DailyNewsGems

House of Representatives Has Become the House of Crazies!

Final vote tally for H.R. 3684-Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act

Image Credit: House Television via AP

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If there is agreement on nothing else in Washington, the one area, you would think, that we can all agree on is how bad (downright deplorable) the crumbling roads and bridges are in the United States.

For evidence, look no further than the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) report card for 2021.  It assigned a “C-” grade, up from a “D+” in 2017, the highest grade in twenty years. In addition, the United States faces an “infrastructure investment gap” of nearly $2.6 trillion this decade, which left unaddressed, could cost the United States $10 trillion in lost GDP by 2039.

 McKinsey & Company researchers say that $150 billion per year will be required between 2017 and 2030 to modernize the country’s infrastructure needs. 

President Joe Biden responded quickly to the alarm bells and developed a $2 trillion “Build Back Better” infrastructure plan, an ambitious plan, which he promoted as a “once-in-a-generation investment in America.”

The second part of Biden’s infrastructure plan (which hasn’t been voted on yet) is a social spending bill that includes hundreds of billions of dollars for child- and elder-care programs, which is considered “human infrastructure.” To fund this plan, Biden has proposed raising taxes on corporations and wealthy Americans.

After heaps of acrimony and uncivilized debate, Congress passed a $1.2 trillion, bipartisan plan, which will invest hundreds of dollars to upgrade physical infrastructure, including roads and bridges, railways, airports, and water systems.  The plan additionally invests tens of billions of dollars to modernize the U.S. electrical grid, aggressively embrace electric vehicles, and significantly expand broadband internet access. 

With the stroke of a pen, President Biden will sign the bill on Monday.

On the face of it, this should have all the makings of a grand celebration for America’s infrastructure, much like when President Dwight D. Eisenhower on June 30, 1956, signed a record $33 billion road-building program, a bipartisan authorization bill, which was met with little opposition in Congress. Sinclair Weeks, Secretary of Commerce under the Eisenhower administration hailed the bill as the “the greatest public-works program in the history of the world.”

Unlike Ike’s, the harmony in Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill was nowhere to be found. Most Republicans were dead set against it, labeling a socialist bill. Only 13 Republicans broke ranks and voted for it.

The final tally for the bill’s passage in Congress was 228-206.

The infrastructure bill was greeted a little more warmly in the other chamber, when Senate Minority leader, Mitch McConnell, and 19 Senate Republicans voted in favor of the infrastructure bill on August 10th of this year.

It’s practically unfathomable how vicious Republicans opposition to the bill were. FOX News commentator Laura Ingraham tweeted the 13 Republicans who voted for the bill had signed their “political death warrants. “

That was just the beginning.

The GOP House leadership quickly launched a malicious drive to strip committee assignments from the 13 Republican lawmakers who voted for the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill.  

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., tweeted that those 13 Republicans "handed over their voting cards" to Nancy Pelosi to pass Biden's "Communist takeover of America via so-called infrastructure."

Why aren’t those members demonizing the 13 GOP members of Congress who voted for the bill being challenged by their own constituents and local newspapers for wanting to deny their state of badly needed infrastructure upgrades?

Why on earth would Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), want to oppose a bill that would deprive her own state of $12.5 billion in badly needed funding in Georgia over the next 20 years to maintain drinking water infrastructure. Georgia’s report card from the American Society of Civil Engineers additionally shows that Georgia has 374 bridges and more than 2,260 miles highway in poor condition.

Yet, Marjorie Taylor Greene likens the bill to communism and no one as much as bats an eye in her home state.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, (R-Fla) tweeted that he couldn’t believe Republicans gave the Democrats their socialism bill even though his own state of Florida has 408 bridges and over 3,564 miles of highway in poor condition.  From 2010 to 2020, the Sunshine State incurred 22 extreme weather events, which cost up to $100 billion in damages. The recently passed infrastructure bill will infuse $50 billion to help communities, like Florida, recover from disasters.

If I lived in Florida, I would be outraged that Gaetz wouldn’t support such a bill knowing how badly their state was slammed with weather disaster damages.

After reading such spiteful tweets, you became painfully aware how much the GOP has lost its purpose in Washington, abandoned its values and principles, and have forgot why they were elected, which is to improve the lives of their constituents through the enactment of better laws and to act as a strong voice for the crying needs of their communities.

Today, most members of the Republican Party, sadly, are more interested in tweeting the most outrageous comment on social media in order to elicit media attention and create a buzz on social media than they are in improving the lives of the residents they supposedly represent.

Their vicious attacks and vows of revenge against the 13 GOP members who voted their conscious and what was best for their state, was downright appalling. How do they live with themselves in refusing to be part of a bill that will repair the nation’s dilapidated infrastructure?

It really makes little sense to oppose such a bill when you look at the disturbing evidence of the condition of the country’s infrastructure.

Henry Petroski, a historian, in his book, “The Road Taken: The History and Future of America’s Infrastructure” writes that poor infrastructure can impose large costs on the U.S. economy. In addition to catastrophic failures with bridge collapses or dam breaches, poorly maintained roads, trains, and waterways cost billions of dollars in lost economic productivity.

In addition to the gloomy report from the American Society of Civil Engineers, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) finds that nearly one in four bridges are deficient, with 10 % considered as structurally deficient and 14 % functionally obsolete.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report in 2019 ranks the United States infrastructure at 13th in the world, behind France, Germany, Japan, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.

Equally alarming, a 2020 Federal Communications Commission report finds that approximately 18 million Americans, most living in rural areas, lack access to any broadband network.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that drinking water and irrigation systems need $632 billion in additional investment over the next decade.

And yet the United States hypes itself as one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

Besides the desperate need for drastic improvement of roads and bridges, Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill will serve as a significant boon to the ailing economy in the post-pandemic United States.

By increasing efficiency and reliability and lowering transportation costs, analysts contend that investment in the nation’s infrastructure would improve “long-term U.S. competitiveness, insulate the economy from shocks, and create jobs.”

 Imagine, the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers estimates that $1 billion of transportation-infrastructure investment supports as many as 13,000 jobs for a year.

This bill should have been championed by both parties as a great American success story.  Instead, some members of the Republican House of Representatives (such as Rep. Fred Upton R-Mich.) are being demonized and receiving death threats because Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) posted many of their phone numbers on her Twitter page. Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois reportedly received a call to slit his wrists and “rot in hell.” Another caller hoped Don Bacon of Nebraska would slip and fall down a staircase.

Because we live in an age when compromise is considered a dirty word and Republicans didn’t want to give Joe Biden legislative win, they were willing to neglect the needs of the nation’s infrastructure and were ok with denying potential jobs for constituents in their own state, all so they could embarrass Joe Biden.

As expected, former president Donald Trump demonized the bill, saying they [13 House members] should be “ashamed of themselves” for “helping the Democrats.”

Trump went mute over what the bill actually does for the country.

What kind of country have we become?

I never read about President Eisenhower being branded a socialist or communist for sponsoring and signing the Federal Highway Act of 1956, which gave birth to America’s interstate highway system. Eisenhower would later say that the Federal Highway Act was his favorite piece of legislation that he worked hard to get passed.

Everyone knows Washington is broken and dysfunctional; but even the Republicans, if they had any brains, would have subscribed to the timeless adage: “choose your fights wisely.”

Even Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell considered the infrastructure bill a “godsend” for his home state of Kentucky.

Jennifer Gosar, the sister of Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), told CNN’s Pamela Brown that she considers him a “sociopath”

***

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz) tweeted an image of someone killing progressive Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. Soon after, Gosar’s sister appeared on CNN, calling her own brother a “sociopath.”

I’m sure It would come as little surprise to Jennifer Gosar to know that her brother isn’t the only sociopath in Congress.

Clearly, Republicans in the House of Representatives, at least most of them, are now members of the House of Crazies!

 

--Bill Lucey

November 14, 2021

WPLucey@gmail.com

Winston Churchill's Iconic Status Questioned in New Book

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British statesman, writer, historian, and former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1940-1945), Winston Churchill, once famously said, “history will be kind to me for I intend to write it."

Well, history hasn’t been very kind to Winston Churchill lately, because a trend is in progress with revisionists and other commentators looking back on history with a 21^st century progressive and moral lens—on a mission to shame history’s most decorated historical figures. Knowing a rebuttal for those accused won’t be coming because they’re no longer around to defend themselves, makes their case appear even stronger.

Most recently, journalist and historian Geoffrey Wheatcroft has taken to a public flogging of Churchill in broad daylight in his new book, “Churchill’s Shadow,” hoping to shatter all the hero worshiping and adulations given to the “British Bulldog” for most of the 20^th century and spilling over into the 21^st century.

Wheatcroft challenges readers to widen their net when looking at Churchill’s life by taking a sharper, more critical look at some of his unseemly characteristics which have largely been swept under the rug.

Readers are going to have to decide for themselves whether his account is a character assassination or an objective, non-partisan look at arguably one of the most worshiped figures of the 20^th century.

Peter Baker, Chief White House correspondent for the New York Times, recently reviewed Wheatcroft’s book, writing that “on both sides of the Atlantic, we are living in an era when history is being re-examined, a time when monuments are coming down and illusions about onetime heroes are being shattered.”

Between the covers, Wheatcroft, according to Baker’s account, underscores Churchill’s perceived racism, narcissism, heavy drinking, his unabashed imperialist tendencies, neglecting his own children, along with being a horrible judge of character, and, naturally, a shameless mythmaker.

In Wheatcroft’s book, he becomes the prosecutor, judge and jury of Churchill’s life and career without the former prime minister ever appearing on the witness stand.

While Baker might not be in perfect agreement with Wheatcroft demolishing the iconic status of Churchill, he does concede that Wheatcroft makes a compelling argument in unpacking the complicated features of Churchill, just not the ones we selectively choose to remember.

“History is not one-dimensional,” Baker wrote. “Churchill was indeed a complicated figure, one whose stirring defense of Britain at its moment of maximum peril — and by extension that of Western civilization — overshadows fewer worthy parts of his record.”

Roger Louis, an American historian and a professor at the University of Texas at Austin and editor-in-chief of “The Oxford History of the British Empire” thinks “Churchill’s Shadow” was a book that needed to be written and according to him, an accurate reassessment. “It makes clear,” Louis told me, “what most authorities on Churchill would recognize as a long overdue account and concludes with a fair judgment: “he saved his country and saved freedom.”

Will Wheatcroft’s book significantly reshape Churchill’s legacy?

Not according to Richard M. Langworth, Senior Fellow at Hillsdale College’s Churchill Project.

“I think there is scarcely a dent in Churchill's legacy: first because most of the charges are false, and second because they ignore what really matters. Only a small fraction of people believes such things,” Langworth observed.

The Hillsdale College Churchill Project has been making “the case for the defense” against blatant inaccuracies written about Churchill for years-- such as its “Truths and Heresies," department.

The Churchill Project additionally documents a selection of popular quotes wrongly attributed to Churchill. Followers of Winnie, for example, might be surprised to learn he never said: "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: what counts is the courage to continue.” Nor did he say, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”

In addition to Peter Baker, “Churchill’s Shadow’’ was reviewed by British historian and biographer Richard Aldous in the Wall Street Journal in which he praises Wheatcroft for the first part of his book, but takes him to task for the second part in which he belittles historian Andrew Roberts (author of “Churchill: Walking With Destiny,” 2018), along with other historians for their "Churchillolatry.”

“That’s a shame,” Aldous wrote, “not least because Mr. Roberts’s is a much better book—deeply researched in the archives and the product of decades of Churchill study.”

 Aldous is additionally puzzled that Wheatcroft questions the wisdom of the British state paying £12.5 million for the Churchill papers. “Those papers are now available digitally, though Mr. Wheatcroft seems not to have made much use of them,” Aldous wrote.

 Aldous contends Wheatcroft was correct in suggesting that so much of what Churchill believed in and championed has “withered away” as Britain lost its leadership prominence as the 20^th century came to a close. But Aldous is just as quick to point out that while Britain is no longer a superpower, it still maintains the fifth largest economy in the world, has a permanent seat on the United Nations Council, is a leading member of NATO, and is now part of the Aukus security alliance (with Australia and the United States).

