February 18th, 2010
EDWARD EVERETT, GEORGE WASHINGTON & THE POWER OF ORDINARY GREATNESS
On Tuesday, February 23rd I’ll be at the Massachusetts Historical Society at 1154 Boylston Street in Boston. There will be refreshments at 5:30 with the Washington lecture n at 6:00. The event is free but reservations are requested.
Call (617) 646-0560
Richard A. Katula, author of The Eloquence of Edward Everett: America’s Greatest Orator(2009) will discuss the role of the lecture and lyceum movement in the years before the Civil War. Dr. Katula has served as Professor of Communication Studies at Northeastern University since 1990. In addition to his faculty appointment, Professor Katula serves as Director of the workshop on “The American Lyceum and Public Culture” sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Richard will speak of Edward Everett; I will speak for him.
Since 1997 I have been presenting “Edward Everett: The Other Speaker at Gettysburg.” My man is best known for his 1863 oration at the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg which was totally eclipsed by President Lincoln’s brief remarks.
Dr. Katula regards Everett’s Gettysburg Address as his best speech but holds that his oration on The Character of George Washington was his most successful. Indeed, it had a most beneficial result. First delivered in Boston on February 23, 1856, Everett went on to repeat it 137 times around the country, in the North and South. He paid his own expenses and turned over all his earnings to the Mount Vernon Ladies Association. This gift allowed the good ladies to purchase Mount Vernon which was falling to rack and ruin. Had it not been for Everett’s Washington address and his generosity, it is doubted Washington’s home would exist today. When he spoke, Everett hoped his words could hold the Union together and prevent a civil war. He quotes from a Jefferson letter to Washington: “North and South will hang together while they have you to hang to.” But to no avail; when Fort Sumter was fired upon — Everett ceased to speak.
As an actor, I’ve never felt comfortable in the 20th Century let alone the 21st. Who knows: I might have made a mark in the 19th? In any case, it is a joy and a privilege to recycle some small part of Edward Everett’s oratory.
Tags: Edward Everett, George Washington, Gettysburg
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March 4th, 2009
To mark Abraham Lincoln’s Centennial the Lincoln penny replaced the old Indian head cent. This was our first “portrait” coin. All previous US coins had depicted or personified “Liberty.” Coincidentally, 1909 was the year Calvin Coolidge was elected Mayor of Northampton, Massachusetts. From that office 100 years ago he began a political journey that brought him to the highest office in the land. Based on political experience, Coolidge was certainly one of our best-prepared presidents. He would later write: “Without in any way being conscious of what I was doing I then became committed to a course that was to make me President of the Senate of Massachusetts and the Senate of the United States, the second officer of the Commonwealth and the country and the chief executive of a city, a state and a nation. . . On the first Monday of January 1910, I began a public career that was to continue until the first Monday of March, 1929, when it was to end of my own volition.”
Thus in his spare autobiographical prose Coolidge summarizes an extraordinary political career that took him from the office of Mayor to the office of the Presidency. Following the death of President Harding he served out that term and was elected to his own four-year term.
This record of steady progress from office to office is unique and unparalleled. Some of his contemporaries saw it as “Coolidge Luck.” Some saw the hand of Fate or Destiny. (The more devoted of Coolidge’s supporters often compared him to Lincoln.) Coolidge never engaged in such comparison but suggested: “Some Power that I little suspected in my student days took me in charge and carried me from the obscure neighborhood of Plymouth Notch to the occupancy of the White House.”
In Coolidge’s day it was well known that he shared the birth date of the country. The very first Fourth of July birthday little Cal could recall was his fourth – 1876 — our Centennial year. As president “Silent Cal” would be featured on a commemorative fifty-cent piece marking the nation’s 150th birthday or Sesquicentennial – this is the single instance of a living president appearing on a US coin. He and George Washington are shown in profile.
In the face of almost certain re:election Coolidge chooses not to run for a second term in 1928. Had he done so he would have been president for ten years. He believed that was too long. When the Coolidges leave Washington they return to the half of the two-family house in Northampton they had rented since 1907. The Stock Market Crash was nine months away and people still had change in their pockets. There, the Lincoln pennies were outnumbering the remaining “Red cents” or Indian head pennies in circulation. The Sesquicentennial half-dollar has always been a collectors’ item and can usually be found on eBay.
(Above italicized quotes from “The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge” 1929)
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February 11th, 2009
Presidents’ Day is an occasion to sell cars both new and used; it is little more. In fact: It is less. It provides yet another long weekend as it is always on Monday. It fails to connect us to any former president. President’s Monday occurs in some proximity to George Washington’s and Abraham Lincoln’s natal dates. It has nothing to do with either man — although their images are used to sell cars.
If I were to subscribe to conspiracy theories I would suggest that the the purpose of Presidents’ Monday is to distance us from our history. One dead president is like any other. Those several we consider “Great Presidents” earned his distinction by getting a lot of people killed in his administration. (Theodore Roosevelt makes this cut because he seemed so eager to lead us into war.) You can become president by promising to “keep us out of war” but for any potentially GP it is a promise best forgotten once in office. As our President Bush fades into the sunset his star will begin to rise. More than enough people died in his administration. In futurity his “Greatness” is assured. Am I right, or am I right?
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January 22nd, 2009
“Having bought the colours, an easel, and a canvas, the next step was to begin. But what a step to take! The palette gleamed with beads of colour; fair and white rose the canvas; the empty brush hung poised, heavy with destiny, irresolute in the air. My hand seemed arrested by a silent veto. But after all the sky on this occasion was unquestionably blue, and a pale blue at that. There could be no doubt that blue paint mixed with white should be put on the top part of the canvas. One really does not need to have had an artist’s training to see that. It is a starting-point open to all. So very gingerly I mixed a little blue paint on the palette with a very small brush, and then with infinite precaution made a mark about as big as a bean upon the affronted snow-white shield.”
Winston Churchill
OK. I’ve begun.
Today I watched the video of James Cagney’s “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” What a picture! Yesterday I saw “The Wrestler” at the Harvard Square Movie Theater. It seemed long; while I admired the performances yet I waited for it to get on. I wanted to know more about the secondary characters, too. I wanted more of the story. My ideas of drama and life are drawn from the last Century and, to a large degree, from the previous Century, too. Tonight I’m going to The Stone Temple Coffee House to hear a folk singer. Amy will be singing over the dead bodies of two presidents — John and John Quincy Adams — in the crypt below along side their wives. I hope they enjoy the music. This is enough painting for now.
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