The failed lockdown policy

Our governors imposed draconian measures to control the Corona virus. The people meekly obeyed as though they didn't have a Constitution to protect them. Our rates of restricted movement and mask wearing are just as good as other developed countries. Yet still over 500,000 have died, and our "leaders" just call for more of the same, with more damaging health and mental welfare outcomes. Even the new "president" claims he has no ideas for how to stem the spread (which disappeared after the election) and has moved the target for backyard get togethers to July 4. Minorities and the elderly, whom Democrats claimed to care about, are suffering the most. Lockdowns have never been recommended before, even for those pandemics with higher death rates, like the Asian Flu in 1957 which I survived.

Where is the American spirit of 1776? Haters of America claim our country was built on slavery in 1619. Don't prove them right by being slaves to power hungry politicians.

Restrictions

Notes for bookclub on McCullough's 1776

Non-fiction books don't usually bring me to tears (well, the documentation and notes for Seabiscuit did), but there were times I had to stop reading David McCullough's breath taking 1776 and go for a walk--even the second time around this week. And this morning, I went out and bought the new boxed, illustrated, coffee-table 1776 with 140 images and 37 removable replicas of the sources he used. I had planned to loan it out, or donate it to the church library, but it is such a treasure, I may just hug it for awhile.

First a note about reviews and questions. Unlike most of the other books I remember reading for bookclub over the years, I couldn't find any questions for club discussions on the internet, although I found many clubs reading it and interviews with McCullough that included questions. Second, there are wonderful reviews available on-line, but I want to point you to two that are not so wonderful--one on the right and one on the left. Their distain for anything patriotic and dislike for a book about politics and war which isn't anti-war, political or flag waving is quite apparent--at least to me.

The first is "With God on our side," reviewed by Preston Jones for Christianity Today, in July 2005. Jones teaches at John Brown University, a small Christian college in Arkansas. This vacuous and inaccurate comment really turned me off:

"Either you like this kind of history or you don't. Of course, it's possible to enjoy a well-told, well-documented tale while yet recognizing that it's couched in fluff. Even leisured academics, one hopes, can see that if books like McCullough's pull people away from the tube, then a good thing is happening."

And then he goes on to ask some "interesting questions" that make you wonder if the 18th century was even covered when he went to school. What was the editor thinking when he accepted this piece?

The second is the review that appeared in The New Yorker, also in 2005, by Joshua Micah Marshall. He is best known as a blogger, who early on saw possibilities for moving from cyberspace to print, as long as he hung way left of center. 1776 is completely built on the character and leadership of George Washington, whom Marshall decides was half marble, a man who invented his own persona by copying "101 Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior," as a child and reading deeply in the classics and history. God forbid that a gen-xer steeped in gaming, downloading and digital wing-dings would think books could improve a man! Apparently no one told him that most children for several centuries, even in the 19th century, used something very similar for learning good manners and deportment. There are several versions, and I think some homeschoolers (the kids who are beating the pants off the public school grads) are still using them. So far, no more Washingtons have emerged from exposure to these rules that I know of.

I also want to refer you to some important maps which you can find at Military.com. I printed The battle of Long Island, the Northern campaigns, Operations around Trenton, and the Battle of Trenton, and the Christmas Campaign. You'll see multiple maps on one page, but it only takes one page to print each selection, so I had 3 printed pages. They will be useful in following the important battles of 1776.

Finally, we have read McCullough before (John Adams) and most of us are acquainted with his works. If we had a national historian, it would be him because his writing is so accessible to the layman and the envy of the academic whose prose eludes most of us. One of the best sites on McCullough I found was "The Glorious Cause of America," where he lectures without notes on Sept. 27, 2005 at Brigham Young University. This is reprinted at http://magazine.byu.edu, and if you don't have time to read the book, I'll give you a pass and let you in with this article. If you read nothing else, it's worth it.

See you at Peggy's on November 5.

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1776, the good, bad, and hopeless

I don't particularly like war stories. After all, the U.S. has been at war with some country some where throughout its existence. But lest you get indignant, so have most countries, unless you're reading a modern history published in the U.S. for use in our schools, then all communist and marxist countries/governments are given a pass, and all Americans are invaders, pillagers or scoundrels.

Still, David McCullough's 1776 is a very sobering book. It only covers one year of our revolution which lasted until 1783, but there are so many times the Americans came close to remaining British subjects. In 1776, Americans had the highest standard of living in the world. I imagine there were many asking, Why are we in this war? Many Americans, Loyalists, and British wanted the war to end with peace talks because of the high losses.

"In a disastrous campaign for New York in which Washington's army had suffered one humiliating, costly reverse after another, this, the surrender of Fort Washington on Saturday, November 16, was the most devastating blow of all, an utter catastrophe. The taking of more than a thousand American prisoners by the British at Brooklyn had been a dreadful loss. Now more than twice (2,837) that number were marched off as prisoners, making a total loss from the two battles of nearly four thousand men--from an army already rapidly disintegrating from sickness and desertions and in desperate need of almost anyone fit enough to pick up a musket. . . The British were astonished to find how many of the American prisoners were less than 15, or old men, filthy, and without shoes. . .

