What I’m Blogging

Today is the 400th anniversary of the establishment of Jamestown Colony, the first permanent English settlement in what would become the United States of America. At first, it was a disaster. Their plan was to find gold or silver or a river route to the Pacific Ocean. But they settled in a swampland, the mosquitoes were terrible, and many people caught malaria. The colonists also had trouble growing enough food, and they failed to dig an adequate fresh-water well. There was an epidemic of dysentery and a severe food shortage. More than 400 people starved to death./p>

The colony only began to be a success when they stopped focusing on gold and began to grow tobacco. It was John Rolfe who introduced a new type of tobacco plant from the West Indies. The crop proved enormously profitable, and it inspired more investment and more colonists to join the settlement. Rolfe went on to marry the princess Pocahontas.

By 1619, Jamestown was thriving, and it was that year that the settlers formed a new kind of government with a general assembly, the members of which were elected by the citizens of the colony. It was the first-ever representative government in what became the United States. That very same year, a ship arrived in Jamestown carrying 50 African slaves, 20 of which were purchased for work in the tobacco fields. And so Jamestown became the birthplace of both democracy and slavery.

It’s the birthday of Karl Marx, born in Trier, Prussia (1818). His main theory was that the economic system was a perpetual conflict between those who controlled the capital and those who provided the labor. He believed that the conflict would never be resolved peacefully, because capitalism was too volatile.

Marx wrote about his ideas in the Communist Manifesto, published in 1848, but after revolution broke out in France, Italy, and Austria, Marx was forced to flee Belgium where he was living. He moved to London, where he worked on his last book, Das Kapital (1867). He slowly sank into poverty, having to avoid creditors, pawn his furniture, and fight off eviction. When one of his children died, Marx was so poor that his wife had to borrow money from a neighbor to buy a coffin. When he died in 1883, only 11 people came to his funeral.

From the Writer’s Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.
Further Marxist reading available at Amazon.com

It’s the birthday of Niccolò Machiavelli, born in Florence, Italy (1469). He grew up at an extremely unstable period of Italian history. Italy wasn’t even a country at the time, but just a collection of city-states that were constantly at war with each other. By the time he was 30, Machiavelli became the secretary to Florence’s governing council, which meant he was the most influential bureaucrat in the city.

But at the height of Machiavelli’s career, the influential Medici family took power in Florence, overthrowing the elected city council and purging the government of enemies, including Machiavelli. He lost his government position, and then the authorities arrested him and threw him in a dungeon, where he was tortured for 22 days.

Machiavelli was eventually released from prison and sentenced to house arrest. He decided that the only way to get his life back was to offer some kind of gift to the Medici family, and the thing he had to give was his knowledge of politics. So he holed up in his tiny villa just outside of Florence and set out to write a handbook, incorporating everything he knew about being an effective ruler in a dangerous and volatile world. It took him just a few months to complete his book in 1513, and that was The Prince, the book for which he is remembered today.

Machiavelli’s main point in The Prince is that an effective ruler should use whatever means possible to keep his country secure and peaceful. He wrote, “Men must be either pampered or crushed, because they can get revenge for small injuries, but not for grievous ones. So any injury a prince does a man should be of a kind where there is no fear of revenge.”

Despite Machiavelli’s hopes, The Prince didn’t win over the Medicis. A few years later, a new republic was established in Italy, but Machiavelli’s name had already become so associated with evil and violence that he wasn’t able to get another government job for the rest of his life. Today, the word “Machiavellian” has come to mean “marked by cunning, duplicity, or bad faith.”

Niccolò Machiavelli said, “It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.”

From the Writer’s Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.
Further machiavellian reading available at Amazon.com

It was on this day in 1939 that the New York World’s Fair opened to the public. The theme of the fair was The World of Tomorrow. Planners built the fairground on Flushing Meadows, which had been a garbage dump.

It was at that fair that many Americans first saw the products they would enjoy after World War II, including television, long-distance phone service, air conditioners, refrigerators, FM radio, fluorescent lighting, and washing machines. There were prototypes of the early helicopter, called an autogiro, which was basically a plane with a propeller on top. There were dioramas showing model utopian cities of the future, where everyone would soon have fax machines and videophones. The most popular exhibit was General Motors’ Futurama, which was a scale model of an American city in 1960, with futuristic homes, cars shaped like flying saucers, and an advanced superhighway system with a speed limit of a hundred miles per hour. The Futurama exhibit popularized the term “aerodynamic.” Visitors to the exhibit were given a small blue-and-white pin that said, “I Have Seen the Future.”

It’s the birthday of comedian Jerry Seinfeld, (books by this author) born in Brooklyn, New York (1954). He helped create the TV show Seinfeld, which was one of the first American sitcoms that was totally free of morality. He had two rules for every episode: ““No hugging” and No learning.”

It’s the birthday of Harper Lee, born Nelle Harper in Monroeville, Alabama (1926). She’s the author of To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), a novel about a girl named Scout growing up in Alabama during the Great Depression. She, her brother Jem, and her best friend Dill spend all their time trying to uncover the mystery of Boo Radley, the recluse who lives down the street.

Harper Lee grew up in Monroeville, which had a population of about 7,000, and it was the model for the town of Maycomb in To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee wrote, “It was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.”

