About

Earl Aagaard’s opinions about everything that interests him. Og also enjoys gardening, travel, reading, woodbutchery, and lots of other stuff.

Monthly Archives

Join Og's Mailing List

OgBlog.net

SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE CAME YESTERDAY

It’s always good, but the September, 2005 issue is particularly rich. (Translation: they have a lot of stories that interest me!)

The very best thing was on the last page, in a loving column about the author’s computer nerd husband. I read it to Gail and we could hardly finish for laughing—computer nerds are a varied group, but we recognized enough to make it really fun. There’s more…....

GOOD NEWS on the endangered species front.

Not every endangered species is doomed. Thanks to tough laws, dedicated researchers, and plenty of money and effort, success stories abound

You think slavery ended in the last century? Come to NIGER, where it’s alive and well, despite official denials.

History resonates with countless verified accounts of human bondage, but Asibit escaped only in June of last year. Across western Africa—not only in Niger, but also in Mali, Chad and Mauritania—hundreds of thousands of people are being held in what is known as “chattel slavery,” which Americans may associate only with the transatlantic slave trade and the Old South. The families of such slaves have been held for generations, and their captivity is immutable: the one thing they can be sure of passing on to their children is their enslavement.

The roots of the two World Wars go back many centuries - to the time of Christ! German tribes beat the ROMANS by trapping and slaughtering three entire legions of soldiers, ending Rome’s drive to conquer all of Europe.

“Ongoing finds,” reports Fergus M. Bordewich, “ranging from simple nails to fragments of armor and the remains of fortifications, have verified the innovative guerrilla tactics that according to accounts from the period, neutralized the Romans’ superior weaponry and discipline.”

How do you get a classroom full of white Iowa third-graders in 1968 to understand what segregation and discrimination meant to black people? Jane Elliott’s answer is still controversial, but in a fascinating story,

University of Iowa journalist and professor Stephen G. Bloom reports on the enduring legacy of Elliott’s work. Interviewing dozens of now-grown children who took part in the exercise over the years, he finds that most of them say it had a profound and sometimes surprising impact on them and their families.

Some folks get obsessed about this, and others about that. FRANK DRIGGS’ obsession was “jazz photographs”, of which he has upwards of 78,000. Louis Armstrong, Earl Hines, Benny Goodman, and many lesser-known figures are represented. But almost equal to the photographs as a resource is Driggs himself—and he is no longer a young man…...

The stories Driggs tells about the pictures put you in mind of the Jazz Age writer William Bolitho’s description of the saxophone, endlessly sorrowful yet endlessly unsentimental, writes Newsweek senior writer Jerry Adler in his paean to the dedicated jazz-o-phile whose photo collection captures, like no other, America’s greatest musical art form.

Finally, in Navigating Siberia, travel writer Jeffrey Tayler takes us on a

2,300-mile boat trip down the Lena River, one of the last great unspoiled waterways, is a journey into Russia’s dark past—and perhaps its future as well.

“Down the river” means “up north” to the Arctic Ocean, and through the Siberian wilderness where Stalin put many of the camps of the Gulag. Those who remain in this harsh land are lending their support to harsh government, and possibly a return to the authoritarianism of the past. A chilling story, in several senses of the word.

Hey! You really should SUBSCRIBE

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 08/25 at 08:21 AM

Comments and reactions