Today In History: March 31 Happenings

One way to learn a little about history is to write about it. An even better way is to teach it. Today I am just going to write about it.

1596

French philosopher Rene Descartes was born on this day in 1596. Descartes wrestled with the notion of self and knowing, famously declaring, "I think, therefore I am." Truth be told, his actual words were in French, and the statement above is a bad translation of what he actually said, which was "I am thinking, therefore I am."

1732
Austrian composer Franz Hayden was born on this day in Austria. I took my first piano lessons at age 8 and was introduced to simplified versions of compositions by great composers, including Chopin, Beethoven, Liszt and Franz Hayden.

1809
Russian author Nikolai Gogol was born on this day in 1809. Though his career overlapped Dostoevsky's he was a forerunner of sorts for the great Russian authors who followed. Most of us who studied Continental literary figures have read his story "The Overcoat." Another of his stories was titled "The Nose," which happens to be the title of one of my own stories which you can read here.

1878
Boxer Jack Johnson was born. Jonson would become the first African American to become World Champion and you can bet he was much hated for this achievement. He reigned supreme from 1908 to 1915, the most famous black man of his time. He married a white woman at a tine notorious for the Jim Crow laws in the Deep South. His cavorting resulted in getting sentenced to prison for violating the Mann Act. He fled the country for seven years but finally returned to serve a year in Leavenworth. 105 years later he received a presidential pardon for this injustice, from Donald Trump.

1914 

Saddleback Mountain, Monterrey. 1980.

Mexican diplomat and poet Octavio Paz was born. In 1990 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. In 1945 he went to Paris as a diplomat and wrote "The Labyrinth of Solitude." Labyrinths are a recurring theme in the writing of Argentine Jorge Luis Borges, who influenced numerous 20th century authors including Umberto Eco (Name of the Rose), Gabriel Garcia Marquez (The General in His Labyrinth), Italo Calvino and myself (Duel of the Poets.)

1948
Albert Arnold Gore, Jr. was born in Washington D.C. to a Tennessee congressman who would later serve 18 years as a senator from Tennessee. Born into politics he became a two-term VP under Bill Clinton. He was derided many ties over the years for having claimed to invent the Internet. These cheap jabs were based on a false interpretation of what he had said. In reality, Gore actually did cast an important vote that enabled the Internet to come into being. He never once said or hinted at having invented it. He was treated like a chump for something he never said. He's more famous now as an environmentalist. In 1998 I attended an Environmental Expo across the street from Disneyland in Anaheim where he was the keynote speaker. I attended in person; he was piped in by satellite.

1918
101 years ago today Daylight Savings Time went into effect for the first time in U.S. history.

1916

Old Mexico

On this day in General Pershing and the U.S. Army invaded Mexico with whom we were not at war and routed Pancho Villa. From 1910 to 1920 the Mexican Civil War (or revolution) was an ongoing disruption. After Victoriano Huerta was ousted Pancho Villa and Venustiano Carranza vied for power. The U.S. chose to take sides with Carranza so Pancho Villa got even by executing 16 Americans living in Northern Mexico and 17 more in a New Mexico town. Pershing took 10,000 troops deep into Mexico to deal with Pancho Villa, but after a year Mexicans got tired of this American army cat-and-mouse game and Pershing was dispatched back to his home turf. Three years after the Revolucion someone assassinated Pancho Villa on his ranch during peacetime.

EdNote: Reading this brought to mind a 5-mile long underground tunnel from the center of Matehuala to Pancho Villa's hideaway. For a pair of interesting films about this period of Mexico history see Viva Zapata! (Marlon Brando) and The Old Gringo (Gregory Peck, Jane Fonda) based on the powerful novel by Carlos Fuentes. (The film was weak but I enjoyed it because I'd read the book.) FWIW, the Viva Zapata! screenplay was written by John Steinbeck. (Bet you didn't know that.)

1889 
The Eiffel Tower in Paris officially opens as part of the Exhibition of 1889. Hopefully it will still be standing after all this Yellow Vest protesting of the past several months in France.

1880
Wabash Indiana is first city in the U.S. to install street lamps.

1790
Maximilien Robespierre is elected president of the Jacobin Club. When I was in seventh grade I did a report of Robespierre, who played a central role in the bloody French Revolution. He came to exemplify the saying, "He who lives by the guillotine dies by the guillotine." They didn't call it a reign of terror for nothing. You might just say this is one more reason I'm not a fan of mob rule.

