The Blaisdell Blog

I would not want to be Maximilien de Robespierre right now.   Trust me, he or she is out there.   What is worse, the poor delusional fool may not know they are Robespierre.   They will find out too late and no one will be more surprised or be given less sympathy.   But, I digress.             I am, of course, referring to the Reign of Terror which swept over France from the fall of 1793 to the summer of 1794.   In this span of ten months, the French Revolution changed from a violent overthrow of the monarchy to a wholesale slaughter of anyone the resistance didn’t like.   The rabble decided that it wasn’t enough to do away with the aristocracy.   They were on a mission to rid the country of anyone who didn’t look, sound, act and believe exactly as they did.   Some 1,400 people were put to death.               The executions started with the obvious suspects.   The nobles had to go and it was important to kill them.   What demonstrates your power more than the power to kill?   B

Finley Peter Dunne was one of the first syndicated newspaper columnists. He was born shortly after the Civil War and died during the Great Depression.   He was a writer and satirist on the vein of Mark Twain (who was a contemporary of his).   His preferred character for the dispensation of wit and wisdom was a “Mr. Dooley” who owned a bar on the southside of Chicago and spoke on all issues, political and social.   Based in Chicago, Dunne became the first in a long line of newspaper writers who could make us laugh and think all at the same time.   He was followed by writers like Mike Royko, Erma Bombeck and Charles Krauthammer.   Dunne wrote at a time when newspapers were king.   Chicago had nine daily papers during Dunne’s time.   This was typical of every major city in the nation.   These papers made absolutely no attempt at even-handed dissemination of “just the facts, Ma’am.”   No, they were blatantly and happily partisan.   People chose the Republican paper, the Democratic pa

The ages of the earth are long, and they change slowly.   To comprehend geologic time requires a mental framework that needs—before all else—a humble acceptance of man and mankind’s brief presence on this planet.               But we do have analytic minds and the ability to look, if imperfectly, both forward and backward along the arrow of time.   The time warp I was exposed to this week certainly required a wide-angle lens.   It started with a relaxing cruise on the Shaunodese , a pleasure boat, on Lake Pend Oreille (pronounced Pond-u-ray).     The Pend Orielle is formed by the outflow of the Clark River. It is located in the Purcell Valley of Idaho’s panhandle, only 50 miles from the Canadian border. Isolated beauty defines this region. Now.             If you can imagine a time 18,000 years ago things would look a bit different.   This would be near the end of our latest (not last, there will be another—and another) Ice Age.   For 2.5 million years combinations of cooler te