Monument

 From 1935 by artist Kwase Hasui.  Via Alexander's Cartographer. 

 

Kwase Hasui (1883-1957) was considered Japan's leading printmaker and became very popular in the United States during the 1930s.  Some other examples of his work, from Wikipedia.

 

Not All Disrupters Are The Same

It's said at the end of this post from Assistant Village Idiot, one of the few long time bloggers who has not gone off the rails over the past decade. AVP also makes an astute observation about what might explain the findings he refers to.

RFKJr, among many other myths that he believes*, thinks psychiatric meds are contributing to the high-profile shootings we've been seeing, and thinks we should "look into it." Well, this is only one study in Sweden, but it does have an N=247,420 with robust results. Prescribing ADHD medication resulted in lower adverse "real world outcomes" such as self harm, traffic crashes, and crime. Interestingly, the effect seems to be weakening over time as the number of prescriptions increases. 

In this longitudinal population-based study of 247 420 individuals using ADHD medication between 2006 and 2020, we consistently found ADHD medication to be associated with lower rates of self-harm, unintentional injury, traffic crashes, and crime across all analyzed time periods, age groups, and sexes. However, magnitude of associations between ADHD medication use and lower risk of unintentional injury, traffic crashes, and crime appear to have attenuated over time, coinciding with an increase in prescription prevalence during the same period. The weakening trends for unintentional injury and traffic crashes were not fully explained by changes in age and sex distribution of the medication users, whereas the trend for crime was no longer statistically significant. These findings suggest that the declining strength of the associations of ADHD medication and real-world outcomes could be attributed to the expansion of prescriptions to a broader group of individuals having fewer symptoms or impairments.

My guess on this reveals one of my biases, but it may turn out to be true in this case. A broad range of interventions pick off the low hanging fruit at first, whether this be in medicine, education, economics, or crime. As this success is experienced by the doctors, politicians, or teachers, they try the solution on a wider group that less-obviously fits the the category and surprise! It doesn't work as well on every Tom, Dick, and Harry. The Law of Diminishing Returns. I used to see this in mental health, where an intervention like ECT's would work spectacularly well on some people with depression, but treatment-refractory patients of many diagnoses would eventually end up at the "shock treatment" door, because patient, family, and prescribers were all frustrated and willing to try less-likely interventions.

*The current fallback argument by his supporters are that the CDC and the medical establishment badly needs disruption and he is supplying disruption, so shut up, you liberal weenie. I find this unconvincing. Just because an institution needs to be disrupted does not mean that any particular disruptor is on the right track. Not all disruptions are equally valuable. Saruman wanted to disrupt Mordor, after all.  

RFK Jr is very glib, a plaintiffs personal injury lawyer, and a believer that conspiracies underlay every aspect of society.  There are no honest disagreements.  You are either good or evil.  Observing his technique in interviews over the decades you see him deploying the same approach against interviewers who don't know the details about which he is speaking.  He overwhelms the interviewer by spewing out a long list of studies and findings.  The problem is he starts by fairly accurately referring to two studies, then cites 3 more where he misstates the conclusions, and wraps it up with 4 studies summarized accurately but where there are a dozen other studies with better methodology that reach opposite conclusions none of which he cites.  He does this over and over again. 

The agency he oversees needs disruption and reform but he is the wrong person to do it.  He is not about open scientific inquiry.  When appointing committee members or authorizing studies they are designed to reach the conclusion he wants.

UPDATE:  In a September 5 piece in the Wall St Journal, former CDC Director Susan Monarez (hand-picked for the role by RFK Jr, who fired her after 29 days), writes that at a August 25 meeting with the HHS Secretary:

 I was told to pre-approve the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled
with people who have publicly ex-pressed antivaccine rhetoric. That panel’s next meeting is

scheduled for Sept. 18-19. It is imperative that the panel’s recommendations aren’t
rubber-stamped but instead are rigorously and scientifically reviewed before being accepted

or rejected.

A Congressional committee should ask Monarez to testify under oath in more detail about her assertion. 

La Roque Gageac

La Roque Gageac is a small riverside village along the Dordogne River which we first visited in 1977.  Our most recent stop was in 2022 and we hope to return next spring.  We stay in the bastide town of Domme on a cliff on the other side of the river, about a 10 minute drive away (which you can see center-right in the first photo below).

La Roque has only one street on which you can find restaurants, gift shops, and a hotel. Behind are a couple of rows of houses with narrow pathways and all back up by a cliff, pockmarked with caves used as a refuge by the inhabitants during the Viking raids of the 9th and 10th centuries and when other disturbances occurred during the following centuries.

 

The Cisco Kid Goes To War

The Cisco Kid was a half hour TV series broadcast from 1950 to 1956 of which I have a vague recollection watching as a youngster.  Starring Duncan Renaldo as the Kid and Leo Carrillo as his sidekick Pancho, as Robin Hood-type outlaws, it was based on a 1907 short story by O. Henry.  Apparently it was the first TV series to be filmed in color though, at the time, I didn't know it because we, like everyone else, had a black and white TV (I never owned a color set until the mid-1980s).

The Cisco Kid is also the title of a million selling hit song from 1973 by the band War, which commenced with these lyrics:

The Cisco Kid was a friend of mine
The Cisco Kid was a friend of mine
He drink whiskey, Poncho drink the wine

 

War began as a group of musicians in Southern California.  Linking up with singer Eric Burdon (formerly of The Animals) they produced the hit, Spill The Wine, in 1970.  Splitting from Burdon the following year, War went out to have a series of hit albums and singles during the 1970s.

The Cisco Kid is from The World Is A Ghetto, the best selling album of 1973, which also contains the beautiful title song.  War had a very tight rhythm section, which with catchy melodies and lyrics, resulted in a lot of chart success.

Other songs worth a listen by War include Slippin' Into Darkness, Low Rider, and Why Can't We Be Friends (with the immortal lyric, "I know you're working for the CIA/They wouldn't have you in the MAF-I-A").

A lot of the riffs and rhythms in War's songs have been covered and sampled by many other artists and used in movies and other shows. 

Outback

Chris Arnade writes of his travels, mostly walking, through the world, with a focus on avoiding downtowns and tourist spots, observing how life is lived for "regular" and particularly in the U.S., by those who are struggling.  His substack is Chris Arnade Walks The World.  It provides a very different perspective than your usual travelogue.  He's also the author of Dignity: Seeking Respect In Back Row America.

Chris recently returned from Australia and just published Alice Springs, Townsville and Crossing the Australian Outback.

The outback is like an extreme version of America's flyover country, and most Australians literally do only fly over it. When I announced my original Sydney-to-Townsville-to-Alice Springs bus route, I was struck by how many people had strong negative opinions about both places, especially Alice Springs, despite never visiting them. I began jotting down their responses, and by the time I left Sydney, over a hundred people had warned me against going, about ten were neutral or positive, and only five had actually been to the outback.

