History Archives - Page 16 of 32

John F. Kennedy Inauguration and Robert Frost

inauguration jfk

On January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as president of the United States. For many, the transition from President Eisenhower to this much younger man was the beginning of a new era. This short video captures much of the festivities of the inauguration.

President Kennedy gave one of the more famous inauguration speeches. And, for a more detailed look at the day, check out this longer video that includes Kennedy’s speech.

Robert Frost’s Inaugural Poem(s)

The above video makes a passing reference to poet Robert Frost’s appearance. At the inauguration, the 87-year-old poet attempted to read the poem “Dedication” that he wrote for the occasion.

Frost, however, had difficulty in the bright sun. Outgoing vice-president Richard Nixon attempted to help by using his hat to block the sun.

This short video below captures Frost’s famous struggle to read in the sunlight’s glare.

But Frost realized he could not get through the poem. So, he instead recited another one of his poems from memory.

He chose a much shorter poem about the United States, “The Gift Outright.” I could not find his full recitation at the inauguration in a video, but here is him reciting the poem on another occasion.

“Dedication,” the poem that Frost had planned to read, ended with the lines: “A golden age of poetry and power / Of which this noonday’s the beginning hour.” Little did anyone know that day how short would be that golden age.

What is your favorite inauguration moment? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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Stephen King’s 11/22/63 (Short Review)

Dylan Releases “Murder Most Foul”

RFK (and Aeschylus) on MLK Assassination

Harry Shearer’s New Series on Richard Nixon

(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)

Salt and Nails

A recent article in the New Yorker recounted how during World War I, U.S. Army doctors doing medical inspections discovered a high incidence of goitre. Because of a lump on their necks from a swelling of a thyroid gland, a number of men could not button the top button of their uniforms. Eventually, doctors also noticed that the recruits were more likely to have the problem if they lived far from the ocean. (Malcolm Gladwell, “Man and Superman,” New Yorker 16 (9 Sept. 2013).)

Eventually, they determined that an iodine deficiency caused the goitre, as well as deficiencies in intelligence. Those who lived nearer the ocean were getting more iodine in their diet while those elsewhere were not getting enough of it because oceans maintain iodine levels better than soil. Because iodine is not present in a lot of food, the government convinced the Morton Salt Company to start adding iodine to its salt in 1924. And IQ’s rose and incidences of goitre dropped. Iodine supplements have similarly increased IQ’s around the world.

One of the best songs with “salt” in its title is “Rock Salt and Nails,” written by Utah Phillips. Although YouTube does not have a video of Phillips singing his song, in this video, Tony Norris plays part of the song and tells how Phillips came to write it.

A number of artists have covered the song, including Joan Baez, Flatt & Scruggs, and Waylon Jennings. The song is not really about iodized salt, and the reference to salt in the title does not appear in the song until the final shocking line. In the song, the singer reveals his sorrow because a lover has betrayed him. The song reflects both his anger and his sadness. Regarding the latter, he cannot help thinking back on happier times: “Now I lie on my bed and I see your sweet face / The past I remember time cannot erase.” But at the end of the song, he exclaims that if ladies were squirrels, he would “fill up his shotgun with rock salt and nails.”

Steve Young recorded what many consider a landmark outlaw country album in 1969 that used Phillips’s song for the title track. The album featured guest musicians like Gram Parsons.

My favorite version, though, is the one by Buddy and Julie Miller from their 2001 album Buddy & Julie Miller. I am a fan of anything by Buddy and Julie, and here Buddy’s powerful voice captures the anger and sadness in the song perfectly.

So today’s lesson is eat a little salt for your thyroid and to get smarter. But try to get through your day without loading some salt and nails in your shotgun.

What is your favorite version of “Rock Salt and Nails”? Leave your two cents in the comments.

When is Mickey Newbury’s “33rd of August”?

The Mavericks Cover Waylon’s “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?”

Dwight, Lucinda, and Steve: “Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (and Loud, Loud Music)”

The Flying Burrito Brothers Song That Includes a Tribute to Bobby Kennedy

The Life and Songs of Emmylou Harris

Buddy Miller’s Touchstone: “That’s How I Got to Memphis”

(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)

Buy from Amazon

A Christmas Movie: “The Crossing” (Missed Movies)

If you are looking for an unusual holiday movie, you should check out The Crossing (2000). The film is an excellent A&E made-for-TV movie starring Jeff Daniels as George Washington. The Crossing portrays the story behind Washington’s famous crossing of the Delaware River on the night after Christmas in 1776 to fight the Battle of Trenton.

