Though music is a constantly evolving art, change has, by and large, been slow, and radical change has been relatively rare.  By the first decades of the twentieth century, however, classical music was undergoing a swift transformation that even the least astute could discern.  Throughout Europe, composers were breaking with established conventions and seeking new methods of expression, paralleling similar movements in literature and the visual arts.   This era of modernist experimentation reached its zenith in the years of the Weimar Republic.  Continuous radio transmission in Germany began on October 29, 1923, with a concert of classical pieces broadcast from the Vox-Haus at Potsdamer Platz.[1] Bolstered by a burgeoning publishing business, growing recording industry, the availability of music increased substantially.[2] The prevalence of highly-skilled German orchestras and opera companies, attracted not only audiences, but composers from within and without Germany, who premiered an astonishing array of chamber music, orchestral pieces, and works for the stage during the Weimar years.  Among the major compositions debuted in Germany during Weimar’s “Golden Years” were Alban Berg’s Wozzeck (Berlin, 1925), Paul Hindemith’s Cardillac (Dresden, 1926), Bela Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin (Cologne, 1926), and Serge Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 5, with the composer himself as soloist (Berlin, 1932).  Igor Stravinsky, already an international musical celebrity, saw the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin premiere his Violin Concerto under the direction of Serge Koussevitsky in Berlin in 1931.[3] Founded in 1923 for the purpose of radio broadcasts, that orchestra was notable for its frequent concerts of modern classical music.  Countless other modernist pieces premiered elsewhere were performed in Germany during the years of the Weimar Republic.

Meanwhile, in Vienna, Arnold Schönberg’s music reflected the expressionist aesthetic of Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele.  An amateur painter himself, Schönberg had shifted from a lush chromaticism reminiscent of Richard Wagner, to a free atonality, before finally arriving upon his serial twelve-tone system in 1921.  His Neue Wiener Schule counted Alban Berg and Anton Webern among its pupils.  The works of these composers, though powerful and innovative, were dismissed or rejected by some musical and social conservatives, who perceived atonality to be ugly and un-German.  Alfred Rosenberg, the influential editor of the right-wing newspaper Völkischer Beobachter, trumpeted a view held by many conservatives that “the entire atonal movement [is] contrary to the heartbeat and soul of the German people….”[4] One of Germany’s leading composers, the musical reactionary Hans Pfitzner—who had been introduced to Hitler himself in 1923—rejected modernism on its face, and openly criticized Schönberg and his disciples, whom Pfitzner rightly perceived to be ascendant in the late 1920s.  Leaving Vienna in 1925, Schönberg became a professor at the Preussische Akademie der Künste in Berlin—where Pfitzner himself would teach a masterclass until 1929—and for several years was among the most prominent exponents of Weimar modernism active in Germany.  He enjoyed the support of other prominent musicians, including “progressive Radio Frankfurt conductor Hans Rosbaud, who provided [Schönberg] with the opportunity to broadcast his views on music and actually performed his works to his great satisfaction.”[5] But as the 1930s began, Arnold Schönberg certainly perceived a surge in anti-modernist sentiment.

The rising reactionary tide against composers like Arnold Schönberg was attributable in a large degree to their ethnicity.  Schönberg—and his musical allies Kurt Weill, Berthold Goldschmidt, Franz Schreker, Alexander von Zemlinsky, among others—was Jewish, and following the substantial victories by the NSDAP in the Reichstag elections of 1930, Jews holding civil service and academic positions witnessed their job security vanish.[6] In a letter dated 18 September 1930, Schreker cautions Schönberg that his position at the Preussische Akademie der Künste was in jeopardy, and that “Hitler-Berlin” was not a safe place for Jews.[7] Schreker understood the seriousness of the situation from his own experience.  He, too, held a prestigious position in one of Berlin’s important musical institutions, the Musikhochschule.  During his tenure, he had invited the young star Paul Hindemith to teach, but as the Nazi Party rose to prominence, the careers of each of these men came under threat.  Hindemith, who enjoyed the support of renowned conductors like Fritz Busch, was at that time most notable for his Kammermusik (1924-1927), and the sensational Sancta Susana (Frankfurt, 1922).  Schreker, whose works were among the most frequently performed of the Weimar period, saw his reputation—earned through the tremendous success of Die ferne Klang in 1912—sullied by accusations of decadence: “Schreker was branded because he wrote about branded souls – people haunted by their sexuality or deformity or perversity.”[8] A common strategy for the reactionary right was to conflate Judaism with decadence, and vice versa.  In this way, Jewish composers like Schönberg and Schreker could be grouped with non-Jews like Hindemith because their musical idiom was superficially similar.

