Initiated by Lincoln, overseen by Johnson, and completed under Grant, the undertaking called for the Union Pacific Railroad to work westward from Omaha and the Central Pacific, eastward from Sacramento. They met, as most schoolchildren learned in my day (do they study this anymore?), at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory, in 1869, where a laurel tie was laid and ceremonial golden spike was driven to link the two coasts. With that linking, a cross-country journey abruptly dropped from six weeks to five days. Moving people and freight and the telegraphy that paralleled the tracks changed America forever. The immensity of the undertaking (the equivalent of a 19th century NASA moon shot) captured the imagination of Americans.

At Promontory Summit, telegraphers chronicled the ceremony by sending messages with each swing of the hammer, and church bells pealed in towns throughout the country.

Replica of the Union Pacific's Engine 119 (the replica of the Central Pacific's "Jupiter" locomotive was in the shop)

Even though railroad tracks no longer run through Promontory Summit (a more direct route across part of the Great Salt Lake was completed in 1904 and the tracks were torn up for use in the war effort in 1942), the Golden Spike National Historic Site is there. Only a half-hour off I-85 and I-15 near the north shore of the Great Salt Lake, it is a bit of Americana worth the side trip.

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

I glance at the headline of an old newspaper that had been used to insulate one of the old log cabins that make up the museum in Frisco, CO.

“Bankers Blame Tax Laws for Securities Drop” (The Denver Post…November 7, 1937).

The Great Depression had been ongoing for over eight years.

Yesterday the Dow fell over 500 points. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Sigh…

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

It was Colonial Williamsburg, and my daughter Emily and I were breaking our cross-country drive with a hot summer’s day walk into 18th-century Virginia.

As the day reddened into sunset, the cooper reshelved tools and stowed his bands and staves.

“The barrel,” he informed me through thin lips, “was and is a perfected invention. Nothing to be done to make it better than it is. Unchanged for a thousand years. This…” he spoke louder as tapped the oaken lid on a chest-high, unfinished barrel, “is my best work. And it, my friend, is nothing better than the barrels I made yesterday or a fortnight ago. And that’s because I signed on as an apprentice and worked 80 hours a week for ten years to learn my trade. I learned how to not think, to be second-nature with my craft, to do the same operation over and over. In the same way. With the same tools. Making the same barrel.”

He sucked on a tooth and leaned closer, seemingly offering a confidence. “Now if my shop were near a winery, I’d be making hogshead barrels, 63 gallons each. If I were near a ale brewery, they’d all be 36 gallons. A armorer, the gunpowder kegs would hold 25 pounds. But I’ve set my life beside this mill. I’ve been here 24 years, lived through three wives and seven children, four of them grown and wed, the others dead and buried. Beside this mill I set my life. This barrel, oak and iron to hold 200 pounds of flour, is what I learned to make.”

He tapped the barrel again. “This one, I say again, is nothing better than the ones I made yesterday or a fortnight ago. But nothing worse, neither. And that’s the knot I’ve untied to know my work. I do what I must do, and I do it well. Those who work on many things cannot truly know their craft, cannot be expert in anything…and those who work on one small part of a whole cannot know the entirety of what they do. They can be replaced. I cannot be.”

Standing his ground in a time before machined parts and assembly lines, the cooper stepped inside his shop and pulled the large wooden doors closed, leaving us outside in the late sun of our own century.

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

I wrote the letter because: (a) I had recently read three thought-provoking books about racism in America during the early years of the 20th century and (b) the magazine’s profile of Clarence Darrow overlooked an important and defining episode that checkered the man’s career.

The first book, The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War by James Bradley, deals with Theodore Roosevelt’s foreign policy, highlighting the central role of paternalistic racism in American decision-making.

In the summer of 1905, Roosevelt, seeking to extend American hegemony into Asia, sent a huge diplomatic legation eastward from San Francisco on the passenger ship Manchurian. It was headed by Secretary of War William Howard Taft and, as this was still the era of monarchies, decorated with Roosevelt’s 21-year-old daughter Alice, America’s own “princess.”

