The findingDulcinea Blog

Remembering the Start of World War II

A war veteran stops by the monument of World War II casualties in Sheffield, Yorkshire, United Kingdom

On Sept. 1, 1939, World War II began with Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland. This week’s 70th anniversary commemoration of the event saw diplomatic gestures between former enemies. The war killed 6 million Poles, Christian Science Monitor’s Elizabeth Pond reports from Gdansk, Poland, in an assessment of “old enemies” on the 70th anniversary. Half of them were Jewish.

Poland is the center of this year’s commemoration because it “suffered the highest ratio of war deaths per population.” But today, “Poles and Germans are friends and allies,” Pond notes, and another old foe, Russia, this week made efforts to denounce the Hitler-Stalin pact forged just before the outbreak of the war. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany described her country’s role in the atrocities of World War II at a ceremony yesterday, saying Germanybears an “‘eternal’ responsibility” for what happened, Bloomberg reported.

“There are no words that could even remotely describe the suffering caused by this war and the Holocaust,” Merkel said at the Westerplatte peninsula in Gdansk. “I bow before the victims.”

This week also saw British wartime songstress Dame Vera Lynn reemerging on the UK album chart at number 20, becoming the oldest living singer on the chart (she is 92).

As her Allmusic biography explains, the “mere mention of Vera Lynn's name evokes images of London skies filled with barrage balloons, and Britons riding out the German blitz in shelters and subway stations.” Wartime songs like “Auf Wiederseh’n Sweetheart” became hits in the U.K. and U.S., and Lynn became the British troops’ “sweetheart” when she travelled to entertain them, “often at great personal risk,” AFP explains.

Learn more about the circumstances surrounding the outbreak of World War II with findingDulcinea’s article, “On This Day: Nazi Germany Invades Poland, Starting World War II.” Then, read about the final day of the European portion of the war with “On This Day: V-E Day Ends World War II in Europe.”

Liz Colville
Senior Writer

Sweet Sites | A Eulogy to Kennedy and Obituaries

Photo: AP

Last night, Sen. Edward Kennedy passed away after a yearlong struggle with brain cancer. Any newswire reveals this much, but only the obituary pages offer a comprehensive look at Senator Kennedy’s life and national importance. Technically an announcement of death, an obituary can also serve as an authoritative biography, and it is often written while its subject is still alive and continuously updated until its fatal debut. Before you tire of the phrase “lion in the Senate,” read the following thoughtful and detailed looks at Senator Kennedy’s life, and bookmark those newspapers’ obituary sections for some excellent biographical resources.

Declaring Sen. Kennedy “a Rabelaisian figure in the Senate and in life,” the six-page New York Times obituary delves scrupulously behind the senator’s public image, offering a detailed, chronological account that balances the discipline of his public career with his private excesses and troubles. After an overview of the circumstances of Kennedy’s death and his recent role in the health care debate, reporter John M. Broder breaks down the phases of the senator’s life, from a youth overshadowed by more powerful brothers to his role as influential statesman. The Times supplements its written obituary with multimedia resources, including a 13-minute video tribute.

Focusing more on his legislative accomplishments and priorities, The Washington Post obituary provides a slightly different emphasis in its extensive coverage of Kennedy, but still wraps up with a thorough and interactive biographical timeline. Reporter Joe Holley also offers his personal reflection on the senator on the Post’s “Post Mortem” blog, which goes behind the day’s obituaries in regular features like “The Daily Goodbye.”

For an international perspective, including details on how he “annoyed several British administrations,” read Kennedy’s obituary in The Daily Telegraph. Interspersing its obit with illuminating quotes and anecdotes, The Telegraph offers a more personal and visceral account of the senator—and of its other obituary subjects—than the American papers do.

Finally, if you would like to research an older or more obscure death than Senator Kennedy’s, the Internet Public Library has written a helpful guide to finding obituaries.

Jill Marcellus
Senior Intern

Go-Go Boots, Baby Boomers, Peace Movements and Pop Art: Minced Metaphors of the 1960s

AP
The Woodstock Music & Art Fair of 1969, perhaps one of the least dramatic events of the decade.

There’s a new line of thought being developed by many journalists. They’re making a plea for a fresh look at the protesters that have usurped town hall debates across the country, arguing that many civil rights activists in the 1960s didn’t always know what they were doing either, as Mitch Albom suggests.

Albom may be onto something. The 1960s may not be as rosy as second wavers and civil rights activists imagine. In the early 1960s, black people rose in rebellion all over the Deep South in response to the memory of slavery. Their deep and constant humiliation was found in poetry, music, occasional outbursts of anger and more frequent sullen silences as they pledged themselves again and again to passive resistance.

