January 9, 2007
Manchester, New Hampshire, Union Democrat,
December 8, 1852 (?); with news of Fillmore’s State of the Union Address
Millard Fillmore was a grade school drop out. He took the path to a career that many in his day did — he apprenticed, and worked his way up. Legal education in his day (circa 1815 to 1825) required that one apprentice in a law office, to “read for the law.” In that way, Fillmore, who didn’t graduate elementary school, became a lawyer.
Lawyering requires words, of course, but Fillmore was no great writer than we know, especially compared to Teddy Roosevelt, who was a newspaper reporter, or John Kennedy, in whose name a Pulitzer Prize-winning book was published (controversy for another time; Profiles in Courage, (Perennial Classics Books, 2000). We might hope that some institution will undertake a collection of Fillmore’s legal arguments as they may be spread across New York court archives, much as the Lincoln Library has scoured Illinois for Lincoln’s writings and oral arguments.
We may assume that Fillmore participated heavily in the writing of his state of the union addresses, in a day when ghost writers were not listed in the staff books of the White House. So they would contain genuine Fillmore ideas and phrases. Fillmore’s three state of the union speeches are available at the Gutenberg Project.
I’ll be mining them for accurate quotes, you may rest assured. (Does he mention bathtubs in any of the speeches? No.) Read the rest of this entry »
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Abraham Lincoln, Accuracy, Good Quotes, Millard Fillmore, Presidents | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
January 9, 2007
For many years my colleagues in Scouting and I have mused at the great lack of interest in flag etiquette. We have collected dozens of cases of improper flag display, usually by people who were trying to honor the flag and nation, but who went about it contrary to good taste or the flag code, or both.
A couple of days after President Ford’s death I posted a short reminder of what the flag code calls for, with a photo of a flag flying at half-staff over the White House — a photo taken in 2004, after the death of Ronald Reagan, but the only one I could find at the time. That post is by now, far and away the most popular post on this blog since we started it up last July. For the past few days the number of visits to that post continued to grow.
I don’t know why the post is so popular. I hope people are getting from it a touch of flag etiquette — that would be fitting an proper especially as a result of the funeral of Gerald Ford, supreme nice guy and Eagle Scout. But there it is.
Today I found that the White House had included a photo of the White House flag at half-staff on December 26, 2006, in honor of Gerald Ford. Here it is:
A reminder again: The flag should be hoisted quickly (as always), to the peak of the pole, and then be lowered solemnly to half-mast. When the flag is retired at the end of the day, it should be raised again to the peak, quickly, and then lowered solemnly.
See also:
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1 Comment | Boy Scouts of America, Flag etiquette, Gerald Ford, Presidents | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
January 9, 2007
David Parker at Another History Blog updates and corrects our information on state pledges of allegiance: Texas is not alone, Georgia also has a state pledge.
Georgia does not require students to say the pledge daily, however.
These provisions are often hidden away in state laws that do not index well at the legal sites I use, Findlaw.com and the Cornell University Law Library’s Legal Information Institute. Consequently, it’s quite possible I have missed other state pledges. If you know of any others, please let me know.
And, in the meantime, go check out Prof. Parker’s post. The details make the story, as always.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
2 Comments | Current History, Curricula, Flag etiquette, Law, Patriotism | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
January 8, 2007
Kentucky is shopping for a new state commissioner of education. The outgoing commissioner, cognizant of the legal failures of education agencies to insert ID into curricula during the past year, advised that the new person should not be an ID advocate.
Members of the Kentucky State School Board say it is not an issue. The story is here, in the Kentucky version of the Cincinatti Post.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, Bogus history, Creationism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Science, Science and faith, State school boards | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
January 7, 2007
Millard Fillmore was born on January 7, 1800.
Fillmore was:
- The 13th President of the United States
- The first Chancellor of the university at Buffalo now known as the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York
- The “handsomest man I ever met” according to Queen Victoria
- Namesake of one of the earliest capitals of Utah, Fillmore, in Millard County
- Almost definitely NOT the person responsible for putting plumbing in the White House, especially for the first plumbed bathtub.
Happy birthday, Mr. Fillmore! We hardly know ye, still!
(Prof. Parker at Another History Blog worked to dog down the quote attributed to Fillmore that I mentioned Friday: “May God save the country, for it is evident that the people will not.” He could not confirm the quote, but at least as good and probably better, he offers a free history database. Go see.)
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5 Comments | Accuracy, History, History blogs, Hoaxes, Millard Fillmore | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
January 7, 2007
Texas is a whole ‘nother place.