Adolf Hitler assumed the official title of chancellor on 30 January 1933, and though nearly two months passed before “the so-called enabling law of 23 March…gave the government the power to impose laws without the Reichstag,” the systematic intimidation and ouster of Jewish- and anti-Nazi musicians was already underway.[9] In February, Otto Klemperer had aroused “violent antagonism in the Nazi press” during a new production of Tannhäuser at the Berlin Staatsoper.  Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA) shut down a rehearsal by Fritz Busch at the Semperoper in Dresden on 6 March.  Ten days later, following Nazi threats, Bruno Walter—a towering musical figure who could count among his friends not only the Jewish Gustav Mahler, but the anti-Semite, and early Nazi favorite, Hans Pfitzner—was forced to cancel a concert at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, then another with the Berliner Philharmoniker, replaced, in the latter instance, by Richard Strauss.  The Städtische Oper Berlin lost its intendant, the noted Marxist Carl Ebert, to Nazi pressure that same month.  He was replaced by Max von Schillings, president of the Preussische Akademie der Künste, who, on 1 March, had begun the process of dismissing Arnold Schönberg from his teaching position at the Akademie – a move that Klemperer had warned his friend Schoernberg was imminent.  Schilling’s explanation for the firing was blunt: “the Jewish influence at the academy must be eliminated.”[10] Schönberg’s ouster was complete on 23 May 1933, and in November “he became an exile in America.”  He was “among the first to recognize the futility of remaining in Nazi Germany.”[11] He would not be the last.

The crackdown on Jewish and modernist composers and musicians in the first half of 1933 was largely an extra-governmental affair.  That is, though the intimidation of Fritz Busch, Otto Klemperer, and Bruno Walter was carried out by members of the Nazi party and in the Nazi press, Adolf Hitler’s government had yet to articulate a specific artistic or musical agenda.  That changed on 30 June when “Hitler declared that the Ministry of Propaganda had the authority to deal with ‘all areas that influenced the mind, including complete control of cultural affairs’.”[12] Almost immediately, a rivalry between two powerfully influential Nazi figures ensued.  On one side, Joseph Goebbels petitioned Hitler to authorize the creation of a culture ministry with comprehensive legal authority over all German intellectual and artistic endeavors.  On the other side was Alfred Rosenberg, a man even more ideologically driven than Goebbels.  Rosenberg’s Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur (KfdK), founded in 1929, had for several years been among Germany’s most reactionary cultural institutions, and maintained close ties to the Nazi party.  Its tens of thousands of members vociferously attacked the perceived excesses of Weimar society.  They even had their own prestigious journal, Die Musik.  Still, however potent the KfdK was as a musical force, “Hitler appeared reluctant to reward Rosenberg by giving him permission to turn…a party organization into one which was run by the state.”[13] That power was handed to Goebbels, whose new Reichskulturkammer (RKK) was established on 22 September, and included—in addition to chambers responsible for fine art, film, literature, the press, radio, and theater—a dedicated Reichsmusikkammer (RMK).  Rosenberg had failed, and his KfdK soon folded, having suffered mass defections of its members to the RMK, which made membership compulsory for professional musicians.[14] But for the RMK to become truly successful, Goebbels—who had never managed an orchestra or an opera house—needed to find men with talent and experience, who could enact its agenda, and “further the advance of German music.”  He chose the most qualified, but, in some ways, least appropriate men for the job.

