Well, I said I might be back. But as we roll into Christmas, I will probably keep this really brief. Silent Night is probably one of the more famous Christmas carols. It’s been covered by hundreds of singers, from Annie Lennox (from the Eurythmics, that 1980s pop duo) to country songwriter Skip Ewing. It’s probably [...]
Archive for December, 2011
Musical Crisis Ends with Silent Night
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged 1818, Austria, Franz Gruber, Joseph Mohr, Silent Night on December 24 | Leave a Comment »
Christmas Eve: A Book by the Fire
Posted in United States, Middle nineteenth century (1848-1861), tagged Library of Congress, President Thomas Jefferson, Fire, Washington D.C., 1851 on December 24 | Leave a Comment »
It contains more than 30,000,000 books. It has more than 100,000,000 items from various collections. Are you bilingual? Good, this place has materials written in 460 different languages. It houses invaluable music collections, including some of the first recorded sounds in existance. It has one of the original Gutenberg Bibles. Yep, the Library of Congress [...]
Joachim Peiper’s No Good Very Bad Day
Posted in Europe, World War II (1939-1945), tagged 1944, Battle of the Bulge, Belgium, Joachim Peiper, Operation Watch on the Rhine, Trois Ponts on December 18 | Leave a Comment »
Joachim Peiper was getting a bit frustrated, because he was getting further and further behind schedule. Operation Watch on the Rhine (which we know so well as the Battle of the Bulge) had gotten off to a good start for him and his German compatriots. Having achieved complete surprise with a 30-division offensive in the [...]
Major Quakes Cause Midwest Misery
Posted in Early nineteenth century (1810-1850), United States, tagged 1811, Earthquake, New Madrid, New Madrid Seismic Zone on December 16 | Leave a Comment »
The other night we watched yet another of those “disasters of the Apocalypse” shows that seem to pop up with almost absurd frequency these days. It’s usually the Discovery Channel, or the History Channel, or the Learning Channel, but they’re on all the time. I suppose it has something to do with the ominous approach of 2012, the year the [...]
Garrison “Wakes” Up and Lays One on the Enemy
Posted in Pacific, World War II (1939-1945), tagged 1941, Grumman F4F Wildcat, Pearl Harbor, Wake Island, Winfield Cunningham on December 11 | Leave a Comment »
Ususally, when we’re faced with a crisis, our first reaction is some degree of shock. In a figurative (or maybe even literal) sense, we stand there, staring blankly and not really focusing on anything, with our arms hanging at our sides, not really knowing what to do. Eventually, our wits return, and we can begin assessing [...]
Clark Air Base: The Pearl of the Philippines
Posted in Pacific, World War II (1939-1945), tagged 1941, Clark Air Base, General Douglas MacArthur, Pearl Harbor, Philippines on December 8 | Leave a Comment »
We ate dinner last night with our son Andrew and his three boys. It was his birthday last week, but he was out of town, so we celebrated it late. He picked Uncle Buck’s as his restaurant, where the food is always good. As we sat at the table, 5-year-old Teagan informed us that another [...]