The three-month journey across the Pacific also included seven senators, 23 representatives, and about 40 aides, servants, and hangers-on. In the aftermath of Imperial Japan’s stunning victory over Tsarist Russia in the Russo-Japanese War—the first victory of an Asian (non-white) power over a European (white) power in modern history—Roosevelt wished to “show the flag” to Hawaiians and demonstrate authority to America’s Filipino subjects (referred to more than once as  “Asian niggers” on the floor of Congress). The Philippines, after gaining independence from Spain in the Spanish-American War, was still in turmoil seven years later over its annexation by the U.S.

Roosevelt justified western control as necessary (what Kipling had called in 1898 the “white man’s burden”) because Taft, governor of the Philippines at war’s end, had assured President McKinley that “our little brown brothers” would need 50-100 years of close supervision “to develop anything resembling Anglo-Saxon political principles and skills.”

The second book was Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and his Rendezvous with American History by Yunte Huang. It deals with the reality upon which Chan’s character was based (real-life Honolulu detective Chang Apana) and the racial implications of an intelligent Chinese hero in American fiction. I’ve already posted about it.

The third was David Stannard’s Honor Killing, an exhaustive, historical examination of Honolulu’s Massie Affair, a racially explosive case of alleged rape (1931) that led to a hung jury and the murder of one of the Hawaiian defendants (1932) by the mother and husband of Thalia Massie, a 21-year-old white woman whose rape story had failed to convince the jury.

Clarence Darrow

Thalia’s father was the illegitimate son of Theodore Roosevelt’s brother; her mother’s grandfather was Alexander Graham Bell (even though Jill Lepore’s article stressed Darrow’s dedication to the oppressed, The New Yorker edited these facts out of my letter…for “space considerations”). Calling on wealthy friends, Thalia’s mother collected enough money to hire Clarence Darrow, whose defense of the accused murderers included creating a fictional scenario that attempted to prove temporary insanity.

The shorthand version of what happened is in my letter.

Most stories of racism in America are about African Americans. This one isn’t.

*   *   *   *   *

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

The Civil War was a mold for heroes and villains. Out of its tragedies and triumphs came courageous and outrageous men: Lincoln, Lee, Grant, Booth, Sherman, Davis. And unforgettable place-names: Gettysburg, Antietam, Appomattox.

Emotions and issues had been heating up for years before, but the actual shooting began in 1861 with the Confederate firing on Fort Sumter, the lone Union fortification guarding Charleston’s harbor in South Carolina. The fort was still unfinished and ungarrisoned in late December of the previous year when the South Carolina legislature voted to secede from the Union. Six days later, the Yankee troops at nearby Fort Moultrie, a tiny force of 75 men, moved quickly to the more easily defended Fort Sumter. South Carolina’s Governor Pickens immediately demanded that the Union garrison surrender the stronghold, but under direct orders from President Lincoln, the men within the walls refused.

No shot had yet been fired, but war seemed imminent. Over the next four months, the North made several attempts to resupply and reinforce the surrounded garrison at Fort Sumter, but all help was beaten back by the secessionist cannon batteries strategically mounted around Charleston’s harbor. Inside the fortress, the Union officers and men were resigned to the impending conflict and at 4:30 a.m., April 12, 1861, 150 years ago today, the shelling began.

The fort was battered by a continuous bombardment from four sides of its pentagonal shape. Union troops took cover, returning no fire until dawn, when the attacking positions could then be seen. Fort Sumter’s second-in-command was a 41-year-old captain from New York. He was no newcomer to battle. A graduate of West Point, he had served under Gen. Zachary Taylor in the Mexican War and for two years had fought against the Seminole Indians in Florida. Now, at the dawn of the War Between the States, he was the garrison’s ranking field officer…and so destiny chose him on that early spring morning to order the Union’s first return volley.

With the firing of that cannon, the great Civil War was engaged.

Abner Doubleday

Abner Doubleday, a man heroic in battle and so close to the eye of history’s storm, is today remembered (and most suggest incorrectly) as the inventor of baseball.

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

One of my daughters, a medieval history scholar and expert on European royalty, recently acquired a Henry VIII mug with images of his six wives surrounding him. Appropriately, when the Queens get into hot water (e.g., tea or coffee), their heads disappear.

