Olio/Olla podrida/Mulligan stew/Stone soup

March 26, 2007

Here are some of the posts I’ve been thinking about over the past couple of days:

Iraq and Vietnam:  Writings by Hudson has been reading about LBJ and Vietnam.  Santayana’s ghost appreciates the exercise.

Camels in the Outback, camels in the dogfood:  Would you believe a million camels are feral in the Australian Outback?  And now, with a drought, it’s a problem.  The Coffee House alerts us.

What if everybody in your organization came to you for help? The Drawing Room tells us why you’d be wise to work for such a thing.

U.S. soldiers protest the war:  No, not the current war — African American soldiers protest the Filipino conflict.  Forgotten soldiers, forgotten war — you’d do well to reacquaint yourself with this chapter of U.S. history at Vox ex Machina.

Leaks about the incident that got us into the war:  No, not yet the Iraq war (see how you jump to conclusions?).  POTUS reflects on LBJ and the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and the leaks and lack of intelligence that may have gotten us into a quagmire.

Earthquakes in Tornado Alley:  Tennessee Guy points to an article that wonders about the New Madrid Fault, and whether it is tensing up for “the Big One” to shake West Tennessee (and the rest of the Midwest), or it is going to sleep for a millennium.

Science and racism:  A collection of Darwin’s writings that touch on race and slavery, for your bookmark file.

Cool school libraries:  We’re not talking about air conditioning.

1 Comment | Charles Darwin, Civil Rights, Dissent, Education, Elections, Evolution, History, History blogs, Leadership, Lessons of Vietnam, Patriotism, Politics, Presidents, Public libraries, Santayana's ghost, Theodore Roosevelt, Vietnam, War, Weblogs | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Tuskegee Airmen medal ceremony set for March 29

March 23, 2007

Tuskegee Airmen in Europe, Library of Congress photo

Congress voted to award the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor to the Tuskegee Airmen as a group. The ceremony is set for Washington, D.C., in the Capitol Rotunda, for March 29, 2007.

This is another great story of Americans, otherwise held down in their daily life, who rise to meet a monstrous challenge. They not only met the challenge but achieved a degree of triumph beyond what anyone had hoped. The story is a natural segue to the post World War II civil rights movement, and it fits nicely into studies of the war or studies of civil rights. News items around the time of the ceremony should update the history of the Tuskegee Airmen and provide good photos for classroom presentations.

“It’s sort of an open validation of the Tuskegee Airmen, that we fought stereotypes, overcame them and prevailed,” said Roscoe Brown, an 85-year-old Riverdale, N.Y., resident who graduated from the Tuskegee program in 1944. “This is the ultimate when your nation recognizes you.”

The gold medal, equivalent to the Presidential Medal of Freedom, is awarded to individuals or groups for singular acts of exceptional service and for lifetime achievement. The Tuskegee fliers will join a distinguished group of recipients that includes George Washington, Winston Churchill, Rosa Parks, the Wright brothers and former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., and Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., introduced identical bills in the House of Representatives and the Senate in 2005 to give the airmen the congressional medal. The Senate bill passed in October 2005 and the House followed in February 2006. President Bush signed the bill into law last April.

It is also a story of racism and bureaucratic bungling delaying appropriate recognition to heroes for 60 years.

Lee Archer, 87, of New Rochelle, is America’s first black flying ace.

“It shows the country is trying to right an old wrong,” Archer said. “I never thought we would get it, but we would have done it without any recognition … . My family is very excited. I am, too.”

Of the 994 black aviators who got their training at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama beginning in 1942, fewer than 385 are still alive. On March 4, Edgar L. Bolden, 85, who trained at Tuskegee and flew P-47s, died in Portland, Ore.

More information:

Tip of the old scrub brush to Resist Racism.

Leave a Comment » | Civil Rights, Current History, Curricula, Freedom - Political, Heroes, History, Leadership, Patriotism, War, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

A thoughtful festival of liberal comments, Carnival of the Liberals 34

March 20, 2007

Brainshrub hosts the 34th Carnival of the Liberals, an Ides of March edition, with ample warnings to would-be-tyrants, or to leaders who refuse to listen to their people, or to the sages who know better.

COTL is rather unique in that it limits the number of posts to about a dozen. It’s generally a quick read, packed with information. COTL logo

Mentioning it also gives me a chance to plug the pending Fiesta de Tejas!, a carnival of Texas history and other things Texas. We’re aiming for April 2, no foolin’. Details are a few posts down on this blog.

Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, Business Ethics, Civil Rights, Politics, Weblogs | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Eugene, Oregon’s Japanese internment memorial

February 22, 2007

11th grade history courses should be finishing up with World War II about now. If the course covered the material planned, it included a discussion of the internment of Japanese-Americans in the U.S. during World War II. The discussion should have included questions about whether the internment was just, and whether the reparations paid and apology made later by the U.S. government adequately compensated the victim internees.

