I was born in Maryland and spent my first thirty years living there, first in the Appalachian Mountains, then on the Eastern Shore, and later in suburban Washington. After a year in South Carolina, I moved to Georgia in 1977. I soon met another park ranger who worked in Florida. She was a wonderful woman who became my best friend. then my wife, and soon the mother of our three children. I spent over eleven years working in the historic city of Savannah, Georgia, and on the moss-draped sea islands nearby before moving to Atlanta.. In 2007, I retired from the National Park Service and a career dedicated to preserving and interpreting resources and themes in the cultural and natural history of the United States. It was a most rewarding experience. Today, I enjoy living in the rolling hills and woods of the Appalachian Piedmont east of Atlanta.
For more than a decade of Columbus Days I've referenced this interesting post by James C. Bennett on some surprising complexities regarding the holiday. Here's the summary paragraph from my post:
Caboto? Cabot? Yes, it's the same explorer. John Cabot, often identified as the "English" navigator, was really an Italian. In 1497 he financed his "discovery" of North America - not just a few islands as Columbus did in 1492 - with English money. Leave it to those crafty English to Anglicize him and create mass confusion among school children and armchair authorities for centuries to come.
Cabot in his Venetian Robes, Guistino Menescardi, 1762
Putting aside Bennett's Calvinist Puritan "depravity of man" talk, readers know full-well my opinion on the superlatives and "firsts" regarding the exploration, occupation, and settlement of the planet. Whether it's Leif Erikson, Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, Kennewick Man or whomever, we should know by now it's the politics that matters. Given that, Power Line's John Hinderaker offers his perspective on this day. Glenn Reynold follows up with his opinion on Instapundit, including a recommednation that readers explore Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus, a superb biography by the renowned writer and maritime historian, Samuel Eliot Morison.
And so we are left with a national holiday celebrating an explorer who "discovered America" but never set foot on the North American continent. Enough said. My you have an enjoyable Columbus Day holiday and thank Bjarni Herjolfsson for staying out to sea.
For almost two months Muslim forces laid siege to the city of Vienna. Their objective was far larger than a city. It was in fact the defeat of Europe and an end to the Christian world. Fortunately it was not to be. The army of the Holy Roman Empire and the commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania defeated the much larger Army of the Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Vienna, September 11-12. The year was 1683. You can read more about this complex battle at the link. With their defeat the 300 year-long Muslim effort to conquer Europe ended. That effort
Battle of Vienna Franz Geffels (fl, 1635-1671)
inclued a first siege by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1529. Wikipedia's Siege of Vienna entry has more on this event as well as others involving the history of this pivotal city over the past thousand years.
By coincidence or intention the date of September 11 witnessed two significant events in the thousand year long history of religious conflict between Christians and Muslims. I doubt we have seen the last conflict as such history demands remenbrance and vigilance.
For fantasy fiction fans this day in 1954 has great significance. It is the day that J.R.R. Tolkien'sThe Fellowship of the Ring first appeared on store shelves in the United Kingdom. Today, a used copy of that first edition with its original dust jacket would fetch an owner at least $6500. An autographed copy would easily be in six figures as Tolkien was a bit of an introvert and disliked autographing his books. I doubt that sum would matter much to true fans. To them the words within are priceless.
Who was the man behind this beloved three volume narrative we know as The Lord of the Rings? Below is some footage released in 2010 of a 1968 BBC program interviewing Tolkien and exploring his real and imaginary worlds. The audio is not the best so viewers may want to use earbuds or headphones.
Tolkien died about five years after this production. It would take another generation before a cinematic version of his great work would, perhaps could, appear. In the interim his imagination gave new energy to a full range of fiction writers. His is a rich legacy and one that will be enjoyed and expanded in the years head.
Rudyard Kipling, writing in 1919 on the death of his son in World War I, has much to say to us as London burns and our president fiddles.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race, I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place. Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn: But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind, So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace, Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place, But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch, They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch; They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings; So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace. They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease. But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life (Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife) Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all, By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul; But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man There are only four things certain since Social Progress began. That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire, And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins, As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn, The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
Postscript: OTR first read this poem several years ago in a National Review post. He agrees with an Instapundit reader that this is a good time to revisit its wisdom.
