103/365 Old College Days

John Filo's Pulitzer-Prize winning photograph

May 4th always sticks in my mind as the day everything changed.

In 1970, I was just shy of 15 years old. In 1970, the coolest thing you could do in high school was cut class to go to an antiwar demonstration.

Not being a huge fan of geometry, I cut class a lot.

Back in those days there were lots of demonstrations. And almost everyone went, not necessarily to protest the Vietnam War, although that was pretty much a given.

People went because they hated the war, hated Nixon, hated Republicans, hated rules and restrictions, or because they loved good music, being with their friends, meeting guys or girls.

For the record, I knew my politics inside out, hated the war, hated Dick Nixon, wanted to be with my friends,and definitely hated geometry.

Where else would I be in 1970, except at a demonstration?

On April 30, 1970, Nixon announced the United States was going to invade Cambodia.

The latest in a long line of Nixon announcements, this one set off demonstrations and riots at hundreds of colleges and universities. Eight million students went on strike. At Iowa State University - where my father taught and my family lived- thousands of students, blockaded the campus streets. Most of my friends had older brothers and sisters at ISU, and of course, we went along to help. Who needs geometry when you can make history?

A few hundred miles away, a similar demonstration was taking place at Kent State, in Ohio.


It would end up being the famous one. You can google it for the details - there were several days of mayhem and riots, as well as arson (a National Guard Armoury was burnt -the arsonist never caught), there were threats and ultimatums from both police and students, and then there was tear gas. And bullets.

Years later, long after the smoke cleared and four students lay dead, there was an vague investigation. The National Guard said they feared for their lives, but eventually were ordered to state for the record that they "regretted their actions". There were rumors of a sniper on top of the building who fired the first shot. There was much discussion of how it came to be that the National Guard was firing on American citizens, and whether the university had any right to ban either students free speech or their right to assemble.

Neil Young wrote a song that became famous, nine other students recouperated from their wounds that day, and over the years, a memorial was held every year on that date. Getting the university to put up an actual memorial took even longer, but in the end, a simple memorial was erected over the exact spot where each student died.

But here's the thing.

That same day, May 4, 1970, when I was dropped off by my friends, after a long hot afternoon sitting in the middle of a four lane highway, in the middle of Iowa State's demonstration, I saw the evening news: nine wounded and four dead in Ohio. And at that exact moment, at the age of 14-almost-15, I saw everything in absolute clarity.

I have never looked at the government, the military, or the police the same way again. To me, they will never be completely "Officer Friendly", or the good guys that saved the world in World War II, or the people you can always trust in an emergency. They remain "the guys with the guns", people that may or may not be on my side, irregardless of the fact that I'm an American citizen.

It truly does amaze me - after 39 years of a crime-free life (except those few-and-far-between speeding tickets) - that I still feel that small, almost imperceptible, tug of discomfort during any contact with police officers or military personnel. Even more amazing is that I can track that feeling to its exact source -May 4, 1970.

I guess it just never occurred to me that they would shoot students. Or that it would stay with me for so long.

Day 102/365 My Life Is An Open Book

Or 10,000 open books anyway.

It's Big Book Sale Season again (versus Monthly Book Sale season). Wednesday was one of our two annual setups for a library sale in a county just north of here. Meaning we hauled home 7 boxes of books that day, including lots of military history for DD.


Today, after letting our backs recouperate a couple days, we went back for the Box Sale. At a library sale that's usually the last day, when all the remaining books are sold by the boxful for a set price, in this case $2.00 per box. I LOVE BOX SALES!

And there's always good books that have been missed. Today there were 15 boxes of good books. Lots of paperbacks, and even a few vintage hardbacks that were donated at the last minute, so the main crowds missed them completely.

Of course I rescued a copy of The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabaldon (my favorite author, out of many favorite authors). I have a policy of buying copies of her books whenever I see them - paperback or hardback - leaving them in a library sale or thrift shop would be too much like leaving good friends on the shelf. As a result that means I have at least 10 copies or more of each of her books. Several complete sets. Sets with dust jacket artwork from around the world. At least one complete set that is signed by the author herself. At least three sets that have been adopted out to carefully vetted adoptive homes. I retain visitation rights, with no prior notice.