While one may only pack so much information in an 89-minute movie, few holiday movies will put you on the edge of your seat like The Crossing. Director Robert Harmon does an excellent job of condensing the story to convey the drama, risk, and importance of George Washington’s decision to cross the Delaware.

Most people are familiar with the crossing because of the famous painting Washington Crossing the Delaware by artist Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze. But in watching The Crossing I was surprised by how much I did not know — or had forgotten.

Perhaps because of the painting, many think of the crossing as being near the end of the American Revolutionary War. But it occurred closer to the beginning of the war. The crossing took place less than six months after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, when the war would continue until 1783. Also, the battle was not against the main British forces but against hired German Hessian forces.

None of that, though, lessens the significance of the battle and George Washington’s decisions. The Crossing does an excellent job of portraying the risks involved and the importance of the battle.

The film is based on the novel of the same name by Howard Fast, and it takes some liberties for dramatic effect. But the film sets the big picture accurately. The Colonists had suffered repeated defeats at the hands of the British. And the British were expecting a quick end to the war. But Washington decided to take his weary men in a risky move. The result of his decision would gain supplies for the winter and provide a much-needed victory to inspire the Colonists and future enlistments.

While the personality of Washington remains somewhat elusive, Jeff Daniels does an excellent job portraying one of the most important people in American history. He conveys the difficult decisions encountered by the steady leader.

Even though you know how the story ends, the film will still draw you into the tense tale, seeing the men battle against the odds. The Crossing does a good job of portraying the challenges, including the cold weather and Washington’s realization that it is impossible to encounter the Hessians before daybreak.

Conclusion? While The Crossing has little Christmas cheer, it is a great way to remember an important event in American history that occurred on the night of December 25 into the morning of December 26. Watching The Crossing, one cannot help but think how American history may have gone differently — or never existed at all. What if George Washington made a different decision or if the outcome was different on that Christmas night more than two hundred years ago?

At least for now, you may watch the entire film on YouTube:

Other Reviews Because Why Should You Trust Me? Rotten Tomatoes provides no critics rating for the TV movie, but it gives a disappointing audience score of 53%. I suspect some may have had high expectations for the film and were disappointed because they expected a movie theater film on the life of George Washington. But others appreciate the film for what it is: a short dramatization of the important events over a short time period. By contrast, GJ’s Closet called The Crossing “the greatest American Revolutionary War film ever made and an ideal history lesson.” The film won a Peabody Award in 2000.

Painting photo via public domain.

What is your favorite movie set during Christmas that is not about Christmas? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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“Hello Christmas” from Dion and Amy Grant

(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)

Thoughts on the Passing of Nelson Mandela (Guest Post)

The following is a Guest Post by James Silk, who is a Clinical Professor of Law at the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School. After Jim shared his thoughts privately, he gave us permission to share these reflections with our readers.

I hesitate to share my thoughts about the death of Nelson Mandela. It feels pretentious to express my personal reaction when I have no claim to any insight or wisdom or connection to Mandela. To reflect without resorting to cliché seems almost impossible. I started to write tonight only to try to understand myself why the news of Mandela’s death affected me so strongly and felt so personal. But I decided to share my graspings, first, with my family and friends and then with others I know are struggling with their own complicated feelings.

I was driving when I heard that Mandela had died. As I pulled over, tears overflowed my eyes, taking me by surprise. My immediate thought was, “What right do I have to cry over this great man’s death?” As tears continued to brim, I continued to question, “Who am I to mourn the far-off passing of a hero who belongs to his country and people?” But the sadness returns every time I hear his name or see his image or think about the loss. I wanted to understand, but I have found only feeble guesses, more questions than answers.

First, most personal and removed from any more universal response, I imagined my father, with his gentle smile and voice not unlike Mandela’s, born a year before Mandela, in harsh circumstances that might have embittered him but, instead, made him an unfailingly loving and generous father. Maybe it felt, in the language so many used to talk about Mandela, like losing a father, but a father to us all. Or was it just that losing a hero so linked to the promise of life came as an especially hard-to-ignore reminder of the fate we all share but that, for some of us, is no longer far enough away to scorn?

