I was born in Maryland and spent my first thirty years living there, first in the Appalachian Mountains, then on the Eastern Shore, and later in suburban Washington. After a year in South Carolina, I moved to Georgia in 1977. I soon met another park ranger who worked in Florida. She was a wonderful woman who became my best friend. then my wife, and soon the mother of our three children. I spent over eleven years working in the historic city of Savannah, Georgia, and on the moss-draped sea islands nearby before moving to Atlanta.. In 2007, I retired from the National Park Service and a career dedicated to preserving and interpreting resources and themes in the cultural and natural history of the United States. It was a most rewarding experience. Today, I enjoy living in the rolling hills and woods of the Appalachian Piedmont east of Atlanta.
The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (Ukraine) reactor explosion and fire occurred on this day in 1986. The event remains the worst accident of its kind. A precise number of casualties will never be known beyond the 41 who died during and in the few months following the event.
On the edge of the plant, a city died. Its 50,000 people were evacuated in two days leaving behind a photograph of interrupted lives. In the 38 years since the reactor meltdown and fire the decaying remains of Pripyat have become a prime destination for those seeking the disturbing presence of abandoned and decaying places.
The background radiation in Pripyat remains about three times above normal with hot spots exceeding fifty times normal. The situation has not prevented the growth of a robust tourist industry focused on the event and its aftermath. Although the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought tourism to a halt this site is a good indicator of the response to curiosity surrounding the area. In time I have no doubt that tourists will return to experience what has become one of the strangest places on the planet.
The incomparable jazz singer, Ella Fitzgerald, was born on this day in Newport News, Virginia, 107 years ago. When she was 17, Ella Jane Fitzgerald wanted to dance at an amateur night at the Apollo in Harlem, but was intimidated by other dancers and decided to sing instead. It was the beginning of a career that took her magnificent voice through the big bands, to jazz, bop, and the Great American Songbook. With a voice ranging from smoky to bright she put her signature on every note and sharp diction on every word. For people who like to immerse themselves in lyrics, Ella was unbeatable. And when she forgot those lyrics or let the spontaneity flow, the scat singing was priceless.
The First Lady of Song in 1960 Erling Mandelmann
Only once did I see her perform and that was in an overcrowded and hot venue in Washington. After a few songs, the crowd didn't mind the environment. She had us wrapped in music for over two hours and left us wanting more after several encores. Everyone had a great time that evening, especially Ella. Looking back on that concert, I realize how significant it was. She had turned 50 and completed her famous Songbook series a few years earlier. And though her peak years were coming to an end, what she had left exceeded the best of what most 20th century singers ever offered. She went on to perform another quarter of a century dazzling audiences everywhere. Ella passed away twenty-seven years ago, but she's still entertaining fans through a huge discography and video record. In all, it is an immense if not iconic legacy.
Fitzgerald and President Reagan at the White House in October 1981
Throughout her very public life, Ella Fitzgerald remained a private if not shy person. Were she receiving a birthday cake today, I can envision a broad, approving smile and nervous glances from squinting eyes behind those big bottle bottom glasses. She'd respond with a heart-felt "Thank you, thank you," and move into the comfort and safety of song.
Here she is in 1964 performing two Johnny Mercer jazz standards for the last of her now legendary Songbook albums - eight in all - produced by Norman Grantz and released over an eight year period. The series has never been out of print and remains a hot seller over fifty years after its release.
In almost sixty years, few jazz vocalists - there are many fine ones performing today - can approach the significance and near-perfection of Fitzgerald's interpretation of the Great American Songbook. To me, nothing since has quite matched it and I doubt anything in the future will without some extraordinary changes within the music industry and jazz itself.
Though she left us in 1996, Ella simply "is." I can only imagine the look on the faces of the heavenly hosts when she waltzed through those pearly gates scat singing all the way. So here's a happy birthday wish going up to the First Lady of Song. Simply incomparable and yes, sometimes too marvelous for words.
Sources
Photos and Illustrations: Mandelmann photo, commons.wikimedia.org White House, Item C4495-9A, President Reagan with Ella Fitzgerald after her performance for King Juan Carlos I of Spain in the east room, 10/13/81; Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, Simi Valley, California.
