In Key West, early on in an apartment near the Ford dealership, where they awaited the delivery of the Ford purchased for Hemingway and his wife Pauline, by Pauline’s Uncle Gus, Hemingway wrote most of A Farewell to Arms, published in 1929.
The house was purchased later. I can’t tell — some say he used here a Royal Quiet DeLuxe.
New logo and slogan for the Texas Historical Commission
A lot of photos from the sites the Historical Commission operates, news of special events, and links to the Commission’s sites’ websites. As yet there are not any substantive historical analyses.
Great idea. Really. There’s a lot of campaign stuff left over. Rather than dump it, they’re selling it cheap.
Image from the Obama campaign site, June 2009
Government and politics teachers can stock up on the stuff to decorate the room. AP Government teacher Mrs. Richie, at Duncanville High School had a collection of bumperstickers that went back 30 years before she retired (where did that collection go?)
Over at Republican National Headquarters, they’re having a sale on politicians, I hear. Entire Congressional committee minorities, cheap. Izzat so? Not really. Really?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, oil on canvas painting by Aaron Shikler, 1978 - Wikimedia image
Beginning in March 1974 I had the great pleasure and high honor of interning with the Secretary of the Senate, Francis R. Valeo. Valeo served because of his close relationship with the Majority Leader, Mike Mansfield, and working in Valeo’s office put one on the Mansfield team. In an era before serious security with magnetometers in Washington’s public buildings — we didn’t even have photo identification cards then — Mike Mansfield’s signature on my staff card got me anywhere I wanted to go in Washington, including the White House.
People who knew Mansfield held him in very high regard. I often tell people he was the best politician to work for, but in reality, he’s probably the best leader I ever worked with in any enterprise. He respected every senator as a representative of the people of one of the 50 states, and that respect was returned.
In his office one afternoon he met with the a couple of members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the big bigwigs from the Pentagon. Mansfield was a former sailor, marine and soldier — he had served in the Navy, Army and Marines. He lied about his age the first time. He had served in China and the Philippines, producing a life-long interest and deep expertise in U.S. affairs in the Pacific and Far East.
But this was 1974. Mansfield had turned against supporting corrupt Vietnamese politicians early in the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Originally a supporter of Nixon’s policies, by 1974 his opposition to the war was the chief part of their relationship. Still the military guys loved him. An Army Colonel accompanying the group was anxious to explain to the young intern part of the mystique.
“You should see Mansfield in the formal meetings. Everybody is always introduced, and their full rank is laid on the table. ‘General Muckamuck. West Point ’33, Columbia Law. Admiral Bigship. General Soandso, who recently got his third star.'”
“And then they get to Mansfield. He’s the Senate Majority Leader. And he introduces himself as ‘Mike Mansfield, Private First Class.'”
I asked Mansfield about it later. He smiled, and said he might have done that a time or two. He said that the big brass in the military need to remember as every senator does that they work for the American people. Rank doesn’t make you right, he said.
Looking up a minor fact on Mansfield this morning I ran into this statement, which I’d never heard [quoting now from Wikipedia]:
This gentleman went from snuffy to national and international prominence. And when he died in 2001, he was rightly buried in Arlington. If you want to visit his grave, don’t look for him near the “Kennedy Eternal Flame”, where so many politicians are laid to rest. Look for a small, common marker shared by the majority of our heroes. Look for the marker that says “Michael J. Mansfield, Pfc. U.S. Marine Corps.”
Remarks by Col. James Michael Lowe, USMC, October 20, 2004.
The burial plot of Senator and Mrs. Mansfield can be found in section 2, marker 49-69F of Arlington National Cemetery.
For the sake of accuracy, I would like to know the occasion of Col. Lowe’s remarks, and who Col. Lowe is. The link at Wikipedia is dead. Does anyone know?
Three of Jack Kerouac’s fantasy baseball team cards, circa 1953-56. New York Public Library, Berg Collection, Jack Kerouac Archive
Kerouac fans, and anyone who participates in a rotisserie league sport, and anyone who just wants a moment of merriment, should read this New York Times story:
Almost all his life Jack Kerouac had a hobby that even close friends and fellow Beats like Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs never knew about. He obsessively played a fantasy baseball game of his own invention, charting the exploits of made-up players like Wino Love, Warby Pepper, Heinie Twiett, Phegus Cody and Zagg Parker, who toiled on imaginary teams named either for cars (the Pittsburgh Plymouths and New York Chevvies, for example) or for colors (the Boston Grays and Cincinnati Blacks).
At least one more book Kerouac had inside, unwritten. Now we just see the outline of what could have been a superb, and funny, work of fiction, in a book by New York Public Library curator Isaac Gewirtz. The Kerouac items are in the Berg Collection at the Library.