The 1960s also marks the decade when two buses left from Washington, D.C., on May 4, 1961, only to be burned, with riders beaten because of their affiliation with other Freedom Riders; when prisoners, instead of shattering rocks on a work gang in Georgia, smashed their own legs with sledgehammers to call attention to the daily brutality they suffered; and when civil rights workers go missing. Come to your own conclusions about Albom’s analogy. There are plenty of resources for mining the Internet for cultural and political historians of the 1960s. Here are a choice few of them:

PBS produced a timeline of the 1960s with resources for teachers and students.

The Seattle Times presents a discussion of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement.

Ron Jones’ famous social experiment, The Third Wave, was a proto-fascist movement among his high school students in 1967, and is a cultural artifact of the 1960s.

Ella Baker, who advocated for civic engagement in a participatory democracy, is one of the superstar civil right activists of the 1960s, and has a Web site dedicated to retelling her biography.

To sate the increasing interest in presidential private thoughts, catch up with John Quincy Adams on Twitter, read George Washington’s diaries or visit the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum to take a peek at Johnson’s diary. 

Joshua Goldberg

Get Acquainted With Health Care Reform Issues

I don’t think that health care reform will be Obama’s “Waterloo,” as South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint was quoted as saying by Ben Smith of Politico. But the stakes are high, both personally and politically.

An article in Slate Magazine explains how private insurance companies give incentives to employees to drop expensive accounts—just before a major surgery—“based on stupid technicalities.” These are called rescissions. According to Slate, an employee at WellPoint received a high score on her job evaluation due to “the dollar amount [$10 million] she had managed to deny through rescission.”

My mother was a victim of rescission. After suffering from gingivitis for 15 years, she had two teeth taken out. The cores of the teeth had rotted with infection. Unfortunately, these teeth anchored her permanent dentures, so she not only needed two teeth removed but also a new denture. Her insurance company, which paid for her previous dentures, dropped her two days before she was scheduled for a $38,000 procedure on the basis of an “undisclosed previous condition.”

More than half (51 percent) of Americans admit that they don't understand the issues involved in health care reform. The numbers are even lower for Americans’ faith in members of Congress: Only 27 percent of Americans believe that members of Congress have a good grasp of health care issues.

The sheer complexity of the current health care debate needs to be understood. Get informed with a variety of perspectives on health care reform:

Jonathan Cohn, a writer for The New Republic, is stationed in Washington, D.C., and reports what he sees in The Treatment, The New Republic’s health care blog.

The Washington Post's health care blog, Health Care Rx, is a reliable source of breaking news. Turn here for new research on the complicated social policies involved in the debate.

The Cato Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C., presents different philosophical views on the health care debate in its blog, Cato @ Liberty.

Jim Sabin's blog, Health Care Organizational Ethics, keeps an eye on policy ideals and the most efficient distribution of health care.

David Williams, cofounder of MedPharma Partners, covers business issues in health care in his blog, Health Business Blog.

Health Beat is a project of The Century Foundation, an organization that examines public policy. The blog is maintained by Maggie Mahar, a fellow at the Foundation and author of “Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much.”

The Covert Rationing Blog, written by a former professor of medicine, explains why it's unavoidable to ration health care, and distinguishes between productive and unproductive means of rationing health care.

Read findingDulcinea's four-part article series on health care to learn more about landmarks and issues leading to President Obama's plan:

Part I: Surveying the Facts of the American Health Care Landscape
Part II: Revisiting HillaryCare: What It Proposed and Why It Failed
Part III: Does Socialized Medicine Work? A Look at British Health Care
Part IV: Deconstructing the Democratic Plan for Health Care

Josh Goldberg

What I Didn’t Know About Tiananmen Square

Photo: Elizabeth Dalziel/AP

In the spring of 1988, I traveled to China with a small group of other high school students and a much larger group of older adults. I’ve always liked to say that I learned more about American tourists during that trip than I ever learned about the Chinese. There were the two ladies who refused to eat anything but white rice. The woman who had to keep purchasing new luggage to fit all the souvenirs she was buying. Her daughter, who was so focused on videotaping everything, that she never seemed to look at anything with her own eyes. The man who thought it was funny to kick the back of my seat on every short plane flight, and who apparently decided that the very real machete fight that we inadvertently witnessed and which left one man with serious head wounds was light entertainment put on for his benefit.