The recent move on the part of the State Department to replace Mom and Pop with Parent One and Parent Two on passport applications didn't sit well with lots of folks. There's plenty in print about it, but the best of the lot is Michael A. Walsh's commentary in today's New York Post. Here's a sample
Leaving aside the wretched barbarism of the phrase "gender neutral" -- what State really means, of course, is "sex neutral" -- the move is another salvo in the ongoing sapper war against American and western cultural norms. Even as recently as a decade ago, it would have seemed absurd to think that words like "mother" and "father" would become politically incorrect, but such is the world we now inhabit.Leaving aside the wretched barbarism of the phrase "gender neutral" -- what State really means, of course, is "sex neutral" -- the move is another salvo in the ongoing sapper war against American and western cultural norms. Even as recently as a decade ago, it would have seemed absurd to think that words like "mother" and "father" would become politically incorrect, but such is the world we now inhabit.
For more than two centuries, dating back to Rousseau, the left has been waging an unrelenting war on the wellsprings of Western civilization, as if it were some deliberate, malign conspiracy against an oppressed minority instead of the bulwark against savagery that picked up the pieces of Greco-Roman culture and transformed them into the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. No society is perfect, but where would you rather be? Dubuque or Darfur? San Francisco or Riyadh
Traditional peasant societies believe in only a limited good. The more your neighbor earns, the less someone else gets. Profits are seen as a sort of theft. They must be either hidden or redistributed. Envy rather than admiration of success reigns.
In just over 700 words, classicist and military historian Victor Davis Hanson tells us about a defining difference in Western civilization and why it's so in need of defense these days. Better history lessons are very hard to find. Here is your link.
Source: Neal Boortz Nuze link to Townhall Photo: Vincent Van Gogh's Portrait of a Peasant (Patience Escalier)
There was a time when I didn't think much of what people today call flyover country, the vast American experience between the Eastern Seaboard states and the West Coast. It's never been an active dislike for that territory on my part, but more like a subject lost to other interests. If anything, the story should have been different long before I married into a Midwest and Great Plains family in 1981. As a historian and geographer, I was immersed in Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier hypothesis and its iterations by Ray Allen Billington, and a host of professors schooled at the history department Turner made famous at the University of Wisconsin. A decade after formal education ended, a new learning began as I made frequent and extended trips into that region to meet my new family and know the American interior they called home.
We could debate endlessly about the merits of the work by Turner and his students, but there is no question that the evolution of settlement in the Heartland has stamped it with a distinctive personality. In his new book, Prairie Republic: The Political Culture of Dakota Territory, 1879-1889, Jon Lauck explores a surprising aspect of that personality that flourished in one part of the inland nation. It is all about republicanism and the English legal system that a century earlier bound the colonies in a new venture called the United States of America. It is about a civic society rivaling and often exceeding that found in many of the much older Eastern states. Today, the cultural remnants of that period make for interesting politics in the Age of Obama.
Travis Kavulla reviewed this book in the August 3 issue of National Review. Unfortunately, the review is available only through purchase - online at www.nationalreview.com - or your local library. I'm happy to report there is an excerpt available at NRO's The Corner, along with some comment, thanks to a post by Denis Boyles.
I have a feeling this is going to be an important book in spite of what may appear to be a rather dreary and esoteric subject.
In the U.S., living like a king - for most folks, a king well beyond his means - isn't as easy as it was a decade ago. We know economic times are tough these days. It's especially rough for those starting their careers as members of Generation Y, the children raised in prosperous Boomer households.
How rough is it? For starters, a Bloomberg Business Week article on retirement planning notes that the average salary for workers aged 25-34 has DECLINED 19% over the past thirty years to $35,100 after adjustment for inflation. Gen Y is already saddled with plenty of student debt and an unemployment rate over 15% for its younger members. No wonder retirement and the need to prepare for it doesn't seem to register with this group. More frightening, is the fact that Gen Y folks will be the first "do-it-yourself retirement generation." Those old defined benefit plans from a lifetime of work with one employer are history.
I think this article speaks to far more than just younger workers. How many readers were actually aware of the steep decline in average salaries over the last generation? I would have guessed stagnation or a much smaller decline. It seems the great American economic engine that produced a remarkably prosperity for two generations following World War II (1945) may indeed have peaked. This raises a host of questions for Americans as the nation moves into post -industrial maturity and, some would say, the inevitable decline of aging nations.