Lots of history here -several of these will go in the homeschool classic lots. By the time I am done sorting paperbacks, my eyes are swimming and all the books look the same.

Except those irritating oversized paperbacks. Not quite trade paperbacks, but longer than regular paperbacks. They pack easily........nowhere.

I want the name of the guy who thought those were a good idea.

Day 101/365 Pandemic? What Pandemic?

I had a little bird,
Its name was Enza.
I opened the window,
And in-flew-enza.
—Children's Rhyme, 1918

More thinking on epidemics, pandemics, influenza, yellow fever, small pox, measles and other cheery topics. I got to wondering exactly how many epidemics have we had in America and/or worldwide.

Turns out, they are more normal than abnormal.

From the first white settlers to the American Revolution:

1628-1631 New England Small Pox
1638 New England Small Pox & Spotted Fever
1648-1649 Massachusetts Small Pox
1679-1680 Virginia Small Pox
1689-1690 New England Small Pox
1690 New York Yellow Fever
1693 Boston Yellow Fever
1701 Jamestown, VA Small Pox
1702 New York Yellow Fever
1702-1703 Boston Small Pox
1706 Charleston Yellow Fever
1711-1712 South Carolina Small Pox
1713 Boston Measles
1715-1725 The Colonies Small Pox
1721 Boston Small Pox
1723-1730 Boston, New York, Philadelphia Small Pox
1729 Boston Measles
1732 Charleston & New York Yellow Fever
1732-3 Worldwide Influenza
1735-1740 New England Small Pox, Scarlet Fever & Diphtheria
1734 Virginia Yellow Fever
1738 South Carolina Smallpox
1739-40 Boston Measles
1741 Virginia Yellow Fever
1747 New England Measles
1752 Boston Small Pox
1759 N. America (White pop) Measles
1760-1761 New England, Charleston Small Pox
1761 N. America Influenza
1762 Philadelphia Yellow Fever
1764 Boston Small Pox
1772 N. America Measles
1772-1774 New England Small Pox
1775 N. America Influenza
1776 Boston Small Pox

Keep in mind these all make the list because they generated the number of cases and deaths required to make them an official "epidemic".

It's amazing anyone was left to fight the Revolution.

Things got better after the War for Independance, right?

Not really:

1778 Boston Small Pox
1788 Philadelphia and New York Measles
1792 Boston Small Pox
1793 Vermont Influenza
1793 Virginia [500 dead in 4 weeks) Influenza
1793 Philadelphia Yellow Fever
1793 Harrisburg, PA [many unexplained deaths] Unknown
1793 Middletown, PA [many mysterious deaths] Unknown
1794 Philadelphia Yellow Fever
1796-8 Philadelphia Yellow Fever

(Unexplained deaths? Physicians then could identify major illnesses, so what were these"unexplained deaths"?)

Maybe after the 19th century began, things got better? Maybe life was safer, mortality not quite that constant companion?


Nope.


1803 New York Yellow Fever
1831-2 Nationwide Asiatic Cholera
1834 New York City Cholera
1837 Philadelphia Typhus
1841 Nationwide Yellow Fever
1847 New Orleans Yellow Fever
1847-8 Worldwide Influenza
1848-9 North America Cholera
1850 North America Influenza &Yellow Fever
1851 The Great Plains Cholera
1852 New Orleans Yellow Fever
1855 Nationwide Yellow Fever
1857-9 Worldwide Influenza
1860-1 Pennsylvania Smallpox
1865-73 Nationwide Smallpox, Cholera, plus recurring epidemics of
Typhus, Typhoid, Scarlet Fever, Yellow Fever
1873-5 N. America and Europe Influenza
1878 New Orleans Yellow Fever



Imagine 1852 in New Orleans: On the narrow, dark streets of the French Quarter, every corner has a sulfur bonfire bellowing with yellow smoke. The stench is thought to ward off the yellow fever. In the early morning, carts appear, pulled by men with faces wrapped in thick cloth. The men stop in front of each door and cry out "Bring out your dead!" The corpses of those who died during the night are passed out the door, to be taken to mass burning sites. Supposedly the city is quarantined, but some of the wealthy families smuggle themselves out to country plantations, spreading the disease as they go.

