happen.
You have got to be kidding.
"Corporate Joe" Biden put the man who presided over the rise of brutal factory feed-lots in Iowa in charge of the Agriculture Department.
"Corporate Joe" Biden is ensuring that corporations have a plentiful supply of illegal aliens to hire, driving down the pay for unskilled labor and denying the American poor a living wage.
Biden the Vampire Liberal is sucking money from other countries with Unpayable Debt to fund Worthwhile Programs.
Biden is recklessly exploiting our captive proxy Ukraine to bleed Russia. In doing so, he has exposed the weakness of our military manufacturing sector and accelerated the process of global de-dollarization, while picking a fight with an opponent who has weapons (including hypersonic missiles and stealth-killing and satellite-killing missile defenses) that we can't effectively defend against.
And then there are Biden's glaring weaknesses as a candidate:
With Biden, Democrats have difficulty pointing to Trump's age and growing mental deficiency.
With Biden, Democrats have trouble going after Trump for his "penis finger" violation of Jean Carroll, because Biden did the same thing to Tara Reade.
With Biden, Trump has the immigration issue, which fires up his base and gets noticed by independents.
With Biden, Democrats have to squirm about Biden's complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Biden is an absolute disaster.
As is sometimes the case, John tends to significantly overstate his positions (Goebbels indeed!), but there's little question in my mind that Mr. Biden should have thought more practically about this second run. I believe that the mistakes he's made notwithstanding, he's done about as good a job as President as he could have, given our present political mess, but the possibility that the combination of the stresses of the modern presidency under any circumstances and the uncertainties of aging would make a second Biden presidency problematic cannot be ignored. I'm 'only' 79, and I've been fortunate to have maintained quite reasonable health all my life, but even if I'd ever thought of myself as presidential material (which I certainly have not), I have filled several positions of authority and decision making over the course of my life, and I'd be very leery of doing so again at this point. There are simply too many uncertainties associated with life at eight plus decades.
I'll certainly vote for him again if he decides to complete this run; the alternative is far too dangerous on many levels - but I'll do so with trepidation.
Except that Biden hasn’t ever left his trajectory. He didn’t retire and decide to come back to anything. He has kept himself in the game and active, AND this is what he prepared his whole life to do. He doesn’t need to be seen on a daily basis with the same energy as the SOTU. Can you imagine being called from within to be president at this time? I work in hospice and this with elders and I have zero doubt that Biden will be fine all the way through his second term. Not only because he has the best healthcare possible but because he is compelled, profoundly compelled to do the job.
And he has chosen knowledgeable, effective people to serve in his administration, not one of which has been arrested or indicted for scurrilous crimes - we must not forget that they are the executives who actually carry out the policies, and they are talented, intelligent, and decent people.
I profoundly hope you are right, but at the same time I'm not sure there is any job on earth which places so much stress on an individual, and that has to be a consideration. That is the chief cause of my concern. In addition to whatever situations confront him if he is re-elected, one must also factor in the possible reactions of the most die-hard Trump supporters if Trump loses. Four years of what will be unremitting stress of a kind most people cannot imagine is not a factor to be taken lightly.
Please do not enable the troll.
But it's so much fun!
The Goebbels reference is because of the cultivated Big Lie that Biden is mentally fit to be President.
Can he read energetically from a teleprompter after taking his pep pills?
Yes!
Does he shun impromptu public exchanges involving policy issues?
Yes!
Does his wife come lead him off the stage when he gets lost again?
Yes!
Does he routinely make absurd statements that imply deteriorating mental capacity?
Yes!
I should clarify. Most of what a president does is out of sight of the public eye. Those who work most closely with Biden have a very different take than much of the public brouhaha.
None of which portrays what happens when he’s actually doing his job.
James Quinn,
You may take an interest in my reply to Mitch Moncrief:
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-15-2024/comment/51772916
John, once you start back down that Ukrainian proxy business, you lose credibility. Your continued defense of Russian aggression is untenable in any factual universe.
🚫🙄 Enough of this guy.
Please do not enable the troll.
I just scroll past his comments and all the comments to his comments. I don't want to waste my valuable time.
Agree. It's hard to watch his cognitive disintegration resulting from a badly-aspected Aries rising.
Badly-aspected?? There are no Ascendant aspects except for an exact conjunction to Mercury: I say what I think. Mercury rules my Gemini North Node:
I'm here to say what I think, in this polluted swamp of thuggish thought control.
...said the Bidenista minion who would rather not think
That's why I blocked him.
Folks other than Schmeekle: Don't feed the troll.
I'm not in favor of getting anyone banned unless they advocate violence in general or threaten people with violence or other forms of assault like doxxing. We should just ignore him. He appears to relish goading people, and to get a large charge out of provoking the biggest, angriest reaction he can get. People who take the bait give him the opportunity to escalate, for example by calling them 'fascists'. Deprive him of that entertainment. Don't take the bait.
I report his posts every time. Perhaps if we all did that, Facebook would get the message and ban his posts??
...as if you were a fascist thought controller telling others how to think.
Biden is sharp. He proved himself at the State of the Union Address.
I am looking forward to the big debate between Biden and Trump.
It will be interesting to see a man who has done an remarkable job in governing this country debate a criminal who has committed fraud, shared classified documents with our adversaries, cause the insurrection at the capital where people were killed etc. Frankly, in my opinion, I believe Biden's in better health then Trump.
Regarding a possible Biden-trump debate, I am reminded of the admonishment to not wrestle with pigs.
Get a grip on priorities and open the single link
https://twitter.com/Liz_Cheney/status/1768744612363976869?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Please do not enable the troll.
Liz Cheney is as much a bought-and-paid-for Establishment minion as her evil father Dick Cheney. ("Heart transplants don't kill you, but they do kill the other guy.")
Check out the writings of Peter Pomerantsev. You might find his books a good read.
It may be reposting on Heather's part today -- but one part is fresh, still vital.
This is where Heather summarizes Lincoln at his most salient -- on "ordinary Americans standing together against the oligarchs of slavery."
Those oligarchs never went away (thus Heather's great "How the South Won the Civil War"). And they've gotten more powerful because, with the Powell memo of 1971, they finally did what the vulgar most needed to do. Killed off, stripped away humanities from schools.