But who is to say this is a time for despair? Not I. Though this nation and its people are bound to change over time, we still have opportunities to make the right choices. For younger workers, the Bloomberg Business Week provides some basic information and sound advice: 1. pension plans are history; and 2. open and contribute to a retirement savings today.
The second installment of NRO's Summer Reading List has appeared. The list includes an often overlooked work of fiction by C. S. Lewis, a 1938 biography of Fanny Kemble, an exploration of everyday life in the Middle Ages, a shelf of new and old novels, and much more. Here's your link.
These past few years, NRO has asked a panel of distinguished individuals what they plan to read over the summer. It's always an interesting list with something for everyone. The first installment of titles, along with entertaining commentary, is available here. Happy reading!
The classicist and military historian, Victor Davis Hanson, has written another superb piece on human character. He reaches deep into Greek theater at the dawn of Western civilization and links ancient tragedy to the disaster unfolding every day in the Obama White House. Hanson is a remarkable observer of time past and time present. I have described him previously as a real, live Tralfamadorean, an alien character from the mind of Kurt Vonnegut. Tralfamadoreans had the ability to see all time as a single moment, a temporal landscape as an image much like what we would see looking at the Rocky Mountains. Oh that we could all have such perception of worlds past and present. I could go on from several perspectives, but I'll leave you to read the article and ponder the wisdom of the Greeks that lives within our own time.
Title: from the final chorus of Sophocles's Oedipus, King of Thebes, warning us that we cannot judge until the story ends.
The rise and celebration of extremism, weak leadership in the face of ominous threats, world-wide economic malaise, emotion outweighing reason, broad interpretation of law and constitutional authority, and anti-Semitism. All of these elements were present in the 1930s and they are with us today. The coincidence bears watching.
. . . instead of the old deadly inter-European rivalry, for a while a continental culture did indeed emerge. Prosperous Europeans from the Mediterranean to the Baltic embraced socialism, utopianism abroad, childlessness, agnosticism, and a fashionable anti-Americanism, ensuring no more 19th-century nationalism or 20th-century wars. At least all that was what we were lectured about for the last twenty years by European chauvinists and dreamy American liberals.
Above, he alludes to a future when the fluffy world of cultural equivalence bumps into economic reality. The outcome may not be very pretty for the world community as it moves away from the super power dominance of the United States. History types will enjoy this post. Those who don't often dwell with the great chains of circumstance may want to take heed.
I think all of us would accept the premise that the earth and the world upon it belong to living generations. It is a vast engine and the only permanence it brings is complex interaction accompanied by change. The Founding Fathers recognized this and made accommodations for it in their new republic. As such, the United States abides by the rule of law derived from its constitution as interpreted by the senior jurists of its highest court. The latest issue (May 17) of National Review is dedicated to the U.S. Constitution, its evolution over the past two centuries, and recommendations on restoring and ensuring its traditionalism. I think it's another landmark for the magazine and deserving of your attention. Unfortunately, it's not available free on line - got to pay those bills - although some articles may appear at NRO in the future. You can review the contents and purchase the May 17 issue here for $5. Better yet, head to your local library for a free read. If your politics is right of center and political history is an interest, this issue is an essential. I think we'll be hearing more about its contents for months to come. Once again, National Review proves it is an exceptional source for thoughtful interpretation of the American experience.
This week, the Hoover Institution's video series, Uncommon Knowledge, hosted by Peter Robinson, features Victor Davis Hanson discussing his new book, Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern. Hanson is an outstanding scholar who sees the American experience the same way Kurt Vonnegut's alien Tralfamadorians saw time: like viewing the Rocky Mountains. Few historians have such a holistic grasp of the context of western civilization and what it means to be in this great national experiment we call the United States. Here's your link.
OTR regrets that his attention has been pulled away from his blog these last two months. One result has been the passage of several birthdays of those who have helped define our culture and, in no small part, shaped what makes OTR sit up and listen.
