1926: Events and Inventions

Oct17

January 27, 1926. Scottish inventor M. John Baird demonstrates his new machine capable of the wireless transmission of moving pictures using a cathode ray tube. The invention is called by its inventor, television.

'Robert Goddard with his Double Acting Engine Rocket in 1925' photo (c) 2010, NASA on The Commons - license: http://www.flickr.com/commons/usage/February 25, 1926. Francisco Franco becomes the youngest general in the Spanish army.

March 16, 1926. Robert Goddard launches the first liquid-fuel (gasoline and liquid oxygen) rocket, at Auburn, Massachusetts.

April 7, 1926. An assassination attempt against Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini fails. Italian Fascist Party member march in the streets and vow their loyalty to Mussolini. The Pope says that Mussolini is obviously being protected by God.

May 3-12, 1926. General Strike in Britain. A coal miners’ strike begins on the 1st of May, and on the 3rd a general strike in support of the coal miners is called. The general strike causes the shutdown of mines, transportation, iron and steel works and other industries and paralyzes the country for 10 days. The general strike ends when public opinion goes against the striking workers, but one million coal miners are still on strike.

June 13, 1926. Marshall Joseph Pilsudski takes dictatorial power in Poland. Many Poles believe that the Polish army will under Pilsudski’s command will soon attack SOviet Russia.

September, 1926. Nationalist Chinese Kuomintang troops under General Chiang Kai-shek capture hang-kow and begin the unification of China. China has been suffering for the past several years, since 1916, under the fighting of warlords in various regions who refuse to answer to a central government.

October 23, 1926. Leon Trotsky is removed from the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Josef Stalin is becoming more and more powerful.

December 25, 1926. Japan gains a new emperor after the death of Emperor Yoshihito who had ruled Japan for the past 14 years. Twenty-five year old Emperor Hirohito, who has been regent for his ailing father for the past five years, will now become Japanese head of state on his own.

Notable deaths in 1925: Harry Houdini, Rudolph Valentino, Eugene Debs, Annie Oakley, Mary Cassatt, Claude Monet.

Over the Edge by Brandilyn Collins

Oct17

Nominated and shortlisted for the INSPY Awards, Mystery/Thriller category.

Brandilyn Collins is a popular and award-winning writer of faith-driven suspense novels. Her books have sold well, and she’s written a lot of them. She’s also a survivor of chronic Lyme disease. Unfortunately, by the time I read a third of the way through Over the Edge, I was fairly sure that:
a) the author had battled Lyme disease herself or with someone in her own family, and
b) the author had an ax to grind and a lesson to teach.

I have a friend who received a very delayed diagnosis of Lyme disease. She has dealt with devastating illness and much pain. I do understand that Lyme disease and its diagnosis are controversial subjects with much suffering and pain involved. I understand the temptation to use fiction as a teaching tool to make people aware of the difficulties facing those who have Lyme disease. But maybe nonfiction would be a better way to go.

In this story, Janessa McNeil, married to research doctor Brock McNeil, becomes infected with Lyme disease. Her husband, whose life research is invested in the idea the chronic Lyme disease doesn’t exist and that Lyme can be cured by a simple, short course of antibiotics, doesn’t believe that Janessa is really sick. Nor does he believe that an evil intruder infected Janessa on purpose–to get Dr. McNeil’s attention.

Yeah, it’s kind of far-fetched, and I’d have a hard time believing it, too. In fact, despite the fact that Brock, the husband, is an adulterer and and a liar, I had a sneaking sympathy for him throughout most of the book. That’s because I don’t like being preached at and emotionally manipulated in my suspense novels. It makes me cranky.

If you’re looking for a fictional tract on the trial and tribulations of chronic Lyme disease sufferers, Over the Edge is your book. If you read Over the Edge and want “the other side of the story” about the so-called “Lyme Wars”, you might try this page from the CDC. I’m not taking sides, just reporting the facts, m’am.

1925: Arts and Entertainment

Oct17

Visitors flock to the Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs in Paris, France beginning in April, 1925. The art displayed at the show features bold coloring and geometric shapes, and it’s sometimes called Cubism domesticated. This “art deco” style persists in everything from architecture to fashion to dishes from 1925 into the early 1940’s.

