Kenneth C. Davis's Blog, page 106

Touch of Frost: A Videoblog

When winter comes to New England, it is easy to bring to mind the name of Robert Frost. There is no more iconic winter New England poem that the one that begins,

Whose woods these are, I think I know.

And one of my favorite spots in Vermont is the Frost gravesite in the cemetery of the First Church in Old Bennington -just down the street from the Bennington Monument.

Apples, birches, hayfields and stone walls; simple features like these make up the landscape of four-time Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Frost's poetry. Known as a poet of New England, Frost (1874-1963) spent much of his life working and wandering the woods and farmland of Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire. As a young man, he dropped out of Dartmouth and then Harvard, then drifted from job to job: teacher, newspaper editor, cobbler. His poetry career took off during a three-year trip to England with his wife Elinor where Ezra Pound aided the young poet. Frost's language is plain and straightforward, his lines inspired by the laconic speech of his Yankee neighbors.

But while poems like "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" are accessible enough to make Frost a grammar-school favorite, his poetry is contemplative and sometimes dark—concerned with themes like growing old and facing death. Robert Frost –New England's poet of snowy woods, stone wall and apple trees.

I hope this "touch of Frost" will inspire you to read some of his work.

Here's a link to Robert Frost's page at Poets.org

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/192

It includes an account of Frost and JFK

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20540

The first poet invited to speak at a Presidential inaugural, Frost told the new President:

"Be more Irish than Harvard. Poetry and power is the formula for another Augustan Age. Don't be afraid of power."

 

Hear Robert Frost for yourself at Poets Out Loud:

http://robertfrostoutloud.com

This link is to Middlebury College's online Frost exhibit

http://midddigital.middlebury.edu/local_files/robert_frost/index.html

This is the website of Frost House and Museum in Franconia, N.H. http://www.frostplace.org/html/museum.html

Robert Frost died on January 29, 1963. He had written his own epitaph, "I had a lover's quarrel with the world," etched on his headstone in a church cemetery in Bennington, VT.

Here is the NYTimes obituary published after his death.

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0129.html#article

This material is adapted from Don't Know Much About Literature written in collaboration with Jenny Davis.

DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT ELECTING THE U.S. PRESIDENT? A Classroom Skype Invitation (ALL SESSIONS BOOKED)

SORRY!

THIS SERIES OF SKYPE SESSIONS HAS BEEN FULLY BOOKED. PLEASE WATCH FOR ANNOUNCEMENTS OF FUTURE SKYPE PROGRAMS HERE ON THE WEBSITE, OR YOU CAN FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER OR FACEBOOK. THANKS!

 

BEAM ME IN TO DISCUSS THE AMERICAN ELECTION PROCESS

The Presidential Campaign of 2012 is underway.  Americans will go to the polls on Tuesday November 6, 2012.

The marathon of caucuses, primaries, conventions and delegate counts will soon begin in earnest and preoccupy the nation for most of the year.

That makes 2012 a good time to get a handle on America's crazy quilt of election history and rules. Beginning in January 2012, I will visit classrooms via Skype to discuss America's election history and the 2012 campaign.

In a session lasting approximately 30 minutes, I would like to use Skype to "Beam in" to your classrooms to engage your students on the basics of the Presidency and the American election process.  I will speak briefly, then take questions from students in a wide-ranging conversation about a system that doesn't always seem to make sense.

Here are some of the topics I have in mind–

-Why a President? When they were inventing the American system of government back in 1787, how did those men decide what the office of the President should be?

-Who elected George Washington and what's different today?  How has the process of electing the President changed since George Washington won the office first back in 1789?

-Is the Electoral College a Party School? The Constitution doesn't specifically mention the "Electoral College." What is it? Do I need good SAT scores to get in? Most important, why do we still have it?

-Do we need a President? Are the problems of the country too big for one Chief Executive to handle? Maybe we should split the job up. Benjamin Franklin thought we should have three men to do the job. Was he right?