Eugene, Oregon, hosted a “civic control station” where Japanese-Americans were forced to register. Most were later sent to internment camps — from Oregon, many were sent to Tule Lake, California. Oregonians, especially those who were interned and their families, are working to honor the internees and pass on the stories of the events. They want to highlight the fact that many of the interned citizens served gallantly during the war.

A memorial is being built in Eugene, featuring a statue of a young Japanese American girl sitting atop her luggage on the way to internment, reaching for a butterfly.

Below the fold I copy the editorial from the Eugene Register-Guard about the memorial — I’ve taken the liberty of copying the entire piece, as well as including a link (free subscription required). If the Register-Guard wishes I not promote their work this way, they know where to find me. It’s a good editorial on important issues, and it deserves broader circulation and preservation.

Read the rest of this entry »

10 Comments | Civil Rights, History, Japanese American internment, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Pentagon official calls for assault on Constitution

January 13, 2007

I used to marvel at the irony of attending Republican conventions in states and counties across the nation, where ceremonies would open with the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S. flag, and the nation, ideals and government it stands for, and where speaker after speaker would then assault every aspect of that same nation and government. In the Vietnam era and a decade afterward, frequently these speeches would include rhetorical questions like, “Do we really need a First Amendment?” in reference to protestors, or the speech of anyone that the speaker found disagreeable.

This is a new height: The New York Times reports this morning that a top Pentagon official is bothered that lawyers defend prisoners in the U.S., especially prisoners at Guantanamo Bay — somehow forgetting that lawyers are obligated to do such things by their ethical canons, their state laws and state licensing rules, and by the Constitution. Then he urges corporations who use those same lawyers to stop paying them.

Is this a joke, or can someone who has sworn to uphold the Constitution actually be so clueless?

The senior Pentagon official in charge of military detainees suspected of terrorism said in an interview this week that he was dismayed that lawyers at many of the nation’s top firms were representing prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and that the firms’ corporate clients should consider ending their business ties.

The comments by Charles D. Stimson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, produced an instant torrent of anger from lawyers, legal ethics specialists and bar association officials, who said Friday that his comments were repellent and displayed an ignorance of the duties of lawyers to represent people in legal trouble.

The Wall Street Journal joined in the assault on the Constitution in an editorial, according to the news story.

Stanley Kubrick is dead, or I’d think that this was just a review of a Stanley Kubrick follow-up to Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb.

Any corporation official who fires the company’s attorneys for representing Guantanamo Bay detainees should be fired himself — he’s acting contrary to the interests of his stockholders in getting rid of the best legal team he could hire.

How do such barbarians an anti-American people get to be officials in the Pentagon, and editorial writers at the Wall Street Journal?

More information:

Blog reactions:

2 Comments | Civil Rights, Current History, Democracy, Dissent, Ethics, Iraq, Jurisprudence, Justice, Law, Patriotism, U.S. Constitution | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Kearny, NJ, supports voodoo history

January 1, 2007

A brave kid in Kearny, New Jersey, recorded his high school history teacher doing what can be fairly described as preaching religion instead of teaching history.  That should be good enough warning to good and careful history teachers to keep doing their jobs right.

Some citizens of Kearny, however, take a different view:  On a city-run internet bulletin board the student gets little support, and his father gets threatened.  Jim Lippard at the Lippard Blog has a summary of key details.

And you thought your class a tough room to work?

And a tip of the old scrub brush for tracking the story to Pharyngula.

Postscript:  Does anyone know how to pronounce the name of that town?   Like Kearns, Utah, or is it like Kearny, Nebraska? 

5 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, Civil Rights, Curricula, Voodoo history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

‘First, Roy Moore came for Keith Ellison . . .’

December 26, 2006

While denying that they have any racist or other xenophobic intent, critics of Minnesota’s U.S. Representative-elect Keith Ellison, like the abominable Dennis Prager, continue to try to gin up reasons why he cannot carry his own scriptures to Congress, why he cannot have the rights that every school child in America has, because the scriptures Ellison carries are Islamic.

Except for Roy Moore, the Xian Nationalist, unreconstructed Christian Reconstructionist, and Christian Dominionist who probably got the memorandum about how they aren’t supposed to talk about it in public, but who lets it fly anyway.

Representing the Great Booboisie, Roy Moore says Ellison should not be seated in Congress at all.

Alabama’s voters were wise to reject Roy Moore as governor, after Moore burned the people so badly when they trusted him to be chief justice of the state’s supreme court, and he instead turned the court into a circus of religious pomposity and disregard for the laws of religious freedom. Another History Blog Fisks the manifold, manifest errors Moore makes.

