#GuestPost Presidents’ Day 2025

“The looking glass for 1787” – A political cartoon attributed to Amos Doolittle satirizing the debates between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists.

It is therefore obvious to the least intelligent mind, to account why, great power in the hands of a magistrate, and that power connected, with a considerable duration, may be dangerous to the liberties of a republic—the deposit of vast trusts in the hands of a single magistrate, enables him in their exercise, to create a numerous train of dependants—this tempts his ambition, which in a republican magistrate is also remarked, to be pernicious and the duration of his office for any considerable time favours his views, gives him the means and time to perfect and execute his designs—he therefore fancies that he may be great and glorious by oppressing his fellow citizens, and raising himself to permanent grandeur on the ruins of his country.—And here it may be necessary to compare the vast and important powers of the president, together with his continuance in office with the foregoing doctrine—his eminent magisterial situation will attach many adherents to him, and he will be surrounded by expectants and courtiers—his power of nomination and influence on all appointments—the strong posts in each state comprised within his superintendance, and garrisoned by troops under his direction—his controul over the army, militia, and navy—the unrestrained power of granting pardons for treason, which may be used to screen from punishment, those whom he had secretly instigated to commit the crime, and thereby prevent a discovery of his own guilt—his duration in office for four years: these, and various other principles evidently prove the truth of the position—that if the president is possessed of ambition, he has power and time sufficient to ruin his country.

(Emphasis my own.)

This quote is from “Cato IV”, an essay published in 1787. It is one of the Anti-Federalist Papers that argued against ratification of the Constitution, in this case arguing that the powers of the presidency were too broad and held for too long.

While not all of Cato IV holds up – nobody has reason to care nowadays that the state that the vice president comes from technically gets a bit of a boost in the Senate, nor could one imagine any presidency or premiership being usefully held for just one year – I fear that we are all about to learn the hard way that the Anti-Federalist’s fear that the presidency could become tantamount to an elective monarchy was not unjustified.

In “Federalist No. 69”, Alexander Hamilton argued that the presidency had a built-in accountability mechanism (as compared to the British monarchy) in the form of impeachment:

The President of the United States would be liable to be impeached, tried, and, upon conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes or misdemeanors, removed from office; and would afterwards be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law. The person of the king of Great Britain is sacred and inviolable; there is no constitutional tribunal to which he is amenable; no punishment to which he can be subjected without involving the crisis of a national revolution. In this delicate and important circumstance of personal responsibility, the President of Confederated America would stand upon no better ground than a governor of New York, and upon worse ground than the governors of Maryland and Delaware.

What Hamilton did not anticipate or ignored was the possibility that the president could end up commanding a “train of dependants” who would refuse to hold him to account.

I will not sugarcoat: we are in a dangerous time for the American Republic, and I make no apology for this post being more political than the ones in the past couple years. But regardless of your own views on the current situation, please at least consider this: the U.S. Constitution was the work of humans, not demigods, and it was contested. It may be time to start reading and considering some of the arguments made against it and understand why the current form of the presidency had its critics all the way back to the 1780s.

#GuestPost: Martin Luther King Day 2025: Number 21

Maude Ballou and Martin Luther King, Jr. (Picture from the Ballou family)

The job of secretary to a minister is generally not associated with any particular risk to life or limb. But there are exceptions. From an interview published in the Washington Post (and republished by the Chicago Tribune in 2015:

Four days later [after the bombing of Ralph Abernathy’s house], Montgomery Improvement Association leaders supplied the chief of the highway patrol with a “List of persons and churches most vulnerable to violent attacks.” King registered at the top. Mrs. Maude Ballou was No. 21.

“Maybe I didn’t have the sense to worry,” says Ballou, who later spent three decades as a college administrator and a middle and high school teacher in North Carolina. “I didn’t have time to worry about what might happen, or what had happened, or what would happen,” she says in the cadences of a Baptist minister. “We were very busy doing things, knowing that anything could happen, and we just kept going.”

One time a man came down from Birmingham. “He said the White Citizens’ Council had sent him down there to tell me to stop working for civil rights or they would get my children. And that’s what got me, when you think about your babies. That really shook me,” says Ballou, with considerable equanimity. “But it didn’t stop me.”

Another night, working late in the office, alone, “somebody was outside watching. They were outside there in the car. And I found out later it was the KKK. But I was not afraid, for some reason,” she says. “I was a daredevil, I guess.”

