This Day in History

On this day in history we have two very important events. First, this is the birthday of one of the greatest presidents of the United States—Theodore Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt was born in 1858. It is worthwhile to read a good biography about this man. His determination to excel is one of great record. His life is a challenge to everyone who faces personal physical difficulty. He certainly deserves being on Mt. Rushmore. Of course now he will to make room for Hillary Clinton.

On a different note this is the day that Columbus landed on Cuba in 1492. I can remember when I was in grade school that we often had a holiday for Columbus Day. Today, it is fashionable to bad-mouth this man who changed history. Christopher Columbus is a classic example of a Black Swan event.

Our daughter in California still has a home at Arrowbear, but can't return for a while. A godly woman in Palm Springs, CA turned her home over to Becca and her family for the duration of her "exile." What an act of kindness. Unfortunately CNN, ABC, BBC, etc., will never make mention of the good people who will come out. Her husband, Seth Burt, has been on the fire line through the whole thing, getting very little rest and not a lot of food. He went home and raided his freezer to provide food for his men. A great guy! A giant in our time! I'm glad Rebecca snagged him.

Oh yes, our granddaughter Pyper Lili is now counting in Spanish. What does that bode?

This Day in History October 23

Today's history has a lot of content. To begin with this is the day that the United Nations was established in 1945. Most people are unaware of the price that was paid for this organization. Meeting with Churchill and Stalin on the Black Sea, Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave away Eastern Europe to the Russians in exchange for their cooperation to start the United Nations. What gall these men possessed! What a total disregard for human rights! These people would not be free until 1989 when communism fell. During that time the Russians would rape their countryside and despoil their land with pollution. In the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, the Russians would attempt to put to death or ship to Siberia all the intelligenstia. Thousands of teachers and doctors just disappeared in the vast wasteland of Siberia. Christian leaders faced similar fates. So when I think of the United Nations I can only think of how it started.

Beyond that the United Nations has been a major financial burden to the United States. Many of the countries included in it do very little, if anything for support. I would hope that some brave politician would lead a campaign to send the whole thing to Siberia.

On a lighter note, the 40 hour workweek went into effect on this day in 1938.

On a sadder note, this was the day before Black Thursday in 1929 when the stock market fell in a catastrophic fashion and we dived into the Great Depression. On this day nearly 13 million shares of stocks were traded.

In 1922 Benito Mussolini began his rise to power. Not good news.

But also on this day in 1861 the first transcontinental telegraph message was sent in the United States which signalled the end of the Pony Express.

California fires

As of 8:30 CDT, the fire at Running Springs/Arrowbear had been contained. But with the Santa Ana winds there is always the risk that it could go on the move again. Most of Running Springs is gone. Our daughter, Rebecca and her family, live in Arrowbear. Her husband, Seth, told her that their house was still standing. We are thankful for that but grieve for the 100s of homes that were lost in the fire.

Fires in California

We have heard from my daughter in California, Rebecca, twice now concerning the fires. Yesterday, October 22, she had to evacuate from Running Springs, California and today she said her husband, Seth, reported that the fire was already burning the next door community of Arrowbear. By now the fire may have reached her house.

We are thankful that Rebecca, the children, and the zoo are safe and will remember hourly her husband on the fire line.

On Sunday evening on 60 minutes a leading fire fighter was asked what the cause was for all these massive fires. His answer--mismanagement. The Forest Service department would not let fires clean out all the underbrush and so the brush has accumulated to the point that now we have major fires. The other aspect is due to the tree huggers and organizations like the Sierra Club that have fought any efforts to thin the forests or get rid of beetle infested forests. Now we are paying the price for these wealthy do-gooders who helped create this nightmare. None of them will be available to help these people replace their homes.

We will know by the end of the day the fate of our daughter's home.

