Five years ago today, on October 27, 2018, eleven congregants were killed by a gunman at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. In the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel, it seems worthy of looking back on this earlier tragedy. Words fail to express the horror of both events, and no one can undo the inhumanity of each.

The Pittsburgh gunman, who does not deserve to be named, was finally convicted and sentenced to death just this past August. Who knows how long the effects of the Hamas attack may go on.

I wrote a poem the day after the Pittsburgh attack centered around the Bar Mitzvah of a friend’s child that I attended there next day. All the details of the attack were still being gathered and a fact or two of mine turned out to be off, but the sentiment still weighs on me, particularly as the Middle East deals with the aftermath of this October 7.

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The iconic Sydney Opera House was dedicated on October 20, 1973 by Queen Elizabeth, fifty years ago today. The winning design for the facility was based on a 1957 sketch that invoked the image of sails that would house several performing arts facilities within flying concrete arched shells. It took years to translate the sketch to a structure that was economically and physically able to be constructed.

I had the good fortune to visit the Opera House several years ago and, unlike some famous landmarks, is as impressive in life as in photographs. It serves as the anchor for a beautiful waterfront and city center and the wonderfully friendly city of Sydney. The harbor is one of the best in the world, with a fairly narrow entrance from which boats wind their way to a wide area busy with ferries and pleasure craft. the Opera House serves as the backdrop for the start of the annual Sydney-Hobart sailing race that begins each December 26, known as Boxing Day.

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On August 28, 1963, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom ended with MLK Jr’s speech from the Lincoln Memorial that culminated with the “I have a dream” climax for which it became known. Accounts from the day tell that Mahalia Jackson shouted to King from the stage to “tell them about the dream,” prompting him to stray from his prepared text and extemporize the most famous portion of his address.

I was nine years old that day, but had followed the march on the evening news and realized that I was witnessing history unfold. On this particular day, our black housekeeper with whom I had a bond, watched the events unfold on our television while ironing, instead of the daytime soap operas of the era. The photo above shows the event as I remember it, a massive crowd of blacks and whites applauding with press cameras capturing the moment in the black and white oeuvre of film from the era. I lived in the South then, as I always have, but couldn’t quite grasp the suppression of voting and employment rights they were fighting to end.

Sixty years later, much has changed and too much seems to remain the same. What I can’t grasp now is that many of my generation that witnessed the march and events of the 60’s have grown as intransigent and hateful as those that governed the South then. Some issues may have changed, but fundamentally, voting and employment rights are still seen as a zero sum game in which it seems more important to stand atop a crumbling world than to make it better for all.

Even in elementary school, we studied King’s speech alongside those of Lincoln and Kennedy, and I still believe that aspirations and the words that inspire them matter and can change minds and history. I visited South Africa this year and marvel at the courage of so many there that mirrored that of John Lewis a strong and gentle man, Andy Young, and others here. Free elections there are now celebrated but economic inequality remains for them a distant dream.

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Secretariat completed horse racing’s Triple Crown on this day, June 9, fifty years ago, in 1973. He was the first three-year old horse to win the crown in 25 years and did so commandingly, contending to be the greatest race horse of all time.

There is a long history of misuse, if not abuse, in the sport of horse racing, but in its purest the sight of a horse proudly speeding away is inspiring, and Secretariat captured that spirit. He was large and also larger than life, and according to those around him, seemed to know it. He was playful and proud, lending a sense that animals can, in their own way, be sentient.

Secretariat’s owners had to syndicate him before racing in his third year, due to estate tax issues following the death of the owner of his stable. Though he’d had a mixed record up to that point, the move allowed Penny Chenery to retain ownership of “Big Red” as he’d come to be known. His breeding results never led to a champion of his caliber, but then he was unique.

Secretariat died in 1989 of a hoof disease. Before burial, they measured his heart and found it to be two and a half times that of a normal horse. Anatomically, this certainly played a role in his stamina, but it also symbolized something special in a truly great horse.

In recent news, a number of horses died or were put down at Churchill Downs this season. An investigation is pending and may lead to better care for horses in the future.

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The first modern report of the sighting of the Loch Ness Monster occurred on this day, May 2 in 1933. Records of sightings date back to 565 CE, but grew more common after this event and the building of a road along the Loch Ness shore. The “Surgeon’s Photo” above from that era has been largely discredited and even the doctor who took it refused to have his name associated with it.

Hoaxes abounded over the years that followed, lending support for the community, if not for the existence of the creature. I have visited the lake and can attest to its stark beauty. I did not see the beast, though I secretly wanted to as do many of the tourists that now float up and down the lake while listening to guides’ tales of their beloved creature.

In truth, the lake is deep, murky from the nearby peat that leaches into the feeding waters, and even modern technology cannot lend much credence or doubt to the legend. Tales of dragons and such are cherished throughout Great Britain, just as are leprechauns in Ireland. It seems we want to believe in lonely, misunderstood beings, perhaps because they remind us of ourselves.

Some time ago I wrote the prose poem below which appears in my book “At Sea.” This is a good day to share it.

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On April 3, 1973, fifty years ago today, Martin Cooper, then of Motorola, made the first cellular phone call to Joe Engel of Bell Labs, marking the beginning of a revolution in communications. The event was noted here and there, mostly as a curiosity, but led directly to the ubiquitous mobile phones carried today by over seven billion people.

