Category: History

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Things Aren’t Getting Worse

Odd and ends to keep in mind when you begin to feel like the idiots have taken control (of course, it’s just a partial list; consider it in progress):

The Wisdom of Crowds, 18th Century Style: An estimated one-third of the colonial population at the outset of the American Revolution supported the British. One-third were on the fence. One-third bought into the “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” thing enough to actively support the rebellion.

Keep Your Damned Foreign Books: After the British burned the Library of Congress during the war of 1812, former President Thomas Jefferson offered to help re-establish it by selling his large personal library to the government. Representative Cyrus King of Massachusetts argued against the purchase because he objected to the ideas that might be found inside Jefferson’s collection: “It might be inferred, from the character of the man who collected it, and France, where the collection was made, that the library contained irreligious and immoral books, works of the French philosophers, who caused and influenced the volcano of the French Revolution. The bill would put $23,999 into Jefferson’s pocket for about 6,000 books, good, bad and indifferent, old, new and worthless, in languages which many cannot read and most ought not.”

Nice Phrase — Now Get Lost: In the Senate campaign of 1858, in which Lincoln memorably argued that “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” he lost.

Evolution for the Hell of It: In the 1925 “Monkey Trial,” in which John Scopes was put in the dock for violating a Tennessee law prohibiting the teaching of evolution, Scopes was convicted. The law under which Scopes was prosecuted stayed on the books until 1967.

See? The idiots always been in control, or waiting in the wings.

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The Historical Hurricane

Two new storms — Philippe and Rita — have come to life. Next on the list would be Stan. Stan, the casual hurricane. Of course, there’s not much in these storm names. The relaxed-sounding Mitch (1998) spawned a disaster in Central America that in many ways dwarfs the impact of Hurricane Katrina.

There’s all sorts of documentation about who chooses the names and what the names are. The basic principles in naming are first to create a universal reference for forecasters and other officials and second to personify the storm in a way that makes the phenomenon concrete for the public. However, I haven’t come across any explanation of how the actual names are picked — how Mitch or Stan make it, for instance, and Mikhail and Shlomo don’t. Mostly it’s the desire to keep the names short and sweet and familiar.

But do you want a storm to sound friendly? I mean, Katrina had previous connotations for me that made it easy to imagine the storm as an awesome and potentially destructive force of nature. But Stan? What does that bring to mind? Stan Laurel. He might get you into trouble with the wife, but how much real damage could he do?

Which is why I’ve always (privately, until now) advocated a system that uses names of particularly destructive people — anyone from big-league despots down to well-known criminals. Hurricane Stalin. Hurricane Huberty. That way, you could convey the potential menace of tropical cyclones and deliver a history lesson at the same time.

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September 17 Notebook

–Happy Constitution Day. Senator Robert Byrd inserted a provision into a spending bill last year — later approved by Congress and signed by the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue — that directs schools that get federal money to conduct some sort of educational program every year on or around September 17th. That’s the date in 1787 the Constitution was signed. The requirement is actually a pretty loose one. The University of California set up a Constitution Day website, and doing that little bit would have complied with Byrd’s law. (At UC Berkeley, the occasion will be marked with a panel discussion at the law school, open to anyone).

–Happy 143rd anniversary of Antietam. Well, yes, happy might not be the word. After the battle that consumed a beautiful summer day in the woods and cornfields around Sharpsburg, Maryland, “nearly 6,000 men lay dead or dying, and another 17,000 wounded. … The casualties at Antietam numbered four times the total suffered by American soldiers at the Normandy beaches on June 6, 1944.” (From “Battle Cry of Freedom,” by James McPherson).

Beyond the carnage, the North’s strategic victory gave Lincoln political breathing space to promulgate the Emancipation Proclamation.

–Happy Harvest Moon. It’s tonight.

