Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper
Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper
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Strange how certain books captivate my interest, others not as much. I find myself going back again and again to reread Mark Forsyth's 2013 book, "The Elements of Eloquence." In Forsyth's "Preface," he writes, "Shakespeare was not a genius. He was the most wonderful writer who ever breathed. But not a genius. Instead, he learned rhetorical techniques and tricks." Of Shakespeare's first plays-"Love's Labour's Lost," "Titus Andronicus," and "Henry VI, Part 1"-Forsyth says, "there is not a single...
Abraham Lincoln of Illinois was elected President of the United States of America on November 6, 1860, for a four-year term. One year later, on November 6, 1861, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was elected President of the Confederate States of America for a six-year term. Between those two dates, eleven states, each in the south, voted to secede from the Union and form their own government, the Confederates States of America. That division between north and south over the issue of slavery had...
Allen Guelzo, history professor at Princeton, tells a story about Lincoln that he included in his recent book, "Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment." Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, one and a half years into the Civil War. He justified his Proclamation out of "military necessity." Eleven states of the Union had rebelled and threatened the Federal Government's very existence. Freeing slaves in the Confederacy, Lincoln...
When driving to destinations from home and back, I occupy my time by listening to YouTube videos of Civil War historians on my mobile phone. I am curious to hear their ideas and stories. The best crop of Civil War historians today, in my estimation, include: Eric Foner at Columbia, Gary Gallagher at the University of Virginia, David Blight at Yale, and Allen Guelzo now at Princeton, but formerly at Gettysburg College. Each has a collection of videos. Plus, each possesses that innate ability to...
Universities opened their doors a week or two ago. Freshman students moved into their dorm rooms, met their roommates, hung pictures on the walls, and completed their class schedules. Most students want to do well, even just ok, at college, but not everyone does. How well any student completes his or her mastery of course work at a college depends upon that student's preparation, his or her readiness, his or her skill at reading and writing, plus his or her ambition, hustle, and drive. Yet, abov...
Students will walk back into school soon and settle themselves into a small desk. Once seated, each girl and each boy will stare at a series of math story problems, or long pages of difficult-to-read text on science or history, plus the dreaded weekly compositions in English. To those anxious students I say, "Embrace those compositions. Do not let them intimidate you. Let your light shine. Present your opinions, your ideas, your humor. Lay aside your fear of ridicule from your peers. Show your...
During the first World War, Henry Ford brought suit against the "Chicago Tribune," because a reporter wrote that Ford was an "ignoramus." At the trial, the newspaper's attorneys peppered Ford with trivia questions, each designed to prove Ford's ignorance. To each question, Ford replied, "I do not know." Feeling exasperated, Ford said, "If I should wish to answer these foolish questions, I could call in men who could give me the correct answer. Now why should I fill my mind with useless details,...
Columbia Pictures released Easy Rider on July 14, 1969, fifty-five years ago last Sunday. I missed seeing it that summer, because I was busy on the farm driving a 92 Massey Harris combine in wheat harvest. I missed the film later, because I was busy my sophomore year in high school running here, there and everywhere: cross country, track, and basketball. I admit. I have never watched Easy Rider. Other things have crowded out my time. The film was a runaway success, grossing $60 million, but only...
In 2022, a jury convicted Elizabeth Holmes, founder of biotech firm Theranos, of four counts of defrauding investors. A judge sentenced Holmes to 11 years and 3 months in prison. The film producer Harvey Weinstein was declared guilty of inappropriate relations with women twice, first at a trial in New York in 2020, and the second in California in 2022. In 2018, the comedian Bill Cosby was sentenced to 10 years in prison for drugging and assaulting a woman, but in 2021, after serving three years...
In Topeka, Kansas, on February 20, 1943, a black girl named Linda Brown was born. When still a child in the early 1950's, her father, Oliver Brown, was required to drive Linda to an all-black school five miles across Topeka, when an all-white school, the Sumner School, was a few blocks distant from Oliver's home. Oliver was angry. An assistant pastor at St. John African Methodist Episcopal Church, he joined the NAACP and other plaintiffs to file a lawsuit against Topeka's Board of Education,...
Last time in these pages I looked at Section 1 of the 14th Amendment. Today I continue. The last phrase in Section 1 of the 14th Amendment declares that no state can "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law." All races are equal under the law. Section 2 begins: "Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers." By these words the committee eliminated the 3/5's rule. Section 2 continues: "But when the right to...
In early 1866, the Joint Committee of Fifteen on Reconstruction in the 39th Congress wrestled with the idea that they must write a 14th Amendment to address certain issues: Who is a citizen? How does the country's laws apply to former slaves and slave owners? Will former Confederate officials hold elected office now in the Union? Will former slaveholders receive any compensation for the loss of their property? Who will pay the Confederacy's debts? Most important, who will rule supreme: state...
In December of 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln suggested a plan to reinstate the seceded states back into the Union, his "Ten Percent Plan." He would permit each Confederate state to form a new state government after ten percent of the voters in a state took loyalty oaths to the Union and recognized the former slaves' freedom. Following Lincoln's assassination on April 9, 1865, his successor, former Vice-President Andrew Johnson, decided to run with Lincoln's Ten P...