I cannot escape the feeling that Moore is speaking for most Reconstructionists and Dominionists, Read the rest of this entry »

9 Comments | Accuracy, America's founding, Bad Quotes, Bill of Rights, Bogus history, Civil Rights, First Amendment, Freedom - Political, Good Quotes, History Revisionism, Patriotism, Religious Freedom, Voodoo history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

First woman Scoutmaster, Catherine Pollard

December 16, 2006

Catherine Pollard died in Largo, Florida last week. She was 88. Catherine Pollard volunteered to be Scoutmaster for Milford, Connecticut Boy Scout Troop 13 from 1973 to 1975, when no one else would volunteer. Scout officials refused to accept her application at the time, citing a perceived need for male role models for boys. Eventually the troop dissolved when no one else stepped up as Scoutmaster.

In 1988 Boy Scouts of America abolished gender requirements on all volunteer positions, and made Ms. Pollard the first woman Scoutmaster.

A funeral service is set in Milford for Monday, December 18. Her casket will be carried on a fire truck from the Milford Fire Department, for whom she volunteered in different positions for years. When the ban on female Scout volunteers was lifted, it was the Milford FD that sponsored a troop so Pollard could be Scoutmaster. Read the rest of this entry »

52 Comments | Boy Scouts of America, Civil Rights, Current History, Leadership, Women's rights | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Sources for Japanese internment history

December 14, 2006

A reader graciously pointed the way to a very good source of information about the Japanese internment, especially on video, in comments to my earlier post about the book on Dorothea Lange’s photos of internment events.

Shay Witt suggested we look to the Japanese American National Museum.  In addition to exhibits, the museum store offers several VHS and DVD products that should be good for classroom use.  Witt specifically mentioned the award-winning documentary “Something Strong Within.”  That film is now available on DVD, in a compilation disc.

Tests tend to show that students are unfamiliar with this history.  It is particularly salient today, with our nation once again at war and imprisoning people unaccused of any particular acts.

Leave a Comment » | Civil Rights, History, Japanese American internment, Lesson plans, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Reversing Brown v. Topeka Board of Education

December 10, 2006

Is the Supreme Court getting ready to reverse the most significant civil rights case in the past 200 years?  Interesting, thought provoking stuff from a blog, Marisacat.

Here is a more cool-headed view of the case (though, perhaps not different).  And here’s more.  Here’s a longer discussion.

The two cases are:  Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, and Meredith vs. Jefferson County Board of Education.

1 Comment | Civil Rights, Current History, Desegregation, Education reform | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Anti-fundamentalist Christian ire gone awry

December 2, 2006

Update: The speech took place as scheduled; 125 people attended, the lecture was great, the questions were fine — you can listen and read for yourself [from Language Log]:

Anyway, whether that’s right or not, I do know this: the lucky people who live in the Boston area (I regret that I now do not) have a chance to hear Everett in person on Friday, because despite the hate campaign he still plans to get in that taxi at Logan Airport and take it to MIT’s Building 46. His lecture is called “Culture and Grammar in Pirahã”, and it’s on Friday, December 1, from noon to 1:30 p.m., in room 46-3310 at MIT (that is, Room 3310 of building 46; MIT people do have a system of number names, and they use them to name buildings). Language Log readers in New England who get there early enough to find a seat can check out what Everett actually says, rather than what his enemies say he says, and then make up their own minds.

[Update: Dan Everett’s talk did place as scheduled on December 1; it was not boycotted by the linguists in the area; about 125 people showed up, in fact; and a good, spirited discussion followed in the question period. You can actually listen to it, and look at the handout, thanks to Ted Gibson’s lab: handout in PDF form here, and audio for Windows Media Player here.]

ORIGINAL POST:  WordPress has some wonderful features that carry to one ideas from realms one would not otherwise visit. And so it was that I found this post at Language Log, about a Bush-style “pre-emptive strike” on the scholarship of a linguist, condemned for a pro-Christian bias that does not exist, according to the blogger.

An unnamed scholar was ranting in e-mail about the work of linguist Daniel Everett of Illinois State University, who was scheduled to give a lecture on his work on the language of the Amazonian tribe Pirahã, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), on December 1. The e-mailer threatened at least a protest of the lecture.

I have not found any indication either that there was a protest at the lecture, or that it went on as planned. Does anyone know?

The MIT listing for the lecture:

Brain and Cognitive Science

December 1, 2006
12:00p.m. – 1:30p.m.
Building 46, Room 3310

Culture and Grammar in Piraha

Dan Everett
Illinois State University / University of Manchester Abstract:
This talk considers the on-going research into the relationship between culture and grammar in Piraha, an Amazonian language isolate. As background, it surveys a number of unusual linguistic and cultural phenomena in Piraha, e.g. the absence of numerals, number, and counting, the absence of myths, the lack of quantifiers (and quantification), then summarizes the analysis of Everett (2005) which accounts for these facts in terms of a cultural value of ‘immediacy of experience’. The talk then turns to focus on how culture constrains segmental phonology in Piraha.

