My Top Five Stories on Medium This Week

FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH DEPT

For a lot of people Top Five lists are like digital dopamine hits—crisp, scannable, and instantly gratifying. In a scroll-fatigued world, they promise order amid chaos: five bullet-sized insights instead of a 3,000-word ramble. Readers devour them because the brain loves completion; crossing off “5/5” triggers the same reward loop as finishing a game level. Curiosity hooks first (“Who made the cut?”), then validation or surprise. 

A few years ago I invested some time posting some of my writing on Medium, an online social publishing platform designed for writers and readers. Like everything else, the platform had its pros and cons. Nevertheless, there are people still reading what's been planted there, and Medium still send a weekly email to each writing noting what others are reading.

Here are my top five Medium stories that readers clicked on and read this week. 

He Who Controls the Narrative Controls the People

 

Curses, Foiled Again

 

A Lesson from 29 Golden Gate Suicide Attempts

 

Who Are Five Extraordinary People From History You Want to Meet?

 

The Real Reason They Punish Horse Thieves

Putting Nuclear Power In Perspective: An Interview with David Watson

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

"Beating climate change is hard enough without taking away one of the best low-carbon tools we have. It’s time to talk about nuclear."
--David Watson

For 25 years I have been involved in the automotive aftermarket with a keen eye on the evolution of diesel engine technology and electric vehicles (EVs). Meeting ever tightening emissions standards and improving fuel economy have been the big drivers of change over the past five decades. 

As we move toward an increasingly energy dependent future and away from carbon-based energy, there seems to be no way that solar, wind and hydro-power will be sufficient to meet demands. That is why I've taken such a keen interest in what is happening with nuclear energy. 

David Watson is editor-in-chief of The Kernel, a Medium publication that self-describes as "The Generation Atomic magazine. Our latest thoughts on the role of nuclear in a clean energy future."

* * * 

EN: What is your background and how long have you been involved in the nuclear movement?

David Watson: I'm what you might call a second generation nuclear engineer in that my father also works in the industry. I don't have one of those "Road to Damascus" conversion stories so common among nuclear advocates; nuclear was always normal to me. One of my fondest childhood memories was visiting the Wylfa A nuclear plant on the isle of Anglesey in Wales. I remember being fascinated by the walk-in radiation detectors. I also remember us driving past a coal plant one day and asking why there was smoke coming out of it. I remember saying something like "if I was Prime Minister I'd replace all the fossil fuels with nuclear." After a Physics degree, I joined the industry as a safety engineer in 2011. As an advocate though, I've only really become active in the last few years. I decided to speak out more when I realized how slowly we were moving as a society on climate change.

EN: Though nuclear energy has been around for more than half a century, it seems to be experiencing a resurgence in recent years. What are some of the triggers for this new interest in nuclear?

DW: In short, because of climate change. Around the year 2000, nuclear was almost written off as a future energy source by many politicians and economists. That would have been a mistake, as even without climate change there are many benefits to using nuclear over other forms of energy. As the world realized the scale of the climate problem, nuclear has come back onto the agenda. It's gone through various phases since 2000, but I think now in 2021 there is a growing realization that we can't just rely on intermittent solar and wind, and that too much gas and imports leaves us vulnerable to price spikes and even blackouts. I know you interviewed Meredith Angwin recently, and she can talk to this topic much better than I.

EN: Three Mile Island and Chernobyl dampened a lot of enthusiasm for nuclear power. Why is it different this time?

DW: Nuclear has always been treated as "different" to other forms of energy. People remember Three Mile Island, but they don't remember that no one died or even got ill from radiation from that accident. Chernobyl was a terrible event, both the accident and the Soviet Union's behavior in the weeks that followed, but only around 50 deaths have been attributed to it. In comparison, there have been hundreds, perhaps thousands, of gas explosions and coal mining accidents that have killed more than 50 people. Ironically, this means that most people couldn't name a single fossil fuel accident (maybe Deepwater Horizon?). Similarly, there have been many hydro dam collapses that have killed hundreds, and some even tens of thousands (the Banqiao dam collapse in 1975 may have caused up to a quarter of a million deaths). 

Saying that, the nuclear industry does everything it can to limit the likelihood and consequences of accidents from happening. Safety is the number one priority for anyone operating in the space. A Chernobyl-like accident is physically impossible in any of the reactors proposed or under construction in the world today. Many of the "advanced" (Generation IV) reactors claim improvements in safety over today's reactors.

EN: What is The Kernel and how did you get involved?

DW: The Kernel is Generation Atomic's magazine. Generation Atomic is a global grass-roots nuclear advocacy movement. We try to grow support for nuclear, particularly among the young. I joined Gen A (as well call it) a few years ago with the express idea of relaunching their blog on Medium. We recently re-launched the magazine under the banner of "The Kernel" as we wanted to give the publication its own identity.

EN: Are there any countries that are 100% nuclear powered now? How is that working and why haven’t we heard about it? 