“All these elements of status and power,” Aldous argues, “have their origins in the late 1940s and 1950s, a period Mr. Wheatcroft views so balefully. “

Chris Waters, professor of Modern European History at Williams College (Williamstown, Massachusetts) agrees with Wheatcroft that the cult surrounding Churchill since World War II emphasizing his “finest hour” speech too often dominates the “more problematic side Churchill’s character and politics,’’ which should be more thoroughly scrutinized.

Waters argues as Britain has lost its prominent status on the world stage, there’s a tendency to fall prey to nostalgia, especially about Churchill going to eyeball-to-eyeball with Adolf Hitler and standing tall after the Luftwaffe sprayed bombs on London for 57 consecutive nights between September and November 1940.

Waters believes, strongly, that we should “demolish the myth that has grown up around Churchill since the War, but we should not demolish the statues or fail to respect his many triumphs and contributions to the nation either!”

Since the main thrust of “Churchill’s Shadow” was to smash what Wheatcroft considered the blatant idolatry of Churchill in historian Andrew Robert’s 2018 masterpiece, “Churchill Walking with Destiny,” (published in 2018), it didn’t take long for Roberts to answer back.

In an article published by The Churchill Project , the biographer and historian highlighted some weaknesses or inaccuracies in Wheatcroft’s work.

Wheatcroft stated Churchill was not a well-travelled man. Quite the contrary, Roberts fired back. “Churchill visited America 16 times and Canada nine times, crossing both from coast to coast. He served for years in India and Afghanistan, fought in Cuba, South Africa, the Sudan and on the Franco-Belgian border, honeymooned in Italy, holidayed in France, Italy, Florida, Monaco, Madeira, Morocco, Bahamas and Spain, mountaineered in Switzerland, twice visited Stalin in Moscow, held conferences in Cairo and Tehran, watched army maneuvers with the Kaiser in Germany, cruised the Mediterranean and Caribbean, and also visited Palestine, Iceland, Turkey, Cyprus, Uganda, Belgium, Tanganyika (modern-day Tanzania), Mozambique, Kenya, Bermuda, Monaco, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Malta, Holland, Trinidad, Jamaica and Greece.”

In another part of the book, Wheatcroft argues that Churchill’s judgement was strategically flawed. “Yet,” Roberts answers, it was Churchill and “Alan Brooke (senior officer of the British army) who not only came up with the Mediterranean strategy that liberated North Africa and Italy but also sold it to the Americans, and ensured no over-hasty return in force to the European continent before D-Day.”

In addition, charges that Churchill cultivated fascist leanings in the 1920’s isn’t supported by any reputable sources, Roberts claims, except political enemies of the “British Bulldog.”

Roberts argues, among other weaknesses of the book, that many of Wheatcroft’s sources are dubious, including the use of internet articles by the former journalist Johann Hari, who later had to return a journalism prize for inventing quotes.

In summing up Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s book, Roberts wrote that “never in the field of Churchill revisionism have so many punches been thrown in so many pages with so few hitting home.”

Winston Churchill addresses the House of Commons of Canada in 1941. 

Photo Credit: CP Archive

***

Admittedly, one of the biggest problems in assessing the life and times of Winston Churchill, much like Abraham Lincoln, is that he endured many failures and hardships before rising to the top when his country needed him most, during its darkest hour.

Churchill spent sixty years of his political life in the House of Commons. Taking a broad brush to Churchill’s accomplishments and failures over so many decades of service, isn’t fair. He entered the House of Commons in 1900, and over 19 contested elections, he was successful in 14 of them.

He failed miserably in 1915 as First Lord of the Admiralty in orchestrating the disastrous Dardanelles naval campaign, which resulted in the loss of thousands of British lives. As Chancellor of the Exchequer (treasurer) he blundered badly by restoring Britain to the gold standard, which resulted in unemployment, deflation, and a general strike. He also voted against self-rule for India, unable to let go of the romanticism associated with Britain’s imperial history. And much like Lincoln, he succumbed to severe bouts of depression, “The Black Dog’’ as he called it.

Imagine, Churchill was 65 years old when he became PM in 1940, about the time most are retiring.

Prior to leading Britain out of the dark storm, Churchill served in every important cabinet post except for Foreign Minister.

So, all those setbacks and failures he experienced may very well have prepared him for a time when the country needed a strong, resolute leader to face the menace of Nazi Germany. Churchill undoubtedly met the challenge as PM and as head of the Ministry of Defense.

“I felt as if I was walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour," he would later write.

While all of us may fall prey to Churchill idolatry now and again, it’s hard to imagine how Britain and Western Europe could have survived World War II had not Churchill been in the right place at the right time, with decades and decades of experience under his belt.

I’m not reading many books that focus on Abraham Lincoln being defeated for the state legislature in 1832, his abysmal failings in business, being defeated for the U.S. Senate, not once (1854) but twice (1858), and being defeated in the nomination for the Vice Presidency in 1856.

But we do remember Lincoln’s Gettysburg address (November 19, 1863) in which he famously said: “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

 Churchill, to be sure, possessed heaps of flaws, prejudices, and undoubtedly exercised poor judgement at times in his career, but do we honor Churchill today for his personality qualities and boorish behavior, or do we honor him for his indomitable courage and leadership in rallying the nation during arguably one of the most destructive conflicts in human history, when FDR and the United States was nowhere to be found.

 

--Bill Lucey

November 3, 2021

WPLucey@gmail.com

Early Prognosis: Baker Mayfield Likely Done for the Season

Cleveland Browns quarterback, Baker Mayfield, absorbs a punishing sack from Arizona Cardinals defensive end, J.J. Watt

Photo Credit:  Brownswire.USAToday.com

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Cleveland Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield is as tough and resilient as they come. There’s simply no quit in this unconquerable Texas native who’s in his fourth year as the Browns field general.

Typically, any setback he faces, only means he roars back the following week like a Category 4 hurricane, usually silencing his critics in a blink of an eye. If you remember, Mayfield was met with boos and hollers last year when he overthrew some easy targets early in the season. His confidence was never shaken and bounced back with some star-studded performances, leaving his critics speechless.

That’s the charm of this blue-collar quarterback playing in a blue-collar town: both were made for each other, a marriage made in heaven. Mayfield won’t be confused with Tom Brady or Joe Montana, but his work ethic, raw talent, and unabashed confidence is well suited to this Rust Belt city.

Unfortunately, as tough as he is, multiple shoulder injuries he sustained in the first few weeks of the young season--left him sidelined in week seven against the Denver Broncos who visited the shores of Lake Erie on Thursday night.

Not only were the Browns without Baker Mayfield, hamstring injuries sidelined their two workhorses in the backfield: Nick Chubb and Kareem Hunt.

Thanks to the serviceable job turned in by backup quarterback, Case Keenum, (now on his 8^th NFL team since 2012) and the spectacular running performance of D’Ernest Johnson (rushing for 146 yards and 1 TD), the Browns broke their two-game losing streak with a 17-14 win to put them at 4-3 for the season.

The Browns now face three formidable opponents in the coming weeks: they’ll be in Pittsburgh on October 31 followed by two home games against Cincinnati (November 7) and New England (November 14^th). Two of those three opponents, of course, are division rivals.

The question now becomes will Mayfield be healthy enough to battle through his injuries and return as the Browns starting quarterback?

That’s been a mighty big question mark all week.

Mayfield suffered a fully torn labrum (cartilage that is attached to the shoulder socket rim) in week two of the season. He mentioned to reporters, he was experiencing some “fraying in the shoulder.” If that wasn’t alarming enough, the Browns quarterback recently admitted to reporters that he fractured the humerus bone at the top of the non-throwing shoulder when the Browns played the Los Angeles Chargers in Week 5 of the season, compliments of a J.J. Watt strip sack.

So, now Baker Mayfield is dealing with multiple fractures. Early indications are is that he’s determined to play though the injuries and schedule surgery after the season is over. Head coach Kevin Stefanski told reporters in his post-game press conference after the Denver game that he hasn’t made any decision on whether Mayfield will start on October 31 and will rely, heavily, on the advice of his medical team.

Curious about the severity of Mayfield’s injuries, I consulted with a few sports medicine specialists who deal with elbow and shoulder surgeries.

Not knowing all the minute specifics of Mayfield’s injuries, their prognosis, nonetheless, was not encouraging.

Josef K. Eichinger, an M.D. in sports medicine, shoulder and elbow surgery, and Professor of Orthopaedics at the Medical University of South Carolina, said that Mayfield should strongly consider surgery. “My money,” Eichinger told me, “would be on him being out for the remainder of the season.  The multiple dislocations are a real concern.  Cumulative dislocations can result in additional bone loss and can change the nature of surgery. “

Eichinger went on to explain that, typically, you can play through a torn labrum, but the fracture Mayfield suffered will require a minimum of 6-8 weeks (or longer to heal).

Amit Momaya, M.D. in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the Heersink School of Medicine at the University of Alabama Birmingham, thinks players with greater tuberosity fractures can return as early as a few weeks.  “The danger,” Dr. Amit warns, “is that repeated dislocations can result in glenoid (socket) bone loss in terms of long-term damage, which can make surgery more involved. In addition, a repeat injury to a healing fracture may result in displacement, thus requiring surgery."

My guess is that Baker Mayfield will follow the sound advice of his medical team and opt for surgery immediately, meaning he’ll miss the rest of the season. With 10 bruising opponents still to come, I don’t see the sense of jeopardizing his long-term health so early into his promising career.

He’s still a young athlete, only 26, whose long-term contract still hangs in the balance. Why risk playing through the rest of the year with the chance he’ll never be the same again?

It’s a crying shame that Mayfield’s season is most likely over. He recently took to social media (as did his wife, Emily) to answer critics who made some vicious comments about his mediocre play in week four and five of the season.  It was during those weeks that Mayfield was suffering from a torn labrum (in his non-throwing arm) but never made it an excuse. He still faced toxic comments on Twitter after the Los Angeles Chargers loss in week five despite throwing for over 300 yards, two touchdown passes, and no interceptions.

What’s so ridiculous about all this back and forth about Mayfield and whether he’s a franchise quarterback is that we wouldn’t even be having this conversation if the Browns defense hadn’t played so poorly over the last few weeks.

Over the last three games, the Browns defense has surrendered 98 points. How’s a team supposed to be successful with those kinds of numbers, regardless of who’s the quarterback.  During the Browns lopsided loss (37-14) to the Arizona Cardinals in week six, the Cardinals offense scored on every possession in the first half. That’s just plain disgraceful, which raises serious questions whether this team is playoff bound with such a broken-down, disheveled defense.

Over the last few weeks, including the Denver win on Thursday, opposing quarterbacks just seem to be able to slice and dice their way through the Browns secondary without much effort, like a knife through butter. It’s simply painful to watch.

And yet, all the idle chatter among Cleveland fans is whether Baker Mayfield is a franchise quarterback.

The Kansas City Chiefs have dropped four out of their last six games. I don’t hear Chief fans calling for Pat Mahomes head--even though he’s thrown eight interceptions, five more than Baker Mayfield. Mahomes completion percentage (69.00), moreover, is just a tick above Mayfield’s (67.1).

The same goes for Aaron Rodgers, the Green Bay Packers quarterback.  Rodger’s completion percentage stands at 66.7, just below Mayfield’s. And while Mayfield might not have as many touchdown passes as his equals, few teams have the firepower in the backfield like the Browns have with Nick Chubb and Kareem Hunt who have a combined nine rushing touchdowns this year. In baseball lingo, these two freight trains represent the Ruth and Gehrig of the NFL. Not many teams have the luxury that Mayfield does in having such a strong backfield to punch the ball into the endzone.

While Browns fans are railing against Baker Mayfield, they should be reminded that this team absorbed 12 consecutive losing seasons before last year. The last time they had a winning season, prior to 2000, was in 2007. In addition, the Browns, last year, with Baker Mayfield as their quarterback, advanced to the playoffs for the first time since 2002.  They upset the Pittsburgh Steelers, 48-37, in the NFL Wild Card game before losing to the Kansas City Chiefs (22-17) in the NFL Divisional round.

Browns fans should also remind themselves that before Baker came on the scene, there was a habitual defeatist attitude cascading through Northeast Ohio, so convinced that the Browns would never taste success. Mayfield changed the whole narrative in Cleveland. For the first time in quite some time, fans expect the Browns to win and win often. Mayfield is a no excuses type of guy, the first in the office in the morning, and the last to leave at night (as head coach Kevin Stefanski once explained), working his tail off to make Cleveland proud of the Browns again, much like it was during the glory days of Otto Graham and Jim Brown.

