Wanderlist

The British-published Rough Guides lists these 30 places/events as things not to miss in USA.

How many have you checked off?

Follow above link for photos.

  1. Monument Valley, AZ • Massive sandstone monoliths stand sentinel in this iconic southwestern landscape.
  2. Redwood National Park, CA • Soak up the quiet majesty of the world’s biggest trees, wide enough to drive through and soaring upwards like skyscrapers.
  3. Skiing in the Rocky Mountains • The Rockies make for some of the best skiing anywhere, with their glitzy resorts and atmospheric mining towns.
  4. Pike Place Market, Seattle, WA • Piled high with salmon, lobster, clams and crabs, the oldest public market in the nation is also home to some great seafood restaurants.
  5. Savannah, GA • Mint juleps on wide verandas, horse-drawn carriages on cobbled streets and lush foliage draped with Spanish moss; this historic cotton port remains the South’s loveliest town.
  6. Ancestral Puebloan sites • Scattered through desert landscapes like New Mexico’s magnificent Bandelier National Monument, the dwellings of the Ancestral Puebloans afford glimpses of an ancient and mysterious world.
  7. Yellowstone National Park, WY • The national park that started it all has it all, from steaming fluorescent hot springs and spouting geysers to sheer canyons and meadows filled with wildflowers and assorted beasts.
  8. Going to a Baseball Game • America’s summer pastime is a treat to watch wherever you are, from Chicago’s ivy-clad Wrigley Field to Boston’s Fenway Park, the oldest in the country.
  9. Graceland, Memphis, TN • Pilgrims from all over the world pay homage to the King by visiting his gravesite and endearingly modest home.
  10. Sweet Auburn, Atlanta, GA • This historic district holds the birthplace of Dr Martin Luther King Jr and other spots honouring his legacy.
  11. Niagara Falls, NY • The sheer power of Niagara Falls is overwhelming, whichever angle you view the mighty cataracts from.
  12. Driving Highway 1, CA • The rugged Big Sur coastline, pounded by Pacific waves, makes an exhilarating route between San Francisco and LA.
  13. Crater Lake, OR • Formed from the blown-out shell of volcanic Mount Mazama, this is one of the deepest and bluest lakes in the world, and offers some of the most evocative scenery anywhere.
  14. Crazy Horse Memorial, SD • A staggering monument to the revered Sioux leader, this colossal statue continues to be etched into the Black Hills of South Dakota.
  15. Las Vegas, NV • From the Strip’s erupting volcanoes, Eiffel Tower and Egyptian pyramid to its many casinos, Las Vegas will blow your mind as well as your wallet.
  16. Hiking in the Grand Canyon, AZ • Explore the innermost secrets of this wondrous spot on many of its superb hiking trails at the heart of one of America’s best-loved parks.
  17. Walt Disney World, Orlando, FL • Though each of Orlando’s theme parks strives to outdo the rest, Walt Disney World remains the one to beat.
  18. Glacier National Park, MT • Montana’s loveliest park holds not only fifty glaciers, but also two thousand lakes, a thousand miles of rivers and the exhilarating Going-to-the-Sun road.
  19. San Francisco, CA • Enchanting, fog-bound San Francisco remains bohemian and individualistic at heart.
  20. Hawaii’s volcanoes • Hawaii’s Big Island grows bigger by the minute, as the world’s most active volcano pours molten lava into the ocean.
  21. The National Mall, Washington DC • From the Lincoln Memorial to the US Capitol by way of the towering Washington Monument – this grand parkway is an awesome showcase of American culture and history.
  22. Mardi Gras, New Orleans, LA • Crazy, colourful, debauched and historic – this is the carnival to end them all.
  23. New York City, NY • With world-class museums, restaurants, nightlife and shops aplenty, the Big Apple is in a league of its own.
  24. Yosemite Valley, CA • Enclosed by near-vertical, mile-high cliffs and laced with hiking trails and climbing routes, the dramatic geology of Yosemite Valley is among the country’s finest scenery.
  25. Miami’s Art Deco, FL • This flamboyant city is deservedly famed for the colourful pastel architecture of its restored South Beach district.
  26. Driving US-1 to Key West, FL • Travel one of America’s most tantalizing highways from sleepy Key Largo to heaving Key West, cruising over the sharks and rays on giant causeways and bridges.
  27. BBQ • Perhaps no other cuisine is as essentially American as BBQ – smoked ribs, pulled pork and brisket – with the Carolinas, Texas and Kansas fighting it out as the nation’s top pit masters.
  28. Venice Beach, LA, CA • Combines wacky LA culture with Muscle Beach, surfing, sand and good food, all a short drive from the glitz of Beverly Hills and Hollywood.
  29. South by Southwest, TX • This thriving ten-day festival in Austin is one of the nation’s best music festivals and plays host to bands from around the world – and Texas, too.
  30. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, OH • Housed inside this striking glass pyramid is an unparalleled collection of rock music’s finest mementoes, recordings, films and exhibitions.

