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In the median strip of I-69 outside of San Benito, TX a historical marker few people ever see keeps a lonely vigil as traffic roars by. The marker commemorates the deaths of hundreds of Mexican-Americans at the hands of the Texas Rangers between 1915 and 1917, a period known as…
Read more“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” That quote by the 19th century philosopher Kierkegaard lies at the heart of the novels written by William Faulkner, one of the giants of American literature. Faulkner believed the reality of one’s life experience almost invariably falls short…
Read moreOn November 6th, 1829 a man dressed in a white shirt and spinner pants stepped to the edge of a stone precipice ninety-four feet above the High Falls of the Genesee River in downtown Rochester, New York. Below him, some 8,000 spectators lined the banks. He bowed to the crowd…
Read moreIt was a war nobody wanted. Even rabblerousers like Sam Adams and John Hancock agreed that tangling with the mother country would probably to lead to grief. The preferred method was to pressure the crown into repealing the acts the colonists found so intolerable. The Intolerable Acts, as the colonists…
Read moreIt was idealism that motivated them, idealism and a self-righteous belief in their own rectitude. Prickly is a word that might have been used to describe them, as well as narrow minded and intolerant. They were not easy people to get along with. They left England because they feared persecution…
Read moreIn a country constituted of immigrants and the progeny of immigrants, immigration is surprisingly thorny issue in America. It is often said that Native Americans are the only real Americans. Everyone else is an immigrant. But even that’s not true. The ancestors of Native Americans arrived in North America 15,000…
Read moreDeath from spinal fracture was the final verdict for Otto Lilienthal. Displaying a heady mixture of audacity and ingenuity, Lilienthal, a German engineer, had developed a heavier than air glider, flown it several times, tweaked its design and was working on a way to power it when the accident occurred….
Read moreThe Old West was just the briefest snapshot in time. It’s odd to think that the era we consider the Rootin’ Tootin’ Wild West lasted all of about 15 years, existing during that brief period of time between the arrival of the first settlers and the effective establishment of law…
Read moreThe years 1944-1960 saw the greatest expansion of the American economy we may ever know. They saw the end of Second World War, the dawn of the nuclear age, and the beginning of the Cold War. They were among the most challenging and rewarding years in American history, and they…
Read moreAs I came into Florida, home of the largest concentration of senior citizens in the United States, on my way to the oldest city in the United States, I was feeling a little creaky in my limbs. I had stayed up too late watching the game, it had been a…
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