Vietnam and North Carolina: This Date in History
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donbosco
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Speaking of Politics...
The clipping here is from April 19, 1978 and refers to the votes on the Panama Canal Treaty by North Carolina’s two U.S. Senators - Democrat Robert Morgan, a Yes, and Republican Jesse Helms, No. That April ‘78 vote assured the neutrality of the canal and pledged that the U.S. would not interfere in the internal affairs of the nation of Panama.
The day of that vote I had a Political Science seminar taught by Professor Federico Gil. I was a junior struggling to keep up in the heady stuff being discussed in that class. UNC was a leader globally at the time in Latin American Studies. Very specifically the course was ‘Latin America in World Affairs.” Most of y’all must have been acquainted with the college lore of the late instructor, i.e., students wait 5 minutes for a tardy graduate teaching assistant, 10 for an assistant prof, 15 for an associate, and 20 for a full professor.
That day, Dr. Gil was still not there at the 20 minute mark. So respected was he that no one left. His expertise in international relations was globally renowned and smart, open-minded public servants, business people, and other scholars sought out his counsel. Expertise was many years away from the shunning currently the standard operating procedure among modern Conservative politicians. Professor Gil was the very definition of erudite. His classes were brilliantly executed and every student, even those ‘in-over-their-heads’ such as I, worked our hardest to keep up.
When he did arrive, over half an hour late, he apologized and thanked us for staying. He explained that he had been delayed by a phone call from a North Carolina Senator seeking advice on the Panama Canal vote. Which of our two had sought out the expert needed no explanation.
The clipping here is from April 19, 1978 and refers to the votes on the Panama Canal Treaty by North Carolina’s two U.S. Senators - Democrat Robert Morgan, a Yes, and Republican Jesse Helms, No. That April ‘78 vote assured the neutrality of the canal and pledged that the U.S. would not interfere in the internal affairs of the nation of Panama.
The day of that vote I had a Political Science seminar taught by Professor Federico Gil. I was a junior struggling to keep up in the heady stuff being discussed in that class. UNC was a leader globally at the time in Latin American Studies. Very specifically the course was ‘Latin America in World Affairs.” Most of y’all must have been acquainted with the college lore of the late instructor, i.e., students wait 5 minutes for a tardy graduate teaching assistant, 10 for an assistant prof, 15 for an associate, and 20 for a full professor.
That day, Dr. Gil was still not there at the 20 minute mark. So respected was he that no one left. His expertise in international relations was globally renowned and smart, open-minded public servants, business people, and other scholars sought out his counsel. Expertise was many years away from the shunning currently the standard operating procedure among modern Conservative politicians. Professor Gil was the very definition of erudite. His classes were brilliantly executed and every student, even those ‘in-over-their-heads’ such as I, worked our hardest to keep up.
When he did arrive, over half an hour late, he apologized and thanked us for staying. He explained that he had been delayed by a phone call from a North Carolina Senator seeking advice on the Panama Canal vote. Which of our two had sought out the expert needed no explanation.
The Ghost of Richard Nixon wishes he was POTUS today.
#OTD 1994 Richard Nixon Died.
Robert “Too Liberal for North Carolina” MorganSpeaking of Politics...
The clipping here is from April 19, 1978 and refers to the votes on the Panama Canal Treaty by North Carolina’s two U.S. Senators - Democrat Robert Morgan, a Yes, and Republican Jesse Helms, No. That April ‘78 vote assured the neutrality of the canal and pledged that the U.S. would not interfere in the internal affairs of the nation of Panama.
The day of that vote I had a Political Science seminar taught by Professor Federico Gil. I was a junior struggling to keep up in the heady stuff being discussed in that class. UNC was a leader globally at the time in Latin American Studies. Very specifically the course was ‘Latin America in World Affairs.” Most of y’all must have been acquainted with the college lore of the late instructor, i.e., students wait 5 minutes for a tardy graduate teaching assistant, 10 for an assistant prof, 15 for an associate, and 20 for a full professor.
That day, Dr. Gil was still not there at the 20 minute mark. So respected was he that no one left. His expertise in international relations was globally renowned and smart, open-minded public servants, business people, and other scholars sought out his counsel. Expertise was many years away from the shunning currently the standard operating procedure among modern Conservative politicians. Professor Gil was the very definition of erudite. His classes were brilliantly executed and every student, even those ‘in-over-their-heads’ such as I, worked our hardest to keep up.
