tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22462369220778312652024-03-14T05:28:44.935-07:00historeicsRob Hoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02211809421832142963noreply@blogger.comBlogger125125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246236922077831265.post-42579009709705673662013-07-19T06:40:00.000-07:002013-07-19T06:40:07.736-07:00Another look at Henry Shaw as his 213th birthday approaches<h3>
<a href="http://www.stlbeacon.org/#%21/content/31945/shaw_take_5_07182013" target="_blank">Take 5: Another look at Henry Shaw as his 213th birthday approaches</a></h3>
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<span class="label label-transparent">by <strong>website@stlbeacon.org (Kristen Hare)</strong></span>
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Nearly 155 years ago, businessman <a href="http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/about/additional-information/our-mission-history.aspx">Henry Shaw</a> opened the <a href="http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/">Missouri Botanical Garden</a> on the hundreds of acres of prairie he'd previously purchased. With the help of pre-eminent naturalist <a href="http://www.huh.harvard.edu/libraries/asa/asabio.html">Asa Gray</a>, <a href="http://www.kew.org/heritage/people/hooker_w.html">William Jackson Hooker</a>, director of England’s Kew Gardens, and St. Louis resident <a href="http://www.mobot.org/mobot/archives/results.asp?pagenum=1&selectby=subject&phrase=Engelmann%2C+George%2C+1809-1884">Dr. George Engelmann</a>, Shaw created a major and lasting institution.<br />
<div>
<figure><img alt="xxx" src="https://www.stlbeacon.org/lantern/public/resources/content/31945/images/shaw1_28572.60.jpg" /><figcaption>
Photos courtesy of the Missouri Botanical Garden
Henry Shaw at his townhouse at 7th and Locust. </figcaption></figure>
</div>
“A lot of times, people think of Henry Shaw, was he a horticulturist?
Was he a botanist? He was really neither,” says Andrew Colligan, head of
archives at the garden. “He was a man who had money and vision and
wanted to establish an institution that supported both of those fields.”<br />
In Shaw’s time, Colligan says, he began a herbarium, which is basically
a library of dried plant specimens. When Shaw started, the herbarium
had about 60,000 specimens. Today, it’s about 6.5 million.<br />
Wednesday, July 24, marks the anniversary of Shaw’s birthday, and to
celebrate, admission to the garden is free from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.<br />
To help us understand Shaw and the impact of his initial vision,
Colligan spoke with the St. Louis Beacon about the man, the times in
which he lived, and the impact his vision had. Answers have been edited
for length.<br />
<strong>Beacon: Shaw came to St. Louis at just 18 to open a hardware
business. Forty years later, he opened the Missouri Botanical Garden.
What happened during those 40 years that inspired him to create the
garden?</strong><br />
<strong>Colligan:</strong> Shaw initially came to St. Louis in 1819.
Riverboat travel had only come up to St. Louis the year prior, in 1818,
and he came aboard a ship called The Maid of New Orleans. He saw that
St. Louis was geographically located on a good spot on the river.<br />
<div>
<figure><img alt="xxx" src="https://www.stlbeacon.org/lantern/public/resources/content/31945/images/garden1_28571.60.jpg" /><figcaption>
Early plans for a proposed park garden, east of the existing garden </figcaption></figure>
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St. Louis at the time was mainly a French fur-trading outpost on the
river, and he thought to set up a general store. It proved to be a very
lucrative for him. With each passing year he generated more and more
income and during those years he was really dedicated to being a
successful businessman. By 1839, he had amassed a fortune of about
$250,000, which would have made him a millionaire in his day.<br />
During the 1840s and into the early 1850s, he did three trips abroad.
He went on what they would have called the Grand Tour of Europe. He saw
all the famous historical sites and also during this time visited many
beautiful gardens in Europe, some public, many private.<br />
We have his travel diaries; he visited the Great Pyramids of Giza and
he also visited areas around the Mediterranean. His last trip abroad was
in 1851 and he saw The Great Expedition of 1851 in London. He also
visited the private gardens of <a href="http://www.chatsworth.org/attractions/garden">Chatsworth</a>.
It was later in his life when he was recalling things to his only
official biographer that he alluded to the fact that it was during his
walk in Chatsworth that he thought, I would like to do something like
this on a smaller scale back in my adopted city of St. Louis.<br />
<strong>So he brought those ideas inspired by his trips back with him
to start the Missouri Botanical Garden. Was that happening around the
country at the time, or was he a pioneer in the U.S. with these ideas?</strong><br />
<div>
<figure><img alt="xx" src="https://www.stlbeacon.org/lantern/public/resources/content/31945/images/garden2_28573.60.jpg" /><figcaption>
The willow pond at the arboretum </figcaption></figure>
</div>
<strong>Colligan: </strong>I would argue that he was a pioneer. New
York did not have a botanical garden until 1892. So, it was kind of
unusual. You could almost argue that 200 miles west of St. Louis was the
wild west, and that was also how Shaw was able to amass his fortune.
People were traveling west, St. Louis was kind of like the last stop.<br />
<strong>Shaw isn’t just associated with the garden, but also some other
notable St. Louis institutions. Can you talk about his role in places
such as <a href="http://www.towergrovepark.org/">Tower Grove Park</a> and the <a href="http://www.umsl.edu/mercantile/">Mercantile Library</a>?</strong><br />
<strong>Colligan: </strong>Shaw’s second gift to the city, of course,
is Tower Grove Park. Over the years he became aware of how city politics
ran things, so he was very careful in that he wanted to make sure that
things he established would stand the test of time. Shaw’s will, in
1859, clearly laid out in legalese how the garden would be established
and he did a similar thing for Tower Grove Park. But he did not want his
garden to fall prey to city politics, in particular City Hall. He made
it where the garden is not a park. It does not fall within the St. Louis
Parks division. It operates individually.<br />
He established Tower Grove Park and actually gives it to the city, but
it has its own commissioner; it has its own board. It operates as a St.
Louis park, but yet it does not. They have their own grounds keepers and
staff.<br />
When Shaw died, they started a board of trustees, established it for
the garden. One of the first things that happened was the mayor’s office
told the board of trustees that they should have their meetings down at
City Hall. They were able to tell the mayor, "Thank you, but no
thanks," and that was pretty much the end of it.<br />
<div>
<figure><img alt="The m" src="https://www.stlbeacon.org/lantern/public/resources/content/31945/images/757px-henry_shaw_botanist_-_missouri_botanical_garden4_28576.60.jpg" /><figcaption>
The mausoleum </figcaption></figure>
</div>
<strong>Shaw still has quite a presence in St. Louis, particularly at
the garden. People can view his mausoleum and tour his house. Can you
share some thing you’ve learned about Shaw that the public may not know?</strong><br />
<strong>Colligan: </strong>Maybe one thing people may not realize is
for a time between 1828 and 1855, Shaw was a slave owner. When he came
to St. Louis, he wrote back to family that he was against that practice,
it had been outlawed in England. He was disgusted with the practice. We
don’t really know what changed his mind ... was it a manner of
business? His ownership of slaves ends prior to his establishment of the
Missouri Botanical Garden.<br />
But one thing that’s somewhat frustrating about Shaw is that we don’t
really have his personal papers. We don’t have a whole lot. His
business papers are well documented. The receipt from the nursery from
the first planting of the Missouri Botanical Garden, we can look at that
and see what he bought. But we don’t have his love letters.<br />
He was a life long bachelor. The closest thing is that he was sued for
breach of promise by a woman named Effie Carstang in the late 1850s,
just prior to the garden opening. And that’s the closest thing to a
salacious love story with Henry Shaw. And it really is not that
exciting. He loaned her a piano. She took it as an intent to marry. He
asked for the piano back. And she sued for breach of promise. We can
even go into the Shaw papers and see that the piano is more or less
listed as a loan. It’s kind of hard to fit a piano on your ring finger.<br />
It is somewhat frustrating. His thoughts on, say, the Civil War, we
don’t know. We do know after the Civil War he did hire a number of
African Americans, one was more or less his right-hand man and continued
to live on Garden grounds until the 1930s and had nothing but good
things to say about Henry Shaw.<br />
<strong>Now, the Missouri Botanical Garden is a National Historic
Landmark, with 79 acres of gardens and an international center for
research and conservation. Looking back at plans and documents from
Shaw’s time, what do you think he expected the Garden to become?</strong><br />
<strong>Colligan: </strong>One thing that's worth mentioning is that
botany was kind of in its infancy when Shaw established the garden. I
would say it really isn’t until more or less the turn of the century
that botany becomes the botany that we’re familiar with and we studied
in school.<br />
He wanted it to be a world-class institution. He wanted it to be a
world-class institution in research and in horticulture and I think that
as far as research, we’re always ranked in the top three: the <a href="http://www.kew.org/">Kew</a>, the <a href="http://www.nybg.org/">New York Botanical Garden,</a> and us. I think he’d be very proud of that.<br />
Aand when you think of it as a display garden, we have the largest
Japanese garden in North America. I think he’d be amazed at how much the
city has changed and how much the garden has changed. The landscape has
changed dramatically since Shaw’s time.<br />
We still have buildings here like Tower Grove House, Linean House, his
mausoleum. Those things have been constant while the garden has changed
around them. I think when you look at research and horticulture, I think
he’d be very pleased not only that the garden is still existing, but
it’s at the forefront. Rob Hoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02211809421832142963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246236922077831265.post-91992843407774595922012-11-12T10:01:00.002-08:002012-11-12T10:01:48.029-08:00Geronimo’s Appeal to Theodore Roosevelt
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<a href="http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/2012/11/geronimos-terms/" rel="bookmark">Geronimo’s Appeal to Theodore Roosevelt</a></h3>
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<img alt="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-6750" height="0" src="http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/files/2012/11/Past-Imperfect-Geronimo-470.jpg" width="0" /><br />
<div class="wp-caption alignnone" id="attachment_9030" style="width: 494px;">
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GeronimoRinehart.jpg"><img alt="" class="size-full wp-image-9030 " height="600" src="http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/files/2012/11/484px-GeronimoRinehart.jpg" width="484" /></a><div class="wp-caption-text">
Geronimo as a prisoner of war at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, 1898. Photo: Frank A. Rinehart, Wikipedia</div>
</div>
When he was born he had such a sleepy disposition his parents named him <em>Goyahkla</em>—He Who Yawns. He lived the life of an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Sill_Apache_Tribe_of_Oklahoma">Apache</a>
tribesman in relative quiet for three decades, until he led a trading
expedition from the Mogollon Mountains south into Mexico in 1858. He
left the Apache camp to do some business in Casa Grandes and returned to
find that Mexican soldiers had slaughtered the women and children who
had been left behind, including his wife, mother and three small
children. “I stood until all had passed, hardly knowing what I would
do,” he would recall. “I had no weapon, nor did I hardly wish to fight,
neither did I contemplate recovering the bodies of my loved ones, for
that was forbidden. I did not pray, nor did I resolve to do anything in
particular, for I had no purpose left.”<br />
He returned home and burned his tepee and his family’s possessions.
Then he led an assault on a group of Mexicans in Sonora. It would be
said that after one of his victims screamed for mercy in the name of
Saint Jerome—<em>Jeronimo</em> in Spanish—the Apaches had a new name for <em>Goyahkla</em>.
Soon the name provoked fear throughout the West. As immigrants
encroached on Native American lands, forcing indigenous people onto
reservations, the warrior Geronimo refused to yield.<br />
Born and raised in an area along the Gila River that is now on the
Arizona-New Mexico border, Geronimo would spend the next quarter-century
attacking and evading both Mexican and U.S. troops, vowing to kill as
many white men as he could. He targeted immigrants and their trains, and
tormented white settlers in the American West were known to frighten
their misbehaving children with the threat that Geronimo would come for
them.<br />
<div class="wp-caption alignleft" id="attachment_9032" style="width: 410px;">
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GeronimoRinehart.jpg"><img alt="" class=" wp-image-9032 " height="242" src="http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/files/2012/11/Apache_prisoners-500x302.jpg" width="400" /></a><div class="wp-caption-text">
Geronimo
(third from right, in front) and his fellow Apache prisoners en route
to POW camp at Fort Pickens in Pensacola, Florida, in 1886. Photo:
Wikipedia</div>
</div>
By 1874, after white immigrants demanded federal military
intervention, the Apaches were forced onto a reservation in Arizona.
Geronimo and a band of followers escaped, and U.S. troops tracked him
relentlessly across the deserts and mountains of the West. Badly
outnumbered and exhausted by a pursuit that had gone on for 3,000
miles—and which included help from Apache scouts—he finally surrendered
to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_A._Miles">General Nelson A. Miles</a>
at Skeleton Canyon, Arizona in 1886 and turned over his Winchester
rifle and Sheffield Bowie knife. He was “anxious to make the best terms
possible,” Miles noted. Geronimo and his “renegades” agreed to a
two-year exile and subsequent return to the reservation.<br />
In New York, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Cleveland">President Grover Cleveland</a>
fretted over the terms. In a telegram to his secretary of war,
Cleveland wrote, “I hope nothing will be done with Geronimo which will
prevent our treating him as a prisoner of war, if we cannot hang him,
which I would much prefer.”<br />
Geronimo avoided execution, but dispute over the terms of surrender
ensured that he would spend the rest of his life as a prisoner of the
Army, subject to betrayal and indignity. The Apache leader and his men
were sent by boxcar, under heavy guard, to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Pickens">Fort Pickens</a> in Pensacola, Florida, where they performed hard labor. In that alien climate, the <em>Washington Post</em>
reported, the Apache died “like flies at frost time.” Businessmen
there soon had the idea to have Geronimo serve as a tourist attraction,
and hundreds of visitors daily were let into the fort to lay eyes on the
“bloodthirsty” Indian in his cell.<br />
While the POWs were in Florida, the government relocated hundreds of their children from their Arizona reservation to the <a href="http://home.epix.net/%7Elandis/histry.html">Carlisle Indian Industrial School</a>
in Pennsylvania. More than a third of the students quickly perished
from tuberculosis, “died as though smitten with the plague,” the <em>Post</em> reported. Apaches lived in constant terror that more of their children would be taken from them and sent east.<br />
<div class="wp-caption alignright" id="attachment_9033" style="width: 410px;">
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carlisle_pupils.jpg"><img alt="" class=" wp-image-9033 " height="230" src="http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/files/2012/11/Carlisle_pupils-500x288.jpg" width="400" /></a><div class="wp-caption-text">
Indian
students sent to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania
died by the hundreds from infectious diseases. Photo: Wikipedia</div>
</div>
Geronimo and his fellow POWs were reunited with their families in 1888, when the <a href="http://www.chiricahuaapache.org/">Chiricahua Apaches</a> were moved to <a href="http://www.chiricahua-apache.com/chiricahua-apache-pow-history/contact/mount-vernon-barracks-al-1887-1904/good-indians-at-mount-vernon-barracks/">Mount Vernon Barracks</a>
in Alabama. But there, too, the Apaches began to perish—a quarter of
them from tuberculosis— until Geronimo and more than 300 others were
brought to <a href="http://www.fortsillapache-nsn.gov/">Fort Sill</a>,
Oklahoma, in 1894. Though still captive, they were allowed to live in
villages around the post. In 1904, Geronimo was given permission to
appear at the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_Purchase_Exposition">1904 St. Louis World’s Fair</a>, which included an “Apache Village” exhibit on the midway.<br />
He was presented as a living museum piece in an exhibit intended as a
“monument to the progress of civilization.” Under guard, he made bows
and arrows while Pueblo women seated beside him pounded corn and made
pottery, and he was a popular draw. He sold autographs and posed for
pictures with those willing to part with a few dollars for the
privilege.<br />
Geronimo seemed to enjoy the fair. Many of the exhibits fascinated
him, such as a magic show during which a woman sat in a basket covered
in cloth and a man proceeded to plunge the swords through the basket.
“I would like to know how she was so quickly healed and why the wounds
did not kill her,” Geronimo told one writer. He also saw a “white bear”
that seemed to be “as intelligent as a man” and could do whatever his
keeper instructed. “I am sure that no grizzly bear could be trained to
do these things,” he observed. He took his first ride on a Ferris wheel,
where the people below “looked no larger than ants.”<br />
In his dictated memoirs, Geronimo said that he was glad he had gone
to the fair, and that white people were “a kind and peaceful people.”
He added, “During all the time I was at the fair no one tried to harm me
in any way. Had this been among the Mexicans I am sure I should have
been compelled to defend myself often.”<br />
After the fair, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pawnee_Bill">Pawnee Bill’s Wild West</a>
show brokered an agreement with the government to have Geronimo join
the show, again under Army guard. The Indians in Pawnee Bill’s show were
depicted as “lying, thieving, treacherous, murderous” monsters who had
killed hundreds of men, women and children and would think nothing of
taking a scalp from any member of the audience, given the chance.
Visitors came to see how the “savage” had been “tamed,” and they paid
Geronimo to take a button from the coat of the vicious Apache “chief.”
Never mind that he had never been a chief and, in fact, bristled when he
was referred to as one.<br />
The shows put a good deal of money in his pockets and allowed him to
travel, though never without government guards. If Pawnee Bill wanted
him to shoot a buffalo from a moving car, or bill him as “the Worst
Indian That Ever Lived,” Geronimo was willing to play along. “The
Indian,” one magazine noted at the time, “will always be a fascinating
object.”<br />
In March 1905, Geronimo was invited to President Theodore Roosevelt’s
inaugural parade; he and five real Indian chiefs, who wore full
headgear and painted faces, rode horses down Pennsylvania Avenue. The
intent, one newspaper stated, was to show Americans “that they have
buried the hatchet forever.”<br />
<div class="wp-caption alignright" id="attachment_9034" style="width: 410px;">
<a href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3b03887/"><img alt="" class=" wp-image-9034 " height="298" src="http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/files/2012/11/Parade-500x373.png" width="400" /></a><div class="wp-caption-text">
Geronimo
(second from right, in front) and five Native American chiefs rode in
President Theodore Roosevelt’s Inauguration Day Parade in 1905. Photo:
Library of Congress</div>
</div>
After the parade, Geronimo met with Roosevelt in what the <em>New York Tribune</em>
reported was a “pathetic appeal” to allow him to return to Arizona.
“Take the ropes from our hands,” Geronimo begged, with tears “running
down his bullet-scarred cheeks.” Through an interpreter, Roosevelt told
Geronimo that the Indian had a “bad heart.” “You killed many of my
people; you burned villages…and were not good Indians.” The president
would have to wait a while “and see how you and your people act” on
their reservation.<br />
Geronimo gesticulated “wildly” and the meeting was cut short. “The
Great Father is very busy,” a staff member told him, ushering Roosevelt
away and urging Geronimo to put his concerns in writing. Roosevelt was
told that the Apache warrior would be safer on the reservation in
Oklahoma than in Arizona: “If he went back there he’d be very likely to
find a rope awaiting him, for a great many people in the Territory are
spoiling for a chance to kill him.”<br />
Geronimo returned to Fort Sill, where newspapers continued to depict
him as a “bloodthirsty Apache chief,” living with the “fierce
restlessness of a caged beast.” It had cost Uncle Sam more than a
million dollars and hundreds of lives to keep him behind lock and key,
the <em>Boston Globe</em> reported. But the <em>Hartford Courant</em>
had Geronimo “getting square with the palefaces,” as he was so crafty at
poker that he kept the soldiers “broke nearly all the time.” His
winnings, the paper noted, were used to help pay the cost of educating
Apache children.<br />
Journalists who visited him depicted Geronimo as “crazy,” sometimes
chasing sightseers on horseback while drinking to excess. His eighth
wife, it was reported, had deserted him, and only a small daughter was
watching after him.<br />
In 1903, however, Geronimo converted to Christianity and joined the
Dutch Reformed Church—Roosevelt’s church—hoping to please the president
and obtain a pardon. “My body is sick and my friends have thrown me
away,” Geronimo told church members. “I have been a very wicked man, and
my heart is not happy. I see that white people have found a way that
makes them good and their hearts happy. I want you to show me that way.”
