history

books / cycling / history / Monday / photo / running — Comments Off on I survived a Monday that should have been an e-mail
29
Nov 21

I survived a Monday that should have been an e-mail

A nice, but chilly weekend. Perfectly delightful for late November. Any time around here that you can use the word “nice” around weather in late November, in any capacity, you count yourself lucky. And the skies were cooperating nicely.

Went for a run on Sunday afternoon. It was cold, but not too cold. It was hard, but not too hard. I was slow but not too slow. Somewhere in the third mile my back locked up in a serious way. And after three-quarters of a mile trying to run around it a lot of other things went, too. Something to work on for the future. But I got a nice shadow selfie.

But look at that surprising sky!

Also, I had a bike ride on Saturday. That’s three this week! It’s almost a streak. This one was in a simulacrum of northern France. I did not notice Mont-Saint-Michel, must have been trying to catch my breath, but you can see the lighthouse.

The abbey, which is a UNESCO site, is one of the most popular spots in that part of France. It dates back to the ninth century at least, and you would see it in this brownish-orangish section just to the top of the map.

But you’re going to want to see the real Mont-Saint-Michel. It’s gorgeous.

At some point this weekend I finished The Coming Fury, the first installment in Bruce Catton’s centennial trilogy of the American Civil War. Now I have to go buy and read volumes two and three.*

It’s a good historical tome, concerning itself with all of the major events in the year leading up to, and through, the First Battle of Bull Run. One part I might never forget is when someone writes to President-elect Lincoln and basically asks what should be done about the forts in Charleston if they wind up in South Carolina’s hands. Essentially, should we get them back? Leave them be?

Catton writes:

An interesting field for speculation opens just briefly here. What would have happened – how would the ever changing situation in respect to slavery, secession, and the preservation of the Union have been affected — if in December the South Carolina commissioners had won everything they asked for? Suppose that Buchanan had given them the forts and that Lincoln had announced publicly that as soon as he took office, the government would fight to regain what had been given away? What then?

At that point Catton has, over 193 pages, starting with the political conventions the prior spring, distilled this down to the decisions of Maj. Anderson in command of Fort Sumter and a South Carolina militia captain ordered to a paddle boat in the bay. Catton has put it before you that any of the decisions these two men made, for several days, meant war or peace at any moment — even as it was obvious the people wanted to play at war — and then asked you that rhetorical question.

This is December 1960.

James Buchanan is historically portrayed as ineffectual with Southern sympathies. Catton’s characterization feeds into that. Buchanan couldn’t make up his mind, he was a poor executive in desperate need, always, of his cabinet. Then late in the year his cabinet necessarily has its makeup changed and, suddenly, Buchanan resolves himself to be made of stern stuff.

As ever, there’s more to that guy than the one or two sentences you usually hear. Lincoln, meanwhile, was playing the cagey lawyer. He was insistent that he had to get in office and be credibly* seen as the president, before he’d do or say anything more than he’d already said.

It’s insight, but I spent hundreds of pages in this book thinking “You guys should be cabling each other constantly!”

Two more work days for me. Then it’s time for a long weekend vacation. But who’s counting?

*I have already started the bidding on e-bay.

**The credibility part was important because Lincoln was portrayed by many in the early going as a figurehead for William Seward, his secretary of state. Lincoln had to prove himself the president, even to Seward, and show that to the people, while juggling the border states, each according to their need, and starting a war. So the second book is probably going to be something.

bespoke / history / photo / television / Twitter / video / Wednesday — Comments Off on Time — do not bend
20
Oct 21

Time — do not bend

Stepped outside at almost the right time this evening. This is looking west down Kirkwood, through IU’s photogenic Sample Gates. At their dedication in 1987 then-Vice President Kenneth Gros Louis said the gates an entrance to the campus, but “an entrance from the campus into the greater world, the world beyond the university, of which this institution is a part, hopefully as a major civilizing force, as the preserver and transmitter of the best that has been known and thought.”

He said, “(I)t is a coming in, never a going out – either coming into the campus, or from the campus, coming into the community. We can never leave either. We enter the community and centuries of knowledge guide us. We enter the campus and obligations, commitments, and relationships with all of society, impel us. We are always entering, always moving through these gates on a continuum.”

