Category Archives: History

A visit to Iceland continued

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Gullfoss (Goldwater) falls, southern Iceland

It’s hard to pack for cold weather when it’s 90 degrees, as it was at home before we left. We did pretty well, but today was a challenge. Snow ringed some of the nearby hills as we left for the Gullfoss falls – not the largest in Iceland, but the largest that is easily accessible. The temperatures were below freezing as we climbed down the stairs from the overlook to the level where I took this picture. Rain, wind, and frozen spray from the falls drove us into the heated gift shop, where “California Girls” by the Beach Boys played on the radio.

We stopped down the road at Geysir, home of the geyser named Geysir that gave geysers their name. Is that clear? Geysir itself has grown quiet, erupting only infrequently, but there are many other geysers there, including Strokkur, which erupts at five minute intervals. In the cafe at Geysir, the Stones and the Doors were playing.

Strokkur quiescent

Strokkur erupting

According to Wikipedia, Iceland has about 23 days of rain in September, which fits our experience. Our one sunny day came during our trip to Thingvellir, which not only gave us a chance to admire spectacular autumn colors, but also to explore a spot that is key to Icelandic sagas and to the history of the nation.

Iceland was settled in 870. Sixty years later, the settlers, mostly vikings, formed a national assembly at Thingvellir, on land that was confiscated from a man who was outlawed for murder.

In the best known Icelandic saga, Njal (pronounced NEE-ahl, from Neal, an Irish name) says, “With law our land shall rise but without law, it will perish.” The assembly moved to Reykjavik in 1798, but a quarter of the population met at Thingvellir in 1944 to declare independence from Denmark.

As we left the cafe at Geysir, “Aquarius” came on the radio. “No way!” one of us said, but there it was…

Skalholt, Iceland

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The view out my window is Skalholt Cathedal and this reconstructed chapel which is part of an archeological dig at one of Iceland’s key historical sites.  On the horizon behind the chapel likes Hekla, one of Iceland’s most active volcanoes.  In the middle ages, Europeans called it the Gateway to Hell.  Hekla last erupted in February, 2000, but with luck, it will continue to sleep through the rest of the week.

Mary and I are here for a different type of archeology – a dig into an ancient tradition of story.  We are here with three other storytellers to explore Njal’s Saga, the account of a feud with tragic consequences, not unlike the American tale of the Hatfields and the McCoys.  In both cases, events are based in history; we’re visiting some of the key locations mentioned in the saga.  Njal was shaped by an anonymous author into the masterpiece of a unique tradition that influenced Tolkien, among others.

Meeting of the continents: the North American tectonic plate (left) meets the Euro-Asian plate at Thingvellir, Iceland.

This week of the equinox, the temperature drops to freezing at night, but the guesthouse where we are staying is warmed by geothermal energy, by water bubbling up from hot springs that is shipped through pipes to cities and settlements throughout the island. Iceland is 99% energy independent.

I’ll have more to reflect on in future posts, but meanwhile it is seven hours later than west coast time – tomorrow is almost here, so it’s time to log out.  Please enjoy your week and stay tuned for future posts.

This day in history: the battle of Antietam

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Near Dunker’s Church, Antietam. Photo by Alexander Gardner. Public domain.

One hundred and fifty years ago today, Union and Confederate forces clashed at Antietm Creek, near Sharpsburg, MD, in what remains the bloodiest day in American history.  By sunset, 23,000 men lay dead or wounded.  They fell in a cornfield, along a sunken road, and beside a stone bridge – places where George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac confronted Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia in the latter’s first incursion into Union territory.  Based on opposition to the war in the north, Lee assumed – perhaps correctly – that a southern victory in Union territory might push the Federal government to peace negotiations.

In one of those moments in history that seem providential in retrospect, on the morning of Sept 13, Corporal Barton W. Mitchell of the 27th Indiana Volunteers found a packet of three cigars wrapped in what proved to be a copy of Lee’s battle plan.  Understanding the importance of his find, Corporal Barton sent the papers up through the ranks.  Upon reading them, McClellan was gleeful and said, “Here is a paper with which, if I cannot whip Bobby Lee, I will be willing to go home.”  He moved his army to intercept Lee near Sharpsburg.

Lee’s army of 55,000 was outnumbered 2-1, but the ever-cautious McClellan committed only 3/4 of his forces, allowing Lee to match him by shifting his own troops across the field as the advantage swung back and forth.  There was no clear winner.  After skirmishes throughout the following day, Lee withdrew from Maryland.