September 27th

Wilford Brimley is 81 today. He was 53-54 when he played the old guy in Cocoon.

Gwyneth Paltrow is 43.

William Conrad, one of the great voices of radio, was born on this date in 1920. (He died in 1994.)

Conrad estimated that he appeared in over 7,500 roles on radio. He was regularly heard inviting listeners to “get away from it all” on CBS’ Escape. Conrad’s other radio credits include appearances on The Damon Runyon Theater, The Lux Radio Theater, Nightbeat, Fibber McGee and Molly and Suspense. For “The Wax Works,” a 1956 episode of Suspense, Conrad demonstrated his versatility by performing all the roles.

Conrad’s longest-running role was that of U.S. marshal Matt Dillon on the groundbreaking radio western Gunsmoke, which aired on CBS radio from 1952 to 1961.

When the golden age of radio was over, Conrad could be heard delivering the urgent narration for Jay Ward’s classic Bullwinkle Show. He later starred on the television series Cannon and Jake and the Fatman.

Radio Hall of Fame

Or, Alternatively, Colonel Mustard in the Conservatory with the Candlestick

The much disputed Warren Commission Report was issued on this date in 1964. According to the report, the bullets that killed President Kennedy and injured Texas Governor John Connally were fired by Lee Harvey Oswald in three shots from a rifle pointed out of a sixth floor window in the Texas School Book Depository.

The Warren Commission was chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren, former Governor of California. It included Senators Richard B. Russell and John Sherman Cooper, House Members Hale Boggs and Gerald R. Ford, and two private citizens with extensive government service, Allen Dulles and John J. McCloy.


“I heard a new CIA joke. Okay: how can we be sure the CIA wasn’t involved in the Kennedy assassination?”
“I don’t know,” said Stone. “How can we be sure?”
“He’s dead, isn’t he?”

Neil Gaiman, American Gods

Devils Tower National Monument (Wyoming)

President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed Devils Tower a national monument 109 years ago today. It was the first landmark set aside under the Antiquities Act.

DevilsTower

The nearly vertical monolith known as Devils Tower rises 1,267 feet above the meandering Belle Fourche River. Once hidden below the earth’s surface, erosion has stripped away the softer rock layers revealing Devils Tower.

Known by several northern plains tribes as Bears Lodge, it is a sacred site of worship for many American Indians. The rolling hills of this 1,347 acre park are covered with pine forests, deciduous woodlands, and prairie grasslands. Deer, prairie dogs, and other wildlife are abundant.


According to research conducted by the National Park Service, several historic documents recount the names “Bear Lodge,” “Bears Lodge,” and “Mato Teepee” were the names assigned to the Tower on most maps, with few exceptions, between 1874 and 1901. In 1875 Lieutenant Colonel Richard Dodge escorted the scientific expedition of geologist Walter P. Jenney though the Black Hills to determine the truth of rumors of gold initiated by General George Armstrong Custer the previous year. Dodge wrote in his 1875 journal, “The Indians call this shaft ‘The Bad God’s Tower,’ a name adopted, with proper modifications, by our surveyors.” It is speculated that a guide for Lt. Dodge was the source of this translation, and “Bear Lodge” may have been mistakenly interpreted as “Bad God’s.” As a result, “Bad God’s Tower” then became “Devils Tower.” The name “Devils Tower” was applied to maps of that era, and subsequently was used in the name of the national monument when it was proclaimed in 1906.