What was the Montgomery Improvement Association? The organization that organized the Montgomery bus boycotts.

Who was Number 21, Maude Ballou? Martin Luther King, Junior’s first secretary. She worked in that role from 1955 to 1960, handling King’s voluminous correspondence (including putting off Malcolm X), keeping his affairs in order, and helping to set up the Southern Christian Leadership Conference office when King moved to Atlanta.

Ballou went on maternity leave in 1958, so Hilda Stewart Proctor, a niece of Harriet Tubman and active in other civil rights organizations, filled in for seven months. King clearly made an impression on her; later that year, after she had moved on to other work, she still offered to help with his correspondence prior to his trip to India:

If I do 100 letters between now and the time you leave for India that will peel down the pile a little won’t it?

AND I WOULD LIKE TO DO IT AS ANY FRIEND WOULD DO WHO IS INTERESTED IN GETTING YOU OFF TO INDIA. I shall donate my services to the cause.

Please do this. Of course, as usual, all your work will be held in the strictest confidence.

PLEASE LET ME HELP BECAUSE I STILL FEEL AS THOUGH I AM YOUR SECRETARY WITHOUT PORTFOLIO, SECRETARY AT LARGE, SECRETARY ON ‘MATERNITY’ LEAVE, not mine, of course.

King also had a significant effect on his final primary secretary, Dora McDonald, who worked for him from 1960 until his assassination in 1968. From a profile of her by Dudley Percy published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1989:

Working for Dr. King was her political awakening. Unlike many of those who found themselves aligned with the movement, Miss McDonald did not initially join because of a deep-felt conviction. Dr. King sought her out when he moved back to Atlanta from Montgomery, Ala., to co-pastor his father’s church.

Once she agreed to join his staff, his spirit was contagious.

“After I got into my job, and what I was doing, what we were doing, and what the movement meant, I never wanted to be doing something else. I was a part of something momentous.”

King’s spirit may have been contagious, but the Civil Rights Movement could not have been sustained on spirit alone. It was a collaborative, thoughtful effort that depended on organizational skills to pull off. Consequently, on this MLK Day, please give a thought not only to King and the other luminaries of the movement, but also to the secretaries, the bookkeepers and the office managers who kept things running.

As with my 2022 MLK Day post, I am grateful to the The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford for making many of King’s papers available online.

Thanksgiving 2024

Orange tabby cat sitting on the back of a chair, looking back at the camera
George is thankful for the catio

Another year, another Thanksgiving. Hecate, George, Luna, and Tuna are with us, and for that we are thankful. No joy is unmixed, however; this year we lost Lucifer.

Some readings for today, beginning with “Frederick Douglass” by Robert Hayden:

When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,
this man, superb in love and logic, this man
shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues’ rhetoric,
not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,
but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives
fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.

From Lincoln’s thanksgiving proclamation in 1864:

It has pleased Almighty God to prolong our national life another year, defending us with His guardian care against unfriendly designs from abroad and vouchsafing to us in His mercy many and signal victories over the enemy, who is of our own household. It has also pleased our Heavenly Father to favor as well our citizens in their homes as our soldiers in their camps and our sailors on the rivers and seas with unusual health. He has largely augmented our free population by emancipation and by immigration, while He has opened to us new sources of wealth and has crowned the labor of our workingmen in every department of industry with abundant rewards. Moreover, He has been pleased to animate and inspire our minds and hearts with fortitude, courage, and resolution sufficient for the great trial of civil war into which we have been brought by our adherence as a nation to the cause of freedom and humanity, and to afford to us reasonable hopes of an ultimate and happy deliverance from all our dangers and afflictions:

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do hereby appoint and set apart the last Thursday in November next as a day which I desire to be observed by all my fellow-citizens, wherever they may then be, as a day of thanksgiving and praise to Almighty God, the beneficent Creator and Ruler of the Universe. And I do further recommend to my fellow-citizens aforesaid that on that occasion they do reverently humble themselves in the dust and from thence offer up penitent and fervent prayers and supplications to the Great Disposer of Events for a return of the inestimable blessings of peace, union, and harmony throughout the land which it has pleased Him to assign as a dwelling place for ourselves and for our posterity throughout all generations.

Robin Flower’s translation of Pangur Bán:

I and Pangur Bán, my cat,
‘Tis a like task we are at;
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.

