history « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

history

adventures / history / Monday / Scotland — Comments Off
22
May 17

Edinburg to Inverlochy to Fort William to Inverness

We’ve set off for the Highlands on a grand adventure! And this is where the geography started to change.

You go over a hill, round two curves and the landscape is entirely different:

It is rugged and scrappy and harsh:

And it holds a brutal beauty all its own, which is impossible to capture in just one or two pictures:

So let’s try a panorama. Click to embiggen and scroll around:

This is St. John’s Episcopal Church. Looks ancient, but is pretty young for these parts. It was built in 1842:

That church is in the village of Ballachulish, which is where the mountains and a lake and a river estuary meet. This is the time of year to visit, because of all of the bluebells:

This church may well wind up as the video on the front page of the site, soon …

Opposite the church is Loch Leven. Pronounce it “Li’ un,” or, in the local Gaelic, as “Lee’ oon.” Click to embiggen and scroll around:

Lunch was in Fort William — a charming little tourist town with about 10,000 residents and a history dating back to the 17th century when the English were busy dealing with the Scots and, later, to control them through force. It is named after William of Orange, the Duke of Cumberland, who the Scots called “Butcher Cumberland.” I had a nice steak and ale pie there.

We stopped off in a light drizzle at Inverlochy Castle. I made a video:

And then we made our way up near Inverness, where our B’n’B is. We’ll stay for two nights in a room with a view of Loch Ness. As in …

Didn’t see Nessie today, though we have a fine vantage point:

After dinner in a pub in Inverness — I do enjoy pub food just a bit too much, I know — we got back to Kimcraigan just in time for a great light show. A double rainbow. Again, click to scroll around in the larger version:

Tomorrow, we’re finding Nessie.

adventures / history / photo / Scotland / weekend — Comments Off
21
May 17

Where am I? Who am I?

We flew all night. Because red eye flights give one character. We flew on the Dutch airline, which is happy to feed you as long as you are happy to eat. And I watched three movies — The Founder, Reacher and something I’m already a bit foggy about. It was a long night, you understand.

And so we landed safely in Edinburgh, Scotland, which was the plan. We exited the plane onto the tarmac into a slight chill and a light sprinkle, feeling every bit like world weary rock stars in the world’s largest band that requires a plane with an upstairs level which I never checked out.

We shuffled through the U.K.’s Border Force version of customs and then began an approximately 10 minute walk to the car rental desks. Got our car, reminded each other to drive on the left side of the road and off we went, to check in to our AirBnB, where we’ll sleep all of this off in just a bit.

Met the owners, a lovely older couple, and then walked down the street to the Grassmarket, which has been a central part of the city since the late 15th century. Today, of course, it is part of the tourist path.

Just above, the famed Edinburgh Castle:

The timeline here is incredible. The castle sits above everything, and even today dominates the city’s skyline. There is archeological evidence of people there for perhaps more than two millenia. The castle has been there for at least 800 years, and was actually a royal residence until the 15th century when it became more of a military installation. Today: they give grand tours, I’m sure. In fact, it is Scotland’s most popular paid attraction.

We stayed below it. But, inside, you could see the Stone of Scone, or the Stone of Destiny. Scottish kings, and now the UK’s monarchies, are installed on this stone. The Scottish crown jewels are also on display there. The crown dates to 1540, the scepter to 1494 — it was a gift from Pope Alexander VI.

Mon’s Meg is also on display. This is a canon that could send a 330-pound projectile two miles downrange … in 1457. That’s state-of-the-art. It was used in actual combat for about 90 years.

St. Margaret’s Chapel is up there, too. It was built in the mid-12th century, which makes it so old that its historical origins were forgotten and then re-discovered in the mid-19th century. Otherwise, Wikipedia tells me, not many of the buildings at the castle are older than a 16th century siege. Newbies.

Walked by this:

At 17 feet by 14 feet, about 20 people can stand in there, they say. Notice, it is Scotland’s smallest, so I guess there is a bar somewhere in England that is more wee than this one.

We saw Boston’s smallest bar in 2005. It closed soon after, because the world needed new condominiums. Sometime later I heard the owner opened a new smallest bar in Boston and it closed, too. More condos. So watch out, Edinburg.

And we saw this. Interesting to see that this debate is ongoing in Scotland:

When, obviously the answer is Roger Moore.