Lincoln fired McClellan for failing to pursue Lee, yet driving the southern troops from northern soil was victory enough for the president to release the Emancipation Proclamation.  Lincoln had been waiting for a northern victory to free the slaves, so the move would not be interpreted as a sign of desperation.  He had a long wait, for the south was largely unbeaten early in the war.  Though abolitionists criticized Lincoln for delaying emancipation, Antietam marked the moment when the war became about something greater than simply preventing secession.

One other consequence of the battle was the publication of battlefield photographs by Alexander Gardner.  Within a month of Antietam, civilians saw the price the soldiers were paying.

Confederate dead in the sunken road. Photo by Alexander Gardner. Public domain.

It’s always moving and worthwhile to remember the sacrifices earlier generations made in the name of ideals that underpin our way of life.  Especially in our current election year, characterized in the media as full of divisiveness, when we remember Antietam, we can reflect how the nation has experienced and overcome divisions far deeper than any we see today.

If Gardner’s photos preserve the tragedy of the civil war, the following clip immortalizes resilience, strength, and hope.  Taken in 1938, on the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, it shows veterans of the north and south meeting again at the wall on Cemetery Ridge – in a very different spirit than their first encounter.

A brief history of Labor Day

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Labor Day Parade, New York, 1882. (Public Domain)

Labor Day was first proposed as a national holiday in 1882, by one of two members of early labor unions (historians are not sure which one).  Some say the idea came from Matthew Maguire, a New York machinist and secretary of the Central Labor Union.  Others credit Peter J. McGuire, of the American Federation of Labor, who had seen a Canadian labor festival in Toronto.

Oregon was first to make it a state holiday in 1887.  In the next few years, 29 more states did the same, but Labor Day did not become a national holiday until after the bloody Pullman strike of 1894.

The trouble began in May, 1894, when 4000 employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company protested a reduction in the wages, sixteen-hour workdays, and high rents in the company town of Pullman, IL.  Company owner, George Pullman refused to talk to the workers.  The workers struck, and in June, members of the American Railway Union, led by Eugene Debs, announced a boycott, refusing to switch Pullman cars onto trains.  Within a few days, 125,000 workers on 29 railroads had walked off the job rather than handle Pullman cars.

After a peaceful rally led by Debs in Blue Island, IL, some groups of workers set fire to buildings and derailed a locomotive.  Across the country, workers in sympathy with the strikers blocked the transportation of goods, and attacked strikebreakers.  President Grover Cleveland sent U.S. Marshalls and 12,000 army troops to break up the strike.  They fired on crowds, and before the disturbance was over, 13 workers were dead and 57 wounded.

Troops fire on Pullman strikers, 1894 – Public Domain image

Fearing further trouble, legislation to create a national Labor Day holiday was rushed through congress and signed into law by Cleveland just six days after the strike ended.

Because trains carried the mail, Eugene Debs was accused of conspiracy against the US Postal Service and tried for this and other criminal and civil charges.  After a brilliant defense by Clarence Darrow, he was acquitted of everything except violating an injunction, which carried a six month sentence.  While serving his time, Debs read the works of Karl Marx and became a socialist.  He ran for president on the socialist ticket in 1900.

Eugene Debs, 1912 (Public domain photograph)

During the strike, Illinois governor, John P. Altgeld had offered the President the use of the Illinois National Guard to maintain order.  He was incensed that Grover Cleveland ignored his  plan and put federal troops at the service of company management.  Altgeld used his influence at the 1896 Democratic convention to deny Cleveland a second nomination for president.

President Grover Cleveland (Public domain photograph)

A federal commission found the Pullman company’s town to be “unAmerican,” and in 1898, the Illinois Supreme Court forced it to divest.  The township was annexed by the city of Chicago.

When George Pullman died in 1897 he was buried at night in steel-reinforced crypt, surrounded by tons of concrete, in fear that veterans of the strike might try to desecrate his grave.

***

A friend who is active in a hospital union  insists we have to remember that people died to win us an eight hour day, vacations, health care, pensions, and other benefits workers could only dream of 100 years ago.  Employers didn’t give us these things from the goodness of their hearts.

It’s safe to say that western nations would not have a middle class without the efforts of organized labor.  And it’s no coincidence that both institutions are now on the ropes.

Something to think about this Labor Day.  Those who forget the past…

Man on the moon

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Neil Armstrong on the Moon. (NASA photo, public domain)

There are moments we always remember.  Sadly, most of them are bad, like Pearl Harbor for my parents’ generation and September 11 for us.  Sometimes, however, the news is good, even fantastic.  Those of us who remember July 20, 1969 will never forget the thrill, the surge of optimism when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon.