Richard Strauss and Wilhelm Furtwängler were undisputed musical titans – Germany’s greatest living composer and conductor, respectively.[15] Strauss earned his reputation with a string of concertante works and tone poems, including Don Juan (Weimar, 1888), Tod und Verklärung (Eisenach, 1890), Also sprach Zarathustra (Frankfurt, 1896), and Ein Heldenleben (Frankfurt, 1899), before turning largely to opera.  But his early works for the stage contain much music and action that audiences found shocking.  In Dresden, Strauss premiered Salome (1905), then Elektra (1909)—two stridently dissonant works with often ambiguous tonality—before eventually retreating to a safer, more traditionally Romantic aesthetic with Der Rosenkavalier (1911).[16] Furtwängler was among the most famous conductors on Earth, whose only true rival was Arturo Toscanini.  He had conducted the premieres of Bela Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 1 (Frankfurt, 1927), and Schönberg’s twelve-tone Variations for Orchestra (Berlin, 1928), but was a musical conservative, vehemently pro-German, and considered himself an ambassador of his country’s musical heritage.[17] He was the principal conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Kapellmeister of the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, and an Abonnementdirigenten of the Wiener Philharmoniker.   Strauss and Furtwängler were considered national treasures, but neither man was especially ideological politically, or was eager to see politics dictate artistic policy.  Indeed, as a creative artist, Strauss would be reluctant to relinquish his freedom of creative expression, and in spite of Furtwängler’s own personal distaste for the avant-garde, he believed that the audience alone should judge a work’s artistic merit.  Nevertheless, Goebbels selected these men to be the president and vice president of the Reichsmusikkammer.

“According to his own contemporary utterances and postwar testimony, conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler consciously attempted to oppose Nazi rule from the first time he decided to remain in Germany early in 1933.”[18] He was also open and unapologetic in his advocacy for Jewish musicians in his own Berliner Philharmoniker, “notably the concertmaster Simon Goldberg.”  Indeed, the evidence clearly shows that, “because of [Furtwängler], several musicians were able to stay and work in Germany longer than would have otherwise been possible.”[19] Among the most famous examples of the conductor’s breech of Nazi policy was an op-ed he published in the 25 November 1934 edition of the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung.  Entitled “Der Fall Hindemith,” Furtwängler’s essay was written in support of the composer, who was still the subject of protests by Alfred Rosenberg’s sycophants.  Furtwängler was eager to receive permission to stage Hindemith’s opera Mathis der Maler in Berlin, and hoped his article might persuade Adolf Hitler that Hindemith’s early atonal pieces were merely “Jugendwerk,”  and that the composer, indeed, represented true German musical ideals.[20] The conductor also cautioned against further political meddling in artistic matters.  But Furtwängler’s efforts backfired:

When [Joseph] Goebbels and [Hermann] Goering, sitting in their respective boxes in the Berlin Staatsoper, witnessed the public demonstrations in support of Furtwängler during a performance of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, they quickly realized that the applause signaled approval of the conductor’s defence of artistic freedom, and an implied rejection of the regime’s policies.  As a result, Furtwängler was denied a meeting with Hitler, in which the proposed performance of Mathis der Maler would have been discussed.[21]

Two weeks later, Furtwängler resigned his position as vice president of the RMK, director of the Berliner Philharmoniker, and the Staatsoper.[22]

Richard Strauss had been “active in support of the new order beginning in March 1933,” and he initially considered the presidency of the RMK “an honor, and possibly the crowning achievement of his career.”  And yet, “Strauss was no Nazi, and he believed himself capable of affecting politics on the strength of his international reputation, artistic achievement and professional authority.”[23] Strauss’s own daughter-in-law was Jewish, and he had many Jewish friends and associates, including librettist Stefan Zweig, with whom he collaborated on Die Schweigsame Frau.  While Adolf Hitler had initially approved its Dresden production—because, in Zweig’s estimation, banning it would have cost Strauss, and Germany, prestige—the Führer changed his mind on 6 July 1935, after the Gestapo intercepted a letter from Strauss to Zweig in which the composer “denied belief in Nazi principle…and made light of the RMK by claiming to ‘playact’ the role of its president ‘in order to prevent worse’.”  From Berchtesgaden, Hitler requested Strauss’s resignation, and received it one week later.[24] Strauss spent the rest of the war years writing music, and remained Germany’s most-performed—and richest—composer, premiering four new operas between 1937 and 1944, but his relationship with Goebbels and Hitler remained strained.