Better far than praise of men
‘Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill-will,
He, too, plies his simple skill.

‘Tis a merry thing to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.

Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur’s way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.

‘Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
‘Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.

When a mouse darts from its den,
O! how glad is Pangur then;
O! what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love.

So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Bán, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine, and he has his.

Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night,
Turning darkness into light.

Labor Day 2024

In 2021 the Belgian singer Stromae released the song “Santé”, a paean to the invisible workers who receive all too little regard while performing work that supports our society. If you have never seen the music video, stop reading now and watch the link above, and rejoice in being one of the lucky ten thousand today.

Back? Let’s continue. Part of the lyrics are this:

Pilotes d’avion ou infirmières
Chauffeurs de camion, hôtesses de l’air
Boulangers ou marins-pêcheurs
Un verre aux champions des pires horaires
Aux jeunes parents bercés par les pleurs
Aux insomniaques de profession
Et tous ceux qui souffrent de peines de cœur
Qui n’ont pas le cœur aux célébrations
Qui n’ont pas le cœur aux célébrations

In English:

Airplane pilots or nurses
Truck drivers, flight attendants
Bakers or fishermen
A drink to the champions of the worst schedules
To young parents rocked by crying
To professional insomniacs
And all those who suffer from heartache
Who have no heart for celebrations
Who have no heart for celebrations

The mention of nurses is of course not surprising for a pandemic-era song, but let’s consider the airline pilots. Pilots are of course not nearly as invisible as the cooks and cleaners shown in the music video; after all, who could miss them in their smart uniforms with stripes on their sleeves? It is not every job where one is responsible for the safety of dozens or hundreds of people at once. Flying is very safe (but we’ll get back to that in a moment), but the sheer flying skill of a pilot is tested the most when things have gone wrong.

A pilot is not just a glorified bus driver (but don’t underestimate the bus drivers either!); the training required makes piloting very clearly a skilled profession that continues to command public respect. For all that, however, pilots are still labor, not management. A pilot-in-command’s near absolute authority regarding flight safety evaporates the moment that they exit the plane. Fundamentally, the management of the airline calls the shots, telling pilots where to go, when, and with what fuel allotment. Pilots need their unions; passenger airlines are not in fact hugely profitable percentage-wise, so there is always at least of background level of management attempting to cut cost as well as a lot of very smart people trying to completely automate airliners.

Cut costs too much in the wrong ways, of course, and the result will be less safety. However, airliner travel is incredibly safe by every measure you can think of. The last fatal passenger airliner crash in the United States was over fifteen years ago!

This degree of safety is mostly not a matter of luck. In fact, I argue that it is one of the crowning achievements of modern society: it is the result of literally decades of work across the globe to improve aircraft design, pilot training, air traffic control, and emergency procedures conducted by governments and corporations across the globe. Along the way, we collectively have learned many important lessons, some of which apply to most any job that presents risks to the workers or the public:

  • Make sure to investigate every significant accident or incident (and as many of the minor ones as you can)
  • Keep digging until you find the ultimate cause(s) of the incident, then dig some more
  • Look for the systemic causes before laying blame on the people involved (too often has “pilot error” been invoked for crashes where the fundamental problem was with the design of the airplane)
  • Make it possible for people to report incidents without fear for their jobs
  • Safety practices are perishable: you can never stop doing your bit to promote safety culture when doing dangerous jobs

For more on flight safety, I particularly recommend Admiral Cloudberg’s retrospectives on airline crashes.

These lessons (and the more technical ones about aircraft design and flying procedures) were learned the hard way. Many regulations are written in blood, especially in flight safety.

So on this labor day, please also give a toast to the safety staff of the world: the crash investigators, the engineers, the policy analysts, the lawyers, the pilots… and the flight attendants.


Marlene’s Note: Because Reading Reality is, at its heart – or mine – a book blog, I can’t resist mentioning a book series here that is absolutely on the nose for the topic at hand. If, after reading Galen’s excellent post about the labor of pilots and the labor of the people at the National Transportation and Safety Board who investigate incidents to help keep us all safe while we travel – and particularly while we fly – you’d like to explore that process a bit more in an exciting, fictional way, through the operations of a terrific group of characters, let me recommend (again, I’ve done it before in reviews) the Miranda Chase NTSB series by M.L. Buchman that begins with Drone. The series is a political technothriller, but at the heart of each and every story is a plane crash and the team’s meticulous investigation into the cause of that crash. So far, every single book in the series has been an edge-of-the-seat thrill ride, and I’ve loved every one of them. Hopefully you will too.