America's greatest boon to having and keeping its democracy lay in a people with literacy that often and highly included reference to its best artists best in touch with working people and their communities. So many fine novels, memoirs, films, photographs, murals, music, live theater, and -- until the M.F.A. programs -- even poetry.
The commercial classes got rid of all that, marginalized it, got it set to neutered silos in higher ed, got it replaced by standardized testing perversions suffocating all K-12. And our most vulgar were finally perched as the new-style oligarchs they became. Not of slavery again, but of millions sunk in deadly minimum wage ghettoes. Outside decent health care. Reliant on tentacle car culture. Newly illiterate. Slaves to social media hate algorithms. For higher ed, obscenely reliant on predator banks and state legislatures who together abandoned the great legacy of the Justin Morrill land grant system of publicly well-financed, excellent public colleges and universities.
Or, do I err? Isn't it indeed oligarch slavery again?
Republicans want education restricted to job training. Heaven forbid we stray into insignificant and unpleasant details. such as slavery, and the politics behind it. Bush II's Sec. of Education wanted to rid the system of all liberal arts programs. "The Supply Side" wants reliable, disposable robots; flesh and blood if not steel and AI.
Questioning is problematical. It can get you killed in political systems Trump admires.
JL, years before I retired I counseled a student (one of many!) regarding his Univ progress (I worked for 40+ yrs in student fin aid) and, having reviewed his transcripts, noticed he was not making sufficient progress toward his degree at a level necessary to sustain aid (lots of aid “requirements”). I noticed that in his major—Natural Resources as I recall—he was getting C’s & D’s (and one or two F’s)….then I noticed his required electives in the “liberal arts” were all A’s & B’s. I asked him about this. He replied that he felt he needed a degree that he could “get a job in”. Hmmmm, understood that, but I asked him if he didn’t really enjoy it, or wasn’t really drawn to it, how would it be to do a lifelong career in it? I explained that a liberal arts degree could actually be a bonus for job seekers. I’d often refer students to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook (once just a copy in the Library, now online) to see what kinds of jobs were affiliated with his interests. Truly, IMHO, we need liberal arts degrees, technical degrees, trade apprenticeships, etc., as well rounded educational opportunities to those seeking them. Higher education can mean many things & a good liberal arts underpinning is a springboard & good foundation for any education.
I *knew* I couldn’t be the only college advisor who understood that a college education is NOT about getting a job (with the exception of engineering/computer science), it’s about learning how to think critically. How to find out about things. How to see more of the world and its people than just your own neighborhood, even if you can’t physically travel.
Thank you for writing this.
Sooz, one student I met with had come to Humboldt County (a very rural and mostly white/Native American/Hispanic population) from inner city Oakland. We discussed some personal issues that were impacting her studies and tried to problem solve them. She offered that she really enjoyed her classes at this rural Univ, so far and so different than where she was raised, and shared info on some of her classes. She said she had no idea that “white people” could be so cool (think expanding horizons for all students involved in coming together from disparate origins—one of the benefits of Univ educations!)….she dove into her studies and saw beyond—to a wider world—than she grew up in. I felt keenly, however, her sadness at going home and now being/seeing beyond, while honoring it, the culture she was raised in…she felt a bit lost in dealing with an expansive horizon that her family could not relate to. I have wondered how she made her way in this tumultuous world….it was such an engaging and insightful connection this many years ago.
Great comment. But....is Oakland, Oakland, CA? "very rural"?
Great article today by HCR. She is a fantastic writer and speaker. Really appreciate the comment about the student being accepted at Cal Poly Humbolt/Humbolt State University. Wonderful. It just jumped out that Humbolt County was described as "very rural." Since I live in Montana, my perspective on "rural" or "very rural" is a bit different. Humbolt County has a population density of 38 people per square mile. The federal definition of rural is generally 35 people per square mile or fewer. The feds also have a definition of "frontier rural," which is generally 7 people per square mile or fewer. The entire state of Montana has 7 people per square mile. Not a big deal. But just pointing this out.
I believe Sooz wrote about the student coming from Oakland to attend Cal Poly Humboldt (formerly known as Humboldt State University.)
Humboldt County in the far north CA is rural.
Humboldt county CA is very rural, Oakland CA is not, being one of the Bay area’s larger cities (to this rural gal, they kinda blend together…hard for me to tell where one city ends & another begins!)—sorry if it was confusing.
I used all the Stay at Home Mom time to get a degree in Liberal Arts, English Literature, philosophy and all "the requirements" like history and math. I was very low income but never considered that I would use any of it to get a job. I thought that getting an education in order to get a job would be cheating myself. One thing I knew and that was that Shakespeare is very important. And, The King James Bible: one course textual criticism and one The literature of. Rutgers was $12.50 a credit. I could afford this indulgence.
I finally decided on sales but only in something men bought (it was the mid'70's) I did very very well.
I advised my son when he went to college to stick with liberal arts. I’ll forever be grateful to Dr. Johnston, my Humanities professor, for opening my eyes to a world I never knew existed.
I've found a certain joy as a teaching assistant in a Community College Aeronautics A&P program in getting kids from the least advantaged backgrounds into the more team related technical hands on courses first. We had them mixed in with retired engineers and even flight school owners/instructors who signed up for our courses during the Great Recession when they had so much down time. The mix introduced them to very objective topics and procedures that had to be done successfully every time, with enough personal reading to see if they could read what was supposed to happen then see if it did the way they interpreted what they read.
It was particularly unique that our college had coursework that included fabric covering where you had to know how to sew the fabric onto the structure with anti-chaffing tape to protect it and mix the chemicals for adhesives and coatings. The older flight school types including a Naval Academy grad, thought it was a total waste of time, especially since there were only 4 fabric questions out of 1600 in the pool of questions for the FAA written exams so only 1 question was usually in the set of questions that had to draw a minimum from each category.
Our philosophy was that it was a great equalizer in having few students of any background familiar with it. The kids with the least previous advantages built a lot of new confidence in being able to do as well or better than ones from any other more advantaged background.
By the time they had disassembled, inspected and rebuilt our bigger radial engines (not an FAA requirement) and run them on the test stand, they had levels of confidence in their abilities that no liberal arts students could shake when they started taking the liberal arts classes (they never would have signed up for without that level of confidence in their ability to learn).