This was like the cartoonish US stereotype of an out-of-touch coastal urban elite, but in this case, the opinions weren’t confined to the elite, but to almost everyone of every class who lives within fifty miles of the dense (for Australia) southeastern coast.

On Alice Springs:

Since everything I was told had been proven wrong, including that the bus ride would be a little slice of hell, I arrived in Alice Springs close to convinced it would be a little slice of heaven, a festival of desert felicity, complete with kumbaya circles of Aboriginals dancing and singing with their now reformed and newly tolerant colonial masters. Or maybe I was going mad, and delusional, from thirty hours without sleep in the unforgiving landscape.

It however wasn't a little slice of heaven, at all, and by the end of the first day I realized that the only thing that everyone who had warned me, had gotten completely correct, was that Alice Springs is, to use Australians favorite vernacular2, a shithole. A shithole of majestic landscapes, and wonderful people, but still a shithole. 

Read it to find out why. 

An Irreconcilable Conflict Of Principles

"His Majesty's Government have thus been faced with an irreconcilable conflict of principles... For the Jews the essential point of principle is the creation of a sovereign Jewish State. For the Arabs, the essential point of principle is to resist to the last the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine". 

- Ernest Bevin(1), British Foreign Minister, February 1947, explaining to the House of Commons why Britain decided to terminate the Mandate for Palestine(2) and refer the matter to the United Nations. 

I recently learned of this statement for the first time watching a Podcast by Fleur Hassan-Nahoum(3) in which she interviews Israeli politician Einat Wilf.  I've been able to confirm the accuracy of the quote and the exact language.

 

The first 6 minutes of the podcast are invaluable because it provides a succinct explanation of the reason for the conflict, though I recommend listening to the entire thing. 

 

 

Einat Wolf is a former Labor Party politician, serving as an advisor to Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres in the 1990s and later as a member of the Knesset.  In 2011 she left Labor and is now unaffiliated politically, though she opposes Benjamin Netanyahu.  In 2012 I attended a talk by Wilf at Yale University.

 

The reason I found the first part of the podcast particularly interesting is her discussion of how, as she describes it, her "hypothesis" of how to achieve a two-state solution proved to be incorrect, and what she now believes the correct hypothesis to be which, as she states, is encapsulated in Bevin's 1947 statement, from a time before Israel existed and before there were any refugees. 

 

Her original hypothesis led her to support the Oslo Accords and the Camp David peace proposal and other two state peace proposals, which were ultimately rejected by the Palestinians.   The events of the 21st century have led her to conclude that the Palestinian cause is based on the total negation of Israel, rather than being willing to accept a two-state solution, refusing to allow Israel to exist as a Jewish state, under any terms.

 

Wilf's point has only been reinforced since October 7, 2023.  The Western academic, progressive, and NGO mob supporting Hamas are not doing so in support of a two-state solution.  They want Israel eliminated.  They are not hiding it.

 

Her transformation since the 90s is similar to mine.  Realizing the risks of Oslo but optimistic that the peace process would succeed.  In retrospect, Oslo was a disaster for Israel because it got the peace process backwards, believing that small "confidence-building" measures would lead to peace, rather than insisting that the big and fundamental disputes be resolved before proceeding to confidence building measures that would eventually allow a full and lasting settlement to be implemented.

 

Nonetheless, the 2000 Camp David talks, the unilateral withdrawal from South Lebanon the same year, and in 2005 from Gaza, along with Prime Minister's 2008 peace proposal, were all attempts to reach peace.  All were rejected and instead there was the Second Intifada from 2001-3 in which 1,000 Israelis were killed and the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2006.

 

The result was the political destruction of what was once a political powerful Israeli peace camp.  At this point there is not much difference between Israeli parties regarding national security.  While there is much internal disagreement over how to bring the current war in Gaza to a close, virtually no one in Israel thinks a two-state solution along the lines proposed at Camp David is practical any more.  I'll add that I have no idea what the right strategy is regarding Gaza at this point.  My only observation is that Netanyahu's strategy seems increasingly more focused on maintaining his political coalition than in ending this phase of the conflict.

Wilf's argument in her recent book, The War Of Return, is that the actions of the United Nations, and of Western Nations, and the peculiar nature of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has led to the inability to resolve the conflict.  UNRWA created a unique category of refugee for Palestinians, unlike that of the tens of millions of other refugees around the world created in the wake of WW2.  UNRWA has become a facilitator of Palestinian rejectionism.  

 

The only way to create even a chance, however slim, for a peaceful solution is to dissolve UNRWA, and for the Western nations to stop trying to solve the conflict and leave it to the Israelis and Arabs to work it out if they can.  

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(1)  Ernest Bevin was a socialist and became foreign minister in the first Labour cabinet at the end of WW2.  A fervent anti-communist he was instrumental in the establishment of the Marshall Plan and in the creation of NATO.  He was also an anti-Zionist.

 

(2)  The Mandate for Palestine was granted to Britain at the peace conference after WW1.  It encompassed the territories of today's Jordan, Israel, West Bank, and Gaza.  In 1922, Britain split the Mandate into two sections.  One, constituting the bulk of the territory, became Jordan and the British installed a Hashemite Arab monarch.  Jews were forbidden from living in this portion of the mandate.  The other parcel was what is known as Palestine.  During the period between the establishment of the mandate and 1948, Jews living in this region referred to themselves as Palestinians or Palestinian Jews, while the non-Jews referred to themselves as Arabs.  In his 1947 speech Bevin refers to Arabs, not Palestinians.

 

(3)  Fleur Hassan-Nahoum is a Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem.  She is descended from a Moroccan Jewish family and is an opponent of Benjamin Netanyahu.

Dyin' Crapshooter Blues

How you want to go?

Eight crapshooters to be my pallbearers

Let 'em be veiled down in black

I want nine men going to the graveyard

Eight men coming back 

Blind Willie McTell (1898-1959) recorded his version of Dyin' Crapshooter Blues in 1949, but it was only released with some of his other recordings in 1972 on the album Atlanta Twelve String.  The song features his distinctive voice and playing.

 

Thematically, Crapshooter Blues, bears some resemblance to St James Infirmary Blues.  In turn, Bob Dylan adapted the melody of St James for one of his finest songs, Blind Willie McTell, with its refrain, "No one can sing the blues, like Blind Willie McTell", interspersed with vivid imagery in the verses.