If you would like to organize a free Skype session, please go to the website Contact page and send me an email request. Please be sure to include the name and location of your school, how many students are in your class, and the grade level. The schedule and dates of the sessions will be set at a mutually convenient time. (Please note: A limited number of Skype visits will be scheduled based on my availability.)

I would also encourage you to consider turning this into a "FAMILY EVENT" by inviting parents and other family members into the classroom to make this an exciting discussion about the role of voting and citizenship in our democracy.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Very best,

Kenneth C. Davis

Don't Know Much About@ History: Anniversary Edition

 

DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT ELECTING THE U.S. PRESIDENT? A Classroom Skype Invitation

BEAM ME IN TO DISCUSS THE AMERICAN ELECTION PROCESS

The Presidential Campaign of 2012 is underway.  Americans will go to the polls on Tuesday November 6, 2012.

The marathon of caucuses, primaries, conventions and delegate counts will soon begin in earnest and preoccupy the nation for most of the year.

That makes 2012 a good time to get a handle on America's crazy quilt of election history and rules. Beginning in January 2012, I will visit classrooms via Skype to discuss America's election history and the 2012 campaign.

In a session lasting approximately 30 minutes, I would like to use Skype to "Beam in" to your classrooms to engage your students on the basics of the Presidency and the American election process.  I will speak briefly, then take questions from students in a wide-ranging conversation about a system that doesn't always seem to make sense.

Here are some of the topics I have in mind–

-Why a President? When they were inventing the American system of government back in 1787, how did those men decide what the office of the President should be?

-Who elected George Washington and what's different today?  How has the process of electing the President changed since George Washington won the office first back in 1789?

-Is the Electoral College a Party School? The Constitution doesn't specifically mention the "Electoral College." What is it? Do I need good SAT scores to get in? Most important, why do we still have it?

-Do we need a President? Are the problems of the country too big for one Chief Executive to handle? Maybe we should split the job up. Benjamin Franklin thought we should have three men to do the job. Was he right?

If you would like to organize a free Skype session, please go to the website Contact page and send me an email request. Please be sure to include the name and location of your school, how many students are in your class, and the grade level. The schedule and dates of the sessions will be set at a mutually convenient time. (Please note: A limited number of Skype visits will be scheduled based on my availability.)

I would also encourage you to consider turning this into a "FAMILY EVENT" by inviting parents and other family members into the classroom to make this an exciting discussion about the role of voting and citizenship in our democracy.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Very best,

Kenneth C. Davis

Don't Know Much About@ History: Anniversary Edition

 

Thanksgiving Pop Quiz- A Videoblog

With Thanksgiving around the corner, cutouts of Pilgrims in black clothes and clunky shoes are sprouting all over the place. You may know that the Pilgrims sailed aboard the Mayflower and arrived in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620. But did you know their first Thanksgiving celebration lasted three whole days? What else do you know about these early settlers of America? Don't be a turkey. Try this True-False quiz.

True or False? (Answers below)

1. Pilgrims always wore stiff black clothes and shoes with silver buckles.

2. The Pilgrims came to America in search of religious freedom.

3. Everyone on the Mayflower was a Pilgrim.

4. The Pilgrims were saved from starvation by a native American friend named Squanto.

5. The Pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving in America.

Read more about the Mayflower and its passengers with your children in Don't Know Much About the Pilgrims.

And read about America's real "first Pilgrims" in America's Hidden History

Tthe site of Plimouth Plantation is definitely worth a visit.

 

Don't Know Much About@ History (2011 Revised and Updated Edition)

Answers

1. False. Pilgrims wore blue, green, purple and brownish clothing for everyday. Those who had good black clothes saved them for the Sabbath. No Pilgrims had buckles– artists made that up later!

2. True. The Pilgrims were a group of radical Puritans who had broken away from the Church of England. After 11 years of "exile" in Holland, they decided to come to America.

3. False. Only about half of the 102 people on the Mayflower were what William Bradford later called "Pilgrims." The others, called "Strangers" just wanted to come to the New World.

4. True. Squanto, or Tisquantum, helped teach the Pilgrims to hunt, farm and fish. He learned English after being taken as a slave aboard an English ship.