July 4th 2024

President Johnson on July 4th, 1966, regarding the signing of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA):

THE MEASURE I sign today, S. 1160, revises section 3 of the Administrative Procedure Act to provide guidelines for the public availability of the records of Federal departments and agencies.

This legislation springs from one of our most essential principles: A democracy works best when the people have all the information that the security of the Nation permits. No one should be able to pull curtains of secrecy around decisions which can be revealed without injury to the public interest.

At the same time, the welfare of the Nation or the rights of individuals may require that some documents not be made available. As long as threats to peace exist, for example, there must be military secrets. A citizen must be able in confidence to complain to his Government and to provide information, just as he is–and should be–free to confide in the press without fear of reprisal or of being required to reveal or discuss his sources.

Fairness to individuals also requires that information accumulated in personnel files be protected from disclosure. Officials within Government must be able to communicate with one another fully and frankly without publicity. They cannot operate effectively if required to disclose information prematurely or to make public investigative files and internal instructions that guide them in arriving at their decisions.

I know that the sponsors of this bill recognize these important interests and intend to provide for both the need of the public for access to information and the need of Government to protect certain categories of information. Both are vital to the welfare of our people. Moreover, this bill in no way impairs the President’s power under our Constitution to provide for confidentiality when the national interest so requires. There are some who have expressed concern that the language of this bill will be construed in such a way as to impair Government operations. I do not share this concern.

I have always believed that freedom of information is so vital that only the national security, not the desire of public officials or private citizens, should determine when it must be restricted.

I am hopeful that the needs I have mentioned can be served by a constructive approach to the wording and spirit and legislative history of this measure. I am instructing every official in this administration to cooperate to this end and to make information available to the full extent consistent with individual privacy and with the national interest.

I signed this measure with a deep sense of pride that the United States is an open society in which the people’s right to know is cherished and guarded.

Despite the second and last paragraphs of this statement, Johnson was in fact far from a fan of FOIA. Per White House press secretary Bill Moyers, Johnson “had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the signing”. FOIA has had a checkered history over the years, but has enabled an unprecedented degree of transparency around government decisions, exemplified by the National Security Archive.

Freedom must be fought for every, but it is not just the result of stirring battles and speeches on the fields of sacrifice and victory. The quotidian matters as well: does this plan make sense? Do the numbers pencil out? Is the government correct in arresting this one individual or another? It is our responsibility as U.S. citizens to enact and protect our own freedom. Thus, a challenge for the year: are you confused about a government action? Disagree with it? Don’t just sit there: consider filing a FOIA request.

 

Juneteenth 2024: Ron’s Piece

1959

“When he was 9 years old, Ron, without my parents or myself knowing his whereabouts, decided to take a mile walk from our home down to the library,” Carl tells his friend Vernon Skipper.

The library was public, Carl says — “but not so public for black folks, when you’re talking about 1959.”

“So, as he was walking in there, all these folks were staring at him — because they were white folk only — and they were looking at him and saying, you know, ‘Who is this Negro?’

“So, he politely positioned himself in line to check out his books.

“Well, this old librarian, she says, ‘This library is not for coloreds.’ He said, ‘Well, I would like to check out these books.’

“She says, ‘Young man, if you don’t leave this library right now, I’m gonna call the police.’

Carl McNair says that his brother, astronaut Ronald McNair, saw possibilities where others only saw closed doors.
StoryCorps

“So he just propped himself up on the counter, and sat there, and said, ‘I’ll wait.’ ”

The librarian called the police — and McNair’s mother, Pearl.

When the police got to the library, Carl says, “Two burly guys come in and say, ‘Well, where’s the disturbance?’

“And she pointed to the little 9-year-old boy sitting up on the counter.

“And he [the policeman] says, ‘Ma’am, what’s the problem?’

By then, the boys’ mother was on her way, Carl says.

“She comes down there praying the whole way there: ‘Lordy, Jesus, please don’t let them put my child in jail.’ And my mother asks the librarian, ‘What’s the problem?’ ”

“He wanted to check out the books and, you know, your son shouldn’t be down here,” the librarian said, according to Carl.

“And the police officer said, ‘You know, why don’t you just give the kid the books?’

