Back in my days as a classroom history instructor, I was afforded the luxury of creating many new courses for the department’s curricular menu. That show of confidence by administration and the gift of autonomy it bestowed was an aspect of my job I really liked. Over four decades, that license gave rise to classes on a wide range of subjects—The Vietnam War, The ‘60s, Medieval and Russian History, The Cold War, Utopia, Reel History, The Second World War, Greek and Roman History, The History of the Constitution and the Supreme Court, Meet the Beatles, The Civil Rights Movement and the like. One prospective course I flirted with but never found opportunity to offer involved the body of literature written by people in jail. Prison literature, but with a more humorous course title than that to attract student interest. (As evidenced above).

Did Abraham Zapruder make what is arguably the most important film of the twentieth century? Thanks to his steady hand, and the steadying influence of his loyal secretary, Marilyn Sitzman, who spotted her vertigo-disabled boss atop a four-foot-high cement pedestal on the Grassy Knoll in Dealey Plaza, posterity has been given a front row seat to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

I honestly remember this exchange between me and my mother when I was a child in single digits:

Tim: “Where did I come from?”
Mom: “You were born under a rock.”

 What I don’t recall is whether what followed was the woozy feel of vertigo or a warm blanket of comfort.

The Holy Bible is not for the prudish or easily offended. It speaks to brute realities. This is especially the case with the Old Testament (Hebrew scriptures). Its various books contain material many would find entirely unsuitable for young, impressionable minds. Consider its controversial subject matter: The enslavement of human beings, horrific acts of sexual violence including gang rape, cringe-worthy incestuous relations between parent and child as well as among siblings, a wide assortment of ghastly bodily mutilations, incidents of mass murder, adultery, prostitution, sorcery, human and animal sacrifice, depictions of animal cruelty, the immolation of individuals and entire populations of towns… the list goes on and on. And then there are the dark, depressing corners of human suffering (Job), the crippling realization that in life nothing matters (Ecclesiastes), and the agonizing despair of living in a godless universe (Psalm 88).

We love our animals. Humans always have. More than mere pets, they become treasured, deeply-beloved family members. As we all know, animals possess remarkable sensitivities and unique intuitive skills that allow their training as allies for humans in need of assistance, such as medical issues. Not surprisingly, since antiquity, humans have also found inventive ways to employ their help in military matters. And to have honored them for their service.

Would you mind my sparing you the trouble of wading through tomes of books recounting the rise of Adolf Hitler and the triumph of the Nazi Party in Germany? How about a handy-dandy crib sheet overview of how this momentous event came to pass?   

‘There must be some way out of here,’ said the joker to the thief. ‘There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief.’  (Bob Dylan, All Along the Watchtower)

Everyone knows— and many complain—that history books are filled with warfare. Have you ever taken a history course that didn’t require you to examine the causes, course, and consequences of some significant military contest? War is a constant of human history. What did Bob Dylan say when asked by Martin Keller in a 1983 interview with the Twin Cities Reader if he believed in peace? If memory serves, Dylan replied something like, “call the time it takes to reload peace.”

“My theory is limited to utilizing the passions just as Nature gives them and without changing anything. That is the whole mystery, the whole secret of the calculus of passionate attraction. The theory does not ask whether God was right or wrong to endow human beings with particular passions; the societary order utilizes them without changing anything and just as God has given them.”

“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which humanity is always landing. And when humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realization of Utopia.” (Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism)

Over many years of reading, I began to notice things of historical importance (at least to me) occurring on the same day: November 22. This led to jotting down my periodic discoveries on a notepad, and in no time a list began taking shape. Then the idea presented itself of transforming my growing roster of ‘happenings’ into a short volume—the way others have written books of consequential years. This TRivia posting reflects that aspiration and offers two samples of what I’ve been collecting.

Is smuggling morally wrong in all instances? While by definition transgressive and often a crime, must it always bear the dark stigma of having deliberately introduced something risky or harmful into an unknowing, vulnerable environment? The cult action-comedy film Snakes on a Plane (2006) would certainly suggest as much. So might Arlo Guthrie’s Woodstock-era song, “Coming into Los Angeles” (‘bringing in a couple of keys’). How about Odysseus’ Trojan Horse? Well-intentioned moviegoers could disagree about the 1931 film Monkey Business, in which all four of the Marx brothers play stowaways on an ocean liner, hidden on board in kippered herring barrels. Everybody knows the kind of mischief they can cause.

I can hardly wait for the June 12 release of Steven Spielberg’s new film, Disclosure Day. I know I’m not alone. With all the buzz attending NASA’s recent Artemis moon mission, the Trump administration’s pledge to disclose all UFO files, the recent (May 8) dump of 162 declassified UFO files by the Pentagon, and unending social media chatter about UFOs, I find myself rocketing back to the days of my youth. Kudos to Florida congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna for her unwavering stand for full disclosure of all Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP). She won’t be quiet until she gets the government’s 46 UAP videos.

“When the Professor is told by the Polynesian that once there was nothing except a great feathered serpent, unless the man feels a thrill and a half temptation to wish it were true, he is no judge of such things at all.” (G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man)

On March 23, 1888, Chief Justice Morrison Waite died. He was seventy-one. For fourteen years he had occupied the center seat on the highest court in the land.

After considering a short list of possible replacements, President Grover Cleveland opted for Chicago-based attorney, Melville Weston Fuller. He’d wanted a prominent Midwesterner, and with 30 years of legal practice in Illinois, Fuller seemed to fit the bill. Cleveland announced the nomination of the fifty-five-year-old on May 2, 1888.

I’m going to go out on a limb and assert that most Americans know more about the eagle nest site in California’s Big Bear Valley than they do about members of the US Supreme Court. I’d further bet that they could identify by name the eagles and ‘bonking’ eaglets (past and present) who’ve known this nest as home. Is it because they are so doggone cute or is it the cameras? Perhaps both? Is this, perhaps, the strongest possible argument for having cameras in the courtroom?

So far, we have established the fact that Mr. Jefferson was quite the eccentric backwoods Renaissance man whose intellectual appetite knew few limits. It is also clear from what we’ve shown that he was no stranger or Stoic to devastating emotional blows of sadness and grief. The pungent smells emanating from his Monticello outhouse roused him to build and install a stone-lined shaft to ventilate its offensive odors. Life can sometimes be like a latrine; both can occasionally stink to high heaven. Getting away from grief is as individual as the singularity of grief itself.

I claim no expertise as a Dylanologist. I’m just a fan, a big one. If I were ever marooned on an island and had only five record albums to listen to for the remainder of my days, three of them would be Dylan.

In my previous post, I tried to convey the humanity behind the historical figure of our third president. I highlighted Jefferson’s proclivities as a polymath—what areas of information concerning the world and all its contents didn’t attract his active interest? An ornithologist, an architect (Monticello and the University of Virginia), an inventor (a wheel cipher, a spherical sundial, a hideaway bed, a two-faced mirror…

It is Sunday evening, April 29, 1962. President John F. Kennedy is hosting a dinner in the State Dining Room of the White House honoring 49 Nobel Prize winners. You might recognize the names of a few of his distinguished guests—J. Robert Oppenheimer, Linus Pauling, John Glenn, Robert Frost, James Baldwin, Melvin Calvin and Pearl S. Buck.