Where is nuclear on the adoption curve? (Click to enlarge)

DW: No country is 100% nuclear, just like no country is 100% coal or wind; there is always an energy mix. There are, however, some countries where a large proportion of electricity comes from nuclear: France at 75% is the leader. Although the US has a larger total number of reactors, the larger size of the US means this equates to 20% of US electricity. Sweden, Finland, South Korea, the UK, Belgium and Japan also have 20-50% of their electricity coming from nuclear. Although some countries in the West (Germany, Belgium) are looking to phase out nuclear, many others (e.g. UK, France, Finland, Czechia, Poland, Estonia, China, Pakistan, India, Egypt, Russia, UAE, Ghana, Nigeria) are building (or planning to build) new reactors.

EN: Thank you for taking some time to increase our understanding of nuclear power. 

Related Links

Grid Fragility and a Book by Meredith Angwin

Five Minutes with Joe Heffernan on Nuclear Energy

NPR Takes a Swipe at Ben Shapiro

In March I wrote a blog post about the Top Ten Podcasts that people have been tuning in to. The reason for this was that I'd heard that one of these was a local Duluth Catholic priest called Father Mike. When I shared the list I noticed that Ben Shapiro was also in the top ten. 

I only listened to parts of his videos a couple times but have read enough about him in recent years to know who he is. I got the impression that his schtick is similar to the boy who said, "Oh my! The king doesn't have any clothes on!"

About ten days ago NPR did what I would call a "hit piece" on Shapiro. The angle was interesting because of the angle of their attack. The title of the article -- a transcript of what played on All Things Considered -- is "Outrage As A Business Model: How Ben Shapiro Is Using Facebook To Build An Empire."

The article begins by showing the size of his audience and the success he has achieved. He has more followers than the Washington Post.  What's more, the content he creates has more likes and shares than any other news producers "by a wide margin." In short, what he's doing is generating engagement. What's wrong with that? 

Well, to paraphrase, it's not fair. The NYTimes and Washington Post have big staffs to support. In other words, he gets so much more reach and has more impact than he deserves. 

One things that's not fair to his competitors, including NPR I suspect, is that he doesn't do journalism. That is, he doesn't have a staff researching stories. Rather, he talks about the stories that the paid staff of other media enterprises create. He's basically a reporter on the way that they -- liberal media -- cover the news.

I think what irks left-leaning media like NPR and CNN is that Shapiro is successful. Also, he seems skilled at showing how THEY are spinning the stories they tell.

The story makes a fascinating accusation a little further on. They interview an expert who explains how even when there is nothing untrue in what is said, the effect is to create a false narrative. "If you've stripped enough context away, any piece of truth can become a piece of misinformation." 

Well, it takes one to know one. This is precisely the game liberal media has played for ages. Bernard Goldberg's book Bias showed how Dan Rather would discard stories that countered the narrative he was constantly striving to weave. Bias uses example after example to make its point. The book's subtitle is, A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distorts the News. (For the record, Goldberg was second in command behind Rather at CBS. He saw it all, firsthand.)

Last year there were journalists on the New York Times who protested when the Times printed an editorial by a conservative GOP congressman on their Opinion page. The impression I got from the article was that some staffers think balanced reporting is wrong, that we are in a war of ideas and journalists have to take a stand. (i.e. slanting the story is O.K. if it serves higher purposes.)

Here's another barb from the NPR story. "Traditional media would set the agenda but not necessarily tell people what to think," Freelon said. "Ben Shapiro is sort of cornering both aspects: telling [people] what to think about, and secondly, telling them what their opinions should be about those particular topics."

When Freelon says, "traditional media" he is referring to mainstream media, which conservatives have dubbed MSM as a pejorative. Conservatives like Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro (I suspect, having never listened much to either) may agree that MSM does not Tell people what to think, they just EXPECT you to think this way "because it is the correct way to think."

MY TAKE is that people need to use their brains, read both sides and not behave like infants eating baby food, eating whatever flavor is spooned into their mouths. We need to assume responsibility for mental hygiene as well as our physical health. "You know that what you eat you are" applies to mind food and not just to vitamins and veggies. 

HERE'S THE ORIGINAL STORY FROM NPR:  
https://www.npr.org/2021/07/19/1013793067/outrage-as-a-business-model-how-ben-shapiro-is-using-facebook-to-build-an-empire

SEE ALSO: He Who Controls the Narrative Controls the People

How Effective Is A Personal Website for Short Stories?

What follows is my answer to a question I was asked on Quora, the international crowdsourcing Q&A website. In 2018 I got the nod as a top writer on Quora, a website I enjoyed because I could help people by answering their questions, from silly to curious, earnest and serious, and everything in between. In 2019 I dropped off from being so active on Quora because I'd amped my participation on Medium, a platform that pays its writers whose work is being read and appreciated.

Q: How effective is a personal website for short stories?

Effective in what way?

When the internet was first emerging I created a website and shared poetry, art, journalism and short stories…. among other things. There were not a lot of websites in 1995–96 and I even got a badge from the St Paul Pioneer Press as a Top 5 Minnesota Websites of the Week.