David Blight teaches Civil War and Reconstruction history at Yale University. In 2018, Blight published a biography on the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, entitled, "Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom." Blight tells a remarkable story. His biography deserved and did win the Pulitzer Prize in 2019. Blight describes Douglass as a spell-binding lecturer through most of the nineteenth century, who left audiences both weeping and laughing, their emotions whipsawed by his incredible story of how... Full story
On May 11, 2017, the newly-elected U.S. President, Donald Trump, issued an executive order to form a Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. He appointed Vice-President Mike Pence as chair, and Kansas State's Secretary of State Kris Kobach as vice-chair. For some time, Kobach had "promoted the myth of voter fraud and supported laws that restricted people from voting." Two other members were "notorious advocates for voter suppression." At least one member was a Democrat, Maine's S... Full story
December 16 marked the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, when colonial Bostonians dressed as Mohawk Indians boarded three ships-Dartmouth, Eleanor, and Beaver-split open 340 chests filled with tea, and dumped their contents into Boston's harbor. This defiant act was directed as a protest against Parliament's insistence that the consignees of the tea in the American colonies pay an import tax, to keep afloat the struggling British East India Company, which brought the tea to the... Full story
Abraham Lincoln faced an absolute calamity on March 4, 1861, the day when Chief Justice Roger Taney administered the oath of office to Lincoln at his inauguration. Already seven states from the South had seceded, or withdrawn, from the Union because voters had elected Lincoln President of the United States. Southern voters believed that Lincoln opposed the expansion of slavery into western territories, like Kansas and Nebraska. South Carolina voted to secede on December 20, 1860, forty-four... Full story
Throughout the year of 1864, President Abraham Lincoln believed that he would lose the election in November. He admitted in August, "I am going to be beaten, and unless some great change takes place, badly beaten." The odds were stacked against him. Plenty of voters in the Union had reason to despise, even hate, Lincoln. The war that had begun in April 1861, at Fort Sumter, had turned into a ghastly event, full of fury, fever, horror, and madness. The human wreckage was colossal, on a scale... Full story
People burrow into the subsoil, build tunnels, plus storage rooms, and stockpile food and water, for one reason, and that is to stay alive. Atop the ground, in the open air, in the sunshine, they feel oppressed, insecure, and poised to die or suffer an injury. On July 4, 1863, thirty-one thousand Confederate soldiers, trapped inside Vicksburg, on the Mississippi River, surrendered to the Union's commanding officer, Ulysses S. Grant, on the forty-eighth day of Grant's siege of that town. During... Full story
What is the good that comes from knowing even a little about the ancient Greeks' religion? I prefer to learn of actual people who once lived in a historical setting, a time and a place. Greek mythology, instead, is a collection of make-believe fantasy stories I would like to know more of, but I find it hard to gain much traction from them, practical use. I wonder. Mark Twain disparaged the whole notion. "Classics," he said, "are the books that everybody wants to claim to have read, but nobody... Full story
Since 2004, radio personality Steve Inskeep has hosted National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition.” During Covid lockdown in 2020, at home with time to spare, Inskeep researched and wrote a book that was published this past week. Inskeep found its title, “Differ We Must: How Lincoln Succeeded in a Divided America,” in a letter that Abraham Lincoln wrote to his good friend Joshua Speed, dated August 24, 1855. Last week, Inskeep explained to Amna Nawaz of PBS News Hour, and Scott Simon of NPR, that... Full story
Some people possess a talent to peer deep into the future. In Biblical times people called them prophets. In the Middle Ages, people believed them wizards. Today they are economists who make projections based upon previous business data. Thomas Paine was an unknown writer in Philadelphia, fresh off the boat from England, but he peered deep into the future, more than did others already here. In 1776, in “Common Sense, Paine wrote, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A sit... Full story
The main highway running east to west across Israel's width is Highway One. It connects Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to the Jordan River Valley, near Jericho. In 2012, highway contractors working five kilometers west of Jerusalem near the town of Motza uncovered a Neolithic town, home to perhaps 3,000 people at one time. A new thing, an interstate highway, led to a discovery of an old thing, a town. Tel Motza is now the largest Neolithic site in Israel. Archaeologists define a Tel as "a mound or small... Full story
The list of banned, censored, and challenged books is long and illustrious. Decameron (1353) by Giovanni Boccaccio, and Canterbury Tales (1476) by Geoffrey Chaucer were banned from U. S. mail because of the Federal Anti-Obscenity Law of 1873, known as the Comstock Law. That law "banned the sending or receiving of works containing 'obscene, 'filthy,' or 'inappropriate' material. William Pynchon, a prominent New England landowner and founder of Springfield, Massachusetts, wrote a startling... Full story
Popular song writers will, on occasion, dub into their lyrics references to summer. In 1970, Mungo Jerry sang, "In the summertime, when the weather is high, you can stretch right up and touch the sky." In 1972, Bobby Vinton sang, "Yes, it's going to be a long, lonely summer." In 1973, Terry Jacks sang about enjoying his "Seasons in the Sun." In 1977, in the film Grease, John Travolta and Olivia Newton John sang a back-and- forth duet about their "summer days drifting away, to summer nights."... Full story
