I read a review of this book which described it as "exhaustively researched" which is my overwhelming reaction to this. It is the telling of a tragedy, one that was widely seen as it unfolded, and one that shaped public opinion of NASA going forward.
It is in some ways a hard story to tell because we know the end before we start, so it might be tempting to weave the ending into the story of how it happened, but that is not how this author rolls. He somewhat grimly marches forward in a linear way through the story, getting better acquainted with the astronauts on that ill fated flight than we might have previously been, and even delving into some of the history of the addition of women and people of color to the astronaut program that might not have been known (I read The Six, so had in depth knowledge of that era, but it is an excellent push back on the "unqualified" moniker that is being asserted in the United States in 2025). I found myself dreading the inevitable conclusion, and read quickly to get to it rather than savoring the journey--which is true to form for me, and might not be the norm, but this was a bit of a hard read for me.
My mom and dad honeymooned in Québec City in 1957 and we returned 67 years later so that my mother could re-experience it after burying my father on what had been their wedding day. They married on a Saturday and made their way to the Château Frontenac on a Sunday and so did we.
The hotel opened its doors in 1893 and is situated in Old Québec, within the historic district's Upper Town, on the southern side of Place d'Armes. The Château Frontenac was designed by Bruce Price, and was built by the Canadian Pacific Railway company as one of their grand railway hotels. The Châteauesque architectural style used throughout the hotel would later serve as a template for other Canadian grand railway hotels erected in the late-19th to early-20th century. The central fortress-like tower design is derived from medieval châteaux found throughout France's Loire Valley. These elements include the hotel's asymmetrical profile, with steeply pitched roofs, massive circular and polygonal towers and turrets, ornate gables and dormers, and tall chimneys. It was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1981.
The Château Frontenac is on a hill and it borders the Saint Lawrence River. We opted not to dine in the upscale restaurant, but rather in the bistro, and the views of both the river and the walkway alongside it were beautiful. It was not the first large building on the site. The first one was built during the 1780s, and was known as the Château Haldimand, named after the Governor of Quebec who ordered its construction. It was demolished in 1892 to make way for the present hotel. My parents paid $15 a night for their accomodations in 1957 and we paid $14/hour for parking today.
My mother didn't remember much about her time here, but then notes that maybe that is because it was her honeymoon.
Saintes was originally a prosperous settlement in the area of the Santones, a Gallic tribe, and the town became the chief centre of the district later known as the Saintonge. After the Roman conquest it became known as Mediolanum Santonum and was the capital of the Roman Empire in Gaul. The town’s most noteworthy Roman remains are a ruined 1st-century amphitheatre and an arch that had been transferred from a Roman bridge, known as the Arch of Germanicus.
Germanicus is my favorite post-Caesar Roman Emperor until Trajan.
The details of his career are known from the Annals of the Roman historian Tacitus, who portrayed him as a champion of republican principles and played him off in his historical chronicles against Tiberius, whom he depicted as an autocratic villain. Through his mother, Antonia, Germanicus was grandnephew of the emperor Augustus and his father was Tiberius’s brother.
He was wildly popular--a Quaestor at the age of 21, Germanicus served under Tiberius in Illyricum (7–9 CE) and then on the Rhine (11 CE). As consul in the year 12, he was appointed to command Gaul and the two Rhine armies. His personal popularity enabled him to quell the mutiny that broke out in his legions after Augustus’s death (14). Although pressed to claim the empire for himself, Germanicus remained firmly loyal to Tiberius. In three successive campaigns (14–16), he crossed the Rhine to engage the German tribes, inflicting several defeats in an ultimately inconclusive struggle. Finally, having aroused the jealousy and fears of Tiberius, he was recalled to Rome. Later he met his death, like many related to Tiberius, by poisoning.
I spent 4 years shadowing a Classics major which furthered a love of seeing ancient ruins wherever they are.
So we swooped in—we came, we saw, we left.