This is what we have missed: the photographer, Alfred Stieglitz, on January 1; the American singer/composer Iris DeMent and her enchanting voice, on January 5; Carl Sandburg, the Lincoln interpreter, voice of the Chicago image, the rough-handed working man, on January 6; the unsurpassed duo of Django Reinhart, January 23, and Stephane Grappelli, January 26, who gave us the Quintette du Hot Club de France in 1934; the English composer, Frederick Delius, January 29, who wrote some of the most beautiful, unique and difficult music in the western world; the mathematician/composer Philip Glass, January 31; and the Bambino at the bat, Babe Ruth, on February 6.
That's a long list, and OTR would have loved writing at length about every one of them. In all honesty, if he were to pick one individual it would be most difficult, but the honors would likely go to Frederick Delius, a remarkable force in music that has been a part of his life since 1968.
He remembers sitting at home in front of the old RCA color television console with his dad and certainly not anticipating any earthshaking entertainment. Suddenly he's hearing music the likes of which he has never heard before. In the next hours, watching Ken Russell's Song of Summer, the story and music of Delius's last years become a part of his world.
Delius is an interesting character in western music. He patterned much of his music after that of his friend and fellow composer, Edvard Grieg, but tempered it with English impressionism, his love of naturalism, and folk themes he heard among African American working on his father's grapefruit plantation near Solano Grove, Florida. The result was simply beautiful, but I think appropriately described as an acquired appreciation. In some respects, one could say that Delius has left us The Calculus of music. Here is an opportunity to explore The Calculus at its best as interpreted by Delius's close friend and advocate, Sir Thomas Beecham:
Years ago, I had the opportunity to sit alone on a dock watching the sunset across the St Johns River not far from Solano Grove. This music was in my head, and all the beauty of La Florida was in my heart. Delius had likely walked the river edge, watching the same sun glistening on the water, hearing the insects and the wind rustling the reeds and nearby palmettos, feeling the evening move over the landscape. It was an immersive experience for me. Events like that become fixed in memory and compel you to share them with those you love.
I suppose there is a story much like this one behind all of the shapers of the American experience that I have forgotten over the last eight weeks. That realization tells me it is much too precious to ignore the biographies that have made us what we are and what we will become. OTR promises to do better in the coming weeks.
For those who find Delius to their liking. I offer this as a somewhat deeper excursion into his complex world:
This year marks the centennial of the premiere of a signature composition that began a revolution in classical music in the 20th century West. The piece is The Firebird, written by 27 year-old Igor Stravinsky. The music would make him famous. It also led to a collaboration with Sergei Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes in Paris.
Stravinsky spent his last 32 years as part of the American experience. He arrived on these shores in 1939, became a naturalized citizen in 1946, and expanded musical soundscapes for the world until his passing in 1971. His legacy of independence, experimentation, perseverance, and respect insures his place in the elite of Western composers.
I probably first heard The Firebird lying in my bed in Salisbury, Maryland, late at night and listening to WMAR-FM/WBAL-FM - now WIYY - broadcasting from Baltimore. At that time, it was a full-time classical music station and one of the few I could reasonably depend on for some reception and popular programming. Although elementary school teachers made certain my classmates and I knew about classical music, I think the real incentive for my personal, late night listening to the classics was born in the death of Jan Sibelius in late 1957. For the next year or two following his death, the music of Sibelius took center stage in my music classes in elementary and middle school. From there, my interests broadened over fifty years to admit few exceptions in music. But I do have my favorites, and Stravinsky's Firebird is among them.
We can only imagine what the music of Firebird meant to those who first heard it and saw it danced a century ago at the Ballet Russe. For those expecting moderne, it was certainly that. For others, it was the rap of its time. Regardless, Diaghilev was impressed, and his enthusiasm would lead to the remarkable - some would say scandalous - Rite of Spring (1911) and two years later to Petrushka.
Here is music written in 1910 that foretells the orchestral moment of much of the twentieth century. The video segment you are about to watch is a faithful attempt to recreate the original production in costume and dance. Imagine it is 1910. Queen Victoria has been dead for almost a decade after a near 64 year reign of the United Kingdom of Great Britain. The United States has 1000 miles of concrete roads. The beloved American humorist, Mark Twain, passes away. Just over half of the U.S. population of 92 million lives in cities of 2500 or more. Babe Ruth turns fourteen years old. The baby who would become Mother Teresa is born in Macedonia.
You are your own doing in a century on the move charting its own course.
NRO contributor Clifford D. May finds some disturbing similarities between then and now in a biography of Winston Churchill by the historian, Paul Johnson.