–Happy birthday to Dominic Hickey, born in Berkeley on this date in 1983, while I played with his older brother Dylan and my son Eamon in a park down the street from his folks’ place. He’s a senior this year at UC Irvine. Hey, it seems like yesterday,

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Yosemite Shutter Geeks

Sleuth astronomers in Texas announced last month that they had unraveled a minor mystery from the career of Ansel Adams: The exact date and time he shot one of his most famous images, “Autumn Moon.” By locating the site from which Adams took the picture and doing lots of number work, the astronomers figured that the shutter snapped at 7:03 p.m. on September 15, 1948, The team calculated the same alignment of Earth and moon occurs precisely every 19 years; thus, everything ought to line up the way Adams saw it at 7:03 p.m. on September 15, 2005.

Armed with that knowledge, there was only one thing for Adams geeks to do: Go up to Yosemite to try to capture the scene. Ben Margot, an Associated Press photographer who was snapping pictures for the Alameda Times-Star when I was there in the early ’80s, was one of those who made the trek. SFGate has his story (and some of his images) of the event.

(Naturally, the copy editor in me screams, “Autumn Moon”?! It was still late summer!)

(And here’s another, less neutral take on last night’s photo-pilgrimage. I also note that that post and others freely use the copyrighted Adams and AP images.)

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The City and the River

I didn’t listen to Bush tonight, much. I did hear the part that was excerpted for the late local news here in liberal-land. If I knew nothing of his history, I’d say I liked what they chose to play: He said he’s responsible, the people deserve better, and there will be an honest effort to learn from the catastrophe. Having seen him on the job for the last five years, the most optimistic sentiment I can muster is “uh huh.”

However, I will not now stoop to the blame game. Let us consider what others might be saying about the present and past of New Orleans and its region and what it might tell us about the future.

First: From Sunday’s Washington Post, an interesting piece of historical perspective from Joel Garreau, a reporter who suggests the city, as it was, will never come back. The biggest reasons, he says: the people who control the resources to rebuild simple won’t pay, and the people who live in the city lack what it takes to make it happen.

“In his 2000 book, “Bowling Alone,” political scientist Robert Putnam measured social capital around the country — the group cohesion that allows people to come together in times of great need to perform seemingly impossible feats together. He found some of the lowest levels in Louisiana. (More Louisianans agree with the statement “I do better than average in a fistfight” than people from almost anywhere else.) His data do not seem to be contradicted by New Orleans’s murder rate, which is 10 times the national average. Not to mention the political candidates through the ages who, to little effect, have run on promises of cleaning up the corruption endemic to the government and police force. New Orleans is not called the Big Easy for nothing. This is the place whose most famous slogan is ‘Laissez les bons temps rouler’ — ‘Let the good times roll.’ ”

Second: Recommended by the proto-Infospigot (aka, my dad) is an “American Experience” documentary on the 1927 Mississippi River floods. The disasters may differ in origin, but the utter disregard for the poor looks familiar. The show was on Tuesday night (September 14), but public TV being public TV, it’ll be on again.

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Re: September 11th

A day late: From a brilliant abridgment of Walt Whitman’s "Song of Myself" that Scott Simon read on NPR the weekend after September 11, 2001:

"I understand the large hearts of heroes,

The courage of present times and all times;

How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steam-ship, and Death chasing it up and down the storm;

How he knuckled tight, and gave not back one inch, and was faithful of days and faithful of nights,

And chalk’d in large letters, on a board, Be of good cheer, we will not desert you:

How he follow’d with them, and tack’d with them—and would not give it up;

How he saved the drifting company at last:

How the lank loose-gown’d women look’d when boated from the side of their prepared graves;

How the silent old-faced infants, and the lifted sick, and the sharp-lipp’d unshaved men:

All this I swallow—it tastes good—I like it well—it becomes mine;

I am the man—I suffer’d—I was there. …

I am the mash’d fireman with breast-bone broken;

Tumbling walls buried me in their debris;

Heat and smoke I inspired—I heard the yelling shouts of my comrades;

I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels;

They have clear’d the beams away—they tenderly lift me forth. 