5. False. The Indians had been having similar harvest feasts for years. So did the English settlers in Virginia and Spanish settlers in the southwest before the Pilgrims even got to America. And the Mayflower Pilgrims weren't even America's "first Pilgrims." That honor goes to French Huguenots who settled in Florida more than 50 years before the Mayflower sailed.

11-11-11: Don't Know Much About Veterans Day–The Forgotten Meaning

On this year's Veteran's Day, marked on 11-11-11, a reminder of what the day once meant and what it should still mean.

 

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

That was the moment at which World War I largely came to end in 1918. One of the most tragically senseless and destructive periods in all history came to a close in Western Europe with the Armistice –or end of hostilities between Germany and the Allied nations — that began at that moment. Some 20 million people had died in the fighting that raged for more than four years since August 1914. The complete end of the war came with the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919.

The date of November 11th became a national holiday of remembrance in many of the victorious allied nations –a day to commemorate the loss of so many lives in the war. And in the United States, President Wilson proclaimed the first Armistice Day on November 11, 1919. A few years later, in 1926, Congress passed a resolution calling on the President to observe each November 11th as a day of remembrance:

Whereas the 11th of November 1918, marked the cessation of the most destructive, sanguinary, and far reaching war in human annals and the resumption by the people of the United States of peaceful relations with other nations, which we hope may never again be severed, and

Whereas it is fitting that the recurring anniversary of this date should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations; and

Whereas the legislatures of twenty-seven of our States have already declared November 11 to be a legal holiday: Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), that the President of the United States is requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the officials to display the flag of the United States on all Government buildings on November 11 and inviting the people of the United States to observe the day in schools and churches, or other suitable places, with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples.

Of course, the hopes that "the war to end all wars" would bring peace were short-lived. By 1939, Europe was again at war and what was once called "the Great War" would become World War I.  With the end of World War II, there was a movement in America to rename Armistice Day and create a holiday that recognized the veterans of all of America's conflicts. President Eisenhower signed that law in 1954. (In 1971, Veterans Day began to be marked as a Monday holiday on the third Monday in November,  but in 1978, the holiday was returned to the traditional November 11th date).

Today, Veterans Day honors the duty, sacrifice and service of America's nearly 25 million veterans of all wars. We should remember and celebrate those men and women. But lost in that worthy goal is the forgotten meaning of this day in history –the meaning which Congress gave to Armistice Day in 1926:

to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations …

inviting the people of the United States to observe the day … with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples.

The Veterans Administration website offers more resources on teaching about Veterans Day.

You can read more about World War I history as well as all of America's conflicts in Don't Know Much About History

Don't Know Much About@ History (2011 Revised and Updated Edition)

Halloween–The Hidden History

When I was a kid in the early 1960s, the autumn social calendar was highlighted by the Halloween party in our church. In these simpler day, the kids all bobbed for apples and paraded through a spooky "haunted house" in homemade costumes –Daniel Boone replete with coonskin caps for the boys; tiaras and fairy princess wands for the girls. It was safe, secure and innocent.

The irony is that our church was a Congregational church — founded by the Puritans of New England. The same people who brought you the Salem Witch Trials.

Here's a link to a history of those Witch Trials in 1692.

Rooted in pagan traditions more than 2000 years old, Halloween grew out of a Celtic Druid celebration that marked summer's end. Called Samhain (pronounced sow-in or sow-een), it combined the Celts' harvest and New Year festivals, held in late October and early November by people in what is now Ireland, Great Britain and elsewhere in Europe. This ancient Druid rite was tied to the seasonal cycles of life and death — as the last crops were harvested, the final apples picked and livestock brought in for winter stables or slaughter. Contrary to what some modern critics believe, Samhain was not the name of a malevolent Celtic deity but meant, "end of summer."