Asked to abandon all Indian “superstitions,” as well as gambling and
whiskey, Geronimo agreed and was baptized, but the church would later
expel him over his inability to stay away from the card tables.<br />
He thanked Roosevelt (“chief of a great people”) profusely in his
memoirs for giving him permission to tell his story, but Geronimo never
was permitted to return to his homeland. In February 1909, he was thrown
from his horse one night and lay on the cold ground before he was
discovered after daybreak. He died of pneumonia on February 17.<br />
<div class="wp-caption alignleft" id="attachment_9035" style="width: 410px;">
<a href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3c24430/"><img alt="" class=" wp-image-9035" height="300" src="http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/files/2012/11/Worldsfair-500x375.png" width="400" /></a><div class="wp-caption-text">
Geronimo (center, standing) at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. Photo: Library of Congress</div>
</div>
The <em>Chicago Daily Tribune</em> ran the headline, “Geronimo Now a
Good Indian,” alluding to a quote widely and mistakenly attributed to
General Philip Sheridan. Roosevelt himself would sum up his feelings
this way: “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are
dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn’t like to
inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.”<br />
After a Christian service and a large funeral procession made up of
both whites and Native Americans, Geronimo was buried at Fort Sill.
Only then did he cease to be a prisoner of the United States.</div>
</div>
Rob Hoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02211809421832142963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246236922077831265.post-33106807208591319682012-05-17T22:00:00.001-07:002012-05-17T22:00:25.498-07:00The day they stopped Niagara Falls<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The day </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span>Niagara Falls</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span> ran dry: Newly discovered photos show the moment the iconic waterfall came to a standstill!</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Its
been 42 years, a previously unseen set of photos of the mighty Niagara
Falls reduced to nothing more than a barren cliff-top have surfaced. The
stark images reveal </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span>North America</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span> 's iconic - and most powerful - waterfall to be almost as dry as a desert.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">In June 1969, U.S. Engineers diverted the flow of the </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span>Niagara River</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span> away from the American side of the falls for several months.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><img alt="Description: FF9BC8989FCB4674AF2AEDEE02C21261@margPC" class="GH" height="410" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=0cd0d3d3fb&view=att&th=1375d96c7b59c710&attid=0.1.1&disp=emb&zw&atsh=1" width="634" /></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span lang="EN-CARRIBEAN"></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Stark: A completely dry </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span>Niagara</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span> Falls never seen before or since the six months in</span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">July 1969 when U.S. Engineers set about restructuring the American side of the twin landmark.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><img alt="Description: F9715957B9E94AD498B999E6A79CF91A@margPC" class="" height="417" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=0cd0d3d3fb&view=att&th=1375d96c7b59c710&attid=0.1.2&disp=emb&zw&atsh=1" width="633" /></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span lang="EN-CARRIBEAN"></span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Mountain of rubble: This set of photos only recently came to light when</span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Russ Glasson found them in a shoebox in his in-laws' </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span>Connecticut</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span> garage.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Their
plan was to remove the large amount of loose rock from the base of the
waterfall, an idea which they eventually abandoned due to expense in
November of that year. During the interim, they studied the riverbed and
mechanically bolted and strengthened a number of faults to delay the
gradual erosion of the </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span>American Falls</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span> .</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The
team, made up of U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, blew up their temporary
dam in November, 1969 and six million cubic feet of water once again
thundered over the falls' sides every minute.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Now,
after lying unseen for more than four decades, a set of images showing
the eerie calm at the American Falls that year have been unearthed by a
man from Connecticut.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><img alt="Description: CE6D6C70D0294F4E90EF80D462E0B8E6@margPC" height="407" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=0cd0d3d3fb&view=att&th=1375d96c7b59c710&attid=0.1.3&disp=emb&zw&atsh=1" width="634" /></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span lang="EN-CARRIBEAN"></span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Plan: The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers studied the riverbed and mechanically bolted and</span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">strengthened a number of faults to delay the gradual erosion of the </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span>American Falls</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span> .<span> </span><img alt="Description:" height="436" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=0cd0d3d3fb&view=att&th=1375d96c7b59c710&attid=0.1.4&disp=emb&zw&atsh=1" width="634" /></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span lang="EN-CARRIBEAN"></span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Historical moment: In order to stop the </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span>Niagara River</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span> from running over the American Falls,</span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">engineers constructed a dam consisting of 27,800 tons of rock, stopping the water for the first time ever.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Russ
Glasson recently stumbled across the pictures, which were taken by his
in-laws, and had been left in an old shoebox in their garage for over
four decades.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Mr.
Glasson said: 'My in-laws took these pictures during the six months
through June to November that the Army was working to improve the health
of the </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span>American Falls</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span> .'</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Two
rockslides from the plate of the falls in 1931 and 1954 had caused a
large amount of rock to be collected at the base. In 1965, reporters at a
local newspaper, Niagara Falls Gazette, revealed that the </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span>American Falls</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span> would eventually cease to flow and stop altogether if the rocks were not removed.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Four
years later, the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers were charged with
de-watering the falls to clean the river bed and to remove any loose
rock at the bottom of the falls.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Gradual deterioration: Two rockslides from the plate of the falls in 1931 and 1954</span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">had caused a large amount of rock to be collected at the base.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><img alt="Description: 03D4AD2E67E543C784C4D8C92AF57F92@margPC" class="" height="417" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=0cd0d3d3fb&view=att&th=1375d96c7b59c710&attid=0.1.5&disp=emb&zw&atsh=1" width="634" /></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span lang="EN-CARRIBEAN"></span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Eerie calm: The temporary dam can be seen in the top-right of this photograph.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><img alt="Description: 84B8EFEDA9944B4FAC462E15EAE8DF4C@margPC" height="433" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=0cd0d3d3fb&view=att&th=1375d96c7b59c710&attid=0.1.6&disp=emb&zw&atsh=1" width="634" /></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span lang="EN-CARRIBEAN"></span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Thunderous: The American Falls as they normally appear,</span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">with millions of gallons of water hurtling over the edge every minute.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">To achieve this the army had to build a 600ft dam across the </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span>Niagara River</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span>, which meant that 60,000 gallons of water that flowed every second was diverted over the larger </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span>Horseshoe Falls</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span> which flow entirely on the Canadian side of the border.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The dam itself consisted of 27,800 tons of rock, and then on </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span>June 12 1969</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span>, after flowing continuously for a long, long time, the </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span>American Falls</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span> stopped.Over the course of the next six months thousands of visitors flocked to the falls to witness the historic occasion.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Once
the engineers had removed the collected rocks from the falls base and
made geological testing to make safe the rest, the falls were re-watered
on November 25 in front of 2,650 onlookers.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><img alt="Description: 7B7E1F2AA8CD45929EB82558591FE7BC@margPC" class="" height="449" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=0cd0d3d3fb&view=att&th=1375d96c7b59c710&attid=0.1.7&disp=emb&zw&atsh=1" width="632" /></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span lang="EN-CARRIBEAN"></span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-left: 0.5in; margin-right: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></span></div>
</span>Rob Hoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02211809421832142963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246236922077831265.post-28970084834649486792012-05-16T15:18:00.002-07:002012-05-16T15:18:41.272-07:0011 Eponymous Brands and the People Behind Them<br />
<h2>
1. Adolph “Adi” Dassler – Adidas</h2>
<img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-126517" height="600" src="http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/adi-dassler-adidas.jpg" title="adi-dassler-adidas" width="560" /><br />
<em>© Schnoerrer/dpa/Corbis</em><br />
Adi and his brother Rudolph owned their own shoe company in Germany
during the 1920s and 30s. Their products were so popular, many of the
German competitors in the 1928 Olympics wore Dassler Brothers shoes. But
during WWII the brothers had a falling out. While both joined the Nazi
party, Rudolph was more fanatical and went off to fight, leaving Adi to
make shoes for the military. After the war ended, Rudolph left and
formed his own company, Puma. Adi then renamed the original company
after himself, and Adidas was born.<br />
<h2>
2. King Camp Gillette – Disposable Razor</h2>
<span id="more-126516"></span><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-126518" height="460" src="http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/king-camp-gillette-utopia.jpg" title="king-camp-gillette-utopia" width="560" /><br />
King realized early on that people liked things they could use for a
short time and then throw away. Since constantly sharpening your razor
was a pain, he decided to come up with a disposable one. After five
years of work he finally succeeded, and founded the Gillette Safety
Razor Company in 1901. King came up with the idea to give away the razor
for free and charge men for the blades. He also believed in a socialist
utopia, where all companies would be combined into one, which would be
owned by the public. He offered Teddy Roosevelt a $1 million salary to
be head of this theoretical company, but was turned down. He also
believed that everyone in the United States should live in one giant
city called Metropolis, which would be powered by Niagara Falls.<br />
<h2>
3. Candido Jacuzzi – Hot tubs</h2>
The seven Jacuzzi brothers emigrated from Italy to California in the
early 1900s. Once there they started coming up with innovations for the
big new craze: the airplane. Their biggest hit was the creation of the
first plane with an enclosed cabin, which the US Postal Service bought
to deliver mail. According to legend, their mother was worried about her
sons’ safety and eventually convinced the brothers to change jobs. They
started concentrating on hydraulic pumps for irrigation and hospital
use. In the late 1940s, Candido’s young son Kenneth started suffering
from arthritis. He received hydrotherapy at a hospital, but his father
decided his son needed to have access to it at home as well. He filed a
patent for his invention, but it wasn’t until another relative, Roy,
joined the business years later that they started selling their Jacuzzi
tubs to the public.<br />
<h2>
4. Charles Rudolph Walgreen – Drug stores</h2>
Today Walgreens pharmacies can be found in more than 8,000 locations
around the US. But originally, Charles had nothing to do with
pharmacies. He was working in a shoe factory in the late 1800s when he
lost part of a finger in an accident. The doctor who patched him up
managed to convince him to become an apprentice in a drug store.
Eventually he became a licensed pharmacist, but enlisted to fight in the
Spanish-American war before he could do anything with his new skills.
At the war’s end, he started opening pharmacies that also had other
amenities like over-the-counter goods and soda fountains. Soon Walgreens
were popular hangouts, and Charles owned a chain of hundreds of them
before his death in 1939.<br />
<h2>
5. Earl Tupper – Tupperware</h2>
Earl wasn’t always in plastics. Originally he was a landscaping man,
but the Great Depression put him out of business. He got a job at DuPont
and created a lightweight, flexible plastic, which the government then
used for gas masks during WWII. In 1948, ten years after he founded the
Tupperware Plastics Company, he was contacted by a woman named Brownie
Wise. At that time Tupperware was sold in stores, but Wise had started
selling it at women’s get-togethers to great success. She and Earl
joined forces and soon he pulled his entire line from shops and it was
sold exclusively at these “Tupperware Parties.”<br />
<h2>
6. Frank Zamboni – Ice Resurfacers</h2>
<img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-126519" height="431" src="http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/frank-zamboni.jpg" title="frank-zamboni" width="560" /><br />
<em>Image credit: <a href="http://www.zamboni.com/about/zamboni-archives/the-zamboni-story/">Zamboni.com</a></em><br />
Before household refrigerators were common, the ice making business
was booming. But in 1939, twelve years after Frank and his brother
started their ice block business, refrigerators were popular enough that
they saw little future in the venture. Stuck with many large
refrigeration units, they decided to open an ice rink. It was there that
Frank, who had no more than a 9th grade education, came up with a way
to resurface the ice. Originally it took three men an hour and a half to
get it done, but in 1949 he invented the precursor of the ice machine
we know today. Now one man could resurface a rink in ten minutes. Like
Xerox and Kleenex, Zamboni is a trademarked word that we now use to
refer to all ice resurfacing machines. In April 2012, the 10,000th
Zamboni ever sold was delivered to the Montreal Canadiens.<br />
<h2>
7. Dr. Klaus Märtens – Footwear</h2>
The Nazis were apparently very good at footwear. Like Adidas, Doc
Martens were designed during WWII by Klaus while he was on leave from
the German army due to an ankle injury. He experimented with making
better boots for himself, and when the war was ending and Germans
started looting from their own cities, he managed to get his hands on a
bunch of leather. When the war officially ended he pilfered more from
disused Luftwaffe air fields. He was surprised to find when he opened
his shops that 40% of the people who purchased his comfortable, durable
boots were housewives. Once his shoes were popular enough, an English
company bought the rights to distribute them in the UK. Since it was
only 1959 and feelings towards Germany were still negative, the name was
Anglicized to Doc Martens.<br />
<h2>
8. Orville Redenbacher – Popcorn</h2>
The creator of the most popular popcorn in the United States didn’t
even start selling it until he was almost 50 years old. Orville spent
most of his life breeding corn hybrids, tens of thousands of them, until
he found one that would pop 40% larger than normal corn. Since this
special corn, called “RedBow,” was more expensive, many distributors
were hesitant to buy it. Orville hired a Chicago marketing company for
$13,000. Their advice? Call the popcorn Orville Redenbacher’s and put
his picture on the label. While Orville was fond of saying his mother
came up with that idea for free, it worked and starting in the 1970s he
was appearing in dozens of popular television commercials and going on
chat shows to convince the public he was a real person.<br />
<h2>
9. Josiah Wedgwood – Pottery</h2>
<img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-126520" height="373" src="http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/man-brother.jpg" title="man-brother" width="332" /><br />
Josiah may be remembered today in his eponymous pottery, but his life
was far more exciting than that association would lead one to think. In
his day he was a prominent abolitionist, and his pottery company made a
medallion with the design of a black slave on his knees with the motto,
“Am I not a man and brother?” He produced large quantities of the
medallion and distributed them for free through the Society for the
Abolition of the Slave Trade. Fashionable women started wearing them as
jewelry and men smoked pipes with the image on the side. It became the
most widely recognized image of a black person during the 1700s. Sadly,
Josiah died before slavery was abolished in England. However, he also
has the distinction of being the grandfather of Charles Darwin.<br />
<h2>
10. William Henry “Boss” Hoover – Vacuums</h2>
Boss’s last name is so synonymous with vacuum cleaners that in the UK
it is both the go-to noun and verb; there they hoover the house with a
hoover. But it wasn’t Boss who came up with the idea. James Murray
Spangler invented the first upright vacuum in 1908 because his asthma
was exacerbated by the dust the carpet sweeper used at his work stirred
up. He was making one every 2-3 weeks when he loaned a model to his
cousin Susan Hoover. Her husband, Boss, was looking for a new business
venture since he was a leatherworker and the popularity of the car was
reducing people’s need for his goods. He seized the opportunity and
bought Spangler’s patent from him. But if only a few people had been
interested in Boss’s leather goods, absolutely no one was interested in
his weird sucking machine. Desperate, he put an ad in a popular magazine
allowing what was possibly the first ever “free at home trial.” The
gimmick worked and within four years the Hoover Company was an
international brand.<br />
<h2>
11. Linus Yale, Jr. – Locks</h2>
Linus was originally a gifted portrait painter. But in 1858, his
father died and Linus started working at the lock company his dad had
founded. Once there, Linus used his drawing skills to envision ever more
complex and secure locks. In order to make sure companies bought from
him and not his competitors, Linus learned how to pick their locks and
would demonstrate how easily they could be broken into at banks and
businesses. He died of a heart attack in <strike>1858</strike> 1868
while in the middle of negotiating the use of his locks in a new
skyscraper. Yale went on to be the #1 lock manufacturer in the US.<br />
<strong>* * *</strong><br />
There are plenty more where these came from. If there’s an eponymous
brand whose history you’d like to know more about, leave a comment and
we’ll talk about a sequel.<br />
<div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">
<br /></div>Rob Hoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02211809421832142963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246236922077831265.post-66692947946215583872012-05-08T19:27:00.000-07:002012-05-08T19:27:34.367-07:00The American Civil War was a very misunderstood historical event<span class="inline_editor_value">American Civil War, aka War Between
the States, aka the War of Northern Aggression, aka the War Between
Southern Confederacy and Northern States' Federal Government.<br /><br />1. First, it wasn't a civil war.<br /><br />It was
not a war between two parties trying to control the same government. It
was an attempt of the Southern States to secede from the Union. You may
say that it was a rebellion, but see the next part.<br /><br />2. The Southern States had the right to secede.<br /><br />The Constitution
(10th Amendment) reserved all rights for the States and their people
except those that were reserved for the Federal Government or were
explicitly denied to the States (right to coin money, right to form
international treaties, etc.). A right to secede from a union between
sovereign nations is a right that was not explicitly denied to the
States by the Constitution; nor was it reserved for the Federal
government (a right to expel a state from the Union). Therefore,
constitutionally, the States had that right.<br /><br />Were the States
sovereign nations before the signing of the Constitution? Historically,
after the Colonies broke away from the United Kingdom, they reverted to
the state of nature. Afterwards, they each re-formed into states, each
with its constitution and legislature. Afterwards, the States formed a
union, in which their sovereignty was preserved. (Also, what is the very
last thing that you see if you look at the back of the Constitution?
That's right: you see signatures of the representatives of the specific
States.) The Constitution was ratified as a contract between sovereign
nations and a government they were creating.<br /><br />Claiming that the
States had no right to secede is the same as claiming that when two
people enter into a contract or a treaty (without specified time
limits), they have no right to terminate the contract whenever they
wish. It contradicts the accepted practices of contracts.<br /><br />Therefore, the
Civil War was an attempt of the Southern States to secede from the
Union. It would be no different from, say, Spain deciding today that it
wants to secede from the European Union and EU invading Spain to make it
a "subject" of Brussels. I.e., your regular expansionist invasion.<br /><br />3. Was the war about slavery?<br /><br />Well, yes
and no. It was in the sense that the Southern States seceded when it
became clear that the Congress would be dominated by the anti-slavery
Northern States. But it's not so simple as to say that the war was a
crusade to end slavery in the South.<br /><br />First, Lincoln and many
other Northerners did not care about the slavery per se. They cared
about preserving the Union. Lincoln is known for saying that if he could
preserve the Union by freeing all the slaves, he would do that; if he
could do it by freeing half the slaves, he would do that; if he could do
it by freeing none of the slaves, he would do that too.<br /><br />Many Northern
abolitionists were in favor of letting the Southern states secede for
three reasons: a) they did not want to be in the same Union with the
states involved in the abominable practice, b) they believed (correctly)
that Southern states were adamantly pro-slavery due to the reasons of
honor and politics, c) they knew that the economic forces would make
slavery unprofitable very soon (as they did in many other countries).<br /><br />So, what was the war about? In no order of importance:<br /><br />a) Southern
States' rights and honor. Southerners felt that they had the right to
self-government in the areas that locally concerned the individual
states, not the Union altogether, and the the Federal government was
abusing its powers. Plus, the Southerners felt that the Northerners were
disdainful of the Southern culture and were trying to turn the
Southerners into second-class citizens. (Yes, I know it's ironic for
slave-owners to feel this way. I never claimed they were consistent.
Many of the Founding Fathers were also slave-owners and were also
inconsistent.)<br /><br />b) Money. The Northern States wanted to dominate
the Congress in order to be able to impose tariffs on the European
imports to "protect" Northern manufactured goods. European nations, in
retaliation, imposed tariffs on American exports, which were, for the
most part, agricultural products (mainly cotton) from the South. So, if
the Northern States controlled the Congress, they could make things
favorable for the Northern manufacturers and hurt Southern farmers.<br /><br />c) Northern
racism and economic interests. Many Northerners wanted slavery
abolished (both in the Southern States and in the Federal territories).
Not all of them had humanist motives. Many of them (including the author
of the famous Wilmot Proviso which would ban slavery in any territories
acquired from Mexico) wanted the labor markets available for the white
men.<br /><br />They were 19th-century version of modern-day opponents of
doing business with illegal immigrants and China. There are two reasons
to oppose that today: i) one can be concerned about the welfare of the
Mexicans and the Chinese, ii) one can be a racist and more concerned
about "bona fide Americans" getting the jobs. The same was the case in
the North in the 19th century. Many anti-slavery advocates wanted the
labor markets secured for white men and former slaves shipped out of the
country back to Africa or the Caribbean.<br /><br />d) Southern racism and
economic interest. Yes, obviously, there were Southerners who considered
the slaves to be non-humans and who had interest in keeping them
working in plantations, cotton gin or not. To ignore that would be
intellectually dishonest.<br /><br />4. Was the War worth it?<br /><br />This is
a complicated question. Obviously, the lives of many slaves became
better off as a result of the War. There is no denying it.<br /><br />Then again:
the War remains the bloodiest single conflict in the US history. US
remains the only Western nation to end slavery by killing a lot of its
own citizens. (Even in Russia the serfdom ended around the same time
peacefully.) Slavery was going to end anyway, and very soon: changing
economic realities (the invention of the cotton gin, etc.) would make
sure of that. Of course, the slaves might not be ok with waiting for
another few decades for the markets to change, but it is not clear that
all the murder of the soldiers and civilians was justified...<br /><br />Economically, the War (and the ensuing Restoration) devastated the South, and its effects are still felt.<br /><br />Politically, the
War was a case of freeing the slaves and enslaving the free. It
reversed the polarity between the Federal Government and the States.