Though his involvement in the Richard Strauss matter was apparently direct, Adolf Hitler was largely uninterested “in the finer details of music policy.”  He stepped in to resolve conflicts between Goebbels’s RKK and the myriad German cultural institutions that attempted to maintain some degree of autonomy – notably the opera houses in Munich and Dresden.  Hitler also was directly involved in the promotion of “conductors, instrumentalists, and singers to the titles of Professor, General Music Director, State Kapellmeister, Chamber Singer, and Virtuoso,” and often made such announcements at celebrations marking his birthday.[25] He also personally guaranteed the Bayreuth Festival’s solvency, funded Wagner research, and subsidized performances of the music of fellow Linz native Anton Bruckner.  Most directly, Hitler prescribed exact metronome markings for the “Horst-Wessel-Lied” and the “Deutschlandlied.”  These specific and seemingly random acts suggest that his “intervention in musical matters remained rather unpredictable and even capricious.”[26]

“Unpredictable and capricious” aptly describes much of the Third Reich’s approach to music policy.  Although it would have appeared to some as though the government had adopted rigid standards as to what it considered acceptable music (and for composers like Arnold Schönberg and Paul Hindemith the standards were, indeed, unduly rigid), the application of those standards in other cases was surprisingly lax, or even waived altogether.  Robert Schumann’s masterpiece Dichterliebe raised an interesting issue:  what should be done about works with Aryan and Jewish authorship?  No one questioned Schumann’s racial purity, but the Jewish poet Heinrich Heine’s books were being burned in German streets.  Losing one of the great Lieder cycles was inconceivable, and Dichterliebe was only the tip of the iceberg.  Nearly every composer of German art song set Heine’s poetry to music.  Rejecting him would mean losing Franz Schubert’s Schwanengesang, and beloved songs by Johannes Brahms, Hugo Wolf, and many others.  The novel solution proposed by musicologist and Nazi Karl Blessinger was to, in essence, deny the contribution of the Jewish poet, rationalizing that when audiences hear those Lieder, “it is not Heine who speaks to us, but Schubert and Schumann.”[27] Thus, Germans could continue to enjoy those songs in their own language.  Paradoxically, the immortal operas of Mozart were not granted the same latitude.  Cosi fan tutte, Don Giovanni, and Le Nozze di Figaro had libretti by Lorenzo da Ponte, a Christian with Jewish heritage.  Originally set in Italian, in Germany the works were known almost exclusively in translation.  That German translation, however, had been made by a Jew, Herman Levi, nearly a hundred and forty years earlier, and in the pages of Alfred Rosenberg’s Die Musik, critics on the far-right demanded new translations.  By 1938, Mozart’s operas were performed in new Aryanised translations.[28] Inversely, with the music of the unwaveringly German, but intolerably Jewish Felix Mendelssohn banned, Edmund Nick went so far as to compose new incidental music to replace Mendelssohn’s Ein Sommernachtstraum for a performance in 1934.  That the Third Reich preferred to reset the text of an English playwright than use Mendelssohn’s famous score demonstrates the lengths to which they were willing to go to recast German culture to fit a new, invented mould.[29]

“The arts occupied a central position in the ideology and propaganda of National Socialism.”[30] The Nazis considered the arts to be a reflection of the German spirit.  To the extent that that reflection appeared to contradict their own self-image, it was eradicated.  But music, the most abstract of the arts, often presented contradictions: although National Socialism could claim to be both traditional and revolutionary, music could not.  For anyone who had not yet come to that realization, the point was made clear on 24 May 1938, with the opening of the “Entartete Musik” exhibition in Düsseldorf.  That exhibit, which later traveled across Germany, expressly branded the works of Berg, Hindemith, Korngold, Krenek, Schönberg, Schreker, Webern, and Weil “degenerate” – conferring the stigma of sub-humanness.  By the beginning of the Second World War, the National Socialists had already undermined their musical institutions to an almost irreversible degree, prompting a mass exodus of creative talent that, for the most part, would never return.  By the conclusion of the Second World War, those musical institutions lay in ruins, destroyed not only by allied bombs, but by the Nazis themselves.