What she hadn’t anticipated was how fascinated her five-year-old daughter would be with the mug.

“Why do the queens disappear?” was the first question, quickly followed by, “Why did he have so many queens?”

As my daughter searched for a way to explain the pressures and consequences of primogeniture in 16th century England, she somewhat clumsily crafted an age-appropriate story to go with the old rhyme:

King Henry the Eighth had six wives he wedded:
One died, one survived, two divorced, and two beheaded.

Over the next three days, my granddaughter insisted on five more retellings, demanding additional details each time. Ultimately it became a call-and-response story.

“Once upon a time, over five hundred years ago–”

That’s WAY before Laura Ingalls was a little girl.

“Way before, yes. Before King Henry was a King he was a Prince, and he married a Spanish Princess. Her name was—”

Katherine. She was the first Katherine. There were lots of Katherines. Why were there so many Katherines?

“Princess Katherine of Aragon married Prince Henry of England and after a few years they became the King and Queen of England and all was well except for one thing: Henry and Katherine only had a daughter and he wanted a son.”

Why?

“Well, a long, long, long time ago, lots of people didn’t think that a girl would be able to be strong enough to protect the country.”

That’s silly. I am very strong.

“Remember how I told you about Dr. Martin Luther King and how there have been times in history when some people haven’t had the same opportunities as other people? Black people, Jews, Irish immigrants, and girls. Lots of people didn’t think that girls should even go to school!”

Yes, yes, Mom, I know that about Dr. Martin and the Jews. Tell me the story of the SIX QUEENS. [blogger's note-- "Dr. Martin and the Jews" is a direct quote.]

“Well, Queen Katherine and King Henry had a daughter, Princess Mary.”

And she became bloody. [Face scrunches, knowing she mixed it up.] No! They CALLED her bloody.

“They didn’t call her “Bloody” when she was only a princess. That came later.”

Yeah, later, when she was queen. Nobody liked her very much.

“No, they didn’t. But when she was just a little girl, King Henry was very upset that she didn’t have any brothers, so he decided he needed a different queen who might be able to have boy babies, so he divorced Queen Katherine.”

She didn’t like that very much.

“No, she didn’t. And a lot of people were angry about it. But the King had fallen in love with a girl named Anne Boleyn, and Anne promised the King that if they had children together that those children would be boys. Of course, no woman can promise that, and that promise got her in trouble with the King a few years later after she was Queen and she had a baby—”

ELIZABETH! But not the Elizabeth who is the queen now. She’s the second Elizabeth — and she’s old now. But not dead!

“That’s right, she’s the second Elizabeth, and she’s still very much alive. I can show you a picture of her. But the first Elizabeth was a great queen who lots of people loved and she was queen for a very long time — almost 45 years! But King Henry didn’t know how great she’d be when she was just a little baby. He was mad that Queen Anne hadn’t had a prince like she promised. So he decided he needed a new queen, but since he had just divorced Queen Katherine he couldn’t divorce another queen — even though he was king, the court wouldn’t let him do it twice in a row! So he made up stories about the queen so she would get in trouble.”

That wasn’t very nice.

“No, it wasn’t very nice. And when all the stories were told, Queen Anne got in a LOT of trouble. Even though she really didn’t do anything except have a daughter instead of a son. But a lot of people became very angry at her for being a Bad Queen and she went to prison. And a long time ago when kings and queens went to prison — which didn’t happen very often — but when it did, sometimes they had their heads cut off, which is really not nice at all! After that, King Henry married Jane Seymour.”

She died.

“Yes, she died, but not before having a baby boy, Prince Edward.”

Why did she die?

[Here is inserted an age-appropriate aside about infections and mortality a long time ago and how doctors are much smarter these days.]

“After Queen Jane died King Henry was very sad, but a king needs a queen so the King’s friends looked all around for a princess to become queen, and they all decided that Princess Anne of Cleves would be the right princess to become queen, but King Henry didn’t like her very much but he hadn’t divorced a queen in a while so he divorced Anne. And that was queen number four. Then the king fell in love with a silly young girl who wasn’t very smart. Her name was Katherine.”