I thought back to myself fumbling through my twenties unsure of where I might find a path into life as a responsible adult until, in graduate school in the late 1970s, I happened into a small role in a modest effort with people of inspiring dedication and integrity trying to help end apartheid by pressing the University of Chicago to divest from companies doing business in South Africa. It was the clear wrong of apartheid, cynically consecrated as law, that pushed me eventually and diffidently to seek a place trying to contribute in some way to the cause, then beginning to blossom, of establishing and protecting human rights.

And Mandela’s death felt instantly like the end of something, but what exactly was it that felt like such a terrible loss? It’s all the things that people have said, many, like Muhammad Ali, eloquently, about what Mandela accomplished and meant. Still, that didn’t seem to explain the desolation, here and tangible and personal, that I felt. That, I thought, must be the worry, even the fear, that we are deprived of Mandela’s profound optimism, his embodiment of the possible counterpoise between justice and love, his transcendence of bitter difference, hatred, and long years of life stolen in the service of greed and power. It’s not only that we’ve lost this one remarkable person who gave us these gifts; it is as if, without him, there is no one in the world who embraces, represents, insists on these values. Without his example, in a darkening time, where will we look to find the inspiration to optimism that the world so badly needs? The hope, as my son, Jonah, said, is that Mandela’s death will remind the world what he stood for. Optimism for most of us, I believe, requires work. That work may be even a little harder now.

The closest I came to understanding why I have found myself experiencing grief (and not just the more comprehensible sadness of a hero lost) is something a little different or maybe just a summary of it all. In a world that has been looking uglier -– politics and its rhetoric, ugly like never before, our earth and home, turning violent and ugly, the ethic of terror, spreading its ugly contagion, ugly greed and disdain for people in need, pushing us further and further apart -– we have lost a great leader who was, in every facet of his life and despite the cruel injustices he suffered, beautiful. When you think of Nelson Mandela, you see a beautiful man and life. We are diminished because a world short on beauty is today less beautiful. Where we need it most, from the Middle East to South Africa itself without Mandela to the prisons of China and the United States to the city streets, who will stand, defying the ugly, beautiful in the face of hate, darkness, greed, and fear?

For now, with no intent against the peace of Mandela’s final rest, I keep hearing the words of Dylan Thomas:

“Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Maybe Mandela’s gift to us is one more act of reconciliation: to insist that we “rage against the dying of the light” and still have permission to finally “go gentle into that good night.”

Photo via Library of the London School of Economics and Political Science (public domain).

Nelson Mandela, Sun City, and Changing Times

(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)

First Transplant of a “Fearless Heart”

On December 3, 1967, doctors at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa performed the first successful human heart transplant. Fifty-three-year-old Lewis Washkansky, who was dying from chronic heart disease, received his new heart when cardiac surgeon Christiaan N. Barnard led the nine-hour operation.

Washkansky’s new heart came from a 25-year-old woman named Denise Darvall. Darvall had worked as a bank clerk and enjoyed designing clothes.

Darvall had lost her life when she and her family were out for a family drive. At the time, Darvall and her mother were walking back to their car from a bakery when a car struck them. Darvall’s father, George Darvall, who from the family’s car had witnessed both his daughter and wife being killed, approved the heart donation when he thought of how generous and kind his daughter had been.

Although the transplant was successful, Washkansky died eighteen days later from double pneumonia. Unfortunately, drugs designed to keep his body from rejecting the new heart made him more susceptible to illness. During the eighteen days, though, his new heart worked well, giving hope to future heart transplant patients.

Singer Steve Earle has explained that to live life well you only need two things: “an inquisitive mind” and “a fearless heart.” On the third of December in 1967, the inquisitive minds of doctors, researchers, and scientists created a landmark achievement with the help of the fearless hearts of Lewis Washkansky, Denise Darvall, and George Darvall.

So, here is one of my all-time favorite Steve Earle songs, “Fearless Heart,” dedicated to the women and men who made this accomplishment possible and saved many lives.

The song “Fearless Heart” first appeared on Steve Earle’s excellent 1986 debut album, Guitar Town.