Category: History

All historical references, especially American history

It’s weird the things you remember from days gone by…Tricks of Memory

Today is June 6.  6/6.  It is the 73rd Anniversary of D-Day, that momentous day in 1944 when the Allies invaded France to re-take Europe from Hitler’s evil forces.  But that’s not what I remember.

In June of 1966, I was a junior in high school in Seattle.  I was taking a ceramics class, with a bunch of really “artsy” students.  I have a very vivid memory of writing on the blackboard, “Today is 6/6/66”.  It got a laugh from the class, but it was a distraction for the teacher, so it only lasted a few minutes.  But I remember that day, even 50 years later.  And I also remember another student, a boy, who wore a pink shirt to school that day.  I remember thinking “pink is for girls”!  But I did like that shirt, and today most guys have at least one pink shirt in their closet.  I don’t, since I hate pink!

I have received the notice of my class’s 50-year high school reunion.  I went to the fortieth, and it was fun.  I got re-acquainted with a girl who I was friends with back then, and we discovered that now we have even more in common now than we did then (I became a Conservative), and we have seen each other fairly often, and plan to go to the reunion together, with our husbands.

Memory…  It ties you to the past, and to old friends.

Be Very Careful What You Wish For, Seattle

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Tomorrow is May 1, or May Day, or “Workers of the World Unite” day. In Seattle, in the everlasting spirit of the WTO Riots of 1999, various leftist student, activist, and Anarchist groups get together and march for workers’ and immigrants’ “rights”.  They normally start in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, and march down Pine Street to the downtown area, ending up at Westlake Center.  Previous years have seen various degrees of property damage and general mayhem.  In 2016, five Seattle police officers were injured by various projectiles (rocks, wrenches) hurled by the marchers.  This year, however, will be different.  ED: Article from May 1, disruptions expected all day.

Welcome to Mob Rule

This is the first year of the despised Trump Administration, and the Seattle revolutionary elements have already signaled that this year’s “demonstrations” will be an order of magnitude larger.  In fact, a Seattle City Council member, avowed Socialist Kshama Sawant, has actually urged the demonstrators to break the law.  Yes, an elected member of the Seattle city government introduced a proposal to the council giving city employees the day off to join the protests.  This proposal was unanimously adopted by the council.  She has also gone so far as to urge the demonstrators to block streets.  Seattle City Council Member says “Yes” to May Day Rioters.  Many business owners in downtown Seattle proactively board up their windows and engage added security for May 1.  I wonder how many of them will sit still for their government encouraging the violence.

Well, those business owners and their customers elected Sawant to the City Council.  I wonder if they will regret that decision on Tuesday.  And will Seattle’s Finest stand back and watch the rioters, or will they unmask and arrest all the rock-throwers and vandals?  This year’s May Day may just be the Second Battle of Seattle, with similar results.

68 Years Ago Today…

On April 13, 1949, a huge 7.1-magnitude earthquake hit the Seattle area.  Buildings in the downtown areas of Seattle, Tacoma, and Olympia were badly damaged.  The owner of this car probably wasn’t able to drive it home that day!

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Structures in areas of the cities built on fill were totally destroyed, and streets crumbled when the ground shifted under them.

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This has meaning for me, because on that day, my mother was 9 months pregnant with me, and overdue by two weeks.  She got in the car and drove downtown to go shopping, and my dad was frantic, since she didn’t tell him she was going.  Well, when that earthquake hit, she was standing on Third Avenue, looking in the window of the Bon Marche Department Store.  The plate-glass window fell…inward, away from her, and she was unhurt.  Three days later…Ta Dah!!  I made my appearance.

I always like to say that it took a 7.1-magnitude earthquake to shake me loose!

 

Weekly Photo Challenge-Atop

Mount Rose is the highest point in the Washoe Range in Nevada, and the highest year-round pass in the Sierra Nevada mountains.  On the highway at the summit of Mount Rose, here are the trees and rocks at the very tippy-top.

Mt. Rose Summit
Mt. Rose Summit

On the way down the other side, when you feel like you’re really on top, you can see Lake Tahoe below.

Lake Tahoe, from Highway 431
View of Lake Tahoe, from Nevada Highway 431, Mt. Rose Highway

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/photo-challenges/atop/

Photo Challenge….Wish

Ever since I returned from Cambridge, England in 1991, I have wished I could go back.  There’s just no other place on Earth like it.  If I was told I only had a year to live, I’d pull up stakes and spend my last days in Cambridge.

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A peaceful River Cam bridge, behind Trinity Hall.
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Rear entrance, Trinity Hall.
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Round Church, Cambridge, dating from 11th Century

King's College Chapel

King’s College Chapel, back side, from the River Cam

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/photo-challenges/wish/

Windows on Wednesday

What is a window?  It’s an opening in a wall or a door, normally contains glass, and lets light into the room or building.  As an opening, it is often said that the human eye is a “window into the soul”.  And a book, or a treatise, can be said to “open a window” into history.  Sort of like this one:

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Title page of a book found in the Library at Gonville & Caius College. Yes, the publication date is in the 1600s!

People first began putting glass in the openings of their dwellings and other buildings in Roman times.  Glass wasn’t very pure back then, and often had inclusions and impurities, making it cloudy.  But it literally enlightened peoples’ lives.  Windows can also be openings in castle walls, for the defenders to shoot their arrows through.  Like this.

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Castle Rising, “defense window”. Archers shot from here.

Sometimes, new windows are inserted into very old walls, like these.

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House, built into the ruins of the abbey at Bury St. Edmunds, Ely

Here is an early American window. At Fort Ticonderoga, in New York.

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Windows can be sad, as in when they are broken, and the building abandoned.

Camden, NJ

This is Camden, New Jersey.

And windows can be joyous, as when they are the stained-glass windows of churches.  These windows take an enormous amount of labor in design and installation, and they give much joy.  There are stained-glass windows surviving today, that were installed in ancient times.

Long Melford
Church windows, Long Melford, Suffolk
Stained glass window, St. Joseph's Polish Catholic Church
Stained Glass Window, at Saint Joseph’s Polish Catholic Church in Camden, New Jersey.
Ely Cathedral
Stained glass windows, Ely Cathedral, Cambridgeshire

Modern buildings can have entire walls of windows.  Human ingenuity creates them all.

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Happy Window Wednesday!