I’ll keep praying, that by some miracle, Baker Mayfield does return to lead the Browns this year. But if he doesn’t, the Browns can expect brighter days ahead if he’s signed to a long-term contract and made our franchise quarterback for many years to come.

Do we really have to count how many quarterbacks the Browns went through before Mayfield was drafted in the first round of the 2018 NFL draft?

If you insist on knowing, 28 different starting quarterbacks suited up for the Browns since 1999, the year they re-entered the NFL.

Given all that Mayfield has accomplished over the last few seasons in helping propel the Browns into a winning team, with a winning attitude, together with a tinge of swagger, I think he deserves a great deal more respect than what he’s been shown (by some belligerent so-called fans) over the last few weeks.

--Bill Lucey

WPLucey@gmail.com

October 24, 2021

 

***

Baker Mayfield and his wife, Emily (Wilkinson) Mayfield took to social media to answer critics

 

Exiting a Never-Ending Civil War in Afghanistan

President Joe Biden speaking on the situation in Afghanistan and on the response to Tropical Storm Henri on August 22, 2021.

Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

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History wasn’t going to repeat itself on Joe Biden’s watch.

At least not if he had anything to do with it.

The 46^th U.S. President and fourth guardian of the war in Afghanistan was determined not to meet the same fate as Lyndon Johnson, when the tall, big-eared Texan left office in 1968.

Johnson biographer and historian Robert Caro reports that there were 23,000 Americans in Vietnam when LBJ took office. By the end of 1965, that number leaped to 184,000; by the end of his presidency, there were 586,000 American troops in Southeast Asia. 58,000 Americans were killed, 288,000 seriously wounded.

Was it worth it? Hardly! North Vietnam conquered South Vietnam (who the U.S. supported), surrendering in April, 1975.

By the time Joe Biden was sworn in as president, he was faced with the same difficulty bedeviling George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. All of these presidents wrestled whether to send in more troops, more money, more weapons in dealing with the Afghan civil war or end American’s participation in a tribal conflict and withdraw.

Biden had the courage to step forward and rip off the band aid and withdraw the troops. He chose such an action knowing full well the land mines he was about to confront.

“There never was a good time to withdraw U.S. forces” Biden said in his August 16^th address to the nation.

Biden could have kicked the can down the road, like three of his predecessors have, and left it to his successor to deal with the mess when he was out of office.

Instead, he did something novel-he took ownership of the war in Afghanistan.

“I am president of the United States of America, and the buck stops with me,” Biden said.

I’m sure the decision wasn’t an easy one, knowing leaving meant possibly the reemergence of the scourge of the Taliban, and more alarming still--the reemergence of the terrorist group, al Qaeda.

But to hear newspaper reports, opinion columnists, and nauseating television talking heads, you would think it was Biden’s war to begin with.

Why wasn’t the media asking what has been accomplished in the 20 years before Joe Biden assumed office?

The answer is fairly simple. The Taliban, after 20 years, is still alive and well in Afghanistan. They never really left, they were scattered in the crevices of the countryside, the villages, and small towns, particularly in the south of the country, their stronghold, while the U.S. military held the larger populated urban areas.

What does the U.S. have to show for it after 20 years? Glad you asked! 2,461 U.S. service members have been killed, 20,000 injured, another 3,846 U.S. contractors killed.

The final U.S. tab? Between the Afghanistan and Iraq--$2 trillion.

I wish the same journalists condemning Biden would discuss what are mission in Afghanistan has been?

After getting rid of terrorists who attacked on 9/11 and preventing Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for terrorists, it was to make the Afghans self-reliant by providing them with billions of economic assistance, the best military training in the world, along with state-of-the-art weapons.

Between 2002 and 2017, in fact, the United States reportedly gave the Afghan military an estimated $28 billion in artillery, including guns, rockets, night-vision goggles and even small drones for intelligence gathering.

An Afghan National Army soldier stands in afternoon formation awaiting instructions at a checkpoint in western Afghanistan, Dec. 31, 2019.

Photo By Jeffery J. Harris/U.S. Army

***

What else is to be done in a country divided with factionalism and tribal warfare? U.S. forces, after all, helped equip the Taliban with a convenient anti-colonialist rallying cry for others to join their crusade in rooting out foreign occupation.

Clearly, we overstayed our welcome!

It’s obvious now that the Afghans were never interested in autonomy or taking the baton from the U.S. to lead their country as they saw fit, far removed from Taliban influence.

Once President Biden announced he would abide by the deal President Trump struck with the Taliban to withdraw all troops, Afghan troops folded like a deck of cards.

Knowing the U.S. were heading to the exit doors, heaps of Afghan troops, instead of hunkering down and taking responsibility for their country, accepted cold hard cash from the Taliban and handed over their weapons, practically without as much as a whimper. Knowing the Taliban would eventually control the major cities, others surrendered without a fight in exchange for not being subject to harsh retribution once the Taliban reigned supreme.

Large pockets of Afghans additionally didn’t feel President Ashraf Ghani (before he fled the country) came to power legitimately; his presidency was tainted with fraud and corruption. And he didn’t accomplish what he set out to do, which was to unite the country. Before Biden was elected, Ghani, according to many observers, was prone to cruelty and spite. When the U.S. asked him to form a negotiating team in 2018, it took him two years. A senior Afghan leader told journalist Dexter Filkins (from the New Yorker) that Ghani was surrounding himself with people who were determined to “destroy the peace process.”

When Ghani was reelected in 2019, less than two million Afghans voted for him. Many Afghans didn’t feel waging war for such an ineffective leader was worth fighting for.

The U.S., in other words, flushed $83 billion down the toilet (in weapons, equipment, training) over the last 20 years with little to show for it.

Reuters reports that the Taliban control more than “2,000 armored vehicles, U.S. Humvees, and up to 40 aircraft potentially including UH-60 Black Hawks, scout attack helicopters, and ScanEagle military drones.”

Biden, correctly, said from the East Room of the White House that it’s up to Afghans to make the decision about the future of their country. “American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves,” Biden stated on August 16.  “We spent over a trillion dollars.  We trained and equipped an Afghan military force of some 300,000 strong — incredibly well equipped — a force larger in size than the militaries of many of our NATO allies. “

What Joe Biden realizes now is what the Soviet Union came to realize when they finally withdrew its troops from Afghanistan in 1989. After 10 years of occupation, 13,000 of their soldiers had been killed, 40,000 more wounded and the public outcry for remaining in such a quagmire in a foreign land, propelled the Soviet Union to exit the country and direct more money toward fixing a deplorable health care system back home, work on arms reduction, and other freedom of speech initiatives that needed serious attention.

Similarly, Joe Biden realizes with an ambitious $1 trillion Infrastructure Bill passed by the Senate last month, the $2 trillion spent on Iraq and Afghanistan could have been spent much more wisely on American soil, including policies to address climate change, funding to expand high-speed internet access; much needed repairs to roads, bridges, and airports; modernization of the nation’s power grid, repairing and replacing aging public works projects and more mechanisms directed at  pollution control.

Biden also acknowledges the paradigm of U.S. foreign policy is changing, which means we have to change with it, which includes tracking and directing more of our resources toward al Shabaab (a jihadi militant organization in Somalia), al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al-Nursa (another jihadist organization fighting against Syrian government forces in the Syrian Civil War), along with monitoring ISIS attempts to create a caliphate in Syria and Iraq and establishing affiliates in multiple countries in Africa and Asia. All of these new global fears were articulated by Joe Biden in his remarks to the nation on August 16^th.

As Abraham Lincoln said in 1862: “As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew.”

It’s almost hysterical that while Joe Biden is receiving the brunt of the blame for pulling out of Afghanistan, his boss for eight years, Barack Obama, receives hardly a mention for his deception.

On December 14, 2014, President Obama said, “thanks to the extraordinary sacrifices of our men and women in uniform, our combat mission in Afghanistan is ending, and the longest war in American history is coming to a responsible conclusion.”

Only it wasn’t the end.

Instead of reducing our troops to 5,500 as he told the American public, he ordered more U.S. boots to stay in Afghanistan in July, 2016. So that by the time Obama left the White House (January, 2017), 8,400 troops remained in Afghanistan.

Craig Whitlock, an investigative reporter for The Washington Post, reporting on national security issues wrote that the “Obama administration’s assertion that the fighting had ended was “among the most egregious deceptions and lies that U.S. leaders spread during two decades of warfare.” “The war,” Whitlock explained, “was nowhere near done, and Obama wasn’t willing to actually end it, lest he face exactly what Biden is facing right now.”

 Instead of attacking him and slinging arrows in his direction, many should be thanking President Biden for finally ending our presence in Afghanistan, saving American lives, and doing what Barack Obama promised but blatantly lied about.

 

--Bill Lucey

WPLucey@gmail.com

September 7, 2021

Did Ethel Rosenberg Deserve the Electric Chair?

 

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg in 1951.

Photo Credit: Not provided.

***

British author and journalist, Anne Sebba, who has written biographies on some shadowy British figures, including Jennie Churchill and Wallis Simpson, among others, traveled across the Atlantic to explore one of the most controversial characters of them all in her new book, “Ethel Rosenberg: An American Tragedy."

In one of the most highly debated cases in American history, Ethel, along with her husband, Julius Rosenberg, were tried and convicted of espionage for providing the Soviet Union classified information on the Manhattan Project. The Rosenbergs were executed in 1953.

Ethel Rosenberg was the first woman executed by the United States Government since Mary Surratt, an American boarding house owner, was hanged (July 7, 1865) for her role in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

The Manhattan Project was a code name attached to a top-secret project involving Allied scientists working to develop an atomic bomb. According to recorded testimony, British physicist Klaus Fuchs, working at Los Alamos, met with a Soviet agent (named Raymond) on two different occasions and transferred notes on the working design for the atomic bomb.

Fuchs would eventually be arrested and pressured to name his co-conspirators. He confessed to spying and passing to the Soviets information about the Manhattan Project.

There isn’t much debate surrounding Julius Rosenberg, the husband of Ethel Rosenberg. He was a card-carrying Communist party member since December 12, 1939, approximately six months after marrying Ethel in a small civil ceremony.

Mountains of court testimony, FBI records, and recently declassified cables, show irrefutably that Julius Rosenberg was a prime mover and shaker of a spy ring which involved transferring classified information about the development of the United States first atomic bomb from the Los Alamos Laboratory (New Mexico) to a courier, Harry Gold, who was alleged to have passed it on to the Soviets.

Testimony reveals David Greenglass, the brother of Ethel Rosenberg, passed a "sketch of a high-explosive lens mold" to Gold at Julius Rosenberg’s request; a sketch that was eventually transferred to the Soviets.

 Greenglass worked as a machinist-soldier stationed at Los Alamos. He was recruited by Julius Rosenberg to assist in this espionage ring.

 So, exactly how did Ethel become linked in this spy ring?

When the FBI questioned Greenglass on June 15, 1950; in addition to naming his wife Ruth and Julius Rosenberg in the spy ring, he told the feds that Ethel Rosenberg, the wife of Julius, was in Julius’s apartment room and typed hand written notes on classified information from him.

In fact, no handwritten or type-written notes were ever found and they were never presented in court, raising credibility problems for the prosecution’s case that Ethel Rosenberg was an accomplice to the spy ring. The charges that Ethel Rosenberg typed the notes, in other words, was unsubstantiated.

In exchange for their testimony, David and Ruth Greenglass were given appreciably lighter sentences.

It wouldn’t be divulged until 2008 that the Greenglass’s (both Ruth and David, active participants in the spying activity) lied in their original testimony about Ethel Rosenberg typing notes that would facilitate the spy ring. They later claim they were coerced by the prosecuting team, led by the ruthless firebrand Roy Cohn, to fabricate their story so they could force Ethel Rosenberg to disclose additional badly needed information about the spy ring.

In order to save his wife from prosecution, David Greenglass told journalist Sam Roberts that he was squeezed by the prosecution to commit perjury. His false testimony additionally saved his wife from prosecution.

David Greenglass was released from prison in 1960 after serving 10 years of his 15-year sentence. His wife, Ruth, was never charged.

***

Groundless accusations against Ethel Rosenberg and the reason she was sentenced to death becomes the central focus of Anne Sebba’s fascinating book.