One day I got contacted by a poetry website in Croatia. They asked permission to translate my story Duel of the Poets into Croatian as a centerpiece. (The story now appears in my book Unremembered Histories.)  A few months later a Russian website contacted me to translate another one of my stories into Russian.

Later, a French grad student was given the assignment to translate a story by an American writer into French and he selected my story Terrorists Preying. This was especially interesting because the word Preying is a Homonym for Praying and he had trouble trying to convey that in his translation.

Still later, I was contacted by a pair of young filmmakers for permission to make my story Episode on South Street into a short movie. I said I was honored and within the year it was on Vimeo.

I never made a penny, but felt honored and gratified that my work was appealing to readers. So I go back to the question “How effective in what way?” Keep in mind that the whole world is uploading content at dizzying speeds and your little batch of stories may never be seen at all if you don’t also find ways to let people know they are there. According to this website “There are 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created each day at our current pace, but that pace is only accelerating.”

In early 2011 I received some encouragement from someone I respected that my stories were worth sharing more widely and by the end of the year I published Unremembered Histories and two volumes for Kindle which, if I could do over again I would have done differently.

I think a website is useful for having all your work in one place. The downside is that most publications consider your work “published” if you do this, and you will have trouble selling it later.

I did it in order to share my work with readers. I disliked the whole game of sending things to publishers and waiting for rejection slips. But if you do decide to put your stories online, you can also repurpose them and share them on. Medium, which is a community fo writers.

As a  final aside I'll mention here that also used the website to share a few stories my children wrote. We were homeschooling for a while and in 2000 or 2001 I shared a long cowboy story my son had written and two of my daughter's stories. As it turns out, one of my daughter's stories was published in a California periodical and another in a New Zealand publication. No money in either, but it did make me a proud papa.

I hope this has been helpful.

Roz Warren Writes for Everyone from the New York Times to the Funny Times

Librarian/author Roz Warren

As I've indicated many times, Medium has been a great place to meet a lot of interesting people. It's a community of writers and readers, with a full spectrum of interests on every facet of life and a range of experience from beginners to lifetime professionals.

In some ways Medium is similar to other social media platforms. For example, you can choose to "follow" people, and they frequently follow back in turn. And since Medium was founded by Ev Williams, who co-created Blogger and later Twitter, it has gives member writers a chance to write self-descriptions that succinctly say who they are. I very much liked Roz Warren's slogan, which got me into reading one of her stories, and then another.

She's got a bright wit, and knows how to tell a story.

EN: Can you briefly describe your path as a writer?

Roz Warren: Like a lot of writers, I began writing as soon as I could hold a pencil and never stopped. I began publishing short fiction in my 20s, in magazines from Beatniks from Space to Seventeen Magazine. These days, I write essays and humor, for everybody from the Funny Times to the New York Times.

And, of course, I write on Medium.

EN: What kind of law did you practice and was there a trigger incident that prompted you to leave that behind to become a librarian?

RW: I was a bankruptcy attorney. Twenty-two years ago, I impulsively took a job at my local public library when I realized that having fun was more important to me than having money. I have no regrets.

EN: Do you have an especially funny library story you can share here?

RW: Here's the first funny story I ever wrote about library work. It's included in Our Bodies, Our Shelves, my collection of library humor.
(EdNote: Go read A Nun Walks Into A Library...)

EN: Were you a class clown? Would it surprise your Detroit classmates to see you getting published in Reader’s Digest and the New York Times?

RW: I was never a class clown. I was not a goofy, attention-grabbing little girl. Instead, I was the kid in glasses with her nose in a book at all times. So I doubt anyone was surprised when I became a writer. But they may not have expected that I'd be a humor writer.

EN: Do you have a philosophy or process about humor writing?

RW: I don't know why, but I've always cared a lot more about funny stuff than other people seemed to. I like to laugh. I read a lot of humor and watch a lot of comedy, and when I write, I "write funny." That's just my voice and it always has been.

EN: What is it that makes written humor effective?

Roz loves libraries and being a grandma.

RW: For written humor to be effective, it has to surprise the reader. In a good way.

EN: In the same vein, have you ever done stand-up? You strike me as outgoing. How is stand-up comedy different from humor writing?

RW: I'm not at all outgoing. I think of myself as a friendly introvert. Library work is perfect for me because I love interacting with people, but one at a time. And in a situation that has some structure.

I've never wanted to do stand-up. Becoming a successful stand-up means hanging out in bars and clubs with other comics till 2 in the morning. It also means hitting the road to hone your act.

I want to write in my home office alone in my pajamas and be in my own bed every night by 10. That, to me, is a perfect life.

I once appeared on the Today Show. My Today Show goal was to not die of fright on live TV in front of 5 million people. I'm happy to say that I met that goal. And while I'm glad I met the challenge of entertaining millions of people on live television, that one taste of fame didn't make me eager to repeat that kind of live, high-pressure tightrope walk.
(EdNote: Here's where you can read Roz's An Introvert on the Today Show.)

EN: Your Leonard Cohen story was a fun read. Did you ever get a chance to see him again?

