Hello, is there anybody out there?

It often feels like I am speaking into the void until I look at the Stats page and see I got 1000 hits yesterday. The traffic has been sporadic and coming from unusual places. I would think the site would appeal mostly to Americans, yet over the past week the overwhelming majority of hits have come from Singapore. The most frequented posts have been early ones when we still had a reading group going in this forum. Among the favorites, a reading of The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire from April, 2011. The infamous fire ushered a new era of building safety regulations with the hope that such tragic events would never happen again. The fire killed 146 persons, mostly young women and children. It also led to stricter laws on child labor.

As much as I have enjoyed posting my thoughts on various topics, changing the name of the forum to suit my eclectic nature, I miss the reading groups. We had some good ones like The Age of Roosevelt: The Crisis of the Old Order, the first of Arthur Schlesinger's three-volume epic of FDR. The participants are mostly gone or if they look in don't say much anymore. So, I'm left holding the fort down, hoping that at some point someone might be interested enough to respond to the posts other than my dear friend Trippler.

I'm not sure what draws persons to this blog other than they might come upon the posts in a google search on the subject. Yet, most of last year I had a steady audience from France, averaging about 400 hits per day. That dried up at the beginning of the year for reasons as mysterious as why they looked in to begin with. For a while there, it was absolutely moribund in this forum - 10,15 hits per day. I once again thought about shutting it down but then it picked up and so I felt rewarded for my efforts. As much as one can anyway in a public forum.

I try to stay objective, or at least provide links to support my arguments. I welcome the opinions of others. No spam please. I'm quick to erase any comments promoting products or other websites that I don't consider germane to the posts. I had problems a few years ago with viruses, which eventually I was able to rid the forum of, and hope to keep it clean. I also don't appreciate trolls who report posts to Blogger just because you guys don't like the opinions being expressed. I have to appeal to Blogger to get the posts reinstated. Grow up!

Anyway, I hope whoever is looking in enjoys the posts and gets something out of the reading group discussions. It would be nice to get another reading group going if anyone is interested. I'm open to virtually any topic at this point. It doesn't have to be American history.

Cheers!

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

The Searchers

You are invited to join us in a discussion of The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl. The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics' Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts. The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories. The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...

TripplerJune 7, 2023 at 7:53 PM
Yes, indeed, we did have many outstanding discussions in the past. I sure learned quite a lot from them. So sad that those days are gone. If our good friend Bob Whelan had stayed healthy, we would still be having such great exchanges.

While I'm glad to see your site gets hits from Singapore, I wonder why they do not post on the board (?). I usually end my day online by watching professional badminton from that city/state and other parts of Asia. The sport is incredibly popular in that region of the world. The amateur game is growing here in Minnesota at the high school and collegiate levels.

Hopefully, folks will join in real soon.

Dispatches from Vilnius

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