It was a privilege to learn alongside them as I did my best to keep up with them.
P.S. The Naval Academy grad wanted a quick and easy course and complained to me one day that we were teaching 3 times what the FAA required. I looked at him in feigned horror, telling him, "Oh no, we're trying to teach them 9 times what the FAA requires!"
The FAA tests usually proved to be the easiest tests the students would have to take after making it though our courses. We had to have an 80% pass rate for students we certified as being ready for the FAA written exams, we had a near 100% pass rate on the initial exam, though some students had been too nervous and had to retake them after so many hours of remedial training and passed within the time limits that could still count as a 1st attempt to keep our pass rate among the highest, and our students sought out by employers that even included Disney Land who wanted very well qualified mechanics and problem solvers for maintenance on their rides.
We also seemed to have young women including from disadvantaged backgrounds that learned unshakable confidence in their newfound abilities, at least one of whom went on to work for NASA while I was there.
I ended up with a degree in Criminology because I was able to take ancillary courses that I was interested in (and could do well in) for my degree requirements; I (at the age of 20) knew that if I could take the courses I was interested in, I would do better. I could pick and choose from "humanities" (in this case, sociology, psychology, and philosophy) and the sciences (chemistry and biology) while also tailoring my writing requirements to those areas that I could do well, and blessed be, no freaking math.
I can tell you that the degree I got (at a college where I could also play music and letter in two sports without taking courses in music or phys ed) made me a far better cop than just about anything else I could imagine.
Ally, I was on the “10 yr no degree” plan….tapering from classes when I started working full time, maybe one a term. As a student, mjr Social Welfare/Sociology, I also took a lot of English & art history, auto shop (adjusting valves was a hoot), woodshop, welding, tailoring (I was already a proficient seamstress), psych, religions, philosophy, geology….few “hard” sciences (only what was required) & NO math (had a math trauma from a class in Jr High that took me from an A student to D student within the year)—I stopped taking classes when I could no longer fit it in & was only a couple of courses shy of my degree. That’s when my boss a the time said you are already excelling in a job you’d normally need a Master’s for…well, that made me feel better! & realized I really didn’t “need” to, either for employment nor for the “diploma”. Now, as a retired Univ employee, I take Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) classes overseen by the Extended Ed office on campus—the fun of learning w/o exams & usually no homework (or the fun kind!).
I was thrilled that my major needed “science” which was fine; took chemistry and biology. I don’t understand numbers. At all.
My son went to a top tier school and he got what we paid for - a solid well rounded ed. His advisor his junior year sat him down and asked him a similar question about one course he was taking that was taking way more time for preparation and hurting his other studies. Immediately he was dropped from the class and his college life improved as did his grades. He chose the school to get an education and he did. The school had great networks, which lead him to a great company where he now works. Good advising.
The order in which a particular student takes classes can make all the difference, too. What ever gives them the most confidence earliest seems to produce better results than the ones who sign up for, or are forced to take the ones most difficult for them, first.
My liberal arts degree in Political Science and History did not get me a job. My nursing diploma did that. The degree did give me critical thinking, a powerful desire to continue learning, and an appreciation of the complexity of good governance all of which I found helpful as I did my job.
In the mid 1960’s, i went to college for a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing. At the time, those majors were very easy to come across. I must say that over my nursing career, I have used what I learned in my liberal arts courses just as much as my nursing courses. No matter your job, when working with people, those courses are valuable!!
Humboldt at one time had BS majors such as Audiology, Nursing & Economics & Industrial Arts (became Industrial Tech)—-why oh why the Univ scrapped these programs I’ll never understand…..they are now trying hard to reinstate the Nursing BS program (never never never should have let it die on the vine in the first place!). Exposing students to a broad range of disciplines while studying for a tech or career-based degree (Nursing, Engineering, and many of the Natural Resource mjrs) really provides a “whole” well-rounded education.
That’s exactly how I feel about getting a well-rounded education, particularly if working with people of diverse backgrounds.
100%!
JL I am reminded of an IBM ad from yesteryear THINK OR SWIM. Also, John Gardner, who, in writing about excellence, stated that, if we did not pursue it, we would have neither good philosophy or plumbing.
If we, as a nation, do not have an educated populous trained in critical thinking, then we will continue to experience the ‘false facts’ that are prevalent today in our country.
I still have my THINK sign from my years with IBM. I was told then my background in music and history made me a perfect candidate for the marketing jobs I held. I could translate from clients to tech folks, and my humanities background has served me well into a 3rd career.
Nancy The humanities and an ability to type have been major assets in my diverse careers. Being a MIT Sloan Fellow filled in some technical gaps, but without humanities (including economics) I would have been a fish swimming in shallow water.
Gardner- there is a name I have not heard in a while. Great educator and writer - used his stuff quite a bit. William Glasser is another.
Rickey Gardner’s excellence was my North Star in the 1970s.
Schools Without Failure?
Was it John Gardner that influenced Kennedy’s speeches? “ for too long and too often, we have replaced personal excellence with the mere collection material things…”. Or did the mindset/worldview/ culture change? Or was it suppressed after the sixties? How?
Ted I am not aware that John Gardner was personally involved with President Kennedy. [Ted Sorensen was a JFK alter ego and his top speechwriter.]
At that time Gardner had just published EXCELLENCE on education and was, I believe, still heading Carnegie.cHe was a Republican HEW secretary under Johnson, until he resigned in opposition to the Vietnam war. [As a Foreign Service Officer with boots-on-the-ground experience in Congo, I twice refused an ‘invitation’ from our ambassador in Saigon to join him—1965 & 1967.]
Here’s one of Dr Gardner’s best ( hope u like it too)
https://www.pbs.org/johngardner/sections/writings_speech_1.html
I first became where John Gardner and grad school I read speech that he wrote about creating meeting in the importance and power of that. I was inspired and read several of his books. “On Renewal” I think was the speech. He was LBJ s Sec of Edu and founded Common Cause?
Not a Trump "Republican", that.s for sure.
Our media instructs us to do so.
In this context I must repeat the story of my professor of medieval language and lit, a multifaceted giant of a man. He got his PhD at Harvard at the age of 20 and bragged of getting out of Harvard “while it was still a university— the year before they put in the Business School.” That said it all to me. I’ve seen “Starving the Beast” and read “Democracy in Chains.” The Koch businesses continue to operate in Russia in spite of the ban. Need I say more?