 

Blind Willie McTell was born William Samuel McTier in 1898 or 1901 at Thomson, Georgia.  As a youngster he was part of the Great Migration of African-Americans to the north, growing up in Detroit.  Along the way he learned to play the blues on a 12-string guitar.  Like many of the bluesmen of the era, he had trouble finding a market for his music, as well as his own personal troubles, and by the 1950s was reduced to playing for spare change on Atlanta street corners.  

His best known song today is Statesboro Blues which was for decades a staple of Allman Brothers shows.  

Declarations

The US government acquiring an equity interest in Intel is a very, very bad idea.

The President has a Constitutional obligation to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed".  The TikTok ban was passed on a bipartisan basis by Congress and its constitutionality upheld by the Supreme Court.  The President's refusal to execute the ban, despite the clear statutory language, along with his most recent action establishing a White House TikTok account, is a violation of that obligation.  It is no better than the Biden administration's failure to enforce of immigration laws and its violations of the Civil Rights Act.

I have no opinion about Cracker Barrel's new logo.  I last ate there in the 90s. 

I See You

I know you
Met before, seventh floor
First World War
I know you

From Fifth Dimension, the third album by The Byrds, released in July 1966.  The album was the second of the three pioneering musical ventures the band was to undertake during its career.  The first, in the spring of 1965, was the creation of folk rock, with Dylan's Mr Tambourine Man.

Fifth Dimension heralded the advent of psychedelic music in the year before the Summer of Love, with songs like Eight Miles High, 5D (How is it that I could come out to here/ and be still floating?), Why, What's Happening ?!?!, and I See You.  Though the album was somewhat of a mishmash, also including traditional folk tunes like Wild Mountain Thyme and John Riley, along with the novelty tune, Mr Spaceman, it was clear we were entering a new musical era.  

The third twist was with the band's sixth studio album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo, released in August 1968.  Though The Byrds and some other American bands had flirted with country music, Sweetheart of the Rodeo was the first album by a rock band to fully embrace the country sound and was the launching pad for the emergence of country rock with groups like the early phase of The Eagles. 

At 15 I thought I See You, with its far out lyrics and McGuinn's weird guitar, was pretty cool. 

Moonlight Graham

Archibald Wright Graham died on this date, sixty years ago in Chisholm, Minnesota.  Graham, better known to most as Moonlight and in Chisholm as Doc, came to wide attention as a character in WP Kinsella's novel Shoeless Joe, and the 1989 film based on his book, Field of Dreams.

(Archibald "Moonlight" Graham, from wikipedia)

I recently caught Field of Dreams on TV.  It remains highly rewatchable.  If you haven't seen it, I won't describe the plot because it makes the movie sound ridiculous, while it is really wonderful (and ridiculous at times).  The last scene always moves me. And it is about much more than baseball.
 

I already knew that the real Archie Graham played in the outfield for two innings in a June 1905 game after being called up from the minors to join John McGraw's New York Giants.  It was his only major league appearance and he never got a chance to bat.  Graham (Burt Lancaster) tells the story in Field of Dreams.  In the 1970s, author WP Kinsella ran across a mention of Graham while perusing the Baseball Encyclopedia, was captured by his brief career and nickname, and included him as a character in Shoeless Joe.  Graham reportedly garnered the nickname Moonlight because he was "fast as a flash".

What I had not realized was how closely the fictionalized version of Moonlight Graham in the book and movie was to the real Archibald Graham.

In the movie, Graham's one appearance with the Giants takes place in 1922.  He later retires from baseball and moves to Chisholm, Minnesota, becoming a doctor and dying in 1972.  Doc Graham, as he is known, is a beloved figure in that small town, with a sterling reputation, and devoted to his wife Alicia, who always wears blue.  Doc always walks with an umbrella.  In one scene, Terrence Mann (James Earl Jones) interviews older townsfolk about Doc Graham and they tell endearing stories of him.  Terrence and Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) also go to the local newspaper where a reporter reads to them from Doc Graham's obituary.

It turns out the real Archibald Graham was a college graduate, unusual in baseball in those days, and received his medical degree from the University of Maryland in 1905, the same year he played for the Giants.  After a couple of more years in the minor leagues he moved to Chisholm in 1909, because he was suffering from a respiratory condition and heard the climate in the Iron Range mining town could help him.  The town immediately to the south of Chisholm is Hibbing, where Robert Zimmerman (Bob Dylan) grew up.  Graham opened a medical practice, a few years later becoming the school system doctor, a role he remained in until 1960, along with being the team doctor for all of the school sports teams. He married Alicia Madden, who always wore blue, and he always carried an umbrella.  Doc Graham died in 1965 and Alicia in 1981. The anecdotes used in the movie are from the life of the real Graham, and the reporter in the film is reading from his actual obituary.

From the Chisholm Free Press & Tribune (1965)

"And there were times when children could not afford eyeglasses or milk or
clothing. Yet no child was ever denied these essentials because in the
background there was always Dr. Graham. Without any fanfare or publicity,
the glasses or the milk or the ticket to the ballgame found their way into
the child's pocket." [This was the portion read in Field of Dreams]

From a 2005 article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

While still new in Chisholm, he grew sweet on Alicia Madden, a
schoolteacher. She was a farmer's daughter from Rochester, and they married
in 1915.

They never had children. Instead, they showered their affection on every
child in town -- he as the full-time doctor for the public schools for more
than 40 years, she as the director of countless community plays.

They built a house that still stands in southeast Chisholm, on the fringe of
a neighborhood known as Pig Town, for the livestock kept by the hardscrabble
immigrant miners' families.

"That was Doc," said Bob McDonald, who grew up in Chisholm and has coached
high school basketball there for 44 years. "He and Alicia could have lived
up with the high and mighty on Windy Hill, but they chose to be among the
common people."

McDonald remembers a wiry, athletic man, dapper in an ever-present black hat
and black trench coat, walking everywhere and always swinging an umbrella.
Yes, he said, Alicia did always wear blue.

On the opening night of all of her plays, Graham would sit in the same seat
in the back of the high school auditorium, a dozen roses in his lap,
Ponikvar said.

People were poor, but schools used mining company taxes to meet needs. Under
Doc's care, kids got free eyeglasses, toothbrushes and medical care. He
lectured them on nutrition, inoculated them, rode their team buses, made
20-year charts of their blood pressure, swabbed their sore throats, made
house calls if they stayed home sick.

He bought apartment houses but charged rock-bottom rents, and no rent to a
single mother and her eight children, Ponikvar remembers.
"Doc became a legend," she wrote when he died. "He was the champion of the
oppressed. Never did he ask for money or fees."

Below is a preview (narrated by Vin Scully!) of a Mayo Clinic film about Doc Graham's collaboration with the clinic on a groundbreaking study of blood pressure in children.