Today is St. George's Day, a festival day in much of the Christian world and in many places, including England, where St. George is recognized as a patron saint. We're happy to acknowledge his connection to England by flying the St. George's Cross - the flag of England - a dominant element in Great Britain's Union flag.
We know little about St. George's life other than his Greek origin, service in the Praetorian Guards under the Roman emperor Diocletian, and martyrdom for his Christian faith. Safe to say, he never set foot in England and his battle with any dragon remains legendary but his place as one of the most venerated saints in Christianity goes without question. In terms of his connection with England we must return to the time of the crusades and the veneration of George as a warrior for the faith. Over the centuries his association with military units and memorial organizations grew large as England took its place in the Age of Empire. Although that age has passed and England now shares it identity of sorts in the United Kingdom, St. George and England remain inseparable.
The finest expression of this fabric of faith, martyrdom, and love of country was heard across England as part of today's celebration, It comes from William Blake's Preface to Milton.
Preface to Milton from Blake's illuminated version, 1804
In a fitting conclusion for our St. George commemoration I present a rousing song from the Empire period that has survived to become a great symbol of British patriotism and pride. From Last Night at the Proms 2009, it is Rule Britainnia. sung by Dame Susan Connoly.
Rule Britainnia (Complete lyrics)
When Britain first, at heaven's command, Arose from out the azure main, This was the charter of the land, And Guardian Angels sang this strain:
(Chorus) Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves! Britons never, never, never will be slaves.
The nations not so blest as thee Must, in their turn, to tyrants fall, While thou shalt flourish great and free: The dread and envy of them all.
(Chorus)
Still more majestic shalt thou rise, More dreadful from each foreign stroke, As the loud blast that tears the skies Serves but to root thy native oak.
(Chorus)
Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame; All their attempts to bend thee down Will but arouse thy generous flame, But work their woe and thy renown.
(Chorus)
To thee belongs the rural reign; Thy cities shall with commerce shine; All thine shall be the subject main, And every shore it circles, thine.
(Chorus)
The Muses, still with freedom found, Shall to thy happy coasts repair. Blest isle! with matchless beauty crowned, And manly hearts to guard the fair.
(Chorus)
Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves! Britons never, never, never will be slaves.
Sources
Text:
classicfm.com
Photos and Illustrations: Family archives Preface to Milton, public domain, wikipedia.com
Today we celebrate our planet, our earthly home. At our home in the woods a celebration of the planet takes place in some way every day. Perhaps it's a seed order, a letter about water quality in the creek that crosses our property, admiring a blooming orchid or slicing into an amazing tomato harvested a few yards from the kitchen. More often these days I simply watch nature flowing through the seasons.
Our appreciation of nature persists in spite of the full-on seizure and politicization of environmental themes by the radical left - the green movement - that came with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990. Even the unhinged need an anchor and it is after all the birthday (1870) of the Communist butcher, Vladimir Lenin. Still, it's sad they selected such a universal idea. And now even our information technology isolates us from the outside making it more difficult to experience, understand, appreciate, and protect our planet. All of my adult life, I fought hard to dissolve the barriers between people and nature. Whether we like it or not we live IN nature. The sooner we recognize it the better off both we and the planet will coexist.