I was driving home from the bay area yesterday afternoon when the radio said he had died at the age of 82.  In an instant, memory carried me back  back to a restaurant in Yosemite 43 years ago.  I was  up there for the summer, working to earn money to buy my first car.  It was slow at 4:30 that afternoon – the dinner crowd wouldn’t arrive for another hour.  The whole crew gathered in the kitchen where someone had placed a portable black and white TV with rabbit ears.

Later that evening, a friend and I lay on the ground near the river, gazing up at the summer moon, which was full that night, trying to wrap our imaginations around it.  The night was warm.  We lay there, not saying very much, until it was late.

Neil Armstrong. Photo by NASA, Public Domain

Several people who knew Neil Armstrong spoke on the radio.  A friend of his noted of the irony of a man who stood in the world spotlight but was one of the shyest and most retiring people she ever knew.  Everyone mentioned his patriotism and courage, as a combat pilot, a test pilot, and finally as a man who went where no one had gone before.

There are times in adolescence when we think we can do anything, like get a job in the mountains and earn enough money to buy a car.  There are times when nations believe they can do anything, like put a man on the moon.  The webs of cause and effect are far too complex to sort out, but both individual and collective achievements begin with strong intentions.  Even when we set out to find X and discover Z instead, some determination got us moving.

Neil Armstong seems to have been a decent and courageous man.  Now he is even more than that.  His smile from space will always remind us of how barriers can fall and new frontiers can be gained when we are motivated by deep and unswerving intention.

The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism by Andrew Bacevich – A book review

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Anyone paying attention knows that our nation has lost its way, but that’s where clarity ends.  How and when did we go wrong?  Sometimes I wish I could read the histories that will be written a hundred years from now, after time has lent perspective to the chaos of current events.  Thanks to Andrew Bacevich, we don’t have to wait for at least one piercing analysis.

Bacevich, a Viet Nam veteran, retired as a colonel after 23 years in the army.  He holds a PhD in American Diplomatic History from Princeton and taught at West Point and Johns Hopkins before joining the faculty at Boston University in 1998.  In March, 2007, he described the US doctrine of “preventative warfare” as “immoral, illicit, and imprudent.”  Two months later, his son died in Iraq.

Andrew Bacevich

In The Limits of Power, published in 2008, Bacevich steps back to examine our history from WWII to the present, to look at the root cause of the folly that has made constant warfare, with its huge cost in lives and resources, our norm.  Foreign policy and domestic policy are wedded together, he says.  Despite political rhetoric, our seeming state of perpetual warfare is not simply the result of international villains like Slobodan Milošević, Saddam Hussein, or even Osama Bin Laden.  To blame them, he says, is like “blaming Herbert Hoover for the Great Depression or…attributing McCarthyism entirely to the antics of Senator Joseph McCarthy.”  Foreign policy has become “an expression of domestic dysfunction.”  Bacevich pulls no punches, and pinpoints the nature of this dysfunction in the title of his first chapter, “The Crisis of Profligacy.”

“For the majority of contemporary Americans, the essence of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness centers on a relentless personal quest to acquire, to consume, to indulge, and to shed whatever constraints might interfere with those endeavors.”

Bacevich says the critical, though seldom acknowledged, turning point was bookmarked by two presidential speeches.  The first was President Jimmy Carter’s so-called “malaise” speech, though he never used the word.

The seventies was a decade of severe economic shocks that saw the first oil crisis, a stock market meltdown, and our transition from a producer to a consumer economy.  On July 15, 1979, Carter said the real crisis was not what OPEC was doing to oil prices, but our way of life, which makes us depend on foreign oil.

“In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities and our faith in God…too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption.  Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns.  But we’ve…learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.”

To continue down that road, Carter said, was “a certain route to failure.”  He urged a renewal of national purpose, characterized by national restraint and an effort to find and develop alternative energy sources.  The main effect of his speech was to provide ammunition to his political opponents.  Republican presidential candidate, Ronald Reagan, in his “morning in America” speech told us there were no restraints.  The energy crisis was the government’s fault.  The solution was to reduce federal spending and cut taxes.

In an effort to salvage his re-election prospects, Carter adopted a pugnacious tone, articulating the “Carter Doctrine” in January, 1980.  He said the nation would “use any means necessary, including military force,” to prevent any other power from dominating the Persian Gulf.”  Sadly, this endorsement of American imperialism rather than his earlier call to fiscal and moral balance is what guides our politicians to this day.  It isn’t hard to see why.  In the 1980 presidential election, Carter won just four states, while Reagan carried 48.  No one in Washinton missed the message:  the way to get elected is to pander to our illusions, to suggest that our credit is infinite and the bills will never come due.