Most observers who have followed the Rosenberg case reach the overriding conclusion that threatening Ethel with a harsh punishment would make her share more information about the spy ring. She never offered prosecutor’s any more damaging information about the espionage activity because she wasn’t privy to such information. She was merely the wife of a Soviet spy, not a collaborator.

Martin Sobell, an American engineer, convicted of spying for the Soviet Union, told reporters in 2008 that Ethel was guilty only "of being Julius's wife.”

Anne Sebba writes that the true extent of Ethel’s complicity will probably never be clearly known, but points out, “it was not a crime under U.S. Law to approve spousal wrongdoing, either during the war or the time of the trial.”

The fact that Julius Rosenberg didn’t distance Ethel from the real crime capers during the intense questioning, left many historians and journalists scratching their heads why he wouldn’t save his own wife from possible execution.

Not all observers, however, are convinced Ethel Rosenberg wasn’t an active participant in the spy ring.

Mark Kramer, Director of the Cold War Studies Project at Harvard University, told me “the evidence against Ethel Rosenberg at the trial was overwhelming, and Soviet foreign intelligence documents that became available in 2005 provide conclusive evidence that she gave her husband invaluable assistance with his espionage ring.”   “She did not deserve to be put to death” Kramer concedes, “but she certainly was guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage and was justifiably convicted, despite the misdeeds of the prosecutors.” Kramer thought a sentence of 15 to 25 years for Ethel Rosenberg would have been more appropriate. 

Along with the dubious charges against Ethel Rosenberg, Anne Sebba drives home the critical point that the execution of the Rosenbergs happened during a time of heightened paranoia in the United States about Soviet aggression and Communist intrusion into leading American institutions.

At the time of the Rosenberg case, Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, the prominent ring leader of the “Second Red Scare,” charged that the State Department employed over 200 Communist agents, triggering fear and suspicion, leading to the blacklisting of a number of individuals who were hauled in front of McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee and accused of unfounded subversion and treason charges.

“For one brief moment in time,” Sebba wrote, “hysteria overtook common sense and, in order to appear strong in the face of credible Communist threat, the American government allowed this profoundly moral woman to be executed, and in the most brutally incompetent manner.” “It is hard to imagine,” Sebba went on to write, “any other country, in Western Europe of the wider free world, where this terrible fate would have been inflicted on Ethel.”

The death penalty unquestionably met with the approval of a number of Americans at the time. As many as 68% respondents in a 1953 survey, supported the death penalty.

The death penalty might have been ok with a majority of the American public, but there was pent-up outrage, internationally, for the death sentence of Ethel Rosenberg, which Anne Sebba underscores.

At the time of the trial, for example, The New York Times printed a letter from German born physicist, Albert Einstein, who wrote: “My conscience compels me to urge you (President Eisenhower) to commute the death sentence of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.”

The Vatican newspaper (L’Osservatore Romano) published a passionate plea from the pope not to execute the Rosenbergs. Before he left office, President Truman received as many as three million letters and telegrams asking the Rosenbergs not be put to death.

Further, U.S. Ambassador to France, C. Douglas Dillon, predicted (probably correctly) that the Rosenberg executions would be viewed, many years later, as a knee jerk reaction to McCarthyism. The majority in France, in fact, opposed the executions which they viewed as “unjustifiable punishment.”

For decades after the trial, the Rosenberg’s sons Robert and Michael Meeropol believed both their parents weren’t spies and fought vigorously to clear their names.

All that changed in 2008, when 91-year-old Martin Sobell admitted for the first time that he was a Soviet spy in a New York Times article. He additionally implicated Julius Rosenberg in the spy ring. According to the New York Times, “coupled with some of that grand jury testimony, Mr. Sobell’s admission bolsters what has become a widely held view among scholars: that Mr. Rosenberg was, indeed, guilty of spying, but that his wife was at most a bit player in the conspiracy and may have been framed by complicit prosecutors.”

After such a sobering revelation, the Rosenberg sons finally gave up the fight and acknowledged their father, Julius Rosenberg, was indeed a Soviet spy.

Both sons, however, continue to fight for the exoneration of their mother, Ethel Rosenberg. In 2016, they made an impassioned plea to President Barack Obama to clear her name without success.

Now that there’s a new president, I asked Michael Meeropol whether he and his brother would make a plea to President Joe Biden to decide for himself whether their mother was a spy?

Mr. Meeropol responded to my email only to say, “my brother and I are considering the possibilities, but we have not made any decisions yet.”

Thanks to Anne Sebba’s compelling narrative, readers are given an opportunity to decide for themselves whether prisoner number “10510” (from the Sing Sing prison overlooking the east bank of the Hudson River) really deserved to be executed shortly after 8 p.m. on June 19, 1953, along with her husband, Julius.

 

--Bill Lucey

WPLucey@gmail.com

June 19, 2021

Remembering 1948: Progress in Civil Rights and the World Champion Cleveland Indians

Larry Doby, left, with Satchel Paige, was the American League's first Black player.

Photo Credit: Sporting News, via Getty Images

***

"Our Team: The Epic Story Of Four Men And The World Series That Changed Baseball," by Luke Epplin is more than a book about the 1948 World Series, the last time the Cleveland Indians won a World Series.

It’s actually a splendidly written, meticulously researched, and upbeat social history about the expansion of Black American baseball players into Major League Baseball.

Heaps of attention has historically been paid to Jackie Robinson in becoming the first African-American baseball player in Major League Baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, while Larry Doby, a 23-year-old outfielder for the Newark Eagles, (the first American League African-American player to smash the color barrier 11 weeks later), often receives little attention or becomes a mere footnote by baseball historians.

Epplin, a New York City writer, centers this American social saga on four individuals: two Black, and two white, all of whom changed the face of baseball forever. Biographical sketches presented of Larry Doby, Satchel Paige, Bill Veeck, and Bob Feller become, knowingly or not, the unsung heroes of the integration of baseball.

Had it not been for Doby and Satchel Paige breaking the color line, many argue, the Indians might not have won the 1948 World Series.

Luckily for baseball, the integration of Jackie Robinson, Larry Doby, Satchel Paige, and others, wouldn’t have been possible without two color-blind owners: Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers and of course, Veeck of the Cleveland Indians, who bought the Indians in June, 1946.

The progressive thinking Rickey reportedly said: “the greatest untapped reservoir of raw material in the history of the game is the Black race.” “The Negro,” Ricky observed, “will make us winners for years to come.”

Bill Veeck, meanwhile, not only wasn’t afraid of welcoming Black players into the big leagues, he enthusiastically widened his net with the hiring of Black security guards, vendors, janitors, groundskeepers, ushers and musicians, along with offering a front office job to Olympic gold medalist, Harrison Dillard.

Despite the overabundance of promising talent in the Negro Leagues, it would take years before the rest of baseball would sign Black players, including the New York Yankees who didn’t sign a Black player until 1955, the Detroit Tigers not until 1958, and the Boston Red Sox were the last to the party, by not signing a Black player until 1959, more than ten years after the game was officially integrated.

Alabama born, Satchel Paige, 42-years-old, came on board in July, 1948 during the Indians stretch run of the pennant race. Epplin underscores how Satch during his first month with the Indians, only surrendered seven runs over 38 and a third innings, while generating rock star status. His first three starts in MLB, attracted more than 200,000 fans, inspiring sports columnist for the Cleveland News, Ed McAuley, to write that Paige was “the greatest drawing card in the history of baseball”

Overall, Paige pitched 21 games in the 1948 regular season, including seven starts with two complete game shutouts. His ERA that year was an impressive 2.48.

Larry Doby became the first Black player to belt a home run in a World Series in Game 4 of the Boston Braves and Indians Series. The Indians disposed of the Boston Braves in six games. Doby additionally led the Indians with a .318 batting average in the 1948 Series.

Not many people associate Iowa native Bob Feller with progressive thinking in race relations, especially in 1948. Rapid Robert, in fact, told reporters during his barnstorming tours that he didn’t think many Black players had the right stuff to make it in MLB, including Jackie Robinson.

Cleveland owner Bill Veeck witnesses the signing of ace pitcher Bob Feller to a contract for the 1948 season. Despite the high hopes for the staff ace, the right-hander won 19 games and led the AL for the seventh and last time, while the velocity on his blazing fastball began to wane. 

Photo Credit: The Rucker Archive

***

But if not for Feller’s widely reported barnstorming tours in the offseason, many in America wouldn’t be aware of the explosive talent of many Black players.

During the barnstorming tours, Joe DiMaggio, the “Yankee Clipper,” would say that Paige was the “best and fastest pitcher he ever faced.” Of course, many mainstream newspapers never published DiMaggio’s comments for fear it would imply Black players were better than whites.

For three consecutive barnstorming tours, Satchel Paige and Bob Feller met head-to-head.

Because of Feller’s major contribution with showcasing marquee Black ball players of the era through different sections of the country, Negro League players invited him to their Negro Baseball League Reunion in Kentucky.

Most fascinating about Epplin’s book of the 1948 World Series is that many of the progressive elements of the 1948 Cleveland Indians was mirroring many events and individuals outside of the diamond during the same year.

In 1948, for example, Atlanta, Georgia hired its first Black police officers at a time when a quarter of the Atlanta police department were reportedly members of the Ku Klux Klan. But much like Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby, Black Atlanta police officers in 1948 had to tolerate racial taunts and abuse, they couldn’t lose their temper, they couldn’t ride police squad cars, and they couldn’t arrest white suspects. They had to call for assistance.

Additionally, in 1948, Alice Coachman Davis won the high jump at the Olympics in London, England, becoming the first Black woman to win an Olympic Gold medal.

In 1948, Johnny Ritchey became the first African-American baseball player to play in the Pacific League as a member of the San Diego Padres.

Most importantly, President Harry Truman issued Executive Order 9981, which directed the armed forces to provide “equality of treatment and opportunity for all personnel without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin.”

Epplin chronicles how Larry Doby had to endure the humiliation of segregation in the military while serving his country. Robert H. Meyer, Professor Emeritus at Moravian College, observed that “Black vets, having just fought against Hitler and vicious bigotry, returned to the country to find themselves treated with a similar bigotry.”

Victoria W. Wolcott, Professor of History at the University of Buffalo, tells me, “1948 was an important milestone in the civil rights movement. It was a period of what historians refer to as “racial liberalism” following World War II.” “Because of migration,” Wolcott said, “during the war years large numbers of African Americans migrated to northern cities, where they could vote. The NAACP also grew significantly during the 1940s and even had some successful voter registration drives in southern cities like Atlanta—as well as legal victories that lead up to Brown v. Board of Education.

In his State of the Union address in 1948, President Truman made a major push for civil rights. Such progressive thinking lost him support in different sections of the country, but as it turned out, it was the Black vote he received which decisively helped him win the 1948 presidential election over Republican governor of New York, Thomas E. Dewey.

Gregg Ivers, Professor of Government in the School of Public Affairs at American University, depicts the 1940s as a “period underappreciated by the general public and even by educators, journalists, and others, who believe that the civil rights movement began with Brown and Rosa Parks.” “Nothing just happens,” Ivers stressed.

Ivers additionally pointed out that 1948 was the last year of the Negro Leagues, which opened up a fresh pool of Black players who were no longer bound to their teams and their domineering owners. Willie Mays played his last game in the Negro Leagues in 1948 as a member of the Birmingham Black Barons.

Progress with civil rights, however, ran into a major roadblock in the 1950s.

Jim Ralph, Professor of American History and Culture at Middlebury College, said so much of the progress with race relations in the mid and late 1940s, came to a screeching halt with the emergence of the Cold War and McCarthyism, which narrowed the activist tendencies of the country. “Left-leaning CIO unions,” Ralph observed, “which had often been pioneers in fighting against racist practices, were on the defensive.  A powerful voice for civil and workers’ rights like Paul Robeson found himself under attack for his sympathetic disposition toward the Soviet Union. “

As fascinating as Epplin’s book about the four central pillars in the integration of baseball is, the book, from this observer, is more a valentine to the City of Cleveland in 1948 during a time when industry was thriving, the city was prospering economically; a time when downtown Cleveland was bustling with restaurants, bars, and entertainment venues, and when civic pride was at an all-time high. It was the last time the Cleveland Indians were world champs, the toast of the town.

The years after 1948 in Cleveland, would usher in crushing heartbreak and disappointment.

