Gil Hahn's Blog, page 4

Humor as Social Commentary

Quality, value, style, service, selection, convenience,
Economy, savings, performance, experience, hospitality,
Low rates, friendly service, name brands, easy terms,
Affordable prices, money-back guarantee.

George Carlin - “Advertising”

I recently listened to a George Carlin monologue called “Advertising” on YouTube. The first two minutes of the nine minute piece consisted of a litany of advertising buzzwords and phrases. Typical of George Carlin, the monologue flipped to social commentary with la...

Discussing War and Radical Peace

"If you want to end war and stuff you got to sing loud."
Arlo Guthrie "Alice's Restaurant"
One of the pleasures of living in Wilmington, Delaware is participating in the book discussion group that is sponsored by the Wilmington Library Institute. The program is celebrating its twentieth anniversary. The usual moderator during that time has been Thomas Leitch, a professor in the English Department at the University of Delaware.

Tom is one of the world’s great talkers, and it is always fun to list...

Boogie Music, and the right comprehension, and the right application thereof

We must make Boogie Music the essential factor in the life's law. In presenting this song to the world, we must then explain and justify our prediction by formulating a definition of Boogie Music and setting forth its main principles in such a way that all may understand instantly that their souls, their lives, and every relation with every other human being in every circumstance depends on Boogie Music, and the right comprehension, and the right application thereof.

– Canned Heat, Boogie Musi...

Sense in the City

Major Strasser: Are you one of those people who cannot imagine the Germans in their beloved Paris?
Rick: It's not particularly my beloved Paris.
Heinz: Can you imagine us in London?
Rick: When you get there, ask me!
Captain Renault: Hmmh! Diplomatist!
Major Strasser: How about New York?
Rick: Well there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade.
Casablanca (1942)

The 1859 edition of Phelps’ Strangers and Citizens’ Guide to New York City offered sage words of...

Cotton and Foreign Policy

In 1860, the states that would secede and form the Confederacy had a near monopoly on the world's supply of raw cotton fiber – they produced about 80 percent of the world's cotton, and raw cotton represented roughly 50 percent of the value of goods and produce exported from the United States.

At the same time, Britain was the world's largest producer of cotton cloth and cotton goods, making it the largest consumer of cotton fiber, followed by France.

In these facts lie the origin of the Confede...

Thirty-Sixth Congress, First Session

The first session of the Thirty-Sixth Congress, which met from December 1859 to June 1860 was tumultuous but not productive of the legislation that histories recall – such as the Compromise of 1850, the grab-bag of legislation that was intended to put slavery as a political issue to rest once and for all; or the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 that revoked the Missouri Compromise and decreed that popular sovereignty henceforth would determine whether the federal territories would enter the union...

Barns: Variations Reflecting the Spread of Knowledge

Although industry was a growing component of the economy in 1860, America remained in large part a farming nation, and barn were ubiquitous farm structures. Barns of the day were almost all rectangular structures. Circular barns and barns built as polygons were promoted later in the nineteenth century, although a few existed in earlier times. The Shaker community in Hancock, Massachusetts built a magnificent round barn in 1826; it still stands although with a modified roof structure. While no...

Visitation and Search

In the middle of the nineteenth century, the international law of the sea, although seemingly straight forward, had become the source of a dispute that threatened war between the United States and Britain, a threat that was finally extinguished on the eve of the American Civil War. As do many events of that time, the incident is wrapped up with slavery.

International law consisted of the shared understandings of the sovereign nations of the world as to how nations should conduct themselves in...

Archbishop Hughes

John Joseph Hughes was the Archbishop of New York in 1860. He was born in Ireland in 1797. His family emigrated to the United States in 1816, and he followed them the next year. He studied at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Maryland, and he was ordained in 1826 in Philadelphia where he acquired a reputation as a vigorous defender of the church. He was appointed the coadjutor bishop of New York in 1837; he was consecrated as the fourth bishop of New York in 1842 and as the first archbishop of New...

Flim Flam

I have just read Flim Flam: Houdini and the Hereafter, the newly published edition of a play written by Gene Franklin Smith. Flim Flam premiered at the Malibu Playhouse last year to good notices, and it ran from June into August. I can see why – it is fun and engaging.

(Full disclosure: I have known and admired Gene Smith for years. When I started dating the woman whom I married 30 years ago (we are still married), she was house-managing a production of his play Life Beneath the Roses in New...