Eventually, 8000 people will die and be taken to the burning piles.

Then the 20th century arrives with all it's modern progress in sanitation and science.

Things really did get better this time around, right?

A little.

1918 Worldwide Influenza -More people were hospitalized in WWI from
this pandemic than from war wounds.

U.S. Army training camps became death camps

with an 80% death rate

1949 Nationwide Polio

1952 Nationwide Polio (between 1949 and 1952 6,000 die from polio)

1957 Worldwide Asian Flu Pandemic causes 4,000,000 deaths

1968 Worldwide Hong Kong Flu causes 750,000 deaths

1981–2007 Worldwidewide AIDS (total deaths as of 2007: 25,250,000)

Of course, there are more people in the world now, so any disease will kill more people, simply due to availability of victims.

In 1852, the total population of New Orleans was 116,000, meaning approximately 7% of the city died in the yellow fever epidemic.

For comparison, let's take a random U.S. city, say, Boston. As of 2007, Boston's population was 599,351. If 7% of the population died from a pandemic, that would mean 41,954 deaths.

Historically speaking, that's how bad it will have to be before we make it to pandemic levels.

Day 100/365 Great Aunt Emma

With all the increasing concerns about the swine flu (there's got to be a better name), and the possibility of a pandemic, my thoughts turn to the Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918.

Although it was thought to have originated in China, it first struck with a vengenance in Spain where it killed 8 million people. With troops moving back and forth during World War I, it spread quickly, with almost 1 billion people contracting it world-wide.

In hindsight, the death toll for the Spanish Flu is estimated to be between 50-100 million people.

Read that again: 50-100 million people.

It's effects were greater than the Bubonic Plague, although many of the difficulties encountered weren't that much different (not enough doctors, not enough medical supplies, not enough hospitals, and, eventually, not enough coffins to bury the dead.).

Let me put a human face on this huge number.

This is my Great-Aunt Emma. On this particular day in late September 1918, she is twelve (with a birthday coming up shortly). She and her siblings are sitting for the all-important family photo, made by the traveling photographer in Wytheville Va. The family has made the long trip by wagon over the mountain, in order to pick up a cousin who is has been stationed in Europe during World War I. It is a joyous reunion - so many young men are not returning, but now Edgar is safely back with his family.

My grandfather is on the far left, standing just behind his big sister, Emma, who is the oldest. Addie is on the far right, the second oldest daughter. And the baby (Tom) sits on Addie's lap, while two more sons fidgeting in the background. Right in the middle is (of course) the middle daughter, Leona, fondly called Onie.

Two weeks later, Emma has turned thirteen and died on the very same day, having contracted the Spanish Influenza from her beloved cousin Edgar.

She enjoyed writing stories, teaching Sunday School, and singing. In fact, she had just sang in a school competition and won a blue ribbon for first prize. Her parents saved not only her funeral notice, but her blue ribbon, and her composition book with her stories.

They made sure she wasn't forgotten, even though she was just one of the 50 million or more who died from the Great Pandemic of 1918

Day 99/365 Charles Dickens, Just Because

Mostly just because PBS has been running a wonderful adaptation of Mr. Dickens Little Dorrit, and the conclusion starts in less than an hour. Over the last year or so, PBS has sucked me into Jane Austen and now Charles Dickens.

Never mind he has the library I wish I had.

Mr. Dickens had a wonderful childhood, and was a particularily voracious reader with an almost photographic memory. When he was twelve, life took a drastic turn for the worse when his father overspent, landing the entire family in the Marshalsea debtor's prison. This series of events later became the foundation for Little Dorrit.

The financial ruin of his family and his days of child labor working in a boot polish factory led to a life-long interest in the living conditions of the working-class poor (not to mention that he was an ardent abolitionist as well).

Dickens was a court stenographer, political writer, an editor, and even wrote advertisements to make ends meet (eventually he was father to ten children).

At the height of his popularity, his writings were released a chapter at a time, and hung up in public store windows, where passerbys could gather to read them.