Worse than questioning being problematical, J L, it gets, too, to the personal.
On the standardized tests, of course, it isn't. Standardized testing looks for skills in causality, in sequencing, in categorical correctness. Diane Ravitch in her great, 2003 "The Language Police," looked at how our elites stripped the personal out of everything -- as if the pinnacle of human achievement could be robotic -- that we perform superbly mechanically, humanly void, like those in Don Siegel's 1956 "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," who vaunted their freedom from humanity.
I think it's the personal that put's the life into education, and for that matter, into life. By personal, I'm not at all talking about self-centeredness, but rather the abundant connections between one's self and other's, in society, in relationships, in democratic governance, in the arts and the sciences, even in math. First of all, we have dependencies from the moment we are born, with respect to reciprocity with others, and with and upon the stardust all around us and of us. Education helps us to notice, and some degree comprehend, the nuances and connections that are consciousness. Good education is literally "consciousness expanding", and equips us with tools that we can personally apply, in grasping our circumstances, and in applying strategies with a better than random chance of improving our own lives and those of others. Such skills can and do become part and parcel of our own process, like the once laboriously practiced skill of reading, which is now automatic to the point that one almost can't help but read a prominently placed encountered sentence. The same is true, or can be true, of many other acquired skills. That's genuinely personal.
And those skills and expended consciousness impact any job, any relationship, any decision affecting our own extended impact on the present and the future.
Life is a gift. Education for successful and aware living helps to make the most of it.
Yes! Life is a gift. Education is the way that gift is expanded and passed on to others. It is no accident that human creativity started as a mash-up of art and technology unified as one thing. It is really that way still. What good is this gift of a life without the art that makes it worth living?
I am trained in the physical sciences (first career: Geologist), and medical science (third career: psychiatric RN). It has been my experience that creative artistry lies at the base of all scientific and artistic endeavors. To rid our education of the arts is to stifle much future progress in science, technology, and policy making.
Good, Steve.
You likely already well know how all our greatest scientists -- all -- in biographies, memoirs, letters, speeches, or testaments by others have cited some arts, some humanities, as key, central to their own greatest discoveries, achievements.
Your career sequence has been a grounded example of maneuvering through life with opportunities. I agree with what you say about creative artistry but what that means in practice for those committed and contributing one-of-a-kinds poses questions about practical living (earning money). Artist/practitioners whose work emerges on the leading edges of cultural change need to be received. The 'art world' is its own quagmire of hierarchies and bailiwicks. I'm not proposing a fix but pointing out how integrated and absorbing of uniqueness an adaptive culture must be for all to thrive.
Creativity in the building trades solves many a problem, major and minor. Any task that is resisting a standard fix. Some leaps of imagination change the world, and others save the day, or only minutes, but it all adds up and it tends to mount up quicker if you can imagine something "outside of the box" as well the practical process to get there.
Good taste is the enemy of creativity -Pablo Picasso. How do we keep the politics that occur in every human endeavor from becoming a stifling weight? Politics is after all, an art and a science.
Yes, J L, very good of you to distance the personal, or the individual, from "self-centeredness."
Any program that seeks humane essaying will caution that, as we allow the personal in us, from ourselves, we do so only in connection to similar perspectives from others.
Those others will let us respect whatever key differences illuminate our circumstances, theirs.
Schools could do this. It's a mean, vulgarized world -- this of our billionaires, their orange clowns, their more murderous Putins, the fossil fuel royals, the Clarences, the white domestic terrorists. Some day those in our schools will wake up and see how visions of the world as of actual people can compete with all the packagers, abstractors, standardized testers, and other profiteers off of grouping inhumanity.
The Christian "Great Commandment", in part, "love thy neighbor as thyself", the "Golden Rule", "Categorical Imperative", is all about transcending a self-absorbed view of what matters. That's what the word "love" really means, though we also use it to signal intense enjoyment, such as in "I love chocolate", but you consume chocolate, you don't regard its welfare. Love does not impose the personal, it bonds our awareness and concerns beyond what an acquaintance of mine calls "our punyverse".
"I want to say, like Neruda,
that I am waiting for
"a great and common tenderness,"
that I still believe
we are capable of attention,
that anyone who notices the world
must want to save it."
- Rebecca Baggett https://www.ayearofbeinghere.com/2014/03/rebecca-baggett-testimony.html
Supposing education in the U.S. suddenly became enlightened and realized its obligation to teach the humanities, who is to decide which authors are worthwhile, which works of science remain viable, whose works of art represent the human spirit, whose interpretation of history is true? This is a question for Phil Balla.
The humanities used to be thought of as the product of dead white men.This belief is obviously not a workable one now. What is your real definition of humanities? On close examination, it would seem that it is entirely cultural which makes something of a problem in establishing curriculum.
My college, now bankrupt, featured a program created by Robert Maynard Hutchins for the University of Chicago, sometimes called "Great Books". It was basically explored the evolution of modern thought, begining with the writers of Ancient Greece. It highly Euro and US centrist, but was, I think, a substantive introduction to stages of development of modern intellectual thinking, which has influenced understandings held by societies, to some extent, around the globe and certainly here in the USA. We read the thoughts of some of the same texts that apparently influenced the US founders. We studied the development of directions of though in the sciences, the arts, sociology, psychology, law, etc, The curriculum was remiss to the degree it left out the contributions of non-Western societies, but I think it left us better prepared to appreciate them, nevertheless. The process was deliberately left open-ended, not tied up in a bow.
I think I see a similar methodology in many of Heather's contributions that illustrate that we can learn for today from acknowledging more than the emergent tip of the historical "iceberg".
Jean, I think the very first of the humanities curriculum must be logic and critical thought. Then the various histories - prehistoric development of humans, history of science and math, history of philosophies, history of religions and religious thought, history of politics and political thought. And those histories are world histories, comprising every culture of which we know at this time. All we can do is our best, with respect to presenting these histories with as little bias as possible, with declaring the nature of the inherent biases - and a solid grounding in logic and critical thought will help here. This is a vast undertaking, but that is precisely what "the humanities" is. And it must begin as early as grammar school, before the hormone ravages begin to show up in middle school.