The Ancien Regime, as the French ruling class was known in 18th-century France, always sounds like such an immovable force. It speaks of arbitrary power, stiffened with protocol, girded by gold, topped by a dusting of icing sugar (something we all enjoy about France today) and utterly stuck in its ways. Until, that is, revolution arrived in 1789 with a clap of thunder to reset the clock so that everything could start over. Yet, as is shown in this book, the last 50 years of old France were in fact febrile and shifting, rocked by a series of social and political affairs that reached far beyond elite circles, engaging men and women who were more used to worrying whether the cost of bread would rise by another two sous--which of course it did, and that was also in the mix.
The author labels this new flexible mood the “revolutionary temper”, by which he doesn’t simply mean that the French people eventually became so cross that they embarked on a program of violent protest that led to the guillotining of the king and queen in 1793. Rather, he is referring to a frame of mind that was shifting. The role of food prices is not fully fleshed out in here, which is a pity because it sounds like there were some climactic factors that led to severe weather and crop failure that might have been a harbinger of the future (or maybe not). Instead he suggests that between the end of the war of the Austrian succession in 1748 and the storming of the Bastille in 1789, the French population underwent a series of convulsions, some as molten as others were icy, which resulted in a subtle but powerful molecular shift. After 500 years of rigidity, it made anything seem possible. Edmund Burke's 'Reflections on the French Revolution', published in 1790, posits that unlike America, the French were not ready for democracy, whereas this author focuses on the things that boiled over rather than why ultimately the whole thing collapsed on itself.
My spouse and I listened to this exhaustive history of the Vietnam War. Stanley Karnow was a journalist for a lot of reputable news organizations throughout the lead up to our involvement in Vietnam and well beyond the conclusion, and he examines in minute detail the history of Vietnam before the French colonized it, and then the history of what happened when France was there--which leaves no doubt as to why the Vietnamese would want out from under the French, who then proceeded to get the US involved by providing aid, and finally boots of the ground soldiers. Every single assessment of the South Vietnam government was that it was corrupt and incompetent, without the will to defeat the nationalist movement from the north, and unable to hold any appeal to the people.
Every US president understood clearly that we would not be able to defeat the North Vietnamese Army nor the Viet Cong. They understood that bombing was not going to work, and they knew they were in a no win situation.
And yet. Onward they went, unable to step away, unable to admit what they had seen from the very beginning, and all those soldiers, most of them barely out of high school, who went blindly into that war. This should be required reading for anyone in the upper echelon's of government who thinks they can solve a problem with brute force, mostly alone, but mixed in with some lying and cheating and hoping they won't remember that part. It is a sad story with a sad start, a sad middle, and a sad ending.
In the tradition of Lenin, Stalin and Mao, Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum is a monumental marble edifice. Contrary to Ho Chi Minh’s desire for a simple cremation and having his ashes spread in three locations, the mausoleum was constructed from materials gathered from all over Vietnam between 1973 and 1975. Set deep in the bowels of the building in a glass sarcophagus is the frail, pale body of Ho Chi Minh. The mausoleum is usually closed from 4 September to 4 November while his embalmed body goes to Russia for maintenance.
Ho served as the president of North Vietnam for 25 years; his powerful reign in the communist country symbolizes the struggle of the Vietnamese people’s fight for independence from the anti-communist regime in the south and from that regime’s southern allies, including the United States. He was not a religious man, but reportedly respected the role religion played in people's lives, and the use of Buddhist icons at his mausoleum seems less disrespectful than keeping his body preserved.
Uncle Ho, as the former Communist Party leader is often endearingly referred to by Vietnamese, is an important historical figure, and the Vietnamese people largely consider a visit to the mausoleum an honor – well worth the long journey many citizens endure. A version of this altar, respecting ancestors, is a feature in almost all Vietnamese homes.
And I’d like to use as a subject from which to speak this afternoon, the other America. And I use this subject because there are literally two Americas. One America is beautiful for our situation. And in a sense, this America is overflowing with the miracle of prosperity and the honey of opportunity. This America is the habitat of millions of people who have food and material necessities for their bodies and culture and education for their minds, and freedom and human dignity for their spirit. In this America, millions of people experience every day the opportunity of having life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in all of their dimensions. And in this America, millions of young people grow up in the sunlight of opportunity.