All Possess Alike Liberty Of Conscience

Moses Seixas was a man with a plan in the summer of 1790. Forty six years old, the son of Portuguese Jews who emigrated to Rhode Island, Moses was warden of Newport’s Tauro Synagogue. President George Washington was making his first visit to Rhode Island, and Moses was determined to use the occasion to obtain express acknowledgement of the enfranchisement of American Jews under the new Constitution.

Washington’s visit also had a plan behind it. The prior year, he had undertaken a lengthy visit to the northern states as part of his strategy of drawing the new nation together and creating more popular support for the newly formed Federal government (he would tour the southern states in 1791). Rhode Island was not part of that tour, because it had yet to ratify the Constitution. The recalcitrant state, under pressure from the new federal government and neighboring states, along with the promise of a visit from Washington and Vice-President Thomas Jefferson, became the last of the original 13 states to ratify on May 29, 1790.

Sexias was to get what he wanted from his letter, but the President’s response expressed additional thoughts that are worth reflecting upon today.

On August 17, 1790 Moses sent a letter to the President, welcoming him to Newport on behalf of “the children of the stock of Abraham“, expressing their happiness in having the “invaluable rights of free Citizens“, and adding:

“we now with a deep sense of gratitude to the Almighty disposer of all events behold a Government, erected by the Majesty of the People – a Government, which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance – but generously affording to all Liberty of conscience, and immunities of Citizenship.”

The President responded the following day, echoing the warden’s phrasing but adds his own distinctive sentiments:

“The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United states, which give to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”

Much of the commentary on the letter by historians focuses on the passage that the Government “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance“, citing its importance for the concept of religious liberty, but its significance is deeper in its link to America’s unique founding principles. It is found in two sentences which do not have a counterpart in the Sexias letter. The first:

“It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights.”

The passage expresses two concepts:

First, the American version of “tolerance” is not something bestowed by a dominant group, or individual, upon other groups, because that kind of tolerance is revocable upon the discretion of the dominant group or individual. Bestowed “tolerance” was the concept used in most other societies in that age (and still used in many parts of the world), but in Washington’s parlance “tolerance” is that which we owe to each other as equals. In other “tolerant” societies of the time, the Jewish Community would be considered supplicants; in Washington’s they are equals.  In other words, tolerance is a mutual obligation, because it is a sign of equality.  It is that sense of mutuality that is foundational to this nation.

Second, the source of what we owe to each other as equals are our “inherent natural rights“. These rights are not created by the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. It’s the other way around – these rights predate those documents and are a source for the text and ideas behind them. Specifically, the Constitution is not a document describing the rights of citizens – those inherent natural rights are so broad as to exceed any attempt to catalogue them in a document. Rather, the Constitution is a delineation of the specific powers delegated by the citizens, who hold those inherent rights, to the government in order for it to perform certain designated functions.

It was 25 year old James Madison who first pointed out how these concepts worked together in May 1776, during the debate on Virginia’s new state constitution. The draft constitution contained a Declaration of Rights, including a clause on religious liberty drafted by George Mason, providing that “all men should enjoy the fullest toleration in the exercise of religion“. Madison objected to the use of the word “toleration” because it implied toleration was a gift from government rather than an inherent natural right. Mason agreed and the draft was amended to read “all men are entitled to the full and free exercise” of religion. This approach is now embodied in the First Amendment our Constitution, not coincidentally authored by Madison:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

As for Washington, his views were not something newly formulated in 1790. In 1775, shortly after the Continental Congress named him commander of its military forces, he approved a plan to invade Canada. The civilian population of Canada, which the British had taken from France only twelve years prior, was almost exclusively Catholic, a religion detested by most American Protestants of that era. On September 14, 1775, Washington sent instructions to Benedict Arnold, commanding the American expedition about to start its epic campaign through the backwoods of Maine to Quebec. He directed Arnold to respect the religious beliefs of the Canadians. This, in and of itself, was not remarkable – doing so was wise strategy when the Americans were trying to get the Canadians to join them in the revolt against Britain. It was the way Washington expresses himself that is striking:

“While we are Contending for own own Liberty, we should be very cautious of violating the Rights of Conscience in others; ever considering that God alone is the Judge of the Hearts of Men and to him only in this Case they are answerable”

The second significant sentence in Washington's response to the Jewish congregation:

For happily the Government of the United states, which give to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”

In this passage, the President emphasizes the duty of every American is to be a good citizen by supporting the new federal government. Thought the letter does not refer specifically to the Constitution, Washington had  expressed that this was the underlying purpose of his state visits, and he seized every opportunity to promote it. The Constitution, not a common religion, was to bind all citizens together.  However, if you read more on Washington and many of the other Founders, what underlay all of this was a common sense of morality.  That duty of the citizen was not absolute, rather Washington's expression of that duty presupposes the government would act in a moral way that deserved the support of its citizens.  But not only the government.  As John Adams would write:

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

Both letters are worthy of a full reading, expressing their sentiments using the wonderful phrasing characteristic of that time, a writing style that only a generation later had fallen out of favor. I particularly like Washington’s closing lines:

” . . . while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.”

Moses’ closing words aren’t too bad either:

 “And, when, like Joshua full of days and full of honour, you are gathered to your Fathers, may you be admitted into the Heavenly Paradise to partake of the water of life, and the tree of immortality.”

You can find the full text of the Seixas letter here, and Washington’s full response here.

As a final note, it is often overlooked that Moses Seixas wrote a second letter to President Washington on August 17, 1790. This letter was on behalf of King David’s Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons, of which Seixas was Grand Master, and contained greetings from one member of a fraternal order to another member.

Greatness Meets Greatness

 Top artists in their respective fields.  Ella Fitzgerald and Willie Mays.

 

The Boxer

Still a man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest 

I didn't care for this Simon & Garfunkel song when it came out in the late 60s.  I do now.  Heavy hitting lyric, strong melody, and stirring arrangement.  Listen carefully to the instrumental outro; so much going on.  

Three Ladies Of Lyon

From Stuart Humphryes at BabelColour.  Stuart restores and enhances old color autochromes, but does not colorise them.  This photo is from 1910, taken by Professor Fernand Arloing.  I enjoy the feeling conveyed here on a hazy late summer afternoon.

The autochrome process, considered the first practicable method of color photography, was invented by Auguste and Louis Lumière.  You can read about the process here.  The Lumiere brothers are best known for their invention of the cinema.  You can view one of their earliest efforts, from 1896, here.

 

The Viaduct

 By Belgian artist Paul Delvaux (1897-1994).  The train makes it.  Via Marysia.

Fanny

I was vaguely aware of this group in the early 70s but had no recollection of hearing them.  A few years ago clips from an appearance they made on German TV showed up on YouTube and I, and many others, saw them for the first time and learned they were a really rocking band.  That's the Millington sisters on guitar and bass.

