Recently, I linked to a post by historian Adam Hochschild about the historical parallels between the First World War and the Iraq-Afghanistan War. Last week, Christopher Hitchens reviewed Hochschild’s new book in the New York Times. There’s also an excerpt from the book, if you’re interested.
It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.
This is a transcript of a speech given by Joseph Stalin at a “campaign meeting” of Moscow-area voters in 1946. In it, he explains exactly why World War II was totally not his fault and just how much pig iron the Soviets will be producing in the future, then very graciously accepts his “nomination” to continue his glorious leadership. (As you can see by the picture above, Uncle Joe made sure the ballot boxes were stuffed to the gills.)
This message paid for by the Republican National Committee
As unlikely as it seems today, at one time the Irish were considered to be the absolute scourge of the City of Boston. The corridors of power throughout the city were filled with the Brahmin establishment — descendants of the English who had settled Eastern Massachusetts and had founded Boston, and had dominated every aspect of the upper echelons of society. The Irish were savages, barely human, and, worst of all, Catholic. But there were a lot of the freckle-faced bastards, and there was no stopping them from celebrating the holy day of their national saint, St. Patrick, and thus bringing the city to a halt, since all those Irish worked in every menial, yet critical, job in the city. So, the blue-blooded, Protestant old-money elite did the only thing they could do: invent their own holiday to justify the day off and, hopefully, subvert the bog-trotters at their own game. Just about anything that they could have come up with to commemorate would have sufficed, but they got lucky that there was a marginally noteworthy event from the Revolutionary War that happened on March 17, 1776: it turned out to be the day the British troops quit Boston after holding the city under siege for almost a full year. Since that particular anniversary had the local cred of celebrating the Patriots, which is always good for something in Massachusetts, the Lodges and the Cabots declared “Evacuation Day” as an official state holiday in 1901. Years later, in 1938, even though the Irish had by that time even elected their own kind to the office of mayor, the holiday became more specific to Suffolk County (basically the City of Boston plus the surrounding suburbs of Revere, Winthrop, and Chelsea. It’s also a school holiday in the cities of Cambridge and Somerville), while the rest of the state gave in to the leprechauns, green beer, and parades of Irish-American clubs.
Local historian J. L. Bell posts today about the events of that day in March, 1776 with a first-hand account from someone who was probably attached to George Washington’s army, headquartered in Cambridge, describing the “wretched fleet” of small transports and a trio of men-o-wars as they looked at first to be heading toward some of the islands in Boston Harbor, but then sailed away. They joined the main British force which held New York and successfully so until the end of the Revolutionary War. New York has its own Evacuation Day holiday in late November, which has absolutely nothing to do with the Irish or Saint Patrick’s Day.
Congratulations, Mr. President.
One way or another, we all knew, George W. Bush would be on his way to the dregs of American history this day, and so you are in that sense merely lucky to be the man who got to show him the door. One way or another, we all knew, the balance of power would shift away from the party of Hoover, Nixon, Reagan and Bush and return to the party of Truman, Johnson, Carter and Clinton, and so you are in that sense merely lucky to have chosen sides wisely. One way or another, we all knew, change would be vowed by the person who would stand this morning before the world and receive the mantle that empowers that promise, and so you are in that sense merely lucky that no one who ever makes those vows is held to account for them.
And yet there you are. If so much luck was borrowed, it must be acknowledged that you made much luck yourself. A year ago it seemed beyond belief that it would be you on that platform. A generation ago it seemed beyond belief that a person of your color would ever be on that platform. You have demonstrated your own ability and promise so much that you were able to completely reverse those seemingly immutable convictions. In a nation which continues to define itself through polar oppositions, that speaks volumes to your personal strength and courage.
As you transform now from blank slate upon which a desperate nation projects its hope into a visionary who must project a course of action to a nation cast into despair, luck will not likely be your ally. Here, Mr. President, you will need to rely on your own ability and trust that your ability is as sufficient to achieve something positive for all of us as it was to achieve this shining moment for you.
So many people have thrown in their lot with you because you have given them hope. Others, like myself, because the alternatives were too terrible to contemplate. Nevertheless, you have us all in your charge, even those who will continue to actively work against you (and they are nearly as many as we are). The cheering will subside, the tides of public opinion shift, and not everything you do will work out for the best. But we will all still be here and will need you until your turn to relinquish this role comes, as inevitably as Mr. Bush’s turn today. Your potential to do well is enormous and deserves as much support as possible. I look forward to your successes, and offer you the sincere wish that your mistakes and failures are few and insignificant.
A year ago today, I posted about the 89th anniversary of the Boston Molasses Flood, ergo today marks the 90th anniversary of said event.
