Fort Ticonderoga: Well worth a day trip this summer
There is an article in the Sarasota, Florida, Herald-Tribune, “A new view on history,” published June 26, that is about Fort Ticonderoga, in which I have long had a real interest. I lived in Albany for...
View ArticleHamilton’s connection to Albany
I haven’t seen any references to Albany in the many stories about the Broadway hit, “Hamilton,” about which there is a piece in today’s New York Times, “What ‘Hamilton’ forgets about Hamilton,” by...
View ArticleThe flight (and safe landing) of refugees
I doubt that anyone knows fully what happened to the three million South Asian refugees that fled Communist regimes that came to power after America’s defeat and pullout from Vietnam in 1975. No one...
View ArticleThe idea of a common good
A former colleague, an historian, told me a joke some forty years ago. A frog and a scorpion are talking to one another on the side of a river. The scorpion wants to get to the other side of the...
View ArticleWhat would Tocqueville think about Donald Trump
This post came to me in the middle of the night; it is my strange response to Donald Trump and the current absurdities that have fixated the media and made American democracy seem like utter silliness...
View ArticleGouverneur Morris, a short history
When Alexander Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris sat at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, one was a New York delegate the other a Pennsylvania delegate. Hamilton, the New York...
View ArticleHamilton and the scandal of the century
The hip-hop Broadway musical, “Hamilton,” has been much in the news lately. There was an article in the magazine section of yesterday’s New York Times (7-19) about the musical; there were earlier...
View ArticleIf Charleston flies the Confederate flag, should Berlin fly the swastika?
Having just watched “Meet the Press” on Sunday morning has helped clarify my thinking about several issues, including flying the “Confederate flag” in front of the South Carolina State House. This is...
View ArticleOn David McCullough’s visit to Albany
Paul Grondahl has written an article in the Times Union about a talk that David McCullough will give this Wednesday at the State Education Department Building. This isn’t the first time that McCullough...
View ArticleWhen Patton slapped the soldier…
I just saw the movie, “Patton,” with George C. Scott in the title role. It was the first time I had seen it since it first appeared in 1970. I remembered the movie well, better than I would have...
View ArticleQuestions of war and guilt and shame
A documentary on the 1968 My Lai massacre on “American Experience” on PBS raises difficult questions about war guilt. Watch it online here. There is no doubt about what American soldiers did in a...
View ArticleChance meeting leads to a Tiffany moment
Someone ran to catch up with me the other day when I was taking my daily walk on the beach in Florida, where I now live full-time. I had spoken to the guy and his wife twice before. They live in...
View ArticleWashington gridlock then and now
Continuing the political storm theme… The turbulence of today’s political storm that has engulfed the presidency of Barack Obama could hardly be more different from the experience of America’s first...
View ArticleWhy does 2014 remind me of 1777?
Trying to decide what to do with ISIS is a real problem for President Obama and those around him. What strategy, what approach, should they follow? Our own experience when we became a nation offers...
View ArticleWrongs of the past
I made invidious comparisons in my last blog between the America in which I went to high school and college, the 1940s and 1950s, to today’s America, with a video game store in Crossgates as the main...
View ArticleTwo athletes who took different paths
Two stories that appeared this week made me think about change in America after World War II. Both stories pertain to athletes who in rather different ways made the news this week. One might find no...
View ArticleRossini, revolution and Albany
Continuing on the Rossini theme, let’s look at the composer’s connection to monarchy, revolution and Albany, NY, of all places… Rossini became the most famous opera composer in Europe in the seven...
View ArticleTocqueville, Albany and America
Here is a follow-up post to my recent writing on Rossini. It shows the connection between Rossini and Albany, an indirect one, but intriguing. It follows another Rossini-Albany connection, Mme de La...
View ArticleAffairs of the heart, affairs of the state
Plans for a State Dinner at the White House ran into unexpected complications when planners were informed that Valérie Trierweiler, the female companion (lover, mistress, whatever) of President...
View ArticleOn Kennedy and public service
Here is a guest post from Anne Roberts, wife of Professor Warren Roberts and herself a retired UAlbany professor: We had just moved to Albany that fall, after being in Berkeley, CA for some five...
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