The Celts also saw Samhain as a fearful time, when the barrier between the worlds of living and dead broke, and spirits walked the earth, causing mischief. Going door to door, children collected wood for a sacred bonfire that provided light against the growing darkness, and villagers gathered to burn crops in honor of their agricultural gods. During this fiery festival, the Celts wore masks, often made of animal heads and skins, hoping to frighten off wandering spirits. As the celebration ended, families carried home embers from the communal fire to re-light their hearth fires.

Getting the picture? Costumes, "trick or treat" and Jack-o-lanterns all got started more than two thousand years ago at an Irish bonfire.

Christianity took a dim view of these "heathen" rites. Attempting to replace the Druid festival of the dead with a church-approved holiday, the seventh-century Pope Boniface IV designated November 1 as All Saints' Day to honor saints and martyrs. Then in 1000 AD, the church made November 2 All Souls' Day, a day to remember the departed and pray for their souls. Together, the three celebrations –All Saints' Eve, All Saints' Day, and All Souls Day– were called Hallowmas, and the night before came to be called All-hallows Evening, eventually shortened to "Halloween."

And when millions of Irish and other Europeans emigrated to America, they carried along their traditions. The age-old practice of carrying home embers in a hollowed-out turnip still burns strong. In an Irish folk tale, a man named Stingy Jack once escaped the devil with one of these turnip lanterns. When the Irish came to America, Jack's turnip was exchanged for the more easily carved pumpkin and Stingy Jack's name lives on in "Jack-o-lantern."

Halloween, in other words, is deeply rooted in myths –ancient stories that explain the seasons and the mysteries of life and death.

You can read more about ancient myths in the modern world in Don't Know Much About Mythology

Banned Books Week

The Top Ten list for 2010 is out. And there are some familiar names on it-  The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Nickel and Dimed  by Barbara Ehrenreich. But these aren't a critics Top Ten Recommendations. They are among the list of books most challenged by people who object to the presence of these books in school and public libraries.

Yes, it is time to think about the "Book Wars" again.

Each year, the American Library Association and other groups mark Banned Books Week during the last week in September. In 2011,  it begins today, September 24, and continues through October 1. (This video was made two years ago, but the issues remain the same.)

In a time when some American parents don't want their children to hear the President of the United States give a speech on education values, or a planned Koran-burning wins with wide popular approval, the importance of this reminder of the right to free expression and the value of THINKING is more urgent than ever.

Where are they pulling books out of libraries? See a map of local "challenges" to books from 2007-2009.

Here are some important links to three groups involved in combating censorship: the American Library Association, the National Coalition Against Censorship, and Teaching Tolerance:

American Library Association Banned Books Week site

The National Coalition Against Censorship

Teaching Tolerance (A project of the Southern Poverty Law Center)

Don't Know Much About® Constitution Day

On September 17, 1787, 39 delegates to the Constitutional Convention meeting in Philadelphia, voted to adopt the United States Constitution. Since the 17th falls on a Saturday in 2011, Constitution Day –a national day to educate Americans about what the Constitution is and says– is marked on September 16.

To recap these events:

Working from May 25, when a quorum was established, until September 17, 1787, when the convention voted to endorse the final form of the Constitution, the delegates gathered in Philadelphia's Pennsylvania State House were actually obligated only to revise or amend the Articles of Confederation. Under those Articles, however, the government was plagued by weaknesses, such as its inability to raise revenues to pay its foreign debts or maintain an army. From the outset, most the convention's organizers, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton chief among them, knew that splints and bandages wouldn't do the trick for the broken Articles.

The government was broke –literally and figuratively– and they were going to fix it by inventing an entirely new one. James Madison had been studying more than 200 books on constitutions and republican history sent to him by Thomas Jefferson in preparation for the convention. The moving force behind the convention, Madison came prepared with the outline of a new Constitution.

A reluctant George Washington, whose name was placed at the head of list of Virginia's delegates without his knowledge, was unquestionably spurred by the events in Massachusetts (Shay's Rebellion, a violent protest by Massachusetts farmers). Elected president of the convention, he wrote from Philadelphia in June to his close wartime confidant and ally, the Marquis de Lafayette:

I could not resist the call to a convention of the States which is to determine whether we are to have a government of respectability under which life, liberty, and property will be secured to us, or are to submit to one which may be the result of chance or the moment, springing perhaps from anarchy and Confusion, and dictated perhaps by some aspiring demagogue.