But tragically and unfortunately, there is another America. This other America has a daily ugliness about it that constantly transforms the buoyancy of hope into the fatigue of despair. In this America, millions of work-starved men walk the streets daily in search for jobs that do not exist. In this America, millions of people find themselves living in rat-infested, vermin-filled slums. In this America, people are poor by the millions. And they find themselves perishing on a lonely island of poverty, in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.
In a sense, the greatest tragedy of this other America is what it does to other children. Little children in this other America are forced to grow up with clouds of inferiority, farming every day in their little mental skies. And as we look at this other America, we see it as an arena of blasted hopes and shattered dreams. Many people of various backgrounds live in this other America. Some are Mexican-American, some are Puerto Ricans, some are Indians, some happen to be from other groups, millions of them are Appalachian whites. Probably the largest group in this other America, in proportion to its size and the population is the American Negro. The American Negro finds himself living in a triple ghetto. A ghetto of race, a ghetto of poverty, ghetto-
Is to deal with this problem, to deal with this problem of the two Americas. We are seeking to make America one nation, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
This is the most visited of the castles between Riga and the Estonian border--this view is taken from the Sigulda Medeival Castle with my simple iPhone camera, so you can see just how close they really are to each other.
Turaida Castle was the third castle. I have fond memories of it not for the crowds inside the grounds, but for the artisanal shawl I bought for my mother from a vendor outside. It is beautiful and unique, and left me with warm feelings about this place.
The oldest part of the story of Turaida is related to the history of another indigenous nation of Latvia – the Livs. Until the early 13th century, Turaida had been a significant centre of the Gauja Livs.
The Livonians are a Balto-Finnic people indigenous to northern and northwestern Latvia. Livonians historically spoke Livonian, a Uralic language closely related to Estonian and related to Finnish. There are vanishingly few who still speak this today.
Construction of the Turaida stone castle was started in 1214. Until the end of the 16th century, it served as a residence of Archbishops of Riga who that ruled lands. Over the centuries the castle had been rebuilt and improved until a fire damaged it in 1776, after which it was no longer inhabited and gradually turned into ruins.
The manor center began to develop in the fore-castle area of Sigulda Medieval Castle during the 17th century. There are still a few remaining 18th and 19th century buildings built during the ownership of the Von Borghs and Kropotkins in neo-gothic style by Jānis Mengelis from Cēsis.
During WW1 this building was destroyed. In 1922, following the agrarian reforms, New Castle became the Writers’ Castle because it was used by the Latvian Union of Writers and Journalists. The building was in unusable condition after the war so the Union had to invest a large amount of money for restoration. In the 1920’s and 30’s, full room and board was offered to writers and literary types as well as other visitors. The themes of farming, woodworking, and craftsmanship abound.
In 1934 the castle was acquired by the Latvian Press Society. From 1936 to 1937, major reconstruction work was done under the leadership of architect August Birkhans. Building plans were completely re-drawn. The overlook tower was heightened, the terrace around the building was expanded and a new balcony was added to the second floor. Inside, a new modern–age interior design was installed. It became the most notable example of national modern design in the Baltic region. Many famous artists of that time such as Niklāvs Strunke, Pēteris Ozoliņš, Kārlis Sūniņš, and Vilhelms Vasariņš took a part in creating it. Pictures of the castle were found in French art magazines as the press at the time would report. The Writers Castle became a popular visitor's destination after the renovation. It is still a place where new artists are featured and nurtured.
Siuru, named after a fire-bird in Finnic mythology, started here, in this bookstore in Vanlinn, or Old Town Tallinn. It was a literary group of the utmost importance in Estonia’s cultural context, founded in May 1917. It was the second-to-last year of World War I, bringing pivotal events that included the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and Estonia achieving extensive autonomy from the Russian Empire: a hint of freedom was in the air. Political exiles of the 1905 Russian Revolution were allowed to return home.