Source: National Park Service

NewMexiKen, who has circumnavigated Devils Tower, thinks it should be renamed Bears Lodge.

Roosevelt added several more monuments after Devils Tower, including El Morro, Montezuma Castle, Petrified Forest, and Chaco Canyon within the first year of the Act.

Sec. 2. That the President of the United States is hereby authorized, in his discretion, to declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest that are situated upon the lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States to be national monuments, and may reserve as a part thereof parcels of land, the limits of which in all cases shall be confined to the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected: Provided, That when such objects are situated upon a tract covered by a bona fied unperfected claim or held in private ownership, the tract, or so much thereof as may be necessary for the proper care and management of the object, may be relinquished to the Government, and the Secretary of the Interior is hereby authorized to accept the relinquishment of such tracts in behalf of the Government of the United States.

Banned

Banned Books Week is next week (September 27 – October 3, 2015). Here courtesy of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom are the most frequently banned or challenged Young Adult Fiction:

  1. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
  2. Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi
  3. The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
  4. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
  5. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
  6. Drama, by Raina Telgemeier
  7. Chinese Handcuffs, by Chris Crutcher
  8. The Giver, by Lois Lowry
  9. The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros
  10. Looking for Alaska, by John Green

Today’s Painting

Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States

Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States by Howard Chandler Christy (1940). The original is in the House of Representatives Wing of the U.S. Capitol. 39 of the 55 delegates are pictured — but not the three who did not sign or the 13 who had left the convention. Washington is standing; Franklin seated, turned to face us; Hamilton is directly behind Franklin; Madison is seated to Franklin’s left. The person credited with writing the preamble, Gouverneur Morris, is standing behind and just a little to the left of Hamilton, facing us.

Click image for a much larger version.

Today Ought to Be a National Holiday

Hiram Williams was born 92 years ago today (1923). We know him as Hank. Arguably he is one of the two or three most important individuals in American music history. Hank Williams is an inductee of both the Country Music (the first
inductee) and Rock and Roll (its second year) halls of fame.

Hank Williams

Entering local talent talent contests soon after moving to Montgomery in 1937, Hank had served a ten-year apprenticeship by the time he scored his first hit, “Move It on Over,” in 1947. He was twenty-three then, and twenty-five when the success of “Lovesick Blues” (a minstrel era song he did not write) earned him an invitation to join the preeminent radio barndance, Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry. His star rose rapidly. He wrote songs compulsively, and his producer/music publisher, Fred Rose, helped him isolate and refine those that held promise. The result was an unbroken string of hits that included “Honky Tonkin’,” “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” “Mansion on the Hill,” “Cold, Cold Heart,” “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still in Love with You),” “Honky Tonk Blues,” “Jambalaya,” “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” and “You Win Again.” He was a recording artist for six years, and, during that time, recorded just 66 songs under his own name (together with a few more as part of a husband-and-wife act, Hank & Audrey, and a more still under his moralistic alter ego, Luke the Drifter). Of the 66 songs recorded under his own name, an astonishing 37 were hits. More than once, he cut three songs that became standards in one afternoon.

American Masters

The words and music of Hank Williams echo across the decades with a timelessness that transcends genre. He brought country music into the modern era, and his influence spilled over into the folk and rock arenas as well. Artists ranging from Gram Parsons and John Fogerty (who recorded an entire album of Williams’ songs after leaving Creedence Clearwater Revival) to the Georgia Satellites and Uncle Tupelo have adapted elements of Williams’ persona, especially the aura of emotional forthrightness and bruised idealism communicated in his songs. Some of Williams’ more upbeat country and blues-flavored numbers, on the other hand, anticipated the playful abandon of rockabilly.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Hank Williams’s legend has long overtaken the rather frail and painfully introverted man who spawned it. Almost singlehandedly, Williams set the agenda for contemporary country songcraft, but his appeal rests as much in the myth that even now surrounds his short life. His is the standard by which success is measured in country music on every level, even self-destruction.