While originally, the Federal Government was a government of enumerated
powers, whose sovereigns were the States (who could threaten to nullify
the Government's laws if they proved to be unconstitutional or threaten
to secede), after the war, it became clear that the ball was in the
Federal Government's court.<br /><br />The size and power of the Federal
Government, its involvement in people's personal lives, in the economy,
in all aspects of the society started growing and grows still. No
American today is free from the tyranny of the majority, one way or
another. While before, if one did not like conditions in one state, he
could move to another, today, the conditions are made more-or-less
uniform by the Federal tyranny. One's choice is to move to another
country, which is not as easy as to move, say, from Louisiana to
Massachusetts.<br /><br />Effectively, whatever gains in political freedom
for individuals and communities had been accomplished by the War for
Independence from Britain were reversed by the Civil War.</span><a class="edit inline_editor_edit suggested_edits" href="http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-misunderstood-historical-event/answer/Alexander-Flyax#" id="__w2_iSFJLsL_inline_editor_link"><span id="__w2_iSFJLsL_inline_editor_link_text"></span></a>Rob Hoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02211809421832142963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246236922077831265.post-51321615840139655772012-04-20T20:46:00.000-07:002012-04-20T20:53:05.065-07:00The 13 strangest composer deaths in classical music<div class="article-paging">
<br /></div>
<h3>
<b>Jean-Baptiste Lully
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</b><b>(1632–1687)</b> </h3>
This French Baroque master, the favourite opera of King Louis XIV,
died from a self-inflicted wound to his foot, which he stabbed with his
own pointed staff (used for keeping time) while conducting his <i>Te Deum</i>. Gangrene kicked in, spreading to his leg and finally killing him on March 22, 1687, three months after he had dealt the blow.<br />
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<b>
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Henry Purcell</b><b>(1659–1695)</b> </h2>
The English composer who penned the opera <i>Dido and Aeneas</i>
was taken too soon; he was just 36, and at the height of his career. He
died at his home in Dean’s Yard, Westminster, having caught a chill
after returning home late from the theatre (or tavern) one night to find
that his wife had locked him out… Or so the story goes. He is buried
adjacent to the organ in Westminster Abbey, and his <i>Funeral Music for Queen Mary </i>was played at his own funeral.<br />
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<b>
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Alexander Scriabin</b><b>(1871–1915)</b></h2>
Teenagers often say they could “just die” when acne takes over their
faces, but in Scriabin’s case this is precisely what happened. The
Russian composer-pianist made his last public appearance in St
Petersburg on April 2, 1915. Just a few days later he noticed a pimple
on his upper lip. On April 7 the furuncle was infected and Scriabin was
bedridden and febrile. By the 11<sup>th</sup>, well-wishers crowded the
staircase of his flat, for two types of blood poisoning had set in.
Scriabin died a few days later, with his manuscript containing sketches
for the <i>Misteriya </i>open on the piano.<br />
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<h2>
<b>
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Alban Berg</b>(1885–1935)</h2>
An insect bite was the undoing of this pupil of Schoenberg. A sting
gave rise to a carbuncle on his back; since the Bergs were poor his wife
attempted a home operation using a pair of scissors. As a result, the
Austrian composer died from blood poisoning on Christmas Eve, at the age
of 50.<br />
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<b>
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Anton </b><b>Webern</b>(1883–1945) </h2>
Berg wasn’t the only pupil of Schoenberg to die in particularly
unfortunate circumstances; fellow serialist composer Anton Webern also
met a tragic fate. It was September 15, 1945 – World War II had just
ended. Webern had stepped outside to enjoy a cigar without waking his
sleeping grandchildren, unaware that a curfew was being enforced by the
Allied occupying forces. He was shot dead by an American soldier who saw
him light up.<br />
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<b>
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Jean-Marie Leclair</b>(1697-1764)</h2>
This French Baroque composer and virtuoso violinist separated from
his second wife in 1758, moving into a bachelor pad in a rough
neighbourhood in Paris. There, in 1764, he was found stabbed to death.
The mystery of his murder was never solved but it is believed that his
estranged wife was responsible and stood to gain financially. Leclair’s
nephew, Guillaume-François Vial, was the primary suspect at the time.<br />
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<b>
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart</b><b>(1756 – 1791)</b></h2>
Mozart’s untimely death while he was composing his <i>Requiem</i>
has been the subject of rumour, speculation and wild accusations for
more than 200 years. One of the lesser-known legends to have done the
rounds is that Mozart was poisoned with mercury by the Freemasons,
assassinated for publicly revealing the secrets of their Craft in the
libretto and plot of his opera <i>The Magic Flute</i>. The claim persisted in Nazi-era Germany in a 1936 article entitled <i>Mozart’s Life and Violent Death, </i>which
aligned the Jewish faith to suspicious Masonic practices. However,
there is no evidence that Mozart’s efforts were met with disapproval
from the Freemasons.<br />
Another rumour has it that Franz Hofdemel, Mozart’s lodge brother,
murdered the composer for having an affair with his wife Magdalena, a
23-year-old student of Mozart’s. Hofdemel is said to have attacked the
pregnant Magdalena and committed suicide on the day of Mozart’s
funeral.<br />
The most frequently cited, romantic theory is that Antonio Salieri
was so insanely jealous of Mozart’s genius that he conspired to kill
him. Mozart endured 15 days of excruciating pain, swelling and
discomfort before his death, but his symptoms on the whole were not
consistent with poisoning.<br />
As there were no signs of foul play no autopsy was conducted,
historians and medical professionals today can only speculate on the
condition that claimed him. The most commonly held belief is that Mozart
died of rheumatic fever – indeed, there was a fever epidemic in Vienna
at the time – but in the past ten years a new theory has emerged: that
Mozart died from a disease caused by a parasitic worm called
trichinella, spread by tainted meat. The offending dish? Pork chops –
Mozart’s favourite, which he referred to in a letter dated October 7-8,
1791.<br />
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<h2>
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Charles Valentin Alkan<br />(1813-1888) </h2>
This French pianist-composer extraordinaire also had a keen interest
in the Bible and the Talmud. For many years it was believed that he died
a suitably erudite death, crushed under a pile of books after reaching
for the Talmud on a high shelf. But a recently discovered letter,
written by Alkan’s concierge, casts doubt on this anecdote. Apparently
the concierge discovered Alkan in his kitchen, trapped under a coat
rack, perhaps having suffered a stroke or heart attack. He was 74 at the
time of his death.<br />
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<b>
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Ernst Chausson</b>(1855-1899)</h2>
The French Romantic composer who penned the ravishing <i>Poème </i>for
violin was out for a bicycle ride outside his property in Limay when he
lost control on a downhill slope and crashed into a brick wall, dying
instantly.<br />
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<h2>
<strong>Hugo Wolf
</strong></h2>
<h2>
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</b>(1860-1903) </h2>
In early 1897, the great <i>lieder </i>composer began to show signs
of mental derangement brought on by his syphilis, forcing him to stop
composing altogether. After an attempt to drown himself, he admitted
himself into an insane asylum, where he died in 1903 at the age of 43.<br />
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<h2>
<b>Enrique Granados
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</b>(1867–1916)</h2>
At the height of his success, during WWI, the Spanish nationalist
composer was invited was invited by President Woodrow Wilson to give a
piano recital at the White House. When Granados and his wife missed the
boat back to Spain, they travelled to England, then boarding the
“Sussex” ferry to take them on to France. On March 24, 1916, while
crossing the English Channel, the Sussex was hit by a German U-boat
torpedo. Granados, who had a life-long fear of the ocean, drowned after
he jumped out of his lifeboat in a valiant but futile attempt to save
his wife. <br />
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<h2>
<b>
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Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky</b>(1840–1893) </h2>
Tchaikovsky's death remains a mystery to this day. He fell ill just
days after conducting the premiere of his deeply personal Sixth
Symphony, the <i>Pathéthique. </i>Eyewitnesses including his brother
Modest suggest that he had taken a "fateful sip of unboiled water" that
led to cholera. But it is widely believed that the Russian composer had
been having an illicit relationship with a young nobleman he was
tutoring. In 1980 musicologist Aleksandra Orlova published a theory
proposing that Tchaikovsky committed suicide rather than live with the
scandal of th<br />
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<h2>
<b>Claude Vivier
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</b>(1948–1983) </h2>
With the murder of Montreal-born composer Claude Vivier, a student of
Stockhausen, the music world lost one of the most original voices to
emerge in the late 20<sup>th</sup> century. Vivier was 34 when he was
fatally stabbed in his apartment by a male prostitute he met in a bar.
On the worktable was the manuscript of the composer’s final, incomplete
work, <i>Glaubst du an die Unsterblichkeit der Seele?</i> (Do You
Believe in the Immortality of the Soul?) In this hauntingly prophetic
dramatised monologue, Vivier describes a journey on the Metro during
which he becomes strongly attracted to a young man. The music ends
abruptly after the sung line, “Then he removed a dagger from his jacket
and stabbed me through the heart.”<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/RdGCdlDIcQQ" width="560"></iframe>Rob Hoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02211809421832142963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246236922077831265.post-76407200579879498832012-04-20T20:15:00.001-07:002012-04-20T20:15:40.838-07:00Titanic: The final messages from a stricken ship<span class="byline">
<span class="byline-name">By Sean Coughlan</span>
<span class="byline-title">BBC News</span>
</span>
<br />
<div class="caption full-width">
<img alt="The Carpathia rescuing Titanic passengers" height="351" src="http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/59563000/jpg/_59563473_carpathia.jpg" width="624" />
<span style="width: 624px;">The Carpathia was one of the ships that received the Titanic's calls for help</span>
</div>
<div class="embedded-hyper">
<a class="hidden" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17631595#story_continues_1">Continue reading the main story</a>
<div class="hyperpuff">
<h2>
<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine/">In today's Magazine</a></h2>
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<a class="story" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17708761" rel="published-1334964563335">My dad, Bob Marley</a>
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<a class="story" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17794099" rel="published-1334969999030">News tweets: Tupac, Secret Service and Seacrest</a>
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<li>
<a class="story" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17790786" rel="published-1334965216348">French candidates recall glorious past</a>
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<a class="story" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17762034" rel="published-1334883281810">Are language cops losing war against 'wrongly' used words?</a>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<div class="introduction" id="story_continues_1">
On
the night the Titanic struck an iceberg, a network of wireless
operators on ships and land stations frantically communicated with each
other across the expanses of the North Atlantic in an effort to mount a
rescue mission. The surviving messages form a real-time record of the
events of that night. </div>
The story of the Titanic is barnacled with myths and legends. <br />
It has become part of the popular imagination, a symbol for the most epic and glamorous failure. It is tragedy with tea dances.<br />
But there is really only one first-hand, real-time record of
what happened that night - the collection of wireless messages sent
between the Titanic and the other ships which hurriedly tried to
organise a rescue operation, during that freezing night in April 1912. <br />
It is a telegraphic narrative showing how the Titanic had
been given warnings of ice by other ships - and which records the
increasingly frantic calls for assistance after the collision with the
huge iceberg.<br />
And to mark the Titanic's centenary, the BBC World Service's <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00q89fy" title="Titanic - in her own words">Discovery programme</a> is broadcasting an unusual re-creation of these conversations.<br />
<div class="story-feature wide ">
<a class="hidden" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17631595#story_continues_2">Continue reading the main story</a> <h2>
Find out more</h2>
<div class="caption body-narrow-width">
<img alt="Titanic Lifeboats" height="171" src="http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/59564000/jpg/_59564983_lifeboat.jpg" width="304" />
</div>
Titanic - In Her Own Words, a Discovery special on the BBC
World Service is presented by Sean Coughlan. Transmission times and
dates can be found <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00q89fy">here</a>. <br />
</div>
<div id="story_continues_2">
Audio artist Susanne Weber has used speech synthesis software to translate these Morse messages into spoken words.</div>
These are mechanical voices recreating the exchange of
wireless messages, rather than actors performing a script, and it
produces an eerie representation of how these overlapping messages
crackled out over the airwaves.<br />
It is something like hearing the urgent and confused text messages sent from a disaster.<br />
Unlike in the Hollywood films of the tragedy, these wireless
messages are stoically understated. Copied out in neat copperplate
handwriting, and kept on the ships that had been in contact with
Titanic, they are the actual words of the crew and passengers.<br />
It's the Titanic in her own words.<br />
Wireless was still a relatively young technology at the time of the Titanic's maiden voyage. <br />
The Marconi company, the Edwardian equivalent of a top
technology brand, had put its wireless operators on board some of the
more prestigious ships.<br />
The Titanic, as the showcase of an ambitious, optimistic era, had the biggest and best wireless equipment in the world.<br />
It was still something of a novelty and much of the initial
wireless traffic was from first class passengers sending messages to
their friends, rather like text messages showing off about a glamourous
trip.<br />
<div class="caption body-narrow-width">
<img alt="Guglielmo Marconi at work in the wireless room of his yacht Electra" height="228" src="http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/59564000/jpg/_59564814_marconi.jpg" width="304" />
<span style="width: 304px;">Italian electrical engineer Guglielmo Marconi's equipment was on board many prestigious ships</span>
</div>
"Hello Boy. Dining with you tonight in spirit, heart with you
always. Best love, Girl," read one message sent on to New York, the
Titanic's intended destination.<br />
A message sent on to Los Angeles said: "No sickness. All well. Notify all interested in poker."<br />
"Fine voyage, fine ship," wrote another, unaware of the awful irony of how that might later sound.<br />
The wireless operators sending these messages were
independent young men of the modern age, who had been recruited with the
promise of escaping "blind alley careers".<br />
They chatted to wireless operators in other ships in a jaunty, mock public school slang, calling each other "old man".<br />
As well as letting passengers send personal messages, they provided the first wireless news service for ships. <br />
As the Titanic crossed the Atlantic, the news headlines were
about industrial unrest on the railways and a high-profile murder in
France.<br />
<div class="caption body-width">
<img alt="Message received by the Olympic" height="261" src="http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/59564000/jpg/_59564812_titanic.jpg" width="464" />
<span style="width: 464px;">A message from the Olympic reports that it has received word from the Titanic </span>
</div>
But the wireless was also beginning to be used for more serious purposes.<br />
Ships gave each other safety information - and the Titanic
received detailed advice about the location of icebergs - or "bergs,
growlers and field ice" as one ship's captain described them.<br />
Investigations after the sinking would never satisfactorily establish why these warnings had been ignored.<br />
The senior wireless operator, Jack Phillips, had still been
sending passengers' messages when the ship struck an iceberg. The
collision was described as sounding like the tearing of calico.<br />
With only enough room in the lifeboats for half the
passengers and crew, the Titanic's captain turned to his only lifeline -
the wireless - and asked the two Marconi operators to call for
assistance.<br />
<div class="story-feature wide ">
<a class="hidden" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17631595#story_continues_3">Continue reading the main story</a> <h2>
The famous SOS</h2>
<div class="caption body-narrow-width">
<img alt="Artist's impression" height="171" src="http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/59565000/jpg/_59565645_titanicfactbox.jpg" width="304" />
</div>
Wireless operators originally used Marconi's "CQD" distress
signal. "CQ" was the signal to stop transmission and pay attention. The
"D" was added to signal distress. In 1906 the International Radio
Telegraphic Convention in Berlin created the signal "SOS" for summoning
assistance. The letters were chosen for their simplicity in Morse Code -
three dots, three dashes and three dots. While the "SOS" superseded
"CQD" in 1908 Marconi operators rarely used it. It became standard
after the sinking of the Titanic. <br />
<ul class="links-list">
<li><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/titanic/5047.shtml">Survivors of the Titanic - I was there</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div id="story_continues_3">
The distress signal used by
Marconi operators - CQD - boomed out over the Atlantic. The wireless
operators joked they may as well also try another new distress signal
that had been introduced - SOS - because they might never get a chance
to use it again.</div>
While the lifeboats were lowered, with awful goodbyes between
husbands, wives and children, the wireless operators stuck to their
task.<br />
"Come at once. We have struck a berg. It's a CQD, old man," the Titanic called to another ship, the Carpathia.<br />
"We have struck an iceberg and sinking by the head," she told a German ship, the Frankfurt.<br />
The Titanic's messages caused consternation and disbelief among other ships.<br />
They called back to the Titanic struggling to grasp what was
happening, then urgently forwarded the distress signals in the hope that
someone would be near enough to help.<br />
It was like trying to organise a rescue by Twitter, with
operators trying to make sense of the stream of sometimes contradictory
information.<br />
"We are putting passengers off in small boats. Women and
children in boats. Cannot last much longer. Losing power," said the
Titanic as the situation grew ever more desperate.<br />
"This is Titanic. CQD. Engine room flooded."<br />
<div class="caption body-narrow-width">
<img alt="The Titanic's Captain Edward Smith" height="171" src="http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/59564000/jpg/_59564986_captaindog.jpg" width="304" />
<span style="width: 304px;">The Titanic's captain Edward Smith gave the orders for the distress signals to be sent out</span>
</div>
In response her sister ship, the Olympic called back: "Am lighting up all boilers as fast as we can."<br />
There were also flashes of anger in the confusion. "You
fool... keep out," the Titanic barked at a ship almost 200 miles away
who had interrupted to inquire: "What is the matter with you?"<br />
The last recorded messages are increasingly desperate and
fragmented - although a shore station officer following the exchanges
reported there was "never a tremor" in the Morse tapped out by Jack
Phillips.<br />
"Come quick. Engine room nearly full," was sent from the Titanic only a few short minutes before the ship finally sank.<br />
When the Titanic fell silent, the chasing ships carried on calling out for news, co-ordinating the rescue of the survivors. <br />
And the wireless became the only way for survivors to contact their families.<br />
"Meet me dock with two hundred dollars, underwear, cap, big
coat - am well but slightly frozen," messaged one survivor from the
Carpathia rescue ship.<br />
"Completely destitute, no clothes," said one another. Words cost money - and a masterpiece of brevity reported: "Safe, Bert."<br />
<div class="caption body-width">
<img alt="Message by Jack Phillips" height="261" src="http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/59564000/jpg/_59564807_phillipsmessage.jpg" width="464" />
<span style="width: 464px;">One of the messages sent by Jack Phillips says the ship is 'sinking fast'</span>
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These poignant, first-hand reactions to the disaster had been
gathered in an archive by John Booth, a Titanic historian and expert on
old prints. But many were sold off at auction in the early 1990s.<br />
Jack Phillips did not survive the sinking. But his heroism,
staying at his post after being released from his duty by the captain,
became an enduring part of the Titanic story.<br />
Not least because one of the most influential templates for
all future Titanic stories came from Harold Bride, his junior wireless
operator.<br />
Bride survived on an upturned lifeboat and then sold his story to the New York Times.<br />
His story was a global media sensation, setting the tone of
heroic self sacrifice, with the first accounts of the band playing while
the ship sank, with tales of selflessness and cowardice.<br />
And he commemorated the role of Jack Phillips, unflinching,
even when he knew better than anyone else that there was no chance of a
rescue ship arriving in time.<br />
"I will never live to forget the work of Phillips during the last awful 15 minutes," said Bride.<br />
"I suddenly felt a great reverence to see him standing there sticking to his work while everybody else was raging about."Rob Hoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02211809421832142963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246236922077831265.post-41561252143801142142012-04-20T20:12:00.002-07:002012-04-20T20:12:02.865-07:00How Marilyn Monroe changed Ella Fitzgerald’s life<div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style ">
<a class="atc_s addthis_button_compact" href=""><span></span></a><a class="addthis_button_expanded" href="http://groovenotes.org/2012/03/22/how-ella-fitzgerald-and-marilyn-monroe-changed-each-others-lives/#" title="View more services">90</a>
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<a href="http://groovenotes.org/2012/03/22/how-ella-fitzgerald-and-marilyn-monroe-changed-each-others-lives/marilyn-and-ella-2/" rel="attachment wp-att-4040"><img alt="" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-4040" height="300" src="http://groovenotes.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/marilyn-and-ella1-300x300.png" title="marilyn and ella" width="300" /></a>If
asked “Who played an important role in the musical career of Ella
Fitzgerald?” you might respond with names like Chick Webb, Louis
Armstrong, Norman Granz, and Dizzy Gillespie.<br />
The name Marilyn Monroe (who passed away 50 years ago this August), however, might not come to mind.<br />
While touring in the ’50s under the management of Norman Granz, Ella,
like many African-American musicians at the time, faced significant
adversity because of her race, especially in the Jim Crow states. Granz
was a huge proponent of civil rights, and insisted that all of his
musicians be treated equally at hotels and venues, regardless of race.<br />
Despite his efforts, there were many roadblocks and hurdles put in to
place, especially for some of the more popular African-American
artists. Here is one story of Ella’s struggles (as written in <a href="http://www.chicagojazz.com/magazine/the-politics-of-jazz-ii-333.html" target="_blank">chicagojazz.com</a>):<br />
<blockquote>
Once, while in Dallas touring for the Philharmonic, a
police squad irritated by Norman’s principles barged backstage to hassle
the performers. They came into Ella’s dressing room, where band members
Dizzy Gillespie and Illinois Jacquet were shooting dice, and arrested
everyone. “They took us down,” Ella later recalled, “and then when we
got there, they had the nerve to ask for an autograph.”</blockquote>
Across the country, black musicians, regardless of popularity, were
often limited to small nightclubs, having to enter through the back of
the house. Similar treatment was common at restaurants and hotels.<br />
<strong>Enter Marilyn Monroe</strong><br />
During the ’50s, one of the most popular venues was Mocambo in
Hollywood. Frank Sinatra made his Los Angeles debut at Mocambo in 1943,
and it was frequented by the likes of Clark Gable, Charlie Chaplin,
Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Lana Turner.<br />
Ella Fitzgerald was not allowed to play at Mocambo because of her
race. Then, one of Ella’s biggest fans made a telephone call that quite
possibly changed the path of her career for good. Here, Ella tells the
story of how Marilyn Monroe changed her life:<br />
<blockquote>
“<em>I owe Marilyn Monroe a real debt … she personally
called the owner of the Mocambo, and told him she wanted me booked
immediately, and if he would do it, she would take a front table every
night. She told him – and it was true, due to Marilyn’s superstar status
– that the press would go wild. The owner said yes, and Marilyn was
there, front table, every night. The press went overboard. After that, I
never had to play a small jazz club again. She was an unusual woman – a
little ahead of her times. And she didn’t know it.</em>”</blockquote>
<strong>Learning from Ella</strong><br />
Ella had an influence on Marilyn as well. Monroe’s singing had a
tendency to be overshadowed by dress-lifting gusts of wind and the
flirtatious “Happy Birthday, Mr. President,” not to mentions her movies
and marriage to Joe DiMaggio. But years prior to the Mocambo phone call,
Monroe was studying the recordings of Ella.<br />
In fact, it was rumored that a vocal coach of Monroe instructed her
to purchase Fitzgerald’s recordings of Gershwin music, and listen to it
100 times in a row.<br />
Continued study of Ella actually turned Marilyn into a relatively
solid singer for about a decade, but again became overlooked as her
famous birthday tribute song to JFK in 1962 ends up being the vocal
performance that is widely remembered.Rob Hoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02211809421832142963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246236922077831265.post-36000188277079381482012-04-12T17:05:00.001-07:002012-04-12T17:05:43.068-07:00We will never see this againHarry Truman was a different kind of President. He probably made as many, or more important decisions regarding our nation's history as any of the other 42 Presidents preceding him. However, a measure of his greatness may rest on what he did after he left the White House.