When he did arrive, over half an hour late, he apologized and thanked us for staying. He explained that he had been delayed by a phone call from a North Carolina Senator seeking advice on the Panama Canal vote. Which of our two had sought out the expert needed no explanation.
donbosco
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The Voice. (hear it at the link below) I have only heard in retrospectives but I remember him spoken of with reverence by my father who was very pro-democracy and even more anti-authoritarian like so many in his now-forgotten generation—the one that wrestled fascist dictators to the ground and crushed them in Germany and Italy. In our most recent times some brave members of a much maligned profession have followed along his path. We should be thankful for for journalists like this and recognize their work in a measure based on the ire they draw from the shysters, seditionists, and nattering anti-democracy nabobs of our time. Edward R. Murrow seems to have been hated by just the right folks. A hit dog does yell the loudest. #OTD (April 24) in 1908 Edward R. Murrow was born near Greensboro. He grew up in Washington state. His WW2 CBS radio reports from Europe were historic. On his ‘50s TV program ‘See It Now’ he brought down Red-baiting GOP Sen.McCarthy in ‘54.
Please watch that moment at this link:
Read more here: Edward R. Murrow, Legendary Journalist
“Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves…” Act 1, Scene 2, “Julius Caesar”
Please watch that moment at this link:
Read more here: Edward R. Murrow, Legendary Journalist
“Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves…” Act 1, Scene 2, “Julius Caesar”
donbosco
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#OTD (April 27) in 1897, which would have been Ulysses S. Grant’s 75th birthday (he died in 1885), his tomb on #RiversideDriveNYC was dedicated. The location in New York City was controversial as both military parks and Washington D.C. were believed more appropriate by many. Grant himself had nixed those ideas however by his romantic insistence that Julia, his wife, be buried beside him.
Grant (and Julia) preferred that New York City be their final resting place. They actually lived at No. 3 East Sixty-sixth street beginning in 1881. (Read here: http://daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/.../the-lost-u-s... ) As many know, the Grants were ruined financially in 1884, the victims of a Ponzi Scheme. Profits from his memoir managed to keep them solvent in his final year and helped to keep his wife and family comfortable. The General died of throat cancer just over a year later.
As per their wishes the mausoleum is the final resting place of he and Julia. A design by John Hemingway Duncan was chosen in a competition. Duncan based it on the Temple at Halicarnassus of Persia — now Iran, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World (see below, bottom right-facing, for a sketch of that now long-gone structure). While the dedication #OTD (April 27) in 1897 was a huge event, the fund-raising efforts were not always smooth and brought forward both regional and class-based enmities.
In fact, the monument has seen rough times during its 129 year ‘life.’ Having fallen into disrepair, The Works Project Administration (WPA) of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal restored and improved the monument - there are busts of five of Grant's generals...William T. Sherman, Phillip H. Sheridan, George H. Thomas, James B. McPherson, and Edward Ord installed inside by the Federal Artists Project and many infrastructural additions both cosmetic and fundamental were added.
Despite the monument’s placement in the care of the National Parks Service in 1958, in the 1970s graffiti as well as squatting along the exterior of the structure made it unsightly and even dangerous. Overall New York City itself was in similarly dire straits - #RiversideParkNYC was a rough and mainly off limits area. It wasn’t until the 1990s that the monument, and the area was reclaimed. Today when in NYC I walk with Prince and Maxie in this area daily (even nightly), and literally circling “Grant’s Tomb” is part of our regimen. I admire the structure for its solid but fluid lines. It has a timeless quality and diagonally across from the towering Riverside Church we find ourselves sandwiched by two of the more impressive edifices, though I fear, less recognized, in The City. The dogs only see the squirrels and rats in truth but I do try my best to look up. The structure itself does remind me, as a born and bred southerner who was treated to the barrage of Lost Cause propaganda from my earliest memory, that the country has an incredibly divisive history and that I am living through a time of deep division and cultural civil war as well. When I do look up I see on the tomb inscribed Grant’s epitaph: “Let us have peace.” I have to add though...not at the cost of permitting fascism, racism, and regression to win the day.
Amen.
The photographs below: Top left-facing is a photograph of the dedication ceremony. Top right-facing, a shot from 1917. Bottom left-facing is a snap by me from Sakura Park.