Flag etiquette is a concern of mine — no, not an obsession, despite the number of recent posts — and I try to stay alert to news on that front. Hangin’ with Scout leaders today I heard another one: Texas has a law that specifies how a soiled or tattered Texas flag should be retired.
U.S. flags should be retired in a respectful fashion, according to the non-binding U.S. flag code. Texas leaves a lot less up to the imagination or to chance. The law calls for a sober ceremony, but just in case you wonder, it also provides a suggested script for the ceremony, ending with the Texas Pledge. So far as I know, Texas is the only state that has a pledge of allegiance for the state flag, separate from the national Pledge of Allegiance (if you know of others, please tell!).
The state law, in all its glory is below the fold (at least, that portion dealing with the Texas flag retirement ceremony). Read the rest of this entry »
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
12 Comments | Flag etiquette, History, Patriotism, Texas | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
January 5, 2007
Texas’ regular license plate features a Space Shuttle, some stars and a crescent Moon, but a lot of Texas 8th graders are foggy on just why. I hope kids living near Houston have a better idea, since the Houston Johnson Space Center is in their area. To most kids under the age of 20 in Texas, space exploration is not a part of Texas history. I had one student in class ask why it was that in the movie version of the Apollo 13 story, the astronauts said “Houston, we have a problem.”
The drive to get a private spacecraft into commercial use has at least one company using Texas as a base. Space exploration may once again become a current event item in Texas social studies classes.
Jeff Bezos’ company, Blue Origin, tested their space craft in November, and the tardy news is bustling around the internet — and present in print and broadcast media, too. That the story is so hot on the internet should be a cue to mass media that it’s time to start paying attention.
The company’s test site is in Culberson County, in far west Texas — far away from the giant media markets in San Antonio, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth. El Paso is the closest major market, and it’s in a different time zone from the rest of the state.
This space exploration group reverses NASA’s Houston-to-Cape Canaveral style of operations — Blue Origin is headquartered in Kent, Washington, closer to Bezos’ Amazon roots.
Blue Origin is hiring engineers, by the way.
Watch that space.
Tip of the old scrub brush to Futuresheet.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
3 Comments | Current History, Geography - Physical, History, Science, Space exploration, Texas | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
January 5, 2007
Just a reminder that Millard Fillmore’s 207th birthday anniversary is Sunday, January 7, 2007.
How do you plan to celebrate?
Did he really say that? “May God save the country, for it is evident that the people will not.” (attributed to Fillmore)
Update, January 6, 2007: Elektratig tried to source the quote, but cannot — posts that the line does not sound like Fillmore. At the end of the day, January 5, neither the New York State Library nor the good people at the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society could confirm the quote. We may have to add this line to the list of Bathtub debunkings; but there are many sources yet to check.
Image: State Library of New York
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
13 Comments | Good Quotes, History, Millard Fillmore, Public education | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
January 5, 2007
One of its architects, Seymour Papert, lies in a Boston hospital (but out of intensive care) recovering from a head injury suffered in a collision with a motorbike in Hanoi in early December, but the idea of equipping tens of millions of students around the world with inexpensive, wireless-ready laptop computers continues to roll towards implementation.
The Christian Science Monitor carries an editorial more full of hope than opinion, on January 5, 2007, about the computer project. The laptops have been dubbed “XO.”
For billions of parents who earn only a few dollars a day, paying for a child’s education – books, etc. – often gets neglected. Many simple solutions that break that cycle of poverty have been tried and have failed. Now another one is on the horizon: a “$100 laptop.”
While noting past errors in sending technology to the third world, the Monitor cites some numbers from implementation that are quite dramatic, if accurate: Read the rest of this entry »
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
2 Comments | Classroom technology, Education, On-line education, On-line learning, Public education, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom, XO laptops | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
January 4, 2007
[I hear from teachers who want lesson plans dealing with Gerald Ford. Here’s one I came across from the National Archives.]
Vice President Spiro Agnew was forced to resign in late 1973 in lieu of being prosecuted for bribery. The 25th Amendment allows a president to nominate a new vice president in the event of a vacancy. It was passed after the assassination of President Kennedy, when heart-attack victim Lyondon Johnson held office for over a year with no vice president, but it had never been used. With more than two years to go on his second term, Nixon was encouraged to fill the office.
Eventually Nixon picked Gerald Ford, putting Ford in line to become the first U.S. president to hold the office without ever having been elected to either the presidency or vice presidency, though that was unknown in the fall of 1973. What Nixon needed was someone who could pass the “advice and consent” test of the U.S. Senate. He got a letter from the Republican leader in the House, Gerald Ford, a long-time Michigan congressman, who named several others.
Whose names did Ford suggest to Nixon?