I lie in the night air in my red shirt—the pervading hush is for my sake;

Painless after all I lie, exhausted but not so unhappy;

White and beautiful are the faces around me—the heads are bared of their fire-caps;

The kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches. …

I take part—I see and hear the whole;

The cries, curses, roar—the plaudits …

Workmen searching after damages, making indispensable repairs … the rent roof—the fan-shaped explosion;

The whizz of limbs, heads, stone, wood, iron, high in the air. …

Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged;

Missing me one place, search another;

I stop somewhere, waiting for you."


 

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Post-Katrina Reading

Highly recommended: The New Yorker’s extensive collection of current and historical storm pieces from the September 12 issue, including a clutch of Talk of the Town mini-essays and two classic pieces: One by James B. Stewart on the flooding upriver in 1993, and John McPhee’s 1987 history of the Army Corps of Engineers projects designed to keep New Orleans and other parts of the lower delta dry. on the history of the Army Corps and its effects:

“The river goes through New Orleans like an elevated highway. Jackson Square, in the French Quarter, is on high ground with respect to the rest of New Orleans, but even from the benches of Jackson Square one looks up across the levee at the hulls of passing ships. Their keels are higher than the AstroTurf in the Superdome, and if somehow the ships could turn and move at river level into the city and into the stadium they would hover above the playing field like blimps.

“In the early nineteen-eighties, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built a new large district headquarters in New Orleans. It is a tetragon, several stories high, and it is right beside the river. Its foundation was dug in the mainline levee. That, to a fare-thee-well, is putting your money where your mouth is.”

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September 3, 1921

In 1921, September 3 fell on a Saturday. On that day:

A son, Stephen Daniel, is born to the Rev. Sjur and Otilia (Sieverson) Brekke in Warren, Minnesota, the seat of Marshall County. I’d love to know what the Rev. Brekke’s sermon was the next day to his congregation at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Alvarado, 11 miles west of Warren.

Elsewhere:

Henry Bellmon, future governor and U.S. senator from Oklahoma, is born near Tonkawa, Oklahoma.

St. Johnsville, New York, police officer David Bennett Hill is struck by a hit-and-run driver and killed.

Photographer Ruth Orkin born in Boston.

The Cincinnati Reds beat the visiting Chicago Cubs, 4-0, at Crosley Field (so what’s new?). The White Sox fall to the St. Louis Browns, 5-0, at Comiskey Park. The game marks the final appearance of Browns pitcher Joe DeBerry, 24, just a year after making his big-league debut.

Florence M. Foos, 19, marries Fred D. Erni in Bison, Kansas. They had been married nearly 65 years when she died on April 3, 1986.

The population of the world: Roughly 1.86 billion (today: 6.46 billion). Of the United States: 105 million (today: 297 million). Of Marshall County, Minnesota: 19,443 (2000 census: 10,155).

Film star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle drives from Los Angeles to San Francisco to party with friends. By the end of the Labor Day weekend, he’d be a suspect in a murder case — a scandal that all but ended his career.

The September 3 Saturday Evening Post features an article called “The Uses of Calamity” by journalist and early press critic Will Irwin (I haven’t found the text).

In Binghamton, New York, Erma Mae Bryan, 24, marries Herman Otto Wunderlich, 42, who had refused to wed until his mother had passed away.

In the September 3 issue of the British medical journal, The Lancet, Dr. R.W. Burkitt notes that powdered rhubarb has proven effective in treating acute dysentery.

Robert Staughton Lynd marries Helen Merrill. Their son, Staughton Lynd, becomes a noted conscientious objector.

In the 16th Davis Cup tennis tournament, the United States defeats Japan, 5-0.

Ernest Hemingway married Hadley Richardson (it didn’t last).

The Arkansas City (Kansas) Daily Traveler reports: “John Peters, for fifteen years a resident of the little town of Ashton, in Sumner county, west of here, has located in Arkansas City and will in the future make his home in the best city in Kansas. … He has purchased the grocery store of A. L. Bendure, located at 426 North A Street, and he will take charge of the business there next Monday morning.”