Country Music Hall of Fame

Again from American Masters:

It all fell apart remarkably quickly. Hank Williams grew disillusioned with success, and the unending travel compounded his back problem. A spinal operation in December 1951 only worsened the condition. Career pressures and almost ceaseless pain led to recurrent bouts of alcoholism. He missed an increasing number of showdates, frustrating those who attempted to manage or help him. His wife, Audrey, ordered him out of their house in January 1952, and he was dismissed from the Grand Ole Opry in August that year for failing to appear on Opry-sponsored showdates. Returning to Shreveport, Louisiana, where he’d been an up-and-coming star in 1948, he took a second wife, Billie Jean Jones, and hired a bogus doctor who compounded his already serious physical problems with potentially lethal drugs.

Hank Williams died in the back seat of his Cadillac. He was found and declared dead on New Year’s Day 1953. He was 29.

America’s Bloodiest Day

“Of all the days on all the fields where American soldiers have fought, the most terrible by almost any measure was September 17, 1862. The battle waged on that date, close by Antietam Creek at Sharpsburg in western Maryland, took a human toll never exceeded on any other single day in the nation’s history. So intense and sustained was the violence, a man recalled, that for a moment in his mind’s eye the very landscape around him turned red.”

Stephen W. Sears
Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam

The New York Times coverage from 1862 is online.

Antietam gave Lincoln the military victory he needed to issue his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22nd. It stated that slaves in states or parts of states still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, would be declared free. The objective of the war had changed.

America’s bloodiest day:

Killed: Union 2,000 Confederate 1,550 Total Killed: 3,650
Wounded: Union 9,550 Confederate 7,750 Total Wounded: 17,300
Missing/Captured: Union 750 Confederate 1,020 Total Missing: 1,770
Total: Union 12,400 Confederate 10,320 Total Casualties: 22,720

As a rule of thumb, about 20% of the wounded died of their wounds and 30% of the missing had been killed (in the days before dog-tags to identify the dead). Accordingly, an estimate of the total dead from the one-day battle: 7,640.

Source: National Park Service

The best single volume on Antietam is Stephen Sears’s Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam.

Best Line of This or Any Other Day

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Constitutional Convention, September 17, 1787

Canyonlands National Park (Utah)

… was established on this date 51 years ago (September 12, 1964).

Canyonlands

Canyonlands invites you to explore a wilderness of countless canyons and fantastically formed buttes carved by the Colorado River and its tributaries. Rivers divide the park into four districts: the Island in the Sky, the Needles, the Maze, and the rivers themselves. These areas share a primitive desert atmosphere, but each offers different opportunities for sightseeing and adventure.


The foundation of Canyonlands’ desert ecology is its remarkable geology, which is visible everywhere in rocky cliffs that reveal millions of years of deposition and erosion. These rock layers continue to shape life in Canyonlands today, as patterns of erosion influence soil chemistry and where water flows when it rains.

Known as a “high desert,” with elevations ranging from 3,700 to 7,200 feet above sea level, Canyonlands experiences very hot summers and cold winters, and receives less than ten inches of rain each year. Even on a daily basis, temperatures may fluctuate as much as 50 degrees.


National parks preserve some of the darkest skies in the country. In some areas, it’s possible to see up to 15,000 stars throughout the night. By contrast, city dwellers may see fewer than 500 stars at night. Night skies at Canyonlands are so pristine that the International Dark-Sky Association designated Canyonlands as a Gold-Tier International Dark Sky Park in 2015. Canyonlands joins three other national parks in southern Utah with the International Dark Sky Park designation.

Canyonlands National Park

H(enry) L(ouis) Mencken

… essayist and editor, was born on September 12th in 1880.

H.L. Mencken

  • The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it …
  • It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.
  • Courtroom — A place where Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot would be equals, with the betting odds in favor of Judas.
  • Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.
  • A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
  • It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
  • The first kiss is stolen by the man; the last is begged by the woman.
  • The only really happy folk are married women and single men.
  • It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.
  • Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
  • No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.
  • Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
  • I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.
  • In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for. As for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.

Jesse Owens

Jesse Owens was born on September 12th in 1913. ESPN.com ranked Owens the sixth best athlete of the 20th century:

Jesse Owens 1935
Jesse Owens 1935

On May 25 [1935] in Ann Arbor, Mich., Owens couldn’t even bend over to touch his knees. But as the sophomore settled in for his first race, he said the pain “miraculously disappeared.”