The only asset he had when he died was the house he lived in, which was in Independence Missouri .. His wife had inherited the house from her mother and father and other than their years in the White House, they lived their entire lives there.
When he retired from office in 1952 his income was a U.S. Army pension reported to have been $13,507.72 a year. Congress, noting that he was paying for his stamps and personally licking them, granted him an 'allowance' and, later, a retroactive pension of $25,000 per year.
After President Eisenhower was inaugurated, Harry and Bess drove home to Missouri by themselves. There was no Secret Service following them.
When offered corporate positions at large salaries, he declined, stating, "You don't want me. You want the office of the President, and that doesn't belong to me. It belongs to the American people and it's not for sale."
Even later, on May 6, 1971, when Congress was preparing to award him the Medal of Honor on his 87th birthday, he refused to accept it, writing, "I don't consider that I have done anything which should be the reason for any award, Congressional or otherwise."
As president he paid for all of his own travel expenses and food.
Modern politicians have found a new level of success in cashing in on the Presidency, resulting in untold wealth. Today, many in Congress also have found a way to become quite wealthy while enjoying the fruits of their offices. Political offices are now for sale (cf. Illinois ).
Good old Harry Truman was correct when he observed, "My choices in life were either to be a piano player in a whore house or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference!Rob Hoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02211809421832142963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246236922077831265.post-89957807546861915502012-04-12T08:32:00.001-07:002012-04-12T08:32:02.906-07:00December 7, 1941 A day which will live in infamy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7ae_QDiN2vQLR9ETC_vYgCTTTJVV2TrJdQWEpN3n8f5QnG57rO09ucJOyfL4QCdVOjKRA8rfh9yfKxrSXPrRJ4TjjcQtMzcXznUDc9hF8aYJtlSXD6vC_73z6shnICBgWdzadyHsMwvph/s1600/pacific006.sJPG_950_2000_0_75_0_50_50..JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="317" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7ae_QDiN2vQLR9ETC_vYgCTTTJVV2TrJdQWEpN3n8f5QnG57rO09ucJOyfL4QCdVOjKRA8rfh9yfKxrSXPrRJ4TjjcQtMzcXznUDc9hF8aYJtlSXD6vC_73z6shnICBgWdzadyHsMwvph/s400/pacific006.sJPG_950_2000_0_75_0_50_50..JPG" /></a></div>Rob Hoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02211809421832142963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246236922077831265.post-63910156352437522212012-03-27T16:47:00.001-07:002012-03-27T16:49:14.435-07:00Newly Discovered Mozart Piece Performed<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ShL50Z079og" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />A piano work experts attribute to Mozart as a child prodigy (it is believed to have been written when he was as young as 10) was performed for the first time since it was found last year after apparently being left in an attic for centuries. The lively 84-bar passage was played on the composer's piano in a room of his Salzburg home by virtuoso Florian Birsak.<br /><br />The Mozarteum Salzburg Foundation, which staged the event, said the manuscript was found last summer as part of a 160-page book of handwritten piano music at the attic of a house in Tyrol was being cleared from centuries of detritus.Rob Hoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02211809421832142963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246236922077831265.post-69934842359587531832012-03-08T06:40:00.005-08:002012-03-08T07:27:25.707-08:00The Harrowing Lives of Child Miners in the Early 1900s<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTfVNa-mtufqxZekuRlf5w_JyMAjNPLspXsITQA8-vanY-xcCVTbuMofVOCs48KDMJyrW3gIHt0BD_P-cCm4ojbMuIvYZn7HK5sCuQLRmYly1O6zhQzlTmGbboKN0q_KmV_kgZYf64dhOq/s1600/55-minersjpg.img_assist_custom-600x432.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 288px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTfVNa-mtufqxZekuRlf5w_JyMAjNPLspXsITQA8-vanY-xcCVTbuMofVOCs48KDMJyrW3gIHt0BD_P-cCm4ojbMuIvYZn7HK5sCuQLRmYly1O6zhQzlTmGbboKN0q_KmV_kgZYf64dhOq/s400/55-minersjpg.img_assist_custom-600x432.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5717548242402020386" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh7oF4CQWAxAFSEj-lfQJaev04XGpcKyxAfAMxjeIhBClfzdTouDAJL5-26x4MvAxnIVNZHrC0RVqPYxafCopTiKwdCuxI_XMZ72-_w9QS2m5Pyw77Hr2h4t3gusTmpVlLW-3lXdbqnbFN/s1600/19frankjpg.img_assist_custom-600x406.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 271px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh7oF4CQWAxAFSEj-lfQJaev04XGpcKyxAfAMxjeIhBClfzdTouDAJL5-26x4MvAxnIVNZHrC0RVqPYxafCopTiKwdCuxI_XMZ72-_w9QS2m5Pyw77Hr2h4t3gusTmpVlLW-3lXdbqnbFN/s400/19frankjpg.img_assist_custom-600x406.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5717548239484823858" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCfhQwZQNE4fm4oSBIz8HQnbdhUkHsVgjz1FrFywAQFg620cRUBpF7yEhOfMsFx7856t0lmSaKFJaLSANNE0cC1FKZxR6MNyzazyTUHIhUMBE19p9dMCM4rt8yDMp3AlffGE1tAekeolPt/s1600/18boysmulesjpg.img_assist_custom-600x418.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 279px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCfhQwZQNE4fm4oSBIz8HQnbdhUkHsVgjz1FrFywAQFg620cRUBpF7yEhOfMsFx7856t0lmSaKFJaLSANNE0cC1FKZxR6MNyzazyTUHIhUMBE19p9dMCM4rt8yDMp3AlffGE1tAekeolPt/s400/18boysmulesjpg.img_assist_custom-600x418.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5717548235720080770" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGCWmYnACiy982KNXKxA6EPgFSCU3EerddXQ2_BXAGy61n5qPGzE7aYd5qg6tKnuJhFsaRPlq6Mh1Wr2zO56JeBCYzGahk6TLAE4M-qKBPsIrBWsbluatTTl5tLBeXo75Emmo-pVk5K4Bs/s1600/17driversjpg.jpg"><img style="display:block; 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margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 280px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK1E7-pqdwDgwqT7Eb77l-6GDAVEjBX6fsxGil2sqRqWWPl3adPqin_93bteemtLGxAmMReLtYYOsxw6kl58N3h5sxRx88guGU0Hw85UL9zzuh6bzGAG8W77MjMTLw3sK8ZHGnRsrrIoeS/s400/6trapper-boyjpg.img_assist_custom-600x420.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5717547560898602658" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx_-D5CKwWn-czJnnnHpJNBo0q2ELraJ6gRXp2tUPrc6dgVC9PZb8c15r4uX2YN204OOlwQ1pgeSvNIfiAN43N_KhXbooYYdZ0DXyIE-ugZznjt1JpcrY9C_iI_pYoJbRv72_-W9i3OEik/s1600/4mining-boysjpg.img_assist_custom-600x429.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 286px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx_-D5CKwWn-czJnnnHpJNBo0q2ELraJ6gRXp2tUPrc6dgVC9PZb8c15r4uX2YN204OOlwQ1pgeSvNIfiAN43N_KhXbooYYdZ0DXyIE-ugZznjt1JpcrY9C_iI_pYoJbRv72_-W9i3OEik/s400/4mining-boysjpg.img_assist_custom-600x429.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5717547554631817922" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLjXPDai81e7Ykv7VKWlIe3KeSvvYsxQGuLuGTM1xl6Nsgw7dq1AjgMt150wfyycjL8JgpsQ3Kdd8GKmyz-dFivAV8qhr1l90W3zRFGyzyLsTmNdkaD0ldb00U-dH8TfPe7qtQrIy6kQAf/s1600/3trapper-boyjpg.img_assist_custom-600x423.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 282px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLjXPDai81e7Ykv7VKWlIe3KeSvvYsxQGuLuGTM1xl6Nsgw7dq1AjgMt150wfyycjL8JgpsQ3Kdd8GKmyz-dFivAV8qhr1l90W3zRFGyzyLsTmNdkaD0ldb00U-dH8TfPe7qtQrIy6kQAf/s400/3trapper-boyjpg.img_assist_custom-600x423.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5717547551614915874" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs6hKF4nqH2eCYwKvYPL0FvCAhdpROF1CFgd6za1dY6okX1y3cxVjQnD7V6b9gTcUvi6gMPpIYISDMUeDp8ulrniRzJ5INCNf4xJ_eTrj4Lwott0x3IjnKOvP976WmM961uRN-QGU6EZN5/s1600/2trapper-boyjpg.img_assist_custom-600x428.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 286px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs6hKF4nqH2eCYwKvYPL0FvCAhdpROF1CFgd6za1dY6okX1y3cxVjQnD7V6b9gTcUvi6gMPpIYISDMUeDp8ulrniRzJ5INCNf4xJ_eTrj4Lwott0x3IjnKOvP976WmM961uRN-QGU6EZN5/s400/2trapper-boyjpg.img_assist_custom-600x428.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5717547542563994082" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2c0MBa_ecdUmC975HiQ0LbBmj41vg4mwzXYdYSzaHo7lwdNN_PLd1JK6ORfS8a_TM_8-YRnMG7NIl2TNPoDfdoZ-O5CWXSYODUJ35euxZIdWLQ_xVy1O_OxpUqG6EbIDwqAu7-mIWTZz0/s1600/7pickerjpg.img_assist_custom-600x434.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 289px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2c0MBa_ecdUmC975HiQ0LbBmj41vg4mwzXYdYSzaHo7lwdNN_PLd1JK6ORfS8a_TM_8-YRnMG7NIl2TNPoDfdoZ-O5CWXSYODUJ35euxZIdWLQ_xVy1O_OxpUqG6EbIDwqAu7-mIWTZz0/s400/7pickerjpg.img_assist_custom-600x434.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5717547562446863602" /></a><br />A young trapper boy inside Turkey Knob Mine in MacDonald, West Virginia. His job was to open and close the wooden trap doors for the mining cars being shunted through.<br /><br />“Watch out!” the boy shouted as his workmate’s hand came into contact with the mouth of the coal crusher. Too late – the unfortunate lad’s hand got caught and sucked into the machinery. Three of those working the crusher jumped to help, pulling out the boy’s arm, but by then it had been ground to little more than a mangled, bloody mess.<br /><br />“Shouldn’t have dozed off using the crusher,” said the foreman as men carried off the screaming victim. “Get back to it or you’ll be next,” he warned the ten other boys breaking coal who had momentarily stopped their labor. The breaker boys bent their aching backs over the tipple once more. “If he doesn’t make it, who’ll feed his mother and sisters?” one of them thought, blinking back tears. <br />The scenario just described may be imagined, but scenes just like it were the harsh reality for many people – not least young boys forced by poverty and circumstance into risking their lives each day in mines across the United States, many of them working thousands of feet beneath the surface.<br /><br />Coal mining was closely linked to the Industrial Revolution – which continued into the early 20th century in America – as it was the energy generated from coal that powered the steam engines of the era. As mining developed, it became an industry based less on manual pick-and-shovel labor, instead relying more on machinery – like the coal-cutting machines invented the 1880s. Yet, while such inventions reduced the number of workers needed in the pits, for the men – and boys – left toiling underground, many hardships and dangers remained. <br />In the US, coal mining dominated regions like the Allegheny and Appalachian Mountains, both economically and culturally, and Wyoming, northern Maryland, West Virginia and Pennsylvania were all notable for their coal-mining activities. As we can begin to see in these images of mining in the latter two states as well as Tennessee, the industry played on important part in shaping local identity and tradition in various parts of the country. However, as part of this, boys – valued down in the shafts for their small stature, nimble fingers and the lower wages they could command – had a mix of tough and hazardous tasks to fulfil.<br />Breaker boys, had the job of separating, by hand, lumps of coal from slate, rocks, clay and other debris. Among the very youngest of the boys set to work in the mines, they had to be 12 years of age – at least, officially they did, though the law stipulating this was only passed in 1885 in Pennsylvania. Moreover, submitting fake records, parents apparently sent boys to work who were as young as five or six. Bosses can’t have scrutinized the situation very closely, either – indeed, they too were known to forge documentation, eager for all the cheap labor they could get.<br /><br />Despite working above ground, breaker boys were exposed to large quantities of coal dust, which settled everywhere from their faces, eyes and ears to their hands and lungs. What’s more, as we can see, the breaker boys’ working environments were far from well ventilated. And with dust in the air being breathed in constantly, serious and chronic respiratory illnesses were rampant.<br />Another of the occupational hazards faced by the breaker boys was known as ‘red tips’ – a skin condition characterized by swollen and bloody fingers resulting from repeated exposure to the coal’s sulfur content. Wearing gloves, which would have alleviated the problem, was not an option: employers believed that they would affect the boys’ dexterity, and thus their productivity. <br />As if damaged lungs and fingers weren’t serious enough problems, breaker boys also suffered from hearing loss as a result of prolonged exposure to the deafening noises of the machinery – especially the coal crushers. These same machines were also singularly dangerous in other respects: one careless movement could cost an overworked and exhausted young boy dearly, with fingers, hands and even lives lost in conveyor belts, gears and other devices. As one source describes it: “Occasionally a boy fell into the coal crusher and was ground to pieces.” A starkly chilling image. <br />The working conditions in the coal mining industry were clearly bad enough above ground. Underground, it was a living hell. Nippers, or trappers, had the apparently simple – not to say mind-numbing – job of opening the doors for the mining cars trundling through, yet the young boys were in grave danger of being run over by the cars in the dark should their attention lapse for a second. <br />Fifteen-year-old trapper boy Vance got paid $0.75 for a 10-hour shift at a coal mine in West Virginia. Photographer Lewis Hine says: “On account of the intense darkness in the mine, the hieroglyphics on the door were not visible until the plate was developed.”<br /><br />Gary, a city in West Virginia – and site of some of the scenes shown here – was named after attorney Elbert Gary, founder of U.S. Steel. This company not only built the soon-to-be booming coal mining town around it but was also once the world’s biggest steel producer, controlling two thirds of steel production in 1901. Coal, by the way, is essential in the steel industry as a fuel used to extract iron from iron ore. And where there was coal, there were miners – and boys ripe for being exploited in these roles. <br />Mining in Gary, WV has historically been the largest local employer – shaping people’s lives and economic security. Over time, however, it suffered the same fate that has befallen many such mining towns. Since U.S. Steel closed down its Gary Operations in 1986, the area became plagued by poverty and high unemployment. Ironic that it was impoverished conditions which drove many of the young workers and boys down the mines in places like Gary in the first place.<br /><br />James O’Dell,was a ‘greaser’ and ‘coupler’ at Cross Mountain Mine for Knoxville Iron Co., located close to Coal Creek, TN. Pushing the heavily loaded cars looks like backbreaking work, and Lewis Hine estimated O’Dell to be all of 12 or 13 years old.<br /><br />Back in the day, a greaser’s job was to grease the axles of the coal cars, while couplers had to join together those same cars with coupling chains to form a train. Spraggers, meanwhile, kept the wheels of the mining cars going with long sticks. Often, however, rather than the stick, it was the limb of one of the boys that got entangled and severed in the spokes of the cars’ wheels. Dangerous? Wait until you hear of the more general mining dangers, which could strike at any moment. <br />Explosions resulting from the build-up of methane and carbon monoxide killed numerous miners, young and old, and the mere release of these same poisonous gases was enough to asphyxiate those unfortunate enough to breathe in the fumes. What’s more, underground fires often preceded or followed the explosions just mentioned, trapping those not killed in the blasts. Naturally, given such a state of affairs, sanitation wasn’t high on the agenda, and having to go to the toilet meant doing it right there, underground. This lack of basic hygiene, together with rat infestations, resulted in the spread of many diseases. <br />Those who somehow circumvented all the aforementioned subterranean hazards had to contend with yet another common danger: mining tunnels caving in and collapsing. Boys working in the pits stood little chance and could easily be left paralyzed or quite simply crushed to death. As one source has it: “Sometimes a young miner would be crushed to the ground so severely that his body would have to be scraped from the floor of the mine with a shovel.” Too gruesome to contemplate. <br />As one can imagine, with its growing demand for a workforce that suited the machines – rather than vice versa – the Industrial Revolution was not the best time for laws being passed that helped to improve working conditions – not least for children. In spite of this, part of the work of the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), formed in 1904, was to raise awareness about the conditions and risks that tens of thousands of children had to face every day in the United States alone. <br />The NCLC’s investigative photographer Lewis Hine (1874-1940) took on the important mission of traveling the United States to document the working conditions of children. Hine carried out this work from 1908 to 1924, with the 5,100 and more photographs he took creating a body of evidence about the dark underbelly of the Industrial Revolution – a period whose seeming success was based on the broken backs, lungs and lives of society’s weakest members, children. <br />Many of Hine’s photographs (like those shown here) were published in newspapers and other publications of the time. They thus helped to shed light on the dreadful lives endured by many young workers toiling underground and elsewhere. Yet although most people were shocked and outraged, they had to contend with the interests of the business owners, who did their best to keep the young workforce in place. <br />Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, given what we have just learned, at least some of the young workers preferred the idea of slogging underground or within the walls of factories to the prospect of school. Historically, throughout the Industrial Revolution, many families found themselves without a male breadwinner owing to factors such as early death and abandonment, meaning the children had to chip in to help ease the financial burden. <br />Being a child in the 19th century meant growing up fast. At 13 or 14 years of age, adolescents were considered young men and women who had to earn their keep. In fact, as we have seen, many were sent to work much earlier, aged eight or even younger. For many, attending school and thus not earning was simply not an option. And if your role models were men who cheated death each day just by making it through work, sitting at a school desk into your mid or late teens was unthinkable – especially with college nothing more than a pipe dream for most. <br />In early 20th-century America, in large part thanks to the work of Lewis Hine, labor reforms were set in motion to raise the minimum age at which children could work and lower their working hours. There were setbacks, however, with a 1916 law deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court just two years after it had been enacted. After a long struggle, the Fair Labor Standards Act was finally passed in 1938. Under the terms of this act, schooling and health were prioritized for any children working below the ages of 15 and 16, while no one under 18 could be employed in treacherous jobs like mining. A minimum wage and limits on the number of hours children could work were also put in place.<br />Today, child labor is still rife in many countries around the world. Moreover, dismissing it as the problem of poorer nations is missing the point, as developing countries often produce goods for their wealthier counterparts. The fate of the world’s children – rich or poor – is intertwined. It is thus up to all of us to face the reality of the situation, and to be aware that children simply forced out of one kind of employment could easily find themselves in the hands of even less scrupulous employers and performing yet more dangerous tasks.Rob Hoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02211809421832142963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246236922077831265.post-80296918482582546452012-03-07T12:21:00.005-08:002012-03-07T12:35:25.511-08:00The Grinning Skeletons of Peru's 1000-Year-Old Nazca Cemetery<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNWVg9_GQVatYmtMrMlGyEtfFXB_9gw2AWBF1oAgq7RESURXzTLiX7UuqxKLvTrziDbEIiYBrziiQc28R6sMcE8SxhhleVISaCsKc1XZBLwbLiBNo4qa-IhnCItbhsFkGbLQlmZk9EdSZT/s1600/800px-RemainsChauchillajpg.img_assist_custom-600x450.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNWVg9_GQVatYmtMrMlGyEtfFXB_9gw2AWBF1oAgq7RESURXzTLiX7UuqxKLvTrziDbEIiYBrziiQc28R6sMcE8SxhhleVISaCsKc1XZBLwbLiBNo4qa-IhnCItbhsFkGbLQlmZk9EdSZT/s400/800px-RemainsChauchillajpg.img_assist_custom-600x450.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5717256532588453698" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmk3c7UeOVHg2zBlFaXMmetuJXQwmKNX7R7hxRHADWowpmbeB_BHXGHdjRrZCxRQpdEuNMY2ZYSkYgZrmVvljfxt5MuTCYHXh7g4u7mE6WcSwqDqvx8JEmITEkJqKXF4vJrXO4jdi267W_/s1600/800px-Nazca-chauchilla-c12jpg.img_assist_custom-600x401.jpg"><img style="display:block; 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margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvkcPAtxV8MlsoNIVQYxKj3MjNC6LrQpbcz0HCgyztE8nstQKCqddUZ6KjQ1bUbsNHWp9zH811cwlWzhxKEp_jCmHWgViFmolte19NPuEN3o01W_QL6yfE6aCe7liDbON_uDvdP8Ybyy2-/s400/800px-ChauchillaCemeteryskulljpg.img_assist_custom-600x450.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5717255979373882402" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC_Ye7dChJANxP2oRCape1Pto7gmPeyZw6xgfg615EROo0dyCSNm2vGXhtmsgIdb80NCJp4wR9EFXb58j4FmXYPi7L1tLhEtElu6gU6pA1bdjrdc0QbHWPipkqefZHkkMRhz8iSxI3faEI/s1600/667px-Nazca-chauchilla-c04jpg.preview.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 261px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC_Ye7dChJANxP2oRCape1Pto7gmPeyZw6xgfg615EROo0dyCSNm2vGXhtmsgIdb80NCJp4wR9EFXb58j4FmXYPi7L1tLhEtElu6gU6pA1bdjrdc0QbHWPipkqefZHkkMRhz8iSxI3faEI/s400/667px-Nazca-chauchilla-c04jpg.preview.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5717255973298142306" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe2tgTVPvqthebBkOwol0st7eGzHDD4rt1buzUpAFQxQzKP-58hCN-_0muxOuCAf7_GvEQ37vKwZy2YKgq08ksF5wN0FSDvtSoLdc4jM3CSN4_mdcrn4WRj7H9s4brCqqgQGMAkNs7jvpR/s1600/666px-Nazca-chauchilla-c09jpg.preview.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 260px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe2tgTVPvqthebBkOwol0st7eGzHDD4rt1buzUpAFQxQzKP-58hCN-_0muxOuCAf7_GvEQ37vKwZy2YKgq08ksF5wN0FSDvtSoLdc4jM3CSN4_mdcrn4WRj7H9s4brCqqgQGMAkNs7jvpR/s400/666px-Nazca-chauchilla-c09jpg.preview.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5717255968480580866" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH2wyyfEgxKlqUcq9y95yne0JSukaRG7-cs8dDaN9xuUXSyNslJzSRqAPQoIG_Ge8FeISI7ZSdQIsMvDjz5zdEkpPhFvQaZZ8fkACZ688XDu6hPgqn1PqaHk-s4k_dMjBloMNRm1OQyMR_/s1600/592px-Nazca-chauchilla-c06jpg.img_assist_custom-493x640.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 308px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH2wyyfEgxKlqUcq9y95yne0JSukaRG7-cs8dDaN9xuUXSyNslJzSRqAPQoIG_Ge8FeISI7ZSdQIsMvDjz5zdEkpPhFvQaZZ8fkACZ688XDu6hPgqn1PqaHk-s4k_dMjBloMNRm1OQyMR_/s400/592px-Nazca-chauchilla-c06jpg.img_assist_custom-493x640.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5717255970731259634" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdRFp6niZ12-L2N0lildMoO40mYKLR4HDLxkeTEZZXgqvpxvRtow5YPWiP83kfr5rY3EmijwcqcYTTrdPEf9uBxG5FKNnTslRoAIzXALz6qAAfb05s2LqswII0VNjStW-HX6soa_dRPdet/s1600/800px-Nazca-chauchilla-c01jpg.img_assist_custom-600x413.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 275px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdRFp6niZ12-L2N0lildMoO40mYKLR4HDLxkeTEZZXgqvpxvRtow5YPWiP83kfr5rY3EmijwcqcYTTrdPEf9uBxG5FKNnTslRoAIzXALz6qAAfb05s2LqswII0VNjStW-HX6soa_dRPdet/s400/800px-Nazca-chauchilla-c01jpg.img_assist_custom-600x413.