This is a cover of Hey, Bulldog, one of my favorite Beatles tunes.  You can also listen to them perform a cover of Marvin Gaye's Ain't That Peculiar (featuring June Millington's slide guitar) and Place In the Country. 

Anniversary

Today is the 50th anniversary of a personal event that is significant for two reasons.

The first is that on the evening of July 18, 1975 the future Mrs THC and I attended a Red Sox game at Fenway Park.  It was the first Red Sox game we attended together.  We'd met a few weeks prior and attending this game is the first event in our relationship that we can place a firm date upon.  And, in two weeks, we celebrate our 45th wedding anniversary.

It was also the occasion of the longest home run I've seen hit in person, courtesy of Jim Rice.  

This led to the post from 2017 which follows. 

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This is prompted by a conversation at the recently concluded Analytics Conference of the Society for American Baseball Research held in Phoenix.  At lunch I was talking with a fellow attendee who mentioned that at his first game at Fenway he'd seen Mark Fidrych pitch against Luis Tiant.  It turned out I had been at the same game on May 25, 1976 (see The Bird).

I'd been able to figure out the date of the game with the invaluable help of Baseball-Reference.  I've also used BR to reconstruct the first time I saw Willie Mays play and the day I met him (see Meeting Willie Mays), as well as narrowing down the possible dates on which I'd seen my first major league game (My First Ballgame?), and even figuring out what New York Giants game my dad had attended in 1939 based on a blank scorecard he left me (Baseball Scorecard 1939).  After the lunch conversation, I decided to use BR to track down another event I remembered vividly and to see how my recollection matched up with the facts.

What I remembered for certain

The longest HR I ever saw in person was hit by Jim Rice in a game at Fenway in 1975 against the Kansas City Royals.  I remember being stunned at how hard it was hit, how fast it got out of the park, and how far it went.

What I thought I remembered

The homer was hit off Jim Busby, the hard throwing KC pitcher.
Bill Lee was pitching for the Sox.
The Red Sox won the game easily.
The HR was a rising line drive that went over the left center field wall, to the right of the Green Monster and to the left of the flagpole (this was before the centerfield scoreboard was built).
The ball was still rising as it disappeared into the night.
We were sitting in the grandstands underneath the overhang between home and third base.  "We" refers to the future Mrs THC and I.

(Fenway in 1975.  This photo of Fred Lynn shows the outfield as it existed then.  You can see the flagpole.)

What I found out

The game was on July 18, 1975.  Busby and Lee were the pitchers and the Sox won 9-3.  Rice's homer was off Busby, who lasted only 3 1/3 innings, giving up seven runs, but striking out six.

Bill Lee tossed a vintage Bill Lee-style complete game, giving up six hits, walking one and not striking out anyone.  Lee got 16 outs on grounders (including seven in a row at one point) plus two more on  pop ups.  The only Royals to cause Lee trouble were Hal McRae (single, double and triple) and Harmon Killebrew (double and two-run homer in the 9th).  It was also great fun to see Lee tie John Mayberry up in knots with an eephus pitch.  George Brett went 0-4, with three grounders.

I found several articles referencing Rice's titanic blast leading off the third inning for Boston.

Mercy! A Celebration of Fenway Park's Centennial by Curt Smith, describes Rice's homer as one of only six to clear the centerfield wall before the 1976 park alterations.  The others were by Hank Greenberg (1937), Jimmie Foxx (1937), Bill Skowron (1957), Carl Yastrzemski (1970), and Bobby Mitchell (1973).

On July 23, 2015 the Boston Herald, as part of a series about the 1975 Red Sox, carried an article entitled "Jim Rice's Mammoth Home Run off Steve Busby":

The righthander mis-spotted a fast ball and Rice, the Boston rookie slugger, sent the ball out of the park just a little to the left field side of dead center. Rice's home run, making the score 6-0, didn't clear the famed Green Monster, but rather the back wall of the park behind the rows of bleacher seats.

And it did not just slip over that back wall – which in itself constituted a feat reportedly accomplished only five times previous – it exited Fenway somewhere near the top of the flagpole reaching far above the wall.

Then Boston Globe sports writer Peter Gammons famously wrote the "ball was stopped by Canadian customs".  In a 2009 Boston Globe story, reporter John Powers wrote that Yawkey said it was ""unquestionably the longest ever'' hit at Fenway.

The winning pitcher that night, Bill Lee got a good look at Rice's clout.

"Once it leaves the ballpark, it goes over Landsdowne Street, it usually lands in the flatbed of a truck, a train, a truck that's heading west, so it ended up in Buffalo, for all we know," Lee said during a recent visit to Axis Bat Technology in Fall River. "It was an amazing line drive type shot. It wasn't one of those towering high fly balls that (Dave) Kingman hit.

I also learned from the article the game was not televised

At the Sons of Sam Horn website, I found this recollection from someone in the bleachers that night:

I was sitting in the Fenway CF bleachers in July 1975 when I saw Jim Rice teed off on Steve Busby and hit the longest home-run I've ever seen at Fenway. This was before the "600 Club" so there was probably the jet-stream effect, and before the centerfield scoreboard, so there was just a moderately high wall behind the seats in CF. Rice hit a bomb to straight-away CF, that cleared the CF back-wall (behind the batters eye) and from my vantage point some 430-450 ft from home that ball still had an upward trajectory as it left Fenway. It was probably a 500 footer.

At the Baseball Think Factory, Rice answered a question about a homer he'd hit in Comiskey Park this way:

I don’t remember that home run.  Comiskey was a very small ball park.  It was shorter than Fenway to centerfield, short to leftfield, and shorter than that in right.  I had two long home runs in my career that stand out in my mind:

I hit one into the 3rd or 4th deck (however many they have, it was the top one) in Yankee stadium off Matt Keough.  I think Keough hit me with a pitch twice in that game, but third time I got him.

The other home run, which is probably the biggest shot of my career, was off of Kansas City pitcher Steve Busby in 1975.  Mr. Yawkey said it was probably the longest home run he had ever seen.

I'm a little surprised at how close my memory was to the actual event.  Nice to have my recollections confirmed.  It doesn't always happen that way.

The entire game took only 2:07 to play!

And, by the way, it was the very first game that the future Mrs THC attended with THC.  Not a bad night at all.

Day Of Glory

 

On this date in 1863 occurred the Union assault on Fort Wagner near Charleston, SC, an event depicted in the movie Glory.  If you saw the film you'll certainly remember the scene when the character portrayed by Denzel Washington grabs the Union colors from the color guard of the 54th Massachusetts to prevent them from falling to the ground and is then shot as he rallies his fellow soldiers.

