Remember the Maine! On this date in 1898 an explosion on board the USS Maine, a 6,682-long-ton (6,789 t) second-class pre-dreadnought battleship launched in 1889, occurred in the Havana Harbor in Cuba. Later investigations revealed that more than 5 long tons (5.1 t) of powder charges for the vessel’s six and ten-inch guns had detonated, obliterating the forward third of the ship. The remaining wreckage rapidly settled to the bottom of the harbor. Most of the crew were sleeping or resting in the enlisted quarters in the forward part of the ship when the explosion occurred; 266 men lost their lives as a result of the explosion or shortly thereafter, and eight more died later from injuries. Captain Charles Sigsbee and most of the officers survived because their quarters were in the aft portion of the ship. Altogether, there were only 89 survivors, 18 of whom were officers. The explosion was a precipitating cause of the Spanish–American War that began in April 1898. Advocates of the war used the rallying cry, “Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!” The episode focused national attention on the crisis in Cuba but was not cited by the William McKinley administration as a casus belli, though it was cited by some who were already inclined to go to war with Spain over their perceived atrocities and loss of control in Cuba. In addition to the 1898 inquiry commissioned by the Spanish Government by Spanish naval officers Del Peral and De Salas, two Naval Courts of Inquiry were ordered: The Sampson board in 1898 and the Vreeland board in 1911. In 1976, Admiral Hyman G. Rickover commissioned a private investigation into the explosion, and the National Geographic Society did an investigation in 1999 using computer simulations. All investigations agreed that an explosion of the forward magazines caused the destruction of the ship, but different conclusions were reached how the magazines could explode.
Richard and I got up an hour early, and got to work an hour early; we spent a half hour in the Associate Dining Room (ADR), where I wrote out which, how many, what size, and for whom to order wedding photographs. We then went out on the floor; one of our co-workers was already in the pit where (eventually) the Early Out list shows up to be signed. When the list showed, the other dealer signed first, on the grounds (confirmed by other dealers and floor people) that the one who signs first is the one who is in the pit first, not the one who arrives at the casino first. It really didn’t make any difference; once our eight hours started (I was relief for Mini-Baccarat, Pai-Gow, and Three-Card Poker; Richard had a no-hitter on the Mini-Baccarat table, with not a single guest all day), the Powers that Be were sending all the Pai-Gow dealers to take a written test in the shift office (one by one), and were also changing some table top layouts (which means that all the chips have to be removed from the table; after the old layout is taken off, and the new one put back on, then the chips are placed back on the table again), so no one got out. I was quite disgruntled, as I had a lot to do once I got home, and had really been counting on getting a nap in before doing stuff in the afternoon; I figured that I would spend all afternoon doing stuff and running errands, and that with my Book Club meeting, I would get to sleep about 10:30 pm, after being up for 22 1/2 hours. . However, I did finish reading Tinkers by Paul Harding on my last break.
On our way home, Richard suggested that he could run one of my major errands, and that I could let the others slide until tomorrow; that way, I could get a nap in before Book Club. I gratefully accepted his offer, Once home, I read the morning paper (I had not made salads, and was frankly too tired to make them once I got home), did my Book Review for Tinkers by Paul Harding for this weblog and for my Goodreads account (I’m still unable to post reviews to my Facebook account). I then took a nap from 1:30 pm to 4:30 pm; meanwhile, Richard went to the photographers with the clean list of what we wanted to order (for ourselves and for Liz Ellen), went to the grocery, and went fishing (not catching, alas) at City Park Lake.
When I woke up from my nap, I watched Jeopardy! (Watson smoked both Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in the first of two games, with the second game to be broadcast tomorrow), then headed to Lafayette; along the way I phoned Liz Ellen. Once in Lafayette, I went to the Lafayette Parish Library – Southside Branch to return Bloody Crimes: The Chase for Jefferson Davis and the Death Pageant for Lincoln’s Corpse by James Swanson, then went to Barnes & Noble, where I participated in the 7:00 pm Third Tuesday Book Club meeting to discuss Tinkers by Paul Harding. I then headed home, arriving at 9:15 pm; and once I am done with tonight’s Daily Update, I’m going to bed.
Tomorrow I am going to try to wake up early enough to run errands and to do my laundry. In the afternoon, Richard and I are off to Baton Rouge to see the Swine Palace production of King Lear. We may be trés late getting home; so if my Daily Update for tomorrow does not appear until Thursday morning, be not afraid.