In 1983, President Reagan proposed his “Star Wars” missile defense shield, implying that our national security and way of life were wedded to military superiority.  “Defense is not a budget item,” he said.  George Bush didn’t think so, nor do this year’s presidential candidates.  The President criticizes the Ryan budget for draconian cuts to key domestic services, but says nothing about its huge uptick in military spending – perhaps because for Democrats too, “defense is not a budget item.”

Bacevich articulates solutions akin to Carter’s – an end to the fool’s errand of trying to reshape the world in our image and an effort to set our own house in order.  He cautions that expecting those in power to adopt such a course of action is like expecting the CEO of a major car company to lobby for public transportation – there’s too much power and money vested in the status quo. Among other suggestions, he says:

“No doubt undertaking a serious…national effort to begin the transition to a post-fossil fuel economy promises to be a costly proposition.  Yet…spending trillions to forcibly democratize the Islamic world will achieve little, while investing trillions in energy research might actually produce something useful.” 

Technical innovation has been an American strongpoint, from the Mahattan Project to the space race, to the digital revolution.  In contrast, our efforts to reshape other cultures has been rather dismal.

If a change of course is possible, Bacevich does not think it likely.  Throughout his book, he quotes Reinhold Niebuhr, a pastor, theologian, and author who wrote between 1930 and 1960.  He gives us this quote by Niebuhr:

“One of the most pathetic aspects of human history is that every civilization expresses itself most pretentiously, compounds its partial and universal values most convincingly, and claims immortality for its finite existence at the very moment when the decay which leads to death has already begun.”

The Limits of Power is a disturbing book to read, but one I can recommend to everyone who prefers hard truth to subterfuge and lies.  For a more recent look at Andrew Bacevich and his ideas, I recommend this interview, conducted in March, on “Moyers and Friends:” http://billmoyers.com/episode/moving-beyond-war/

As they say in 12 step programs, admitting there is a problem is the first step toward a solution.

A new history of Rome

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It doesn’t take too much imagination to see analogies between our current situation and ancient Rome.  In a recent NPR interview, Anthony Everitt, who has written biographies of Cicero, Augustus, and Hadrian, explains his fascination with that time period:  “I love stories and I love characters.  And the thing about the ancient world, it is crammed, it is packed with [the] most interesting and eccentric and brave and villainous characters of all kinds.”

Everitt was on NPR to discuss his new history of Rome, The Rise of Rome: The Making of the World’s Greatest Empire.  http://www.npr.org/2012/08/05/157668413/a-story-of-ancient-power-in-the-rise-of-rome

In the interview, Everitt brings a 21st century sensibility to bear a past that has shaped us even more than we may know.  Our founding fathers, for instance, poured over the constitution of the The Roman Republic.  And here is what Everitt says about why the Republic failed, to be replaced with a military autocracy:

“The people who governed the world suddenly lost the ability to govern themselves. There was bloodshed. … This collapse of the constitution and an unwillingness of political opponents to talk with each other, to do deals, to come up with agreements, however messy and provisional, that loss was a catastrophe for Rome. And the Republic, in fact, went up in flames.”

‘Nuff said about the relevance of this book, I think…

Humans May Not Be the Original Artists

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Don’t worry, I’m not suggesting a space alien theory – quite the opposite.  As reported on NPR, a new method of dating the paintings in Altamira and some of the other caves painted by prehistoric artists suggests that some of them may have been created before Homo Sapiens arrived in Europe.  This would mean that Neanderthals, who roamed Europe for at least 200,000 years, were the original artists.

Pedro Saura AAAS/Science

Alistair Pike of the University of Bristol says that some Spanish cave paintings are at least 40,800 years old.  Humans had just arrived from Africa.  Archaeologist, Joao Zilhao of the University of Barcelona, is convinced that some of these works were done by Neanderthals.  We know they engaged in symbolic behavior.  They made ritual burials, they decorated beads and other implements, and left caches of ground up colored minerals that may have been used for pigments.

Though not everyone agrees, these findings and theories appear in the journal, Science.  Pike says he and his Spanish colleagues just need to find paintings “a few thousand years older” to prove their point.  They’re planning a return to the region to continue their search.

Take a look at this and several related articles on the NPR website.  It helps put things in perspective for me to realize that we are not the only intelligent species that now walks, or has every walked the earth.

http://www.npr.org/2012/06/15/155009945/famous-cave-paintings-might-not-be-from-humans