Meet William Carney.  Born in 1840 into slavery in Virginia.  His family was eventually freed and moved to Massachusetts.  When the 54th Massachusetts was organized as the first official black unit (designated as United States Colored Troops) in the Union army, Carney enlisted.  Promoted to sergeant, on July 18 he found himself among the leaders of the assault on the Confederate held fort.  Reaching the ramparts he saw the unit's color guard mortally wounded and grabbed the colors to prevent them from falling to the ground.

Wounded several times, Carney kept the flag flying as he rallied his men until finally collapsing from loss of blood.  Unlike Denzel Washington's character, Carney recovered from his serious wounds, and received the Medal of Honor on May 23, 1900.  His citation reads:

When the color sergeant was shot down, this soldier grasped the flag, led the way to the parapet, and planted the colors thereon. When the troops fell back he brought off the flag, under a fierce fire in which he was twice severely wounded. 

Some accounts call him the first black recipient of the Medal, but other black soldiers received the Medal before Carney.  However, the events for which Carney received the Medal preceded all of the others.

Carney returned to Massachusetts after being discharged, married, and became a mail carrier.  He died in 1908.  

For an account of a battle a month prior to Fort Wanger in which black soldiers, who had been slaves just weeks previously, resisted an Confederate assault read Milliken's Bend.

 

Cool

On this date in 1902, Willis Carrier completed the drawings for what became the world's first modern air conditioning system.  Carrier, born in 1876 in upstate New York and a graduate of Cornell, was working at the Buffalo Forge Company as a research engineer.

The Sackett-Wilhelms Lithographic & Publishing Company in Brooklyn, a Buffalo Forge customer, was having paper quality problems due to high summer humidity.  Carrier's device was designed to address this problem, though it was not until January 1906 that he was granted a U.S. patent for an Apparatus for Treating Air.

In 1915, Carrier and six other engineers formed the Carrier Engineering Corporation.  Today the Carrier business is part of United Technologies.

Having been a resident of south Florida for eight years and residing in Arizona since 2017, I give my heartfelt thanks to Mr Carrier for making these places habitable.

For a more culturally oriented discussion of cool, read Cool And Uncool. 

Gee Baby, Ain't I Good To You

A lot of us are most familiar with this song from The Mask (1994), where it's "sung" by Tina (Cameron Diaz in her movie debut) at the Coco Bongo Room.  Diaz is lip synching, it's Susan Boyd doing the singing.

Gee Baby, Ain't I Good To You was composed in 1929 by Andy Razaf and Don Redman but didn't become a hit until recorded by the Nat King Cole Trio in 1943.  Redman was a well-known arranger who contributed to the development of swing music.

Razaf is a fascinating character.  His birth name was Andriamanantena Paul Razafinkarefo. Andy was was the son of Henri Razafinkarefo, nephew of Queen Ranavalona III of Madagascar, and Jennie Razafinkarefo (née Waller), daughter of John L Waller, the first African American consul to Madagascar.  When Henri was killed in the French invasion of the kingdom, the pregnant Jennie fled to the U.S. where Andy was born in Washington DC in 1895 and raised in Harlem.  Razaf collaborated extensively with Fats Waller and wrote the lyrics for many songs, including Ain't Misbehavin', Honeysuckle Rose, and (What Did I Do To Be So) Black and Blue (all of which have been featured on THC). 

I Remember

Ah, those halycon days of our holiday from history.  Wandering the aisles on a Thursday or Friday to find just the right movie for the weekend. 

IYKYK… pic.twitter.com/tiGfp9wy4T

— Abandoned Places (@abandonedspaces) May 25, 2025

Berenike

Last year Smithsonian Magazine carried an article on the recent excavations at the Ptolemaic port of Berenike on the Red Sea, the Egyptian end of the sea trade with India, which have revealed more about the depth of the connections between the two regions.

Though the port was founded by the Greek Ptolemaic dynasty (320-30 BC), the trade was greatly expanded after Rome annexed Egypt in 30 BC.  THC wrote about this trade and the farthest reaches of the Roman Empire in The Farthest Outpost.  It's not just the extent of the trade and the navigation skills and knowledge needed for it, but the logistics of building an isolated port on the Red Sea, separated from the rest of Egypt by a vast desert requiring the establishment and maintenance of a safe and secure land-based transport system.

From the Smithsonian article:

In antiquity, this site, known as Berenike, was described by chroniclers such as Strabo and Pliny the Elder as the Roman Empire’s maritime gateway to the East: a crucial entry point for mind-boggling riches brought across the sea from eastern Africa, southern Arabia, India and beyond. It is hard to imagine how such vast and complex trade could have been supported here, miles from any natural source of drinking water and many days’ arduous trek across mountainous desert from the Nile. Yet excavations are revealing that the stories are true.

Archaeologists led by Steven Sidebotham, of the University of Delaware, have revealed two harbors and scores of houses, shops and shrines. They have uncovered mounds of administrative detritus, including letters, receipts and customs passes, and imported treasures such as ivory, incense, textiles, gems and foodstuffs such as pots of Indian peppercorns, coconuts and rice. The finds are not only painting a uniquely detailed picture of life at a lesser-known but critical crossroads between East and West. They are also focusing scholarly attention on a vast ancient ocean trade that may have dwarfed the terrestrial Silk Road in economic importance and helped sustain the Roman Empire for centuries.

“All the ancient sources talk about this place,” he says. One Greco-Roman text, known as the Periplus Maris Erythraei, or “Voyage around the Erythraean Sea”—which Bhandare, of Oxford, described as “a kind of Lonely Planet guide for the first century A.D.”—lists the port as a hub for maritime trade routes stretching south as far as modern-day Tanzania, and east, past Arabia, to India and beyond. But Berenike’s location was lost for centuries, until the Italian explorer Giovanni Belzoni, after nearly perishing from thirst in the search, rediscovered it in 1818 and hired a Bedouin youth to dig in the Isis temple with a giant seashell. A handful of European and American travelers followed, but the entire area fell back out of reach for decades, designated off-limits by an Egyptian army keen to control the coastline close to Sudan.

And as archaeologists are busy analyzing the growing material finds, other scholars are reassessing literary sources to better evaluate the economic impacts of these intercontinental networks. They already knew that trade was robust. In the early first century A.D., before trade reached its peak, the Greek geographer Strabo described eastbound fleets of more than 100 merchant ships. Another key source, a contract known as the Muziris papyrus dating from the second century, is more specific, describing a loan between an Alexandria-based businessman and a merchant for a return voyage to Muziris. On the reverse side, the text details the cargo of a ship called the Hermapollon, which included 140 tons of pepper, 80 boxes of nard (an aromatic oil used for perfumes, medicines and rituals), and around four tons of ivory. Its value, after payment of the Roman Empire’s 25 percent import tax, was nearly seven million sesterces, which scholars have calculated was easily enough to buy a luxury estate in central Italy, or, if you prefer, to pay 40,000 stonecutters for a year. That translates into some vast fortunes.