According to the plaque outside, it was a neoiromantic and expressionist movement that also had an affinity for futurism and impressionism. In a country that had been jockeyed about since before the times of the Hanseatic League, Siuru philosophy stressed the freedom of the human spirit. The group had mottoes that included Carpe Diem! and May The Joy Of Creation Be Our Only Moving Force! Its symbol was the white chrysanthemum.
A major result of the group's activities was popularizing literature among the Estonian population, which led to the development of original Estonian literature in the youg republic. The movement was short-lived, but the members rose to be major figures in 20th century Estonian literature. Those who write tell the story. This period of freedom between the World Wars was a template for independence when the Soviet Union crumbled in the late 20th centry.
The KGB were everywhere in occupied countries in the post WWII Soviet Union, and Estonia was no exception. The Baltrics were pawns in a chess game that Germany played with Russia, trying to appease them with territory they had lost in the wake of the Russian Revolution so they wouldn't come to the aid of Europe, at least not to begin with. On August 23, 1939 Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union surprised the world by signing the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, in which the two countries agreed to take no military action against each other for the next 10 years. The pact also contained a secret agreement in which the Soviets and Germans agreed how they would divide up Eastern Europe, divvying up countries between them in a very aggressive way. The museum of this underground prison from the Soviet times tells this story as well as the story of Estonians who fought against the Soviet invasion, both during and after the war.
On August 23, 1989, several months before the Berlin wall came down, and on the 50th anniversary of the pact that destroyed Baltic independence, two million people joined hands from Tallinn to Riga to Vilnius, spanning 675 kilometers, each nation singing their own national songs. The event was organised by the Baltic pro-independence movements: Rahvarinne of Estonia, the Tautas front of Latvia, and Sąjūdis of Lithuania. The protest was designed to draw global attention by demonstrating a popular desire for independence and showcasing solidarity among the three nations.
The Great Guild Hall was one of the most distinguished public buildings of medieval Tallinn and with a 21st century restoration under its belt, it is still quite distinguished today. The Gothic-style building, completed in 1410, was built on what was then the main street, and near the Town Hall. It was commissioned by the Great Guild, the association of Hanseatic merchants. Over the centuries a variety of events have been held in the Great Guild Hall, ranging from grand parties and weddings to church services and court proceedings.
In the Middle Ages the cellar was used for storing wine, and in the 19th and 20th centuries the popular wine cellar known as Das Süsse Loch ("Sweet Hole") operated there. During the 19th century the building, then known as the Stock Exchange, was used not only for business but also as a lively arts venue.
The Great Guild Hall has housed the Estonian History Museum since 1952. We went in because it is on the Tallinn card and therefore free once you have paid a flat fee. There are a number of exhibits on view, but this wall of video exhibits telling the history of Estonia, a horrific history of invasion and domination byt foreign powers, with some brief interludes of independence, is enchantingly told in a number of different ways, and so well worth the half hour it takes to watch them through a time or two.
Tallinn has managed to wholly preserve its structure of medieval and Hanseatic origin against all the odds. Estonia, like it's Baltic neighbors, has been home. Due to its exceptionally intact 13th century city plan, the Old Town was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997, joining the ranks of the world’s most recognised landmarks. Here you'll find original cobblestone streets dotted with medieval churches and grandiose merchant houses, barns and warehouses many of which date back to the Middle Ages. It is utterly charming, and well worth a few days exploring.
A fortified settlement existed in Tallinn from the late 1st millennium BC until the 10th–11th century AD, and there was a town on the site in the 12th century. In 1219 it was captured by the Danes, who built a new fortress on Toompea hill. Trade flourished, especially after Tallinn joined the Hanseatic League in 1285 (more on this later). In 1346 it was sold to the Teutonic Knights, and on the dissolution of the order in 1561 it passed to Sweden. Peter I of Russia captured Tallinn in 1710, and it remained a Russian city until it became the capital of independent Estonia from 1918 to 1940. Estonia was annexed to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from 1940 to 1991. After the Supreme Soviet of Estonia declared independence in 1991, Tallinn became the capital of the newly independent state. With the exception of an ugly demonstration in front of the Russian Embassy in the wake of their invasion of the sovereign territory of Ukraine, it is an otherwise peaceful city that hides it troubled past beautifully.