Well, the just stripped the SAT of an essay requirement. (Maybe the prospects of sorting out the AI problem?) So now the test is ALL multiple choice and shorter.
Yes, pathetic, but typical of the cynical billionaires and worse-in-all-ways oligarchs.
The tests have taken over internationally -- partly because there's virtually no "real" test anymore, progwoman, that isn't also machine-graded.
At every level billionaires and oligarchs touch, purpose is to show how unnecessary, marginal, unwanted anything of the human is.
It's a drive, a mission, so to reduce the world to machines, assembly lines, and all the rest of the abstracted, numbered, humanly dead.
It allows mass death trips. Wars. Murders of irksome journalists, Bribes to anything with a Clarence on it. Huge war profits. And lies from all connected to this --lies because there's no truth element at all anymore. That goes when the human goes.
Prog Multiple choice is machine gradable. Essays require thinking humans to read vast numbers of essays. I recall some of my colleagues who would go down to ETS for at least a week to read essays.
Frankly, as a professor (1992-2013) I wonder how capable many teachers are to read and grade a massive pile of essays. Unless the graders are grounded in critical thinking, I fear for ‘creative’ students.
As a teacher (7th & 12th grade, 1955-1956) and over two decades as professor, I never used multiple choice. In college my students started every class writing a THINK essay. I (and many of them) found this helpful. Lots of reading!
I remain grateful to my high school history teacher, Frances Turnipseed, for insisting on discussion questions and short answers rather than multiple choice. Three years in her classes taught me not only plenty of facts but how to think about them. I hope your students remember you as fondly.
Well stated. That's it in a nutshell.
Yes , you have an valid point. However, we had Presidents and civil rights leaders that were killed because they wanted change and equality for the people of this country. We can't be intimidated by fear. The majority of us in this country believe in Democracy. We must fight like hell to salvage it by motivating people to vote. The latter part of Heather's newsletter was a great example for all of us.
I cannot tell you how many damn times I have heard that. Some business owners want that because they think their tax dollars should be spent to support their business. Some other want critical thinkers and problem solvers. That is one reason why the top tier schools graduates - state and private - are sought after by the best companies and professions. There are a number of other schools where companies seek their grads because they are "job trained" which means they are focused on skills - not thinking.
" they left with one sole principle: to stop the Slave Power that was turning the government into an oligarchy."
Sounds a lot like today, doesn't it.
Fundamentally, no error -- even if you're concentrating on a single aspect of the problem. For, if literacy in itself was a cure-all, we'd have been spared ten thousand ills throughout history...
No, the deliberate undoing of education and its replacement by Pavlovian conditioning is part of oligarchy's conspiracy against America. The plan to stifle the spread of freedom and create a large underclass -- a sort of social sump -- surmounted by a totally dependent herd.
I lived in South Africa as a kid and saw the beginnings of Apartheid's tight regulation-bound system of separate development, designed to keep the non-white majority in its place. This of course involved placing a cap on public education for that majority. Built-in inequality.
On the downside of literacy, I'd recommend readers to go to the work of David Abrams, starting with his book The Spell of the Sensuous.
Being literate does not equate to being a reader, and being a reader does not equate to reading and absorbing things that makes one a learner. Then there is the problem of innumeracy. We have a long way to go, but it is encouraging that we have come a long way over the past two centuries.
Thank you for your perspective from personal history, Peter, and the book recommendation.
I don't know it. Will check further. (I'm living in a small town in the mountains of Kyushu, Japan, so no local library with English books, and inter-library loan, for a few thousand miles.)
Judith Dyer gives you an idea of content.
Exposure in Japan to Kanji characters may help you when it comes to the literacy aspect of this book, as may the fact of living in an out-of-the-way mountain area of Japan.
I've spent less than two months in the country, first, in Tokyo, on mission, in 1973, attending a big UNCTAD meeting, the second time, in the mountains of Kyoto prefecture, finding what I wanted to after that first happy contact with the capital.
I have gained much from my Japanese friend and his widow, both among my main teachers. A small shadow of envy. Once there, I never wanted to quit Japan...
Yes, Peter -- much good insight in the kanji side of life.
Having spent time here, as you have -- and in alignment with both the two very, very different Japans -- you can appreciate the wise, serene alternatives to modernity the older culture affords.
Nearly a half century ago (1977) I wrote my doctoral dissertation, "Appalachia and Detroit," which was my first attempt to pair modernity and its flux with things more rooted in what we might know as regionalism.
Some very wise people have cautiously been weighing these dynamics over the years, so I'm glad to see you, too, Peter, thus paying attention.
Always good to meet other seekers.
Tokyo and its inhabitants must have changed greatly since 1973, when I felt wonderfully relaxed and at home there. Yet, something of the same old and new atmosphere in Wim Wenders' delightful film, Perfect Days, even if no one in the film was wearing a yukata when out strolling in Shibuya.
But, regardless of familiarity with all things hitech, there's a huge change in Japan and throughout the Far East.
Back then, all calculations relating to prices and change were swift and mental -- sometimes involving an abacus. Now -- Craig Dupler, note -- it's all pocket calculators, yet I'm not aware of any time gain.
Re. literacy, in Franco's Spain around 1960, there were still many illiterates. But... these people had a fantastically rich vocabulary, folk memories to match it, knew not only songs but poems by heart, and could improvise witty coplas (couplets) on the spot.
Now, everyone can read and write, but most of that natural eloquence has gone down the drain.
Available on Amazon in Audiobook and Kindle. ....interesting...:
"In The Spell of the Sensuous David Abram draws on sources as diverse as the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Balinese shamanism, Apache storytelling, and his own experience as an accomplished sleight-of-hand of magician to reveal the subtle dependence of human cognition on the natural environment."
Nice parallel Peter.
William Bennet - Reagan DOE head - the spiraling down and dumbing down of America.
In "1984", Orwell wrote of "thoughtcrime".
Under the New Normal Dispensation, all unauthorized thought is a crime, in the same way as hunting in a royal forest was punished as the criminal act of poaching. The land is to be a thought-free zone in which oligarchs enjoy a monopoly of thought, the latter of course being angled exclusively to maximizing THEIR wealth and power.
Our entire society has been downgraded to profit-seeking. I've started calling the US "Ankh Morpork," from Terry Pratchett's Discworld stories.