Leave a Comment » | Brain learning, Civil Rights, Dissent, Research | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Teachers reviled world around, still

December 2, 2006

Teachers in the U.S. do not get the respect they deserve, especially middle school and elementary school teachers. It’s an age old problem — Shakespeare wrote of a man being executed by a coup d’etat for knowing how to read and teaching young boys to read.

It’s still true, sadly — see Ed Brayton’s remarks at Dispatches from the Culture Wars. The Taliban in Afghanistan are literally drawing and quartering teachers.

Teachers are revolutionaries, breakers of slavery’s chains, fighters for freedom. It shouldn’t be a fight to the death. Ignorance has long knives, and uses them. As Shakespeare noted, “Small things make base men proud.” (Henry VI, Part 2, act IV, scene 1)

1 Comment | Civil Rights, Current History, Education, Freedom - Political | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Lange photos of Japanese internment show a different light

November 7, 2006

Unpublished photos of the internment of U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry during World War II were found in the National Archives.

Japanese Americans line up at Tanforan Assembly Center

Dorothea Lange took the photos, but they were forgotten in the archives — they did not show the view that the government wanted to be shown, some speculate, and so were not widely disseminated.

The pictures are being published for the first time, in Impounded:  Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment (W. W. Norton).

The New York Times carried some of the photos and a story about the book.

Lange, who died in 1965, showed families who had abandoned their homes and property. Because they couldn’t bring their belongings with them, they were often forced to sell them to speculators at reduced prices. In harrowing images that uncomfortably echo the Nazi round-ups of Jews in Europe, Lange’s photographs document long, weaving lines of well-dressed people, numbered tags around their necks, patiently waiting to be processed and sent to unknown destinations.

“There is no way to really know how much they lost,” Mr. Okihiro said in an interview, but he cited a 1983 study commissioned by a Congressional committee estimating that, adjusted for inflation and interest, internees had lost $2.5 billion to $6.2 billion in property and entitlements. Mr. Okihiro writes that one man, Ichiro Shimoda, was so distraught he tried to commit suicide by biting off his own tongue. When that failed, he tried to asphyxiate himself. Finally he climbed a camp fence, and a guard shot him to death.

Another man, Kokubo Takara, died after being forced to stand in line in the rain as a disciplinary measure at Sand Island in Hawaii. At assembly points in Hawaii, Mr. Okihiro writes, some detainees were forced to strip naked and had their body cavities searched.

Upon arrival at the assembly centers — including the Tanforan Assembly Center in San Bruno, Calif., a former racetrack — the internees passed through two lines of soldiers with bayonets trained on them. Lange was not allowed to photograph the soldiers, but she did manage some stark images of the horse stalls where the families lived, pictures that are included in the book.

18 Comments | Bill of Rights, Civil Rights, History, Japanese American internment, Patriotism, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Iva Toguri, RIP (Not “Tokyo Rose”)

September 30, 2006

Ima Toguri Aquino (NOT Tokyo Rose) (National Archives photo)

Iva Toguri D’Aquino died this week at age 90. She’s seen here in a file photo being escorted out of federal court after her conviction for treason in 1949. She was later pardoned. AP, via NPR National Archives photo (2-24-2007 blog update)

Scott Simon at NPR’s “Weekend Edition” had a remembrance of a woman from his old neighborhood in Chicago who died this week. It’s an audio report (transcripts are available for a fee from NPR).

As a Japanese American student stuck in Tokyo on December 11, 1941, Toguri was tossed out by her cousins. In order to live, she took a job with Japanese radio, and ultimately was one of a dozen women who read material between songs broadcast to American soldiers, known collectively as “Tokyo Rose.” Toguri refused to renounce her U.S. citizenship, ever. Assigned to work with Allied POWs in Tokyo, she read propaganda notices she said later were so silly that no GI could have believed them, written by an Australian POW for humor.

But at the end of the war, trying to get back to the U.S., Toguri was the only one of the woman broadcasters known. She was detained as a suspect Tokyo Rose for a year, then released — there was no evidence against her. Read the rest of this entry »

5 Comments | Civil Rights, History, Patriotism, War, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Omaha segregation plan put on hold by federal courts

September 19, 2006

Via Rational Review, I see that the plan to resegregate Omaha’s schools has been put on hold, at least temporarily, by the federal courts.

Here’s the MSNBC story on the deal.

Leave a Comment » | Civil Rights, Public education, School desegregation | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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