RW: I'm glad you enjoyed it! It's so great when your heroes turn out to be as wonderful as you'd hoped they'd be.

My editor at the Times required that Cohen sign off on the accuracy of the essay before it was published, which he did, through his manager, so I know that Cohen read it. But I never saw him again after the night I wrote about.

But that's okay. I got one more night with Leonard Cohen than most fans got.

EN: Any tips here on how to get bylines in Reader’s Digest or the NYTimes?

RW: In both cases, I didn't submit work. Instead, editors read my work online and got in touch with me. Reader's Digest asked if they could reprint one of my humor pieces. And an editor at the Times recruited me to write for "Booming," their (at the time) brand new blog for Baby Boomers.

I wrote about that experience here: Why Every Essay You Write Should Be the Best Essay You Can Write.

The takeaway? Make sure that everything you write on Medium is as good as it can possibly be before you publish it. Because you never know if an editor for Reader's Digest or the New York Times (or a Today Show producer) will end up reading it.

EN: Thanks, Roz. Great fun, and useful info for writers as well.

* * * *
Related Links 
OUR BODIES, OUR SHELVES: A COLLECTION OF LIBRARY HUMOR 
JUST ANOTHER DAY AT YOUR LOCAL PUBLIC LIBRARY
You can also read more of her work here: https://muckrack.com/roz-warren
What’s In A Name? A Batch of People With Interesting Medium Profiles
Roz Warren on Medium

How do you get ideas for things to write about every day?

The Old Preacher (Behind the Broken Mirror)

This is a question I've been asked more times than I can count. How do you get ideas? And the answer is somewhat straightforward. There are ideas everywhere. Everything you read, everything you see, everyone you meet, everything you've ever experienced--these are all seeds for potential stories. The challenges are these.

First, which ideas can be turned around quickly into a blog post, if you are writing daily? And which ones require further nurturing for a longer, more developed treatment? (See, for example, my post about Not Dead Yet.)

Second, is this something anyone else besides me would care about?

Actually, though, many times I write about a topic because I want to learn more about it, to research it more deeply, to probe it with questions and wring some new insight out of it. And when I've done so, I assume that there must be others like me who were curious about this or that, and so I've done the work so as to answer their questions as well.

Thus far, I have "published" 4744 blog posts here at Ennyman's Territory. What's interesting to me is that I've started 991 blog posts which are still in various stages of development. Some are ideas that were abandoned because I saw them requiring more time to nurture than I had time for. Some were just prompts that I could return to if I lacked an idea one day.

Here's a list of some of these blog post ideas and partially developed pieces:

There's a Dylan Song for Everything: I Need a Shot of Love

Astonishing and Creative Ways of Marking Time, Keeping Time

How the Mighty Fall (Book review)

Two Short Movie Reviews: Yesterday and Searching

Hospitals Hemorrhaging Money

The First Principle of the Georgia Guidelstones

Become a Better Writer by Studying Dylan's Song Writing Technique (as detailed in Daryl Sanders' That Thin, Wild Mercury Sound)

The Special Challenges for the Mentally Ill in America

A Century of Spin: Living in the Modern World

How Did "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" Become the #1 Song of the Twentieth Century

Nina Simone Tells It Like It Is

Pete Seger's Turn, Turn, Turn: The Beauty of Ancient Truths, Revisited

Suffering and Meaning

German Mystic and Philosopher Jakob Böhme

Thornton Wilder: The Man from Our Town

Kierkegaard's Beef Against Christendom

The CIA's World Factbook: Consummate Trivia Resource

How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States

Criminal Justice: Another System That's Broken

Gaugin the Lech?

Minnesota Labor Laws Are More Confusing Than Ever

A Tale of Two Ships: USS Maddox and USS Liberty
 (One President, Two Ships and Lots of Questions)

Trivial Pursuit: What Do All These Songs Have In Common?

The Big Short: Proof Once Again That Things Aren't What They Seem

Amazing People: Creativity Guru Ernie Breton

Why Self-Understanding Takes A Lifetime

Tall, Dark and Awesome: A Roy Orbison Tribute

Hobos in the Roundhouse: A Bill Isles Gem

* * * *

Those are just a few of the 991 unfinished ideas that are in the queue. If you see something you'd like me to finish, leave a comment here or send me a personal note via Facebook, Twitter or email.

* * * *

In 2018 I began writing on Medium. Sometimes I share the same stories both here and there, but here's one you might enjoy that is only found on Medium.

Two Somewhat Scary Cat Stories from My Childhood

Meantime, keep on the sunny side. The best is yet to come.

A Visit with Medium Writer and "No Crime in Rhymin'" Curator Joe Varadi

In June 2007 I stuck my big toe in the water as regards blogging. I wanted to understood what it was, and no better way than by doing. From that first June entry to the present I have been sharing here almost daily for 13 years. In June 2018, after spending a year being a top writer on Quora, I stuck my toe in the water on Medium, an ad-free platform for writers who could not only have a soapbox, but get paid for their blogging and self-expression efforts. It's been an interesting experience.

