"This is how history is made..."

How Christian Were the Founders?
By RUSSELL SHORTO, The New York Times, February 14, 2010

LAST MONTH, A WEEK before the Senate seat of the liberal icon Edward M. Kennedy fell into Republican hands, his legacy suffered another blow that was perhaps just as damaging, if less noticed. It happened during what has become an annual spectacle in the culture wars.

Over two days, more than a hundred people — Christians, Jews, housewives, naval officers, professors; people outfitted in everything from business suits to military fatigues to turbans to baseball caps — streamed through the halls of the William B. Travis Building in Austin, Tex., waiting for a chance to stand before the semicircle of 15 high-backed chairs whose occupants made up the Texas State Board of Education. Each petitioner had three minutes to say his or her piece.

“Please keep César Chávez” was the message of an elderly Hispanic man with a floppy gray mustache.

“Sikhism is the fifth-largest religion in the world and should be included in the curriculum,” a woman declared.

Following the appeals from the public, the members of what is the most influential state board of education in the country, and one of the most politically conservative, submitted their own proposed changes to the new social-studies curriculum guidelines, whose adoption was the subject of all the attention — guidelines that will affect students around the country, from kindergarten to 12th grade, for the next 10 years. Gail Lowe — who publishes a twice-a-week newspaper when she is not grappling with divisive education issues — is the official chairwoman, but the meeting was dominated by another member. Don McLeroy, a small, vigorous man with a shiny pate and bristling mustache, proposed amendment after amendment on social issues to the document that teams of professional educators had drawn up over 12 months, in what would have to be described as a single-handed display of archconservative political strong-arming.

McLeroy moved that Margaret Sanger, the birth-control pioneer, be included because she “and her followers promoted eugenics,” that language be inserted about Ronald Reagan’s “leadership in restoring national confidence” following Jimmy Carter’s presidency and that students be instructed to “describe the causes and key organizations and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.” The injection of partisan politics into education went so far that at one point another Republican board member burst out in seemingly embarrassed exasperation, “Guys, you’re rewriting history now!” Nevertheless, most of McLeroy’s proposed amendments passed by a show of hands.

( Read More )

---

F, 18, Seeks Victorian Gentleman
By PAM EPSTEIN, The New York Times, February 14, 2010

VALENTINE’S DAY 2010: Singles search for love by creating profiles on dating Web sites or posting ads on Craigslist or connecting to a far-flung network via social media. It sounds so ... futuristic. Except it’s not.

Americans have been writing and reading personals — anonymous love notes, laments of missed connections, offers of marriage — for generations. In the 19th century, as cities experienced enormous population growth, men and women invented new ways to find partners in an increasingly atomized world. Amorous advertisements abounded in newspapers around the country; the ads became so popular that one letter-writing manual even offered model replies.

Victorian critics derided the mostly male advertisers as wicked seducers, but the ads were a favorite among readers, who found them titillating glimpses into the hearts of strangers. Though the ads below, taken from the pages of The New York Herald, are certainly less racy than what readers might find in publications today, they also feel surprisingly familiar, reminding us, perhaps, that we are not so different from our 19th-century counterparts — at least when it comes to looking for love.

•

If the young lady wearing the pink dress, spotted fur cape and muff, had light hair, light complexion and blue eyes, who was in company with a lady dressed in black, that I passed about 5 o’clock on Friday evening in South Seventh Street, between First and Second, Williamsburg, L.I., will address a line to Waldo, Williamsburg Post Office, she will make the acquaintance of a fine young man.

Jan. 19, 1862

( Read More )