The original phone pictured above was still in use when the first networks began rolling out around the US around 1983. It was affectionately called “the brick.” As a telephone company lawyer, I was issued one so I could be reached at any time, a negative consequence we all experience today. Because of battery limitations and spotty coverage, I soon also received a three-watt version wired into my car.

Today’s phones can last all day and operate on a milliwatt or less, and thanks first to Apple, have data as well as voice coverage, giving email, text, streaming and Internet service wherever you are.

Cell phones themselves owe their existence ultimately to the invention of the transistor in 1947 by members of Bell Labs, before which electrical devices operated using vacuum tubes to amplify and manipulate analog signals. These were too fragile and consumed too much power for practical mobile uses.

A bit of trivia, which I once heard and still believe to be true is that when AT&T was broken up in 1984, AT&T, which retained its long distance network, chose to cede its mobile networks to the regional operating companies because they never expected mobile phone users to exceed a few hundred thousand. Whether that rumor was true or not, AT&T changed its tune and focus after a time and reacquired the national cellular network we know today.

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The poet Robert Frost‘s poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” was first published on this day, March 7, 1923, in the New Republic. Both it and the magazine have stood up well in the century that has passed. Frost said the poem came to him while watching the sun rise after working on another all night. He is remembered for a number of well-loved poems that many have put to memory, but he called this one “his best bid for remembrance.”

Like a classical composer, Frost used the tools of poetry so masterfully that a reader could fail to appreciate his craft in writing, but his use of meter and rhyme were subtle, simple and sure. You can follow the link above to trace the way he weaves his rhyme scheme through this one work to end with the couplet:

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

As I was thinking of this poem, I heard that a particular board game, Monopoly, is also a century old today. Adam Smith might consider it the greater creation of the two, but Frost’s gift is the greater remembrance for me.

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Pharaoh Tutankhamen‘s tomb was opened 100 years ago on this day, February 16, in 1923 by a team led by Howard Carter. The Boy King, 1341 BCE – 1323 BCE, ruled from age nine to nineteen and died apparently suddenly, but was carefully entombed with riches and a sarcophagus with a death mask pictured here.

Other Egyptian royals’ tombs had been raided over the millennia, leaving Tut’s as one of the first to be discovered still preserved, with its artifacts now in the Cairo Egyptian Museum. Their stunning beauty has been documented a number of times in National Geographic articles, and the cause of his death has been studied and speculated over since its discovery. Scans seem to indicate he may have had foot disease or abnormalities, supported perhaps by the presence of canes among the items found in the tomb. One suggestion has been that he was mauled in a hippopotamus hunt, due to rib damage and the history of royals hunting the species.

There is persistent speculation that any who disturbed the tomb were cursed. Howard Carter and his patron, Lord Carnarvon, both died within four months of the opening. In all ten members of the expedition died within the following ten years.

Carter and others have speculated that Tut’s tomb is actually an antechamber to another, more important royal, perhaps even that of Queen Nefertiti. Overshadowing all that, at least in pop culture, has been the hit song and comedy routine by Steve Martin, a signature act he performed in the late 1970s. Not to be outdone, the Bangles recorded their hit, Walk Like an Egyptian.

A century is a long time to hold the attention of the public, much longer than Tutankhamen lived. In that sense he lives on today through his memory and in the mysteries that still surround him.

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Hank Williams died in the early hours of New Year’s Day in 1953, seventy years ago today. If you have any relationship to Country music, you certainly know his music and the story of his life and death at the age of 29. He recorded 55 top ten songs, twelve of which became number one hits. To country music aficionados, this night in 1953 was the day the music died in the back seat of his powder blue Cadillac somewhere on a highway near Oak Hill, West Virginia. The Atlanta Journal Constitution published an interesting interview in 2013 of his driver that night, Charles Carr, though the story continues to hold its mysteries.

Williams’ songs were both simple and profound and have been covered by countless artists ranging from Bob Dylan to Linda Ronstadt and continue to be recorded by many to this day. His achingly most beautiful lines ring to me of the poetry of Robert Burns gleaned from the desolate countryside of Scotland or, in Hank’s case, the rural Southland. He penned lines that seem fresh today:

The silence of a falling star / Lights up a purple sky / And as I wonder where you are / I’m so lonesome I could cry.

I wrote some lines myself about Williams some years ago, and this seems an appropriate time to share them here.

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The Vietnam Memorial was dedicated on this day, November 13 in 1982. Its black granite walls have the names of 58,320 American veterans. Wikipedia’s page on the memorial discusses at length the detailed process of gathering and engraving the names and is worth reading. Thirty-eight names are included on the memorial who may not have died in Vietnam, including 14 the New York Times located and interviewed.

While in D.C. on business years ago, I had several free hours on a beautiful afternoon and visited the memorial. Out of curiosity, I searched at one of the kiosks there for my family name. Two were listed, one whom I didn’t recognize, and a second who bore my name, not at all a common one, though he had a slight difference in his middle name. I located and made a pencil carbon tracing of his engraved marking and keep it at my desk still.

I had become eligible for the draft in the final year before the end of the war, and the number for my birthday was high enough for me not to face what my namesake did. Seeing his name on the wall though was a chilling reminder of the many lives sacrificed and the effect of the war on the country. I researched the soldier online and, in time, made contact with his brother, who still marks the day of his death, May 17, now 56 years ago, as now do I.

I wrote the poem below to help process my experience at the memorial that day, though I still am saddened and chilled by it all. We all and our country lost so much there and must never forget.

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