I am both surprised that it took me so long to read this and at the same time very happy that I did. I spent 100 days reading at an average of 12 pages per day--which sounds manageable but it is a pretty brisk pace when all is said and done. This is a densely packed book that is best when you savor it. It is an epic novel told about ordinary Russian people, ranging from the very rich to peasant poor and everything in between, with the War of 1812 laid over the top of the whole story. There are the ultra rich Bezukhov family, the Bolkonsky family with their multiple estates, the warm and fun loving Rostov family with their diminished circumstances, and the other 500 plus characters who give a textured look at Russia in the early 19th century. The history is accurate. It is a book full of Napoleon, Russian and French commanders, actual battles, and the downstream consequences of war with an overlay of culture, love, and politics. This translation is excellent, and contains French where the book was written in French, and English where is was written in Russian, to give a full sense of Russia in the time of Napoleon.
I watched this movie yesterday with my youngest son. It is the telling of how Germany began the process of confronting their behavior during WWII. It did not happen with the Nuremberg Trials. In fact in the years after the war, most Germans did not know about the concentration camps and the behavior of soldiers towards others, the unspeakable small and large cruelties that they undertook each and everyday. This is the story of Johann Rachmann, an ambitious and righteous young prosecutor who follows up a complaint that a guard at Auschwitz is teaching at a local school, which is against the law, but at the time completely overlooked. When he sees that in fact the teacher was not removed, he digs deeper and no one wants to hear what he has to say.
The next step is to delve into the archives that the Americans have on Nazi crimes. Almost everyone tells him not to, but never the less, he persists. What he finds drives him mad, but he eventually brings people to trial, which lasts for almost 2 years, and ends with the beginning of a new reckoning. Very painful to watch but magnificently done.
On Labor Day 1941 America was still recovering from the Great
Depression and unemployment was still at 10%. The ascendant Axis powers
had plunged the world into a life and death struggle between freedom and
oppression, and the German Army had penetrated deep into Russia. Nazi Einsatzgruppen (mobile
killing units) had begun murdering Jews in large numbers.
On Sept. 1, 1941 FDR gave a Labor Day radio address. It was his first
broadcast from the new Presidential Library he had built next to his
ancestral home in Hyde Park, NY. Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) gives his first broadcast from the presidential library study. NPx 47-96:1520
It is one of his finest broadcasts, a passionate sermon on the
importance of democracy and the threat that dictatorships pose to all
free people. He did not mince his words:
“On this day – this American holiday – we
are celebrating the rights of free laboring men and women. The
preservation of these rights is vitally important now, not only to us
who enjoy them – but to the whole future of Christian civilization.
American labor now bears a tremendous responsibility in the winning of
this most brutal, most terrible of all wars.”
Roosevelt understood that the free world’s only hope for victory over
the Axis powers was the application of America’s incredible industrial
capacity to the production of war materials. The success of that effort
would require an unprecedented level of cooperation between the
government, labor and business. He speaks of enemies who believe:
“that they could divide and conquer us from within.”
“These enemies know that today the chief American fighters in the
battles now raging are those engaged in American industry, employers and
employees alike.”
Near the end of the broadcast FDR makes his most powerful statement about his commitment to democracy.
“The task of defeating Hitler may be long and arduous.
There are a few appeasers and Nazi sympathizers who say it cannot be
done. They even ask me to negotiate with Hitler – to pray for crumbs
from his victorious table. They do, in fact, ask me to become the modern
Benedict Arnold and betray all that I hold dear – my devotion to our
freedom – to our churches – to our country. This course I have rejected –
I reject it again. Instead, I know that I speak the conscience and
determination of the American people when I say that we shall do
everything in our power to crush Hitler and his Nazi forces.”