Grant (and Julia) preferred that New York City be their final resting place. They actually lived at No. 3 East Sixty-sixth street beginning in 1881. (Read here: http://daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/.../the-lost-u-s... ) As many know, the Grants were ruined financially in 1884, the victims of a Ponzi Scheme. Profits from his memoir managed to keep them solvent in his final year and helped to keep his wife and family comfortable. The General died of throat cancer just over a year later.
As per their wishes the mausoleum is the final resting place of he and Julia. A design by John Hemingway Duncan was chosen in a competition. Duncan based it on the Temple at Halicarnassus of Persia — now Iran, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World (see below, bottom right-facing, for a sketch of that now long-gone structure). While the dedication #OTD (April 27) in 1897 was a huge event, the fund-raising efforts were not always smooth and brought forward both regional and class-based enmities.
In fact, the monument has seen rough times during its 129 year ‘life.’ Having fallen into disrepair, The Works Project Administration (WPA) of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal restored and improved the monument - there are busts of five of Grant's generals...William T. Sherman, Phillip H. Sheridan, George H. Thomas, James B. McPherson, and Edward Ord installed inside by the Federal Artists Project and many infrastructural additions both cosmetic and fundamental were added.
Despite the monument’s placement in the care of the National Parks Service in 1958, in the 1970s graffiti as well as squatting along the exterior of the structure made it unsightly and even dangerous. Overall New York City itself was in similarly dire straits - #RiversideParkNYC was a rough and mainly off limits area. It wasn’t until the 1990s that the monument, and the area was reclaimed. Today when in NYC I walk with Prince and Maxie in this area daily (even nightly), and literally circling “Grant’s Tomb” is part of our regimen. I admire the structure for its solid but fluid lines. It has a timeless quality and diagonally across from the towering Riverside Church we find ourselves sandwiched by two of the more impressive edifices, though I fear, less recognized, in The City. The dogs only see the squirrels and rats in truth but I do try my best to look up. The structure itself does remind me, as a born and bred southerner who was treated to the barrage of Lost Cause propaganda from my earliest memory, that the country has an incredibly divisive history and that I am living through a time of deep division and cultural civil war as well. When I do look up I see on the tomb inscribed Grant’s epitaph: “Let us have peace.” I have to add though...not at the cost of permitting fascism, racism, and regression to win the day.
Amen.
The photographs below: Top left-facing is a photograph of the dedication ceremony. Top right-facing, a shot from 1917. Bottom left-facing is a snap by me from Sakura Park.
donbosco
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A recollection or two in this piece might have appeared here before.
Vietnam was ubiquitous in my youth. Newspapers and the nightly news, often Walter Cronkite but more spectacularly, reporters embedded in the fighting, brought that war into our #Bonlee living room. I had a map of that region on the wall in my bedroom and strange-sounding names like Da Nang and Mekong and Tan San Nhut rang increasingly familiar in my ears. Mark Twain or Ambrose Bierce, both satirical truth-speakers, get credit for saying that “War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.” I’d substitute government for God there but you get the sad joke either way. If we had news these days, and people were to watch it, I guess they’d be quite familiar with the Middle East in ways that Southeast Asia was to me.
In those now long ago times my parents faced the news and talked aloud about the war and other issues of the day. My older brother was draft age and multiple cousins were serving in the military so the events were in our blood. Momma and Deddy’s talk was informed and very political. Our evening meal was a regular seminar with Deddy leading the discussion. We got a morning (‘The Greensboro Daily News’) and an afternoon (‘The Sanford Herald’) newspaper and subscribed To ‘Time,’ ‘Newsweek,’ and ‘US News & World Report.’ Doing her part, my Aunt Leisel Womble made sure that I received ‘National Geographic’ with a Christmas gift subscription every year. Deddy was always informed, even if he didn’t always agree, by the economics in his weekly ‘Kiplinger Report.’ When my Momma passed away I found years of newspaper sections saved, folded to specific stories, most with notes containing her thoughts penciled in the margins. I come by my deep interest in politics and world events honestly.
Despite the final five minutes of mean-spirited editorializing on WRAL (Future Republican Senator Jesse Helms’ “Viewpoint”) we watched NBC channel 5 out of Raleigh but then switched over to channel 2 (WFMY) for CBS’s national news where Cronkite and company so often brought uncomfortable truths. It was there I saw the war as reporters brought the story very literally from the fire zones of the DMZ. (We’ll never see such a thing that close up again - too much transparency) Each night I stared at what amounted to a scoreboard counting off the day’s dead. These body counts, showed an impossibly large number of North Vietnamese army and Viet Cong killed, lower, yet still high, counts of South Vietnamese dead, with the fewest tally being US soldiers dead. I clearly remember thinking that the enemy, North Vietnam, would surely run out of people soon and the war would end. We now know that these numbers were manipulated for the benefit of the ‘war effort’ back home - for naive little boys in places like #DeepChatham for example.