Although Mr. Dickens was a popular writer, like his father, he struggled with expenses. To cover the expenses for the birth of his fifth child, he wrote A Christmas Carol, taking only a couple weeks to turn out what became one of the most enduring Christmas stories ever written.

This is the frontiespiece and title page of a first edition printing of A Christmas Carol (no, not mine - I wish).

Like other kids in the early 1960's, I grew up watching the Mr. Magoo version of The Christmas Carol. Even after seeing much more sophisticated productions, I must confess, Mr. Magoo is still my favorite.

I still catch glimpses of the Ghost of Christmas Past from time to time, and always say a quiet thank-you to Mr. Dickens.

Day 97/365 Tom and Jemmy Sittin' In A Tree

K-I-S-S-I-N...... No wait, that's a different Tom and Jemmy.

I so enjoyed the Weird President Stuff yesterday that I decided to make it an occasional series,but being that the next president is the third, i.e. My Favorite President (Thomas Jefferson), I also decided "occasional" means "next day".

And of course, one president is never enough, so I'll include the fourth as well, especially since he was such a protege of Tom Jefferson.

Is Tom Jefferson good-looking or what? We always think of The Founding Fathers as old white-haired guys but they were really young revolutionaries in their early thirties.

Jefferson was a country farmer, fit as a fiddle, and for that reason he decided after his swearing-in ceremony at the Capitol that he would walk back to his boardinghouse with some of his friends. That was the beginning of the traditional inaugural parade. Really. However, Jefferson did not have Secret Service guys walking on all sides, nor was he wearing heels.

Once Jefferson made it to the White House, he kept a pet mockingbird. It rode around on his shoulder while the President fed it food from his fingers. One can only wonder about the condition of the carpets.

In the spirit of Michelle Obama, Mr. Jefferson was the first President to grow tomatoes. Up until they received his seal of approval, they had been thought poisonous.

Jefferson spoke and understood Italian, Spanish, French, Irish, Latin and Greek. He also suffered terribly from migraine headaches, possibly from trying to understand all those languages at once.

The next time you climb aboard a bus, notice the folding doors (they are modeled after a Jefferson design). And the next time you decide to get fit (whether walking an inaugural parade or elsewhere) and pick up your pedometer, know that Jefferson designed that too.

This is Jemmy.

He adored Thomas Jefferson so much that he served as Vice President, and then took over as the fourth president. His formal name was James Madison, but to his friends he was Jemmy.

Jefferson is usually given credit for the Lousiania Purchase, but James Madison pretty much engineered it and saw it through -in effect doubling the size of America overnight. He then went to the Virginia Statehouse, and convinced them to give up some territory, say, for instance, what is now Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota. Once they turned it over, he labeled it the Northwest Territory (of course this is way before Oregon, Washington State, Idaho, and definitely before Alaska).

Jemmy was the very first president to................wear long pants. No, the others did not wear Bermuda shorts. But back then the style was those odd knickers that only reached the knees. Jemmy was a trend setter, a purveyor of fashion if you will.

Actually, Jemmy was probably just lucky,in that he was married to Dolley, a woman famous for her sense of style, her outrageous parties, and her social panache. I suspect Jemmy just put on what he was told to put on.

Some things never change.

Dolley loved turbans with ostrich feathers, was several inches taller than her husband, seventeen years younger, and made her own lipstick, which she gave away as presents to a lucky few. She was also the only First Lady to be given a permanent seat on the floor of the House of Congress. (Little known tidbit: after a three month courtship, Dolley married Jemmy, and in the process was excommunicated from the Society of Friends, since Jemmy was a non-Quaker.)

And of course she made those great cupcakes.

In a final homage to Tom and Jemmy (at least for now), this is the inscription at President Jefferson's Memorial, lest we forget during these heady days of changing state laws and court decisions:

"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."

And how can we forget:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Tom had it pegged. He absolutely hit one out of the park for our country.

Day 96/365 Heads Up

After the tax history the other day, and being reminded of President Taft getting stuck in the White House bathtub, several other unusual stories of presidents came to mind. While some are busy complaining about the current occupant, let us give thanks that others are no longer there.