Historic Travel-The Rhine

Historic Travel-the Rhine Mark Twine once wrote, ““Germany, in the summer, is the perfection of the beautiful, but nobody has understood, and realized, and enjoyed the utmost possibilities of this soft and peaceful beauty unless he has voyaged down the Neckar on a raft. The motion of a raft is the needful motion; it is … Continue reading Historic Travel-The Rhine →

Historic Travels

Driving in the French country side I was moved to see a field of Poppies. I took these in the Normandy region but am now driving past Verdun that saw so many lives taken needlessly during WWI. We did not stop in Verdun, the tour guide said there was nothing to see. Yet it’s not … Continue reading Historic Travels →

Historic Travels

While planning my trip to Paris, as an American historian I thought it would be fun to visit sites dealing with WWI and WWII. What I came to find out was that the city was relatively spared from the Wars, in terms of physical damage and battles, so there are really no major sites to … Continue reading Historic Travels →

Class Notes

While Washington’s cabinet was battling each other on whether we should assist France during their revolution, an interesting incident occurred. In 1793, a French diplomat arrived by the name Citizen Edmond Charles Edouard Genet. The Republicans who favored assisting France treated him like a celebrity and wined and dined him all over the new states. … Continue reading Class Notes →

Juneteenth

With the creation this week of Juneteenth as a national holiday, I have seen several posts that, though meaning well in celebrating the day, have made mistakes about the history. Even my own college wrote that because the slaves in Texas had not heard about the Emancipation Proclamation, they were not free until federal troops … Continue reading Juneteenth →

Voting Rights?

Going to bed on election night it looked as if President Trump might win the election. But as the mail-in votes started being counted the next day, Trump’s lead slipped away in many important swing states. With mail-in voting and early voting occurring because of COVID-19, there have been many discussions about voting rights. Some … Continue reading Voting Rights? →

Historic Election?

"In this historic election." How many times have you heard this over the past two weeks? In truth, there are some historic elements. This election had the greatest number of votes cast in history. Is that historic or population growth? It's also a higher voter percentage than we have seen in some time, but nowhere … Continue reading Historic Election? →

Class Notes

The 1920s were one of the great decades for culture but also for sports. One of the differences between sports today and then was that we have the four big sports, football, baseball, basketball and hockey. In the 1920s, they had the big three, still baseball, but followed by horse racing, and boxing. Horse racing … Continue reading Class Notes →

Revolutions are Messy

There are many sayings about revolutions, but my favorite is simply, “Revolutions are messy.” This seems to sum up the majority of the world’s revolutions, despite who wins or loses. The problem for Americans is that our Revolution was easy compared to most, so we tend to think all revolutions are as easy. If … Continue reading Revolutions are Messy →

Class Notes

When JFK was running in 1960 he said, “Freedom and Communism are in a deadly embrace; the world cannot exist half slave and half free.” He later went on to say that the US was suffering from a “missile gap,” in other words the Russians had more nuclear weapons than we did and we need … Continue reading Class Notes →