What lay ahead of the Americans taken prisoner was a horror of another kind. Nearly all would be held captive in overcrowded, unheated barns and sheds, and on British prison ships in the harbor, where hundreds died of disease. . . Washington is said to have wept. . ."

The Fort was not reclaimed by the Americans until the end of the war in 1783, and it was renamed during that time for a Hessian, Fort Knyphausen.

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Reading about another war

Many of the passages of David McCullough's 1776 have been very moving and informative. I didn't know Americans in 1776 had a higher standard of living than any people in the world.

"The Hessian and British troops alike were astonished to find Americans blessed with such abundance-substantial farmhouses and fine furnishings. "In all the fields the finest fruit is to be found," Lieutenant von Bardeleben wrote after taking a walk on his own, away from the path of destruction. "The peach and apple trees are especially numerous .... The houses, in part, are made only of wood and the furnishing in them are excellent. Comfort, beauty, and cleanliness are readily apparent."

To many of the English, such affluence as they saw on Long Island was proof that America had indeed grown rich at the expense of Great Britain.

In fact, the Americans of 1776 enjoyed a higher standard of living than any people in the world. Their material wealth was considerably less than it would become in time, still it was a great deal more than others had elsewhere. How people with so much, living on their own land, would ever choose to rebel against the ruler God had put over them and thereby bring down such devastation upon themselves was for the invaders incomprehensible." 1776, p. 158

I googled "Lieutenant von Bardeleben" and found out that many of the diaries and letters of the German mercenaries fighting with the English have been translated.

Timeline

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Book club selections for 2007-2008

In May our book club meets at Barb's lovely home. It has never looked more lovely that last night--almost like a park with trimmed beds and lovely perennials and potted flowers. Our final and fun selection for our book year was Eat Cake by Jeanne Ray, who published her first novel when she was 60. Then with one minute to lobby our choices, the members offered suggestions for next year's reading, with the absentees sending theirs with another. Here's what we'll be reading, although all of the suggestions sounded terrific.

September: Learning to Bow by Bruce Feiler. My caution would be that this is based on his teaching experience in Japan in 1987-88--20 years ago, and was published in 1991. We probably wouldn't want our culture evaluated by a just-out-of-college, one year visitor's first book.

October: Field work by Mischa Berlinski. A first novel by another American visiting a foreign country. A trained classicist, Berlinski worked as a journalist in Thailand where this story of two clashing American cultures--anthropologist and missionary--takes place.

November: 1776 by David McCullough. This is the title I threw into the mix. McCullough's use of diaries and letters and his ability to weave in the stories of the little people we never heard in our history texts is just awesome. George Washington managed to write almost 950 letters in that year, while running the war campaign.

December: Inside the Kingdom by Carmen Bin Ladin, Osama's sister-in-law (half brothers whose father had 22 wives), affords a peek into her life in Saudi Arabia. From the book jacket cover I thought she might use Michael Jackson's surgeon. Do you see a resemblance?

January: A tree grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith is a 1943 classic that was made into a movie. It will be an interesting comparison with the immigrant life today.

February: We'll be doing something Shakespearean with a special guest, who actually taught my children when they were in elementary school.

March: Digging to America by Anne Tyler is a story about two families who adopt Korean children. Tyler is an excellent writer, popular with women, and I'm sure there will be enough stereotypes to go around.

April: Amazing Grace by Steve Turner, a pop/rock journalist, is the book [or part of it] about the hymn on which the movie was based.

May: I'm proud of you by Tim Madigan, yet another journalist, the story of Mr. Rogers.

Also suggested (but we only choose 9) was Unknown world by E. J. Edwards, Snow falling on Cedars by David Guterson, For the Glory of God by Rodney Stark, and Religious literacy by Stephen Prothero. I scored 100% on .Prothero's quiz, and 71% scored 80 or above

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Walking with 1776 by David McCullough

Four miles yesterday and two miles today, 45 miles for my 50 miles of Easter Walk (it started to rain so I quit). I'm in chapter two, "Rabble in Arms." Deeply moving to know the deprivation, hardship, and yes, ignorance that undergirded the poorly clothed and dirty men in the army of General Washington. It was a very long war, and the book just covers one year. Today I listened to the story of 16 year old John Greenwood, a fifer, from Boston.

"After reaching the army encampments, he was urged to enlist, with the promise of $8 a month. Later, passing through Cambridge, he learned of the battle raging at Bunker Hill. Wounded men were being laid out on the Common. "Everywhere the greatest terror and confusion seemed to prevail." The boy started running along the road that led to the battle, past wagons carrying more casualties and wounded men struggling back to Cambridge on foot. Terrified, he wished he had never enlisted. "I could positively feel my hair stand on end." But then he saw a lone soldier coming down the road.

. . . a Negro man, wounded in the back of his neck, passed me and, his collar being open and he not having anything on except his shirt and trousers, I saw the wound quite plainly and the blood running down his back. I asked him if it hurt him much, as he did not seem to mind it. He said no, that he was only to get a plaster put on it and meant to return. You cannot conceive what encouragement this immediately gave me. I began to feel brave and like a soldier from that moment, and fear never troubled me afterward during the whole war.