Today, To Kill a Mockingbird sells about a million copies every year, and it’s sold more than 30 million copies since its publication. In 1963, just three years after its publication, it was taught in 8 percent of U.S. public middle schools and high schools, and today that figure is closer to 80 percent. Only Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and Huckleberry Finn are assigned more often.

It’s the birthday of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, born in Rome (A.D. 121). He rose through the ranks of the Roman Senate and became emperor when Antoninus died in A.D. 161. He wrote a philosophical work called Meditations, and he’s one of the few Roman emperors who is known as much for his writing as he is for his reign. He studied the Stoic philosophers, who believed in detaching yourself from everything in the universe that’s outside of your power to control.

It’s the birthday of Ella Fitzgerald, born in Newport News, Virginia, in 1918. She loved to sing and dance as a child; and when she was 16, she entered a contest at the Apollo Theater - at that time no more than a hip local club in Harlem. She had a dance routine worked out, but once she got on stage she lost her nerve. So instead of dancing, she sang. She won the contest and soon became a celebrity across all of New York. She joined Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington as the only performers who could draw audiences at the Apollo from south of 125th Street.

Marilyn Monroe was one of her biggest fans. Ella said, “I owe Marilyn a real debt. It was because of her that I played the Mocambo, a very popular nightclub in the ’50s. 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. 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.”

From the Writer’s Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.
Further harmonious reading available at Amazon.com

It’s the birthday of humorist Josh Billings, born Henry Wheeler Shaw in Lanesboro, Massachusetts (1818). He was a popular newspaper columnist and also published several books, including Josh Billings on Ice (1868) and Josh Billings’ Farmers’ Allminax (1870).

Billings said, “There are many people who are always anticipating trouble, and in this way they manage to enjoy many sorrows that never really happen to them.”

And he said, “Don’t take the bull by the horns, take him by the tail; then you can let go when you want to.”

From the Writer’s Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.
Further funny reading available at Amazon.com

…it was like a black tidal wave came down from the sky…

Today is the anniversary of Black Sunday, the day in 1935 when a windstorm hit a part of the Great Plains known as the Dust Bowl. When the day started, the weather was sunny and calm. People were on their way home from church, or out visiting friends for lunch, when they saw huge flocks of birds flying south, away from a dark black cloud on the northern horizon. As the cloud approached, people realized that it wasn’t a storm cloud, but a cloud of dirt, blown up by the wind. Witnesses said it was like a black tidal wave came down from the sky. It became as dark as night as soon as the cloud descended. Static electricity stalled cars and shorted out telephone lines. People standing a few yards away from their homes got lost in the darkness, and grabbed onto fence posts to keep from being blown to the ground. It was later estimated that the storm carried 300 million tons of soil through the air.

Today is Easter Sunday in the Christian Church, the holiday that celebrates Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. Easter is one of the few floating holidays in the calendar year, because it’s based on the cycles of the moon. Jesus was said to have risen from the dead on the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring. For that reason, Easter can fall as early as March 22nd and as late as April 25th.

…Easter comes from an ancient pagan goddess…

The word “Easter” comes from an ancient pagan goddess worshipped by Anglo Saxons named Eostre. According to legend, Eostre once saved a bird whose wings had frozen during the winter by turning it into a rabbit. Because the rabbit had once been a bird, it could still lay eggs, and that rabbit became our Easter Bunny. Eggs were a symbol of fertility in part because they used to be so scarce during the winter. There are records of people giving each other decorated eggs at Easter as far back as the 11th century.

On this day in 1917, the United States formally declared war against Germany and entered World War I. American participation in the World War permanently transformed the nation. In order to meet increased demands for goods, the federal government expanded dramatically, taking an unprecedented role in guiding the economy. Women got involved in the war effort and impressed enough of the men they worked with that they won support for voting rights shortly after the war. The war also shortened women’s skirts, since it created a scarcity of wool. And it probably started the widespread American addiction to cigarettes, since American soldiers got to buy cigarettes at much cheaper prices while serving abroad.

…was just the beginning of the United States’ policy of military intervention in world affairs…

At the time, the war had been going on in Europe for three years, but there was no real immediate threat to the United States. Up until then, Woodrow Wilson had been opposed to the war. His campaign for president in 1916 included the slogan, “He kept us out of the war,” though Wilson never used that phrase himself.

But two things changed Wilson’s mind. The first was that Germany had declared unrestricted warfare on American merchant vessels, and began torpedoing any ship they thought was carrying munitions to the British and the French. At that point, the United States was the biggest supplier of munitions to the British and the French. And the second was that the United States intercepted a telegram from Germany to Mexico, asking for an alliance against the United States. If Mexico was willing to attack the U.S., the Germans said they would help Mexico regain Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.

So President Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war on April 2. The declaration passed almost unanimously, and war was officially declared on this day in 1917. One of the few people who spoke out against it was the pacifist Senator from Wisconsin, Robert La Follette.

About 3 million American men were inducted into the military. And though they fought for only a short time, it was enough to make a difference. Between the financial support, supplies, and reinforcements, the American entry into the war was the turning point that helped bring it to an end.

The war was extraordinarily expensive for the United States, costing about $1 million per hour in the last 25 months of the war. The amount of money the U.S. government spent on World War I was more than the combined total of what it had spent in the previous 100 years. Woodrow Wilson hoped it would be the war to end all wars, but instead it was just the beginning of the United States’ policy of military intervention in world affairs.