Along with the military ‘intelligence’ I was filled with war movie-John Wayne heroics - “Combat” and “Rat Patrol,” chronicles of the anti-Fascist ‘good fight’ in World War II were among my favorite shows and despite the unpopularity of the real war in Southeast Asia, I wanted to go. I even begged my Deddy to send me to military school and for those slightly older that were anti-war I had nothing but disdain. The Revealing of Nixon’s dishonest criminality (Deddy had warned me - he saw the GOP in the light of historical experience, a light that has literally never in my life failed to illuminate modern conservatism in the USA from then to the present day as a movement dedicated to ‘trickle down’ voodoo economics and general grifting) lifted the scales from my eyes so that by 1975 or so and the end of that endless conflict I had come to see more clearly the depths of our deadly National Folly.
North Carolina was in those days, as it remains, highly militarized. On our drives to the beach we passed through Fort Bragg, and its city, Fayetteville (called FayetteNam by many), fascinating in its difference and to my Southern Baptist eyes, youthful foreign seediness. We also skirted Pope Air Force Base along the way and Camp Lejeune and Cherry Point were often named places where young men were ‘sent’ to prepare. From #DeepChatham many heads turned to the “Close-By East” of Fayetteville - even a kid knew that into, and out of, that international transit point a good deal of worldliness flowed. 216,348 Tar Heels served in that war and 1,602 died.
I was also aware of anti-war protests and sentiments. Eventually I detected it in the music I was beginning to pay closer attention to and of course the overall presence and power of youth counterculture rumbled and writhed beneath the surface, slowly and quite surely making its way into the mainstream - sideburns grew longer and dresses shorter even in #Bonlee.
As the years of war dragged on into the 1970s in Saigon, the far-off center of the growing diplomatic morass in Vietnam, there was a North Carolinian “in charge.” #OTD (April 29) in 1975 the last US citizens and South Vietnamese allies evacuated Saigon ahead of North Vietnamese forces. United States Ambassador Graham Martin was from Mars Hill, North Carolina. A World War II veteran and career diplomat, Nixon had appointed him in 1973. Martin was a preacher’s son and Wake Forest graduate who became an FDR New Dealer and career foreign service officer with experience in espionage. Read on here about Martin: The Fall of Saigon and Ambassador Graham Martin
MORE HERE ON THE LAST DAYS: Weiterleitungshinweis
Vietnam was ubiquitous in my youth. Newspapers and the nightly news, often Walter Cronkite but more spectacularly, reporters embedded in the fighting, brought that war into our #Bonlee living room. I had a map of that region on the wall in my bedroom and strange-sounding names like Da Nang and Mekong and Tan San Nhut rang increasingly familiar in my ears. Mark Twain or Ambrose Bierce, both satirical truth-speakers, get credit for saying that “War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.” I’d substitute government for God there but you get the sad joke either way. If we had news these days, and people were to watch it, I guess they’d be quite familiar with the Middle East in ways that Southeast Asia was to me.
In those now long ago times my parents faced the news and talked aloud about the war and other issues of the day. My older brother was draft age and multiple cousins were serving in the military so the events were in our blood. Momma and Deddy’s talk was informed and very political. Our evening meal was a regular seminar with Deddy leading the discussion. We got a morning (‘The Greensboro Daily News’) and an afternoon (‘The Sanford Herald’) newspaper and subscribed To ‘Time,’ ‘Newsweek,’ and ‘US News & World Report.’ Doing her part, my Aunt Leisel Womble made sure that I received ‘National Geographic’ with a Christmas gift subscription every year. Deddy was always informed, even if he didn’t always agree, by the economics in his weekly ‘Kiplinger Report.’ When my Momma passed away I found years of newspaper sections saved, folded to specific stories, most with notes containing her thoughts penciled in the margins. I come by my deep interest in politics and world events honestly.