Another Katherine!

“And Katherine lied to the king. Many times. [Age-appropriate euphemism for adultery.] And over 400 years ago lying to a king was a terrible crime called treason, and so Katherine also lost her head.

How do you lose your head?

[Realizing how utterly literal kids this age are, daughter corrects herself and explains that hapless Katherine Howard had her head chopped off because she got in a lot of trouble, but that kings don’t go around chopping people’s heads off anymore. Granddaughter nods approvingly.]

“By this time the king was old and very fat, and could only walk with a cane when he could walk at all. So he married a nice lady who took care of him and his children. Her name was—”

KATHERINE!

“Yes, Katherine. And the king died before she did, so she was King Henry’s last queen. And then Prince Edward became king. But he was very sickly and died only a few years later.”

What did he die from?

[Daughter suspects granddaughter is worried someone cut off his head. But since most historians believe Edward VI died of tuberculosis, she says...]

“From a coughing sickness.”

[But realizing granddaughter’s recent allergies have engendered terrible coughing, quickly adds...]

“He coughed up blood a lot. And that’s never good.”

[Granddaughter purses her lips at this, clearly considering the gruesomeness of bloody coughing.]

“Then Princess Mary became queen, but she wasn’t very nice. She didn’t like people who didn’t think the way she did. And for five years she was a terrible queen, so bad that people called her Bloody Mary. But she didn’t have any children, so the next queen was her sister.”

ELIZABETH! I love her.

[The story ends here, and if my daughter is fortunate, bedtime arrives simultaneously.]

My daughter is an unapologetic monarchist. That her daughter is fascinated with these stories tickles her endlessly. And at the end of this month, she will show her daughter photos and online videos of the royal wedding where she can see the newest Princess Catherine and the second Queen Elizabeth, and no one losing her head.

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

It is hard to imagine a more wrong-headed analysis of Rev. King’s philosophy of non-violence. After correctly noting King’s unwavering stand against the Vietnam War, Johnson loses his way. Quoting from the “I’ve been to the mountaintop” speech given the day before King was assassinated, Johnson mistakenly likens King’s reference to the  compassionate aid of the Good Samaritan to the Shock and Awe of a mighty armed force. He equates giving aid to waging war.

It would be charitable to assume Johnson was being sensitive to his military audience and ignorant of history. More likely he was willfully changing the past to justify the present.

Whatever your opinion of America’s War on Terror, our military deserves better. Shame on Mr. Johnson.

*     *     *     *     *

I include the relevant portions of Johnson’s talk below, but first, an impassioned take on this issue.

*     *     *     *     *

Excerpts:

[T]he most controversial and difficult stand Dr. King took the final year of his life was against the war in Vietnam. Other civil rights leaders urged him to remain silent on the issue, not to alienate President Lyndon Johnson, who had been their best friend on civil rights. Martin Luther King hated violence. He believed that violence “is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy,” and that “returning violence for violence multiples violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars . . . He also believed “an eye for eye leaves everybody blind.” So, beginning in April 1967, one year before he died, Dr. King, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, turned this message into an impassioned plea against the war in Vietnam. Indeed, from that point on he questioned the whole rationale for war in general.  From the gospel song “Down by the Riverside,” Dr. King repeated the line: “I Ain’t Gonna Study War No More.”

I believe that if Dr. King were alive today, he would recognize that we live in a complicated world, and that our Nation’s military should not and cannot lay down its arms and leave the American people vulnerable to terrorist attack.

To our individual servicemen and women who wonder whether their mission is consistent with Martin Luther King’s own message and beliefs, I refer you again to his very last speech in Memphis, the night before he died. In it Dr. King talked about Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan on the dangerous road to Jericho. With great effect Dr. King drew a parallel between the priest and the Levite who passed by the man on the road to Jericho, beaten and robbed and in need of aid, and failed to help him, and those in Memphis in April 1968 who hesitated to help the striking sanitation workers because they feared for their own jobs, for their own comfortable positions in the Memphis community. He criticized those who are “compassionate by proxy,” and said to those in the audience in Memphis that night, “The question is not, if I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?  The question is, if I do not stop the sanitation workers, what will happen to them.”