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5717255985060495602" /></a><br />Screaming or laughing?<br /><br />In a sand-dusted cemetery in the desert, 30 kilometers south of the city of Nazca in Peru, lie the skeletal remains of an ancient people. Inside the open tombs there are not simply scattered bones but whole human mummies, as well as archeological artifacts. Skulls leer up at those souls who venture down the dirt track that leads to this sepulchral site; skeletons in virtually the same ghastly poses in which they were frozen a millennium and more ago. If you ever wanted to see what you might look like after death, these figures – complete with hair – offer a glimpse. Do ghosts haunt this creepy South American burial ground? We wouldn’t be surprised. <br />Chauchilla Cemetery was discovered in the 1920s, yet the last time it was used was back in the 9th century AD. Moreover, the first use of the timeworn necropolis dates deeper still in the mists of time, as early as 200 AD. The length of time for which this place of death served its purpose – together with the important burials to be found here – only adds to the sense of intrigue that pervades the desert site.<br />Unfortunately the dead in this Peruvian graveyard – also known as ‘Death Valley’– were not permitted to rest in peace. Over the years, huaqueros – grave robbers, known for destroying archaeological sites – dug up the tombs, stole many of the treasures that lay therein, and littered the surrounding area with the remains of people and pottery fragments alike. <br />Whether the aforementioned raiders were cursed for their looting and destruction we’ll leave for your imagination to decide. What is certain is that the Peruvian authorities passed a law to protect the cemetery in 1997. Furthermore, those behind the restoration operation managed to find many of the ceramic objects and human remains and return them to their rightful resting places. <br />In keeping with the traditions of the Nazca culture from which they were born, all the remarkably well-preserved corpses face east and are positioned crouched and sitting up, as if eager to greet visitors – be they welcome or not. Amazingly, the heads of these long-dead individuals still have hair – lots of it in some cases – and even pieces of soft tissue remain, skin that has stayed intact over the centuries under the sun.<br />There are a number of reasons why the mummification process of those interred in Chauchilla Cemetery proved to be so successful. First and foremost: the bone-dry climate of the Peruvian desert itself. Among the most arid places on the planet, this environment aided in the preservation of the corpses a great deal, protecting them against the ravages of moisture and rot. <br />Notwithstanding the hot, dry natural conditions, the preparations for the dead employed by the Nazca also contributed to how well the corpses were preserved. These ancients embalmed the dead in a layer of resin, dressed them in embroidered cotton, and then buried them in special vaults built out of mud bricks. The textiles and resin used are both believed to have helped keep insects at bay while also limiting the speed at which bacteria would cause the bodies to decay. <br />Another archaeological site near to Chauchilla Cemetery might also hold some clues as to the preservation methods used. In Estaqueria, archaeologists have unearthed wooden posts that research suggests were used to dry out the dead bodies. It seems funeral rites and natural forces conspired brilliantly to make the mummification formula work so well.<br />Some sources refer to the bodies found at Chauchilla as those of shamans. These spirit-connected persons were highly respected in their communities and upon burial may well have been bestowed with precious earthly possessions such as stone tools and ceramics to take with them into the afterlife. One of the best-preserved mummies is sealed off by glass and surrounded by artifacts, though as we can see, many of the skeletons, pottery shards and fabrics have been left exposed to the elements. <br />Nazca culture itself thrived between 100 and 800 AD, but, like the cemetery itself, its history can be traced back much earlier in time. The Nazca created many wonderful crafts including ceramics and textiles, while some of their feats of engineering, subterranean aqueducts, incredibly still work to this day. Yet this was also a culture with a more macabre side. So-called partial burials of people were commonplace, for example, with sites discovered containing decapitated heads and dismembered bodies. Most of the people buried in Chauchilla Cemetery appear to have gotten off lightly.<br />Nowadays it’s said that local people call Chauchilla Cemetery the "tomb of horror and grief." Could this have to do with the fact that the graves were plundered and the bodies disturbed, such that the unwelcome guests had terrible events visited upon them? Some say it’s so. And yet, interestingly, even eerier happenings are apparently associated with this place…<br />Locals tell tales of bright lights and moving objects seen in the cemetery at night. The suggestion seems to be that these sightings are connected with paranormal activity of some kind – but whether ghosts or UFOs we can but guess. Then again, perhaps unexplained goings-on here shouldn’t surprise us. We are, after all, in the vicinity of the Nazca Lines – those famous giant designs, many depicting animals, etched into the ground and visible from the air.<br />Some might dismiss the strange activities purportedly witnessed in Chauchilla Cemetery as nothing more than trespassing treasure hunters – would-be grave robbers more likely to work at night. The fact that the events took place before the authorities took over and protected the site seems to lend credibility to this theory. And, of course, skeptics will always have their own standpoint…<br />In spite of any skepticism, however, the curious stories surrounding the location persist. One Adolfo Bniaval claims: "None of us can deny the existence of these strange lights. [There] were dozens of people [who] saw them on several occasions and there are a number of certificates stored in the municipality of Nazca which confirms the truth of these views." <br />What more could a visitor to Chauchilla Cemetery want (and all for as little as seven US dollars)? Mummies amid tombs, piles of bones, grinning skulls and tales of unexplained phenomena combine to make this place a must-see for anyone fascinated by the mysterious and the downright creepy. And who these long-dead people really were – how they lived and how they died – is difficult, if not impossible, to fathom.Rob Hoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02211809421832142963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246236922077831265.post-17634126002430950392012-02-27T11:09:00.000-08:002012-02-27T11:10:28.735-08:00America 1950 vs. America 2012America 1950 vs. America 2012<br /><br /><br /><br />Would you rather live in the America of 1950 or the America of 2012? Has the United States changed for the better over the last 62 years? Many fondly remember the 1950s and the 1960s as the "golden age" of America. We emerged from World War II as the wealthiest and most powerful nation on the planet. During that time period, just about anyone that wanted to get a job could find a job and the U.S. middle class expanded rapidly. Back in 1950, America was still considered to be a "land of opportunity" and the economy was growing like crazy. There was less crime, there was less divorce, the American people had much less debt and the world seemed a whole lot less crazy. Most of the rest of the world deeply admired us and wanted to be more like us. Of course there were a lot of things that were not great about America back in 1950, and there are many things that many of us dearly love that we would have to give up in order to go back and live during that time. For example, there was no Internet back in 1950. Instead of being able to go online and read the articles that you want to read, your news would have been almost entirely controlled by the big media companies of the day. So there are definitely some advantages that we have today that they did not have back in 1950. But not all of the changes have been for the better. America is in a constant state of change, and many are deeply concerned about where all of these changes are taking us.<br /><br />There has never been any society in the history of the world that has been perfect. America was flawed in 1950 just as America is flawed today.<br /><br />But that doesn't mean that we should not reflect on how much things have changed over the past 62 years.<br /><br />So which version of America would you rather live in?<br /><br />America 1950 vs. America 2012 - you make the call....<br /><br />In 1950, a gallon of gasoline cost about 27 cents.<br /><br />In 2012, a gallon of gasoline costs $3.69.<br /><br />In 1950, you could buy a first-class stamp for just 3 cents.<br /><br />In 2012, a first-class stamp will cost you 45 cents.<br /><br />In 1950, more than 80 percent of all men were employed.<br /><br />In 2012, less than 65 percent of all men are employed.<br /><br />In 1950, the average duration of unemployment was about 12 weeks.<br /><br />In 2012, the average duration of unemployment is about 40 weeks.<br /><br />In 1950, the average family spent about 22% of its income on housing.<br /><br />In 2012, the average family spends about 43% of its income on housing.<br /><br />In 1950, gum chewing and talking in class were some of the major disciplinary problems in our schools.<br /><br />In 2012, many of our public schools have been equipped with metal detectors because violence has become so bad.<br /><br />In 1950, mothers decided what their children would eat for lunch.<br /><br />In 2012, lunches are inspected by government control freaks to make sure that they contain the "correct foods" in many areas of the country. For example, one 4-year-old girl recently had her lunch confiscated by a "lunch monitor" because it did not meet USDA guidelines....<br /><br /> A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because the school told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious.<br /><br /> The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the person who was inspecting all lunch boxes in the More at Four classroom that day.<br /><br /> The Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs - including in-home day care centers - to meet USDA guidelines. That means lunches must consist of one serving of meat, one serving of milk, one serving of grain, and two servings of fruit or vegetables, even if the lunches are brought from home.<br /><br />In 1950, the United States was #1 in GDP per capita.<br /><br />In 2012, the United States is #13 in GDP per capita.<br /><br />In 1950, redistribution of wealth was considered to be something that "the communists" did.<br /><br />In 2012, the U.S. government redistributes more wealth than anyone else in the world.<br /><br />In 1950, about 13 million Americans had manufacturing jobs.<br /><br />In 2012, less than 12 million Americans have manufacturing jobs even though our population has more than doubled since 1950.<br /><br />In 1950, the entire U.S. military was mobilized to protect the borders of South Korea.<br /><br />In 2012, the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada are wide open and now there are 1.4 million gang members living inside the United States.<br /><br />In 1950, there were about 2 million people living in Detroit and it was one of the greatest cities on earth.<br /><br />In 2012, there are about 700,000 people living in Detroit and it has become a symbol of what is wrong with the U.S. economy.<br /><br />In 1950, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was slightly over the 200 mark.<br /><br />In 2012, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is threatening to soar over the 13,000 mark.<br /><br />In 1950, corporate taxes accounted for about 30 percent of all federal revenue.<br /><br />In 2012, corporate taxes will account for less than 7 percent of all federal revenue.<br /><br />In 1950, the median age at first marriage was about 22 for men and about 20 for women.<br /><br />In 2012, the median age at first marriage is about 28 for men and about 26 for women.<br /><br />In 1950, many Americans dressed up in suits and dresses before getting on an airplane.<br /><br />In 2012, security goons look at the exposed forms of our women and our children before they are allowed to get on to an airplane.<br /><br />In 1950, each retiree's Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 workers.<br /><br />In 2012, each retiree's Social Security benefit is paid for by approximately 3.3 workers.<br /><br />In 1950, many Americans regularly left their cars and the front doors of their homes unlocked.<br /><br />In 2012, many Americans live with steel bars on their windows and gun sales are at record highs.<br /><br />In 1950, the American people had a great love for the U.S. Constitution.<br /><br />In 2012, if you are "reverent of individual liberty", you may get labeled as a potential terrorist by the U.S. government.<br /><br />In 1950, the United States loaned more money to the rest of the world than anybody else.<br /><br />In 2012, the United States owes more money to the rest of the world than anybody else.<br /><br />In 1950, the U.S. national debt was about 257 billion dollars.<br /><br />In 2012, the U.S. national debt is 59 times larger. It is currently sitting at a grand total of $15,435,694,556,033.29. Surely our children and our grandchildren will thank us for that.<br /><br />One of the only things that is constant in life is change.<br /><br />Whether we like it or not, America is going to continue to change.<br /><br />Back in the 1950s and 1960s, about 70 percent of all American adults were married.<br /><br />Today, only about 50 percent of all American adults are married.<br /><br />We are more independent, less religious, more addicted to entertainment and more doped up on prescription drugs than Americans used to be.<br /><br />We have a higher standard of living than Americans in 1950 did, but we are also drowning in an ocean of debt unlike anything the world has ever seen.Rob Hoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02211809421832142963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246236922077831265.post-72158753143913547072012-02-10T20:33:00.000-08:002012-02-10T20:34:14.411-08:00A Short History of the Modern Calendar<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/kzprsR2SvrQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Rob Hoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02211809421832142963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246236922077831265.post-43359913382955185182012-01-02T21:00:00.000-08:002012-01-02T21:01:59.343-08:00Impressions & Observations by the Secret Service> Here are snippets from a book of "Impressions & Observations" of<br />> Secret Service personnel assigned to guard U.S. Presidents/First Ladies, and Vice Presidents:<br />><br />> John and Jacqueline Kennedy:<br />> A philanderer of the highest order.<br />> She ordered the kitchen help to save all the left-over wine during State<br />> dinner, which mixed with fresh wine and served again during the next White<br />> House occasion.<br />> Lyndon Johnson <br />> Another philanderer of the highest order. In addition, LBJ was as crude as the day is long.<br />> (Both JFK and LBJ kept a lot of women in the White House for extramarital affairs, and both had set up "early warning systems" to alert them if/when their wives were nearby. Both Kennedy & Johnson were promiscuous and oversexed men. The wives were either naive or just pretended to "not know" about her husband's many liaisons.)<br />><br />> Richard and Pat Nixon:<br />> A "moral" man but very odd and weird, paranoid, etc. He had horrible<br />> relationship with his family, and in a way, was almost a recluse.*<br />> She was quiet most of the time.*<br />><br />> Spiro Agnew: <br />> Nice, decent man, everyone in the Secret Service was surprised about his downfall.<br />><br />> Gerald and Betty Ford:<br />> A true gentlemen who treated the Secret Service with respect and dignity.<br />> He had a great sense of humor.<br />> She drank a lot!<br />><br />> Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter<br />> A complete phony who would portray one picture of himself to public and<br />> very different in private, e.g., would be shown carrying his own luggage,<br />> but the suit cases were always empty; he kept empty ones just for photo op's.<br />> Wanted the people to see him as pious and a non-drinker, but he and<br />> his family drank alcohol a lot. He had disdain for the Secret Service, and<br />> was very irresponsible with the "football" nuclear codes. He didn't think<br />> it was a big deal and would keep military aides at a great distance. Often<br />> does not acknowledge the presence of Secret Service personnel assigned to<br />> serve him. She mostly did her own thing.<br />><br />> Ronald and Nancy Reagan<br />> The real deal --- moral, honest, respectful, and dignified. They treated Secret Service and everyone else with respect and honor. Thanked everyone all the time. He took the time to know everyone on a personal level.<br />> One "favorite" story which has circulated among the Secret Service personnel was an incident early in his Presidency, when he came out of his room with a pistol tucked on his hip. The agent in charge asked: "Why the pistol, Mr. President?" He replied, "In case you boys can't get the job done, I can help." It was common for him to carry a pistol. When he met with Gorbachev, he had a pistol in his briefcase. Upon learning that Gary Hart was caught with Donna Rice, Reagan said, "Boys will be boys, but boys<br />> will not be Presidents." [He obviously either did not know or forgot JFK's and LBJ's escapades!]<br />> She was very nice but very protective of the President; and the Secret Service was often caught in the middle. She tried hard to control what the President ate, and he would say to the agent "Come on, you gotta help me out." The Reagans drank wine during State dinners and special occasions only; otherwise, they shunned alcohol; the Secret Service could count on one hand the times they were served wine during their "family dinner". For all the fake bluster of the Carters, the Reagans were the ones who lived<br />> life as genuinely moral people<br />><br />> George H. and Barbara Bush:<br />> Extremely kind and considerate Always respectful. Took great care in making sure the agents' comforts were taken care of. They even brought them meals and other items.<br />> One time Barbara Bush brought warm clothes to agents standing outside at Kennebunkport ; one agent who was given a warm hat, and when he tried to nicely say "no thanks" even though he was obviously freezing, President Bush said "Son, don't argue with the First Lady, put the hat on.." He was the most prompt of the Presidents. He ran the White House like a well-oiled machine. She ruled the house and spoke her mind<br />><br />> Bill and Hillary Clinton:<br />> Presidency was one giant party. Not trustworthy --- he was nice because he wanted everyone to like him, but to him life is just one big game and party. Everyone knows of his sexuality.<br />> She is another phony. Her personality would change the instant cameras were near. She hated with open disdain the military and Secret Service. She was another one who felt people were there to serve her. She was always trying to keep tabs on Bill Clinton.<br />><br />> Albert Gore: An egotistical ass, who was once overheard by his Secret Service detail lecturing his only son that he needed to do better in school or he "would end up like these guys" -- pointing to the agents.<br />><br />> George W. and Laura Bush:<br />> The Secret Service loved him and Laura Bush.<br />> He was also the most physically "in shape" who had a very strict workout regimen. The Bushes made sure their entire administrative and household staff understood to respect and be considerate of the Secret Service. Karl Rove was the one who was the most caring of the Secret Service in the<br />> administration.<br />> She was one of the nicest First Ladies, if not the nicest; she never had any harsh word to say about anyone.<br />><br />> Barack & Michelle Obama:<br />> " Clinton all over again" - hates the military and looks down on the Secret Service. He is egotistical and cunning; looks you in the eye and appears to agree with you, but turns around and does the opposite---untrustworthy. He has temper tantrums.<br />> She is a complete bitch, who hates anybody who is not black; hates the military; and looks at the Secret Service as servants.Rob Hoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02211809421832142963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246236922077831265.post-53022568303254779912010-11-12T15:56:00.001-08:002010-11-12T16:14:29.993-08:00Truth is hard to refute!How did Jefferson know? <br /><br />John F. Kennedy held a dinner in the white House for a group of the brightest minds in the nation at that time. He made this statement: <br />"This is perhaps the assembly of the most intelligence ever to gather at one time in the White House with the exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone." <br /> <br /><br />When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe . <br />Thomas Jefferson <br /><br /><br />The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. <br />Thomas Jefferson <br /><br /><br />It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world. <br />Thomas Jefferson <br /><br /><br />I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the <br />pretense of taking care of them. <br />Thomas Jefferson <br /><br /><br />My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government. <br />Thomas Jefferson <br /><br /><br />No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. <br />Thomas Jefferson <br /><br /><br />The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves <br />against tyranny in government. <br />Thomas Jefferson <br /><br /><br />The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. <br />Thomas Jefferson <br /><br /><br />To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical. <br />Thomas JeffersonRob Hoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02211809421832142963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246236922077831265.post-49203302485918442742010-10-20T05:42:00.000-07:002010-10-20T05:43:23.356-07:00World War II Animated Map<object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/64lu8ZNg4_I?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/64lu8ZNg4_I?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>Rob Hoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02211809421832142963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246236922077831265.post-5813613139310348102010-06-19T05:50:00.000-07:002010-06-19T05:53:25.231-07:00RCA Victor Puzzle RecordsRCA Victor Puzzle Records<br /> <br />Puzzle records are odd, multi-track records that expose a different outcome depending on the random groove the needle enters.<br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/E9_VGYL-mzo&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/E9_VGYL-mzo&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br />I've heard rumors that a record like this existed but it seemed to far fetched to be real, but here it is! Each side has 3 songs recorded, not one after the other, but right beside each other! There are 3 grooves on each side and the song you get depends on which groove you start in. Each song is about 1 minute long. Pretty fantastic!<br /><br />Haven't seen one of these until now. I think they are pretty rare. This was released by Victor records in 1931, the middle of the Great Depression. Probably not a lot were actually sold.