“And my mother said, ‘He’ll take good care of them.’ ”

So, the librarian reluctantly handed over the books. And then, Carl says, “my mother said, ‘What do you say?’ ”

And Ron answered, “Thank you, ma’am.”

Ron McNair’s brother, Carl, recalls a trip to the library in South Carolina.

1967

Ron McNair graduates from high school as valedictorian.

1976

Ron McNair receives his Ph.D. in physics from MIT. His thesis concerns lasers.

1978

Ron McNair is one of the first three African Americans selected to join the astronaut corps – and one of 35 selected from an application pool of 10,000.

1984

Ron McNair is a mission specialist on Challenger mission STS-41B. Highlights of the mission include untethered space walks and the launch of the first satellite that was refurbished after a previous mission. Incidentally, McNair becomes the first astronaut to play the saxophone in orbit.

Astronaut floating in the space shuttle cabin playing a small saxophone
S84-27211 (8 Feb 1984) — Astronaut Ronald E. McNair, 41-B mission specialist, uses some of his off-duty time, aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, to play his saxophone.

1986

Ron McNair, along with Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, and Judith Resnick, is meant to reach orbit on Challenger. Normalization of deviance betrays them.

French composer Jean Michel Jarre had been invited to perform in Houston later that year, and one of the pieces was to be performed by McNair from orbit. Upon hearing of the Challenger disaster, Jarre had been inclined to cancel the concert, but was begged not to; it became a tribute to the astronauts. The concert, which included projections onto nearby buildings, stops traffic and broke attendance records.

The piece that McNair was meant to play is renamed Last Rendez-Vous (Ron’s Piece) – ‘Challenger’.

2011

The Ron E. McNair Life History Center opens at the old Lake City library building — the same library that tried to turn him away 52 years previously.

2020

A children’s book about McNair’s visit to the library, Ron’s Big Mission is read to a second-grade class at an elementary school in Missouri.

A parent complains.

The principal responds by reading the book to the entire school.

Memorial Day 2024

Rear Adm. Lisa Franchetti lays a wreath at the US monument at the United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Busan, Korea.

The U.S. has fought wars overseas from almost the very beginning of its history. Many of the fallen have, by necessity or by choice, been lain to rest in the country where they fell.

The American Battle Monuments Commission administers 26 cemeteries and 31 monuments, almost all of which are located overseas. One of them is the monument in the picture, the U.S. Korean War Memorial in the United Nations cemetery in Busan, Korea.

A poem of the “forgotten war” by Lt. Cmdr. (Ret.) Roberto J. Prinselaar, U.S. Coast Guard:

We didn’t do much talking,
We didn’t raise a fuss.
But Korea really happened
So please – remember us.

We all just did our duty
But we didn’t win or lose.
A victory was denied us
But we didn’t get to choose.

We all roasted in the summer
In winter, we damn near froze.
Walking back from near the Yalu
With our blackened frozen toes.

Like the surf the Chinese kept coming
With their bugles in the night.
We fired into their masses
Praying for the morning light.
All of us just had to be there

And so many of us died.
But now we’re all but half forgotten
No one remembers how we tried.

We grow fewer with the years now
And we still don’t raise a fuss.
But Korea really happened
So please – remember us.

Presidents’ Day 2024

Portrait of Ulysses S. Grant

Since this is a book review, blog, let us consider U.S. presidents as authors. Here is an extract from Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs, finished shortly before his death from throat cancer. Although some people today seem to be confused about the causes of the Civil War, Grant was very clear-eyed in 1885:

The cause of the great War of the Rebellion against the United Status will have to be attributed to slavery. For some years before the war began it was a trite saying among some politicians that “A state half slave and half free cannot exist.” All must become slave or all free, or the state will go down. I took no part myself in any such view of the case at the time, but since the war is over, reviewing the whole question, I have come to the conclusion that the saying is quite true.

Slavery was an institution that required unusual guarantees for its security wherever it existed; and in a country like ours where the larger portion of it was free territory inhabited by an intelligent and well-to-do population, the people would naturally have but little sympathy with demands upon them for its protection. Hence the people of the South were dependent upon keeping control of the general government to secure the perpetuation of their favorite institution. They were enabled to maintain this control long after the States where slavery existed had ceased to have the controlling power, through the assistance they received from odd men here and there throughout the Northern States. They saw their power waning, and this led them to encroach upon the prerogatives and independence of the Northern States by enacting such laws as the Fugitive Slave Law. By this law every Northern man was obliged, when properly summoned, to turn out and help apprehend the runaway slave of a Southern man. Northern marshals became slave-catchers, and Northern courts had to contribute to the support and protection of the institution.