* * * *

2019

This won't get you in to tonight's show. But
it's pretty cool. Courtesy Bill Pagel Archive.

Tonight, Bob Dylan is performing in Dusseldorf, Germany. The European leg of his Never Ending Tour is in full swing.

1995
Bob Dylan performed at the Brixton Academy in London.

1964
The Beatles were filming A Hard Day's Night.

1965 
The Beatles filming their sequel, Help!

* * * *

Happy March 31. 

A World Of Mental Pictures

“We see what our minds are trained to see.” ~ Journal Note, 1991

Most of what we know comes to us indirectly. We accept what we read in books, what we see on television and in the movies. We read newspapers and make assumptions about the veracity of what is called news. Astute readers may occasionally notice a little spin within the writing but we usually assume the reported facts have actually occurred.

Yesterday’s headlines included a story about a murder. A man stabbed a man outside a bar in Hermantown. We generally believe that in point of fact, the murder not only took place but occurred outside a bar and not across the street at the auto parts store. It was purportedly the first murder in Hermantown history. Most of us accept that as a matter of fact even without knowing the history of Hermantown.

Things are dicier when it comes to news broadcast from overseas. Walter Lippman, in his 1921 book Public Opinion analyzes in depth the problems associated with our pictures of reality. He begins with the story from Plato’s Republic of the men in the cave who can only see each others’ shadows but believe they are perceiving reality.

How do we understand what is really going on in the world if our minds have been filled with pictures that are interpretations, not realities? Lippman points out that our images of the world do not come from direct experience. As a consequence, our behavior is not derived from what we know but rather from what we are led to believe."The way in which the world is imagined determines at any particular moment what men will do," Lippman writes.

The book appeared shortly after World War I, and is peppered with examples of how the American public often had a distorted view of events at that time. Lippman’s book outlines “how opinions are crystallized into what is called Public Opinion, how a National Will, a Group Mind, a Social Purpose, or whatever you choose to call it, is formed.”

During the Viet Nam War, falsified skirmishes from the battlefield were sometimes leaked to the media in order to make it look like the Viet Cong were attacking a U.S. outpost. The news stories helped legislators in Washington D.C. win key votes to help escalate the war effort. Those votes were based on events that were non-existent.

We have an image inside our heads of our world & universe that’s more comprehensive than any generation in history… TV, magazine, Nova, Discovery, talk radio, the internet. Does all this flood of information make us wiser and smarter than any generation? Or are we now so overwhelmed that we’re even more easily manipulated?

Tomorrow night is our Philosophy Club and we just happen to be discussing Descartes. Descartes, as you may recall, was the one who presented us with that famous dictum, “I think, therefore I am.”

The point he was making is not that he exists because he is a thinking person. Rather, he was wrestling with this very same issue that we’re discussing here. What is true? What can I be sure of? What a reliable basis for behavior? I need a tool to help sort through all these sensory perceptions and miscellaneous anecdotal messages regarding what I should be. What do I know innately as opposed to what I have been told from outside myself?

We like to believe we have reliable pictures in our heads. Capitalism is good. Government needs to be handcuffed. Business people are good because they provide jobs. Unions are bad. Muslims are dangerous fanatics. Or maybe we have alternate pictures. The compartmentalization of everything into black and white is likewise a picture many people have. It resolves a lot of things, makes some choices less complicated.

But what is true? What is reliable?

My suggestion -- and it’s sort of the place Descartes ended up -- is to separate what you know to be certain from what is grey and uncertain. When we hear a new idea, we shouldn’t just swallow it whole without examining it. Put it on the shelf for a little bit and see how it stacks up or fits with everything else you’ve tested and accepted… or rejected.

Even the apostle Paul, who wrote much of the New Testament, did not demand that his hearers accept what he himself was saying. He commended those who checked things out first before acting on Paul’s teaching.

I have high regard for those who are able to hold new ideas with a loose grasp until they’ve fully investigated and verified them, if able. Sometimes it may even stay on that shelf till it gets cobwebs. Eventually, as the saying goes, the truth will out.

In the meantime, things aren't always what they seem.