As Epplin points out, “the year after Veeck departed, attendance dipped to below two million. Six seasons later, the Indians drew fewer than a million fans, second worst in the American League.”

Satchel Paige, moreover, would never taste another World Series appearance again. Ol’ Satch  was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1971 as the first electee of the Committee on Negro Baseball Leagues. He passed away on June 8, 1982.

Despite being the first African-American player in the American League, Larry Doby’s number wasn’t retired by the Indians until 1994, four years before he was elected to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. Many argue that Doby, for one reason or another, never lived up to his full potential.

Bob Feller would appear in only one All-Star game after 1948; 1951 would be the last year the Indians one-time staff ace would win more than twenty games (the same year he threw his third and final no-hitter) and would start in only 15 games in his final two seasons with the Tribe before retiring in 1956 with 266 wins, ranking him 28^th in history. Feller never won a World Series game.

Due to an impending divorce and wanting to set up his children with a trust fund, Veeck sold the Indians after the 1949 season. He would later emerge as owner of the St Louis Browns and the Chicago White Sox.

John A. Kirk, Professor of History at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, summed up the year 1948 best, when he told me: “1948 was certainly a year of hope, in terms of the direction of race relations, and of liberal and progressive movements more generally.”

--Bill Lucey

June 27, 2021

WPLucey@gmail.com

The New York Times Op-Ed Page is Retired after 50 Years

The digital age has tossed another print newspaper feature to the dustbin, much like the pica pole and the AP teletype machine.

According to New York Times Opinion Page editor, Kathleen Kingsbury, the paper has retired the term, “Op-Ed” and replaced it with the label “Guest Essays.”

Kingsbury considers Op-Ed, outdated and “clubby newspaper jargon,” now that a great many readers have migrated to the web and no longer feast their eyes on the editorial page. Readers are now greeted with a battalion of opinion columns, mountains of columnists, who appear to have hijacked the Times’ home page. Op-Ed means opposite the editorial page, and not as many readers think, opposing viewpoints (of the Editorial Page) or even, opinion and editorial.

The New York Times “Op-Ed” page was officially launched on September 21, 1970 . Guest columnists included: political scientist and National Security Advisor to President Johnson, W.W. Rostow, novelist Han Suyin, and mystery novelist and journalist, Gerald W. Johnson.

Soon after the New York Times rolled out their Op-Ed pages, other newspapers across the country fell in line with their own pages and guest columnists.

But not all newspapers followed the same format. In the 1970’s, the Chicago Tribune’s Op-Ed page showcased more liberal opinions to counter the Tribune’s “staunchly conservative views.” In the early 1980s, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, at least for a short time, dressed their op-ed page with more local writers, rather than syndicated writers. Former Plain Dealer editorial director, Mary Anne Sharkey, said the Plain Dealer set up a "Board of Contributors." “We actively recruited different voices from the community to contribute op-eds or essays,” Sharkey explained, “most were good writers and did not require a lot of editing.” The Board didn’t allow politicians to become board members, “but we did have representatives of the arts, business, clergy, activists, and a mix of women and minorities. I added a few more women because I felt the board was not diverse enough” Sharkey said.

Similar to The Plain Dealer, the Los Angeles Times op-ed actively promoted more local opinions.

Editor Herbert Bayard Swope created the Op-Ed page in 1921 for The New York World

Photo Credit: Ray and Judith Spinzia Collection

***

The first Op-Ed page was actually hatched 100 years ago, not from the New York Times, but from the New York World, whose editor, Herbert Bayard Swope, in 1921, came up with the idea of having a full page of columnists offering opinions on news topics. The page was called Op-Ed. Unlike today’s Op-Ed pages, however, the New York World didn’t publish unsolicited manuscripts; rather, they relied on in-house staffers from a mighty group of writers, which included: Heywood Broun, Alexander Woollcott, Deems Taylor, Harry Hansen, and Franklin P. Adams.

Why did the New York Times decide to launch an Op-Ed page?

Editorial Page Editor John B. Oakes pushed for an Op-Ed page for The New York Times since the early 1960s

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

***

According to a number of news accounts, the idea of featuring a page of columnists opposite the editorial page, came from editorial page editor, John B. Oakes, (aka “Johnny”) himself who in the early 1960s, received a long opinion piece from a Suez Canal Company representative about the Egyptian government’s seizure of the canal. There was no space for this piece in the Times, so Oakes began his campaign for an Op-Ed page. His pitch fell on deaf ears from publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger who wanted the page opposite the editorial page reserved for the obituary page, which was bringing in lucrative income.

The idea for an Op-Ed page was kicked around for a few more years without anything being resolved.

A major breakthrough came in 1966, when the New York Herald Tribune folded. The Tribune featured guest columnists from time to time and its editorials tended to have a conservative viewpoint, in contrast to the Times signature liberalism. This opened up an opportunity for Oakes to press again for an Op-Ed page, featuring conservative viewpoints. In addition to Oakes lobbying the publisher, assistant managing editor Harrison Salisbury was a strong advocate of the Times “providing a platform for responsible conservative opinion.”

After some administrative haggling, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, the Times publisher, gave the green light in 1970 to introduce an Op-Ed page, moving the obituary page to another section of the paper. Harrison Salisbury was the first opinion page editor under the direction of John B. Oakes, the editorial page director. The Times paid its contributors $125, which is about $700 in today’s dollars.

The Op-Ed page, as it turned out, was a smash success. In its first six months, the page reportedly produced a net profit of $112,000 (on $264,000) in revenue. The Times receives approximately 1200 op-ed submissions each week.

At first, the Times wanted to feature offbeat or whimsical essays from its contributors; so that readers would be given a break from the political and international news driving the day. It didn’t take long, however, before the Times Op-Ed, touched on many of the most explosive issues of the 1970s, including Vietnam, Watergate, Civil Rights, and the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), among other issues.

Despite the sound diversity of opinions from a wide range of celebrities, politicians, scholars, and columnists, the last 50 years wasn’t without its share of controversy.

One of the most controversial op-eds was written by Times reporter Sydney Schanberg, (a Pulitzer winner in 1976 for his coverage of the Communist takeover in Cambodia). In 1985, he fell out of favor with the Times editors for writing about the proposed underground highway, known as the Westway Project, in which he attacked "New York newspapers" (meaning, The Times) for failing to adequately report on the billions worth of overruns the project was costing.

On April 21, 1991, New York Times op-ed columnist, Anna Quindlen, put her job on the line when she criticized her own paper for their coverage of Patricia Bowman , the woman who who accused William Kennedy Smith of rape. The Times profile on Bowman implied her poor driving record and sexual history, which was described as a "wild streak," cast a shadow over the validity of her charge. Quindlen accused her editors of sexism and of falling below their normal high standards when they identified her simply because of the high visibility of the Kennedy name; and because another media competitor, NBC, already revealed her identity. Quindlen never mentions Bowman's name. Susan E. Tifft and Alex S. Jones in "The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind The New York Times," report that after Quindlen’s column was published, the Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr came by her desk (so everyone could hear), put his arm around her and complimented Quindlen on her column.

The reliability of Judith Miller’s sources during the Iraq war, prompted, op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd to blast her co-worker. Dowd’s column began, "I've always liked Judy Miller."  Dowd questioned Miller’s credibility as a journalist by acting as a pawn for the Bush administration's "Weapons of Mass Destruction" propaganda. She ended her column by suggesting the Times' integrity as an institution would be seriously comprised if Judy "Run Amok," should ever step foot in the Times newsroom again.

The beginning of the end for the Times Op-Ed pages may have been the publication of Senator Tom Cotton’s inflammatory essay, 'Send in the Troops', in which the Arkansas Republican pushed for federal troops to respond if there was violent rioting in major U.S. cities. Despite the publisher of the Times, AG Sulzberger, approving the essay, Twitter exploded over the Times publishing such a reckless column. The storm of controversy forced Editorial Page Director James Bennett to resign after receiving so much backlash on Twitter as well as from Times employees.

A month later, Bari Weiss, the paper’s op-ed page editor, posted her resignation letter online in which she accused her colleagues of “constant bullying by those who disagree with my views.” She additionally described the Times as a 'hostile work environment' and criticized the Times management for allowing her coworkers to “publicly smear” her on Twitter

So, as the Times opinion page enters a new era, many wonder whether the “Guest Essays” will vary much from the Op-Ed page of the last 50 years?

Kingsbury indicated in her column that the Times would continue to “seek out opposing views for its guest essays,” but she did underscore that “we have our thumb on our scale in the name of progress, fairness, and shared humanity.”

 

--Bill Lucey

WPLucey@gmail.com

May 2, 2021

 

Noteworthy New York Times Op-Ed essays

American Culture: October 20, 1973, “On to Disneyland and Real Unreality" by Toni Morrison.

Humor: July 15, 1972, “A Guide to Civil Disobedience’’ by Woody Allen

Censorship: February 17, 1989: “India Bans a Book” By Salman Rushdie who discusses the Indian Finance ministry banning his novel “The Satanic Verses” under the Customs Act. Rushdie had been in hiding since Iran threatened his life, claiming “The Satanic Verses’’ blasphemed Mohammed.

American Culture: January 16, 1974 “Downhill All the Way” by E.B. White, essayist and poet on his whimsical recommendations for 1974.

Vietnam: May 17, 1975: “The Demise of South Vietnam’’ by William C. Westmoreland, a retired general who headed the United States forces in Vietnam.

Kent State Shootings: May 4, 1972: “Kent State: May 4, 1970’’ by Arthur S. Krause who had a daughter killed at Kent State.

Watergate: January 11, 1974: “A Soliloquy” by Clare Boothe Luce, playwright and journalist on whether to impeach Nixon.

Women's Equality: March 19, 1976: “200 Years of Sexism Rampant” by Letty Cottin Pegrebin, editor of Ms. Magazine

Civil Rights: January 16, 1989: “King’s Heritage’’ (race relations in America) by author Taylor Branch

AIDS: November 27, 1985: “Get Moving on AIDS” by Robert E. Pollack, dean of Columbia College of Columbia University, advocating an effective vaccine against HTLV III, the virus that causes AIDS.

9/11: "Correspondent; America's Emergency Line: 9/11" by Bill Keller--the first time the term "9/11'' is used in a newspaper column.

Media Corporate Culture: March 10, 1987: “From Murrow to Mediocrity” by Dan Rather on over 200 employees losing their jobs so that executives can earn more profit. 

Italian-American Stereotypes: July 24, 1972: "We Might Call This The Politics of Fantasy" by Frank Sinatra

The Great Recession: August. 13, 2010 "Obama’s dreadful job on the economy" By Bob Herbert

Global Warming March 19, 1989:  "An Ecological Kristallnacht. Listen" by Tennessee Senator Al Gore

Ken Burns Explores Ernest Hemingway: The Man, the Writer, and the Myth in New Documentary

Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns is at it again.

Monday, April 5, the creator of prize-winning documentaries on the American Civil War, Jazz Music, and Baseball, teamed with director and producer, Lynn Novick, for a new documentary on American literature icon Ernest Hemingway. It will be a six-hour documentary broadcast over three nights.

The film preview promises to smash the man behind the myth and dispel many misplaced notions many have about the American literature legend.

If you talk to enough American literature scholars, you get the sense that many readers don’t even bother to read Hemingway because of the chauvinistic reputation attached to his bull-fighting, hard drinking, multiple marriages (four in all), killing animals for sport, and writing about the scourge of war.

We are, after all, living in the era of the MeToo Movement (the social movement against sexual abuse and sexual harassment), a crusade against bullying, responsible drinking habits, and overall--a kinder gentler era than when Hemingway was plying his trade.

Many think the macho image often attributed to Hemingway is unreasonably exaggerated.

Author Gioia Diliberto in her biography of Hadley Hemingway (Hemingway’s first wife), titled “Paris without End,” wrote: "For all his macho posturing, Hemingway at his best wrote love stories that brilliantly charted the emotional nuances in relationships between men and women.” “His great talent,” Diliberto explained, “was in evoking the most intimate moments of longing, and all his fictional love stories flow from the central love story in his own life -- his marriage to Hadley."

Verna Kale, Professor of English and Associate Editor of The Hemingway Letters Project  at Pennsylvania State University, echoing Diliberto’s sentiments, said that Hemingway’s popular success, and the adaptation by fiction writers of his innovations, “obscure how innovative his work was in its time.  He refused to follow political or literary trends, and as a result his work has the kind of longevity that makes him widely read and studied today, and I do believe he qualifies as one of the greatest American writers--not just of novels but of short stories and what we now call creative nonfiction.”