<br /><br />The Novelty Orchestra shown on the label is actually Ray Noble's orchestra.<br /><br />Now just enjoy this amazing record! Both sides are shown in this video.Rob Hoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02211809421832142963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246236922077831265.post-74110995924842215042010-06-15T05:52:00.000-07:002010-06-15T05:53:17.000-07:00Carousels Were Invented By The MilitaryDepending on where you come from, you may call carousels by another name, perhaps: “merry-go-rounds”, “flying horses” or “roundabouts.”<br /><br />They have been popular rides for the past 200 years, but they started off as military training machines. In fact, the word “carousel” comes from the Spanish word, carosella, which mean “little battle.”<br /><br />This name was fitting because carousels were originally used to train knights to use their swords while riding on a horse that moves up and down. Objects were placed along the outside of the carousel; the knights tried to stab the objects or catch them on their swords.<br /><br />Jousting competitors also trained on carousels, but, when Catherine de Medicis’ husband was killed in a sudden jousting accident (or “lost” as they called it back then), the carousel quickly became a safer form of entertainment. Crowds would watch as entertainers would catch objects on their swords and travel in circles until they got dizzy.<br /><br />That sounds more boring than actually going to a mid-evil times restaurant, so spectators naturally wanted a shot at riding the carousel and even catching one of the objects on their sword. This is how it became the popular amusement ride it is today.<br /><br />In fact, a small number carousels still exist that have an obstacle as part of the ride. On these carousels, riders will try to grab a brass ring as they ride around on the carousel. There are steel rings as well, and those are often thrown at a target to discourage people from keeping them as souvenirs. The brass ring can often be redeemed for a prize, which is usually a free ride on the carousel.<br /><br />This is also where the term, “catch the brass ring” comes from.Rob Hoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02211809421832142963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246236922077831265.post-87828265692794534442010-05-08T10:42:00.000-07:002010-05-08T10:43:44.524-07:00What the Pill Gave Birth ToAmerica and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation by Elaine Tyler May, Basic Books, 224 pages, $25.95<br /><br />Elaine Tyler May's new book begins by quoting the lyrics to Loretta Lynn's 1975 anthem, "The Pill," an overburdened housewife's audacious cry of reproductive independence. "Promised me if I'd be your wife/ You'd show me the world/ But all I've seen of this old world/ Is a bed and a doctor bill," Lynn croons. "I'm tearin' down your brooder house/ 'Cause now I've got the pill." No feminist theorist could have better captured both the emancipatory power of the pill and the threat it posed to patriarchy. The pill wasn't just a medical breakthrough; it was part of a social revolution, one that was messy, incomplete, sometimes disappointing, but ultimately life-altering for millions of women.<br /><br />America and the Pill is a brief history of that revolution, timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Food and Drug Administration's approval of the first birth-control pill. The book covers a lot of ground very quickly; reading it is a bit like being a passenger on a bus tour glancing at the passing landmarks without time to explore any of them. It lacks the depth and richness of May's superb 1995 history of childlessness in America, Barren in the Promised Land.<br /><br />Still, there are worse things one can say about a book than that it should be longer. May's material is fascinating, even when her treatment of it is cursory. Although America and the Pill is sometimes celebratory, it is actually most useful in illuminating some of the darker corners of the pill's history, a history that women's health activists ought to know.<br /><br />The story begins with Margaret Sanger (1879–1966), a complex heroine who for decades personified the cause of birth control and family planning. A fiery socialist in her early days, Sanger saw the gruesome consequences of unsafe abortion while working as a nurse in New York's immigrant slums and, in defiance of federal law, called for access to birth control. Though genuinely motivated by a passion for women's liberation, Sanger also embraced eugenics, a more respectable cause at the time than sexual freedom or feminist self-determination; indeed, after World War I, as Sanger's biographer Ellen Chesler has written, "eugenics became a popular craze in this country -- promoted in newspapers and magazines as a kind of secular religion." Collaboration with eugenicists provided Sanger with powerful allies, but it wasn't just a matter of convenience for her; she became an ardent advocate of population control for eugenic purposes.<br /><br />May quotes a letter that Sanger wrote to her friend and patron, the heiress Katharine Dexter McCormick: "I consider that the world and almost our civilization for the next twenty-five years, is going to depend upon a simple, cheap, safe, contraceptive to be used in poverty stricken slums, jungles, and among the most ignorant people." She went on to call for immediate "national sterilization for certain dysgenic types."<br /><br />One of the central tensions in Sanger's work, then, was between her commitment to reproductive freedom and her willingness to sanction reproductive coercion. A similar tension is at work throughout the history May recounts. McCormick, a brilliant feminist who was the second woman to graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, bankrolled the pill out of a commitment to women's rights. But as May writes, the scientists and doctors who developed the pill never envisioned it as an agent of female emancipation. Rather, they "hailed it as a miracle drug that would solve the global problem of overpopulation, thereby reducing poverty and human misery, especially in the developing world." They also hoped it would improve marital sex and domestic harmony, strengthening the nuclear family. In other words, they saw it as a tool for preserving existing power relations, not shaking them up.<br /><br />It's a bleak irony that if the pill's inventors had been more concerned with women's health, they might have taken much longer to develop it. One of the scientists involved, Gregory Pincus, tested a version of the pill on 15 psychiatric patients at the Worcester State Hospital in Massachusetts. Early pills used far higher doses of hormones than modern contraceptives do, and during large-scale clinical trials in Puerto Rico, the side effects were so severe that a female doctor tried to halt the study, to no avail. "Pincus claimed that many of the women's symptoms were psychosomatic," May writes.<br /><br />As May makes clear, such abuses weren't specific to the testing of the birth-control pill -- they were common to all drug development. "By the standards of the day, the [Puerto Rico] studies were scrupulously conducted," she writes. Furthermore, the women in Puerto Rico were hardly coerced; so many women were so desperate to control their fertility that the scientists had waiting lists of volunteers. Nevertheless, it's undeniable that the creation of the pill often involved a cavalier attitude toward poor or sick women.<br /><br />May's own father, Dr. Edward Tyler, actually held up federal approval of the pill because of concerns about its safety. The head of the Planned Parenthood Clinic in Los Angeles, he had used the same hormonal compounds found in the pill to treat various gynecological disorders and discovered that they often caused weight gain, abnormal bleeding, swelling, and other problems. But eventually, Tyler assured an official of the Food and Drug Administration "that his earlier concerns had been addressed, and that he was now convinced that Enovid, as the pill was called, 'was safe.'" What changed his mind? May doesn't say.<br /><br />In one of America and the Pill's most interesting chapters, May asks whether men would tolerate the sorts of side effects that women have regularly experienced. The prospect of a male pill has appeared on the horizon various times over the last 50 years, but the issue of side effects scuttled every effort. Scientists, May reports, "actually discovered an effective vaccine that completely stopped the production of sperm without interfering with sex drive." But it also made users' testicles shrink by a third, so the researchers abandoned it, concluding, "The psychological trauma of shrinking testes just cannot be overcome."<br /><br />Yet for all this, as May demonstrates, the pill has been a tremendous boon for women, transforming sex and reproduction so thoroughly that it's hard for many to imagine what life was like before it. In the 1960s and 1970s, Black Power leaders denounced the pill as a tool of black genocide -- rhetoric often echoed by today's anti-abortion movement. But female civil-rights activists saw things very differently. "Although they were aware that some white proponents of the birth control pill and other forms of contraception hoped to reduce the numbers of black babies, they wanted the pill and saw it as essential to their reproductive freedom," May writes. For most women, the intentions behind the pill matter much less than its practical effectiveness.<br /><br />Though May doesn't say it, right-wing opposition to the pill has probably helped temper earlier left-wing objections. As she points out, Our Bodies Ourselves, the feminist health bible, was deeply skeptical of the pill throughout the 1970s and 1980s, but by 2005, with new, low-dose formulations on the market and the culture wars in full swing, the book sang the pill's praises: "The advent of the Pill, probably more than any other event, has enabled women the world over to prevent or delay pregnancy and, in doing so, to complete our educations, choose our careers, and create more egalitarian relationships."<br /><br />May herself doesn't go quite so far -- she sees the pill as much as a symbol of feminist gains as a cause. "Without the political and cultural upheavals of the last fifty years, particularly those brought about by the feminist movement, the pill would have been just one more contraceptive -- more effective and convenient than those that came before, but not revolutionary," she writes in her conclusion.<br /><br />She's absolutely right. After all, the pill is widely available in Saudi Arabia, but it hasn't made a dent in that country's brutal patriarchy. Part of the problem with America and the Pill, though, is that it doesn't take the time to delve into the social maelstroms that made the pill so significant. The millions of women who, like Loretta Lynn's narrator, have used the pill to slip the bonds of biology, turning childbearing from an obligation into an option, have utterly reshaped our ideas about sex, marriage, and family. The furious, socially conservative backlash those women have engendered continues to dominate our politics. This slender book can only give us the contours of that tumultuous, still-unfolding story.Rob Hoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02211809421832142963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246236922077831265.post-49434228493463600662010-05-08T10:33:00.001-07:002010-05-08T10:35:42.612-07:00Pandora’s BriefcasePandora’s Briefcase<br />It was a dazzling feat of wartime espionage. But does it argue for or against spying?<br />by Malcolm Gladwell May 10, 2010<br /><br />In the months before the invasion of Sicily, British spies fooled German spies with a caper inspired by a detective novel.<br /><br />In the months before the invasion of Sicily, British spies fooled German spies with a caper inspired by a detective novel.<br /><br />On April 30, 1943, a fisherman came across a badly decomposed corpse floating in the water off the coast of Huelva, in southwestern Spain. The body was of an adult male dressed in a trenchcoat, a uniform, and boots, with a black attaché case chained to his waist. His wallet identified him as Major William Martin, of the Royal Marines. The Spanish authorities called in the local British vice-consul, Francis Haselden, and in his presence opened the attaché case, revealing an official-looking military envelope. The Spaniards offered the case and its contents to Haselden. But Haselden declined, requesting that the handover go through formal channels—an odd decision, in retrospect, since, in the days that followed, British authorities in London sent a series of increasingly frantic messages to Spain asking the whereabouts of Major Martin’s briefcase.<br /><br />It did not take long for word of the downed officer to make its way to German intelligence agents in the region. Spain was a neutral country, but much of its military was pro-German, and the Nazis found an officer in the Spanish general staff who was willing to help. A thin metal rod was inserted into the envelope; the documents were then wound around it and slid out through a gap, without disturbing the envelope’s seals. What the officer discovered was astounding. Major Martin was a courier, carrying a personal letter from Lieutenant General Archibald Nye, the vice-chief of the Imperial General Staff, in London, to General Harold Alexander, the senior British officer under Eisenhower in Tunisia. Nye’s letter spelled out what Allied intentions were in southern Europe. American and British forces planned to cross the Mediterranean from their positions in North Africa, and launch an attack on German-held Greece and Sardinia. Hitler transferred a Panzer division from France to the Peloponnese, in Greece, and the German military command sent an urgent message to the head of its forces in the region: “The measures to be taken in Sardinia and the Peloponnese have priority over any others.”<br /><br />The Germans did not realize—until it was too late—that “William Martin” was a fiction. The man they took to be a high-level courier was a mentally ill vagrant who had eaten rat poison; his body had been liberated from a London morgue and dressed up in officer’s clothing. The letter was a fake, and the frantic messages between London and Madrid a carefully choreographed act. When a hundred and sixty thousand Allied troops invaded Sicily on July 10, 1943, it became clear that the Germans had fallen victim to one of the most remarkable deceptions in modern military history.<br /><br />The story of Major William Martin is the subject of the British journalist Ben Macintyre’s brilliant and almost absurdly entertaining “Operation Mincemeat” (Harmony; $25.99). The cast of characters involved in Mincemeat, as the caper was called, was extraordinary, and Macintyre tells their stories with gusto. The ringleader was Ewen Montagu, the son of a wealthy Jewish banker and the brother of Ivor Montagu, a pioneer of table tennis and also, in one of the many strange footnotes to the Mincemeat case, a Soviet spy. Ewen Montagu served on the so-called Twenty Committee of the British intelligence services, and carried a briefcase full of classified documents on his bicycle as he rode to work each morning.<br /><br />His partner in the endeavor was a gawky giant named Charles Cholmondeley, who lifted the toes of his size-12 feet when he walked, and, Macintyre writes, “gazed at the world through thick round spectacles, from behind a remarkable moustache fully six inches long and waxed into magnificent points.” The two men coördinated with Dudley Clarke, the head of deception for all the Mediterranean, whom Macintyre describes as “unmarried, nocturnal and allergic to children.” In 1925, Clarke organized a pageant “depicting imperial artillery down the ages, which involved two elephants, thirty-seven guns and ‘fourteen of the biggest Nigerians he could find.’ He loved uniforms, disguises and dressing up.” In 1941, British authorities had to bail him out of a Spanish jail, dressed in “high heels, lipstick, pearls, and a chic cloche hat, his hands, in long opera gloves, demurely folded in his lap. He was not supposed to even be in Spain, but in Egypt.” Macintyre, who has perfect pitch when it comes to matters of British eccentricity, reassures us, “It did his career no long-term damage.”<br /><br />To fashion the container that would keep the corpse “fresh,” before it was dumped off the coast of Spain, Mincemeat’s planners turned to Charles Fraser-Smith, whom Ian Fleming is thought to have used as the model for Q in the James Bond novels. Fraser-Smith was the inventor of, among other things, garlic-flavored chocolate intended to render authentic the breath of agents dropping into France and “a compass hidden in a button that unscrewed clockwise, based on the impeccable theory that the ‘unswerving logic of the German mind’ would never guess that something might unscrew the wrong way.” The job of transporting the container to the submarine that would take it to Spain was entrusted to one of England’s leading race-car drivers, St. John (Jock) Horsfall, who, Macintyre notes, “was short-sighted and astigmatic but declined to wear spectacles.” At one point during the journey, Horsfall nearly drove into a tram stop, and then “failed to see a roundabout until too late and shot over the grass circle in the middle.”<br /><br />Each stage of the deception had to be worked out in advance. Martin’s personal effects needed to be detailed enough to suggest that he was a real person, but not so detailed as to suggest that someone was trying to make him look like a real person. Cholmondeley and Montagu filled Martin’s pockets with odds and ends, including angry letters from creditors and a bill from his tailor. “Hour after hour, in the Admiralty basement, they discussed and refined this imaginary person, his likes and dislikes, his habits and hobbies, his talents and weaknesses,” Macintyre writes. “In the evening, they repaired to the Gargoyle Club, a glamorous Soho dive of which Montagu was a member, to continue the odd process of creating a man from scratch.” Francis Haselden, for his part, had to look as if he desperately wanted the briefcase back. But he couldn’t be too diligent, because he had to make sure that the Germans had a look at it first. “Here lay an additional, but crucial, consideration,” Macintyre goes on. “The Germans must be made to believe that they had gained access to the documents undetected; they should be made to assume that the British believed the Spaniards had returned the documents unopened and unread. Operation Mincemeat would only work if the Germans could be fooled into believing that the British had been fooled.” It was an impossibly complex scheme, dependent on all manner of unknowns and contingencies. What if whoever found the body didn’t notify the authorities? What if the authorities disposed of the matter so efficiently that the Germans never caught wind of it? What if the Germans saw through the ruse?<br /><br />In mid-May of 1943, when Winston Churchill was in Washington, D.C., for the Trident conference, he received a telegram from the code breakers back home, who had been monitoring German military transmissions: “MINCEMEAT SWALLOWED ROD, LINE AND SINKER.” Macintyre’s “Operation Mincemeat” is part of a long line of books celebrating the cleverness of Britain’s spies during the Second World War. It is equally instructive, though, to think about Mincemeat from the perspective of the spies who found the documents and forwarded them to their superiors. The things that spies do can help win battles that might otherwise have been lost. But they can also help lose battles that might otherwise have been won.<br /><br />In early 1943, long before Major Martin’s body washed up onshore, the German military had begun to think hard about Allied intentions in southern Europe. The Allies had won control of North Africa from the Germans, and were clearly intending to cross the Mediterranean. But where would they attack? One school of thought said Sardinia. It was lightly defended and difficult to reinforce. The Allies could mount an invasion of the island relatively quickly. It would be ideal for bombing operations against southern Germany, and Italy’s industrial hub in the Po Valley, but it didn’t have sufficient harbors or beaches to allow for a large number of ground troops to land. Sicily did. It was also close enough to North Africa to be within striking distance of Allied short-range fighter planes, and a successful invasion of Sicily had the potential to knock the Italians out of the war.<br /><br />Mussolini was in the Sicily camp, as was Field Marshal Kesselring, who headed up all German forces in the Mediterranean. In the Italian Commando Supremo, most people picked Sardinia, however, as did a number of senior officers in the German Navy and Air Force. Meanwhile, Hitler and the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht—the German armed-forces High Command—had a third candidate. They thought that the Allies were most likely to strike at Greece and the Balkans, given the Balkans’ crucial role in supplying the German war effort with raw materials such as oil, bauxite, and copper. And Greece was far more vulnerable to attack than Italy. As the historians Samuel Mitcham and Friedrich von Stauffenberg have pointed out, “in Greece all Axis reinforcements and supplies would have to be shipped over a single rail line of limited capacity, running for 1,300 kilometers (more than 800 miles) through an area vulnerable to air and partisan attack.”<br /><br />All these assessments were strategic inferences from an analysis of known facts. But this kind of analysis couldn’t point to a specific target. It could only provide a range of probabilities. The intelligence provided by Major Martin’s documents was in a different category. It was marvellously specific. It said: Greece and Sardinia. But because that information washed up onshore, as opposed to being derived from the rational analysis of known facts, it was difficult to know whether it was true. As the political scientist Richard Betts has argued, in intelligence analysis there tends to be an inverse relationship between accuracy and significance, and this is the dilemma posed by the Mincemeat case.<br /><br />As Macintyre observes, the informational supply chain that carried the Mincemeat documents from Huelva to Berlin was heavily corrupted. The first great enthusiast for the Mincemeat find was the head of German intelligence in Madrid, Major Karl-Erich Kühlenthal. He personally flew the documents to Berlin, along with a report testifying to their significance. But, as Macintyre writes, Kühlenthal was “a one-man espionage disaster area.” One of his prized assets was a Spaniard named Juan Pujol García, who was actually a double agent. When British code breakers looked at Kühlenthal’s messages to Berlin, they found that he routinely embellished and fictionalized his reports. According to Macintyre, Kühlenthal was “frantically eager to please, ready to pass on anything that might consolidate his reputation,” in part because he had some Jewish ancestry and was desperate not to be posted back to Germany.<br /><br />When the documents arrived in Berlin, they were handed over to one of Hitler’s top intelligence analysts, a man named Alexis Baron von Roenne. Von Roenne vouched for their veracity as well. But in some respects von Roenne was even less reliable than Kühlenthal. He hated Hitler and seemed to have done everything in his power to sabotage the Nazi war effort. Before D Day, Macintyre writes, “he faithfully passed on every deception ruse fed to him, accepted the existence of every bogus unit regardless of evidence, and inflated forty-four divisions in Britain to an astonishing eighty-nine.” It is entirely possible, Macintyre suggests, that von Roenne “did not believe the Mincemeat deception for an instant.”