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Posted on 01.12.12 by Danny Glover @ 7:02 am
A bear fanatic like me can’t help but blog about Wojtek, the Syrian bear who traveled with Polish troops in World War II:
Wojtek is the subject of a forthcoming documentary. Here’s a clip of the trailer and a related video (via Weird Universe): Filed under: History and Human Interest and Video and Wildlife Comments: None |
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Posted on 01.04.12 by Danny Glover @ 5:35 pm
When I decided to become a journalist, I imagined I’d be working in an atmosphere much closer to this one than the one I’ve known for the past 20 years: The tools for producing and distributing journalism in the information age are much better than those of yesteryear, but I do long for the days of the “rewrite man” and copy editors. They were the protectors of the art of great writing — a mostly lost art in today’s era of blogs, tweets and text messages, where too many journalists think good grammar and consistent style are antiquated. Filed under: Grammar and History and Media and Social Media and Video Comments: None |
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Posted on 11.18.11 by Danny Glover @ 10:37 am
We don’t want our children to be “forced to walk a gauntlet of screaming “Occupy Wall Street” protesters just to get to school.” Granted, we live in the suburbs rather than a big city where the protesters are behaving like children. But by teaching our children at home, we’ll never have to worry about a protest of any kind threatening our children or interrupting the school day. We’d rather not expose them in person to the ugly side of American democracy, when citizens forsake the “peaceably” part of the First Amendment’s “right to assemble.” (Read previous “Why We Home-School” lessons.) Filed under: Culture and History and News & Politics and Why We Home-School Comments: None |
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Posted on 08.25.11 by Danny Glover @ 2:19 pm
The Washington, D.C., region and much of the rest of the East Coast rumbled a couple of days ago when a rare 5.8-magnitude earthquake hit near Richmond, Va. The Earth’s moving crust left its mark on one of the capital city’s most famous landmarks, the Washington Monument. The National Park Service released these photos of the cracks today:
You can see more photos of the earthquake’s damage to the monument at the NPS Facebook page — a testament to today’s social-networking times because the photos aren’t even available on the agency’s website yet. I was working in Washington when the earthquake hit, and like thousands of other earthquake amateurs in the city and elsewhere, I ran out of the building and into the street. According to the experts, we made the wrong choice:
We’ve had a few aftershocks the past couple of days, one of them at 4.5 on the Richter Scale last night, but I’ve slept right through those. Hopefully if I’m awake the next time one hits, at least I’ll know better what I’m supposed to do. Filed under: History and News & Politics and Photography Comments: None |
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Posted on 08.23.11 by Danny Glover @ 1:00 pm
The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial opens this weekend in Washington’s famed Tidal Basin. The news peg is the anniversary of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. This animated video offers a taste of what the public will see in a few days: I’m eager to see the memorial, but I’ll wait for the opening crowds to thin before I visit. Filed under: History and News & Politics and Video Comments: None |
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Posted on 06.24.11 by Danny Glover @ 12:42 pm
When I was 8 years old, tragedy struck our small West Virginia town. Paden City High School caught fire on Jan. 8, 1975, and the school that knit together a community was destroyed. I remember that Wednesday well to this day. I watched the flames and smoke rise as we went to Bible study that evening and still saw them when we left. Paden City has never been home to more than a few thousand people, and the city limits stretch little more than a mile from one end to the other. Everyone knew what was happening that night, and all of us were horrified. Now there’s old-fashioned reel video of that historic day on YouTube: In case you’re wondering, the county finished rebuilding Paden City High School a couple of years later, so when I started my freshman year in 1981, it was in a mostly new building. The gymnasium, band room and shop rooms in the back part of the school survived the fire and are there to this day. Filed under: History and Video and West Virginia Comments: None |
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Posted on 06.06.11 by Danny Glover @ 10:25 am
My wife Kimberly is a new business owner. A few weeks ago, she decided she wants to offer historical walking tours, in antebellum garb, through Old Town Manassas. She took to the task of starting her business with gusto and made her debut appearance in costume yesterday at the annual Manassas Railway Festival. I took photos at the event and created a slideshow. Enjoy it … and if you’re in the Washington, D.C., area and would like to join Kimberly on the premier walk come July 30, you can reach her at 571-425-2888. Please also like the Manassas Past page on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. All good rednecks should know their history, and you can help us share it with others! Filed under: Business and Culture and History and Photography and Travel and Video Comments: None |
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Posted on 10.30.10 by Danny Glover @ 6:40 pm
To hear media elites tell it, this election season is the nastiest of all time. But the creative folks at Reason.tv have a much deeper sense of history. They remember the rhetoric of the 1800 presidential election between revered founding fathers John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Now Reason.tv has given voice to those personal barbs between Adams and Jefferson in a modern media format — the attack ad. Remember that the next time someone whines that civility is dead in American politics. If civility ever existed at all, it died long before the Tea Party Election of 2010. Filed under: History and News & Politics and Video Comments: None |
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Posted on 10.29.10 by Danny Glover @ 6:30 pm
The Great Recession is now officially history — and part of journalistic history. This month the Associated Press added the term to the AP Stylebook, which is gospel in media circles. Here’s how AP defines the negative economic milestone: “The recession that began in December 2007 and became the longest and deepest since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It occurred after losses on subprime mortgages battered the U.S. housing market. The National Bureau of Economic Research said it officially ended in June 2009, having lasted 18 months.” Doesn’t that make you feel so much less depressed and recessed? Filed under: Business and History and Media and News & Politics Comments: None |