Post-modern community

Has relativism so invaded the church that adults have lost the capacity to discipline their own youth? In my darkest moments, I couldn't have imagined it. But a recent episode makes me wonder. Read the rest of this article in Christianity Today.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/october/36.156.html

The Worst Hard Time

The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan

Anyone who has knowledge of the great depression in America is familiar with the pictures taken in the Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl began in North Dakota and extended all the way to Texas. But if you want to read the awesome story of how the Dust Bowl came into existence and the trauma it brought, you need to read Timothy Egan's The Worst Hard Time.

Timothy Egan did research throughout the Dust Bowl region finding people who had actually lived the through the Dust Bowl. His discoveries are heart-breaking. The lessons taught are important for all ages.

The conclusions of this book tell us that the Dust Bowl was the result of greed, greed by the government and greed by people who were out to make a quick fortune.

The first stage of the greed was brought on by a huge cattle ranch called XIT. The owners of the XIT were given the land on the basis of what they would do for the government in return. Overgrazing nearly destroyed this vast grassland which once had supported vast herds of buffalo as well as the Native American tribes that lived in the region. The buffalo were destroyed and the Indians driven off the land.

The next stage was to turn this vast grassland into farmland by the Homestead Act of 1865. Land that was never designed to be farmland was converted to farmland. A few years of good rains led people to believe the land would produce wheat and corn. With the onslaught of World War I, the need for grain increased and prices went out of sight. This led carpet-baggers to come to the area, plant wheat and then leave until harvest time.

The villain in this story was the steel plow that ripped up the sod. Millions of acres were plowed in hopes of getting rich. This opened the door for the Dust Bowl because the sod had held the soil in place. Now that was gone. When both Republican (Hoover) and Democratic (Roosevelt) were approached to do something, both refused to recognize how serious the problem was.

Here in eastern Kansas we have the Konza Prairie. Fortunately the desire to plow it up has been resisted. After you read The Worst Hard Time, you will understand why this rich grassland can never be plowed.

What follows is the description of the book offered by the publisher, Houghton Mifflin Books.

About the Book

The devastation caused this year by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita serves as a grim reminder of the destructive power of nature and the long-term effects of a single storm. In The Worst Hard Time (Houghton Mifflin; December 14, 2005), Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Timothy Egan brilliantly captures the untold story of the Dust Bowl, the decade of brutally punishing dust storms that ravaged the American High Plains during the Depression and became the "worst weather event" in American history, through the eyes of those who survived it.

Once one of the greatest grasslands in the world, the High Plains of Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico went through a bonanza of overfarming in the 1920s. When the rains stopped and the wind picked up in the early 1930s, the stripped earth began to stir and blow to devastating effect, sending millions of tons of dust across much of the nation. In the High Plains, the power of these blinding black blizzards of dust was such that it was often impossible to "see your hand in front of your face," according to one survivor.

At its peak, the Dust Bowl covered close to one hundred million acres, and more than a quarter of a million Americans were forced to flee their ruined homes. In The Worst Hard Time, Egan follows a diverse cast of individuals and families in communities across the affected region, weaving together the eyewitness accounts of survivors now in their eighties and nineties, including:

• Ike Osteen, who survives the Dirty Thirties in a home made of dirt and plank boards, with his widowed mother and eight brothers and sisters;
• Bam White and his family, Native Americans who live through the worst of the storms on the edge of town, in the shadows;
• John McCarty, a businessman, known as the Dust Bowl Cheerleader, who founds the Last Man Club, an association of people who vow never to flee;
• The Doc, a big-hearted, once wealthy man, who ends up a pauper after opening up a soup kitchen;
• The Herzsteins, a pioneering Jewish family, who try to maintain the rituals of daily life even after they lose a beloved uncle to a gunslinger;
• Hazel Lucas Shaw, who comes to the plains as a teenage bride only to see her baby girl killed by the dust.

The Worst Hard Time captures the full drama, heroism, and terror of this unwritten chapter of the Greatest Generation, a time when the simplest thing in life — taking a breath — was a threat. The book is a testament to the power of human perseverance in the face of the most wretched of conditions, as well as a reminder that the environmental catastrophe of the Dust Bowl may be only a preview of what is in store for us in our ever-warming future.