The island of Socotra, mentioned in the article, is also the subject of a THC post. 

Berenike today: 

 

 

 

 

Scopes At 100

On this date a century ago, the trial of John Scopes began in Clarksville, Tennessee.  The Scopes Monkey Trial, as it became known, was a national sensation at the time, given fodder for many books, and was the source material for the play, and later film, Inherit The Wind.  How the case is now remembered in many ways erases the nuances and complexity of the issues and people involved.

I first wrote about the case in 2015, with an update in 2022.  At the time of the 2015 post there were still some efforts to insert creationism into public school curriculum.  Those efforts seems to have ceased, but evolutionary biology now appears under assault from different quarters, it seems an appropriate date on which to post again.

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Rather than the often repeated adage that the victors write the history of an event, the story of anything is actually determined by the unswerving adoption of one version of it, and the telling of that version by a determined cadre of writers. In time, the version with the most persistent adherents becomes the “truth.” – David & Jeanne Heidler in Henry Clay: The Essential American (2010)

I still recall the family getting in the car for the drive to Hartford, Connecticut. It was the late 1950s, and my father was taking us to pick up a monkey. He had a small role as an Italian organ-grinder in a play put on by a local community theater group. The director wanted to use a prop monkey, but dad insisted on the real thing. We housed that monkey for the next week; I remember it as nasty and mean-tempered, but the audience loved it, as well as dad in his bit part (he always had a knack for showmanship). The play was Inherit The Wind, based on a 1925 event in Tennessee that became popularly known as the Scopes Monkey Trial.

Seeing the play and, later, the movie, I accepted its narrative of the forces of enlightenment, reason, heroism, and tolerance (represented by Spencer Tracey in the movie, playing a character based on Clarence Darrow) against the forces of narrow-mindedness, mean-spiritedness, repression, and unthinking old-fashioned religion (represented by Frederic March playing a character based on William Jennings Bryan); a morality play of liberal versus conservative written during the McCarthy years. The play is still staged frequently by regional theaters (here’s a recent Wisconsin production), has gone through several Broadway revivals, most recently in 2007, with Christopher Plummer and Brian Dennehy. There was even a London production, in 2009, with Kevin Spacey. In most cases, it is widely accepted by audiences as historically accurate.

It was only years later, prompted by reading Edward Larson’s Summer For The Gods and doing related research that I appreciated how much more complex and interesting the real story was. American history is much more fascinating and instructive when you don’t try to neatly shoehorn it into boxes labeled “liberal,” “conservative,” “progressive,” and “reactionary” as Inherit The Wind did, aided by influential mid-20th century historians and literary critics such as Richard Hofstadter. Throughout our history, you’ll see prominent people with constellations of political views that are unrecognizable in today’s categories (see Sam Houston as an example).  I support the teaching of evolutionary theory but the full story behind the Scopes Trial is more interesting than the caricature of Inherit The Wind and, as I learned, the main character in this drama, William Jennings Bryan, would not neatly fit into any political classification in modern-day America.

The Background

Dayton in 1925

The early 20th century saw an explosion in the growth of public high schools. In 1890, there were fewer than 200,000 public high-school students nationwide; by 1920, more than two million. In Tennessee, fewer than 10,000 in 1910, but more than 50,000 by 1920. What were they to be taught?

At the same time, battles were heating up between Darwinists and some religious denominations over the teaching of evolution. State legislative fights over its inclusion in educational curriculum became common.

Legislative efforts barring the teaching of evolutionary theory were successful in a small number of states, including Tennessee, which passed its law in early 1925. It was part of a larger package of laws in a massive education reform bill that laid the foundation for state-supported public schools. It was signed into law by progressive Governor Peay. Violation of the ban on teaching evolution carried a $100 fine, but no jail. Bryan supported the bill, but unsuccessfully lobbied against having any fine attached to violating the evolution provision, though no one at the time expected any prosecutions under the statute.

John Scopes

Looking for a test case, the American Civil Liberties Union placed advertisements in Tennessee papers offering to defend anyone prosecuted under the Act. Leading citizens of the town of Dayton decided to take them up on it. While some were interested in challenging the law, many others just saw it as a good opportunity to create publicity and generate business for the town. Rather than showcasing a contentious, divided populace, as portrayed in the play, the actual trial took place in a festive atmosphere, according to reporters like H.L. Mencken. The key players in Dayton recruited John Scopes, a young, part-time schoolteacher, to be the defendant and agreed to pay any penalty imposed on him.

Dayton was a small town in East Tennessee, and part of the only Republican enclave in the state. Bryan won every southern state in each of his three presidential runs, but never carried Rhea County where Dayton was located. The town was also heavily Methodist in a state dominated by Baptists (the Baptist Convention, meeting in Memphis just before the trial, refused to add an anti-evolution plank to the denomination’s statement of faith).

Once the ACLU came into the case, Bryan — the country’s leading opponent of the teaching of evolution — agreed to become part of the prosecution’s team. And through some very complicated machinations, Clarence Darrow, the most famous criminal defense lawyer in America, joined the defense team. When this happened, the trial became the biggest story in the country, and was also followed heavily in Europe. A deluge of reporters descended on Dayton.

Why Evolution? Why Bryan?

 
In 1925, 65-year-old William Jennings Bryan was well known to every American, having run unsuccessfully three times as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate (1896, 1900, and 1908). A remarkable orator — his “Cross of Gold” speech at the 1896 convention secured him the nomination — he is considered to be the first populist to run for President. In 1913, Woodrow Wilson appointed him Secretary of State, a post he resigned in 1915 when the pacifist Bryan became convinced Wilson was maneuvering the country into entering the First World War.

Bryan campaigned successfully in support of four constitutional amendments: direct election of senators, the Federal income tax, women’s suffrage, and Prohibition.  So why, in the 1920s, did he undertake leadership of the crusade against the teaching of Darwinism, and why did he think it was consistent with his other views?  From today's perspective, it doesn't seem to make sense.

Bryan believed in “popular sovereignty", always campaigning against big business and the banks and on behalf of the common people. When the Supreme Court overturned some of the early progressive labor laws, Bryan supported (unsuccessful) legislation to limit judicial review, and backed the Progressive use of popular referendums. He believed the people were entitled to what they wanted, and saw the evolution issue in the same way. According to Bryan:

It is no infringement on their freedom of conscience or freedom of speech to say that, while as individuals they are at liberty to think as they please and say what they like, they have no right to demand pay for teaching that which parents and the taxpayer do not want taught.