Anyway, we have our car, got our bearings, had fish and chips and we stayed up until bedtime (which is the key to minimizing jetlag) and are now ready for our big trip. Tomorrow, we go north.

family / history / Instagram / IU / podcast / video / Wednesday — 1 Comment
3
May 17

A new thing in the video below

I had a nice meeting today with some thoughtful and talented people and we discussed creating a podcast that highlights some of their interesting work. We’re just getting started with the idea, but it could be a very promising project, based on all of the enthusiasm in the room. This one is not the podcasts about podcasts. Nor is it the one which is just the ranking of things. (I’m going to call that one “We Rank Things.”) No, this one will be full of interesting topics and experts. It should come online in the summer or fall.

On my desk there is actually a notepad full of potential show types. It is a slightly annoying thing, this list.

I also spent time in a production studio today. And I spent time in email today. I spend time in email every day. This long note here, this short note there, a summary that probably has more information than any one reader will need, but all of them might think to consult, and recommendation letters.

There’s a late semester rush for references. I am happy to provide them, especially for some of the more talented people like I discussed today, but it does seem unusual that there are places out there still filling their internships.

Also, right as I was walking out the door to go home for the evening I learned of another graduating student’s big interview come next week. If my math is correct that means fully a half of the seniors I’ve worked with this year have jobs before graduation — not too shabby in the journalism and broadcasting game — and another one interviewing 48 hours after graduation. I believe almost every member of the underclasses will be either in school or interning over the summer. That must say something about the quality of their work and the curriculum they’re in.

Also, today, I picked up this book:

Because of an interlibrary loan from the University of Nebraska I am now looking through 137th Infantry Regiment's WWII unit history. My great-grandfather was a combat medic in the 137th during the Battle of the Bulge. He never talked about it. What we know of his months in Europe, in Belgium and France and Germany, we know from sources like this. He was wounded in Belgium, shipped to the States in March of 1945 and made it home that October.

A post shared by Kenny Smith (@kennydsmith) on May 4, 2017 at 7:39am PDT

I’ve read pretty much the entire book online. This was the source material for the map that we made to help us understand my great-grandfather’s time in the Army. There are a lot more photographs in the book, of course. Here’s the map I made a few years ago:

I tried to look up the men that compiled that unit history book, but they all have remarkably common names, good, solid, middle America names. People of that sort, from that particular era are sometimes hard to find on simple Internet searches. Now, in the back of the book there is a partial roster of the regiment. Probably recalled from memory and various early rosters and whatever names showed up on subsequent reports, so not hardly complete. My great-grandfather isn’t it. But there is one man who had the same last name, a Texan. He was a lieutenant, got married, shipped out, made it home and lived a long life as a successful rice farmer and rancher. He died in 2003 at 86. My great-grandfather passed away just shy of 82 in 2001. (And think of all that you would see in a lifetime of that span.)

The commander of the 137th was Maj. Gen. Paul Baade. Born in Fort Wayne, Indiana and educated at West Point, Baade was in the 87th Infantry during WWI, fighting in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in the final hours of that war. And then, three decades later, he returned to the region commanding the 35th Division and maneuvered them over 1,600 miles through the end of the war in Europe. Must have seen some familiar territory. He retired in 1946 and died in 1959. And his is a fine obituary. The regimental commander during my great-grandfather’s time in Europe was Col. William S. Murray. He was a highly regarded commander, and after the war Murray taught at the Infantry School, before retiring in 1948 and dying in 1949. We don’t know what battalion my grandfather was in, so everything about his service is at a basic, bird’s eye level.

I like to wonder, then, if my great-grandfather, the medic, knew the medics in those photographs in the video above.

Anyway, my Google searches have now started wandering for the evening, obviously. So let’s wrap this up … rain tomorrow, starting tonight, even. We are wearing jackets again, like you do in May.

Hey, what did you think of the new video bumpers? Didn’t notice? Scroll up and play it again.

history / IU / photo / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
12
Apr 17

Today was a lesson in knowing things

One of those days that you don’t look out of the window until it is almost too late:

Isn’t that some kind of problem to have, not looking because you don’t know better — especially when you know better. Life teaches you so many things, and some of them you are just determined to learn over and over again. Until you finally do. Know better, that is.

Anyway, that’s the side of the newly christened Frances Morgan Swain Student Building as seen from the Media School. Swain became the wife of the ninth president of the university. She was also a math student, a suffragist and an advocate for more prominent roles and facilities for women on campus, including that one. She seems like an impressive woman.

In the next building over then, our building, tonight:

Sometimes, I have the chance to say something that I know to be true. In those rare moments, like one tonight, I realize I have learned basic things, earnest and true and important things. And sometimes you get to share those things, as advice, because you see the chance. Occasionally you do know.

