Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
AUGUST 3, 2019 – I went to work on my clump of clay: Jedediah Carson passed by here in the year 1845. Bobby watched closely. When I finished, he asked, “What should I write?” I thought a bit and recalled the American Heritage article about the Kensington Runestone—the large stone uncovered by a farmer in rural …
AUGUST 2, 2019 – It was in early August before fifth grade. I’d been down at the beach most of the day. For a change of pace, I went home, hopped on my bike and rode figure eights in the street in front of our house. Something—boredom?—triggered a thought. I pulled out of a figure eight …
AUGUST 1, 2019 – Every good story involves a little background: FIRST: By the age of eight, I was hooked on history. My dad ensured that. He read aloud to me books like William Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico and articles out of his bi-monthly issues of American Heritage magazine. History fired up my imagination. SECOND: Our house …
JULY 10, 2019 – In the news again is talk of reparations to descendants of American slavery. I say, “No.” If the answer were to be “Yes,” we’d lose our way in weeds and never emerge. Hear me out. At the outset we’d face a definitional question: who qualifies? According to DNA testing as part …
JULY 8, 2019 – From August 28 to September 13, 1981 my travels led to Poland. For a year that country had been in the news—Solidarność, the illegal workers union, had started a revolution against the Communist regime, and the world watched nervously to see how the Soviet Union would react. Would it invade and …
JULY 4, 2019 – As go Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Presidents Day, so goes the Fourth of July. In other words, the fashion in which we celebrate these holidays is quite detached from the historical reality of their origins. In the case of Independence Day, where is the meaning in fireworks, local parades, fireworks, backyard barbecues, …
JUNE 10, 2019 – Recently I watched Ken Burns’ acclaimed documentary, The Civil War—the ultimate oxymoron. I’d read and studied much about that seismic event, and I’d been riveted to the first showing of the aforesaid documentary nearly three decades ago. But this time around, the Civil War looks more tragic, more cataclysmic, more baffling …
MAY 8, 2019 – I once heard an historian say that a probative history can’t be written until the subject matter is at least 50 years in the past. By extension, I suppose, the historian would caution us against making any judgments about the (always) tumultuous present. If you think hard enough about those correlative …