There’s a good deal of obscure city names scattered across America that are derived from either native inhabitants or from early 17th and 18th century French explorers and trappers. Here are two more examples: Truckee and Des Moines.
Today, there are far fewer journalistic eyes and ears monitoring all levels of our government since the demise of our local newspapers. We always end up deserving the kind of government we’ve allowed to take place.
Thoughts of the approaching 2023 Christmas take me back more than eight decades of my life. I recall the anticipated booty that never appeared on the dreamscape during my 1940s and early ’50s. Of course, in those days, what toy land wonders we didn’t know about weren’t missed.
When I was a boy, my grandfather could look up at the sun and tell within 30 minutes what time it was. He’d check himself by looking at his pocket watch as the trains came through town. In those days, the weather and time were the main topics of conversation on a day-by-day basis. Those two subjects continue to dominate our lives.
When baseball greats Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig went on tour in 1934 in baseball-crazy Japan, some in the U.S. sporting world wondered why Moe Berg, a third-rate catcher, was included on the team.
Today’s humorless “woke” culture makes it almost impossible for anyone to poke fun at anyone on the political spectrum without being shouted down by some portion of the population. That is to say, it’s a good thing Will Rogers isn’t tossing off his incisive barbs these days when so many folks search for reasons to be offended.
After more than a half century nearly forgotten in history books, the name of Julius Robert Oppenheimer, primarily responsible for the development of the atomic bomb, has been reintroduced to the public by way of a big-screen Hollywood film.
For as much as she became known as “Hollywood’s most beautiful woman,” there was much more to the glamorous Hedy Lamarr than just her stunning good looks. Put it this way: without her, there might not be any of today’s Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and even smartphones as we know them ... not to mention her contribution to winning a world war.
For television viewers, the name “Danny Thomas” appears on-screen at least once daily. The name appears during St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital commercials in a plea for donations. You’ll see his name on the side of the hospital building as “Danny Thomas, Founder.”
Before there were roads connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific and Mexico to Alaska, you could buy goods delivered via railroad freight and/or the U.S. mail. This was more than a century before the Internet, all courtesy of the mail-order catalogs of the Montgomery Ward and Sears & Roebuck companies. It was the Amazon of yesteryear.
Each of us has or will experience a good amount of history as life takes us from one day to the next. Do an assessment of your own life ... you might be surprised.
In lieu of today’s current financial climate in Washington, D.C., reviewing a bit of national banking history seems to be in order. Today, as it was yesterday, there always seems to be light at the end of a very long financial-ladened tunnel.
