“Lafayette, We Are Here”

Minor league baseball looks very different this year. The reorganization of the leagues, rumored throughout 2019, took effect at the beginning of the year. Teams shifted up and down in levels. Teams from independent leagues were brought into affiliated baseball. Teams that had been part of affiliated baseball for decades no longer had a place.Continue reading ““Lafayette, We Are Here””

2020: The Year In Review

Do I need to say that 2020 was an awful year? Must I? Let’s watch a Carl Sagan video before I get to my annual review of the first post of each month. This is not the “Pale Blue Dot” video I was looking for. I went through my blog archives, I went through myContinue reading “2020: The Year In Review”

The Christmas Truce of 1914

It has taken me the better part of six years to find the audio for this program, and last night I finally did. On Christmas Eve 2014, BBC Radio 2 broadcast All Is Calm, a program on the Christmas Truce of 1914, narrated by Sir John Hurt. Hurt, while in treatment for pancreatic cancer, participatedContinue reading “The Christmas Truce of 1914”

Teddy Roosevelt in Baltimore

This is something I found a couple of weeks ago and have been meaning to share. On September 28, 1918, former president Theodore Roosevelt visited Baltimore and delivered a speech at Oriole Park on Greenmount Avenue to extol the Fourth Liberty Loan (ie., war bonds), and this video shows TR and dignitaries delivering a speechContinue reading “Teddy Roosevelt in Baltimore”

The Coldest December

On December 6, 1917, two ships collided in Halifax, Nova Scotia’s harbor. One of the ships, the Mont-Blanc, carrying munitions en route to Europe, caught fire and, shortly after 9 o’clock local time, the cargo exploded, laying waste to the city and surrounding communities, killing (officially) two thousand and injuring nearly 10,000 more, in what’sContinue reading “The Coldest December”

Does Charlie Brown Have a Secret Cousin?

Sunday night I watched Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (And Don’t Come Back!!) and its follow-up animated special, What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown. Given the subject matter and the time (Veterans Day weekend), it seemed appropriate. In the movie and the special, Charlie Brown and three of his friends (Linus, Peppermint Patty, and Marcie) travelContinue reading “Does Charlie Brown Have a Secret Cousin?”

They Shall Not Grow Old

In 2014, the British Imperial War Museums approached Peter Jackson, the award-winning director of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies, with a request. They had 100 hours of digitized film footage and 600 hours of audio recordings from World War I of Tommies in the trenches, behind the lines, and in battle.Continue reading “They Shall Not Grow Old”

My Armistice 100 Adventure

In mid-September it dawned on me that November 11, 2018 would mark the 100th-anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I. Intellectually, as an historian, I knew this. I knew it in the same way that I know that water freezes at 32 degrees and objects fall to the earth at 32 feet perContinue reading “My Armistice 100 Adventure”