One thing I liked was how easy it was to recycle your other online writing. Ev Williams, founder of Medium, had also been the co-creator of Blogger and Twitter, thus he understood how to do the backstage magic that permitted writers to re-publish their work without being penalized by Google's search algorithms.

It's been a rewarding experience meeting so many interesting writers from all over the world. One of these is Joe Varadi, whom you can get to know here.

EN: How long have you been writing?

Joe Varadi: Since childhood, on and off. I didn't speak a word of English until the age of 10, when my family moved to the United States. I would write long descriptive letters, in my native tongue, to my relatives back in the old country. With five years of English under my belt, I wrote a review of the movie Harlem Nights, as a high school assignment. It turned out well enough that my English teacher pulled me aside and accused me of plagiarism. That's when I knew I had a knack for it. I am a regular -- almost daily -- writer since July of 2017, when I established my Medium account. Let's face it, the social engagement aspect of that platform is wonderfully and deeply addictive.

EN: Are you a writer for a living, or is writing something you do as an avocation or side gig?

JV: I work in banking and technology, and I write 50 emails or more a day, and contribute to documents and slide presentations of all sorts, so writing is an essential work tool. But my creative writing is strictly a hobby, a labor of love.

EN: Is your interest in poetry whimsical or serious?

JV: Is there a clearly delineated difference? I hover on the border of these two realms, my poems tend to be humor-infused, playful and satirical, as a quick way of making a connection with my reader, and when they think the coast is clear, I ambush them with a thought-provoking insight or revealing confessional.

Another major driving force in my poetry is the love of my native language, Hungarian, and its incredibly rich poetic tradition. I began to rediscover this tradition, ironically, when my kids were born, and I began to sing to them children's songs from my childhood to get Hungarian into their ears. It turns out that many popular children's songs are drawn from folk art, or from well-known poets of the Romantic period and the Modern era. They are beautiful, vivid works with charming rhyme and meter. I began making attempts to translate them, challenging my self to come up with works that retained musical, rhythmic qualities.

The year 2018 so far has been my most productive period for translations. I published 33 pieces that year, many of them children's songs which can still be enjoyed by all age groups, and a few more adult-oriented, introspective, lyrical poems: https://medium.com/the-junction/translating-poetry-2018-aac849f28718

EN: How long have you been blogging? What motivated you to start?

JV: I've already mentioned Medium -- as my writing, my state of mind, my imagination is deeply intertwined with that site. It has become my second home, my refuge, my choice destination for a happy hour, since I joined two and a half years ago. As for my initial motivation, I was looking for a digital home for an essay I wrote inspired by Pride Week 2017. I published it on Medium, and the next day it got picked up by an obscure publication out of the U.K., before I ever knew what Medium publications were.

As a side note, I really dislike the term blogging. To me it implies a kind of casual, self-indulgent practice of flooding your audience with half-baked ideas, something I termed "word pollution" in my rant below: https://writingcooperative.com/no-do-not-publish-every-day-44ccd39173c9

EN: Who are your favorite writers of the past 40 years?

JV: This question strikes a nerve -- it threatens to reveal how little "traditional" reading I do nowadays, what with digital channels of information and my ever-growing addiction to producing rather than consuming content. I now read online news and investigative journalism, and my daily dose of essays and poems from fellow Medium authors, but don't remember the last time I finished a novel. When I pick up a book, it is mostly historical, scientific and technical non-fiction.

EN: What are you reading now?

JV: The books on my night stand, which I may never finish, are: Prediction Machines, by a cabal of business and Artificial Intelligence professors at the University of Toronto, and John Stauffer's Giants, about the intersecting lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln.

EN: Do you have a big project you’re working on for 2020?

JV: Last year a translation of mine was picked up for an anthology by a British publisher, The Emma Press. I proudly display this little booklet in my home and office, and plan to write more for them. Another children's verse translation I did was accepted into CRICKET Magazine. I am working on securing the rights from the author's estate, and it is proving to be a difficult uphill battle. Stay tuned.

My loftier ambition in the world of writing is to find an agent and eventually a publisher for my original poetry. Call me old fashioned -- I'll continue to pursue that route rather than the rabbit hole of self-publishing.

* * * *
Follow Joe Varadi on Medium @ https://medium.com/@joevaradi

You can also follow me on Medium @ https://medium.com/@ennyman

Two Days In October: PBS Documentary Points to Fall 1967 as the Vietnam War's Turning Point

“What hurts the most was for these men to die so young for a needless cause. It’s a high price to pay for something that’s wrong. As you look at it now we know it was wrong. We had no business being there.”--A Soldier's Lament

Two Days in October is a documentary that aired on American Experience, a series produced for PBS. The show, produced by Robert Kenner, was based on the book by David Maraniss titled They Marched into Sunlight.

Whereas many Vietnam War historians look at the Tet Offensive as the decisive turning point in the war, in conjunction with Walter Cronkite’s February 1968 public on-air statement that the war could not be won, Two Days in October points to a slightly earlier turning point in the war.