The deeper reason was Bryan’s concerns about the implications of Darwinism. Bryan was a committed Christian and pacifist. He rejected evolutionary theory as a matter of religious faith, but also believed Darwinism and its doctrine of “survival of the fittest” threatened the dignity and perhaps even the very existence of the weakest of the human flock. Bryan saw a direct connection between the excesses of capitalism and militarism — which he had denounced throughout his career — and Darwinism, which, as early as 1904, he had called “the merciless law by which the strong crowd out and kill off the weak.”

The concerns Bryan raised in 1904 were reinforced by recent events. The slaughter of WWI appalled Bryan. He saw German militarism as Darwinian selection in action; this was a common view at the time, as reflected in the words of Vernon Kellogg in his book Headquarters Nights: “Natural selection based on violent and fatal competitive struggle is the gospel of the German intellectuals.”

Bryan saw the modernist wing of the Progressives, led by Woodrow Wilson, willing to go down the same road. It is striking to see how much Darwinism was in the air of politics at the time. Wilson’s key 1912 campaign speech, “What is Progress?” espoused a Darwinian approach to American government:

Now, it came to me, as this interesting man talked, that the Constitution of the United States had been made under the dominion of the Newtonian Theory. You have only to read the papers of the The Federalist to see that fact written on every page. They speak of the “checks and balances” of the Constitution, and use to express their idea the simile of the organization of the universe, and particularly of the solar system — how by the attraction of gravitation the various parts are held in their orbits; and then they proceed to represent Congress, the Judiciary, and the President as a sort of imitation of the solar system. …

Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice. Society is a living organism and must obey the laws of life, not of mechanics; it must develop. All that progressives ask or desire is permission — in an era when “development” “evolution,” is the scientific word — to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle; all they ask is recognition of the fact that a nation is a living thing and not a machine. [emphasis added]

The new science of eugenics greatly troubled Bryan. The high school textbook used by John Scopes was A Civic Biology by George William Hunter, which defined eugenics as “the science of improving the human race by better heredity.” Hunter wrote,

If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading … Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibility of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race.

The prior edition of Hunter’s textbook had contained language specifically citing biological deficiencies of African races.

Eugenics had many scientist adherents in the United States and England who believed that the human race could be made better via selective breeding to create a better and more progressive world. One of those scientists, A.E. Wiggam, expressed the connection between the teaching of evolution and eugenics:

“until we can convince the common man of the fact of evolution … I fear we cannot convince him of the profound ethical and religious significance of the thing we call eugenics.”

Holmes

During the 1920s and 30s, the eugenics movement gained momentum. By 1935, more than 30 states had laws mandating sexual segregation and sterilization of persons regarded as eugenically unfit. The most notorious expression of support for eugenics came in 1927 from the leading Social Darwinist on the Supreme Court, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who, in his opinion for the Court upholding Oklahoma’s sterilization law, exclaimed “three generations of imbeciles is enough.” The only dissenting vote was cast by Pierce Butler, the lone Catholic on the Court.

Within a few years, WWII and the revulsion against Nazi law and experimentation would put an end to the eugenics movement (though a revival of eugenics under another name seems to be arising based upon  modern advances in biology and genetics). The heyday of the eugenics movement and the rise of anti-evolutionary forces led to the Dayton trial in 1925. Bryan expressed his pithy view of the whole matter when commenting on the latest discovery of purported early human remains: “Men who would not cross the street to save a soul have traveled across the world in search of skeletons.”  In his closing argument at trial, Bryan explained that evolutionary theory:

". . . if taken seriously and made the basis of a philosophy of life, it would eliminate love and carry man back to a struggle of tooth and claw."

The Trial and its Aftermath
The ACLU and Darrow differed on trial strategy. The ACLU considered it a free speech case, but that was not Darrow’s interest.  As a militant atheist who did not believe in free will, he wanted to use the trial as an opportunity to directly assault Christianity and its beliefs about the creation of the universe and the human race. This discomfited many ACLU supporters, but — through a complicated series of maneuvers — Darrow seized control of the defense strategy and was cleverly able to lure Bryan to the stand, where he cross-examined him viciously on Biblical inconsistencies. (Darrow might have been a terrible person, but you’d want him defending you if you were on trial). This prompted a Congregational Church official who supported the legal challenge to send a note to the ACLU: 

“May I express the earnest opinion that not five percent of the ministers in this liberal denomination have any sympathy with Mr Darrow’s conduct of the case.”

Edwin Mims of Vanderbilt University, another supporter of the ACLU, wrote:

 “When Clarence Darrow is put forth as the champion of the forces of enlightenment to fight the battle for scientific knowledge, one feels almost persuaded to become a Fundamentalist.”

The jury quickly returned a verdict finding Scopes guilty. Bryan offered to pay the $100 fine, and the local school board offered to renew his contract for another year, but Scopes decided to go to graduate school, attending the University of Chicago and becoming a petroleum engineer.  The fine was ultimately rescinded and the Butler Act was repealed in 1967.

Five days after the end of the trial, William Jennings Bryan passed away while taking his afternoon nap.

 

In today's Wall St Journal, playwright David Mamet has a piece with observations on Inherit The Wind, noting that: 

The play and film were intended as ripostes to the House Un-American Activities Committee’s persecution of those accused of communist sympathies.

As such, the play had to tailor the story from 1925 into a narrative usable for a 1950s audience. It also reflects intellectual currents of the mid-century: 

"Inherit the Wind” paints the contest between reason and religion as zero-sum. Religion is a metaphysical concept. It can’t be observed as part of the physical world. But a little reflection must suggest that reason is equally metaphysical. Where does it exist save for in the human mind, which can be inaccurate, uninformed, depraved or plain wrong, and in which “the reasonable” changes through maturity and over time. 

The truth is both are necessary.  

The factors potentially mitigating the horrors wrought by our corruptible human feelings, and our equally defective reason are two. One is religion, which is to say our avowal of our imperfection. The other is the law, the attempt to codify religious intuition mechanically. There will always be an unresolved remainder in an arbitration between justice and fairness, reason and folly. This dissatisfaction is the human condition, the subject of the actual drama, and that which differentiates it from pageant, propaganda or mere entertainment. The hero of “Inherit the Wind” is Darrow but at the play’s end, he has learned nothing. And, so, neither have we.  

As Mamet points out, reason and faith operate in different ways.  I've read articles in which it is said that Saint Aquinas should be read to understand how faith and reason can be reconciled.  I don't think they need to be as each stand on their own.  They may overlap at times but they also exist parallel to each other.  One can understand a reasoned analysis and nonetheless have faith in a certain outcome.  I don't feel any need to reconcile those aspects.  They just exist.