It is a sports night:

We have less than 10 tapings left on the term. Time moves faster. You’d think it might ought to slow down, with the rest of us. But you know better.

cycling / history / Indiana / journalism / Monday / photo — Comments Off
3
Apr 17

This post covers the last 176 or so years

Such a gray day on Saturday. It all blends together as big globs of clouds, but the history function at Weather Underground says it has been a week since I’ve seen the sun. I haven’t taken to putting hashmarks on the wall to keep track. Yet. But on the eighth day in a row of this I realized a few things. First, this is well-passed its sell date. Second, you need features in the foreground to make this backdrop pop:

I went to the movies Saturday, saw Logan, and did some other things, and watched the sky.

Sunday was a terrific improvement. The temperature snuck up into the mid-60s and the sun came out to play and it was otherwise, you know, a nice April day:

I went for a bike ride, a 43-miler that started to fall apart around mile 12 or so. There was a lot of up-and-down, and the up is always slower, even more so when you’re having a slow day in general. But the weather was nice and the views weren’t bad either:

And I looked up the first use of the words bicycle and velocipede in the impressive Hoosier State Chronicles — a digital newspaper program which is a terrific read. It isn’t complete, of course, but it is authoritative.

Aside from a few ads, here is the first mention, in The Hendricks County Union, on March 8, 1866:

The Hendricks County Union started out as the Danville Republican in 1846 and took the Union name in 1864 when a returning Civil War colonel, Lawrence S. Shuler bought the rag. Shuler’s unit had fought in the Second Battle of Second Bull Run, Antietam, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Spotsylvania and more. So newspapers probably seemed a breeze. He sold it the next year, though, and after a series of name and ownership changes and consolidations, the paper finally enjoyed a long run from 1890 until 1931 under one owner.

Then a World War I veteran bought what was called the Hendricks County Republican. Edward Weesner, who’d learned the business working on the Stars and Stripes, ran the shop until he died in 1974. His daughter, Betty Jean Weesner, had been working there for some time and took over. She was, says a Saturday Evening Post column, a Unitarian Democrat running a paper by then simply called The Republican. She graduated with a journalism degree from Indiana in 1951. She died this time last year. Her obituary says she never retired. The Republican was a two-person shop, a small-town weekly, and Weesner’s longtime assistant Barbara Robertson died a few weeks ago. It was also the oldest paper in the county, with roots back to the James K. Polk administration. You hope it comes back, but it would be a surprise if it did. This is one of the ways old newspapers die.

Meanwhile over in Vanderburg County, at the Evansville Journal, these two mention appear in the same column of miscellany on September 15, 1868:

Already, they were concerned with speed. Perhaps always they were.

The Evansville Journal started in 1834, The location of the original building, which was razed after a fire, seems to be a parking lot today. Apparently the paper had endured three fires over the decades. Finally, the Evansville Journal News building, would survive. It was one of those places built way out of town, until Main Street came to it. The two-story beaux-arts brick building with a limestone facade, circa 1910, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. There’s a deli and ice cream joint in there now. The Journal was sold to the cross-town competition in the 1920s and lasted until about 1936 or so.

Here now is the Daily State Sentinel, with a local notice on September 30, 1868:

Twenty-five miles per hour! Much better than a carriage. Le Maire, of course, being French for “the mayor.” Mississippi Street was renamed Senate Avenue in 1895. Third Street, I am forced to assume, was also renamed. But I’m not sure when or to what. So I’m counting roads and if my guess is right the former site of Le Maire’s shop is not either a condo, a distillery, a parking lot or one of a series of apartment/business buildings. The provenance of the Daily State Sentinel dates back to 1840. The paper that became The Sentinel was originally The Indiana Democrat, and Spirit of the Constitution, this being firmly in the times when towns had more than one publication and representing a variety of political parties.

In fact, you probably remember hearing about the Copperheads during the American Civil War. The people that had this paper during that time — ownership was an almost-fluid thing in most newspapers back then — found themselves wrapped up in the Copperhead Trials. After more owners and changes to the masthead than you can count, the paper closed its doors for good in 1906, when it was known as the Indianapolis Sentinel. I haven’t yet discovered anything about monsieur Le Maire.

Finally this bit, which was published in the Daily Wabash Express on March 13, 1869. It was in rebuttal to something that ran in an Indianapolis paper, and I believe this part was an excerpt of the first piece. Either way, we’re settling on terms and facts here, in 1869, and that’s just charming:

This paper also has roots to 1841, but it became the Daily in the 1850s. A few years after this, the ancestor of this paper would boast one of the first female editors in the state. Mary Hannah Krout is, in fact, credited as the first woman to edit a major daily in the state. She did that for about six years before going to Chicago, and then covered the revolution in Hawai’i and wrote from London and China, as well. She was a prominent suffragist and wrote eight or nine books, too. The paper would stick around until April 29, 1903.

I wonder what the weather was like that day.