[2] Emile Berliner had founded the Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft in Hanover in 1898, and Universal Edition debuted in Vienna in 1901, eventually becoming one of the leading publishers of modern music, issuing scores by Bartok, Berg, Mahler, Schoenberg, and Webern.

[3] Kendall, Alan. The Chronicle of Classical Music.  (London: Thames & Hudson, 2000), 218-226.

[4] Alfred Rosenberg, Gestaltung der Idee. (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1939), 337.  “Die ganze atonale Bewegung widerstrebte dem Rhythmus des Bluts und der Seele des deutschen Volks, wurde gerade deshalb von den politischen Machthabern von früher gefördert, und eine ganze Anzahl, zum Teil begabter, zum Teil sehr Minderbegabter Musiker hat sich hier in den Dienst dieser Pläne gestellt.”

[5] Kater, Michael H. Composers of the Nazi Era: Eight Portraits. (New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 1999), 184.

[6] In the German federal election that took place on 14 September 1930, the NSDAP gained ninety-five seats, becoming the country’s second largest party behind the SPD.

[7] Kater, Michael H. Composers of the Nazi Era: Eight Portraits. (New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 1999), 184.

[8] Tambling, Jeremy. Opera and the Culture of Fascism. (Oxford: Clarendon, Oxford UP, 1996), 209.

[9] Bell, P. M. H. Origins of the Second World War in Europe. (London: Longman, 1997), 80.

[10] Kater, Michael H. Composers of the Nazi Era: Eight Portraits. (New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 1999), 185.

[11] Brand, Juliane. Constructive Dissonance: Arnold Schoenberg and the Transformations of Twentieth-Century Culture. (Berkeley: University of California, 1997), xiii.

[12] Levi, Erik. Music in the Third Reich. (New York: St. Martin’s, 1994), 20.

[13] Ibid., 16.

[14] Kater, Michael H. The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 17.

[15] Meyer, Michael. The Politics of Music in the Third Reich. (New York: Peter Lang, 1991), 193.

[16] Kobbe?, Gustav. The New Kobbe?’s Complete Opera Book. (New York: Putnam, 1976), 997-1018.

[17] Kendall, Alan. The Chronicle of Classical Music.  (London: Thames & Hudson, 2000), 218-226.

[18] Kater, Michael H. The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 195.

[19] Ibid., 196.

[20] Luttmann, Stephen. Paul Hindemith: A Guide to Research. (New York: Routledge, 2005), 60. Google Books. Web. 1 Dec. 2009. <http://books.google.com/books?id=dxmBUdnQy0AC>.

[21] Levi, 113.

[22] Monod, David. Settling Scores: German Music, Denazification, and the Americans, 1945-1953. (New York: The University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 128-141.

[23] Meyer, 194.

[24] Meyer, 195.

[25] Levi, 35.

[26] Ibid.

[27] Ibid., 74.

[28] Kater, Michael H. The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 86-87.

[29] Some forty different settings of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream were composed during the Nazi era to replace Mendelssohn’s.  By the end of 1936, his statue in Leipzig was removed.

[30] Steinweis, Alan E. Art, Ideology, and Economics in Nazi Germany. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1993), 1.

On the south bank of the Chicago River there is a plaque describing the 1915 Eastland disaster.  More than eight hundred people drowned right in the heart of the country’s second largest city, while people in skycrapers watched out their windows.  But when I was watching a show at the Oriental Theater, which lies only a few blocks from the Chicago River, I saw no plaque commemorating the Iroquois Theater Fire.  I had never heard of it.  On this date in 1903, more than six hundred people burned to death in a terrible fire at 24 Randolf Street.  The Oriental Theater now occupies that very spot.  I suppose modern theatergoers would find it unsettling to imagine heaps of charred corpses while they tried to enjoy Wicked.  Had I known that address’s tragic history, I would certainly have searched out all the emergency exits and fire extinguishers before the house lights dimmed.

We can visit Dealey Plaza or Whitechapel, understand their histories, and still not be too disturbed.  But something about the Iroquois Theater Fire troubles me deeply.