Father Mississippi Walter Inglis Anderson, U.S., ca. 1955
Experiencing the earth and the built environment upon it has been the greatest teacher over the years. The written word provided significant guidance along the way. First came the foundation heard from childhood:
Psalm 104
1 Praise the LORD, O my soul. O LORD my God, you are very great; you are clothed with splendor and majesty. 2 He wraps himself in light as with a garment; he stretches out the heavens like a tent 3 and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters. He makes the clouds his chariot and rides on the wings of the wind. 4 He makes winds his messengers, flames of fire his servants. 5 He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved. 6 You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. 7 But at your rebuke the waters fled, at the sound of your thunder they took to flight; 8 they flowed over the mountains, they went down into the valleys, to the place you assigned for them. 9 You set a boundary they cannot cross; never again will they cover the earth. 10 He makes springs pour water into the ravines; it flows between the mountains. 11 They give water to all the beasts of the field; the wild donkeys quench their thirst. 12 The birds of the air nest by the waters; they sing among the branches. 13 He waters the mountains from his upper chambers; the earth is satisfied by the fruit of his work. 14 He makes grass grow for the cattle, and plants for man to cultivate-- bringing forth food from the earth: 15 wine that gladdens the heart of man, oil to make his face shine, and bread that sustains his heart. 16 The trees of the LORD are well watered, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted. 17 There the birds make their nests; the stork has its home in the pine trees. 18 The high mountains belong to the wild goats; the crags are a refuge for the coneys. 19 The moon marks off the seasons, and the sun knows when to go down. 20 You bring darkness, it becomes night, and all the beasts of the forest prowl. 21 The lions roar for their prey and seek their food from God. 22 The sun rises, and they steal away; they return and lie down in their dens. 23 Then man goes out to his work, to his labor until evening. 24 How many are your works, O LORD! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. 25 There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number-- living things both large and small. 26 There the ships go to and fro, and the leviathan, which you formed to frolic there. 27 These all look to you to give them their food at the proper time. 28 When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things. 29 When you hide your face, they are terrified; when you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust. 30 When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth. 31 May the glory of the LORD endure forever; may the LORD rejoice in his works-- 32 he who looks at the earth, and it trembles, who touches the mountains, and they smoke. 33 I will sing to the LORD all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live. 34 May my meditation be pleasing to him, as I rejoice in the LORD. 35 But may sinners vanish from the earth and the wicked be no more. Praise the LORD, O my soul. Praise the LORD.
And here, from 1971, are words that to me reinforce that foundation:
...If you think that the world is going somewhere, that there are certain things that are supposed to happen and there are certain things that are supposed not to happen you never see the way it is like music. Music has no destination. We don' play it in order to get somewhere. If that were the way, the best orchestras would be those who got to the end of the piece the fastest. Music is a pattern which we listen to and enjoy as it unfolds. In the same way, "Where is the water going?" Where do the leaves go? Where are the clouds going? There not going anywhere because nature understands that the point of the whole thing is to be here, to be wide awake to the now that is going on. So when you listen to music you don't try to hold in your memory what is past or to think about what's coming. You listen to the pattern as it unfolds and so watch it as it moves now. It's a dance. And dancing is like music for when you dance you dance just to dance. You don't aim at a particular place on the floor that is your destination of the dance. You listen to the music and you move your body with it [as if] your eyes are following the patterns of the water.
The secret of...life is to spend some time every day in which you don't think but just watch, in which you don't form any ideas about life but look at it, listen to it, smell it, feel it. And when you get rid of all the talk in your head, all the ideas about what I do as distinct from what happen to me or what's the difference between man and nature or between what's mine and what's yours it all goes. And it's just the dancing pattern, what the Chinese call "li," the word that originally meant the markings in jade, the grain in wood, or...the pattern on water. When you let go of the definitions, of the attempt to try to pin down nature, to pin down life in your mind so that you can feel you are completely in control of it, its all based on the idea that you're different from it, that you have to master it. When you don't pin it down anymore, when you don't try to cling to it as if it was something different from you then your whole life has about it the sensation of flowing like water. It always goes away. but it always comes back because away and back are two sides of the same thing. Let it go!
Earth Day 2023 will soon be over in my woods but these passages where East meets West tell me that every day is an Earth day. For me the celebration indeed flows like water. Every day is a day to spend some time in observing nature and practicing its wise stewardship. Five generations ago the Czech composer, Antonin Dvorak, spent his last summer in the United States in the Czech settlement of Spillville, Iowa. In two weeks there surrounded by a landscape of fields, farms, and families under the open skies of the prairie he composed what has become known as the American Quartet. It is a beautiful expression of the optimism of the American experience (see Alexis de Toqueville's Democracy in America) and a fine way to conclude remarks on what should be an uplifting celebration of the "big blue marble" we call Earth.