Isn’t that something? I think about that speech sometimes when I walk through there, entering the community and the centuries of knowledge. It’s sometimes a nice feeling, thinking of it as a continuum. And sometimes that whole manner of thinking can bring about any manner of feelings —

Hey! Check out those cool lights down Kirkwood!

Yes, they closed a few blocks of that road for pedestrians and street dining and the local merchants have liked it. Only a few parking spots were lost and it made for a generally much more relaxed attitude in a high traffic and incredibly high pedestrian area.

As the weather is turning colder, that will soon go away. Hopefully it’ll come back in … sigh … five or six months when things warm up again.

I made this gif today and I’m glad I thought to do it. I’m exceedingly proud of it. Also, Emma is great, too.

Here’s the news show they shot last night:

And this is the pop culture show, from whence I made a gif last night to put in this space. This is the show that interviewed the student government president, and you can see that here. He’s an impressive individual. And the whole show is pretty nice, too.

This is the second episode of the new show. I shared the debut here last week. This show is all freshman and sophomores. They’re finding their way and having some fun. I feel like that part shines through, too.

The daily duds: Pictures of clothes I put here to, hopefully, help avoid embarrassing scheme repeats.

New pocket square, old shirt, older tie.

But how about these mespoke cufflinks?

Nice compliment-to-contrast, if you ask me. Which you did not. But, then again, you are here and the question is implied.

I just googled that phrasing, compliment-to-contrast. Most of the uses are in a handful of different medical instances. There are two uses in an interior decorating context. The closest one to my use was in 2015, when a wedding photographer, talked about mist that creeped into a photo shoot.

So, clearly, I’ve coined a fashion term here.

That’s my style, and it is also today’s contribution to the continuum.

adventures / history / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off on Discharged and resting comfortably
13
Oct 21

Discharged and resting comfortably

The only minor surgery, my mother said, is someone else’s surgery. And I suppose that’s probably true. As this week drew closer, I found myself doing a great job of concentrating on all of the other things in life, but on Monday during the pre-op stuff, when you walk by a sign that says Vascular Surgery you are unavoidably confronted by the thing.

My wife’s surgery yesterday went well, before, during and after. Today, a staff physical therapist came by and before long The Yankee was walking down the hall of the Cleveland Clinic unassisted. It was slow, but she put away the crutches. This is about 28 hours after having two chunks of muscle removed from her leg to improve arterial blood flow. (And, I am contractually obligated to say, just nine days removed from an Ironman.) Maybe the worst part of the whole thing was having to say goodnight, last night, and leave her hospital room. The people we’ve met in the Cleveland Clinic have been amazing — and who knows what kind of 18 months these people have had — so I didn’t even make jokes about how that visiting hours rule didn’t apply to me.

I walked down the hall at the appropriate time, before anyone had to run me off, and a woman passing the other way wished me a good night. I was thinking about what one of the staff members had replied to almost everything we’d said earlier in the day, “It’s a blessing.”

So I was in a philosophical mood as I walked back to the hotel room, just two blocks from where The Yankee would fitfully try to get some hospital rest. Probably because we had to spend so much of our relationship apart — a year while we were dating, and five years-plus after we were married — I am keenly aware of the distance when we are close, but apart.

I walked by this on the way back to the room. It’s not a Spock thing.

I knew the gesture made famous in Star Trek had Jewish religious origins, and I stood there for a while trying to remember if I’d ever read what the salute Leonard Nimoy incorporated into the show meant in the real world. We go to Chabad for an explanation:

(T)he Vulcan salute is an authentic imitation of the manner by which Cohanim spread their hands in most congregations when blessing the congregation to this day.

Cohanim are those people that today comprise about four to five percent of the Jewish population, all of whom trace their paternal lineage back to Aaron, brother of Moses, who was also the first High Priest. The Cohanim performed the offerings in the Tabernacle and later in the Temple in Jerusalem. They are still afforded certain honors, and they still bless the congregation with exactly the same words with which Aaron blessed us over 3,300 years ago when we finally got the first Tabernacle up and standing.

