The Blaisdell Blog

  On April 12, 1861, Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard opened fire on Ft. Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Bay, beginning the American Civil War.   Three months earlier, Benito Juarez had been elected President of Mexico.   Like Lincoln, Juarez inherited a country with serious, perhaps fatal, problems.   In Juarez’s case, however, the problems were primarily external. In 1861, Mexico was a country in financial ruin.   It owed money to all of the major European powers and, smelling blood in the water, they were circling the drowning nation.   When Juarez defaulted on the loans France, Britain and Spain all sent their ships into the harbor of Veracruz to wrest something, anything, of value from the destitute government.   Britain and Spain were satisfied with negotiated settlements but France’s Napoleon III saw a chance to claim some semblance of imperial grandeur by annexing Mexico.    Napoleon III (nephew of the great Bonaparte) was certain h...

  My husband’s sister, Kimberly Sue Wynn, died on May 1, 2024.   Kim was born with every card in the deck stacked against her.   Born of unknown parents, on an unknown date in an unknown place in South Korea any reasonable person would say that she had no chance for a good life.   It was not unheard of for unwanted Korean babies (especially girls) to be left on the roadside to die from exposure.   Indeed, a Korean child who did not have a Korean man declare himself as father did not even have citizenship.   But either Kim’s mother, or her family, made a critical choice, and placed Kim in the receiving bin of an orphanage.   The orphanage offered her life, though it would be a half-life at best.   She would be given marginal care, marginal food, marginal education.   She would be trained for a life of servitude, with virtually no opportunity for marriage or a family of her own.   But once again, fate took a hand. Half a world away, ...

What do Bob Packwood, Bob Livingston, John Ensign and Larry Craig all have in common?   Let me give you a hint: Tony Gonzales and Eric Swalwell.   Now you’ve got it.   All these men had to resign from national public office because of sexual misconduct.   Actually “misconduct” is a white-washed word.   These men abused the trust and position of authority they had been given by the electorate to prey on younger women for prurient satisfaction.   Well, Larry Craig is an exception in one small way.   Craig, who was a vocal and aggressive persecutor of homosexuals, referring to members of the LGBTQ community as abominations, was found soliciting sex from men in a public bathroom.   [Note to self: the louder someone condemns an activity, the stronger the possibility they engage in the same.]               Most people acquainted with rape in all its forms, from violent and brutal assault to c...

  I once taught with a great woman who was Irish to the core.   She had asked me when I was going to put up my St. Patrick’s Day decorations and was appalled when I asked her when St. Patrick’s Day was.   I knew it was in March but could never remember the date.   Everyone agreed that not being Irish didn’t make up for my blatant ignorance.               This suggests a much larger question.   Why does the whole country celebrate St. Patrick’s Day (March 17, as it turns out) but nobody celebrates St. Olaf’s Day (July 29)?   I am mostly Norwegian (though on St. Patrick’s Day I am allowed to be Irish through the use of large amounts of green and/or beer).   I know a little about St. Patrick, a great deal more about St. Olaf and I can think of no reason for the lack of celebration for one and too much celebration for the other except, maybe, good press.       ...

  Ellis and Lucille had picked the worst possible time to marry and start a family.   They had also picked the worst possible place.   They were dry land wheat farmers in Eastern Colorado and had started all these endeavors just before the beginning of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. They lost the farm, moved into the nearby town of Wray, Colorado and Ellis began hiring himself out as a day-laborer.   Lucille was pregnant with their fourth child when Ellis found regular work helping to unload box cars at the railroad yard.   That was where the accident happened. Ellis was working a pulley when the rope broke and the metal chassis of a car came down on him, breaking his back.   He would be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.   The family lived hand to mouth for years.   Slowly (I can not imagine how slowly) Ellis started a knife sharpening business in his garage.   Lucille opened a flower shop out of the front room of ...

I am a lifer in education.   I started teaching in 1968 and kept at it until my retirement. During that time, I saw some poor ideas come along, die from lack of pedagogical vigor and then be resurrected a generation later by another group of misguided zealots.   One of these was New Math.  To understand New Math you must understand how devastating the U.S.S.R.’s launch of Sputnik was to the free world.   I remember standing out in the cold, clear Colorado air with my family and our neighbors watching for the pinpoint of light moving across the night sky.   There it was.   Sputnik.   A Russian space satellite, the first in the world, and it wasn’t ours.   It was the enemy’s satellite, doing God knows what, circling the entire world impervious to American intervention.   The race for space was suddenly real, and we were running a distant second.   My parents were the generation that fought in both WWII and the Korean War.   They...