VOTES FOR WOMEN | Aug. 28 – Police Arrest Picketing Suffragists

Lucy Burns in Lorton.

August 28, 2017 – On this day in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson is personally confronted, by woman suffragists picketing in front of the White House, with signs opposing American participation in the European war. 

The women had been picketing six days a week, sunup to sundown, since they met with him in January 2017 to present memorials of the death of Inez Milholland Boissevain. 

Back in January, he told them they were politically naive. They responded by vowing to picket the White House six days a week to demand his support of the Anthony Amendment to guarantee women the right to vote. It worked.

Wilson gave lukewarm support to woman suffrage during both political campaigns. During the 1912 presidential campaign against Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson and his opponent agreed on many reform measures such as child-labor laws and pro-union legislation. They differed, however, on woman suffrage. Roosevelt was in favor of recognizing the right of women to vote at the national level and Wilson was not. 

In his reelection campaign, his position was to leave the issue to the states.  He just ignored the daily picketing and peaceful suffrage demonstrators at the White House. As a former teacher at Bryn Mawr, and the father of two daughters who supported suffrage, he was under pressure to support the cause.


However, that changed on August 28, 1917. According to the Library of Congress in its "American Memory" archives, Wilson rode out of the White House gates that morning with his wife (his first wife died and he remarried in 1914) at his side, and tipped his hat toward the protestors as usual.

The suffragists then held high anti-World War I slogans on their placards in addition to pleas for Votes for Women. Later that day, the protestors clashed with outraged bystanders supporting the war. 

Many of the women were arrested and brought to the Lorton Workhouse for Women. The jailed suffragists included the two leaders of the National Women's Party, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, and Vida Milholland, sister of Inez Milholland Boissevain. All three were trained by the Pankhurst suffragettes. Dorothy Day, currently up for sainthood in the Catholic Church, was also there.

The suffragists went on a hunger strike and were force-fed by their captors. Wilson, worried by publicity about the force-feeding, agreed to a suffrage amendment in January 1918. 

Congress soon enough after that passed the 19th Amendment and in 1920 Tennessee voted for the Amendment, bringing the number of ratifying states to two-thirds and enacting the Amendment.

WELLESLEY | A 1966 Reunion Eclipsed

Watching the Moon Eclipse the Sun. The photo shows three
Wellesley alums and their spouses, plus some other guests.

August 27, 2017 – Three years ago, seven members of the  Wellesley Class of 1966 came to East Hampton in anticipation of its 50th Reunion last year.

They visited the LongHouse Reserve.

This year four alums got together in August: Karen Ahearn Boeschenstein, Joan Hass, Alice Tepper Marlin, and Ann Liggett (Cinnamon) Rinzler. Two were part of the 2014 reunion, and two were not (Karen and Cinnamon).

L to R: Karen Boeschenstein, Curry Rinzler, Cinnamon
Rinzler, Alice Tepper Marlin, Warren Boeschenstein,
and John Tepper Marlin.

After watching the eclipse this year, the reunion group sang songs with guitar accompaniment and had dinner. 

They also went again to the LongHouse Reserve.

HERO DOG | Hachikō Wins Contest

Hachikō Dances Around on One Leg.

August 26, 2017 – The 4th Annual Springs Agricultural Fair took place today at Ashawagh Hall.

At noon the "Dog Tricks" event was featured.

A Springs dog, Hachikō, was entered. He is named after an Akita, Hachi-kõ (ハ-チ公, 1923-1935), born on a farm in Japan. Hachi is the Japanese word for the lucky number eight.

The life story of the original Hachikō was the subject of a movie, transposed to Woonsocket, Rhode Island, starring Richard Gere.

Eight (hachi in Japanese) is a lucky number in Asia, having the same Chinese character as fortune or good luck.  Seven in Asia is unlucky.  

This Hachikō (a Pomeranian-Schnauzer mix) was lucky and won second place.

He was trained by Alice Tepper Marlin with the assistance of her husband John and their daughter Caroline, who has trained her own dog Rondo.

Dog Tricks Contest Winners, First (R)
and Second Prizes. Alice Tepper Marlin
is holding Hachikō.

Hachikō won second prize out of a field of about ten dogs put forward as doing tricks at the Fair. 

Hachikō danced a few circles, sometimes on one leg (see photo above).