With a truly vast Shades, sadly.
Yep.
I totally agree Phil.
Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" traced the beginnings of Nazi ideology to the German ruling class's abandonment of the teaching of the humanities/liberal arts after the Franco Prussian war (circa 1870.) Reich said this more eloquently. I read it 60 years ago so it's a fuzzy reference.
Those vulgars are alive and well in NC, seeking to turn the university system into trade schools.
Phil, according to many workers today, many of today’s oligarchs (and their minions) treat their employees as if they are so many beings whose only worth is how much money those employees make them. There are too many accounts of workers collapsing at work, only to have someone new at their desk the next week, if not the next day.
Yes, Mary -- as in the Bob Seger song, "Feel Like a Number."
And so many, many, fine, apt notes like this from many cultures around the world -- not just the U.S., and Putin's Russia, where so many predators rule.
They also get rid of you unceremoniously when they think your departure will make them more bucks.
Kathy, and they hire less experienced and less expensive replacements.
Unfortunately, they almost have to. A problem made apparent by the garage where I got my vehicle inspected. When I asked about the Help wanted sign, I was told it had been up for 8 years since they couldn't hire new mechanics under 21 since insurance wouldn't cover them driving customer's cars. By the time they are 21, I suspect they have found other work and have little desire to start a career I know so many who have been able to start sooner in the military (a rather great pipeline in the past for people like me to get technical skills, and GI Bill benefits from).
I'd much rather have robust civilian technical education for all who can benefit from it, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds and able to advance into a more open middle class like we had in the 1950s and later (to me started back when my dad was given his start in the CCC).
Jim, the Houston area community colleges have associate degrees in Ford, Honda, Chrysler, GM, Toyota and nonspecific auto repair. The dealerships love the interns and the interns get valuable experience.
I don't know how it would work in Maine but the program I'd like to see (with my interest in Hybrids, Plugin Hybrids especially, and EVs), has a great looking example that can be found at https://www.weber.edu/automotive/j_kelly.html
We didn't have even a Hybrid course yet though when I visited, I found one of my favorite instructors had gone 70 miles further out to the program at The College of the Desert. The courses I wanted to steer students to can be seen at https://catalog.collegeofthedesert.edu/programs/automotive-technology/hybrid_fuelcell_electric_certificate/
Some industries seemed to just want enough training to certify just what they needed, without considering a more rounded and universally beneficial education for them. While some private profit schools had much more demonstrations and less hands on by every student, we had the reputation for students getting a lot more individual hands on experience, according to students I asked about why they came to us after quitting the heavily advertised private profit schools.
I can imagine the differences in student debt loads, too.
Straight talk, Phil. And this led to millions of deaths from Covid, instead of a few hundred. Because that meagerly educated nincompoop, declared, "no need for masks, vaccines -just inject yourself with chlorine bleach or swallow it! We have managed in 50 years to end up in the European middle ages with a handful of ignorant billionaires (formerly kings and aristocrats) and the rest of us serfs.
Be sure to see the film of the Koch brothers’ destruction of public universities, “Starving the Beast.”
I've just been writing about the battle of Shiloh. It took place in an area about one mile to one mile and a half in diameter. Between the two armies, in forty-eight hours, there were 23,841 casualties.
General Ulysses S. Grant described the horror of the scene in his Memoirs:
"I could've walked across that field as far as the eye could see and never touched the ground, by walking on the bodies. It was at that moment I realized that this war could never—that the Union could never be preserved— without complete conquest of the South."
And this is the core problem of US democracy. The "South"—meaning the slave power that controlled and controls it to this day— was never crushed. The people we're fighting today are the (im)moral descendents of the slave power. And they're trying to make it illegal to even talk about slavery.
Exactly so, Alexandra.
Virtually every Letter from Ms. Richardson warrants praise, because they are invariably instructive , usually of what history may teach us , and for other reasons.. But this letter, the one for March 15 and in large part a repost from a Letter published three years ago, is noteworthy for Ms. Richardson identifying the historical lesson expressly (which she does not usually do), removing any possibility that even a few of her readers would fail to pick up on it, the lesson being "[how] a group of ordinary people from country towns who shared a fear that they were losing their democracy could figure out how to work together to reclaim it."
Robert, yes! “We” can absolutely do this…now is the time to commit to a democracy and not be indifferent! To the ramparts! (Are smartphones—look away, look away now!—the new opiates of the masses?….just wondering.)
😀
I absolutely think so Barbara,
More of us( particularly parents of the future ) should consider very seriously what the cell phone is doing for us. It is isolating us and making any group power indistinguishable . Watch the streets. Watch the airports, watch your fellow shoppers at Cost co. Everyone in a tiny capsule of personal absorption. Talk directly to any one of these lone robots and many look at you in great surprise…… like huh, where did you come from? This set us up to not listen and to not hear. This sets us up to be singularly led!
And that she is a daughter of Maine makes it even more memorable and impactful.
Jamie Raskin, in an interview Friday evening at the 10:00 hour on MSNBC, said: "the Republicans are sleepwalking into fascism". He was referring to the ones who don't have the guts or the decency to put an end to Trump and his henchmen.
That sleepwalking looks much more like Republicans goosestepping right into fascism to me.
And he is correct James, imho. Love Raskin; I could serve him. He's quite the wordsmith.
Some are doing it wide awake, though sadly, not woke.
I love your use of words here!
I don’t mind being called woke and using the word. Bill Maher seems to think it only describes elitist snobs with ridiculous positions, but it also, to me, just says someone who sees things that others ignore, on purpose, or attending to the Kardashians…
I think many of them are sure they’ll magically avoid the “real thing” of fascist politics, not being willing or able to see that the fascists will squeeze the pyramid of power more and more (or more likely simply shave it off and keep the assets for themselves) until it resembles the Lincoln Monument.
Trump supporters think, or hope, that they will be accepted in the next Trump presidency “rapture.” They chose to forget that Trump is only for himself, and not even really for the Republican Party that he rules.
There are none so blind . . .
Read some FB pages of his evangelicals.
I do believe that he attributed that to Liz Cheney - but be that as it may - consider trump’s statement/response to the question about loneliness: “nobody has been has been treated like Trump in terms of badly“ and he feels that he’s been treated worse than Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln. What a pitiful, pitiful … truly pathetically pitiful “man”!!!