Kale provided a sneak peek into what to expect from the upcoming PBS documentary. “His reputation as a masculine icon and celebrity may have undermined the appreciation of his work,” Kale observed.  “Both the documentary film and the ongoing project to publish Hemingway's correspondence show that he was a complicated person, full of contradictions. The film and his letters show the sides of him that are often overlooked: his sensitivity, his concern for family and friends, his interests in art and music, his commitment to anti-fascism.” Kale did point out that the film hardly sugar coats his character flaws. Hemingway could be “violent, angry, and proud,” Kale said.

Others aren’t so infatuated by the iconic status that Hemingway enjoys.

Writer and public intellectual, Gore Vidal, told political commentator Pat Buchanan in 1984: “I have a very low view of Hemingway; he’s sort of a Field & Stream writer. His gift for publicity propelled him ever forward. He didn’t develop.”

 Later in the interview with Buchanan, Vidal, said “For Whom the Bell Tolls is an embarrassing book which even he came to realize that.”

 Novelist Kurt Vonnegut remarked in 1990, following the rise of the feminist movements, Hemingway is “a little hard to read nowadays.” 

The brawny image of Hemingway wasn’t so pronounced in his novels as it was in the Esquire magazine pieces that he wrote in the 1930’s in which he projected himself to be tough as nails, vulgar, an adventurous outdoorsman, and a hopeless playboy and carouser.

Even in the prime of his career, Hemingway’s contemporaries pelted him with some harsh criticism.

In 1927, writer Virginia Woolf blasted Hemingway’s “self-conscious virility” of his fiction and with what she considered his “excessive use of dialogue.”

British writer Wyndham Lewis in his study of Hemingway (“The Dumb Ox”), faulted the American novelist for creating “stupid and insensitive characters” and of presenting them in a kind of baby talk borrowed from Gertrude Stein. 

While showering him with well-deserved praise for his literary skills, both Woolf and Lewis were highly critical of Hemingway for embracing unrealistically muscular characters by touching on such violent topics as war, boxing, and bullfighting, among others.

Arnold Weinstein, an American literary scholar at Brown University thinks, sadly, that the new age in American society has lessened the importance of Hemingway in college classrooms. I'd wager that English departments at elite universities have relatively little of Hemingway in their courses,” Weinstein told me. “Needless to say,” Weinstein continued; “there's lots of company, and there'll be even more of it as we move ahead, since there is an ever greater, ever angrier awareness of the systemic flaws, blind spots and injustices in American culture.”

Weinstein said that he’s still teaching, but his repertoire of authors is “imploding.” “It’s a pity given that Hemingway’s work with its depths, ambiguities and virtues are under the radar screen.”

Despite the criticism of Hemingway, especially in the 21^st century, living as we are in a more refined society, Suzanne Clark, Professor in the English Department at the University of Oregon, thinks Hemingway “is doubtless one of the great American writers of the 20th century, and he endures, in spite of much sniping at him.”  “Part of the reason why he endures,” Clark argues, “is that his style, which seems so simple, so straightforwardly factual, rewards close reading the way a poem does.  Hemingway seems easy but is after all as complex as the human experience. “ 

Ernest Miller Hemingway was born July 2, 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois. Soon after graduating from Oak Park High School, he began his writing career as a cub reporter for the Kansas City Star as a police reporter and feature story writing before venturing off to Italy where he was an ambulance driver for the Red Cross in World War I. As an ambulance driver he was badly injured when a heavy machine-gun bullet ripped through his right knee. It was his first taste of war which would permeate many of his works of literature.

The Hemingway canon is vast from cub reporter to feature writer to war correspondent, short story writer, and novelist. But when people discuss Hemingway, they for the most part, center on four novels: “The Sun Also Rises” (1926), “A Farewell to Arms” (1929), “For Whom the Bells Tolls” (1940), and “The Old Man and the Sea” (1952).  Many of his short stories have also been widely hailed as splendid works of literature, including “Big Two-Hearted River,” “The Killers,’’ “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” “A Clean Well-Lighted Place,” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,”

What distinguished Hemingway from his predecessors, especially 19^th century authors were his simple, direct writing style.

“The Sun Also Rises”, was Hemingway’s first novel. It was published in 1926, a piece of fiction about a group of American and English expatriates in Paris, all of whom have suffered both physically and emotionally during World War I.

In reviewing “The Sun Also Rises,’’ The New York Times wrote “Mr. Hemingway writes a most admirable dialogue. It has the terse vigor of Ring Lardner at his best. It suggests the double meanings of Ford Madox Ford's records of talk. Mr. Hemingway makes his characters say one thing, convey still another, and when a whole passage of talk has been given, the reader finds himself the richer by a totally unexpected mood, a mood often enough of outrageous familiarity with obscure heartbreaks.” “No amount of analysis,” the Times went on to write, “can convey the quality of "The Sun Also Rises." It is a truly gripping story, told in a lean, hard, athletic narrative prose that puts more literary English to shame. “

By the time he had written “For Whom the Bell Tolls’’ in 1940, Hemingway was considered one of the greatest novelists in American literature if not the world.  In their review "For Whom the Bell Tolls," J. Donald Adams, editor of The New York Times Book Review wrote: “This is the best book Ernest Hemingway has written, the fullest, the deepest, the truest. It will I think, be one of the major novels in American literature.” Adams summed up his review of For Whom the Bell Tolls by writing: “This is the work of a mature artist, of a mature mind.”

Ernest Hemingway in Kenya in 1952

Photo Credit:Earl Theisen / Getty

***

Before the publication of “The Old Man and Sea” in 1952, Hemingway spent a great deal of time stowed away in Finca Vigia, Cuba, where he lived from 1939 until 1960. “The Old Man and the Sea” was a novella about a Cuban fisherman and his battles with a giant marlin.

It was a smash success, earning Hemingway a Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and the following year, a Nobel Prize in literature in 1954.

In the New York Times review of  "The Old Man and the Sea" on August 28, 1952, Orville Prescott, the primary book reviewer for the New York Times , wrote: “The Old Man and the Sea" is fresh and healthy and the old man's ordeal is moving.”

“But good as "The Old Man and the Sea" is,” Prescott wrote, “it is good only in a limited way. The fisherman is not a well-characterized individual. He is a symbol of an attitude toward life. He often thinks and talks poetically and symbolically and so artificially.”

 After suffering from near fatal airplane crashes in Africa, in 1954, Hemingway’s health plummeted. He began suffering from severe depression, landing him in the hospital, where he underwent electroshock treatments.

Much like his father in 1928, the celebrated American novelist committed suicide on July 2, 1961 with one of his shotguns at his home in in Ketchum, Idaho. He was 61.

Whether Hemingway is still considered a major force in American literature, the Ken Burns and Lynn Novick documentary will undoubtedly answer that question over the next few nights.

Charles Scribner Jr., the longtime head of the Charles Scribner's Sons book publishing company said in a 1982 lecture that “Hemingway’s books were the “foundation stones’’ of the firm’s publishing reputation.”

NOTE: Vern Kale, Associate Editor of The Hemingway Letters Project welcomes viewers of the documentary to the watch party and discussion on April 10, hosted by the Hemingway Society.

--Bill Lucey

WPLucey@gmail.com

April 3, 2021

The Diary of Anne Frank: 69 Years after the New York Times Book Review

Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank, a gifted Jewish writer and diarist, never survived the Holocaust.

***

For those who love books and reading, you might be interested to know that the New York Times Book Review section celebrates its 125^th anniversary this year.

About 90 % of the books on my reading list are books I added after reading the Times Sunday Review of Books.

When did it all begin?

On October 10, 1896, the Times book review section was officially launched. It was originally published in the Saturday Review of Books and Art, based on the prevailing opinion that books should be treated as news. In 1911, it was moved to Sunday.

It wasn’t until August 9, 1942 that the Book Review section added a “Best Seller’s List.”

So, here we are, well into the 21^st century and I wondered which books, reviewed by the New York Times, have weathered the test of time and are still relevant?

There are so many books that are so influential and are as relevant today as when they were first published.

One of the first books that sprang to mind was “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank.

Jeffrey Shandler, professor in the department of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University thinks that “without a doubt Anne Frank's diary is one of the most influential books of the 20th century, in part because it has become one of the most widely read books of any kind, translated into dozens of languages and published in many millions of copies since it first appeared in Dutch in 1947.”

“Those who read the whole diary,” Shandler explained, “can see that it is a more complex text than the most familiar phrases that have been plucked from it. The diary voices anxieties as well as hopes about the dire situation Anne and her fellow Jews were facing and also dwells on Anne's coming of age under extraordinary circumstances” For this reason, Shandler said, “it has been recognized as an important text of adolescent female writing.”

Anneliese Marie Frank, a girl of Jewish heritage, was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1929. Her childhood took a drastic turn when she was about four years old.

In 1933, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazis assumed power, Anne Frank, along with her elder sister, Margot, and their parents, Otto and Edith Frank, fled to Amsterdam. But when Nazi tanks stormed into the Netherlands on May 10, 1940 and cruel anti-Jewish decrees were introduced, the Franks took refuge in Otto Frank’s office building. The Franks and four other Jews hid in a “secret annex,” (at Prinsengracht 263) which was a group of rooms at the top and back of a building that served as a warehouse and office for Frank’s Dutch-owned business. Otto Frank ran a pectin business. Pectin is a key ingredient for making jams, jellies, and other preserves.

During the day they had to be quiet, but later in the evening, they were free to roam around.

On her 13^th birthday, Anne Frank was presented with a red-checkered diary by her father, which she affectionately called “Kitty,” her imaginary friend. Anne would write in the diary from July 5, 1942 until August 1, 1944. Three days later, the family was captured by the Nazis and sent to Westerbork, a transit camp in Drente, in the north of Holland. Less than a month later, they were deported to Auschwitz, the primary Nazi death camp in Poland. Less than two months later, Anne (15 years old) and her sister Margot (18 years old) were taken to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in what is today Lower Saxony in northern Germany. There, emaciated and malnourished, they died from typhus. Historians estimate Anne and her sister died sometime in the spring of 1945. A mere 6-7% of Jewish children survived the Holocaust, compared with 33% among adults. Margot and Anne Frank were among the 6 million Jewish people and 1.5 million children murdered by Nazis.

Of the eight people that hid in the ‘’secret annex,’’ Otto Frank was the only one who survived. He was one of about 7,500 liberated from Auschwitz, out of more than one million.

One of the few remaining relics of his family was his daughter Anne’s diary, which was given to him by Miep Gies, one of the helpers in the annex who helped hide eight individuals from the Nazis, including Otto Frank and his family. Gies had kept the diary in a desk drawer.

After removing some highly personal and embarrassing passages, Otto Frank sought out a publisher for the diary, On June 25, 1947, Anne Frank's Het Achterhuis (The Secret Annex) was published in Dutch in a small edition of 3,036 copies.

After some modest success, Otto Frank successfully signed deals with publishers in West Germany (the Federal Republic of Germany) and in France. Frank's Het Achterhuis (The Secret Annex) was published in both German and French in 1950. The book wasn’t a best seller, but it did sell a respectable 4,600 first edition copies.

The real game changer for Anne Frank’s diary didn’t come until 1952, when the diary was published in English as “The Diary of a Young Girl.”

American novelist Meyer Levin wrote a review of the book on the cover of the New York Times Book Review section on June 15, 1952.  After the review, sales of Anne Frank’s Diary exploded. A second print run of 15,000 copies was issued, followed by a third of 45,000 copies. It wasn’t long before, millions had read “The Diary of Young Girl.”

In the review, Levin wrote: “her book is not a classic to be left on the library shelf. It is a warm and stirring confession, to be read over and over for insight and enjoyment.”

Describing the optimistic view Anne Frank held of the human race despite the torment and harsh conditions they were living under, Meyer went on to write “There is anguish in the thought of how much creative power, how much sheer beauty of living, was cut off through genocide. But through her diary Anne goes on living. This wise and wonderful young girl brings back a poignant delight in the infinite human spirit.”

Most surprising to any who read Meyer’s book review, is the understanding of how stylish Anne Frank’s writing was at such a tender age. “I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, If I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.”