All of that is very interesting, but we’re after the real substance here:

The reason the Cohanim raise and spread out their hands is because that’s just what Aaron did when he blessed us: “And Aaron lifted up his hands towards the people and blessed them …”

But why do they spread their fingers? The Midrash explains that the Shechinah—the divine presence, peers through the fingers of the Cohanim during the priestly blessing, in keeping with the verse, “…behold, He is standing behind our wall, looking from the windows, peering between the cracks.”

The explanation notes the priestly blessing ends with “and give you peace.” A reference in between hospital buildings which is surely welcome to those who know what they are seeing.

Also welcome today was the discharge from the hospital and getting back to the room with ease, via the hospital’s shuttle. I had to pick up some prescriptions and a late lunch and then, finally, we could take a nap. No one sleeps well in the few nights before a surgery — even a minor one! And no patient can sleep well in a hospital bed. So this was one of those late afternoon naps which was so necessary that it didn’t in any way seem indulgent.

There’s a nice little restaurant in our hotel, and I picked up a light dinner there. We had a cookie treat which was in every way an indulgence, before calling it a night.

The doctor had asked us to stay in town an extra night as a just-in-case. Better to be here than six hours away should something unexpected arise, he said. I think he was simply doing me a favor. The idea of driving back today would have been daunting. Today’s nap and a full night of sleep will make a day in the car easier to manage tomorrow.

history / IU / music / Tuesday / Twitter / video — Comments Off on No cohesion, but a lot of interesting Tuesday tidbits
7
Sep 21

No cohesion, but a lot of interesting Tuesday tidbits

Back to work again this morning. And most of the morning spent catching up from a day off and a long weekend out of town. But I only woke up twice this morning wondering where I was.

Stands to reason you could spend the rest of your Tuesday wondering where you are after a morning of that sort.

It’s never quite the same as when it happens in the early morning hours, though, is it? You open a blurry eye and wonder where you are based on whatever light is creeping in from whichever direction. By whatever level of chance is involved, my last two bedrooms have enjoyed the same layout. Even some of the same colors. Once in a great while I wake up truly confused, because the only real clue is in the ceiling, and I can’t focus on that with one blurry eye, it seems.

But this never happens in the rest of the day. You don’t turn from your typing, or move your eyes from that memo, or rouse yourself from a reverie and wonder where you are. It must have something to do with the eyes, or the fluorescent lights.

It’s amazing how many pieces like this are floating around out there. It almost seems odd that there could be a new experience at such a ubiquitous thing. But, it’s true.

Weird how those experiences get turned into published articles while trying to treat a quick steak and a yeasty roll as an ethnography.

I put our name in at the hostess stand and was told it would be about a 10-minute wait.

I didn’t mind the wait. I used the time to take in the ambiance, which was unlike that of any restaurant I’d been to before.

I appreciate the need to get to atmosphere in your photo essay, but you’re asking people to believe you’ve never been to a restaurant which has a theme of neon or kitsch or both.

The author found herself overwhelmed by the “massive” menu and the restaurant which felt “even bigger than it looks from the outside.” That’s called perspective, by the way. The author says she doesn’t like steak. She ordered the chicken.

All of which is to say she buried the actual important story here.

Same-store sales are up over 80% over 2020, which was of course low because of COVID-19, but they’re also up 21.3% over 2019 levels.

This despite reduced hours in many places, like the one she visited in Rochester. (There are two in that town.) The one nearest us, for what it’s worth, always seems busy these days.

I wonder how sales in other restaurants trading in “folksy charm” are faring.

I still can’t imagine eating in a restaurant at the moment. And one day, when that feels comfortable again, I’m sure the menus will overwhelm me.

Speaking of which, don’t forget, we’re flying a drone around on another planet.

Have you noticed how every rover we’ve put on Mars, or every probe we’re sending into space, seems to be outliving the design specs? No planned obsolescence there. Maybe these NASA and JPL people know what they’re doing.

Or maybe …

I never had the honor of meeting the late George Taliaferro. I wish that I did.

If you know the story, you know that he, and his wife who was a trailblazer herself, are larger-than-life personas around here.