An art deco building in Madrid:

'Cine Callao (Gran Via, Madrid)' photo (c) 2010, dalbera - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

French fashion designer Coco Chanel worked in the art deco style and exhited her fashions at the 1925 Exposition in Paris:

'Coco_Chanel' photo (c) 2011, chariserin - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Art deco stairway:

'Art deco stairway' photo (c) 2008, R/DV/RS - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Art deco cocktail set:

'Art Deco Cocktail Set' photo (c) 2011, Artdecodude - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Can you find your own example of art deco, which persists to this day, in your house or neighborhood?

1925: Events and Inventions

Oct17

January 3, 1925. Benito Mussolini (Il Duce) announces he is taking dictatorial powers over Italy.

'General Chiang Kai Shek' photo (c) 2010, SDASM Archives - license: http://www.flickr.com/commons/usage/March, 1925. Chiang Kai-shek becomes leader of the Chinese nationalist Kuomintang (party), following the death of Chinese premier Sun Yat-sen. The picture is a young General Chiang Kai-shek.

April 25, 1925. Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg Is the victor in extremely close German elections. He becomes the first popularly elected president of Germany. Although von Hindenburg supports a return to the monarchy, he has promised to uphold the republican constitution.

June 29, 1925. A bill is passed in South Africa that bans black South Africans from doing skilled jobs in all industries. Afrikaaners (people of Dutch descent) and other white South Africans (mostly of British extraction) combine to make the already widely practiced color ban legal. Afrikaans, a Dutch-based dialect, is made the official language of South Africa.

July, 1925. While in prison, German leader Adolf Hitler publishes Mein Kampf, a book promoting himself, Nazism, and anti-Semitism.

August 8, 1925. The Ku Klux Klan demonstrate their popularity by holding a parade in Washington DC; as many as 40,000 male and female members of the Klan march down Pennsylvania Avenue. The ceremony the Klansmen had planned at the Washington Monument is rained out.

'Conference of the Big Three at Yalta' photo (c) 2008, Marion Doss - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/October 31, 1925. Reza Khan Pahlavi becomes Shah of Persia (Iran). He has been ruling Persia since 1921, but now that his rule is official, the Shah vows to modernize his country.

December, 1925. Josef Stalin uses the year 1925 and following years in the 20’s to consolidate more and more power in his hands, gradually putting down all opposition groups within the Soviet Communist party. In December, at the 14th Soviet Communist Party Congress, Stalin wins approval of a new policy called “socialism in one country.” The USSR will no longer pursue world socialist revolution as its first priority. Leon Trotsky, Stalin’s main rival for power in the Soviet Union, favors the idea of international permanent revolution, called by some people Trotskyism. The picture shows Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin in Yalta in 1945 at the end of World War II.

No Room for Dessert by Hallie Durand

Oct17

Cybils nominee: Early Chapter Books. Nominated by Jama Rattigan. And here’s Jama’s interview with author Hallie Durand about her Dessert trilogy.

Dessert Schneider, the most important and firstborn child in the Schneider family, feels as if she’s been forgotten as her younger sister and two younger brothers get the lion’s share of the attention. But if Dessert can win the Thomas Edison Contest in her class at school for the invention that will improve people’s lives the most, she’s sure to get the attention that she craves.

Dessert is self-centered, attention-seeking, and highly competitive. She’s also funny, inventive, and real. Typical eight year old. I liked Dessert, even when I cringed a little at her grandiose plans and thoughts and her cockiness about winning the contest. Lack of self-confidence is NOT Dessert’s problem, until . . .

Z-baby’s going to love this one, and after she reads it, I’m planning to have her make a notebook of her own inventions. After all, as Mrs. Howdy Doody, Dessert’s teacher, says, “Thomas Edison filled three thousand five hundred notebooks with his ideas! Let your minds dance! Let your minds go crazy! Let your minds fly to the moon and back!”

*This book is nominated for a Cybils Award, and I am a judge for the first round thereof. However, no one paid me any money, and nobody knows which books will get to be finalists or which ones will get the awards. In other words, this review reflects my opinion and Z-baby’s and nothing else.