I am waiting for someone to ask if he wants to be treated ultimately like Lincoln or McKinley were. Can you imagine the look on his face?
He is correct, but I also must say they are doing so with full knowledge thinking they will do just fine. Just like the people who follow the Putins and Obrans of the world.
Sadly, the conservatives could have stopped this years ago, but they have been to busy cutting the regulators (IRS agents) that would prevent someone like trump from even standing on the steps of the court house except for being on trial. The conservatives have touted law and order which means more law for blue collar people, and less law and order for white collar people. It is why the wealthy continues to flaunt their noses at the justice system.
I agree with you 💯 percent !!!Jamie Raskin knows what he’s talking about!!
As a fellow Mainer, I really appreciated this post the first time around, and equally so this time around. The lessons of history come alive in your "Letters." As a retired academic, I am so deeply appreciative of your work. -- Although.... I find it hard to imagine that you really had a "... tongue-tied first date"
We call ourselves Mainers although we've only lived here for 20 years. When we first moved to Maine we were considered by the locals to be "from away." We moved to a small town in Hancock County next door to the Thorton Wilder estate. Of course, we didn't realize how many people from away there were in our community, some of them long passed, like Mr. Wilder and EB White to name one. There's something about Maine, that fosters writers to write here.
One of the first people we met in Maine had moved to the area from Seattle. He recalled an story that was in the local newspaper. It was an obituary of a lady that was born circa 1900. Her parents lived on Isle Au Haut and her mother was having a tough pregnancy. When she went into labor, her husband took her to the closest hospital, which was in Stonington a short boat ride from Isle Au Haut, where the baby was born. Both mother and baby were fine and after 3 days in the hospital the family returned to Isle Au Haut. This lady lived her entire life on the island passing away at the age of 98.
The obituary began, "Even though she was from away, we considered her one of our own."
It was at that moment I realized that even our 10 year old daughter would never be a true Mainer but would always be "from away."
It's never really bother any of us, In fact we laugh about it now and then. Just not with the native Mainers. We can't imagine living anywhere else, not just because of the rustic beauty of the place, but the incredible people that live here. It's always felt like home, more so than any of the nine other states we've lived.
Gary, It sounds like we live near you. We moved to Ellsworth, Maine in 1973, so we've lived here for 51 years. But I'm sure for many locals we're still "from away"!
It reminds me of Tim Sample's old joke: Just because your cat has kittens in the oven, doesn't make'em biscuits!
I love that KMD. We lived in Blue Hill when we first moved to Maine.
What a wonderful story. I am glad you found ME. I grew up in Portland and my wife in Orono (We met in college in MA). We moved away, eventually landing in CA. With three daughters and 4 (soon to be 6) grandchildren living in CA, we won't be moving back to ME. -- We still visit ME at least once a year and it really feels like coming home.
It takes two to tango, Steve! It makes me wonder whether silent Buddy tied young Heather's tongue with his own? Oh, the mystery! Do tell Professor.
Bruce, a very astute conjecture!! -- Yes, do tell Professor.
Dr. Richardson this was a perfect posting for tonight. I remember reading it the first time you posted it and thought it was great how you had made such an important piece of history so interesting. Tonight I read it and realized the gift you gave me, hope. I am almost 82 and have seen our country come through many terrible situations but today feels different. I am scared. Your understanding of the past and the present of our country is remarkable and your ability to share your knowledge and wisdom in a manner that it can help me renew my faith in our country is so needed and so appreciated. That being said, please take time for yourself so you can find peace and good health in your life.
Dear Kathleen -
I’m 66 and scared too. And yet I’m managing to muster the chutzpah - in no small part due to Dr. Richardson and our LFAA community - to advocate for US in the spirit of those 19th century hero’s from Main, and Lincoln.
Thank you Professor for today’s history lesson, giving meaning to the moral and political differences between slaveholders and the anti-slavers. You tell us about Representative Edward Dickinson working to “stop the Slave Power that was turning the government into an oligarchy.”
Emily Dickinson’s poem, “Hope is the thing with feathers” is more than a poem for children. It is a metaphor for the times of change and hope and possibility. Don’t we all need Hope?
From the Poetry Foundation, form changed to save space, this timeless poem:
Hope” is the thing with feathers by Emily Dickinson
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -
I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.
Hope is a thing with feathers… 🪶:’-)
Thank you, Irenie, for sharing this.
Thank you, Jean-Pierre. Poetic Medicine. We could pass it out to those officials who ban books and knowledge and History.
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.”
George Orwell, 1984
What a vision. Sounds like chump feet, or worse
In those dreadful hi-tops...
Great choice Love you sharing your Maine and US history hopefully as maine goes so goes our nation assuming you “ represent “ Maine😀
According to Lincoln, "two principles -- right and wrong -- throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings."
Absolute monarchs, any sort of autocrats, and those who aim to be them.
" they left with one sole principle: to stop the Slave Power that was turning the government into an oligarchy."
I’ve always loved this story. I’ve read it more than once every time we come upon March 15th … maybe missing a year I don’t
recall… what I always feel is my first understanding of what and how you are gluing together “real time” stories from very long ago and making the moment I’m living in here & now, come to life, and hence “understandable” … Magic for me.!
As always I am one of many educated (BA, MSW, LCSW) folks who have very little understanding of how we ‘got here’ and your gifts bring ‘here’ to life with historical substance that I can remember and ponder over w pleasure.
Forever your student and admirer. Gratefully and joyously!
Fabulous piece by Heather tonight.
I would toss in few bon mots---
The horrendous murder of Elijah Lovejoy led to one of the first speeches by the man from the State that bears his name in its motto today, as he so eloquently decried the murder, and in so doing became nationally prominent.
A slight correction---while the Kansas/Nebraska Act of 1854 sent an uppercut across the jaw of the Missouri Compromise, it did not render it invalid. Henry Clay, the Great Compromiser, supported both. The first firmly, and the latter less so. It was the dreaded 1857 Dred Scott decision that rendered the death knell to the Missouri Compromise, and virtually armed the cannons that would later fire upon Fort Sumter.
Finally, I love the "Cedar, beware the Adze of March!" quote from Heather that I had never heard before. That is so cool.