CREDIT: Mauldin, Bill, artist. “Another such victory and I am undone” Copyright 1962, Field Enterprises, Inc. Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Waldseemueller's 1507 map that named the America's. Library of Congress image. Click on the map for access to a very high resolution image.
According to the Associated Press, Marin Waldseemueller is the cartographer who decided to name the New World continents after Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian navigator who had made a voyage to the Americas and then wrote a book about what he saw. The book sold well in Europe, but became a runaway when an unscrupulous printer spiced up Vespucci’s story with tales of sex.
Martin Waldseemueller, German cartographer who named the New World after Amerigo Vespucci on his 1507 map -- from a painting by Gaston Save, circa 1900
Waldseemueller’s map was published in 1507, on April 25.
Vespucci’s account described land and peoples that clearly were not from East Asia, to canny and alert readers. Waldseemueller was widely read, and on the basis of Vespucci’s account and other accounts from China, concluded the lands Columbus discovered were separate from Asia.
Waldseemueller accurately protrayed the width of South America to within 70 miles in some places, and appears to have been the first to predict the presence of a wide ocean between the Americas and Asia — the Pacific not being “discovered” by Europeans until 1513, six years after this map.
About 75,000 images, most very high quality, for classroom use. Images are sorted into categories that should align with all state standards and any textbook series — at the California State Universities, World Images Kiosk. There are a lot of images from ancient cultures, a lot of images from pre-Renaissance times, and a rich panorama of other images.
How do we know what we know department: Kris Hirst explains how we know shamanistic behavior in ancient art. This is an area much too neglected in public school curricula. When students understand how we know something, they are less likely to be suckered in by hoaxes or bad research claims.
George Washington, the "porthole portrait" by Rembrandt Peale
I have a tie from the Save the Children Foundation, a picture drawn by a young child that shows a teacher in a classroom, with portraits of Washington, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt on the classroom wall. Where have those portraits gone?
At Mount Vernon this past weekend, with more than 20 teachers at the seminar I attended, a significant majority of us remembered those portraits in our classrooms. Most of us don’t have such portraits today.
The Mount Vernon Ladies Association, the group that saved Mount Vernon and operates it today, has program to donate a large, canvas portrait of Washington to your school, the George Washington Portrait Program. Two thousand schools have already received the framed portraits, and the program to distribute them, free of charge, to schools, has been extended.
Portraits come with an educational kit — a U.S. flag, flown at General Washington’s home, lesson plans for elementary schools, and a CD-ROM with information for middle and high schools.
The Black Ships — Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s squadron in Japan, 1854 – CSSVirginia.org image from Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing Room Companion, Boston, May 15, 1852 (also, see BaxleyStamps.com); obviously the drawing was published prior to the expedition’s sailing.
Commodore Matthew C. Perry in 1852 photograph, Library of Congress via WikiMedia
Within 50 years Japan would come to dominate the seas of the the Western Pacific, and would become a major world power.
1854 japanese woodblock print of U.S. Navy Commodore Matthew C. Perry. Peabody Museum: “The characters located across the top read from right to left, ‘A North American Figure’ and ‘Portrait of Perry.’ According to the Peabody Essex Museum, ‘this print may be one of the first depictions of westerners in Japanese art, and exaggerates Perry’s western features (oblong face, down-turned eyes, bushy brown eyebrows, and large nose).'” But compare with photo above, right. Peabody Museum holding, image from Library of Congress via WikiMedia
Then, 20 years later, on March 8, 1874, Millard Fillmore died in Buffalo, New York.
The Perry expedition to Japan was the most famous, and perhaps the greatest recognized achievement of Fillmore’s presidency. Fillmore had started the U.S. on a course of imperialistic exploitation and exploration of the world, with other expeditions of much less success to Africa and South America, according to the story of his death in The New York Times:
The general policy of his Administration was wise and liberal, and he left the country at peace with all the world and enjoying a high degree of prosperity. His Administration was distinguished by the Lopez fillibustering expeditions to Cuba, which were discountenanced by the Government, and by several important expeditions to distant lands. The expedition to Japan under Commodore Perry resulted in a favorable treaty with that country, but that dispatched under Lieut. Lynch, in search of gold in the interior of Africa, failed of its object. Exploring expeditions were also sent to the Chinese seas, and to the Valley of the Amazon.
Here we are in 2013, 160 years after the end of Millard Fillmore’s presidency, 159 years after Commodore Perry’s success on the mission to Japan Fillmore sent him on, 139 years after Millard Fillmore’s death, and not yet have we come to grips with Fillmore’s real legacy in U.S. history. Most of that legacy, we don’t even acknowledge in public. Santayana’s Ghost paces nervously.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