THE STORY goes back and forth between events in Vietnam and the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In Vietnam we're taken to the Lai Khe Base Camp where 140 fresh recruits begin training with the Alpha and Delta Companies of the famous "Black Lions." As with the Ken Burns Vietnam War documentary, the story is told through interviews with the men and wives who were still alive when the documentary was produced. You are very quickly given a quick sketch of the situation, an over-confident commander who thinks "we'll just march in their and whoop 'em."

In Madison, students were aware that the war had picked up considerably. The draft was on. Body counts and body bags were constantly in the news. There was a stirring taking place as students wrestled with the proper response to what was taking place.

Antiwar protesters at the Pentagon, October 1967.

Some students believed, “If our government says we should be there then we should be there.” Others were beginning to question the narrative of "my country right or wrong."

The trigger incident that October was when Dow Chemical came to the campus to recruit students for employment. The newspaper reported that Dow would be present to conduct job interviews. This Company that made saran wrap was the same company that had been producing napalm starting in 1965. Napalm is a hideous jellied gas that burn sat 2000 degrees F. It didn’t just kill you, it burned your clothes off and tortured you. Napalm had become a symbol of the war, and the manufacturer was going to be on campus.

Students got riled up when they learned the U had invited Dow to recruit. “I didn’t want to see any more pictures of children with their clothes burned off," one student said. Chancellor William Sewell was himself opposed to on campus recruiting but gave in to teachers.

* * * *
NEARLY HALF A MILLION troops were now in Vietnam. Pressure was on to win by attrition, to just go out and kill as many of the enemy as possible.

The U.S. soldiers could here enemy movement but never see anything. “My company was getting most of the action because I would go where the enemy was," the company commander Terry Allen said.

But these 140 American troops had no clue what they were up against. 1200 Vietnamese troops were passing through to another location. They were not supposed to encounter American troops. This Vietnamese army hadn’t eaten in days and were looking for food, not a fight. If they’d found it, they would not have been there when the Americans showed up.

Photos on this page courtesy goodfreephotos.com

There's also a behind the scenes matter taking place. General Hay was being told by General Westmoreland that he wasn’t being aggressive enough. So Hay put pressure on Terry Allen to go out and track down the Viet Cong. The singular purpose for being there was to make contact and beat them up.

Pressure was coming from above to the troops below. “You’re not moving fast enough.” These guys were all carrying 50 lbs. of gear. “We’re concerned about being ambushed while the generals were concerned they were going to slow," Allen said.

On October 16, Delta and Bravo were sent into an area where they thought they would make contact and they did.

Col. Allen said it would be a great day tomorrow. Delta will lead, Alpha will follow and “we’re going to follow this route.” It was a frontal attack on a fortified position. You just don’t do that.

One of the cardinal rules in tactics, especially that kind of environment, if you don’t go out the same way two times because the enemy will be waiting to ambush you. And a slaughter ensues.

THE STORY flips back to where the students protest inside the admin building. The school calls in the Madison police department to break things up. These off-campus police have no love for the students and begin busting heads. Tear gas is used and something of a riot follows.

MEANWHILE, back in the jungle, the lead company is cut to shreds. They had no idea what they were up against. 

Here were a few quotes from those who survived

"Normally there would be 20 helicopters moving us in and out. Only five were needed to move them out."

“I was kind of wandering around in a daze.”

“We were not to mention that it was an ambush.”

This was another  problem. What the soldiers experienced, they were not supposed to talk about. They were to spin it like it was part of some bigger battle that was successful. “It was a total fabrication of what really happened.” The American generals made it appear to be a victory.

This quote sums it up: "If that’s the way history is written, who the hell knows what really happened?”

BACK IN MADISON University newspapers came out with stories that the students were the problem, that they had attacked the police. “That was the beginning of a movement on campus. Students were saying, ‘If they’re doing that to us here, who were peacefully protesting, maybe the United States is doing the same thing abroad. Maybe the United States is the bully.”

Campus protests continued from that day forward which resulted in violence against the students for taking a position the school didn’t approve of. Chancellor Sewell was so shaken by the violence against the students that decades later, at age 90, he was still shaken.

After October 18 rioting became a routine thing. "We were going through $50,000 of tear gas a week," one officer said. "I think the Dow demonstration was the first violent antiwar demonstration to take place on a university campus."

For this reason, Two Days in October points to this moment as the turning point in the war. Campus protests spread, culminating in "four dead in Ohio" in the spring of 1970. From this point in time the anti-war movement couldn't be swept under the rug any more.

* * * *
The story brings to mind the manner in which two disparate battles in the Civil War — Vicksburg and Gettysburg — proved to be the beginning of the end for the South. The fall of Vicksburg closed off the South’s access to resources West of the Mississippi River, and the defeat at Gettysburg sapped the heart out of General Lee’s disruptive march North. The two battles, in different regions, occurred the same week. Though the war continued, it was essentially over at this moment in time.