Not nearly as cool, but as kids learning famous Shakespearean lines, we learned why Julius Caesar died on March 15th. Whenever someone was asked to read the passage in "Julius Caesar" when Caesar is killed, instead of declaiming "Et tu Brute", some wise ass kid, myself included, would mouth off with "Ate two burritos"!
🤣 Daniel, love those wise-ass kids!
Thanks much, Barbara!
Hope all is well with you!
Lol Daniel ~
I’m laughing! Thanks for the giggle!
I'd argue the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska act was more important since it lit a fire that started the "anti-Nebraska" politicians from old parties fragmenting (Whigs, Northern Democrats, Know-Nothings, etc, to form the Opposition Coalition that became the majority in the 34th Congress, elected in later 1854, not that long after the passage of the inflammatory act. There were not even any candidates identified as Republicans when they were seated in 1855, the first House member identified as a Republican was George T Hodges (R) seated December 1, 1856 to replace the deceased James Meacham (O) of the Vermont 1st District.
Oops, fixed the No Nothings phonetic spelling to Know- Nothings as I also reworked a spreadsheet on the 34th Congress to see how people in various parties changed.
The parties listed for the the duration of the 34th Congress include the 3 Senate Classes, with Class 1 beginning their 6 year term in the 2 years of the 34th Congress. Class 2 had 4 more years to serve before their 6 years ended (after beginning with the 33rd Congress).
Class 3 only had the 2 years of the 34th Congress to serve before they finished their 6 years (beginning with the 32nd Congress).
The Wikipedia article on the 33rd Congress shows Democrats ended with 155 seats, Independent Democrats with 1, Free soil with 3, Whigs with 74, and the Independent Party with 1.
That (33rd) link shows the Democrats starting the 34th Congress down 76 seats at 79, while the Opposition Coalition supposedly started at 154. That doesn't quite jibe with the entry for the 34th Congress that says Democrats started with 82 seats instead of 79 and ended with 156 seats instead of 155. The numbers for the Opposition "Caucus" vs "Coalition" in the 33rd link show a start at 154 vs the 34th entry putting the start at 151.
It seems the only Whigs left were 8 Senators who served all of the 34th Congress (4 from classes 2 and 3, and 4 who started their 6 year terms in Class 1 along with the 34th Congress House members. Back then Senators were selected by State Legislatures which may explain how 13 or 14 Senators that served some portion of their 6 year terms are listed as Republicans at various dates though most didn't start with the 34th Congress (8 were still listed as Whigs who likely voted with Republicans.
Hannibal Hamlin is uniquely identified as starting the 34th Congress as a Democrat, before being identified as a Republican on June 12, 1856. Lincoln, himself didn't change from Whig to Republican around the time Hannibal Hamlin did in 1856 (over half way through the 34th Congress).
Thanks for that, Jim. In my childhood neighborhood in L.A., the local public library was the John C. Fremont library. As you know, Fremont was the first Republican candidate for President, losing somehow to James Buchanan in spite of his fame and the celebrity allure of his beautiful wife Jessie Benton Fremont, the daughter of Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton.
LINDA FORCE Daniel ; Love your comments - I always wonder about Julius and being stabbed with a dozen swords by senators. Is there any analogy in today's world?
Thanks so much for your kind words, Linda!
I can't think of any modern analogy. Then again, I can think of a former President currently seeking a return to the White House he so fully disgraced, that I wouldn't mind having his own Ides of March on the Senate floor.
Thank you so much Heather. First, I’m tearing up reading this story in a lovely breakfast room in Porto, Portugal. People here remember dictatorship … Salazar … and they take the politics of the former Prez very seriously indeed.
Which brings me to a comment on the putrid swamp that the GOP’s become: look at their ages. Not a one remembers what it means to be a nation at war, none remember (or know or care to know) what life was like before Social Security (only 10% of the population “retired” 90% worked till they dropped dead), clearly they don’t remember what is was like to have widespread child labor, no minimum wage laws, no 40 hour work week … I could go on.
The dirtydiaperssmallhands party is enthralled with the past because they have No F***ing Idea what they are talking about.
They might as well be the party of Plague, Pestilence & Poverty.
No matter when we were born our necessaries are to get the education that we deserve, through high school at least however we can. Public education should be high on everyone's list. We have to overcome the naysayers who are afraid of, or lazy about or whatever it is, the prospect of using our brains the best we can, to become and grow into our adult citizen selves, abiding by our Constitution and our constitutionally based laws. Democracy demands it.
They also live up to the epithet of RHINO. Truly, Republicans in name only, while Democrats are now the champions of Democracy envisioned by the original Republicans.
Fred, u r 100% correct. I wish MSM would stop calling MAGA “conservatives.” They aren’t conserving nothing! Not the constitution, not American traditions, not small government & not fiscal prudery!
Well observed and stated Suz ...
Mike Pence, stating he won't endorse Trump, on the Ides of March.
https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1768766962077741110?fbclid=IwAR1kq7t-OT-Q6FrViNeVaUrsMdt3Z-R-WTbkBeZBMuNh8D2Q_d6COxsxzMI
I SO admire Pence for speaking truth to MAGA…..this is twice, so far, that he has done something that I admire…he found his bedrock principle and is sticking to it. Wish more R’s had his “cojones” to stand for the truth and democracy. 👍
For myself Barb, I'm just not willing to give him much credit wise. Dick Cheney for instance came out today rebuking tfg in no uncertain terms. With both men, far too much water has passed under any proposed bridge in my mind. I have a modicum of 'respect' for their words and actions - at select times (few), but that's about it.
A modicum is significant to my mind, since I considered both pond scum. I will appreciate any sane action, and wish a Bush or two had an urge to do something courageous since they helped create the path to our quagmire
Understand…..
Too little, too late comes to mind.
Much better than my initial thought: Too little, too late.
Risking a noose round your neck tends to concentrate the mind.
Lol.... now "there's" a great observation Sophie ! Lol...
This whole period has made me root for some people I dislike intensely, including Dick Cheney. One of the worst of the worst, responsible for thousands of deaths. Yet here he is doing one good thing. Yes Pence has done 2 good things. My cynical self suggests that Mother said "If you endorse that horrible man, you'll be sleeping on the couch till kingdom come. "