What's Past is Prologue

Very old (1865) black & white photo of snowy frozen landscape in Canada

"In Beauport (Near Quebec); Taken While Snowing," photo by Alexander Henderson. 1865
[Museum of Modern Art]

Central Coast Conference (Civil War) announcement, with photo of Ulysses S. Grant and historian Brooks Simpson. May 1-3, 2026 in Monterey, CA. Other presenters listed by name: Lesley Gordon, Lorien Foote, Gordon Rhea, Kevin Levin, Dean Calbreath, David Powell.

SELDOM HEARD HISTORY of the CIVIL WAR ERA—May 1-3, 2026. A weekend of intriguing presentations in the Stanton Theater in beautiful Monterey, California • Conference webpage: tinyurl.com/4m3m4upu • Schedule of talks: tinyurl.com/97hu87eu • Presenter biographies: tinyurl.com/57vx9ydy #AmericanHistory

YouTube video by British Pathé Eisenhower And Montgomery See The Civil War Battlefield (1957)

Ike & Monty at Gettysburg—
President Eisenhower showed his WWII comrade-in-arms, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, around the battlefield at Gettysburg in this 1957 newsreel (1 min). Both men agreed that Gen. Lee should have been sacked after the battle. Monty judged Pickett's Charge as "monstrous"

Yes it’s Valentine’s Day. But it’s also the chosen birthday of Frederick Douglass who was born in 1818 on a plantation in Talbot County, Maryland. He escaped from slavery & rose to become the most eloquent and forceful voice for the abolition of slavery & for Black voting rights in the U.S.

Photo of an empty lot in Chicago, site of building where the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre took place

OTD in 1929: Valentine's Day Massacre. PHOTO: 2122 N. Clark Street in Chicago, the former site of the SMC Cartage Company.

More about that gruesome event on Block Club Chicago: "Memory Of St. Valentine’s Day Massacre Can’t Be Erased By Lost Address," by Ted Cox: tinyurl.com/5y5tzf8d

. . . to stave off an invasion of "proto-Nazis" would be more accurate, I suppose, since this predated the MGGA movement (Make Germany Great Again) by a number of years.

110 Years Ago . . .
Canadians enhanced their border defenses to stave off a Nazi invasion . . .from the United States.
——————
The threat of that happening may be even greater today, now that the U.S. has a Nazi-curious Kleinkind in the Oval Office. #Canada #border

YouTube video by BobDylanVEVO Bob Dylan - Everything Is Broken (Official Audio)

Broken hands on broken ploughs
Broken treaties, broken vows
Broken pipes, broken tools
People bending broken rules
Hound dog howling, bullfrog croaking
Everything is broken
#Dylan

Watch: Aerial footage of “classic Western landscape” that city of Santa Clara sold to Lake Tahoe-area tribe for $6 million The 10,274 acre Loyalton Ranch had been planned for geothermal development but will go instead to the Washoe Tribe

"A historic deal was announced on Wednesday: the Washoe Tribe, pushed off land it members had lived on for thousands of years during the Gold Rush by settlers, miners and loggers in the 1850s, reclaimed some of their ancestral territory near Lake Tahoe."

How Lincoln and Darwin Shaped the Modern World Born on the same day, Lincoln and Darwin would forever influence how people think about the modern world

Born OTD 217 years ago:
"By the time Abraham #Lincoln & Charles #Darwin were dead—the American murdered by a pro-slavery terrorist in 1865, the Englishman after a long illness in 1882—the shape of history had changed, & the lives they had led and the things they had said had done a lot to change it"

when asked why she's concealing the identities of a ring of CHILD RAPISTS, #Bondi replied:

“The Dow is over 50,000 right now. The S&P [is] at almost 7,000 and the Nasdaq [is] smashing records. Americans’ 401k and retirement savings are booming right now . . .That’s what we should be talking about.”

Why JFK Kept a Coconut Shell in the Oval Office During this week in 1943, a 26-year-old Kennedy and his crew were marooned on a deserted island and then rescued thanks to two daring men

The whole story. #PT-109

Famous Coconuts
In WWII, marooned Lt. John F. Kennedy & surviving crew were rescued after #Kennedy carved this message into a coconut shell. "NAURO ISL…COMMANDER…NATIVE KNOWS POS'IT…HE CAN PILOT…11 ALIVE…NEED SMALL BOAT…KENNEDY". Photo: paperweight used by President Kennedy in the Oval Office. #JFK

The History of the California State Flag California State Parks

Evolution of the California flag
www.parks.ca.gov?page_id=24644

California Bear Flag
Designed by William Todd on a piece of new, unbleached cotton. Todd was reportedly the nephew of Mary Todd Lincoln. The original flag was in San Francisco in 1906, and was destroyed in the conflagration following the great earthquake. www.sfmuseum.org/hist6/toddfl...