He ends the speech with a simple but powerful statement of hope.
“May it be said on some future Labor Day by some future
President of the United States that we did our work faithfully and
well.”
Just a few years after the American Revolution and just two years after the Constitutional Convention hammered out a document that everyone could more or less sign on to in the United States, the French Revolution got rolling.
The storming of the Bastille, a prison that had long held political prisoners, followed a period of food shortages, increased taxes, and the militarization of Paris. It was a far cry from the “liberté, égalité, fraternité” that we think of today. There were wild swings in loyalties, those who started it were killed by those who followed, accusations flew, and in the end, Napoleon came to power and they replaced a king with a dictator. Not the kind of progress they were hoping for surely.
The biggest lesson learned from this period has to be that big changes are hard to muster. Edmund Burke said it best in well known letter published after the American Revolution, government must arc towards progress, but not veer to far or too quickly. In the United States we are headed at least back to the 1970's in terms of environmental protection, the 1950's in terms of social values, and the era of dictators in terms of leadership.
Today we celebrate the beginning of one of the few truly successful revolutions for independence in modern history. Those brave men and women fought to not be ruled by kings, and they got the vast majority of it right. We continue to have a cleft about what is right and wrong, which transcends political administrations. The thing is, at the very beginning there was thought given to denouncing slavery. Thomas Jefferson wrote:
"He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most
sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who
never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in
another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation
thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is
the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep
open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted
his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or
restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors
might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very
people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which
he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded
them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one
people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of
another." That would have been a game changer, but it did not make the final version.
Well over a century after the first Labor Day observance, there is
still some doubt as to who first proposed the holiday for workers.
Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the
Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a co-founder of the American
Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those "who
from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold."
But Peter McGuire's place in Labor Day history has not gone
unchallenged. Many believe that Matthew Maguire, a machinist, not Peter
McGuire, founded the holiday. What is clear is that the Central Labor Union adopted a
Labor Day proposal and appointed a committee to plan a demonstration and
picnic.
The first Labor Day holiday (pictured above) was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5,
1882, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central
Labor Union. The Central Labor Union held its second Labor Day holiday
just a year later, on September 5, 1883.
In 1884 the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday, as
originally proposed, and the Central Labor Union urged similar
organizations in other cities to follow the example of New York and
celebrate a "workingmen's holiday" on that date. The idea spread with
the growth of labor organizations, and in 1885 Labor Day was celebrated
in many industrial centers of the country.
Today is a day for
history lessons.A long history of
dispute characterized the ownership of the Oregon Territory, which included
present-day Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and portions of Montana, Wyoming, and British
Columbia. Russia and Spain had both
surrendered their claims to the region, but the United States and Britain were
active claimants in the 19th century's early years. The matter's resolution was
delayed by the Anglo-American Convention of 1818, in which both parties agreed
to a temporary policy of "joint occupation" of the region. This
accommodation was extended in 1827. During the 1830’s, the American
position came to favor establishment of the northern border along 49º-north
latitude, arguing that the nation's 'Manifest Destiny' required
no less. The British, however, wanted to see the southern boundary of British
Columbia established at the Columbia River and based their claims on the
Hudson's Bay Company's long history in the area.
The British position weakened in the
early 1840's as large numbers of numbers of American settlers poured into the
disputed area over the Oregon Trail.
Possession of Oregon became an issue in the 1844 election. Democratic candidate James Polk took an
extreme view by advocating the placement of the border at 54º 40' north
latitude (we have a deep history with extravagant claims, some of which have served us well). Expansionists chanted, "Fifty-four Forty or Fight!" After
the election, Polk put the British on notice that joint occupation would not be
extended, but quietly entered into diplomatic discussions.
On June 15,1846, the
Oregon Treaty was signed between Britain and the United States, the latter represented by
Secretary of State James Buchanan.