That’s not to say that I didn’t have any encounters with the people who actually lived there. Unlike my trip the previous year to what was then the Soviet Union, no one tried to block us from making contact. The other students and I talked with young people on the streets of Shanghai who were anxious to practice their English, waved to an adorable, rosy-cheeked kindergarten class who chanted “Good morning! Good morning!” as we passed, ignored the desperate vendors who tried to sell us trinkets through the windows of our bus and watched an elderly woman with bound feet painfully limp down a flight of steps in the Forbidden City, leaning on the arm of a soldier.

Although my high school friends and I felt that we were obviously better behaved travelers and more open to truly experiencing the country than the adults with us, that did not mean that we ever really had a clue about any of China’s most pressing political issues. One peaceful evening in Beijing, we lay in the middle of Tiananmen Square and sang “You Can Call Me Mao,” parodying a song popular at the time, Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al.” A little more than a year later, that spot was overrun with protesting students, tanks and soldiers firing on civilians.

It was deeply upsetting to me that a site I associated with a silly memory became associated in the eyes of the world with such horrifying bloodshed. It’s equally upsetting that in the 20 years since, the Chinese government has made significant efforts to obliterate all recall of that terrible event, and have forbidden people to commemorate it in any way. During the days leading up to the anniversary this year, authorities have tried to block discussion about it on the Internet.

Learn more about what happened in June 1989 by reading findingDulcinea’s Web Guide to the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

Amy Goldschlager
Editor

Gay Rights in the Mainstream Media, Gay Rights in the Twitter Stream

Rep. Beth Bye of Connecticut holds her marriage license, the first issued to a gay couple in the state, on March 6, 2009. (Photo: George Ruhe/AP)

When Proposition 8 appeared on the California ballot in November 2008, gay rights were not yet a mainstream topic. Ironically, when Prop 8 passed, support for gay marriage started to mount. Whereas once homophobia was considered “the last accepted prejudice,” people came out in large numbers to protest the ban, and the media covered it. More states started to push harder for marriage laws. Recently, Iowa and Vermont passed laws in favor of gay marriage, and the District of Columbia council voted to recognize marriage in other states.

Now, the media watch on gay marriage is so tuned in that The New York Times City Room blog published a piece yesterday about N.Y. Gov. David Paterson’s anticipated but unconfirmed plans to introduce a gay marriage bill. Ten years ago, homosexuality was still a taboo topic, but in the past year, most media outlets, and many Americans, take the importance of gay rights as a given.

But perhaps the best example of all was the fast spread of news about the so-called #amazonfail on Twitter. A handful of gay authors found that their books had been reclassified as “adult” on Amazon and therefore could not be found on search. A decade ago, I genuinely believe that those few authors would have been the only ones to know or care about that situation. But this weekend, #amazonfail became the most popular search topic on Twitter.

Amazon decided it was such an emergency that employees were called in on Easter Sunday to fix the problem. The fact that the mistake is being called a PR disaster tells me that somewhere along the way, this country’s attitude toward homosexuality has shifted. No longer is homophobia “the last accepted prejudice.”

Rachel Balik
Senior Writer

Inauguration Highlights: Where to Watch and Listen on the Web

Photo: Jose Luis Magana/AP

Maybe you were busy today and weren’t able to catch President Obama’s inauguration ceremony; or you tried to stream it live from your computer and ran into some problems. Don’t worry: there are plenty of places online where you can watch video highlights, look at photo slideshows from citizens and photojournalists, and listen to the speeches and performances from the ceremony.

The New York Times “Readers’ Album” collects the fruits of readers’ photo submissions from the D.C. inauguration celebrations, including the concert, parade and ceremony.

The Huffington Post has numerous videos of key points from Inauguration Day, a live blog from the ceremony and a slideshow, all on the same page.

The transcript of President Obama’s inaugural address is available on BarackObama.com.

MSNBC has extensive video coverage and cool supplemental features like “Watch 18 past inaugurals” and “360-degree views of D.C.” and an article (including a transcript) about the verbal stumbles that occurred as Chief Justice John Roberts swore in President Obama.

CBS has an organized inauguration page that includes videos of speeches and performances from the inauguration ceremony, as well as slideshows of celebrities in the inauguration audience, the crowds, world reactions and more. CBS also has ample background information on President Bush’s departure, the Obama family and global reactions to Obama’s win and this week’s events.

Check tv.yahoo.com to search for prime time television recaps of Inauguration Day in your area.

Liz Colville
Senior Writer
Audience Development

For fun trivia and information about inaugurations past and present, visit findingDulcinea’s special section of “Inauguration Features,” which includes articles on D.C., inaugural balls and ceremonies, President Bush's exit and more.