Pop star Bad Bunny needed a Puerto Rican history scholar. UW–Madison had just the one. Bad Bunny collaborated with UW–Madison history professor Jorell Meléndez-Badillo on Puerto Rican narratives that accompany the new album “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS.”

"Bad Bunny was interested in a general overview of Puerto Rican history to go with the YouTube videos, so I wrote historical narratives that cover the conquest by the Spanish empire in 1508 until the present day."

Cover of Princeton University Press book: "Puerto Rico: A National History," by Jorell Meléndez-Badillo

historical consultant to the stars, Jorell Meléndez-Badillo — "Puerto Rico: A National History" (Princeton University Press, 2024). #BookSky 📚💙 tinyurl.com/bdz4ectv

Notorious R.B.G. Babe status. (Ruth as a senior at Cornell in December, 1953)

Notorious R. B. G.
#RuthBaderGinsburg her senior year at Cornell, December, 1953. #NotoriousRBG

Dreams
by Langston Hughes

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

—"Collected Works of Langston Hughes"; photo: Carl Van Vechten, 1932. Nat'l Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian

The Underground Railroad - Google Arts & Culture We are proud to continue telling the stories of brave individuals who risked their lives to dismantle the institution of slavery.

— The Underground Railroad —
"With its origins in the late 18th century, the #UndergroundRailroad (UGRR) was a network of African Americans and white allies who provided safe houses and different resources to enslaved persons who seek freedom from the South."

Fighting Abroad and At Home: Remembering the Experiences of Black Vietnam Veterans If you were a twelve-year-old kid, as I was in the summer of 1966, N. Fifth Street in Columbus, Ohio seemed a bucolic place. Every neighborhood kid seemed to have a bicycle. Trees shaded homes. Men…

"There has long existed in America a conundrum of Blacks and the military, and it stretches back across two centuries." #BookSky 📚💙

Allensworth and Black Resilience on Juneteenth This Central Valley town was founded in 1908 to offer Black people respite from the Jim Crow South, but it was stymied by racism and failed. Today, it’s a state park where broken dreams exist alongsid...

—Colonel Allensworth State HP (CA)
"Like Du Bois, Allensworth believed that Black people would be well served by relocating to the relatively less cruel California. And like another leading figure, Booker T. Washington, Allensworth promoted vocational education, land ownership, & self-sufficiency"

There is nothing a frothy-mouthed racist hates more than being called a racist. What is WRONG with these people?

What was it King Solomon is reputed to have said? "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."

American Infamy #2, 2006, by Roger Shimomura. Boise Art Museum. Minidoka War Relocation Center, Idaho. www.arts.gov/.../2016/spo...

Artist Roger Shimomura, like “Star Trek” actor George Takei (painted here for a show at Greg Kucera Gallery), was forced to live in an internment camp with his family during World War II
[Seattle Times article: tinyurl.com/mrxx9mts]@ge... @georgetakei.bsky.social

black and white photo of the Unabomber's cabin, Exhibit A

Unabomber's Cabin, Exhibit 'A'
by Richard Barnes, 1998
Gift of Evanne and Edward Gargiulo in honor of Richard E. Salomon, MoMA tinyurl.com/pf3szcb2

Minor White. Two Barns and Shadow. 1955 | MoMA Minor White. Two Barns and Shadow. 1955. Gelatin silver print. 7 1/4 × 9 5/8" (18.5 × 24.4 cm). Gift of Robert M. Doty. 163.1969. © Trustees of Princeton University. Photography

Minor White
Two Barns and Shadow
1955

Wright Morris. Farmhouse in Winter, near Lincoln, Nebraska. 1941 | MoMA Wright Morris. Farmhouse in Winter, near Lincoln, Nebraska. 1941. Gelatin silver print. 7 × 9 1/2" (17.8 × 24.2 cm). Courtesy of the photographer. 2579.1967. Photography

Farmhouse in Winter, near Lincoln, Nebraska
by Wright Morris, 1941
MoMA tinyurl.com/2jbywxn6

Hot Coffee, Mojave Desert
by Edward Weston, 1937
Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. MoMA

Connubial
By Stephen Dunn

Because with alarming accuracy
she’d been identifying patterns
I was unaware of—this tic, that
tendency, like the way I’ve mastered
the language of intimacy
in order to conceal how I felt—
I knew I was in danger
of being terribly understood.

Source: Poetry Feb 2009