When you read about the freakishness of the whole accident, as well as the sheer devastation and disruption the wave of molasses caused, it’s relatively surprising that the flood is not better remembered in a place that prides itself on being able to commemorate a nearly infinite list of historical trivialities. Walk through various parts of Boston and you will be overwhelmed by the number of plaques and signs remembering people whom popular history long since forgot, but the much more recent and seemingly consequential industrial accident itself only gets one little plaque:
This is the site of the disaster as it looks now:
It’s in the uppermost corner of the North End. A century ago it was all warehouses and storage tanks like the one that burst, and now it’s a playground and a housing project in a forgotten corner of the city, unseen by the tourists who cram the more scenic cobblestone streets of the Italian part of the North End.
Last year I mentioned the book by Stephen Puleo entitled “Dark Tide”. It is the only contemporary book about the flood at all, and apparently the only other book about it is the published report on the disaster by the investigating committee. Luckily, the Puleo book is a good read, so at least the one chance you have to learn about it in detail is worth the effort.
Stephen Puleo himself appears today at the Beacon Broadside blog to share a small anecdote about his little taste of fame resulting from the book. He says that one of the various duck-boat tours that operate in the city now include that lonely looking North End project as a stop along the way, so maybe the touristas will take this unique bit of Boston history back to wherever they came from along with all their “Cheers” memorabilia and leftover clam chowder and spread the word.
Boy, don’t you hate it when that happens?
The first commercial microwave ovens were introduced in 1946 by Raytheon. They weighed in at 670 pounds, stood 62 inches tall, required a plumbed-in line for water-cooling the magnetron, and cost $2,000 (approx. $20,000 today). They could cook a six-pound roast in two minutes and singe the hair off a man’s testicles from 50 feet away (okay, I made that one up). A few years later, Raytheon tried again, and also licensed the technology to appliance-maker Tappan, which introduced a more compact and air-cooled model. Between them, a few thousand units were sold in the 1950s and 1960s, but they still did not become popular. Finally, after Raytheon bought the Amana refrigerator company and acquired a cheaper magnetron techonolgy from Japan, the Amana Radarange was born and the microwave oven became commonplace in American homes.
The mother of my high school friend Andy had one of those very early Radaranges. It was mounted into the wall of her pantry, like a traditional wall oven, had a dial for a timer instead of digital input, and only had one power setting: freaking nuclear. She refused to buy a newer one because the original Radarange was so much more powerful than later microwave ovens. My mother got her first microwave oven for Christmas in 1979, and, while it had nowhere near the gamma-ray-burst power of Andy’s mom’s, it did have a cooking chamber big enough to fit a 30-pound turkey. That was the era when they were trying to sell microwave ovens as replacements for traditional ovens, before everyone discovered that the only thing a microwave oven was really good for was making popcorn and heating up Hot Pockets. Her microwave lasted well over 20 years, finally giving up the ghost just a couple of years ago. When Andy’s mother moved out of her house after her husband died, I think she left hers in place for the next family to live there.
All of this is simply an exceedingly long introduction to this 2005 American Heritage article about the history of the development of the microwave oven (via MeFi). Enjoy.
Proving that no record of history is ever final, this recent article from the London Daily Telegraph says that British historian Andrew Roberts has uncovered papers from Churchill’s assistant Lawrence Burgis that included original handwritten notes from Churchill’s War Cabinet meetings. In reading the notes, which were supposed to have been destroyed once formal meeting minutes were published, Roberts found a treasure trove of information about Churchill’s opinions, ideas, and decisions throughout the war as captured first-hand by the younf Burgis. They reveal insights into Churchill’s thinking that weren’t well-known, even despite the reams and reams that have been written about the war and Churchill himself over the last half-century. In the Telegraph story, we learn that Churchill was nearly as taken in by Joseph Stalin as Franklin Roosevelt was when they met in person at Yalta, and believed Stalin’s promises not to occupy Eastern Europe after the war. Churchill’s dislike for Mohandas K. Gandhi is also mentioned; he criticized the South African leader Jan Christian Smuts to his own face for failing to “get rid of” Gandhi during his years of imprisonment in South Africa.
Churchill is such an engrossing figure and his character so complex, that these notes are interesting glosses on the man all on their own, but absolutely add a great deal more to understanding the workings of the War Cabinet, the internal political struggles of the Allied leaders, and the sereis of consequences that determined the nearly three quarters of a century that have transpired since.
Oh, and Roberts’ book has just been published in the U.K.. Not yet published in the U.S., but I do believe Amazon UK ships to the States if you’re dying to get this book. I do very much want to read it, but will probably wait for the American edition.
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