<br /><br />These are two fine examples of why the proprietary kind of information that spies purvey is so much riskier than the products of rational analysis. Rational inferences can be debated openly and widely. Secrets belong to a small assortment of individuals, and inevitably become hostage to private agendas. Kühlenthal was an advocate of the documents because he needed them to be true; von Roenne was an advocate of the documents because he suspected them to be false. In neither case did the audiences for their assessments have an inkling about their private motivations. As Harold Wilensky wrote in his classic work “Organizational Intelligence” (1967), “The more secrecy, the smaller the intelligent audience, the less systematic the distribution and indexing of research, the greater the anonymity of authorship, and the more intolerant the attitude toward deviant views.” Wilensky had the Bay of Pigs debacle in mind when he wrote that. But it could just as easily have applied to any number of instances since, including the private channels of “intelligence” used by members of the Bush Administration to convince themselves that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.<br /><br />It was the requirement of secrecy that also prevented the Germans from properly investigating the Mincemeat story. They had to make it look as if they had no knowledge of Martin’s documents. So their hands were tied. The dated papers in Martin’s pockets indicated that he had been in the water for barely five days. Had the Germans seen the body, though, they would have realized that it was far too decomposed to have been in the water for less than a week. And, had they talked to the Spanish coroner who examined Martin, they would have discovered that he had noticed various red flags. The doctor had seen the bodies of many drowned fishermen in his time, and invariably there were fish and crab bites on the ears and other appendages. In this case, there were none. Hair, after being submerged for a week, becomes brittle and dull. Martin’s hair was not. Nor did his clothes appear to have been in the water very long. But the Germans couldn’t talk to the coroner without blowing their cover. Secrecy stood in the way of accuracy.<br /><br />Suppose that Kühlenthal had not been so eager to please Berlin, and that von Roenne had not loathed Hitler, and suppose that the Germans had properly debriefed the coroner and uncovered all the holes in the Mincemeat story. Would they then have seen through the British deception? Maybe so. Or maybe they would have found the flaws in Mincemeat a little too obvious, and concluded that the British were trying to deceive Germany into thinking that they were trying to deceive Germany into thinking that Greece and Sardinia were the real targets—in order to mask the fact that Greece and Sardinia were the real targets.<br /><br />This is the second, and more serious, of the problems that surround the products of espionage. It is not just that secrets themselves are hard to fact-check; it’s that their interpretation is inherently ambiguous. Any party to an intelligence transaction is trapped in what the sociologist Erving Goffman called an “expression game.” I’m trying to fool you. You realize that I’m trying to fool you, and I—realizing that—try to fool you into thinking that I don’t realize that you have realized that I am trying to fool you. Goffman argues that at each turn in the game the parties seek out more and more specific and reliable cues to the other’s intentions. But that search for specificity and reliability only makes the problem worse. As Goffman writes in his 1969 book “Strategic Interaction”:<br /><br /><br />The more the observer relies on seeking out foolproof cues, the more vulnerable he should appreciate he has become to the exploitation of his efforts. For, after all, the most reliance-inspiring conduct on the subject’s part is exactly the conduct that it would be most advantageous for him to fake if he wanted to hoodwink the observer. The very fact that the observer finds himself looking to a particular bit of evidence as an incorruptible check on what is or might be corrupted is the very reason why he should be suspicious of this evidence; for the best evidence for him is also the best evidence for the subject to tamper with.<br /><br />Macintyre argues that one of the reasons the Germans fell so hard for the Mincemeat ruse is that they really had to struggle to gain access to the documents. They tried—and failed—to find a Spanish accomplice when the briefcase was still in Huelva. A week passed, and the Germans grew more and more anxious. The briefcase was transferred to the Spanish Admiralty, in Madrid, where the Germans redoubled their efforts. Their assumption, Macintyre says, was that if Martin was a plant the British would have made their task much easier. But Goffman’s argument reminds us that the opposite is equally plausible. Knowing that a struggle would be a sign of authenticity, the Germans could just as easily have expected the British to provide one.<br /><br />The absurdity of such expression games has been wittily explored in the spy novels of Robert Littell and, with particular brio, in Peter Ustinov’s 1956 play, “Romanoff and Juliet.” In the latter, a crafty general is the head of a tiny European country being squabbled over by the United States and the Soviet Union, and is determined to play one off against the other. He tells the U.S. Ambassador that the Soviets have broken the Americans’ secret code. “We know they know our code,” the Ambassador, Moulsworth, replies, beaming. “We only give them things we want them to know.” The general pauses, during which, the play’s stage directions say, “he tries to make head or tail of this intelligence.” Then he crosses the street to the Russian Embassy, where he tells the Soviet Ambassador, Romanoff, “They know you know their code.” Romanoff is unfazed: “We have known for some time that they knew we knew their code. We have acted accordingly—by pretending to be duped.” The general returns to the American Embassy and confronts Moulsworth: “They know you know they know you know.” Moulsworth (genuinely alarmed): “What? Are you sure?”<br /><br />The genius of that parody is the final line, because spymasters have always prided themselves on knowing where they are on the “I-know-they-know-I-know-they-know” regress. Just before the Allied invasion of Sicily, a British officer, Colonel Knox, left a classified cable concerning the invasion plans on the terrace of Shepheard’s Hotel, in Cairo—and no one could find it for two days. “Dudley Clarke was confident, however, that if it had fallen into enemy hands through such an obvious and ‘gross breach of security’ then it would probably be dismissed as a plant, pointing to Sicily as the cover target in accordance with Mincemeat,” Macintyre writes. “He concluded that ‘Colonel Knox may well have assisted rather than hindered us.’ ” In the face of a serious security breach, that’s what a counter-intelligence officer would say. But, of course, there is no way for him to know how the Germans would choose to interpret that discovery—and no way for the Germans to know how to interpret that discovery, either.<br /><br />At one point, the British discovered that a French officer in Algiers was spying for the Germans. They “turned” him, keeping him in place but feeding him a steady diet of false and misleading information. Then, before D Day—when the Allies were desperate to convince Germany that they would be invading the Calais sector in July—they used the French officer to tell the Germans that the real invasion would be in Normandy on June 5th, 6th, or 7th. The British theory was that using someone the Germans strongly suspected was a double agent to tell the truth was preferable to using someone the Germans didn’t realize was a double agent to tell a lie. Or perhaps there wasn’t any theory at all. Perhaps the spy game has such an inherent opacity that it doesn’t really matter what you tell your enemy so long as your enemy is aware that you are trying to tell him something.<br /><br />At around the time that Montagu and Cholmondeley were cooking up Operation Mincemeat, the personal valet of the British Ambassador to Turkey approached the German Embassy in Ankara with what he said were photographed copies of his boss’s confidential papers. The valet’s name was Elyesa Bazna. The Germans called him Cicero, and in this case they performed due diligence. Intelligence that came in over the transom was always considered less trustworthy than the intelligence gathered formally, so Berlin pressed its agents in Ankara for more details. Who was Bazna? What was his background? What was his motivation?<br /><br />“Given the extraordinary ease with which seemingly valuable documents were being obtained, however, there was widespread worry that the enemy had mounted some purposeful deception,” Richard Wires writes, in “The Cicero Spy Affair: German Access to British Secrets in World War II” (1999). Bazna was, for instance, highly adept with a camera, in a way that suggested professional training or some kind of assistance. Bazna claimed that he didn’t use a tripod but simply held each paper under a light with one hand and took the picture with the other. So why were the photographs so clear? Berlin sent a photography expert to investigate. The Germans tried to figure out how much English he knew—which would reveal whether he could read the documents he was photographing or was just being fed them. In the end, many German intelligence officials thought that Cicero was the real thing. But Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Foreign Minister, remained wary—and his doubts and political infighting among the German intelligence agencies meant that little of the intelligence provided by Cicero was ever acted upon.<br /><br />Cicero, it turned out, was the real thing. At least, we think he was the real thing. The Americans had a spy in the German Embassy in Turkey who learned that a servant was spying in the British Embassy. She told her bosses, who told the British. Just before his death, Stewart Menzies, the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service during the war, told an interviewer, “Of course, Cicero was under our control,” meaning that the minute they learned about Cicero they began feeding him false documents. Menzies, it should be pointed out, was a man who spent much of his professional career deceiving other people, and if you had been the wartime head of M.I.6, giving an interview shortly before your death, you probably would say that Cicero was one of yours. Or perhaps, in interviews given shortly before death, people are finally free to tell the truth. Who knows?<br /><br />In the case of Operation Mincemeat, Germany’s spies told their superiors that something false was actually true (even though, secretly, some of those spies might have known better), and Germany acted on it. In the case of Cicero, Germany’s spies told their superiors that something was true that may indeed have been true, though maybe wasn’t, or maybe was true for a while and not true for a while, depending on whether you believe the word of someone two decades after the war was over—and in this case Germany didn’t really act on it at all. Looking at that track record, you have to wonder if Germany would have been better off not having any spies at all.<br /><br />The idea for Operation Mincemeat, Macintyre tells us, had its roots in a mystery story written by Basil Thomson, a former head of Scotland Yard’s criminal-investigation unit. Thomson was the author of a dozen detective stories, and his 1937 book “The Milliner’s Hat Mystery” begins with the body of a dead man carrying a set of documents that turn out to be forged. “The Milliner’s Hat Mystery” was read by Ian Fleming, who worked for naval intelligence. Fleming helped create something called the Trout Memo, which contained a series of proposals for deceiving the Germans, including this idea of a dead man carrying forged documents. The memo was passed on to John Masterman, the head of the Twenty Committee—of which Montagu and Cholmondeley were members. Masterman, who also wrote mysteries on the side, starring an Oxford don and a Sherlock Holmes-like figure, loved the idea. Mincemeat, Macintyre writes, “began as fiction, a plot twist in a long-forgotten novel, picked up by another novelist, and approved by a committee presided over by yet another novelist.”<br /><br />Then, there was the British naval attaché in Madrid, Alan Hillgarth, who stage-managed Mincemeat’s reception in Spain. He was a “spy, former gold prospector, and, perhaps inevitably, successful novelist,” Macintyre writes. “In his six novels, Alan Hillgarth hankered for a lost age of personal valor, chivalry, and self-reliance.” Unaccountably, neither Montagu nor Cholmondeley seems to have written mysteries of his own. But, then again, they had Mincemeat. “As if constructing a character in a novel, Montagu and Cholmondeley . . . set about creating a personality with which to clothe their dead body,” Macintyre observes. Martin didn’t have to have a fiancée. But, in a good spy thriller, the hero always has a beautiful lover. So they found a stunning young woman, Jean Leslie, to serve as Martin’s betrothed, and Montagu flirted with her shamelessly, as if standing in for his fictional creation. They put love letters from her among his personal effects. “Don’t please let them send you off into the blue the horrible way they do nowadays,” she wrote to her fiancé. “Now that we’ve found each other out of the whole world, I don’t think I could bear it.”<br /><br />The British spymasters saw themselves as the authors of a mystery story, because it gave them the self-affirming sense that they were in full command of the narratives they were creating. They were not, of course. They were simply lucky that von Roenne and Kühlenthal had private agendas aligned with the Allied cause. The intelligence historian Ralph Bennett writes that one of the central principles of Dudley Clarke (he of the cross-dressing, the elephants, and the fourteen Nigerian giants) was that “deception could only be successful to the extent to which it played on existing hopes and fears.” That’s why the British chose to convince Hitler that the Allied focus was on Greece and the Balkans—Hitler, they knew, believed that the Allied focus was on Greece and the Balkans. But we are, at this point, reduced to a logical merry-go-round: Mincemeat fed Hitler what he already believed, and was judged by its authors to be a success because Hitler continued to believe what he already believed. How do we know the Germans wouldn’t have moved that Panzer division to the Peloponnese anyway? Bennett is more honest: “Even had there been no deception, [the Germans] would have taken precautions in the Balkans.” Bennett also points out that what the Germans truly feared, in the summer of 1943, was that the Italians would drop out of the Axis alliance. Soldiers washing up on beaches were of little account next to the broader strategic considerations of the southern Mediterranean. Mincemeat or no Mincemeat, Bennett writes, the Germans “would probably have refused to commit more troops to Sicily in support of the Italian Sixth Army lest they be lost in the aftermath of an Italian defection.” Perhaps the real genius of spymasters is found not in the stories they tell their enemies during the war but in the stories they tell in their memoirs once the war is over.<br /><br />It is helpful to compare the British spymasters’ attitudes toward deception with that of their postwar American counterpart James Jesus Angleton. Angleton was in London during the nineteen-forties, apprenticing with the same group that masterminded gambits such as Mincemeat. He then returned to Washington and rose to head the C.I.A.’s counter-intelligence division throughout the Cold War.<br /><br />Angleton did not write detective stories. His nickname was the Poet. He corresponded with the likes of Ezra Pound, E. E. Cummings, T. S. Eliot, Archibald MacLeish, and William Carlos Williams, and he championed William Empson’s “Seven Types of Ambiguity.” He co-founded a literary journal at Yale called Furioso. What he brought to spycraft was the intellectual model of the New Criticism, which, as one contributor to Furioso put it, was propelled by “the discovery that it is possible and proper for a poet to mean two differing or even opposing things at the same time.” Angleton saw twists and turns where others saw only straight lines. To him, the spy game was not a story that marched to a predetermined conclusion. It was, in a phrase of Eliot’s that he loved to use, “a wilderness of mirrors.”<br /><br />Angleton had a point. The deceptions of the intelligence world are not conventional mystery narratives that unfold at the discretion of the narrator. They are poems, capable of multiple interpretations. Kühlenthal and von Roenne, Mincemeat’s audience, contributed as much to the plan’s success as Mincemeat’s authors. A body that washes up onshore is either the real thing or a plant. The story told by the ambassador’s valet is either true or too good to be true. Mincemeat seems extraordinary proof of the cleverness of the British Secret Intelligence Service, until you remember that just a few years later the Secret Intelligence Service was staggered by the discovery that one of its most senior officials, Kim Philby, had been a Soviet spy for years. The deceivers ended up as the deceived.<br /><br />But, if you cannot know what is true and what is not, how on earth do you run a spy agency? In the nineteen-sixties, Angleton turned the C.I.A. upside down in search of K.G.B. moles that he was sure were there. As a result of his mole hunt, the agency was paralyzed at the height of the Cold War. American intelligence officers who were entirely innocent were subjected to unfair accusations and scrutiny. By the end, Angleton himself came under suspicion of being a Soviet mole, on the ground that the damage he inflicted on the C.I.A. in the pursuit of his imagined Soviet moles was the sort of damage that a real mole would have sought to inflict on the C.I.A. in the pursuit of Soviet interests.<br /><br />“The remedy he had proposed in 1954 was for the CIA to have what would amount to two separate mind-sets,” Edward Jay Epstein writes of Angleton, in his 1989 book “Deception.” “His counterintelligence staff would provide the alternative view of the picture. Whereas the Soviet division might see a Soviet diplomat as a possible CIA mole, the counterintelligence staff would view him as a possible disinformation agent. What division case officers would tend to look at as valid information, furnished by Soviet sources who risked their lives to cooperate with them, counterintelligence officers tended to question as disinformation, provided by KGB-controlled sources. This was, as Angleton put it, ‘a necessary duality.’ ”<br /><br />Translation: the proper function of spies is to remind those who rely on spies that the kinds of thing found out by spies can’t be trusted. If this sounds like a lot of trouble, there’s a simpler alternative. The next time a briefcase washes up onshore, don’t open it. ♦Rob Hoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02211809421832142963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246236922077831265.post-87302529177147833472010-04-28T06:48:00.000-07:002010-04-28T06:49:07.575-07:00Thomas Jefferson "The United States Declaration of Independence"<object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/zEbsCTa9HB8&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/zEbsCTa9HB8&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object>Rob Hoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02211809421832142963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246236922077831265.post-90543895641724958842010-04-01T19:28:00.000-07:002010-04-01T19:30:24.929-07:00The Sex ScholarDecades before Kinsey, Stanford professor Clelia Mosher polled Victorian-era women on their bedroom behavior—then kept the startling results under wraps.<br />By Kara Platoni<br />DOING HER PART: Mosher served with the American Red Cross in France during World War I.<br /><br /><br />In 1973, historian Carl Degler was combing the University archives, gathering research for a book on the history of the family. Sifting through the papers of Dr. Clelia Duel Mosher, who taught in Stanford's hygiene department around the turn of the 20th century, he came across a mysteriously bound file. Degler nearly put it aside, figuring it was a manuscript for one of Mosher's published works, mostly statistical treatises on women's height, strength and menstruation. But instead, he recalls, "I opened it up and there were these questionnaires"— questionnaires upon which dozens of women, most born before 1870, had inscribed their most intimate thoughts.<br /><br />In other words, it was a sex survey. A Victorian sex survey. It is the earliest known study of its type, long preceding, for example, the 1947 and 1953 Kinsey Reports, whose oldest female respondents were born in the 1890s. The Mosher Survey recorded not only women's sexual habits and appetites, but also their thinking about spousal relationships, children and contraception. Perhaps, it hinted, Victorian women weren't so Victorian after all.<br /><br />Indeed, many of the surveyed women were decidedly unshrinking. One, born in 1844, called sex "a normal desire" and observed that "a rational use of it tends to keep people healthier." Offered another, born in 1862, "The highest devotion is based upon it, a very beautiful thing, and I am glad nature gave it to us."<br /><br />The survey's genesis—like its rediscovery—was a fortuitous accident. Mosher started it in 1892 as a 28-year-old biology undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin; she had been asked to address a local Mother's Club on "the marital relation" and as a single, childless woman seems to have used data collection to fill gaps in her knowledge. Afterward, Mosher continued conducting surveys until 1920, using variations on the same form and amassing 45 profiles in all. Yet Mosher never published or drew more than cursory observations from her data. She died in 1940, and the survey was entirely forgotten when Degler unearthed it.<br /><br />"I remember I was so surprised when I first opened it and saw what was there," recalls Degler, 89, the Margaret Byrne Professor of American History, emeritus. "I said to the librarian there, 'Did anyone ever use these papers before?' I was sure that they'd been used before. [The subject] was something that was so instantaneously interesting at this point. And they said no, no one ever had looked at any of the papers, and certainly not at that survey. That's one of the great experiences of my life as a historian."<br /><br />Degler alerted the world to the survey's existence in 1974 by analyzing it in the American Historical Review, concluding that although in the Victorian era "there was an effort to deny women's sexual feelings . . . the Mosher Survey should make us doubt that the ideology was actually put into practice." The survey was a sensation. Degler recalls feminist historians coming to the archives to make copies, and in 1980 it was printed as a book that soon hit college classrooms.<br /><br />Mosher's survey, says Stanford historian Estelle Freedman, co-author of Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America, was "a goldmine" for scholars. In an era when "the public ideal was that women should be very discreet, if not ignorant, about sexuality," says Freedman, Mosher was "asking very modern questions. She's opening up an inquiry about what is the meaning of sexuality for women." Mosher's survey, like her life, gave poignant testimony to the complex desires of women who were caught between traditional feminine norms and 20th-century freedoms.