The first place winner is in the second photo, but we don't yet know the name of the dog or its owner. (To which the owner could reply, paraphrasing the late Mayor Ed Koch, "if I had known being in second place was so important, I would have gone for that.")

The takeaway from the contest for next year is:

• It is smart to have a routine. Start by having the dog sit, then roll over, the easy tricks. Then get to the harder ones.
• Most dogs refused to do their tricks in front of a crowd, which was funny but reduced the competition. Best to practice with people looking on.
• The winner's trainer had an excuse for why the winning dog didn't do the trick the first time. The second time it went as planned. It's good to have a trainer who can cover for lapses!
• A good time was had by all, including the dogs, who got treats, win or lose.

The full name of Hachikō in Japanese is Chūken - Hachi - kō (忠犬-ハ-チ公), or Loyal Dog - Eight - Little.  The first two characters, reading left to right, are kan-ji (Chinese ideographs) and the other characters are using the Japanese alphabet for phonetic spelling.

HUGUENOTS | August 24 – St Bartholomew's Day Massacre

St Bartholomew's Day Massacre in Paris

This day in 1572, Catholic King Charles IX of France, encouraged  by his mother, Catherine de Medici, ordered the killing of Huguenot leaders in Paris, setting off an orgy of killing.

Tens of thousands of Huguenots (a Protestant minority in France, followers of John Calvin) were massacred, first in Paris and then all across France. The slaughter is called in French the "Massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy".

Two days earlier, Catherine had ordered the murder of Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, a Huguenot leader who was advising a war with Spain. However, Coligny was only wounded, and Charles promised outrage Huguenots that he would investigate the attempted assassination.  But Catherine then convinced her son that the Huguenots were on the brink of rebellion. He went along with the plan to murder their leaders, most of whom were visiting Paris to celebrate the wedding on August 18 day of the king's sister Margaret to the Protestant Henry III of Navarre (who would become   Henry IV of France).

On August 23, 1572, the eve of the feast of Bartholomew the Apostle, a list of those to be killed was drawn up. First on the list was Coligny, who was brutally beaten and thrown out of his bedroom window just before dawn on August 24.

However, once the killing started, mobs of Catholic Parisians began a general massacre of Huguenots.

Charles on August 25 ordered a halt to this killing, but the slaughters continued into October, reaching the provinces of Rouen, Lyon, Bourges, Bourdeaux, and Orleans. An estimated 3,000 French Protestants were killed in Paris, and 5,000-70,000 (estimates vary) in all of France.

The massacre marked a turning point in the French Wars of Religion. The Huguenot political movement was crippled by the loss of many of its prominent leaders, but those who remained became implacably anti-Catholic.

TENNIS | Aug. 22 – Althea Gibson First Black on Tour

Althea Gibson, First U.S. Black Tennis Winner

This day in 1950 Althea Gibson was the first African-American accepted by the tennis authorities to go on a U.S. tennis tour.

The U.S. Lawn Tennis Association (USLTA, now the USTA) accepted Gibson into their annual championship at Forest Hills, New York, the first African-American player to compete in a U.S. national tennis competition.

Gibson was born in Silver, South Carolina on August 25, 1927, but was not born with a silver spoon in her mouth. She had to earn her silver.

Her family moved to Harlem when she was young. That is where she started playing tennis in Harlem at 14. Just one year later she won the New York State girls’ championship of the American Tennis Association (ATA), the black alternative (organized by players in 1916) to the all-white USLTA.

Althea Gibson was a remarkable
tennis player and woman.

With the help of Hubert Eaton and R. Walter Johnson, both doctors, Gibson won ten straight ATA championships in 1947. In 1949, Gibson applied to the USLTA’s National Grass Court Championships at Forest Hills (later called the U.S. Open). When the USLTA failed to invite her, Alice Marble – who had won four times at Forest Hills – bravely wrote on Gibson’s behalf to the editor of American Lawn Tennis magazine, criticizing the “bigotry” of her fellow USLTA members.

Shamed by Marble's letter, someone arranged to invite Gibson to participate in a New Jersey qualifying event, which she won. On August 28, 1950, at Forest Hills, Gibson beat Barbara Knapp 6-2, 6-2 in her first USLTA tournament match. In the second round she lost in a close match with Louise Brough, three-time defending Wimbledon champion. In 1951 she was the first black player of either gender to compete at Wimbledon.