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Related Links
When Walter Cronkite Pronounced the War a "Stalemate"
Two Days in October (Wikipedia)
Before Going Into Battle We Must Know WWAUA
The Decisive Battle of Dien Bien Phu: How the Viet Minh Stunned the World

My Most Read Stories On Medium This Week & Two Blogging Milestones

I'll start with the milestones. Last Sunday I saw my Pageviews scroll past 2,000,000. Seems like a more significant milestone than one million only because it came so much quicker. At this current pace Ennyman's Territory will be at three million pageviews by next year. Thank you to all who have contributed by visiting and sharing as your time permits. Because of you I keep working hard to make it worth your while to spend time here.

The second milestone is that in a day or two I will have also been blogging on Medium for one year. During that year I've acquired 1.2 thousand followers and been tagged as a top writer in Books, Music, Art and History. I guess you might say that I write about my passions.

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"Profile"

There are quite a few things I like about the Medium platform. One of them is the clean look of the layout. It's got an elegance that makes stories inviting to read. I also enjoy the way they encourage use of the header image of high quality. As an artist I work hard to find just the right photo or illustration to accompany the words and ideas I share.

Another feature of the site is the weekly summary they email to you so you know what your most read stories were that week and how your readers found these stories. For example, the three primary ways readers found my articles this week were from looking at my profile page, and from reading my articles Eudaemonia vs. Hakuna Matata and My Start as a Writer.

These were my most read stories this week:

Making a Case for Cicero

Propaganda Revisited

My Start as a Writer

Whether You Call It Awfulizing or Catastrophizing, It’s Not Healthy

Karl Dedolph Shares His Passion for Street Photography

Recovering from a System Crash on Your Mac Laptop


Two of my favorite pieces from the past year:
Eudaemonia vs. Hakuna Matata

A Lesson from 29 Golden Gate Suicide Attempts


Related Links
Blogging and Journal Writing, What's the Difference?
How Long Should A Blog Post Be  
My Profile and List of Articles Published on Medium

This Week's Top Five Stories On Medium (by ennyman)

Here are the stories I've written which received the most pageviews this week on Medium.

Four Marketing Lessons from the Battle of Vicksburg
Here are four important marketing and leadership lessons that stand out from this battle. Each could be elaborated on with illustrations from businesses today. Published on Medium at The Startup.
Read More


Add Martin Guitar Factory to Your Bucket List
Every business has a story, a starting point and a history. Martin Guitars just happens to have a story that leaves none of us untouched. That is, anyone for whom music or pop culture has been a part of their lives, this company’s products have produced sounds that enhanced your life.
Read More

Life is the Artist’s Pallet

Artists, whether their medium is words or paint or cameras or music, discover at some point in time that they are themselves a medium, a vessel through which observation and experience is transmuted and shared.
Read More


Remembering Kurt Vonnegut
A Vonnegut tribute and re-cap of my interview with the author.
Read More


“Go Away Bomb:” — Dylan Writes A Song for Izzy Young
An original manuscript which Dylan wrote for and at the request of Israel “Izzy” Young, will be on display this coming month along with numerous other items from the Bill Pagel Archive. Young owned a music store called the Folklore Center in Greenwich Village. This original document from the Bill Pagel Archive will be on view through much of the summer here.
Read More

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My 8 Most-Read Stories On Medium This Past Week

Reminder: Easter is just around the corner.

Yesterday I hit 1.9 million pageviews here at Ennyman's Territory. Thank you for all who read, who comment and who share.

This past year I began posting on Medium as well. It's a very clean platform for bloggers, and seems to serve a high caliber writing community. There's much to like about it.

Medium founder Ev Williams was also the co-founder of Blogger and Twitter. The site is intuitive and, like every good blogging platform ought, it has stats and other tools to help you reach an audience.

Each week they send out an email with one's most-most read stories.
Here are links to my most read stories at Medium this past week:  

An Insight About Basic Article Structure That Can Help Your Readers

The Birth of Both Sci Fi and SFX: A Trip to the Moon by Georges Méliès

Is There a Relationship Between Suffering and Achievement

This Day In History: March 31 Happenings

Ethics and Advertising

Witch Hunts: Then and Now

21 Questions: Dylan Fest Trivia 2019

A Visit With Amateur Futurist and Instant Millionaire Eric Martin

Meantime, have a rewarding Saturday. 

May you enjoy something good and unexpected. 

A Visit With Amateur Futurist and Instant Millionaire Eric Martin

On several occasions I have mentioned my having become involved with Medium this past year, the blogging platform developed by Ev Williams. Williams, you may recall, was a co-founder of Blogger in the late 90's and later Twitter.

Eric Martin

The elegance and ease of use make Medium popular among users, but especially interesting is the multi-cultural community that has evolved. It has been enjoyable meeting so many new people, sharing one's writing and ideas and getting feedback.

In addition to posting on the forum you may also submit articles and poems to publications that have built followings on Medium. The publications cover all manner of interests, from literature to business and entrepreneurialism. Eric Martin is editor of a publication called Predict, a forward thinking publication to which I have been occasionally contributing. It wasn't till more recently I discovered he has many other facets of his life than merely managing this digital periodical.