We know now, however, that it was a hoax perpetrated by the child’s whore parents, in a shameful effort to attract attention they could parlay into a “reality” television deal.

Hearing about this fraud instantly brought a host of questions to mind.  Did these people think they were going to get away with it?  Do they have any concept of morality?  Does it bother them that, across the country last week, millions of genuinely anxious people wasted millions of honest prayers?  Is this how far our society has degenerated?

The answers to the first three questions are: apparently; apparently not; and I don’t know.  I was tempted to believe that the answer to the last question was a resounding yes – that our society has, in fact, been driven to the point of moral bankruptcy in the short span of our living memory.

Then yesterday Wikipedia stepped forward unexpectedly to challenge my perceptions.  It reaffirmed that we are indeed living in an age of depravity, but it moved the date of our moral degradation back nearly three hundred years, to 1726, to be precise.  In that year, a woman from Surry named Mary Toft perpetrated a hoax that seems so obviously unbelievable, so completely ridiculous, that it is hard to believe anyone could have fallen for it.  And yet people did, and some paid dearly for it.

Mary Toft suffered a miscarriage.  That much is true, and that much is surely worthy of pity.  But Mary Toft took things to another level.  A totally crazy level.  There’s no polite way to tell what she did, but, put simply, she cut up some rabbits and stuck them in her hoo-hoo, and then claimed to give birth to rabbits.  Some doctors heard of this and went to see her, and when they pulled more parts of rabbits from her hoo-hoo, they thought, “hey, this lady’s full of bunny babies!”  Now, you and I would immediately suspect something was amiss, because we know that there just wasn’t enough time since her miscarriage to carry rabbits to full term.  Also, people cannot give birth to rabbits.  But some people believed her.  In fact, some people had the hilariously ignorant idea that a woman could give birth to whatever she had been around.  So, let a cat sleep on your bed, and you’re going to deliver a kitten baby.  When the hoax was discovered (and I can’t believe it took as long as it did), the reputation of a prominent doctor was ruined, and the medical profession in general suffered.

So, let us not grieve for our lately-departed sense of decency; it has been dead for a long time.

UPDATE – 23 December 2009: The parents of “Balloon Boy” (a sort-of inaccurate name) were sentenced to time in jail today, and prohibited from profiting from their story for four years.

Our first stop was the Arecibo Observatory.  Operated by Cornell University, it is one of the largest radio telescopes on Earth.  Pictures don’t do it justice.  It is really enormous.  I seem to recall the tour guide saying something about twenty-five football fields fitting inside.  Astronomers chose this specific location for a few reasons, of which the most significant were the proximity to the equator, and another being the big hole that existed naturally between the surrounding mountains.  The had to do only a little blasting to fit the reflector.  Looking at the different antennas from the rim of the reflector you cannot tell how large anything really is.  But when a man passed in a basket over head, his tiny size gave some indication.  The short film we watched in the visitor center explained that the round sub-reflector suspended high in the air is the size of a three story building.  The pointy antenna next to it is almost a hundred feet long.  Three colossal concrete towers support the cables, and those cables are embedded in massive concrete anchors.  The air at Arecibo was fresh and in the shade I felt so cool and comfortable that if I closed my eyes I could imagine that I was in the North Carolina mountains.

Our next stop that day was to be the caverns in Camuy, but we arrived to find that all the tickets had been sold for the day.  We decided to head instead to the nearby Caguana Ceremonial Ball Courts.  The Taíno lived here in pre-Hispanic times, and left petroglyphs which are on display and are fascinating.  Now, a cynical person might say, “well sure, this place is interesting, but while the Taíno were drawing on these stones, the French were building the cathedral at Riems“.  That may be so, smart guy, but as Jared Diamond points out in Guns, Germs, and Steel, geography and technology are crucial to the development of any society.  Europeans lived in the most fertile place in the world, had horses and access to almost unlimited resources.  The indigenous people of the Caribbean had to cope with frequent hurricanes, occasional earthquakes, land that was far too rugged to sustain substantial populations through agriculture.  The ball courts at Caguana are fascinating, and you could see how the stones surrounding them were brought up from the river running through the canyon below.  All around the site were enormous Ceiba trees, which were easily over a hundred feet tall, with massive trunks that dwarf a man. The park was practically deserted, and the weather was lovely.

