Retelling the Past for Today's Young Readers
Early in his career as the United States government’s go-to man on all things cryptologic, William Friedman was asked if insanity was a prerequisite of the codebreaker. Friedman didn’t hesitate in his response. It was “not necessary,” he said, “but … Continued
Sometime around age fifty I felt the world beginning to pass me by. Technology was the catalyst. Facebook. Twitter. I wanted no part of them. The same, later, for Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok. I would catch my daughter or her … Continued
“I must confess to considerable distaste for Y. Frankly, I didn’t like him at all. He acted like a wooden Indian.” [Fagone 104] William Friedman‘s aversion to fellow cryptologist Herbert Yardley was sincere, yet his choice of descriptor is odd. … Continued
Happy Will Rogers Day! The boy who would grow up to become the beloved Cowboy Philosopher was born on this day, November 4, 1879. That year it was Election Day. In 2020, it is merely Aftermath Day. Rogers’s death day, … Continued
Elizebeth Smith, like so many bright, talented women of her era, understood the limitations before her. Her Quaker upbringing nurtured natural intellectual curiosity and independence of mind. But the unyielding horizon around her family’s Indiana farm threatened to swallow her. … Continued
David Kahn called it the Yardley Symptom, the compulsion of the cryptologist to chip away at the puzzle throughout his waking moments. He turns the letters over in his mind even as he fries his morning egg, scrubs his evening … Continued
Video Conferencing Presentation on my process writing “The Many Lives of Eddie Rickenbacker.Thursday, October 8, 7:00-7:45 pmZoom Link: https://zoom.us/j/85376796720 Passcode: MLER451
I wrote a tenth grade English research paper on Douglas MacArthur. For whatever reason–most likely the limitations of my sources (source!) or the limitations of my reading of same–I focused primarily on his actions in Korea. I remember writing about … Continued
Guerra = “war” in Spanish. Guerrilla = “little war.” In English, guerilla more often means a fighter in one of those little wars. Louise Spencer’s husband, an engineer for an American mining company in the Philippines, became guerilla fighter. That’s … Continued