Category Archives: History

Remember this?

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I was looking through some history for October this morning, and one event brought back a huge memory from my long-ago childhood.

Anyone remember singing this song in elementary school?

One dark night, while we were all in bed
Old Miz O’Leary left a lantern in the shed
And when the cow kicked it over, she winked her eye and said,
“There’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight.” [Fire! Fire! Fire!]

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Of course, it got me to thinking: why would we sing a hand-clappin’, knee-slappin’, happy song about something that killed between 100 and 300 people, destroyed dozens of city blocks, and left countless children orphans? I guess it’s our way of glossing over the pain. The above song about the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 wouldn’t have a place in any school music curriculum today, I’ll wager. Although … songs about Christopher Columbus sailing the ocean blue in fourteen hundred ninety-two are still all over the place — go figure. I digress.

What do you do when everything is on fire? You run. You leave everything and run. Then, as we saw so often during the coverage of 9/11, you choke. You can’t get away from the smoke; it gets harder to breathe with every gasp.

There were also tramplings, especially with so many folks trying to get out of town in horse-drawn wagons. I can’t imagine the pandemonium. All this while everything you own burns.

According to the readings, Chicago was supposed to have been a fire-conscious city in an age when fire was at the top of everyone’s fear list. I guess nobody told that to the all the wooden structures that served as fantastic kindling in an area ravaged by drought. The whole “Mrs. O’Leary’s cow” story never really stood up, either; rather, officials speculated that it was careless smoking that did the deed.

Growing up in Wisconsin, there was a general feeling that the Chicago fire overshadowed another tragic conflagration that occurred on the very same day: the Peshtigo Fire. which swallowed up 12 million acres of pristine forest, and killed 1200 people up near Green Bay. Why did the Chicago fire get all the glory? Obvious reasons: big famous city, cool cow story. Made no sense to me.

I do love reading about history, though. Don’t you wish everybody did? By the way. Big ol’ Hershey bar goes to the person who sees the product ad in this paragraph. Name the product and the slogan. First one to post it in a comment here is the big winna. :-)

All right, I’m late. Speaking of late…the Finkmobile goes in for repair on the 28th. Of November.

Oi.

Where were you?

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Seems like everyone remembers.

While I don’t remember where I was the day JFK was assassinated, I do remember watching the funeral on TV with my dad and being completely terrified of the flag-draped coffin pulled on the caisson. The memory of that feeling has stayed with me my whole life.

I remember exactly where I was standing and what I was doing when John Lennon was shot. Another indelible memory/feeling.

On this day in 2001, I was at school on a beautiful, sunny morning. I had just left the office and was on my way back to my classroom at the beginning of 2nd period, when the band director met me in the hallway and said, “I’m not sure what’s going on, but I just heard that someone bombed the Pentagon.” From there, it all went south.

I didn’t have a television in my room, and since 2nd period was my prep, I decided to walk down the middle school hallway and see what was going on. I ended up in the history teacher’s room, where his class sat in silence, watching. When I left at 9:30, it was chaos. When I returned at 10:30, just in time to watch the second tower fall, it was all too clear. It was Pearl Harbor all over again.

Where were you?

And on this date: school.

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How about some cool school trivia?

Today, 23 April, 376 years ago, school was officially in. In 1635, Boston Latin School became America’s first educational institution funded completely by local government.

  • The first headmaster was paid “fifty pounds and a house” from the public treasury.
  • Its students were taught to “dissent with responsibility.”
  • Five signers of the Declaration of Independence (John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, Robert Paine and William Hooper) received their boyhood training there.
  • The main purpose was to teach Puritan values and bible reading.

Well, look at the school now. We’ve all come a long way, baby. But…

  • School boards didn’t exist until 1837, so hiring practices were largely arbitrary (and often corrupt — *gasp*).
  • School wasn’t compulsory until 1851, when Massachusetts voted to require all children to attend.
  • High schools didn’t come about until 1820.

