The good folks at Electoral-Vote.com have published an interesting map of the electoral votes in the 1976 and 2020 elections: As they say: Compare the 1976 map with the 2020 map. Eleven states (including D.C.) stayed blue (D.C., Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin). Twelve states stayed red … Continue reading Then and Now
History
Litterae ex Domus Alba
In the second year Latin textbook that we used in high school, there appeared this modern use of the eloquent Latin language: Eight girls at New York's Dalton School had translated President Kennedy's Inaugural Address of 1961 into Latin and sent their translation to the White House. This is the reply they received from the … Continue reading Litterae ex Domus Alba
The Pneumatic Tube
In Lebanon, PA, in the 1950s if you walked across Cumberland Street from the Haak Brothers department store, you’d find the J.C. Penney store, I think it was even in the same block, but certainly no more than a block away—the shopping district in Lebanon only covered about four or five blocks in total, from … Continue reading The Pneumatic Tube
The Pedoscope
How many of you remember the Pedoscope? While it might sound like a telescope for pedophiles, it was actually a machine that could be found in many shoe and department stores from the 1920s till as late as the 1970s in some countries. Also called an X-ray Shoe Fitter or Foot-o-scope, it was a fluoroscope that let … Continue reading The Pedoscope
Bipartisan
“It is true that the president needed a few Democratic votes to pass the Thirteenth Amendment in the lagging days of a lame-duck Congress, but he never attached any symbolic importance to its coming before the public as “bipartisan” legislation. He was an unembarrassed Republican who took every opportunity to call himself a Republican; and … Continue reading Bipartisan
Asparagus
Bannister: “If you were to serve asparagus, for example, you would lay a finger bowl but no cutlery. The English eat it with their fingers. Americans do not.” Who knew serving asparagus could be so fraught? Certainly not Church, the Russell family’s butler, who is being schooled in the ways of the English by Bannister, … Continue reading Asparagus
At Tony Pastor’s
When Cornelius Hackl tries to convince Barnaby Tucker, his fellow employee at Horace Vandergelder’s shop in Yonkers, to go to New York City with him, he sings “Put On Your Sunday Clothes”, one of the great ensemble numbers in Hello, Dolly! Alas, Cornelius really doesn’t know much about the upper classes in NYC of the … Continue reading At Tony Pastor’s
We’ll Join the Astors
We'll join the Astors At Tony Pastor's And this I'm positive of That we won't come home until we fall in love! — Jerry Herman I have belatedly begun watching Julian Fellowes’s The Gilded Age, his prequel of sorts to Downton Abbey. I’m about halfway through it and as much as I’m enjoying the drama and the … Continue reading We’ll Join the Astors
A Man for No Seasons
I see that the Lantern Theater Company produced Robert Bolt’s play A Man for All Seasons a little while ago. And I have a question. Why? I mean the play is about Sir Thomas More and his opposition to the divorce of King Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. Henry, of course, was not the most admirable … Continue reading A Man for No Seasons
Political Differences?
“He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security.” — Benjamin Franklin Early in the Ken Burns documentary on Benjamin Franklin the narrator claims that Franklin “let political differences destroy his relationship with his son.” Knowing a little bit about the history of Ben and his son William, I immediately … Continue reading Political Differences?