Lightning strikes the Lower Coverdale, New Brunswick, Methodist Church.

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Louisiana 1927

NPR just played Aaron Neville’s beautiful cover of the Randy Newman song (lyrics as they appear on the original (1974) cover of Newman’s album “Good Old Boys,” which Kate pulled out of her stack of old records while we debated whether the words I found online were correct. Oh, for the record: She was right.):

“What has happened down here is the winds have changed

Clouds roll in from the north and it starts to rain

Rained real hard and it rained for a real long time

Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

“The river rose all day

The river rose all night

Some people got lost in the flood

Some people got away alright

The river has busted through clear down to Plaquemines

Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

“Louisiana, Louisiana

They’re tryin’ to wash us away

They’re tryin’ to wash us away

Louisiana, Louisiana

They’re tryin’ to wash us away

They’re tryin’ to wash us away

“President Coolidge come down in a railroad train

With a little fat man with a note-pad in his hand

The President say, ‘Little fat man isn’t it a shame what the river has done

to this poor cracker’s land’

“Louisiana, Louisiana

They’re tryin’ to wash us away

They’re tryin’ to wash us away

Louisiana, Louisiana

They’re tryin’ to wash us away

They’re tryin’ to wash us away

They’re tryin’ to wash us away

They’re tryin’ to wash us away”

(I note that Neville says “farmer’s” instead of “cracker’s.”)

A couple days ago, CNN published a little somewhat drippy backgrounder on the song and the events it’s based on. The occasion for NPR playing “Louisiana” was an interview with John Barry, author of “Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America.” The Wikipedia has the bare-bones facts about the disaster, which was a big topic during the 1993 flood.

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Random Reading

A product of random reading:

On September 4, 1886, the Chicago Tribune critiqued a pamphlet on a now-forgotten political scandal by a now-forgotten writer: ""The pamphlet on the Paine Bribery Case and the United States Senate, by Albert H. Walker, is plainly the effusion of a crank."

Mr. Walker was an attorney, author of a textbook on patents, who apparently took himself very seriously. The Tribune’s choice of words prompted him to sue for libel. Walker filed a declaration in federal court in Chicago that said the Tribune had published the remark "to cause it to be suspected and believed that plaintiff was a man of crude, ill digested, ill considered, and wild ideas and aims, and to be supposed to be without skill, tact, adequate information, or common sense." Furthermore:

"… to publicly characterize the plaintiff as a "crank," and thus to publicly impute to him sundry qualities, aims, and methods highly inconsistent with usefulness and success as a lawyer and author, … plaintiff has been greatly prejudiced in his credit and reputation, and caused to be considered an unreliable and injudicious person, and destitute of those qualities on which the earnings of a lawyer or a serious author depend; and has been greatly vexed and mortified, and has been deprived of divers great earnings which would otherwise have accrued to him in his professional duties, and divers great royalties which otherwise would have been paid to him on sales of his books."

Walker also noted that since President James Garfield’s assassination in 1881 at the hands of Charles J. Guiteau — widely described as a crank — "the word … has obtained a definite meaning in this country, and is understood to mean a crack-brained and murderously inclined person, and is so used by the public press."

The court wasn’t moved by Walker’s entreaty to help him recover his reputation. It granted the Trib’s motion to dismiss Walker’s claims, resorting to Ogilvie’s Imperial Dictionary to support its finding that "the word would seem to have no necessarily defamatory sense." In fact, the court’s opinion (Walker v. Tribune, 1887) suggested Walker get a thicker skin: " It is no libel upon a man who has entered the field of authorship to underrate his talents."

Despite the trauma of being called a crank by no less an august organ than the Trib, Walker managed to make a living afterward. His patent textbook went through at least four editions. He lectured on patents at Cornell. And he wrote one of the first books on the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, still circulating today.