I hope this post encourages you to go OUTside and find your INside.
Sources
Text:
Psalm 104, Holy Bible, NIV
Alan Watts, writer/narrator, Buddhism, Man and Nature, Hartley Foundation, Inc., Cos Cob, Connecticut, 1968
Photos and Illustrations: Andrew Weyth, Airborne (1996), porterbriggs.com
The great American naturalist and conservationist, John Muir, was born in Dunbar, East Lothian, Scotland, on this day in 1838. Eleven years later he immigrated with his family to a farm in Portage, Wisconsin. Through his personal efforts and the movements he supported with such fervor - he founded the Sierra Club - we can enjoy the spectacular wildness that is Yosemite National Park.
President Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir on Glacier Point, Yosemite Valley, 1903
His efforts also help establish the national park movement that today preserves and interprets 429 units administered by the National Park Service. And modeled after the national park idea, there are more than 6500 state parks and thousands of local parks and preserves to enjoy. Although Muir focused on the preservation of wilderness his work provided a structure for cultural resource preservation and management. That movement originated largely with Civil War commemorations late in the 19th century and accelerated through the benevolence of industrialists including Henry Ford (The Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation and Greenfield Village) and John D. Rockefeller Jr. (Colonial Williamsburg).
Muir in his beloved Yosemite Valley in 1890
Muir was a wanderer both physically and intellectualy building upon his studies in botany and geology as he traveled. In 1868 he saw Yosemite Valley for the first time and soon realized he had found his calling in the world of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. This is how he described the revelation in his autobiographical notebook:
There are eight members in our family....All are useful members of society - save me. One is a healer of the sick. Another, a merchant, and a deacon in good standing. The rest school teachers and farmers' wives - all exemplary, stable, anti-revolutionary. Surely then, I thought, one may be spared for so fine an experiment.
. . . the remnants of compunction - the struggle covering the serious business of settling down -gradually wasted and melted, and at length left me wholly free - born again! I will follow my instincts, be myself for good or ill, and see what will be the upshot...As long as I live, I'll hear the waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I'll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm and the avalanche. I'll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can.
Muir lived to see the creation of Yosemite National Park in 1890 and the consolidation of control of the park - California had retained management of the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove - by the federal government in 1906.
John Muir, seated. reading a book ca. 1912 May 29
Two years following his death in 1914 Congress created the National Park Service to manage the preservation and use of the growing number of national parks and monuments under federal jurisdictions.
Photos and Illustrations: public domain photos, Library of Congress, Washington
Text: wikipedia entry, John Muir title, John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir, ed. Linnie Marsh Wolfe, University of Wisconsin Press, 1979
Yes, today is Der Fuhrer's birthday. We remember him solely as the last century's foremost mass murderer, challenged only by Mao Zedong, and followed by runners-up, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Pol Pot. Perhaps this day will remind us that our president is pandering for votes from his party's Jew hating faction as they chant "Death to Israel" and equally disturbing, "Death to America". Already, analysts are saying the group could easily cost him the presidential election in November. It reminds me that our national experience today walks uncomfortably close to that of Weimar Germany, the breeding ground for the rise of Adolf and his National Socialist party to victory in 1933. Given the Holocaust and World War II that followed we cannot associate Adolf and his party with any kind of win.
We could remember Der Fuhrer by listing his atrocities which remain well documented and commemorated in western culture. I choose to build on that foundation through the forms of humor we know as satire and parody. Both have been described as the most effective forms of ridicule by far and a staple in public discourse and entertainment beginning with the Greeks 2500 years ago. Therefore, I present to you the Adolph Hitler Pin Cushion, a most popular item in American households during World War II. The fine specimen pictured below comes from my great aunt's home.
In our time the film industry has produced some wonderful examples of humor applied to Der Fuhrer. For some individuals and groups it is difficult to understand. In a 2018 National Public Radio interview, Mel Brooks, the comic who brought us The Producers (1967 and 2005) and many other masterful comedies, explained his motivations for making the original film:
. . . Listen, get on a soapbox with Hitler, you're gonna lose — he was a great orator. But if you can make fun of him, if you can have people laugh at him, you win. . . . The comedy writer is like the conscience of the king . . . . He's got to tell him the truth. And that's my job: to make terrible things entertaining.