And as if to portend her imminent death, Anne wrote: “I want to go on living even after my death.” …. “I am grateful to God for giving me this gift, this possibility of developing myself and of writing, of expressing all that is in me.”

The central message Anne Frank wanted to communicate to all of us was “in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart."

F.K Schoeman, Associate Professor of English and Jewish Studies and director of the Jewish Studies program at the University of South Carolina, describing the unconscionable hate and discrimination that existed in Anne Frank’s lifetime, says, “we are implicitly asked by her diary to be aware of what it means to live in a racist, hateful, antisemitic, misogynistic, unjust world for the victims of these wrong ideals.” “The "lesson," so to speak, of The Diary,” Schoeman continued. “lies beyond the last page of the diary: the fact that when we let democracy and justice slip through our fingers, an innocent 15-year-old girl (and 1.5 million more children like her) can be tortured and murdered while the world looks on without doing anything to help.” 

“The Diary of a Young Girl” became so popular and so widely read after Meyer Levin’s book review, that a play about Anne Frank was written by the husband-and-wife team of Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, which opened on Broadway at the Cort Theater on October 5,1955 and continued through June 22, 1957, after 717 performances.

It was a smash success, winning a string of Tony awards, including Best Play, and Best Director (Garson Kanin). The play additionally received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, along with a 1956 New York Drama Critics Circle award for Best Play.

The play was then adapted for a motion picture, which premiered in 1959. The film didn’t match the blockbuster success of the Broadway play, but it did earn Hollywood actress Shelley Winters an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. “The Diary of Anne Frank” also took home Oscars for Best Cinematography (Black-and-White), and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (Black-and-White).

Since Levin’s book review, along with the Broadway and film productions, the diary has been translated into some 70 languages and circulated in an estimated 30 million copies. 

Today, there is a cottage industry of tributes to Anne Frank and her diary, which includes: other films and television programs, ballets, operas, musical productions, paintings, drawings, sculpture, popular books, postage stamps, commemorative coins, videotapes, CD-ROMS, and mountains more.

A sliding bookcase in the "secret annex" that concealed the entrance to the hiding place at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam

Photo Source: Anne Frank House, Westermarkt 20, 1016 DK Amsterdam

***

In 1957, the house that Anne Frank and her family hid in (in the center of Amsterdam) was on the brink of being destroyed. But since there was so much fascination with Anne Frank, the house was preserved (with the “secret annex” intact) and opened as a museum on May 3, 1960.

In 2019, 1.3 million visitors paid a visit to the Anne Frank House, about 80,000 more than in 2018 and 40,000 more than in 2017 when the museum was renovated. According to a museum spokesperson, the number of visitors in 2020 was limited to 396,779, due to the COVID pandemic.

Asked whether the Diary of Anne Frank with its universal message of “courage” and “hope” in the face of danger still resonates today, Sara Sewell, Professor of History at Virginia Wesleyan University, thinks that the “diary had a tremendous impact on Holocaust Studies across the globe, particularly a generation or two ago. As the history of the Holocaust entered the US classroom, it was largely through Anne Frank, as she made this history accessible to millions of students who were also teenagers.”

As much as she praises Anne Frank’s diary for having such a profound impact on understanding the Holocaust, Sewell does point out a critical weakness of the Diary. The problem of “learning about the Holocaust through this text,” Sewell cautions, “is that it ends just as she began the most horrific phase of her persecution.” “In other words,” Sewell explained, “what people most need to know about the Holocaust (death camps and survival, death in camps) is not discussed, and therefore, readers have a skewed view of the Holocaust.”

It is rare, indeed, when a book review propels a book to such towering heights, but there’s no mistaking that Meyer Levin’s New York Times book review, written almost 70 years ago, helped immeasurably in making Anne Frank a household name, both here in the United States and around the globe.

 ---Bill Lucey

March 21, 2021

WPLucey@gmail.com

117th Congress: By the Numbers

House members are sworn in at the Capitol's House chamber on the first day of the 117th Congress.

Photo Credit: Caroline Brehman/CQ Roll Call

***

How well do you know your 117^th Congress?

It’s been open for business since January 3^rd; when Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was re-elected Speaker of the House by a slim margin, coming away with 216 votes, narrowly outdueling House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) who captured 209 votes. This will be Pelosi’s fourth term as Speaker of the House and mostly likely her last.

Over in the Senate, the composition of this august body mirrors the sentiment of the nation: evenly divided, especially when it comes to politics. There are now 50 seats held by Republicans, 48 seats held by Democrats, and two held by independents who caucus with the Democrats, creating a 50-50 split. Vice President Kamala Harris, of course, will cast tie-breaking votes.

This narrow edge for the Democrats, paved the way for President Joe Biden to successfully push through his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill with a 50-49 party-line vote. The bill swings back to the House for a final vote. After much bickering in a marathon session, the bill will provide billions of dollars to combat the pandemic and extend badly needed economic aid to individuals, states, cities, small businesses, and low-income families.

So far, President Biden, less than two months into his administration appears to have the wind at his back. Despite the bill’s exorbitant cost, public opinion polls, such as the one conducted by Monmouth University, found more than 60 percent of Americans support the $1.9 trillion package.

U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi of Calif., waves the gavel on the opening day of the 117th Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 3, 2021.

Photo Credit: Bill Clark/AP

***

So, with the House of Representatives preparing for a final vote on Wednesday on President Biden's historic $1.9 trillion Covid relief plan, now is about as good a time as any to become more acquainted with your new Congress.

Since 1789, 12,415 individuals have served as either Representatives (11,101 individuals) or Senators (1,994 individuals). Of these individuals, 680 have served in both chambers.

117 Congress: By the Numbers

 Party Affiliation

• 225 Democrats in the House of Representatives (including 4 Delegates), 213 Republicans (including 1 Delegate and the Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico), and 3 vacant seats.

• 50 Republicans, 48 Democrats in the Senate, and 2 Independents, who both caucus with the Democrats.

Age

58.4 is the average age of Members of the House; of Senators, 64.3 years.

The youngest Representative in the 117th Congress, and the youngest House Member since 1965, is Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), born August 1, 1995, who was 25 at the beginning of the 117th Congress.

The oldest Representative is Don Young (R-AK), born June 9, 1933, who was 87.

The youngest Senator in the 117th Congress is Jon Ossoff (D-GA), born February 16, 1987, who was 33 at the beginning of the Congress

The oldest Senator in the 117th Congress is Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), born June 22, 1933, who was 87.

NOTE: The U.S. Constitution requires Representatives to be at least 25 years old when they take office, while Senators must be at least 30 years old when they take office.

 Length of Service

• The average length of service for Representatives is 8.9 years (4.5 House terms); for Senators, 11.0 years (1.8 Senate terms).

Professions of the 117^th Congress

• 47 Senators have previous House service

• 113 Members have worked in education, including teachers, professors, instructors, school fundraisers, counselors, administrators, or coaches (85 in the House, including 2 Delegates, 28 in the Senate).

• 4 physicians in the Senate, 14 physicians in the House, plus 5 dentists and 1 veterinarian; 2 psychologists (in the House), an optometrist (in the Senate), 2 pharmacists (in the House), and 3 nurses and 1 physician assistant (in the House).

• 7 ordained ministers (5 in the House, 2 in the Senate)

• 38 former mayors (31 in the House, 7 in the Senate)

• 13 former state governors (12 in the Senate, 1 in the House) and 10 lieutenant governors (5 in the Senate, 5 in the House)

• 7 attorneys general of their states (6 in the Senate, 1 in the House) and 8 secretaries of state (3 in the Senate, 5 in the House.)

• 16 former judges (all but 1 in the House) and 38 prosecutors (9 in the Senate, 29 in the House) have served in city, county, state, federal, or military capacities.

• 4 Ambassadors (two in each chamber).

• 238 former state or territorial legislators (45 in the Senate, 193 in the House, including 2 Delegates and the Resident Commissioner from Puerto Rico).

• 78 former congressional staffers (15 in the Senate, 63 in the House, including 3 Delegates), as well as 5 former congressional pages (2 in the House and 3 in the Senate).

• 2 sheriffs, 1 police chief and 3 other police officers, 1 fire chief, 1 firefighter, 2 CIA employees, and 1 FBI agent (all in the House).

• 1 Peace Corps volunteer in the House.

• 1 physicist and 1 chemist, both in the House, and 1 geologist in the Senate; 9 engineers (8 in the House and 1 in the Senate).

• 21 public relations or communications professionals (3 in the Senate, 18 in the House), and 7 accountants (1 in the Senate and 6 in the House.

• 6 software company executives in the House and 2 in the Senate

• 38 consultants (7 in the Senate, 31 in the House), 5 car dealership owners (all in the House), and 4 venture capitalists (2 in the House, 2 in the Senate).

• 16 bankers or bank executives (4 in the Senate, 12 in the House), 27 veterans of the real estate industry (3 in the Senate, 24 in the House), and 8 Members who have worked in the construction industry (1 in the Senate, 7 in the House).

• 7 social workers (2 in the Senate, 5 in the House) and 3 union representatives (all in the House).

• 16 nonprofit executives or founders (15 in the House, 1 in the Senate) 2 radio talk show hosts (both in the House); 4 radio or television broadcasters, managers, or owners (3 in the House, 1 in the Senate); 7 reporters or journalists (1 in the Senate, 6 in the House); and 3 newspaper publishers in the House.

• 18 insurance agents or executives (3 in the Senate, 15 in the House) and 7 Members who have worked in the securities industry (all in the House.

• 1 artist, 1 book publisher, and 2 speechwriters (all in the House), and 2 documentary filmmakers in the Senate.

• 6 restaurateurs (5 in the House, 1 in the Senate), as well as 2 coffee shop and 1 wine store owners (all in the House), and 1 brewpub owner in the Senate.

• 27 farmers, ranchers, or cattle farm owners (6 in the Senate, 21 in the House); 1 almond orchard owner and vintner, as well as a forester and a fruit orchard worker (all in the House.

• 1 flight attendant and 4 pilots, all in the House, and 1 astronaut in the Senate

• 3 professional football players, 1 hockey player, 1 baseball player, and 1 mixed martial arts fighter (all in the House)

• 7 current members of the military reserves (6 in the House, 1 in the Senate) and 7 current members of the National Guard (all in the House).

Education

The vast majority of Members (93.8% of House Members and 100% of Senators) at the beginning of the 117th Congress have earned at least a bachelor’s degree. 67 % of House Members and 76% of Senators hold educational degrees beyond a bachelors.

• 22 Members of the House have no educational degree beyond a high school diploma or GE

• 5 Members of the House have associate’s degrees as their highest degrees

• 108 Members of the House and 18 Senators earned a master’s degree as their highest attained degrees.

• 144 Members of the House (32.7% of the House) and 50 Senators (50% of the Senate) hold law degrees

• 22 Representatives and 4 Senators have doctoral (Ph.D., D.Phil., Ed.D., or D. Min) degrees

• 20 Members of the House and 5 Senators have medical degrees.

• 3 Representatives and 1 Senator are graduates of the U.S. Military Academy

• 1 Senator graduated from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy

• 1 Representative graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy

• 1 Senator graduated from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy

• 5 Representatives and one Senator were Rhodes Scholars

• 2 Representatives were Fulbright Scholars

• 2 Representatives were Marshall Scholars

• 2 Representatives and one Senator were Truman Scholars

 Congressional Service: 117^th Congress

• 57 of the House Members (12.9% of the total House membership) had first been elected to the House in November 2020, and 9 of the Senators (9% of the total Senate membership) had first been elected to the Senate in November 2020.

• 131 House Members (29.7% of House Members) had no more than two years of House experience, and 18 Senators (18% of Senators) had no more than two years of Senate experience.

 Religion

• 55.4% of Members (236 in the House, 58 in the Senate) are Protestant, with Baptist as the most represented denomination, followed by Methodist

• 29.8% of Members (134 in the House, 24 in the Senate) are Catholic

• 6.3% of Members (25 in the House, 9 in the Senate) are Jewish

• 1.7% of Members (6 in the House, 3 in the Senate) are Mormon (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)

• 2 Members (1 in the House, 1 in the Senate) are Buddhist, 3 Representatives are Muslim, and 2 Representatives are Hindu

Gender

• 147 women Members (27.2% of the total membership) serve in the 117th Congress, 16 more than at the beginning of the 116th Congress

• 123 women, including 3 Delegates as well as the Resident Commissioner, serve in the House and 24 in the Senate

• Of the 123 women in the House, 91 are Democrats, including 2 of the Delegates, and 32 are Republicans, including 1 Delegate as well as the Resident Commissioner

• Of the 24 women in the Senate, 16 are Democrats and 8 are Republicans.

