The Daily (New York Times) The Life and Legacy of Jimmy Carter Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, had written an obituary for Jimmy Carter years ago, but now finally, he had to use it. Carter served only one term, and every president since him has sworn NOT to be another Jimmy Carter. Carter came to power promising never to tell a lie (surely sometimes a President would HAVE to lie, wouldn’t he?- still a ‘he’) which, after Nixon, was a big promise. His presidency was marked by what is now known as the “malaise speech”, which in a way foreshadowed Trump’s Nightmare in America speech, except that Carter placed the problem in the American people themselves, rather than an unspecified “they” which Trump draws upon as a source of grievance. Carter worked tremendously hard to get the Camp David accords, and he tried the same approach during the Iran hostage crisis, but to no avail- in fact it backfired because the Iranians deliberately withheld the hostages until an hour after the inauguration of Reagan, so as to deny Carter any credit. Actually, the Iran hostage crisis was prompted by the admission of the Shah of Iran into America for cancer treatment which Carter didn’t want to do, fearing exactly what came to pass: that the diplomats at the Embassy were in danger. Carter, then and now, was such a contrast to Trump.
Reveal Buried Secrets: Americas Indian Boarding Schools Part I and Part II This is a two-part program, which originally aired in October 2022, and was produced by Reveal. In the early 1990s, a handyman was working on the basement heating at Red Cloud Indian School, a Catholic school on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. He reported that he saw small skeletons interred in a tunnel. He told his supervisor but no-one else other than his wife at the time, but he was haunted by what he saw. In 2022 he urged school officials to search the basements. . In the past the American Federal Government contracted out to the Catholic Church the task of “killing the Indian and saving the man”, as was done here in Australia in many mission schools conducted by church denominations. The Catholic Church was given Native American land that had been granted by treaty, thus increasing the Church’s land holdings while destroying Native American culture through forced assimilation. In the second part of the series, an archival search is undertaken to investigate who these bodies at Pine Ridge might belong to, but the Bureau of Indian Catholic Missions still has control over archival access, arguing that records are ‘sacramental’ and when records are made available, they are heavily redacted on account of ‘privacy’ issues. The Catholic Church today denies that it was particularly complicit in this forced assimilation, arguing that all churches were involved, but it is impossible to ignore that there is 400 years of Catholic Indian Boarding School history in US. The Pope made an apology in Canada, but the process is only beginning in US. I found it amazing that the history of these boarding schools reaches right back to Chief Red Cloud, the Ghost Dancers, and the Battle of Wounded Knee. As far as the bodies are concerned: former students argued that there could not have been bodies there, and certainly scans and imaging have found no trace of them there.
The Rest is History Fancy being able to squeeze a two-part program out of the topic of Beards! Episode 491: History’s Greatest Beards: From Egyptian Queens to Medieval Conquerers. Neither Dominic nor Tom wear beards, but in this episode they go back to Sumer and Egypt where warriors were designated by their beards, compared with clean-shaven men who were priests or scholars, and closer to God. This warrior/religious distinction has remained for some time. In Egypt, Kings had an each-way-bet and wore false beards, something which was very convenient for Queen Hatshepsut as Pharoah. In the Jewish tradition, beards denote purity, and Mohammed is assumed to have a beard. It was the clean-shaven Alexander the Great who broke the mould of bearded warrior. In Rome, beards were caught up in a culture war, where the traditionalists wore beards, compared with the Grecophiles who were clean-shaven. Scipio Africanas was the first to shave daily, and unkempt beards were seen as plebian. Despite his love of Greece, Hadrian introduced the beard again, perhaps as a sign that the Empire was under pressure. Emperor Constantine reverted to clean-shaven, again, perhaps as a sign that the empire was at peace. It’s not clear whether Jesus wore a beard or not. Early depictions show him as both bearded and clean-shaven at the same time, as a symbol perhaps of his man/god nature. Gregory VII ruled that monks and priests should be clean shaven. In Part II Episode 492: The War on Beards from Peter the Great to John Lennon takes us into more recent history, starting with a reminder that shaving was in itself a rather dangerous enterprise, as a cut could become septic. Over time, beards lost their religious overtones and came to be seen as a sign of healthy, virility and an abundance of semen. Shakespeare’s men (and his witches, too) had beards, but by the 18th century men were clean shaven again. Peter the Great wanted his Boyars clean-shaven, and he instituted a tax on beards as a means of Europeanizing his court, and breaking the power of the Patriarchs. The invention of Sheffield steel meant than men could shave themselves, and in 1903 Gillette blades were sold. The Victorians had beards, the Edwardians didn’t. Between the First and Second World Wars, beards were seen as rather eccentric and freakish, and the 1940s were generally clean shaven. Beards go in and out of fashion along with the generations, so I guess that we can expect to see both cycles in our lifetime.
Dan Snow’s History Hit I know that it’s January, but by the eastern Orthodox church, it’s still Christmas so I’m finishing off Dan Snow’s series about Christmas. Folk Christmas: Yule, Solstice and Ancient English Traditions takes us to the New Forest, where he talks with local historian Richard Reeves to talk about how local peasants used the forest during winter, a time of shortages and darkness. He then talks with folklore historian Vikki Bramshaw, to discover what midwinter legends were brought over with the Anglo-Saxon invasion, the origins of the Yule log as a way of stopping evil coming down the chimney, the God Woden flying across the land for 12 nights picking up souls, and the integration of folk tales about the Holy King and the Oak King to incorporate Father Christmas, who used to be dressed in green.
The final episode in this series Charles Dickens’ Christmas joins us up with London-born tour guide David Charnick who takes us to what was the Marshalsea Prison, where Dickens’ father was imprisoned for debt. It hadn’t occurred to me that this was because people were a flight risk, and most imprisonments were only of a short duration until the debtor could lean on family to help with their finances. Dickens’ father was there for only three months, so Little Dorritt is a bit of an anomaly. They go to the George Inn, London’s last coaching inn, and go along the Thames where mudlarkers still search for treasure, although in Dickens’ time it was more likely that they would be scavenging for ‘pure’ (i.e. dog turds) for use in leather manufacturing. They go to the lanes around Bengal Court where Ebenezer Scrooge would have had his counting house, which would have been deserted at night and a good place to be haunted by Christmas ghosts.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 