Category: History

SCHOOLED

OCTOBER 29, 2024 – After watching/listening to vice president’s uplifting campaign speech this evening, I was schooled by our older son, who also heard Harris’s rallying cry. Cory himself is not voting for Trump, but he understands why a lot of men—regardless of race—are Trump supporters. I realized that if I wanted to understand better, …

PRESIDENTIAL APOLOGY

OCTOBER 25, 2024 – When driving to the Red Cabin and reaching the point some 40 miles from my destination, I typically tune the radio to WOJB 88.9 FM, the public radio station broadcasting from the heart of the Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation. It’s a quirky little public radio station featuring an eclectic range of …

WEATHER OR NOT

OCTOBER 14, 2024 – Each of us might well say that by a certain age, we’re “concerned about the current direction of the country.” The more you see and experience of this land of ours—the third most populous in the world—the more chronic dysfunctionality you’ll notice. Because of this, we’re naturally likely to conclude that …

APRIL 9TH

OCTOBER 13, 2024 – Every good war movie—or just to be clear, “every war movie that’s a good movie”—winds up being an anti-war movie. Even a good movie about the “Good War” (WW II) is a reminder of the insanity and futility of war. By that I don’t mean that war is nugatory for the …

HISTORY LESSON (PART V)

JULY 31, 2024 – (Cont.) Back home other Nisei were exerting a different kind of courage in quite a different sort of combat. One of the leading “soldiers” in this regard was a conscientious objector by the name of Gordon Hirabayashi, who worked tirelessly in the pursuit of justice. A Ghandi-like character, he exercised unusual …

HISTORY LESSON (PART IV)

JULY 30, 2024 – (Cont.) The most remarkable aspect of racial discrimination against Japanese-Americans is that it didn’t discourage most Nisei (people of Japanese parentage but born in the United States) from joining the war effort. They signed up because they felt it was their duty—as Americans and in defense of American ideals and principles—and …

HISTORY LESSON (PART III)

JULY 29, 2024 – (Cont.) Ever since we invented ourselves, we humans have in the business of exploiting other humans. Every culture, nation, and people, it seems, has had a go at it. In the last decades of the 19th century, landowners in Hawai’i were breaking the backs of plantation laborers to bring in the …

HISTORY LESSON (PART I)

JULY 27, 2024 – We’re still at our Shangri-La on the shores of Grindstone Lake in northwest Wisconsin, and if you’ve followed my posts over the past few days, weeks, months, and now years, you know my attachment to this place. While I’m here I’m far more attuned to the dynamic beauty of our surroundings …

THE BOOK

JULY 14, 2024 – Today I finished reading The Story of Russia by Orlando Figes, a British scholar with serious academic chops and credentials. He’s written no fewer than nine books on Russian and European history, which have been translated into 30 languages. Yet, as is so often the case among academics, Figes has his …

SEQUEL TO LEMONS AND LEMONADE

JULY 9, 2024 – I concluded yesterday’s technology episode on a positive note—specifically, the likely prospect that I could jawbone the manager of the MOA Apple Store to reimbursement me for the hefty cost of data recovery. Once I’d cinched that deal, I figured I’d ship the device straight away to the data salvage outfit. …

AT LAST: A UNITED UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!

JUNE 28, 2024 – Here’s my take on yesterday evening’s train wreck in Atlanta: the debate produced a rare and magical freeze-framed moment in the annals of American presidential campaign history. Far from being an actual “total disaster,” it’s a juncture where Democrats, Republicans, and all stripes of political independents are in total agreement. The …

FROM THE MOLD OF MYTH

JUNE 24, 2024 – I’m now deep into the book I mentioned in my June 19 post—The Story of Russia by Orlando Figes. The author’s thesis is that much about Russia of today is from the mold of myth; that Putin’s justification for the assault on Ukraine, as well as his domestic autocracy are rooted …

ON THE WATER . . . IN 1614

JUNE 20, 2024 – This afternoon we spent 90 minutes aboard a time machine, and though we never left the present, we experienced the past—over 410 years in the past, to be precise. The excitement was aboard the Onrust, a replica of the old Dutch sailing vessel built in 1613-14 by Adrien Block, a lawyer-turned-merchant-fortune …

IT’S ALL IN THE NAME

JUNE 18, 2024 – Today we drove from Lyme to New Haven. Our destination was Yale University, or more specifically, the Yale University Art Gallery. I’d driven and ridden the route numerous times, but this was the first occasion when I was especially conscious of the names along the way—Clinton, Leetes, Trumbull, Stewart R. McKinney, …

50 YEARS LATER

JUNE 7, 2024 – It’s instructive, I think, to view the Duly Defeated’s stranglehold on the Party of Lincoln—and Nixon—through the historic prism of the Watergate Era. This perspective can reassure hand-ringers worried that the Duly Defeated might well become the Duly Elected. During the first impeachment hearings of Biden’s immediate predecessor—remember that far back?—a …

CITIZENSHIP

JUNE 6, 2024 – For years the Soviet view of the D-Day invasion was inversely proportionate to the American obsession with commemoration of that historic day. Stalin had long been pressing Churchill and Roosevelt to open a second front in Western Europe to draw Germans away from the Eastern Front, where the Nazis had been …

MASTERS OF THE AIR

APRIL 4, 2024 – Okay, okay. Today I was determined as ever to write a political screed. I was all fired up after having digested a Times column about RFK, Jr. (Talk about setting your hair on fire!) Yet, two sentences in and I realized my opinion was of no greater worth than my description …

THE BRIDGE AND THE ANTHEM

MARCH 29, 2024 – When I heard about the “Key Bridge,” I thought of the “main” or “key” bridge serving greater Baltimore. I was not thinking about the author of the lyrics to our national anthem. The more information I absorb about the recent catastrophe and the enormous projects—recovery, clean-up and rebuilding—the more amazed I …

CONSTANCY

MARCH 19, 2024 – (Cont.) One of the papers I wrote for that freshman year survey course in Western Civilization was about the sincerity of Constantine’s conversion. Was he truly committing mind, heart, and soul to Jesus or . . . being a supreme opportunist was he simply riding the rising swell of Christianity within …

HOLD ONTO YOUR HAT A LITTLE LONGER!

MARCH 18, 2024 – (Cont.) There on the top shelf was a book in mint condition. On its dignified spine was the incongruous title, A Short History of Byzantium: what could be short about a history of an 1,100-year empire? Were they still among the living, my college history profs would be impressed that I …

STEROIDAL SHAKESPEARE

MARCH 17, 2024 – This post—more likely, series of posts—is about pure Shakespeare at the same time it had nothing at all to do with the Bard. It has much more to do with books by way of an example of one . . . or perhaps three condensed into one. From an early age …

OUR AMERICAN INHERITANCE

JULY 4, 2023 – In commemoration of Independence Day, today’s post breaks from my individual “inheritance” to celebrate our collective American inheritance. But in the mix of dazzling fireworks, condiment-loaded hot dogs, and liberal servings of potato salad, we should take a sober and sobering account of that inheritance. In my early school years, American …