3:15 — The “Buckeye Bullet” ran the 100-yard dash in 9.4 seconds to tie the world record. 3:25 — In his only long jump, he leaped 26-8 1/4, a world record that would last 25 years.

3:34 — His 20.3 seconds bettered the world record in the 220-yard dash.

4:00 — With his 22.6 seconds in the 220-yard low hurdles, he became the first person to break 23 seconds in the event.

For most athletes, Jesse Owens’ performance one spring afternoon in 1935 would be the accomplishment of a lifetime. In 45 minutes, he established three world records and tied another.

But that was merely an appetizer for Owens. In one week in the summer of 1936, on the sacred soil of the Fatherland, the master athlete humiliated the master race.

This from Owens’ New York Times obituary in 1980:

The United States Olympic track team, of 66 athletes, included 10 blacks. The Nazis derided the Americans for relying on what the Nazis called an inferior race, but of the 11 individual gold medals in track won by the American men, six were won by blacks.

The hero was Mr. Owens. He won the 100-meter dash in 10.3 seconds, the 200-meter dash in 20.7 seconds and the broad jump at 26 feet 5 1/2 inches, and he led off for the United States team that won the 400-meter relay in 39.8 seconds.

His individual performances broke two Olympic records and, except for an excessive following wind, would have broken the third. The relay team broke the world record. His 100-meter and 200-meter times would have won Olympic medals through 1964, his broad- jump performance through 1968.

Actually, Mr. Owens had not been scheduled to run in the relay. Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller were, but American Olympic officials, led by Avery Brundage, wanted to avoid offending the Nazis. They replaced Mr. Glickman and Mr. Stoller, both Jews, with Mr. Owens and Ralph Metcalfe, both blacks.

Hitler did not congratulate any of the American black winners, a subject to which Mr. Owens addressed himself for the rest of his life.

“It was all right with me,” he said years later, “I didn’t go to Berlin to shake hands with him, anyway. All I know is that I’m here now, and Hitler isn’t.

“When I came back, after all those stories about Hitler and his snub, I came back to my native country, and I couldn’t ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn’t live where I wanted. Now what’s the difference?”

Owens received no official recognition from the U.S. — no presidential phone call, no White House visit — until 1976 when he was presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Ansel and Me

Ansel Adams Sign Grand Teton National Park, August 22, 2015
Ansel Adams Sign Grand Teton National Park, August 22, 2015
Click the image above and read the sign.

And here is an image I made at that spot three weeks ago.

Snake River and Teton Range, August 22, 2015
Snake River and Teton Range, August 22, 2015
The Teton Range is there, you can almost see it through the smoke (from wildfires in Idaho and Washington). The trees seem to have grown in the 73 years since 1942. They now hide the bend in the Snake River. Or maybe I should have stood on the roof of my car like Ansel Adams. (It was a rental Toyota Camry, however. My Lexus SUV was having its radiator replaced after an incident with an elk two nights earlier in Yellowstone.)

One of the singular highlights of my archival career was the day 30-or-so years ago when I received unannounced in my inbox at the National Archives — where I directed the records appraisal program — the Official Personnel Folder (OPF) for one Adams, Ansel Easton. The file was due for routine disposal but a conscientious and alert staffer at the Office of Personnel Management thought that maybe Mr. Adams’s file was worth preserving. It was. (That same staffer also preserved Woodie Guthrie’s OPF.)

For reference, Adams’s famous photo.

Ansel Adams, 1942
Ansel Adams, 1942

Otis Redding

… was born 74 years ago today in Dawson, Georgia. He, his manager, and four teen-age members of The Bar-Kays, were killed when their plane crashed into Lake Monona on approach to Madison, Wisconsin, early December 10, 1967.

Although his career was relatively brief, cut short by a tragic plane crash, Otis Redding was a singer of such commanding stature that to this day he embodies the essence of soul music in its purist form. His name is synonymous with the term soul, music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of funky, secular testifying. Redding left behind a legacy of recordings made during the four-year period from his first sessions for Stax/Volt Records in 1963 until his death in 1967. Ironically, although he consistently impacted the R&B charts beginning with “Pain In My Heart” in 1964, none of his singles fared better than #21 on the pop Top Forty until the posthumous release of “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay.” That landmark song, recorded just four days before Redding’s death, went to #1 and stayed there for four weeks in early 1968. …

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum

[The Bar-Kays trumpeter survived the crash. The bass player was on another plane.]