The next few years, however, were difficult for Gibson. Her success was not universally welcomed. For example, she was promoted by Marble and others to compete in the Woodin Ladies Invitational at Maidstone in 1954 but the club was divided on Gibson's participation and she was not invited to play. The Cup was ended the next year, for that reason or other reasons, or a combination.

Gibson, however, came back from her disappointments and won her first major victory in 1956, at the French Open in Paris. The next year she won Wimbledon and the U.S. Open at 30. Gibson repeated at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open the next year but then retired from the amateur tennis and went pro.

Gibson was elected in 1971 to the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island and is given her own display case.

She is credited with paving the way for other African-American tennis champions such as Arthur Ashe and then Venus and Serena Williams. Although she broke the color bar in women's tennis Gibson never earned enough from her tennis victories to support herself adequately. So in the early 1960s, she switched to golf, where she was successful and the winnings were better, and became the first black player to compete well on the women’s golf tour. But her winnings were still inadequate, and during a long illness her friends took up collections on her behalf. She died in 2003 at 76.

KENYA | Aug. 21 – Kenyatta Freed

Mzee Jomo Kenyatta was the George Washington of Kenya.

This day in 1961 he was freed by the British colonial government.

Kenyatta governed Kenya as its Prime Minister from 1963 to 1964 and then as its first President from 1964 to 1978. He was the country's first black head of government and was a key player in transforming Kenya from a colony of the British Empire into an independent republic.

Kenya was an economic powerhouse  relative to its neighbors during his 15 years as Kenyan leader.

As the leader of the Kenyan independence movement, Kenyatta was in prison while the British worried about the independence movement. A member of the largest, Kikuyu, tribe, he was ideologically an African nationalist and conservative and he led the Kenya African National Union (KANU) party from 1961 until his death.

Kenyatta was born to Kikuyu farmers in Kiambu, British East Africa, southwest of Mount Kenya. Educated at a Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) mission, he worked in various jobs before becoming politically engaged through the Kikuyu Central Association.

In 1920, Kenya formally became a British colony, and as of 1921 Kenyatta had moved to the colonial capital of Nairobi. He became involved in African nationalism and by 1928 had risen to the post of general secretary of the Kikuyu Central Association, an organization opposed to the seizure of tribal land by European settlers. In 1929, he travelled to London to lobby for Kikuyu tribal land affairs.

During the 1930s he studied intensely: (1) political tactics at Moscow's Communist University of the Toilers of the East, (2) phonetics at University College London, and (3) anthropology at the London School of Economics. At the end of the decade, in 1938, he published Facing Mount Kenya, which was an anthropological analysis, and celebration, of traditional Kikuyu society. He discussed its plight under colonial rule.

During World War II, he lived in England, lecturing and writing. In 1946, he returned to Kenya and in 1947 became president of the newly formed Kenya African Union (KAU). He pushed for majority rule, recruiting both Kikuyus and non-Kikuyus into the nonviolent movement.

In 1952, an extremist Kikuyu group, the Mau Mau, began a guerrilla war against the settlers and colonial government, leading to bloodshed, political turmoil, and the rounding up of tens of thousands of Kikuyus in detainment camps. Although he was not directly involved, Kenyatta was put on trial in 1952 with five other KAU leaders for "managing" the Mau Mau. An advocate of nonviolence and conservatism, Kenyatta pleaded innocent. After a politicized trial, he was found guilty and sentenced to seven years in prison. He spent six years in jail and was then sent to an internal exile at Lodwar, where he lived under house arrest.

Meanwhile, the British government saw the Swahili script on the wall and decided to prepare Kenya for black majority rule, allowing the nationalist groups to organize openly. In 1960, the Kenya African National Union (KANU) was created, and Kenyatta was elected president in absentia. The party announced it would not take part in any government until Kenyatta was freed.

Kenyatta pledged the protection of settlers’ rights in an independent Kenya, and on August 14, 1961, he was allowed to return to Kikuyu territory. He was formally released on August 21 and the following year he went to London to negotiate Kenyan independence. In May 1963 he led the KANU to victory in pre-independence elections. On December 12, 1963, Kenya celebrated its independence, and Kenyatta became prime minister. The next year, a new constitution made Kenya a republic, and Kenyatta was elected president.