<br />Courtesy Stanford University Archives<br /><br />Born in 1863 in Albany, N.Y., young Clelia had a scientific bent encouraged by her father, Dr. Cornelius Mosher, whom she idolized. He took her on his medical rounds and taught her to love botany and literature. Yet he couldn't bear to let his beloved—and somewhat sickly—daughter attend college, then considered a strain on young women's health. He tried to distract Clelia by helping her set up a small florist shop, but she squirreled away tuition money and off she went.<br /><br />Mosher's college career was somewhat nomadic. In 1889, she entered Wellesley as a 25-year-old freshman but struggled academically and with ill health. She spent her junior year at the University of Wisconsin, where she conducted her first surveys, and in 1892 transferred to Stanford, enrolling in its second class of students. She received a physiology degree in 1893 and her master's in physiology in 1894, while working as an assistant in the department of hygiene teaching health, physiology and exercise to female students.<br /><br />Thanks to a steady supply of young female research subjects, Mosher's scholarly aim soon became clear: to prove that women were not inferior to men, and that frailties chalked up to sex were really the effects of binding garments, insufficient exercise and mental conditioning. Her master's thesis, for example, showed that women breathe from the diaphragm, as men do, rather than from the chest, as was believed at the time. She concluded that this so-called biological difference was really due to tight corsetry.<br /><br />She also began tracking students' menstrual periods, hoping to upend "functional periodicity," the idea that menstruation debilitated women. It was a canny subject choice for an ambitious female investigator. "That was not research that men could do easily, so she definitely claimed an area that was not accessible to men for her own research," says Elizabeth Griego, who wrote her 1983 dissertation on Mosher for an education doctorate at UC-Berkeley and spent most of the early 1980s in the Stanford archives sifting through Mosher's papers. (Griego is now vice president for student life at the University of the Pacific.)<br /><br />But it wasn't until after 1896, when Mosher had moved on to Johns Hopkins to obtain her MD, that she analyzed her data. Again, she blamed nurture over nature: Painful menstruation, she concluded, was in most cases caused by inactivity, poor muscular development and the very idea of "inevitable illness." Sending girls to bed to dwell upon their discomfort, Mosher wrote, "produce[s] a morbid attitude and favor[s] the development and exaggeration of whatever symptoms there may be." Mosher was not subtle about her motivation for seeking to discredit functional periodicity. "Equal pay for women means equal work; unnecessary menstrual absences mean less than full work," she wrote. Convinced that women should stay active throughout their periods, Mosher even invented abdominal exercises—dubbed "moshers"—to counteract menstrual pain.<br /><br />‘The skirt, as modified by the vagaries of fashion, has a direct bearing on the health, development and efficiency of the woman. In 1893-96 I made a series of observations on the clothing of ninety-eight young women. The average width of skirt was then 13.5 feet. The weight of the skirt alone was often as much as the entire weight of the clothing worn by the modern girl.’<br />–Clelia Mosher, Strength of Women (c. 1920)<br /><br />By the time Mosher received her MD in 1900, there were approximately 7,000 female doctors and surgeons in the United States (almost 6 percent of the total), but they still faced discrimination. Mosher turned down a job as an assistant to a gynecological surgeon when told that men would refuse to work under her. She returned to Palo Alto and opened a private practice, but struggled to get patient referrals from male colleagues or win grants to fund her menstruation studies. In 1910, Stanford offered her an assistant professorship in personal hygiene as the medical adviser for women, and Mosher eagerly returned to academic life. "I think she started out thinking she would like to be a doctor and perhaps a surgeon, but she found the doors closed to her very quickly," muses Griego.<br /><br />Instead, Griego says, Mosher found what mattered to her: a living wage, intellectual freedom and access to research subjects. Mosher restarted her menstruation research and completed a study showing that the average height of Stanford's entering female students had increased 1.5 inches in 20 years, a change she attributed to better exercise and comfortable clothing. Mosher became a full professor in 1928, one year before she retired.<br /><br />Despite the increasing prevalence of professional women, Griego says Mosher was an "intellectual loner." She didn't join women's professional groups or bond with many female academics. (Her Stanford research collaborators were male.) "She was really not very interested in the kinds of things that even faculty women—certainly faculty wives—were interested in," says Griego. "She wasn't interested in teas, she wasn't particularly interested in nurturing or mentoring women. She was really a researcher and she wanted to be accepted for her scientific approach to subjects."<br /><br />She cut an odd figure on campus, Griego says, in her habitual "mannish suit." In her writings, Mosher railed against fashion: Sewing dainty clothing wasted women's study time; a young girl "making tatting to decorate her clothes or knitting or embroidering while her brother is playing ball" would grow feeble and sedentary.<br /><br />Mosher never married and had few close relationships, although her mother lived with her on campus. Mosher felt this anomie deeply. A diary entry from 1919 laments: "I am finding out gradually why I am so lonely. The only things I care about are things which use my brain. The women I meet are not so much interested and I do not meet many men, so there is an intellectual solitude which is like the solitude of the desert—dangerous to one's sanity."<br />TOUGHEN UP: Stanford women, c. 1917, try their strength using a device of Mosher and physiology professor Ernest Martin.<br />Courtesy Stanford University Archives<br /><br />Some archival scraps hint at her longing for connection: an unfinished novel whose heroine chooses career over the man she loves, musings on the mother-daughter bond and, the most poignant, a series of letters to an imaginary friend. "I get the sense of companionship and you are spared the boredom of reading them," Mosher wrote impishly in 1921. But in 1926, her tone was more despairing. "Dear 'Friend who never was,'" she wrote, "I have given up ever finding you. I have tried out all my friends and they have not measured up to my dreams."<br /><br />Mosher's biggest scientific splash also eluded her during her lifetime.<br /><br />Because it was hidden so long, her sex survey had little influence on her contemporaries, but today it's a valuable historic document that gainsays the stereotype that Victorian women knew little of sex and desired it even less. Granted, it is small and nonrepresentative, favoring well-educated, middle-class white women, and only those willing to disclose intimate matters. Mosher took care to obscure their identities—names and residences were not recorded—but it's likely the group included Stanford faculty and wives, the Mother's Club members from Mosher's Wisconsin days and other women she knew. Of those surveyed, 34 had attended a university or teachers' college. Nine were Stanford alumnae, six from Cornell; other alma maters included Wellesley, Vassar and the University of California. Thirty respondents had worked before marriage, mostly as teachers.<br /><br />Slightly more than half of these educated women claimed to have known nothing of sex prior to marriage; the better informed said they'd gotten their information from books, talks with older women and natural observations like "watching farm animals." Yet no matter how sheltered they'd initially been, these women had—and enjoyed—sex. Of the 45 women, 35 said they desired sex; 34 said they had experienced orgasms; 24 felt that pleasure for both sexes was a reason for intercourse; and about three-quarters of them engaged in it at least once a week.<br /><br />Unlike Mosher's other work, the survey is more qualitative than quantitative, featuring open-ended questions probing feelings and experiences. "She's actually asking these questions not about physiology or mechanics—she's really asking about sexual subjectivity and the meaning of sex to women," Freedman says. Their responses were often mixed. Some enjoyed sex but worried that they shouldn't. One slept apart from her husband "to avoid temptation of too frequent intercourse." Some didn't enjoy sex but faulted their partner. Mosher writes: [She] "Thinks men have not been properly trained."<br /><br />Their responses reflected the cultural shifts of the late 19th century, as marriage became viewed as a romantic union, not just an economic one, and as people began to dissociate sex from procreation, says Freedman. One woman, born in 1867, wrote that before marriage she believed sex to be only for reproduction, but later changed her mind: "In my experience the habitual bodily expression of love has a deep psychological effect in making possible complete mental sympathy & perfecting the spiritual union that must be the lasting 'marriage' after the passion of love has passed away with the years." Wrote another, born in 1863, "It seems to me to be a natural and physical sign of a spiritual union, a renewal of the marriage vows."<br /><br />‘A great responsibility rests upon us as physicians and teachers of physical training to lead women to ideas of health, to hold out to each one an attainable physical ideal, to teach the mechanism of our wonderful bodies so that she obeys the laws of her body, laws learned so perfectly that they are obeyed automatically.’<br />–Clelia Mosher, The Relation of Health to the Woman Movement, 1915<br /><br />Anxieties about unwanted pregnancies are also clear. This was a hot topic during the 19th century, when the marital fertility rate fell by half despite the criminalization of abortion and contraception, Freedman says. At least 30 respondents reported attempting birth control anyway. Many mentioned using douching, withdrawal or the rhythm method; a few had tried a "womb veil" or male condoms.<br /><br />"My husband and I . . . believe in intercourse for its own sake—we wish it for ourselves and spiritually miss it, rather than physically, when it does not occur, because it is the highest, most sacred expression of our oneness," wrote one woman, born in 1860. "On the other hand there are sometimes long periods when we are not willing to incur even a slight risk of pregnancy, and then we deny ourselves the intercourse, feeling all the time that we are losing that which keeps us closest to each other." A woman born in 1862, who felt that without "a strong desire for children" marriage was no more than "legalized prostitution," nevertheless wrote: "I most heartily wish there were no accidental conceptions. I believe the world would take a most gigantic stride toward high ethical conditions, if every child brought into the world were the product of pure love and conscious choice."<br /><br />So if not all Victorian women scorned sex, why do we think of them as prudish? First, says Freedman, the notion of passionlessness wasn't universal, it was a class privilege, a way for wealthier women to claim respectability that more sexually vulnerable slave, immigrant and working-class women couldn't. "To some extent it's a protection of women from the sense of availability, and in other ways it's a limitation on them and denying their sexuality," Freedman says. Virtue was also a way for women to demonstrate good citizenship—men expressed this in the public sphere, and women in the home.<br /><br />Also, some historical sources are misleading. As Degler pointed out in his 1974 article, until the Mosher Survey, much information about Victorian sex lives came from health advice books, like those of Dr. William Acton, who wrote in 1865: "The majority of women (happily for them) are not very much troubled with sexual feelings of any kind. What men are habitually, women are only exceptionally." But these books, wrote Degler, designed to urge temperance to young women, were prescriptive rather than de-scriptive: "The so-called Victorian conception of women's sexuality was more that of an ideology seeking to be established than the prevalent view or practice of even middle-class women."<br /><br />More accurate portrayals of women's lives likely were confined to diaries and letters. Similarly, Griego says, women probably unburdened themselves to Mosher as a well-credentialed female physician. "They wouldn't have responded to just anyone with that confidential information, but her own self-image as a researcher and scientist encouraged them to be honest and factual." Although the survey's size means we can't draw broad conclusions about Victorian life from it, Freedman says, it's still a remarkably telling document, "a lens on a moment of transition."<br />Courtesy Stanford University Archives<br /><br />We may never know what Mosher made of her own survey. Her brief introduction merely notes that it provided "a priceless knowledge for a practicing physician and teacher; a background sufficiently broad to avoid prejudice in her work with women." A comment on the era's falling birthrate contains her only analysis: "The maladjustments in marriage occasionally occur at the first consummation of the marital relation. The woman comes to this new experience of life often with no knowledge. The woman while she may give mental consent often shrinks physically. Her slower time reaction deprives her of all physical response, or (2) too often her training has instilled the idea that any physical response is coarse, common and immodest which inhibits proper part in this relation."<br /><br />Ultimately, Mosher's story is deeply ironic: She was a staunch feminist who remained aloof from sisterhood, a woman who rigorously researched sexuality and marriage yet probably experienced neither, a pioneering scholar who longed for recognition but did not live to enjoy it. Today there is an often well-rewarded place in our society for awkward overachievers, but Mosher struggled her entire life with her ungainly intellect and with being a woman in a man's research world.<br /><br />"We need people to go before us, and she was certainly a way-shower for a generation that followed her," Griego says. "Even though she was not the kind of person that women of her time wanted to emulate, still she held out the possibility that women could be intellectuals, they could be scientists."<br /><br />In her own writings, Mosher was acutely aware of her foresight, and of the possibilities that lay ahead for women once sex became less of a secret and gender less of a burden. "Born into a world of unlimited opportunity, the woman of the rising generation will answer the question of what woman's real capacities are," Mosher wrote in 1923. "She will have physical, economic, racial and civic freedom. What will she do with it?"Rob Hoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02211809421832142963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2246236922077831265.post-68575916384107887402010-03-27T20:57:00.000-07:002010-03-27T20:59:08.695-07:00Packing the Supreme CourtWith Justices for All<br />By ALAN BRINKLEY<br /><br />Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court<br /><br />By Jeff Shesol<br /><br />Illustrated. 644 pages. W. W. Norton & Company. $27.95<br /><br />In 1937, a few months after his landslide re-election to a second term, Franklin Roosevelt set out on one of the boldest and most dangerous courses of his presidency. The conservative Supreme Court had already struck down a series of New Deal programs. Roosevelt feared that the mostly aged justices would go on to destroy the rest of his legislative achievements before he would have a chance to make any new appointments. As a result, he proposed a “reform” of the courts that would, among other things, have added an additional justice to the Supreme Court for every current justice over the age of 70. It became the most controversial proposal of his presidency — so much so that it nearly paralyzed his administration for over a year and destroyed much of the fragile unity of the Democratic coalition.<br /><br />Jeff Shesol (the author of “Mutual Contempt,” an account of the relationship between Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy) is not the first to chronicle what became known as the “court-packing” controversy, but “Supreme Power” is by far the most detailed — and most riveting — account of this extraordinary event. Shesol provides a revealing portrait of the “nine old men,” as opponents of the court described them. At the same time, he presents in great detail Roosevelt’s own anguish over what he considered the court’s reactionary views. Both sides of the controversy were the products of deep conviction. The court was on a mission to combat what the justices viewed as a great danger to the basic principles of American democracy. The White House was on its own mission to save not just the New Deal, but also its restoration of the nation.<br /><br />Within the Roosevelt administration, the proposal to enlarge the court seemed eminently reasonable. There was no constitutional bar to expanding the number of justices. All other measures — constitutional amendments, legislative remedies, mandatory retirements and similar proposals — seemed far more radical and far less likely to succeed. Court packing seemed the most moderate and cautious of the paths available — but still, they realized, a tremendously risky one.<br /><br />Both the court and the White House paid a considerable price for their insularity and secrecy. The justices, of course, were isolated by design. But the White House and the Justice Department created their own insularity, pursuing their goals with such surprisingly successful secrecy that they gave few people, even within the administration, the opportunity to warn Roosevelt of the dangers he faced. Shesol recounts these miscalculations on both sides with particular skill.<br /><br />And the dangers, it quickly became clear, were much greater than Roosevelt and his advisers had imagined. It was not surprising that the court-packing controversy would arouse the rage of the right, which already detested Roosevelt and the New Deal and believed the White House was building a dictatorship. More startling to the president was the outrage from within his own party — even among many staunch progressives — and the lukewarm loyalty he received even from those who agreed to support him. Many opponents of the proposal shared Roosevelt’s dismay at the court’s conservatism, but tampering with the institution seemed even to many liberals to represent excessive presidential power and a threat to the Constitution.<br /><br />The justices of the Supreme Court were as sharply divided in the 1930s as they often seem to have become in the 21st century. Five of them (George Sutherland, James McReynolds, Willis Van Devanter, Pierce Butler and Owen Roberts) were largely opposed to the New Deal measures they were asked to consider. Four others (Louis Brandeis, Harlan Fiske Stone, Benjamin Cardozo and, somewhat precariously, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes), mostly supported the New Deal. In 1937, when the court-packing fight began, most of the justices had been on the bench for well over a decade, and none had been appointed during Roosevelt’s first four years. Hence the president’s frustration, and his belief that the court had become out of touch with the realities of the time.<br /><br />During the first months of controversy, the likelihood of success, given the huge Democratic majorities in Congress, seemed high, despite the ferocity of the opposition. But gradually the president’s position eroded — a response to growing opposition and to the resentment of what many considered Roosevelt’s duplicity in proposing what he claimed to be court “reform” rather than what many people considered naked political pressure. In July 1937, the court proposal died in the Senate, by now undefended even by the White House and unlamented by most of the public. It was widely described as the most devastating defeat Roosevelt had ever experienced.<br /><br />But how devastating was the defeat? In West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, a 1937 case contesting a minimum wage law in Washington State, Owen Roberts voted with the liberals to sustain the law. (Only one year earlier he had joined the conservatives in voting down another minimum wage law.) Over the following months, Roberts continued to vote mostly with the liberals. And beginning in mid-1937, a number of conservative justices retired, providing the president with the opportunity to appoint several new justices who transformed the ideological balance of the court.<br /><br />Shesol does not engage directly with the scholarly debate over whether the court-packing controversy was responsible for the shift in the court’s behavior. The traditional story, supported by some of the leading historians of the New Deal, maintains that the pressure from Roosevelt persuaded Roberts, and perhaps others, to shift positions. Other historians — mostly legal scholars — argue that the court-packing fight had little or nothing to do with the court’s shift, that it represented instead a slow and steady evolution of constitutional law that long preceded the controversy. But even without taking an explicit stand, Shesol suggests a plausible argument that falls somewhere between these two interpretations.<br /><br />One of Shesol’s many important contributions to an understanding of this controversy is his powerful description of the extraordinary opprobrium the court confronted as it began to overturn New Deal measures in 1935. Indeed, it was the deep unpopularity of the court that helped embolden Roosevelt to challenge it in 1937. In those first years of the New Deal, Shesol suggests, the conservative justices were stunned by the boldness and, they thought, radicalism of the New Deal; their opinions seemed to reflect their alarm and caused them to take positions even more conservative than they had in the recent past. Two years later, similarly stunned by the criticism they were receiving, the justices began to slowly back away from their most conservative views. Roberts’s shift occurred even before Roosevelt announced his court-packing plan; but that does not mean that the political furor played no role in his decision.<br /><br />Shesol also draws attention to a more mundane but nevertheless considerable factor in the shift of the court. In 1937 Roosevelt supported, and Congress approved, a bill to assure retired justices that they would continue to receive their judicial salaries even after retirement. The absence of such benefits had deterred some aged justices from retiring; once the pensions were assured, several of them resigned.<br /><br />“Supreme Power” is an impressive and engaging book — an excellent work of narrative history. It is deeply researched and beautifully written. Even readers who already know the outcome will find it hard not to feel the suspense that surrounded the battle, so successfully does Shesol recreate the atmosphere of this great controversy. There are many ways to explain what become known as the “Constitutional revolution of 1937,” but Shesol’s book is — at least for now — the most thorough account of this dramatic and still contested event.<br /><br />Alan Brinkley, the Allan Nevins professor of history at Columbia University, is the author of “The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century.”Rob Hoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02211809421832142963noreply@blogger.com0