2nd Vatican Council

According to Britannica this is the day in history when Pope John XXIII called the 2nd Vatican Council in session in 1962. This would be a momentous event for the Roman Catholics and would bring about significant changes in the RC church. One item was to allow the mass to be given in the vernacular rather than in Latin. For aeons the belief had been held that Latin was the language of heaven, so it needed to be used in the church. Of course, anyone who knows anything at all knows that the language of heaven is Hebrew. What other language would God have used when talking to Moses? But if you are a red-blooded American, you will believe that the language of heaven is English.

Pope John XXIII was the greatest pope of the 20th century. He was old when he was elected to the position and the Curia (the ruling body of cardinals in the RC church) chose him because they assumed he would die soon. In the meantime they could figure out who they really wanted to be the next pope. But John fooled them and lived long enough to bring about momentous changes in the Roman Catholic church. I believe this man was a true man of God. He did not enjoy all the pomp and circumstance that accompanied the papacy and repeatedly told his secretary not to refer to him as "Your holiness." You should read a good biography about this great man. What was supposed to be a "temp" on the job turned out to be the best pope the church experienced for at least 100 years.

Traveling Delta Style

Based upon some urgency that was never explained, TCM International wanted me to do whatever I could to complete a commitment I made to them to go to Russia to teach. I have worked for TCM International since 2001 when Arletta and I went to Austria for my sabbatical. Since then I have been to nearly every one of their ten in-country schools to teach.

Just a side note. TCM International achieved accreditation with NCA, the organization that accredits colleges and universities in the USA. That gives you a little idea of the high caliber of education this program provides.

Back to the Russia trip. The Russian embassy claimed it was not happy with my passport, not enough clean pages to suit them. Every other country just stamps over the visa items, but not Russia. They want two clean pages on which to paste their page size visa and then a clean page to stamp arrivals and departures. So my summer trip to Russia was canceled. I was still in the Czech Republic when Mike Crull, director of TCM International, send me an e-mail pleading with me to reconsider. Our negotiations were resolved when Mike said TCMi would buy my plane ticket.

Meanwhile a few days before I was to leave my wife developed terrible cramps in her abdomen. She had her appendix removed many years ago, so we knew that was not the problem. We took her to the doctor and he ordered a cat-scan. We went in for the cat scan with the promise that we would have results in two or three days. Meanwhile the pain persisted. By Thursday before I was to leave I was in a bad state of affairs. How could I leave my wife in this condition and be gone for a week? We had no children nearby who could stay with her. What if she required surgery and I am 10,000 miles away?

Arletta improved somewhat on Friday and so we decided I would go. She would not find out for another week what the problem was. Oh the marvel of modern medicine. She could have died while some technician drank his coffee and munched on his bagels or doughnuts! Even in America we are not too high on serious patient care.

I left Kansas City about 12:30 pm on Saturday. I would fly almost straight through to Moscow and arrive there about 10:30 am the following day. Remember there is a nine-hour time difference. I did not get to Vladimir until 5:00 pm Moscow time.

The flight over was interesting. I often wondered why they designated planes certain sizes. I think I now know. I was in a Boeing-boing 767 and I think there were 767 seats jammed in the plane. You needed a shoehorn to get into your seat. My knees abbutted the seat in front of me and when the person in front leaned back his hair was in my face. When it was time to eat your face was in your food. The plane was full, so there was no wiggle room for anyone. The food was passable, but the service and food on Northwest greatly outshown Delta.

Finally, the return trip provided its own challenges. Just getting through the Moscow airport took three hours. It was a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing. First they X-rayed all our luggage. Then we had to wait while everyone's luggage was hand searched. Finally, just before we were allowed to enter the boarding area they searched our luggage again. Those Russians don't trust any one.