This was a degradation which the North would not permit any longer than until they could get the power to expunge such laws from the statute books. Prior to the time of these encroachments the great majority of the people of the North had no particular quarrel with slavery, so long as they were not forced to have it themselves. But they were not willing to play the role of police for the South in the protection of this particular institution.

In the early days of the country, before we had railroads, telegraphs and steamboats—in a word, rapid transit of any sort—the States were each almost a separate nationality. At that time the subject of slavery caused but little or no disturbance to the public mind. But the country grew, rapid transit was established, and trade and commerce between the States got to be so much greater than before, that the power of the National government became more felt and recognized and, therefore, had to be enlisted in the cause of this institution.

It is probably well that we had the war when we did. We are better off now than we would have been without it, and have made more rapid progress than we otherwise should have made. The civilized nations of Europe have been stimulated into unusual activity, so that commerce, trade, travel, and thorough acquaintance among people of different nationalities, has become common; whereas, before, it was but the few who had ever had the privilege of going beyond the limits of their own country or who knew anything about other people. Then, too, our republican institutions were regarded as experiments up to the breaking out of the rebellion, and monarchical Europe generally believed that our republic was a rope of sand that would part the moment the slightest strain was brought upon it. Now it has shown itself capable of dealing with one of the greatest wars that was ever made, and our people have proven themselves to be the most formidable in war of any nationality.

But this war was a fearful lesson, and should teach us the necessity of avoiding wars in the future.

Many of the books written by presidents (or ghostwritten for them) are of course campaign books, mostly forgettable and largely forgotten, with a few exceptions such as JFK’s Profiles in Courage (actually written almost entirely by Ted Sorensen) and Obama’s Dreams from My Father. For an overview of presidents as author, I’ve acquired a copy of Author in Chief: The Untold Story of Our Presidents and the Books They Wrote by Craig Fehrman. Perhaps a review will come later if it’s interesting.

Thanksgiving 2023

Galen here, once again borrowing Marlene’s blog to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving!

Luna the grey tabby cat emerging from underneath a quilt

As always, we are thankful for our cats (and Luna, pictured here, is thankful for quilts to nest underneath). Unlike 2018, 2020, and 2022, there have been no changes in our feline population: Lucifer, Hecate (and how did she suddenly become five?), George, Luna, and Tuna have been trucking along.

For today, “Harvest Moon” by Longfellow:

It is the Harvest Moon! On gilded vanes
And roofs of villages, on woodland crests
And their aerial neighborhoods of nests
Deserted, on the curtained window-panes
Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes
And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests!
Gone are the birds that were our summer guests,
With the last sheaves return the laboring wains!
All things are symbols: the external shows
Of Nature have their image in the mind,
As flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves;
The song-birds leave us at the summer’s close,
Only the empty nests are left behind,
And pipings of the quail among the sheaves.

Indigenous People’s Day 2023: Two Courts

I. Chief Justice John Marshall, in his 1832 decision in the case Worchester v Georgia:

The Cherokee nation, then, is a distinct community occupying its own territory, with boundaries accurately described, in which the laws of Georgia can have no force, and which the citizens of Georgia have no right to enter, but with the assent of the Cherokees themselves, or in conformity with treaties, and.with the acts of congress. The whole intercourse between the United States and this nation, is, by our constitution and laws, vested in the government of the United States.

Worchester was a missionary who lived in New Echota, the Cherokee capital at the time. He and some colleagues were attempting to help the Cherokee challenge encroachment of their territory by the state of Georgia. Georgia had Worchester arrested and sentenced to hard labor for violating a law that forbade white missionaries from living in Cherokee territory without a license from the state. The Cherokee, on the other hand, viewed it as their decision – and their decision alone – who would be allowed to live in their territory. The case made its way up to the Supreme Court.

The decision, if had been enforced, would have thrown a wrench into the gears of the State of Georgia’s plans to expropriate all Cherokee territory in the state. But it was not enforced, although the decision subsequently became one of the foundations of the current legal theory of Native American sovereignty.

II. A reconstruction of the court at New Echota:

The original court building did not survive the removal of the Cherokee to Oklahoma in 1838 and 1839. Oddly, Worchester’s house in New Echota did.