The drive back to San Juan gave me another opportunity to experience awe and terror, as I passed gorgeous scenery, and treacherous driving conditions.  At one point, a convoy of ambulances approached from behind with lights flashing.  I moved over to allow them to pass, but they didn’t go any faster than anyone else.  I concluded that emergency vehicles in Puerto Rico must always just travel with flashing lights.  Meanwhile, when I did hear a police siren, I looked around expecting to find a patrol car.  Rather, I discovered a motorcyclist and his girlfriend, using a police siren to attract attention.

We joined our friend Maggie, who lives in Puerto Rico, for dinner at a restaurant with a cool Egyptian theme.  At the conclusion of the meal, a belly-dancing girl came out and entertained everyone.  I can see why that custom is so popular.

It was after ten o’clock when we arrived back at our hotel, and I was ultra tired.  The next day we would explore San Juan.

The year 1969 must have been one of the most exciting to experience.  I wish I had been alive that night–forty years ago–to watch Walter Cronkite, with an expression of obvious joy, announce that Neil Armstrong had taken that “giant leap for mankind”.  It represented the conclusion of the dramatic story arc begun even before Cronkite informed America that President Kennedy had died in Dallas.

Today, Walter Cronkite is dead, and the astronauts of Apollo 11 are almost eighty-years-old.  Most Americans alive today were born after July 20, 1969.

Men from the dawn of time pondered the moon.  Even when the ancients understood the lunar cycle and the moon’s effect on tides, so much was still shrouded in mystery.  That mystery inspired artists, poets, and entire religions.  It also inspired men of science, who, by 1969, had at their disposal the technology needed to lift that beautiful veil.  We lost the mystery and wonder forever.

I do not know what the future holds for civilization.  Whatever great strides we may make, we will never equal that “one small step for a man”.

As a number of recent books and documentaries point out, much of what is believed today about Lincoln says more about us than about him.  That is to say, Lincoln is such a towering figure, that everyone wants to have Lincoln on their side.  So, whatever beliefs or ideals you hold, you will attempt to ascribe those to Lincoln.  The problem with this is obvious.

Meanwhile, I find it vexing that some today try to vilify Lincoln because his words and actions do not live up to the idea of perfection we have attributed to Lincoln.  For example, as 21st Century Americans, it shocks some that Lincoln did not believe that blacks were the intellectual equal of whites, or that Lincoln used “the N-word”.  Some take this fact and reach the unreasonable conclusion that Lincoln was a “white supremacist” and a racist.  The problem with this, of course, is that these people are not acknowledging the reality of context.  When Lincoln lived, almost every white American was incredibly racist and almost nobody–and certainly nobody in the mainstream of society–was arguing for full equality for blacks.  The truth is this: Lincoln was always opposed to slavery, and no other man with a realistic chance of becoming president of the United States in 1861 was as open-minded, or better suited for that office, in those circumstances, at that time.  It is difficult to imagine anyone else but Lincoln having the wisdom and tenacity to preserve the Union.  Abraham Lincoln personally did more good for his country than any other man.  If you care that Florida and Vermont are in the same country today, thank Abraham Lincoln.

Meanwhile, as one who appreciates good writing, I am endlessly impressed by Lincoln’s words.  One of the best teachers I’ve ever had, Professor Brian McCrea, often quotes Lincoln’s second inaugural address, and cites it as the ideal example of parallel sentence structure.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up our nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Setting aside the beauty of the language, and the nobility of the content, that sentence is structurally brilliant.  It is remarkably long for one sentence, but it is held together perfectly by its parallel structure.  It even follows Dr. McCrea’s convention that the last clause in a parallel sentence should be the longest (in this case, “to do all which may achieve a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations”).  A politician today would not have said the preceding the same way today.  He would more likely say, “Let us strive on to finish the work we are in.  Let us bind up our nations wounds”, etc.  Parallel structure, as Dr. McCrea would say, is a feature of sophisticated writing.

Happy Birthday, Lincoln.