Michelle Obama Wears Isabel Toledo

Photo: Tannen Maury/AP

After weeks of speculation, it’s official. America’s newly minted First Lady Michelle Obama stepped out on Inauguration Day 2009 wearing a pale yellow dress and coat ensemble by designer Isabel Toledo. Made of Swiss wool lace, the outfit is evocative of a look associated with another Mrs. O—Jackie Kennedy Onassis.

The blog Mrs. O, devoted to the fashion sass of the new first lady, points out that the color “Mimosa,” the shade of a champagne and orange juice cocktail, was named by Pantone as the color of 2009 because it “embodies hopefulness and reassurance in a climate of change.”

Toledo said in an interview with The New York Times’ The Caucus blog that she had wanted to dress Michelle Obama in “a very optimistic color, that had sunshine.”

The designer didn’t know until this morning whether Mrs. Obama would choose her ensemble. The first lady is also a fan of Ikram, a boutique in Chicago that carries clothes by designers Maria Cornejo and Narciso Rodriguez; Rodriguez designed the red and black dress that Mrs. Obama wore on election night.

But who is Isabel Toledo?

Based in New York, Toledo was born in Cuba in 1961 and later moved to New Jersey to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology and Parsons School of Design in Manhattan. For years, she worked under her own label, which earned a name for itself as a bastion of clean lines and classic American style.

In 2007, Toledo was tapped by all-American fashion house Anne Klein to serve as the label’s creative director. Toledo left that post a few months later. Nonetheless, fashion critics have named her as part of the lineage of “Great American Designer.” Among Toledo’s sartorial ancestors is Claire McCardell, a designer who fellow classic designer Norman Norell said could “take $5 worth of common calico and turn it into something a stylish woman would wear.”

May the Obamas continue to embrace simple American ingenuity through this new presidency.

Anne Szustek
Senior Writer

To read more about fashion trends with political leanings—both purposeful and inadvertent—see the findingDulcinea story, “Shoes Thrown at Bush Launch Latest Political Trend.” Another findingDulcinea story, “Penny-Pinchers Go Preppy in Economic Downturn,” highlights America’s return to classic fashion during the current recession.

Watching the Presidential Inauguration

Inauguration prep at the Capitol building in Washington (Evan Vucci/AP)

Barack Obama’s victory on November 4, 2008, was arguably one of the most momentous events in American history, and his inauguration on January 20, 2009, will carry on that spirit of hope and enthusiasm. Officials are expecting it to be the best-attended inauguration in history. Even if you can’t attend, you can still immerse yourself in coverage, on TV and online.

Katie Couric might have earned Obama a few supporters over the course of her grueling interviews with Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. On January 20, she’ll spend the entire day covering the inauguration for CBS viewers. Couric will report on the event from 10 am–5 pm and host a television special from 9 pm–10 pm; immediately following that, Couric will answer viewers’ questions in a webcast.

Check the CBS Web site for information on all of their inauguration coverage. The page currently hosts numerous inauguration articles and even a section that rings out the old by reviewing Bush’s legacy.

If the Web is your medium of choice for watching the events, the Chicago Sun-Times will stream live inauguration coverage all day long. Check the site for headlines and photos covering Obama’s journey to inauguration day as well as the event itself.

The Sun-Times also lists all the ways to watch the inauguration on TV and online. Many stations and sites are offering different types of coverage and special features. Choose a favorite newscaster or the particular angle that interests you.

Even if you’re not going to the inauguration, experience it vicariously via US News and World Report’s Interactive DC Map. Track the festivities through our nation’s capital so you’ll know exactly where things are when you’re watching them on TV or on the Web.

Find out more about the events scheduled for Obama’s inauguration and information about inaugurations past in findingDulcinea’s “Inaugurations Past and Present.”

If you’re inspired to head down to D.C., consult our travel feature on “Last-Minute Tips for Where to Stay During the Inauguration,” learn vital information about getting around the city on January 20 with “Getting Around D.C. on Inauguration Day,” and explore the best that D.C. has to offer with the findingDulcinea Washington, D.C. Inauguration Travel Web Guide.

Rachel Balik
Senior Writer

Women Firsts in 2008

As most of us know, Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton were big achievers in 2008. But there are many other women from around the world who set milestones this year. FindingDulcinea teamed up with WowOwoW, otherwise known as The Women on the Web, to profile 20 such women, including Olympic swimmer Dara Torres, New Hampshire's first female senator Jeanne Shaheen, Clinton, Palin, and 16 more. 

Visit WowOwoW's photo essay to see pictures and learn essential facts about the women.

Visit findingDulcinea's special section, 2008 Firsts for Women, to learn more about each of these women's lives and how they achieved their unique accomplishments.

Liz Colville

Senior Writer

Audience Development