1925: Books and Literature

Oct16

Among the bestsellers and critically acclaimed books of 1925:
Gene Stratton Porter, The Keeper of the Bees
Sinclair Lewis, Arrowsmith
Anne Parrish, The Perennial Bachelor I assume this is the same Anne Parrish who had a Newbery Honor book in 1925 (see below). Her books won Newbery Honors twice more, in 1930 and in 1950. Yet, I’ve never seen anything by Ms. Parrish.

In the 1920s, Anne and her husband were browsing in a bookstore in Paris when she came upon a special children’s book. It was a well-worn edition of Jack Frost and Other Stories. She immediately showed it to her husband, remarking that the story had been one of her favorites as a little girl. Her husband opened the book and was stunned to read the inscription inside: “Anne Parrish, 209 N. Weber Street, Colorado Springs, Colorado.”

Fannie Farmer, ed., The Boston Cooking School Cook Book. First published in 1896, Fannie Farmer’s Cookbook became an American classic. It eventually contained 1,849 recipes.

“It is my wish that it may not only be looked upon as a compilation of tried and tested recipes, but that it may awaken an interest through its condensed scientific knowledge which will lead to deeper thought and broader study of what to eat.”

A. A. Milne, When We Were Very Young
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby My history and literature students are finishing up Mr. Fitzgerald’s story of the enigmatic Mr. Gatsby this week. Here’s a rather indicative conversation from the book:

Nick: “You’re a rotten driver. Either you ought to be more careful, or you oughtn’t to drive at all.”
Jordan: “I am careful.”
Nick: “No, you’re not.”
Jordan: “Well, other people are.”
Nick: “What’s that got to do with it?”
Jordan:”They’ll keep out of my way. It takes two to make an accident.”
Nick: “Suppose you meet someone just as careless as yourself?”
Jordan: “I hope I never will. I hate careless people. That’s why I like you.”

I wrote more about the deeply spiritual carelessness of Daisy and Tom and Jordan here.

Prosper Buranelli et al., The Cross Word Puzzle Books
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

The Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925 went to playwright George Bernard Shaw.

Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: So Big by Edna Ferber.
I’ve read So Big, and it’s a decent story. But I’m not sure it’s Pulitzer Prize material, anymore than Ferber’s fun, but highly inaccurate, novel of Texas, Giant. Giant was made into a 1956 movie starring Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean, and Rock Hudson.

1925 Newbery Medal Winner:
Tales from Silver Lands by Charles Finger. (Doubleday, 1925) I’ve tried to read this book, but honestly the “tales” from South America are rather dry and not too exciting.
Honor Books: (I wish I could find copies of these two. It would be fun to see what librarians in 1925 thought were “honor books.”)
Nicholas: A Manhattan Christmas Story by Annie Carroll Moore (Putnam)
The Dream Coach by Anne Parrish (Macmillan)

Nonfiction set in 1925:
The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race Against an Epidemic by Gay Salisbury & Laney Salisbury. Recommended by Heather J. at Age 30+ A Lifetime of Books.

Fiction set in 1925:
Greenery Street by Denis Mckail. Re-published in 2002 by Persephone Books. Recommended by Dani Torres at A Work in Progress.

1924: Arts and Entertainment

Oct16

On February 24, 1924, George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue premieres at An Experiment In Modern Music concert at Aeolian Hall, New York.

The 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris featured track and field athletes from all over the world such as Harold Abrahams of the UK, Eric Liddell from Scotland, Jackson Scholz from the United States, and Paavo Nurmi of Finland. The 1924 Olympics is the setting for the 1981 Academy Award-winning film, Chariots of Fire.

Sunday Salon: Love and Marriage

Oct16

The Sunday Salon.com

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP) — If leaders of Mexico City’s socialist democrat Party of the Democratic Revolution have their way, the city’s 2009 law legalizing gay “marriage” will be followed this year with temporary marriage licenses.