On an unrelated note, though the temperature in Gainesville today reached 49 degrees, I nevertheless felt colder than I have ever felt in my life, including occasions in which I have been flat on my back in a mountain of snow.  I don’t know if it’s me or something else, but I felt certain I was freezing to death.

Still, I’d have gladly endured sub-freezing temperatures to have been in Washington today.  I couldn’t sleep last night, and tonight I’ll probably be too excited again.  I’m very happy.

• President Obama’s address was one of the best ever given
• I wish Chief Justice Roberts hadn’t botched the oath
• The crowds stretching from the Capitol to the Washington Monument were biblical
• It looked very cold, but I was glad the sky was blue
• I feel very happy and very proud

More thoughts to come.

First things first: the Washington Monument is an amazing structure when you consider how old it is.  It’s like a 50 story skyscraper built of stone blocks, with no steel to reinforce anything.  Inside, it’s clear that gravity holds this thing together.  The security procedure was, again, rigorous, and that alone must sharply reduce the number of visitors that can be accommodated daily.  The elevator takes you to a landing at the very top of the obelisk, and the mark on the floor indicates a height of 500 feet.  There are two small windows on each face of the pyramidal section of the monument, and depending on which direction you face you see either the WWII Memorial, Lincoln Memorial and Arlington, Virginia; the Capitol and RFK Stadium; the Jefferson Memorial and Reagan National Airport; or the Elipse and the White House.

The Jefferson Memorial requires a hike, but is well worth it.  I love classically inspired architecture, and this structure has about as many columns, steps and pediments as you could fit into a respectable design.  Plus, inside there’s a great big statue.

The National Archives is not far from the Smithsonian Museums, and is a handsome building in its own rights, with a fine dome.  Beneath that dome, of course, are our nation’s most precious possessions: the original Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights.  You know you’ve got some good stuff on display when you decide to keep the Magna Carta off in a corner somewhere.  The cafeteria there was surprisingly good (and very surprisingly affordable), and the elevator was fancy.  Plus, it was at the National Archives that I saw the only authentic Lincoln document of my entire trip, a letter in his own hand.  The Library of Congress has two copies of the Gettysburg Address, and the National Archives has, I believe, the Emancipation Proclamation, but they are too delicate to display for more than a few days each year.  Still, I was glad I got to see something, at least, that bore Lincoln’s own signature.

Time didn’t allow a visit to the National Gallery of Art, alas, but I did go through the sculpture garden.  Most everything in it sucked big time.  But they did have a Calder stabile, so that was nice.  One evening I took the Metro to the Dupont Circle stop and visited the Phillips Collection.  It’s an art museum in an old mansion in a neighborhood that now houses many of the international embassies.  I am very glad that admission was free, because I really only was interested in seeing one thing there.  I made a pretty weak attempt to imitate a painting, too.

So, I missed the National Cathedral, Cedar Hill, the Bureau of Printing and Engraving and the FDR Memorial.  The National Museum of American History and Ford’s Theater were closed, and my White House tour didn’t come through.  But I’ll go back someday.  Huzzah!

On the day I was there it was possible to wait for a few minutes before being led into the chamber for a short lecture about the history and of the court, the building, and an explanation of what happens on days in which the court hears argument.  The lecture was given by a young law clerk.  Photos of the chamber are not permitted, but the Court’s website has some to see.  Elsewhere in the building was an amazing spiral staircase.

The US Botanic Garden is a pleasant diversion.  It sits right on the west side of the Capitol.  It’s not an especially large structure, and many of the plants are of the sort you can find at your local nursery, it’s a pleasant place.  I liked the glass roof.

One of the most amazing places I have ever been in my life is the Library of Congress.  The building is impressive in and of itself, and the lobby is even fancier than the Capitol, but what’s inside is beyond compare.  Right past the front door is a perfect vellum copy of the Gutenberg Bible, one of only four in the world.  Upstairs, past an exhibit that included dozens of historic pages handwritten by Washington, Jefferson and many other founding fathers, is Thomas Jefferson’s own library.  It’s displayed in a circular case, and I spied within a copy of Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language in two large volumes.  After browsing, I had to use the bathroom of congress, which, oddly, had no urinals.

Later: the National Archives and the Washington Monument.