The Appeasement of 1850

California was admitted as the 31st state 165 years ago today (1850).

Admission of California as a free state (that is, no slavery) was the first in the series of five measures known as the Compromise of 1850.

First page of Henry Clay's resolutions
First page of Henry Clay’s resolutions

The second measure organized the New Mexico Territory (which included present-day Arizona), settled the Texas-New Mexico boundary, and paid Texas $10 million to abandon its claims in New Mexico (everything east of the Rio Grande). The act also stated: “That, when admitted as a State, the said territory, or any portion of the same, shall be received into the Union, with or without slavery, as their constitution may prescribe at the time of their admission.” In other words, slavery in New Mexico would be decided by the people of New Mexico. This became known as “popular sovereignty.”

The third measure was the organization of the Utah Territory (which included Nevada and western Colorado) with an identical provision about slavery.

The fourth was a revised Fugitive Slave Act, amending the law passed in 1793. This act set up commissioners authorized to issue warrants for fugitives and order their return. The commissioners were to receive $10 when the person apprehended was a fugitive slave. They were to receive $5 when they decided he/she was a free person. Fugitives claiming to be freedmen were denied a trial by jury and their testimony was not to be evidence in any of the proceedings under the law. Citizens aiding fugitives could be fined or imprisoned.

The fifth measure was the abolition of the slave trade (but not slavery) in the District of Columbia.

Like most political compromises, there was more for each side to dislike than to like. Slave states disliked California’s admission as a free state. And they disliked the end of the slave trade in D.C., not because it was important but because it demonstrated federal power over any aspect of slavery. Many northerners objected to the Fugitive Slave Act; and many violated it.

And, of course, slavery in the territories became the prime issue of the 1850s, the election of 1860, and coming of the Civil War.

Indeed, was it a compromise at all?

In 1849 and 1850, white Southerners in Congress made demands and issued threats concerning the spread and protection of slavery, and, as in 1820 and 1833, Northerners acquiesced: the slave states obtained almost everything they demanded, including an obnoxious Fugitive Slave Law, enlarged Texas border, payment of Texas debts, potential spread of slavery into new western territories, the protection of the slave trade in Washington, D.C., and the renunciation of congressional authority over slavery. The free states, in turn, received almost nothing (California was permitted to enter as a free state, but residents had already voted against slavery). Hardly a compromise!

Read more: A Proposal to Change the Words We Use When Talking About the Civil War.

Geronimo

Originally posted in slightly different form in 2007:

NewMexiKen has been reading Angie Debo’s excellent 1976 biography of Geronimo. I recommend it. Here’s a couple of trivial items I thought were interesting.

When Geronimo’s and Naiche’s (son of Cochise) bands were consolidated at Mount Vernon Barracks, Alabama, in 1887 and 1888, the post doctor was Walter Reed. Yes, THE Walter Reed.

A school was eventually set up at the Alabama camp, where the Apaches were prisoners of war — men, women and children. Geronimo reportedly monitored the children’s attendance and deportment, walking up and down the aisles with a stick.

The [Chiricahua] Apaches were relocated to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in 1894. Photo from 1898, age 69 or so.

Geronimo 1898


Finishing the biography, amused to learn that when Geronimo traveled he would sell photos and autographs and even the buttons off his coat. He’d sell the buttons to people gathered to see him come by at the train station, then before the next station he’d sew on a new set of buttons.

Geronimo also rode in Teddy Roosevelt’s inaugural parade in March 1905. The Chiricahua would have been about 75-76. It was said he could still vault onto his pony. That’s him, second from right.

1905 Inaugural Parade

He died in 1909, about age 80.

Idle Thought

Goyaałé (aka Geronimo) and Лeв Никола́евич Толсто́й​ (Lyev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (aka Leo Tolstoy) were contemporaries. Tolstoy was born in 1828; Geronimo reportedly in 1829. Geronimo died of pneumonia in 1909; Tolstoy of pneumonia in 1910.

Which would you rather have been?