A relatively young man, Eric won a competition that made him an instant millionaire. (See link at the end of this interview.) But that was only the first of many features of his life adventure.

EN: You called yourself an amateur futurist. Where did your passion for thinking about the future come from?

Eric Martin: It started with Technology, our family got our first computer when I was 4 or 5, and I've been hooked ever since. In about 6th grade I got interested in programming. Then, over the past 5+ years I've really gotten interested in Artificial Intelligence. In my mind, AI is the single biggest development that will shape the future of technology and the economy, so naturally I think about the future implications of it. A fascination with a computer led to a fascination with computation, which led to a fascination with AI, which leads to a fascination with the future.

EN: What prompted you to start Predict, your publication on Medium about futurism?

EM: I'm interested in future topics, but with Predict, I'm trying to create something where anyone can publish an article about the future. Many publications are very exclusive and only let certain writers in. Predict is the opposite of that. If someone is thinking something about the future and can write it into words, we want to publish it. We are not elitist and I believe that anyone can have an insight into trends and how the future will play out. No one holds magic cards with all of the answers, but any can have an insight that is valuable and turns out to be correct.

EN: Your book Liberation Day is a pretty dramatic response to government overreach. How did government infrastructure become so bloated in the first place?

EM: Quite the question. It's the slow but steady creep of Leviathan, compounding exponentially over 200 years now. In the case of the Roman Republic and Empire it probably started out slower. Unfortunately, not one has successfully created a system to stop the overreach of government. The Constitution would be amazing, if we only followed it.

EN: Politically speaking, you identify fairly strongly with a Libertarian view. Is this something that is fairly common among young people?

EM: I sure wish it was more common! Most young people vote less than older people. I think most young people largely try not to think about politics.

EN: Looking into the future… Do you think we’ll ever see a successful presidential bid by a third party?

EM: We already have, right? Wasn't Lincoln the first Republican when two other parties were entrenched? I think given a long enough timeframe we will see it. In the current state of affairs, a third party could win because people are disillusioned by the old way and because of new means of reaching the masses. In particular, I think an AI could enable a candidate with low funding to win in the future, as long as he's employing it much better than any of his opponents.

EN: What did you go to college for and how did you take an interest in writing?

EM: Good questions! I went to college for Political Science. I would say I don't have an interest in writing, per se, I just feel compelled to write about certain things that I care about, or ideas that I think up because I'm afraid they could be wasted if I don't publish them.

EN: What do you do for a living now?

EM: I'm helping to market an upcoming game of self-awareness... right now I'm helping to run a referral contest for them. Stock options are available to the top 20 referrers. You can learn more here: https://500bcfoundry.com/ and even sign up and compete if you're so inclined.

I work as a contractor remotely.

EN: Taproots looks intriguing. What is your role in this, other than modeling the benefit of a big incentive?

EM: My role is the referral contest team lead, I'm also helping with their social media, their blog, marketing in general, and just trying to improve their product with ideas and critiques here and there.

The company's goal is to help propel the know thyself and mindfulness movement into the mainstream. The movement is already getting there, but by creating a game that rewards users, we hope to make mindfulness a fun experience that also helps people live better, more self-aware lives.

EN: Thank you for sharing.

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Related Links
Story of an Instant Millionaire
Wal-Mart Deal Makes Overnight Millionaire Even Richer
Liberation Day @ Amazon

Five Articles Recently Published On Medium Related to the Past, the Present and the Future

These are all fairly short explorations around various ideas. The first two were stimulated by passages from the book Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt. The third examines a thought I had in response to what is happening in France these past several months. The fourth is a brief presentation of how our preconceived biases influence the way we envision the future. The last is a short story idea that came to me around two decades ago when we took a family vacation in the Black Hills.

Lord Nelson, the Battle of Trafalgar and a Lesson in Strategy
https://medium.com/swlh/lord-nelson-the-battle-of-trafalgar-and-a-lesson-in-strategy-51d76e9c48e5?source=friends_link&sk=ecd75488e77e6ab8a766fa370212f94c

Dark Matter and the Psychologist’s Dilemma
https://medium.com/@ennyman/dark-matter-and-the-psychologists-dilemma-93ef7c60c431?source=friends_link&sk=e2e1a6d8146e7beb608377e5938ce9eb

My Biggest Concern About the Green New Deal
https://medium.com/@ennyman/my-biggest-concern-about-the-green-new-deal-9aeb7f671283?source=friends_link&sk=ea252cca8bd976c09c0c879011291984

Notes from Herman Kahn’s The Next 200 Years
https://medium.com/predict/notes-from-herman-kahns-the-next-200-years-fc9f82de6023?source=friends_link&sk=b0663aa9f3f7d1bad3f72314eb66e2a5

Coyote with Broken Mouth (A Black Hills Story)
https://medium.com/@ennyman/coyote-with-broken-mouth-4280c8beb9e7?source=friends_link&sk=0d470297ec73f8d061026c39cc3418c4

Painting by local artist Shawna Gilmore.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to share.