While I did not get the opportunity to meet him, I have watched a lot of footage of Taliaferro speaking to classes and doing interviews. He was a passionate, fascinating, caring man. People talk about that first-to-be-drafted tidbit and in that clip above they mention his many skills on the football field. I’m here to tell you that football was the least of it. A former Media School student put together this little mini-doc that seems to capture Taliaferro very well.

He worked with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Baltimore, counseled prisoners returning to their regular lives and was a leader with the Children’s Organ Transplant Association. He taught at the University of Maryland, was dean of students at Morgan State and returned to Indiana to teach. His wife, Judge Viola Taliaferro, the first African American to serve as a magistrate and then judge in the Circuit Court of Monroe County, remains a powerful voice even today.

Finally, a nice little musical number …

Roy Orbison released that song in 1961 at the age of 25. I wonder what kind of star he’d be if he were 25 today.

Alabama / history / journalism / links / Thursday — Comments Off on Back to the year 1921
26
Aug 21

Back to the year 1921

Let us once again go back in time, to see if anything interesting was in the paper 100 years ago today. And there’s … not a lot … that captures our eye these years hence. Sometimes a slow news day here is matched by a slow news day then. It isn’t exactly the planets aligning, but it could seem close enough if you wanted to think that way. The better read is that probably no one feels like doing more than necessary in the middle of an August heat wave.

So to quickly gloss over the day’s lead story from the August 26, 1921 edition of The Birmingham News …

That’s the West Virginia Mine Wars, a series of strikes, skirmishes, kerfuffles and outright battles that ranged through the 1910s and early 1920s. At the first of August a police chief and his deputy were killed by hired gun thugs when they were going to trial for a violent shootout earlier in the year. That was a tipping point. For weeks miners started arming themselves, and moved to just outside the state capitol. The firing was just starting again when they put this paper together. Thousands of union miners and another few thousand police offers, militia and others were clashing. President Harding was tinkering with the idea of martial law. National Guard were standing ready to be shipped in. Today they call it the Battle of Blair Mountain, which ended on September 2nd, and it claimed about 130 lives. It wound up being a defeat for the miners, and union membership plummeted. Ultimately, the mine owners success helped lead to a larger, stronger movement in many other industries. This was nearing the end of the West Virginia violence. Within the next decade, though, the unrest and violence spilled over into eastern Kentucky.

Anyway, inside the paper … a very vague ad on page three.

This makes sense if you are of the time. Lots of ads, across the country. You’re meant to see it as a seal of approval.

Text of another ad, from elsewhere at about that same time reads, “Like all thoroughbreds the Pup is inclined to be exclusive. He will talk for only one clothing store in each city. And that’s got to be a good one. He symbolizes the live successful merchant — and he is always on the job.”

That we don’t have more in this ad is likely a teaser. Maybe the Pup was just coming into the market.

Knowing, as we do, what was to come in just a generation, this was probably a good idea.

That was page four. She was launched on the first of September. The next month a new treaty went into effect, so the battleship was never actually completed. The Washington was sunk in late 1924 as gunnery practice. It took several days to sink her, and the analysts decided the armor was inadequate.

This standalone photograph is on page 10.

You won’t be surprised to learn that there are people who track presidential pets.

This advertisement really strikes a tone, doesn’t it?

MOTHER!

This is an interesting ad during Prohibition.

These days that address is a parking lot.

I’m not saying these jokes are funny, but on a full page of comics, these are perhaps the best two for modern eyes.

This was a great downtown store. A.B. Loveman’s Dry Goods Emporium was founded in 1887 and soon became the Loveman, Joseph & Loeb when Moses Joseph and Emil Loeb came on board.

When you saw this ad in your 1921 paper, you were reading about the largest, most magnificent department store south of the Ohio River. Most of the store destroyed by fire in 1934, but they rebuilt on the same location. They expanded across town and the state, until they went bankrupt in 1979 and closed the next year.

Today, the beautiful old store is still for kids, even those bursting through the roof. The Loveman’s building is home to the state-of-the-art McWane Center.

It is a terrific museum.

And that’s it for today, and a century ago. Come back tomorrow, for more tomorrow, and probably some history that’s a bit more recent.

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