I would add the terrible things not only become entertaining but also allow us to survive, understand, and accept their reality. Yes, there is healing in this humor.
Here are four examples of satire and parody at work from Charlie Chaplin's, The Great Dictator (1940) where Hitler meets Italy's Mussolini; Mel Brooks's, The Producers (1967); and the British Ministry of Information's Schichlegruber Doing The Lambeth Walk (1942).
Horrible voice, bad breeding, vulgar manners, you have everything you need to be a politician.
from The Knights, a play by Aristophanes, 424 BCE
Sources
Photos and Illustrations: Hitler pin cushion figurine, World War II era, OTR personal collection
Text: NPR Morning Edition interview with Susan Stamberg, April 26, 2018, https://www.npr.org/2018/04/26/605297774/mel-brooks-says-its-his-job-to-make-terrible-things-entertaining
At one time San Francisco was one of my favorite cities and, as cities go, the museums, restaurants, and parks made it one of the best anywhere. Many of those features remain but the social and political climate these days make the city a far less attractive destination for tourists as well as residents. What also remains is that splendid natural setting, a combination of its bay, the coastal mountains, and Mediterranean climate. But there is a more subtle nature to that setting and one that was completely unknown on the early morning of April 18, 1906 when a great earthquake shook the town and started a massive fire. At that time the concept of earth science was a very young discipline. The idea that San Francisco sat astride two massive and drifting plates, one of which was moving toward Alaska, would have been laughable. Fifty years later, such thinking was widely accepted in the theory of plate tectonics.
On that morning and in the days that followed, "theory" wasn't on the minds of San Franciscans. They wanted to survive. This is how the opening paragraphs of the National Archives entry describe the event:
On the morning of April 18, 1906, a massive earthquake shook San Francisco, California. Though the quake lasted less than a minute, its immediate impact was disastrous. The earthquake also ignited several fires around the city that burned for three days and destroyed nearly 500 city blocks.
Despite a quick response from San Francisco's large military population, the city was devastated. The earthquake and fires killed an estimated 3,000 people and left half of the city's 400,000 residents homeless. Aid poured in from around the country and the world, but those who survived faced weeks of difficulty and hardship.
The survivors slept in tents in city parks and the Presidio, stood in long lines for food, and were required to do their cooking in the street to minimize the threat of additional fires. The San Francisco earthquake is considered one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history.
You can read the rest of the article and view scores of historic photographs and documents related to the event here. Below are several stereoscope cards from the family archives showing the scene following the earthquake and fire.
If you want to see remnants of the earthquake first hand and learn a bit more about it, plate tectonics, and continental drift there's no better place in my opinion than the Earthquake Trail at Point Reyes National Seashore. (Point Reyes is a spectacular resource in the National Park Service. Plan two or three days minimum to explore all of it) The Seashore is accessible from Highway 1 at Olema about eighteen miles north of the Golden Gate. The trail - an easy half-mile - is at the Bear Valley Visitor Center. The trail's focal point is the famous old fence displaced eighteen feet by the quake
April 20, 1906 marked the third day following the quake. On that day the horrific fires that had caused far more destruction than the shaking began to decline in part because there was little left to feed the flames. Over 80% of the city was in ruin but a sense of community emerged and its citizens began to think about recovery rather than immediate survival.
Speaking of immediate survival, I have experienced only one earthquake - Alaska in 2000 - that really concerned me. It lasted about thirty seconds and was strong enough to keep me swaying in my seat in a dark theater while the sound of thunder and rock slides rumbled outside. Standing would have been difficult, walking nearly impossible. Our guides told us not to worry because they happened all the time at the site and the building was designed to withstand far worse shaking. Easy for them to say.
Sources
Photos and Ilustrations: Stereoscope views, OTR family archives
Text:
National Archives, Washington, DC Point Reyes National Seashore, National Park Service, Washington, DC