That letter is the focus of a lesson plan suitable for high school U.S. history or government classes, which comes with images of the letter and suggested activities from the National Archives.
The National Archives has lesson plans for all eras of U.S. history.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
1 Comment | 25th Amendment, Gerald Ford, History, Lesson plans, Presidents, U.S. Constitution, U.S. Senate, Watergate scandal | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
January 4, 2007
Not in years — but the 100th Carnival of Education is up over at Teaching in the Twenty-first Century.
What is that in scientific notation? In binary?
- The Howard School, a one-room schoolhouse in Oregon’s Ochocos Mountains area, about 30 miles east of Prineville, Oregon. The school appears to be abandoned, an Oregon Ghost. Photo by Bruce Johnson, who holds the copyright. Used by permission. (More great photos of Oregon available at http://www.OregonPhotos.com).
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
1 Comment | Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), Education, Education blogs, Education reform, No Child Left Behind Act, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
January 3, 2007
Step right up — not even one thin dime, not even one-tenth of a dollar!
The 29th Carnival of the Liberals is up over at Daylight Atheism.
And one of my blog posts is included, the one where I take Roy Moore to task for his uncharitable, anti-American views on having a Moslem in Congress. And while this is a blog of history, events have overtaken that post on the day the Carnival set up its tents — Rep. Ellison creatively pointed out the value of religious freedom and tied it to the founders (go see how.)
Go see the Carnival of the Liberals — there are a lot of posts noted there that are worthy of your attention.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
1 Comment | Current History, First Amendment, Politics, Religious Freedom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
January 3, 2007
The good news is that Russian high school biology textbooks talk about Darwin, at long last, after the 74-year rule of the Communists decimated the corps of teachers who taught Darwinian evolution, partly because Darwin was ‘too bourgeois.’
The bad news is that Russian creationists, with what appears to be the support of the Russian Orthodox Church, are suing to bring back the old Stalinist views that Darwin was wrong. The case is loaded with irony, not the least that Theodosius Dobzhansky, the famous biologist who noted that biology is only clear under the light of evolution theory, was devoutly Russian Orthodox.
This case appears to have gone on for some time, but details are only now coming to these shores. The Baltimore Sun had a story on the case today. And, as if one would not guess, it appears the case is brought by a public relations company — perhaps the Moscow branch of the Swift Boat Veterans?
Tip of the scrub brush to Panda’s Thumb, where there is guaranteed to be more discussion of the issue.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Leave a Comment » | Bogus history, Cold War, Creationism, Darwin, Evolution, History, Religious Freedom, Science and faith, Voodoo history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
January 3, 2007
U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., delivered a lesson to critics today on the value of knowing history.
First, Los Angeles conservative radio host Dennis Prager embarrassed himself by calling on Ellison to use a Christian Bible to put his left hand on while being sworn in as a Member of Congress, the first Moslem to be a Member. Ellison pointed out that in the swearing-in ceremony, no book is used, and noted that other religious texts have been used by people of other faiths during the photo session afterward, when members re-enact the swearing in with the Speaker of the House. Prager compounded his history sins by refusing to back down. Ellison correctly stood his ground.
Then Virginia’s U.S. Rep. Virgil Goode pushed it farther, warning that unless we control immigration, Ellison will be the beachhead for a Moslem take-over of Congress. Ellison, defending the Bill of Rights, stood his ground and refused to get into a name-calling discussion.
Then Roy Moore of Alabama, who was rejected by voters for governor after having made a spectacle of himself and the Alabama Supreme Court over his efforts to install his own religious shrine in the Supreme Court Building, called for Ellison to be denied his seat. Ellison coolly ignored Moore, defending the First Amendment instead.
Now Ellison has acted, and his action comprises a neat, clean and witty rebuttal to the critics.
Read the rest of this entry »
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
4 Comments | First Amendment, History, Leadership, Politics, Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson, U.S. Constitution | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
January 2, 2007
Browsing at Positive Liberty today I first saw the news that the Rev. D. James Kennedy suffered a heart attack, and is hospitalized. Kennedy is the head of Coral Ridge Ministries in Florida, and a leader of the history revisionist movement to rewrite especially textbooks to argue that the U.S. should have a religiously-based government.
It appears the news didn’t get out quickly. The Miami Herald had a story just today, though Kennedy’s heart attack was last Thursday. Jonathan Rowe urges a speedy recovery, so Kennedy can continue to provide material for that blog. I think there’s enough material for this blog without Kennedy, but I wish him a complete recovery anyway.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
2 Comments | America's founding, Bad Quotes, Creationism, History, History Revisionism, Hoaxes, Intelligent Design, Science and faith, Voodoo history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 