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Posted on 09.17.10 by Danny Glover @ 10:33 pm
Salute the troops on this Constitution Day. America is free because of them. Filed under: Government and History and News & Politics and Video Comments: None |
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Posted on 08.23.10 by Danny Glover @ 10:00 pm
Since the dawn of the blogosphere, holier-than-thou journalistic colleagues of mine who think much too highly of our distinguished yet flawed profession have ridiculed blogs as the breeding ground of rumors, lies, innuendo and hoaxes. They all need a history lesson. The New York Sun provided a good one today in an amusing piece about how that storied newspaper manufactured a myth about moon creatures 175 years ago to boost circulation:
The moral of the story is that there is nothing new under the journalistic sun. Misinformation and disinformation may spread more rapidly and flourish longer these days as a result of blogs, Twitter, Facebook and other new media tools, but the media are just the means to an age-old end. Blogs don’t deceive people; people deceive people. Every blogger should memorize that motto, bookmark the Sun’s quasi-correction of its 175-year-old lunar man-bats story and play it as the trump card the next time some uppity journalist decides to bash blogs. Filed under: History and Human Interest and Media Comments: None |
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Posted on 07.16.10 by Danny Glover @ 12:41 pm
Our children don’t need as “leaders” religiously correct busybodies who are determined to push all references to God, even those that are part of America’s government and culture. The key quote from this video: “So, this school district is arguing that Judeo-Christian views, as expressed in our nation’s history, are too offensive for students to view — but other religions, even anti-religion … OK.” (Read previous “Why We Home-School” lessons.) Filed under: History and News & Politics and Religion and Why We Home-School Comments: None |
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Posted on 07.15.10 by Danny Glover @ 12:00 am
You can tell a lot about a state by the rock that represents it. Take West Virginia. My home state chose coal as its state rock in 2009, a selection that makes perfect sense because of what the black rocks buried deep within the Mountain State mean both economically and culturally to her people. For better or worse, West Virginia would not be what it is without coal. Then there’s California, home to an array of reprehensible characters — from the cultural “elites” in La La Land to the degenerates in San Franciso. The rock that represents them: serpentine, a stone laced with deadly asbestos. Score one for the enlightened rednecks. West Virginians know how to pick a state rock. Filed under: Government and History and Human Interest and News & Politics and Rednecks and West Virginia Comments: 1 Comment |
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Posted on 07.01.10 by Danny Glover @ 11:24 pm
The Senate lost its heart and soul this week. Robert Byrd, a constitutional scholar and good ol’ boy from West Virginia coal country, died after serving in the Senate for more than a half-century — longer than anyone in history. He was the epitome of an enlightened redneck. Byrd, who was 92, made one last appearance on the Senate floor today. An honor guard carried his body into the chamber to lie in state. It was the first time since 1959, the year Byrd was first elected to the Senate, that senators had paid tribute to one of their own in such fashion. Politically, I was not a Byrd man. I never voted for him when I lived in the great Mountain State, and I detest to this day the pork-barrel politics he mastered. Money is the most corrupting influence in politics, and pork too often is all about rewarding political allies with taxpayers’ money. But I always respected Byrd for his love of family, his commitment to the Constitution, his eloquent defenses of the legislative branch in general and the Senate in particular, and his passion for the state we both love. Robert C. Byrd was a statesman with an expensive soft spot for West Virginia, and while I wish the practice of earmarking federal funds would die with the “King of Pork,” I forgive him that flaw. Rest in peace, “Big Daddy.” Filed under: Government and History and News & Politics and People and Video and West Virginia Comments: 1 Comment |
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Posted on 04.16.10 by Danny Glover @ 2:21 pm
Like most of America’s official recognitions of God, the National Day of Prayer now at the center of a legal dispute is rooted in the spiritual heyday of the post-World War II era. The day was first celebrated in 1952. I revisited the history of such “ceremonial deism” (the Supreme Court’s term) in my 1999 “Congress Back Then” column for IntellectualCapital.com, and I am reprinting it here to offer some context for the current debate about the National Day of Prayer. Congress Back Then: America’s Spiritual Heyday Earlier this year, policymakers, pundits and people on the street reopened a uniquely American (and seemingly infinite) debate. In the wake of another incident of school violence, this time a mass murder at a high school in Littleton, Colo., they pondered a familiar question: Just how far should our nation go in trying to maintain a clear separation between church and state? Congress debated the question in mid-June and decided that perhaps we had gone too far. More specifically, House lawmakers saw a need for a greater religious presence in the public schools, so they cast a series of votes designed to give new spiritual direction to the nation’s youth. The most-publicized decision: They sanctioned the posting of the Bible’s Ten Commandments on school walls. The primarily symbolic votes topped the news of the week, not at all surprising in an era when Americans are sharply divided on the relationship between religion and government. But four decades back, the votes might have gone unnoticed, an unremarkable act at a time when Congress added the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance, and made the phrase “In God We Trust” the national motto and a mandatory slogan on all U.S. coins and currency. All of that religious posturing, and more, happened during the presidency of Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower and in the early days of a Cold War that most patriotic Americans apparently saw as a battle between Christian America and the godless, communist Soviet Union. Filed under: Books and Culture and Entertainment and History and News & Politics and People and Religion Comments: None |
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