And schools, like countless other American institutions, changed with the times:

  • African American children were allowed to attend segregated, “separate but equal” schools after the Civil War.
  • The Smith-Hughes Act passed in 1917, and “tracking” was born. Students were pointed in vocational directions via “intelligence tests.”
  • In 1954, Brown vs. Topeka precipitated the Supreme Court decision that “separate” was definitely not “equal,” and that segregation must be abolished. We all know how that went over in the South. Eisenhower had to call in the National Guard to keep the peace.
  • In the 1980s, the first charter school popped up in Minnesota, and to some, signaled the renaissance of segregation.

And everything old is new again.

The agrarian school calendar has repeatedly come under fire. Personally, I think it would take a huge influx of cash and a systemic overhaul of union practices to pull off year-round schooling, so I don’t see it happening nationwide for a long time. And further, if you’re really a stickler for semantics, we don’t have a truly “agrarian” calendar. According to Dartmouth professor and researcher William Fischel:

The “agrarian calendar” was not the current calendar of fall-winter-spring. [C]ities in the late 19th century had school in the summer. Nobody had AC back then, so going to school or working in a hot factory was not a big deal. The real reason for the Sept to June calendar is the widespread adoption of age-graded schooling. Rural schools of the 19th century did not have age-specific grades, and so they could have a “term” of school whenever they wanted for as long as they wanted. But age-grading required coordination among different schools. You had to start and stop at the same time so the third graders could start fourth grade together with those from other schools.

Well isn’t that interesting. Teaching all these years, and never knew that. And if you’re still with me by now — did you enjoy this little Saturday lesson? Feels like school, no?

:-)

I think I’ll break with tradition and have some coffee this day. Resolutions, shmesolutions.

Like it was yesterday

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That’s how I remember it.

On 8 December, 1980, I was pacing my living room floor while watching a football game, with a sleepy six-week-old Seamus in my arms, when the news broke sometime in the late evening. Howard Cosell said something like, “It’s hard to go back to the game after reporting this.”

Strangely though, I remember nothing else about that night, except the tears that followed.

Those who know me know that the Beatles — John Lennon, especially — occupy a deep, private, important place in my heart. Heck, my soul. Their music spoke to me first in the late 60s, as a confused pre-teenager. I knew their earlier songs because my aunts used to play their records when they’d come to babysit Mavis and me. As I got older, I delved deeper into their stuff, and before long, I knew (and eventually owned) all of their mainstream albums.

But John’s voice and lyrics always held the top drawer space. There is no voice on the planet like his, although his son Julian’s comes pretty close. I can’t believe it’s been 30 years.

Speaking of dying: that’s what I felt was going to happen last night. I was closing up my classroom around 8:45 p.m. to go home after watching the first half of the  basketball game. I forgot about the presence of a big cinder block, which I sometimes use to prop the door open. I tripped over it and went down, hard, on my hands. Everything in my arms went flying. The good news: I can type this morning. As long as I don’t put any downward pressure on my right hand — like, oh, trying to play the piano or move the gearshift in the car — I’m fine. Today’s rehearsals should be interesting. Oi.

Imagine there’s no Christmas music…

Infamy

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Most of the time, war requires preparation. People know it’s coming; oftentimes, it’s a gradual progression to conflict. Not so with 7 December, 1941. For many years after, important people swore it would be the last time the United States would be caught unawares on such a huge scale. That held true until September 2001.

I remember Dad talking about Pearl Harbor; his contention was that FDR didn’t do enough. Dad always said that Roosevelt knew about the possibility of an attack, but instead of sending a personal envoy to Hawaii to warn them, he was caught up in transmitting telegrams to the Emperor of Japan. I don’t know if that’s true (I don’t subscribe to conspiracy theories, usually), and I haven’t the time to look it up right now, but it seems that even the worst of presidents — and there have been quite a few, from both parties, let’s admit it — would act in the country’s best interest before trying to talk someone out of declaring war.

But that’s just me.

I don’t make light of Pearl Harbor, or trivialize it in any way. I can’t imagine the horror of that morning. Final death toll after the 90-minute attack: 64 Japanese, and 2,386 Americans. War is not funny.

This week has two important historical tragedies; one more tomorrow. But for now, I hit the shower and the snowy road. Christmastime is here, happiness and cheer…

Shyeah right. Bah!