In 2011, I draw the parallel to our own servicemen and women, deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere, away from the comfort of conventional jobs, their families and their homes.  Those in today’s volunteer Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps have made the conscious decision to travel a dangerous road, and personally stop and administer aid to those who want peace, freedom and a better place in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and in defense of the American people.  Every day our servicemen and women practice that “dangerous unselfishness”

*     *     *     *     *

Rev. King’s actual words were: The question is not, “If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?” “If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?” That’s the question.

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

Earlier this year Buffy Sainte-Marie released her 18th album, Running for the Drum.

Her first album, It’s My Way, for which she was awarded Billboard‘s Best New Artist in 1964, included Universal Soldier, which has become an anthem for peace. Her song, Until It’s Time for You to Go, was a huge popular success and has been covered by many artists, including Elvis Presley, Barbra Streisand, and Cher.

Effectively blacklisted during the Johnson and Nixon administrations because of her outspoken politics, she was a regular on Sesame Street for five years beginning in 1975. And in 1982, She won an Oscar for Up Where We Belong from the film An Officer and a Gentleman.

Nonetheless, many have forgotten her.

I’m reminding.

Listen to My Country ‘Tis of Thy People You’re Dying from the album Little Wheel Spin And Spin (1966) to truly grasp her from-the-heart lamentation for Native American peoples.

Here is Buffy Sainte-Marie singing on Pete Seeger’s little-seen Rainbow Quest UHF New York TV show from 1966. The words from that performance are below. They are slightly different from the lyrics published on her official website (© Gypsy Music, Inc.).

Now that your big eyes are finally opened,
Now that you’re wondering how must they feel,
Meaning them that you’ve chased across America’s movie screens.
Now that you’re wondering how can it be real
That the ones you’ve called colorful, noble, and proud
In your school propaganda
They starve in their splendor
You’ve asked for my comment I simply will render:

My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying.

Now that the longhouses breed superstition
You force us to send our toddlers away
To your schools where they’re taught to despise their traditions.
Forbid them their languages, then further say
That American history really began
When Columbus set sail out of Europe, and stress
That the nation of leeches that conquered this land
Are the biggest and bravest and boldest and best.
And yet where in your history books is the tale
Of the genocide basic to this country’s birth,
Of the preachers who lied,
How the Bill of Rights failed,
How a nation of patriots returned to their earth?
And where will it tell of the Liberty Bell
As it rang with a thud
O’er Kinzua mud,
And of brave Uncle Sam in Alaska this year?

My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying.

Hear how the bargain was made for the West:
With her shivering children in zero degrees,
Blankets for your land, so the treaties attest,
Oh well, blankets for land is a bargain indeed,
And the blankets were those Uncle Sam had collected
From smallpox-diseased dying soldiers that day.
And the tribes were wiped out and the history books censored,
A hundred years of your statesmen have felt it’s better this way.
And yet a few of the conquered have somehow survived,
Their blood runs the redder though genes have been paled.
From the Grand Canyon’s caverns to craven sad hills
The wounded, the losers, the robbed sing their tale.
From Los Angeles County to upstate New York,
The white nation fattens while others grow lean;
Ah, the tricked and evicted they know what I mean.

My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying.

The past it just crumbled, the future just threatens;
Our life blood shut up in your chemical tanks.
And now here you come, bill of sale in your hands
And surprise in your eyes that we’re lacking in thanks
For the blessings of civilization you’ve brought us,
The lessons you’ve taught us, the ruin you’ve wrought us –
Oh see what our trust in America’s bought us.

My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying.

Now that the pride of the sires receives charity,
Now that we’re harmless and safe behind laws,
Now that my life’s to be known as your “heritage,”
Now that even the graves have been robbed,
Now that our own chosen way is a novelty,
Hands on our hearts we salute you your victory.
Choke on your blue, white, and scarlet hypocrisy,
Pitying the blindness for you’ve never seen
That the eagles of war whose wings lent you glory,
They were never no more than carrion crows.
Pushed the wrens from their nest, stole their eggs, changed their story.
The mockingbird sings it; it’s all that he knows.
“Ah, what can I do?” say a powerless few
With a lump in your throat and a tear in your eye.
Can’t you see that their poverty’s profiting you.