Ethnicity

African American Members

• There are a record 61 African American Members (11.3% of the total membership) in the 117th Congress, 4 more than at the beginning of the 116th Congress

• 58 serve in the House, including two Delegates, and three serve in the Senate

• 56 of the African-American House Members, including two Delegates, are Democrats, and two are Republicans

• 2 of the Senators are Democrats and one is Republican.

• 27 African American women, including two Delegates, serve in Congress, all in the House.

 Hispanic/Latino American Members

• 54 Hispanic or Latino Members in the 117th Congress, representing 10.0% of the total membership and a record number.

• 47 serve in the House, including two Delegates and the Resident Commissioner, and 7 in the Senate

• Of the Members of the House, 34 are Democrats (including 2 Delegates) and 13 are Republicans (including the Resident Commissioner).

• 14 are women, including the Resident Commissioner. Of the 7 Hispanic Senators (3 Republicans, 4 Democrats), 1 is a woman.

 Asian/Pacific Islander American Members

• 20 Members of the 117th Congress (3.8% of the total membership) are of Asian, South Asian, or Pacific Islander ancestry

• 18 of them (15 Democrats, 3 Republicans) serve in the House, and 2 (both Democrats) serve in the Senate

• 11 of the Asian, Pacific Islander, or South Asian American Members are female; 9 in the House, and 2 in the Senate

American Indian Members

 6 American Indian (Native American) or Native Hawaiian Members of the 117th Congress: 3 of each party, all in the House, representing 1.1% of the total congressional membership, a record number.

 Foreign Birth

• 28 Representatives and 5 Senators (6.1% of the 117th Congress) were born outside the United States; their places of birth include Canada, Cuba, Germany, Guatemala, Japan, Peru, and India.

NOTE: The U.S. Constitution requires that Representatives be citizens for seven years and Senators be citizens for nine years before they take office.

Military Service

• 91 individuals (16.8% of the total membership) who had served or were serving in the military, fewer than at the beginning of the 116th Congress (96 Members).

• 75 veterans in the House (including 4 female Members, as well as 1 Delegate)

• 16 veterans in the Senate, including 2 women

• 6 House Members and one Senator are still serving in the reserves, and 7 House Members are still serving in the National Guard

• 2 of the 6 female veterans are combat veterans.

NOTE: According to the Military Times, the 117th Congress veterans’ numbers are at the “lowest since the start of World War II.”

Source: Congressional Research Service (CRS); Pew Research Center; Congressional Quarterly (CQ)

---Bill Lucey

March 9, 2021

WPLucey@gmail.com

Digitizing the Vatican Library Brings the Past Back to Life

Now that we are well into the 21^st century, have medieval social historians, like Joëlle Rollo-Koster from the University of Rhode Island, faded into the thin night air and lost their relevance?

Hardly!

Turns out, Rollo-Koster is more relevant than ever. With the COVID-19 pandemic gripping the world (deaths having soared past the two million mark worldwide), many are seeking out her knowledge and expertise to learn how COVID compares with the Black Death of the 14^th century. About 25 million people are estimated to have died in Europe from the plague between 1347 and 1351.

But thanks largely to the digitization of documents from the Vatican Archives, mostly on CD-ROMs, researchers like Rollo-Koster are able to search 14^th century manuscripts to see how the word, “plague,” for example, was used, before, during (1348) and after the Black Death.  

Thanks to the magic of digitization (including advanced key word functions), Rollo-Koster didn’t have to plow through 500,000 documents (an impossible task) and was able to narrow her search down to a manageable 300 entries to see how the word was used.

Rollo-Koster discovered the word, “scourge’’ was used to describe heretics or bad rulers. It wasn’t until after Black Death that scourge was used to describe the disease. If she hadn’t been able to access the Vatican Archives, such precise information would have never been found.

The digitization of documents from the Vatican Library and Vatican Archives is still far from being completed, but even at this early stage, it has been an incredible boon for researchers. The Avignon registrars from the Avignon papacy (1309 to 1376), for example, which totals about 500,000 documents, all are digitized.

Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903), opened the Vatican Archives to historians in 1883. 

Anthony Grafton, an American historian of early modern Europe at Princeton University and author of “Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture,” tells me that “DigiVatLab (Digital Vatican Library) during the last year, “has enabled scholars all over the world to continue to make discoveries and publish them, even when the library had to close (due to COVID), and it will continue to provide that service as normal conditions resume.”

Prior to DigiVatLab, Grafton said, scholars would have to journey to Rome on a sabbatical or during the interval between Commencement and the annual closing of the library.

Daniel Gallagher, a lecturer of Latin in the Department of Classics at Cornell University, says the digitization has helped expand accessibility to a wider group of scholars, especially those unable to make the trek to Rome.  Gallagher said “there are many scholars of Chinese history who have the expertise and access to corresponding sources outside the Vatican collection who can shed light on what is in the connection related to the Church’s activity in China.” Exciting stuff, Gallagher thinks.  “Correspondence between the missionary Jesuits and Franciscans in China and the Holy See reveals much about the culture and religion the missionaries were encountering and the means they used to communicate the Christian message to the natives they encountered. “

Once you consider how much rare material is actually housed inside the Vatican Library, you have a greater appreciation why it will take quite some time to digitize the entire collection.

It’s literally unfathomable to think that the library preserves 80,000 manuscripts of late-antique, medieval, Byzantine, and Renaissance provenance, in dozens of languages, from Aramaic to Old Church Slavonic just for starters. Also, at the Vatican Library, there are 60,00 or more of western manuscripts, 8,000 books printed before 1500, along with a vast collection of nonwestern books and manuscripts, treasures of humanity. It houses two million printed books. In fact, if you placed the books end to end in the Vatican Library it would measure 31 miles.  Add to this: a 4th-century Bible, the world's oldest, as well as copies of St Peter's letters and the gospels of Luke and John, dating from the 3rd century and written in Greek on papyrus.

Of particular interest to many is a 1493-book about Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the New World and 11 or 12 love letters of King Henry VIII to his alluring mistress, Anne Boleyn, which includes a hand drawn heart at the bottom of the page by the smitten English king. Henry’s love letters were actually stolen by a Vatican spy to build a case against his annulment request from Catherine of Aragon. A 1,600-year-old manuscript, displaying Virgil's poems once studied by Raphael can be found at the Library as well, though that manuscript is largely off-limits even to the most credentialed scholars.

Believe it or not, prior to the 17^th century, the Vatican lent out its holdings to the general public. Patrons would often check out books with the chain still on them as a reminder they belong to the library. The Vatican Library, as you might imagine, back then, maintained a primitive circulation system (simple notebooks, registrars). Still, according to Anthony Grafton, “librarians from Platina [Italian Renaissance Humanist] on swore solemn oaths to preserve and account for every book in their care.”

Professor Joëlle Rollo-Koster

Photo by Michael Salerno Photography

***

To get a sense of a typical day for a scholar in the Vatican Library or Vatican Archives in the 21^st century, Professor Joëlle Rollo-Koster, after rushing home to feed her dog on a pleasant Kingston, Rhode Island afternoon, took some time with me over the phone to discuss her experiences researching at the Vatican Library, mostly the Vatican Archives.

Rollo-Koster first explained to me that the Vatican Library is used primarily by literary scholars, the Vatican Archives, on the other hand, are mainly used by historians, especially social historians such as herself.

The criteria for gaining access to the library or archives is fairly straightforward: you need to be a researcher, historian, or scholar and need a letter of introduction. If you write a book using sources from the Archives, you need to give the book to the Library/Archives.

You can’t enter the library until you stopped by the Prefect or Secretary, were they’ll check your credentials, letter of introduction, and passport. At that point, they’ll issue you a pass which records exactly when you entered the Library.  All your personal items, moreover, are kept in a locker room. Personal items are strictly forbidden inside the Library or Archives.

Well into the 1980s, women who entered the Vatican Library or Archives had to be dressed in a long skirt. Pants worn by females were forbidden. The dress code imposed on women was relaxed sometime in the 1990s. Patrons to the Library aren’t allowed to make Xerox copies themselves. They need to fill out a form and present it to a library employee, which is then sent to the Prefect for approval.

Rollo-Koster said her area of study requires her to examine documents from the 1300s. To my surprise, Rollo-Koster said many of the documents are gorgeous, in tip-top shape, others are old and decrepit. Most librarians will then display the documents on a table underneath a book stand.

If patrons get hungry at the Library, they’re allowed to exit in the courtyard between the Archives and the Library. Many of the scholars will smoke cigarettes and talk with others about their projects. They also have access to a coffee shop and small cafeteria. “You have some of the best food in Rome here,” Rollo-Koster said.  If you arrive early enough, you can find a table. Otherwise, you just eat outside.

The French born Rollo-Koster (born and raised in Toulon) tells me the biggest satisfaction she gets through researching and writing about the 14^th century, is she is able to look at records of the lesser-known characters and bring their history to life.  “For hundreds of years,” Rollo-Koster continued, “no one paid attention, no one was interested in social history. They were interested in the history of the popes and the kings. The fact that those documents have been preserved, gives me a gate of entry. Those little guys who have disappeared from history, can have their stories retold, thanks to the Archives. “

Another major point that Rollo-Koster stressed to me is that contrary to popular belief, the 14^th century documents found at the Vatican Library and Archives are not dry, dead documents. “Documents can really bring life” “My aim” Rollo-Koster said, “is to bring back to life, all those people who have disappeared from history. The Vatican Archives gives me access to those people.”

So, exactly when did the Vatican Library and Archives collect such a staggering amount of information?

Most historians point to the well-read Pope Nicholas V (1447-1455), beginning in 1451, who re-established Rome as an academic center of worldwide stature, by building a modest library of over 1,200 volumes, including his personal collection of Greek and Roman classics and a series of texts brought from Constantinople. Nicholas wanted to establish not only a collection of books, but an institution. Nicholas additionally wanted to create a library at St Peter’s for general use by the Roman Court.

Pope Sixtus IV (1471-1484) is credited with propelling the Vatican Library into an institution with the installation of books in a custom-built and beautifully decorated suite of rooms with gorgeous paintings.

A lesser-known fact about the growth of the Vatican Library is many from the Vatican were dispatched to ransack private and institutional libraries across Europe, searching in monasteries, above all for rare texts that had been copied and studied in antiquity and the early Middle Ages; documents, in other words that had fallen out of fashion. Leading erudite copyists were employed by the Vatican to translate into Latin the works of Greek poets, philosophers, and historians, many of which had been unknown in the West since ancient times.

Others, such as historian and Italian humanist Furvio Orsini, sold his books to the Vatican in exchange for a pension. The books remained in his possession until his death.

By Sixtus’s death in 1484, the Vatican Library housed more than 3,600 manuscripts. The concept of a central archive of the Holy See didn’t develop until Pope Paul V (1605-1621). In 1783, all remaining material in Avignon was brought to Rome; and in 1798 the archives of Castel Sant'Angelo (papal residence, fortress) were transferred to the apostolic palace, the official residence of the pope.

Today, the library now includes a rich history of science, learning, and the arts, on par with any institution in the world.  This we have Pope Nicholas V to thank for rejecting the common belief in the 15th century that Renaissance humanism represented a potential threat to the Church and its teachings.  Nicholas, undoubtedly going against the grain, encouraged the study of the pagan classics. 

Diana Walsh Pasulka, Professor of Catholic Studies at University of North Carolina Wilmington, underscores how preserving and learning from history is so critical to the continuation of civil society. Pasulka, for example, tells me that she has “uncovered primary sources that enrich our understanding of not only European history, but also data that helps contemporary industries, such as the space industry and others.” “The digitization of these materials,” Pasulka continued “is one of the most important endeavors that has been undertaken to preserve knowledge of historical records that are fragile and in danger of being lost forever.”

Most importantly, the digitization of the Vatican Library and Archives means it is joining the ranks of other prominent institutions who have digitized their archives, such as the British Museum, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Cambridge University, and the Library of Congress.

--Bill Lucey

WPLucey@gmail.com

February 28, 2021