Despite the final five minutes of mean-spirited editorializing on WRAL (Future Republican Senator Jesse Helms’ “Viewpoint”) we watched NBC channel 5 out of Raleigh but then switched over to channel 2 (WFMY) for CBS’s national news where Cronkite and company so often brought uncomfortable truths. It was there I saw the war as reporters brought the story very literally from the fire zones of the DMZ. (We’ll never see such a thing that close up again - too much transparency) Each night I stared at what amounted to a scoreboard counting off the day’s dead. These body counts, showed an impossibly large number of North Vietnamese army and Viet Cong killed, lower, yet still high, counts of South Vietnamese dead, with the fewest tally being US soldiers dead. I clearly remember thinking that the enemy, North Vietnam, would surely run out of people soon and the war would end. We now know that these numbers were manipulated for the benefit of the ‘war effort’ back home - for naive little boys in places like #DeepChatham for example.
Along with the military ‘intelligence’ I was filled with war movie-John Wayne heroics - “Combat” and “Rat Patrol,” chronicles of the anti-Fascist ‘good fight’ in World War II were among my favorite shows and despite the unpopularity of the real war in Southeast Asia, I wanted to go. I even begged my Deddy to send me to military school and for those slightly older that were anti-war I had nothing but disdain. The Revealing of Nixon’s dishonest criminality (Deddy had warned me - he saw the GOP in the light of historical experience, a light that has literally never in my life failed to illuminate modern conservatism in the USA from then to the present day as a movement dedicated to ‘trickle down’ voodoo economics and general grifting) lifted the scales from my eyes so that by 1975 or so and the end of that endless conflict I had come to see more clearly the depths of our deadly National Folly.
North Carolina was in those days, as it remains, highly militarized. On our drives to the beach we passed through Fort Bragg, and its city, Fayetteville (called FayetteNam by many), fascinating in its difference and to my Southern Baptist eyes, youthful foreign seediness. We also skirted Pope Air Force Base along the way and Camp Lejeune and Cherry Point were often named places where young men were ‘sent’ to prepare. From #DeepChatham many heads turned to the “Close-By East” of Fayetteville - even a kid knew that into, and out of, that international transit point a good deal of worldliness flowed. 216,348 Tar Heels served in that war and 1,602 died.
I was also aware of anti-war protests and sentiments. Eventually I detected it in the music I was beginning to pay closer attention to and of course the overall presence and power of youth counterculture rumbled and writhed beneath the surface, slowly and quite surely making its way into the mainstream - sideburns grew longer and dresses shorter even in #Bonlee.
As the years of war dragged on into the 1970s in Saigon, the far-off center of the growing diplomatic morass in Vietnam, there was a North Carolinian “in charge.” #OTD (April 29) in 1975 the last US citizens and South Vietnamese allies evacuated Saigon ahead of North Vietnamese forces. United States Ambassador Graham Martin was from Mars Hill, North Carolina. A World War II veteran and career diplomat, Nixon had appointed him in 1973. Martin was a preacher’s son and Wake Forest graduate who became an FDR New Dealer and career foreign service officer with experience in espionage. Read on here about Martin: The Fall of Saigon and Ambassador Graham Martin
MORE HERE ON THE LAST DAYS: Weiterleitungshinweis
donbosco
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No idea why this text is in German but it is a Soldier's Timeline of the War. Perhaps the most stunning piece of information is that during World War II the average soldier saw 40 days of combat a year while in Vietnam that number was 240 days.
World War II soldiers also averaged 25 years of age while in Vietnam the average was 21.
www.history.com
World War II soldiers also averaged 25 years of age while in Vietnam the average was 21.
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In re "War is God's way of teaching Americans Geography." Nearly simutaneously with the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Philippines were attacked. Because my grandparents lived in the Philippines from about 1910 to about 1930, the locals in my hometown considered them to be experts on all things Philippines. Several local people approaches both my Mother and her parents to ask if they were furious at FDR for letting the Japanese attack the Philippines. When asked how was FDR at fault, these folks replied that FDR had just let the entire Japanese Fleet sail through the Panama Canal so they could attack the Philippines. After a bit more discussion, it became obvious that the only thing they knew about the Philippines was that it had something to do with the Spanish American War. And all they knew about that War was that Teddy "by God" Roosevelt took San Juan Hill in Cuba and they knew where Cuba was, so the Philippines couldn't be too far away. My Mother remembers her mother getting a globe and showing with her finger that it was possible to get from Japan to the Philippines on a boat without going through the Panama Canal.