The minimum marriage contract would be for two years and could be renewed if the couple is happy, the bill’s co-author, Leonel Luna, told the Guardian newspaper. The licenses would include a pre-divorce agreement on the disposition of children and property if the couple decides to terminate the marriage.

“The proposal is, when the two-year period is up, if the relationship is not stable or harmonious, the contract simply ends,” Luna told the Guardian. “You wouldn’t have to go through the tortuous process of divorce.”

I wonder if one could write a dystopian/utopian novel about a society in which this kind of contract was the norm. What would a practice of moving every two years or so from one relationship to the next, always in search of that elusive “happiness”, do to people and families and societal stability? Would it be so very different from the society we’re living in now?

Why young Christians aren’t waiting anymore by Joe Blake.

“The article in Relevant magazine, entitled “(Almost) Everyone’s Doing It,” cited several studies examining the sexual activity of single Christians. One of the biggest surprises was a December 2009 study, conducted by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, which included information on sexual activity.

While the study’s primary report did not explore religion, some additional analysis focusing on sexual activity and religious identification yielded this result: 80 percent of unmarried evangelical young adults (18 to 29) said that they have had sex – slightly less than 88 percent of unmarried adults, according to the teen pregnancy prevention organization.”

So how is our culture very different from the Mexican socialist proposal that we legitimize short-term relationships and go on from there?

I still believe in marriage, life-long and for one man and one woman. However, if our culture has reached the point that this ideal is no longer practiced, even among a majority of professing Christians, what can we do to get the culture moving in a different direction?

Sociologically speaking, the one big difference – and it’s monstrous – between the biblical teaching and our culture is the arranged marriages of very young people. If you get married when you’re 13, you don’t have 15 years of temptation. ~Scott McKnight

I’m not suggesting, and neither is Mr. McKnight, that 13 year olds should be marrying. But what about seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen year olds? Why is it that eighteen year olds are old enough to join the army and old enough to vote, old enough to have sex, but not old enough to marry, according to cultural expectations?

We need stories, historical fiction, dystopian fiction and others, that explore the ramifications of these and other questions about marriage. If you are a writer, you have the power to move the conversation in our nation, not in a propagandistic way, but as a powerful by-product of the stories you choose to tell.

1924: Events and Inventions

Oct15

January 21, 1924. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, leader of the Soviet Union, dies at the age of 54. His death leaves the Soviet government with a power struggle: possible leaders include Leon Trotsky, general of the Red Army and Josef Stalin, general secretary of the COmmunist Party. Stalin immediately begins to purge (kill) his rivals to clear the way for his leadership.

April 6, 1924. Fascists win the elections in Italy with a â…” majority.

April 6-September 28, 1924. The first aerial circumnavigation of the world is conducted by a team of aviators of the United States Army Air Service. The trip takes 175 days, covering 27,340 miles, without crossing the equator into the southern hemisphere. Four planes left Seattle in April, and two of the four returned to Seattle in September to complete the trip.

'Mount Everest from base camp one' photo (c) 2007, Rupert Taylor-Price - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

June, 1924. During the 1924 British Mount Everest Expedition, George Mallory and his climbing partner Sandy Irvine both disappear somewhere high on the North-East ridge during their attempt to make the first ascent of the world’s highest mountain. Mallory is famously quoted as having replied to the question “Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?” with the retort “Because it’s there!”. Whether Mallory and Irvine reached Everest’s summit is unknown.

August, 1924. France and Belgium agree to withdraw their troops from the Ruhr within a year, and Germany promises to pay off the war debts it owes mostly to those two countries.

August 28, 1924. Georgia rises against the Soviet Union in a rebellion, in which several thousands die. The rebellion is unsuccessful.

September, 1924. Indian nationalist Mohandas Gandhi goes on a hunger strike to protest fighting between Hindus and Muslims in British India.

December, 1924. People in the United States can now use disposable paper tissues made by Kleenex to catch those winter sneezes.

'M31 - Andromeda Galaxy' photo (c) 2008, Jyrki Kymäläinen - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/

December 30, 1924. Astronomer Edwin Hubble announces that Andromeda, previously believed to be a nebula, is actually another galaxy, and that the Milky Way is only one of many such galaxies in the universe.