As Kenya’s leader until his death in 1978, Kenyatta encouraged racial cooperation, promoted capitalist economic policies, and adopted a pro-Western foreign policy. He also consolidated his authority, suppressing opposition groups deemed radical. Kenya's stability attracted foreign investment in Kenya and Mzee ("elder" in Swahili) Kenyatta was influential throughout Africa. After he died on August 22, 1978, Daniel arap Moi continued most of Kenyatta's policies.

ATOM BOMB | Tested, July 1945

On July 16, 1945, at 5:29 a.m., 77 years ago, the Manhattan Project tested the first atom bomb. It was in Alamogordo, New Mexico, and the consensus was that it worked.

In 1939, Albert Einstein wrote to FDR supporting the idea that an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction had potential as a weapon. Enrico Fermi had ideas how to do this. In February 1940, the federal government set aside $6,000 for research on it.

In early 1942, the United States was now at war with the Axis. Germany was believed to be working on a uranium bomb. The War Department took an interest in the U.S. project and limits on resources  were removed. Brigadier-General Leslie R. Groves, an engineer, was put in charge of the research effort, which was located initially in Manhattan and was therefore called the Manhattan Project.

The Project succeeded in the desert of New Mexico. In 1943, Robert J. Oppenheimer began directing Project Y at a laboratory at Los Alamos, along with Hans Bethe and Edward Teller, as well as  Fermi. My former headmaster, Rev. Leo van Winkle, a Yale Ph.D. in Physics, was working on the project.

The first atomic bomb was detonated as scientist observers watched from six miles away. The first mushroom cloud stretched up 40,000 feet. The explosion began with intense light and ended with had the destructive power of perhaps 20,000 tons of TNT, followed by radioactive fallout. The tower holding the bomb was vaporized.

Germany was the original target, but they had surrendered. The only belligerent remaining was Japan. Henry Kissinger said once:

"The greatest danger of war seems to me not to lie in the deliberate actions of wicked men, but in the inability of harassed men to manage events that have run away with them."

MAGIC | Misdirection

If you think you can't be fooled by misdirection, watch this TED Talk (link below).

It's also a good introduction to Multi-Tasking.

https://www.ted.com/talks/apollo_robbins_the_art_of_misdirection#t-571236

ELIZABETH BISHOP | Reading

Elizabeth Bishop

Richard Wilbur, 1993 

Reposted here in abbreviated form from original posted on 03/04/2009, updated on 12/26/2016 by Arlo Haskell 

The 1993 Key West Literary Seminar was devoted entirely to Elizabeth Bishop. A series of readings-in-tribute offered her fellow poets the opportunity to discuss Bishop and her influence.

In the 18-minute KWLS recording from the event, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Wilbur reads Bishop’s “Little Exercise.” Originally published in her debut 1946 collection North and South, the poem ostensibly describes a thunderstorm “roaming the sky” over the mangrove islands, palm-lined boulevard, herons, and sleeping indigents characteristic of Key West, a place each poet called home. ...

Comments

John Tepper Marlin says:
01/14/2012 at 12:21 pm

I was sorry to see the Elizabeth Bishop house in Key West in such run-down condition.

Reply

◦ Arlo Haskell says:
01/16/2012 at 11:47 am

Something tells me Elizabeth would have liked it this way, tucked away and anonymous, as simple as the day she left it…

Reply

▪ John Tepper Marlin says:
08/06/2017 at 5:08 pm

Is it important to us whether or not the sandpiper is indifferent to becoming extinct?

Notable article in The New Yorker about Elizabeth Bishop in Brazil

                    https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/elizabeth-bishops-misunderstood-brazil

Previous posts on this site about Elizabeth Bishop:

Time Travel: ELIZ BISHOP | Key West 1938-46

nyctimetraveler.blogspot.com/2012/01/elizabeth-bishop-in-key-west.html

Jan 14, 2012

Time Travel: POETS | Eliz Bishop Homes Neglected in Key West, Brazil

nyctimetraveler.blogspot.com/2013/01/elizabeth-bishop-homes-neglected-in-key.html

Jan 18, 2013

Time Travel: POETS | Elizabeth Bishop in Ouro Preto

nyctimetraveler.blogspot.com/2014/02/on-elizabeth-bishops-trail-ouro-preto.html

Feb 16, 2014