My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying.

She has been singing true stories for almost 50 years. Buffy Sainte-Marie is a national treasure.

*     *     *     *     *

“Kinzua,” a well-known 60′s reference, is now a thin memory. It refers to the Army Corps of Engineers dam in Pennsylvania that flooded about ten thousand acres of Seneca Indian land, forcing the relocation of a third of the tribe and many graves. The dam was a unilateral repudiation of The Canandaigua Treaty of 1794 which said in part “…the United States acknowledge all the land…to be the property of the Seneca Nation; and the United States will never claim the same, nor disturb the Seneca Nation…in the free use and enjoyment thereof; but it shall remain theirs, until they choose to sell the same, to the people of the United States, who have the right to purchase.”

The Seneca land was seized despite vigorous protest.

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

Max Weber

In 1905, physics was a rapidly expanding field. Scientific—include here the new “science” of economics—progress was accelerating, and science was expected to provide physical/mathematical/logical explanations to all previously unsolved or unsolvable conundrums…including the stock market.

Roger W. Babson

“Babson was not a man who inspired confidence as a prophet…. As an educator, philosopher, theologian, statistician, forecaster and friend of the law of gravity [Blogger's note: in 1948, Babson founded and financed the Gravity Research Foundation which encouraged research into anti-gravity physics], he has sometimes been thought to have spread himself too thin. The methods by which he reached his conclusions were a problem. They involved a hocus pocus of lines and areas on a chart. Intuition and even mysticism played a part. Those who employed rational, objective and scientific methods failed to foretell the crash. In these matters, as so often in our culture, it is far, far better to be wrong in a respectable way than to be right for the wrong reasons.”

A generous philanthropist, Babson founded three business colleges: Babson College in Babson Park, MA (1919),  Webber College, now Webber International University, in Babson Park, FL (1927), and the now-defunct Utopia College, in Eureka, KS (1946).

Eccentric and somewhat poetic, Babson wrote in his autobiography, Actions and Reactions (1935):

“Another thing I have been doing, which I hope will be carried on after my death, is the carving of mottoes on the boulders at Dogtown, Gloucester, Massachusetts. My family says that I am defacing the boulders and disgracing the family with these inscriptions, but the work gives me a lot of satisfaction, fresh air, exercise and sunshine. I am really trying to write a simple book with words carved in stone instead of printed paper. Besides, when on Dogtown common, I revert to a boyhood which I once enjoyed when driving cows there many years ago.”

For more on this unusual man, see this review of his autobiography.

Last month I walked among Babson’s boulders (images of all 24 here). Viewed from within this new economic crisis, Babson’s worthy, Protestant ethic inscriptions seem quaint and entirely out of touch with modern Wall Street sensibilities.

Be Clean       Be on Time       Be True       Courage       Get a Job    Help Mother
Ideals       Ideas       If Work Stops Values Decay       Industry       Initiative
Integrity       Intelligence       Keep Out of Debt       Kindness       Loyalty
Never Try/Never Win       Prosperity Follows Service       Save
Spiritual Power        Study       Truth       Use Your Head       Work

What would today’s Wall Streeters inscribe on their boulders?

*     *     *     *     *

[If you are in Gloucester and want to see the Babson Boulders, contact Walk the Words for a personal tour. Photos of me and the boulders courtesy of Seania McCarthy/Walk the Words.]

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

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*    *    *

But perhaps these two Great Men were not born on the same day. Darwin’s birth was in a time zone five hours later than Lincoln’s. If “date of birth” is defined by calendar, then the two men were born on the same calendar day. But if Baby Abe was born later than 7 p.m. in that little log cabin near what is now Hodgenville, Kentucky, then it was already February 13 where Baby Darwin lay in Shrewsbury, England. Similarly, if Infant Charles took Breath One earlier than 5 a.m., then it was still February 11 in Kentucky. Accordingly, to be safe, I am posting this a day early.

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.