On September 17, Washington signed the parchment copy first, as President of the convention. He was followed by the remaining delegates from the twelve states that sent delegates in geographical order, from north to south, beginning with New Hampshire. (Rhode Island was the only state that did not send a delegation.) When the last of the signatures was added –that of Abraham Baldwin of Georgia– Benjamin Franklin gazed at Washington's chair, on which was painted a bright yellow sun. He then spoke, as James Madison recorded it:

I have, said he, often in the course of a session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President without being able to tell if it was rising or setting: But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun.

In another perhaps more apocryphal tale, Franklin left the building and was confronted by a lady who asked, "Well Doctor, do we have a monarchy or a republic?" The witty sage of Philadelphia replied,

"A republic, madam, if you can keep it."

This post is excerpted from America's Hidden History, which offers fuller account of the Convention and the events that led to it.  You can also read more about the Constitutional Convention and the Constitution in Don't Know Much About History: Anniversary Edition.

For more about the Constitution, visit these sites:

The National Constitutional Center in Philadelphia:

James Madison's Montpelier:

Charters of Freedom at the National Archives

The World is a Pear: Columbus Day

"In fourteen hundred and ninety-two/Columbus sailed the ocean blue."

We all remember that. But after that basic date, things get a little fuzzy. Here's what they didn't tell you–

Most educated people knew that the world was not flat.

Columbus never set foot in what would become America.

Christopher Columbus made four voyages to the so-called New World. And his discoveries opened an astonishing era of exploration and exploitation. His arrival marked the beginning of the end for tens of millions of Native Americans spread across two continents.

Once a hero. Now a villain.

You can read more about Christopher Columbus, his voyages and their impact on American history in Don't Know Much About History and Don't Know Much About Geography.

The story of "Isabella's Pigs," and the role of Queen Isabella in the making of the New World, is depicted in America's Hidden History

Don't Know Much About@ History: Anniversary Edition

Don't Know Much About® St. Augustine — Hidden History of America's "Oldest City"

On September 8, 1565, a group of about 800 Spanish sailors, soldiers, priests and colonists landed in Florida and celebrated what is called "the first parish mass" in America –the "beginning" of Christianity in the future United States of America, as St. Augustine's boosters tell us. This is the founding day of what is called "America's oldest permanent European settlement."

According to the website of the shrine that marks this momentous date in history:

 "Mass was said to hallow the land and draw down the blessing of heaven before the first step was taken to rear a human habitation."

The Spanish colonists were led by Admiral Pedro Menéndez de Aviles. But just what were Menéndez and his 800-strong group doing in Florida?

In brief, it was a search-and-destroy mission and St. Augustine was established to mount a murderous offensive against the small, struggling French colony at Fort Caroline, near modern-day Jacksonville.

Menéndez had been dispatched by Spain's King Philip II to wipe out the French colony, established about a year earlier. These French settlers had come to America, as the Mayflower Pilgrims would more than 50 years later, in search of a religious refuge. Huguenots, or French Protestants, they had been given permission by France's King Charles to establish a colony in America.

Admiral Menéndez was sent to Florida with clear orders–wipe out the "heretic" French colony. After killing most of the inhabitants of Fort Caroline, Menéndez captured and put to the sword several hundred French sailors who had been shipwrecked in a hurricane and came ashore just south of St. Augustine before straggling north towards the Spanish outpost.

The spot where Menéndez did his "pious" work with such ruthless efficiency was known as Matanzas, Spanish for "slaughters."

The site of these killings, Fort Matanzas, is now an off-the-beaten path national monument just south of St. Augustine:

I told the story of Fort Caroline, St. Augustine, and the fate of America's true first pilgrims in "The French Connection," an Op-ed in the New York Times

You can also read a more complete story of the bloody history of America's true "first pilgrims" in a chapter called "Isabella's Pigs" in America's Hidden History.