clair057

When you stop for a moment and consider Franklin Delano Roosevelt you have to be amazed and filled with awe that a man who had suffered through such a tremendous physical tragedy as he did during the summer of 1921 was able to rise to the highest office in the land given prevailing opinions concerning the disabled at that time. FDR contracted polio…or what was thought to be polio while on vacation and even though various cures never worked to restore his legs he also never accepted the fact his paralysis was permanent and constantly felt he was getting better.   Many state today his paralysis might have been from the effects of Guillain-Barre Syndrome and not Polio, but no matter the cause FDR was what our society deems as handicapped. Yet, at the time of his death in 1945 and for years afterward very few Americans knew the full extent of FDR’s physical limitations. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt....one of three public photos showing him in his wheel chair Once he entered...

The song I’ve posted below isn’t as popular as Marvin Gaye’s hit “What’s Going On?”, but it is from the same album….the first of its kind for Motown…a concept album. Gaye wrote the songs during a time of great depression when he isolated himself from the outside world.  This site explains.... Through television news broadcasts, Gaye saw the racial, political, and social problems that were plaguing the world, manifestations from the explosion of political and social activism that took place during the late ‘60s. As he wallowed in his seclusion, Gaye read letters from his brother Frankie serving in the Vietnam War. They described the confusion and frustration he and other soldiers felt fighting in a war that had no just cause. Many black soldiers at the time felt doubly conflicted, drafted to fight and die for a country that refused to accept them because of the color of their skin. These observations, along with the loss of Tammi Terrell, motivated Gaye to question his role in the w...

It seems these days everyone has a forum or two to make their opinions known on every subject possible.  We can post to Facebook or Twitter.   We can have our own blog or self-publish our own books.   We can text, we can make regular comments online at various sites, and we can call in to various television and radio shows. Over the last few years we’ve seen how social media can help to accelerate revolutions and impact protests in foreign countries, we can see how fast ideas travel and take on momentum via videos and Internet links that go viral. I often wonder if we aren’t literally drowning in TOO much information…. I often wonder if the present quagmire of partisan politics isn’t caused by TOO much information…. Just imagine for a few minutes how events could have been shaped during the 1700s leading up to the American Revolution if people in England and the Colonies had access to some of the technology we do today along with the resulting partisanship, fing...

On October 2, 1925, the Church Hill section of Richmond, Virginia suffered a great tragedy when a train tunnel caved in at the exact moment a train happened to be in the tunnel.  Several people lost their lives.   It wasn’t long after the cave-in that a story began circulating describing a blood covered creature with jagged teeth.  Huge patches of decomposing skin were hanging off the creature’s legs and arms.  The tale went on to explain how at the time of the tragic cave-in the creature made his way towards the James River and then to Hollywood Cemetery where he was last seen entering the crypt that belonged to William Worthan Pool. It only added to the story that Mr. Pool’s burial site did not share a birth date…only the year he died….1913.  He never died?  Seriously? Somehow the story morphed into a vampire story and the tale of the Richmond Vampire was widely told through the years.    Mr. Pool had lived a very ordinary life before passi...

There’s a little restaurant not too far from my home that we frequent for the great steaks and great service.    I usually order an adult beverage before dinner….a little something served up in a martini glass called a Cosmic Grape.   The drink reminds me of a frozen Fanta Grape soda…..not as sweet as a Fanta, but similar.   The last time we were there I ordered my Cosmic Grape and then wondered aloud what might be in the drink so we could recreate it at home.   I assumed it contained one of the new flavored vodkas….seems like every flavor under the sun is offered up these days. I picked up my hand-dandy smart phone and went online to look up the recipe.   I entered the words “cosmic grape” in the search box. Guess what I found? Yes, I found recipes that seemed like they could be my beloved Cosmic Grape, but I found something much more interesting. My recipe quest was soon forgotten because I found a bit of history involving grade soda a...

Happy President's Day!!! When I was younger we didn’t have a day to celebrate all U.S. Presidents.  Instead we split the day in two and recognized Abraham Lincoln and George Washington since their birthdays were both in February…..so, I’m linking to two past articles.  The first involves Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation.  This article originally appeared at History Is Elementary as well as American Presidents Blog in 2008.  You can view it here. This post appeared at History Is Elementary in 2007 and detailed a famous image we have of George Washington at Valley Forge.   I discuss how I used the image in the classroom and how controversy should not be avoided…but embraced to help students discover for themselves those areas that are white or black…but most of the time controversial areas are really just…. gray.

I met up with a teacher the other day that has the privilege of introducing the Civil War to her fourth graders each year.  The word “introducing” is a little misleading, however.  I live in Georgia where natives, no matter the ethnicity, are born with “The War” ingrained in our souls.   We can’t escape it, we can’t deny it – it’s always there.   Some of our earliest collective memories are filled with the statues around the town square, old family photographs; we hear the stories and see the preserved battlefields that dot our landscape. I haven’t met a fourth grade student yet who doesn’t know something about the Civil War, but the fourth school year is designated by the Georgia Social Studies curriculum to formally learn about the war in an academic setting.   My own personal experience indicates students are eager to begin the process.   A formal study helps them connect to family stories still lingering around the Sunday dinner tabl...