Our Parting Quote tonight comes from Howard K. Smith, American journalist, radio reporter, television anchorman, political commentator, and film star. Born in 1914 in Ferriday, Louisiana, he worked his way through Tulane University in New Orleans, having studied German and journalism. After his graduation in 1936, with both bachelor of arts and L.L.B. degrees, he signed on as a deckhand with a ship bound for Germany, where he briefly studied at Heidelberg University. In 1936, he spent a year as a reporter in New Orleans before securing a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University’s Merton College, from which he graduated in 1939. Smith became active in student politics, mostly protesting Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s seemingly soft attitude toward Nazism. While at Oxford, he was the first American ever to chair the university Labour Club. Upon graduating he worked for the New Orleans Item, with United Press in London, and with the The New York Times. In January 1940 Smith was sent to Berlin, where he joined the Columbia Broadcasting System under Edward R. Murrow. He visited Hitler’s mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden and interviewed many leading Nazis, including Hitler himself, Schutzstaffel or “SS” leader Heinrich Himmler and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. When Smith refused to include Nazi propaganda in his reports, the Gestapo seized his notebooks and threw him out of the country. He left for Switzerland on December 6, 1941, the day before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. He was one of the last American reporters to leave Berlin before Germany and the United States went to war. His 1942 book, Last Train from Berlin: An Eye-Witness Account of Germany at War describes the reporter’s observations from Berlin in the year after the departure of Berlin Diary author William L. Shirer. Last Train from Berlin became an American best-seller and was reprinted in 2001, shortly before Smith’s death. Unable to leave Switzerland, where he and his young wife spent most of the war, Smith reported whatever the Swiss government would permit. After the liberation of France, he began reporting on Germany and central Europe from Berne. By the winter of 1944-1945, he began sending vivid radio accounts of the German counter-attack in the Ardennes known as the Battle of the Bulge, and he accompanied Allied forces across the Rhine River and into Berlin. Smith became a significant member of the “Murrow Boys” that made CBS the dominant broadcast news organization of the era. In May 1945 he returned to Berlin to recount the German surrender. In 1946, Smith went to London for CBS with the title of “Chief European Correspondent”. In 1947 he made a long broadcasting tour of most of the nations of Europe, including behind the Iron Curtain. In 1949, Knopf published his The State of Europe, a 408-page country-by-country survey of Europe that drew on these experiences and that argued “both the American and the Russian policies are mistaken”; he advocated more “social reform” for Western Europe and more “political liberty” for Eastern Europe. In 1959 he hosted a 21-week public affairs series entitled “Behind the News with Howard K. Smith”. Broadcasts included a two-part program on Nikita Khrushchev, the St. Lawrence Seaway, Fidel Castro in Cuba, and unemployment problems in distressed areas. In 1960, having established residence earlier in Bethesda, Maryland, he chaired the first ever televised presidential debates, held between U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Vice President Richard M. Nixon. Late in 1961, Smith left his job at CBS when a dispute erupted over a documentary called “Who Speaks for Birmingham?”. This in-depth investigation concerned the battle between civil rights forces and the police of Birmingham, Alabama. Smith, an advocate of desegregation, concluded his commentary at the end of the program by recalling Edmund Burke’s admonition, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” He was told to remove the Burke quote from the end of the broadcast. Network president and founder William S. Paley declined to support Smith over the matter, and he promptly left the network after twenty years of service. Smith declared that his hatred of discrimination stemmed from living in the racially segregated American South and from watching the Nazis in Europe during the world war. Smith moved to ABC at a time when that network’s news division was a distant third among the “Big Three” networks. After the 1962 mid-term elections, he presented a documentary entitled, “The Political Obituary of Richard Nixon” as part of his Howard K. Smith: News and Comment (1962-1963) television series. He referred to Nixon’s “last press conference” after his disastrous losing campaign against Democrat Edmund G. “Pat” Brown, Sr., for governor of California. In that exchange, the former vice president famously told reporters that they would not “have Nixon to kick around any more.” Smith included in the broadcast an interview with Nixon’s longstanding nemesis Alger Hiss, a convicted Cold War perjurer. Howard K. Smith: News and Comment aired in the 10:30 Eastern slot on Sundays, opposite CBS’s long-running quiz program What’s My Line? hosted by John Charles Daly, who had been the first ever ABC news anchorman. ABC stood by Smith on the Nixon “obituary”, but sponsors dried up for the program thereafter. It was revised in the 1963-1964 season as simply ABC News Reports. On June 5, 1968, Smith was anchoring coverage of the California presidential primary that had stretched to 3 a.m. New York time. As the closing credits for the special were airing, word came in that U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York had just been shot. ABC simply showed a wide shot of the chaotic newsroom for several minutes until Smith was able to confirm the initial story and go back on the air with a special report. He continued at the anchor desk for several more hours for reports of Kennedy’s condition. In 1969, the veteran reporter became the co-anchor of the ABC Evening News, first with Frank Reynolds, then the following year with another CBS alumnus, Harry Reasoner. He began making increasingly conservative commentaries, in particular adopting a hard-line stance in support of the Vietnam War. He contrasted President Lyndon B. Johnson’s decisive stance in Vietnam with the international failure to take preemptive action against Hitler. During this period, his son, future ABC newsman, Jack Smith (died 2004), was serving with the U.S. Army 7th Cavalry Regiment in South Vietnam and fought at the Battle of Ia Drang. These commentaries endeared him to President Nixon, who rewarded him with a rare, hour-long, one-on-one interview in 1971, at the height of the administration’s animus against major newspapers, CBS, and NBC. During the 1972 presidential campaign, a letter was published that Smith had written to the Democratic U.S. Senator Edmund S. Muskie of Maine, indicating his full support for Muskie. The endorsement was written on stationery with ABC’s letterhead. Nothing ever came of this controversy, however, and Smith kept his job. Notwithstanding his past temporary friendly relations with Nixon, who defeated U.S. Senator George S. McGovern of South Dakota for reelection, Smith became the first national television commentator to call for Nixon’s resignation over Watergate. He remained as co-anchor at ABC until 1975, after which Reasoner anchored solo until Barbara Walters joined the broadcast a year later. Continuing as an analyst until 1979, he left the network as the Roone Arledge era was beginning at ABC News and full retirement age approached. Sources say that Smith was embittered over the reduction in time allowed for his commentaries and hence resigned after he criticized the revamped World News Tonight format as a “Punch and Judy show.” Smith appeared in a number of films, often as himself; The Candidate (1972), Nashville (1975), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), the television series The Bionic Woman in the “Kill Oscar” episode (1977) playing himself anchoring an ABC newscast, and both V (1983) and the subsequent 1984 television series. Along with Last Train from Berlin, he wrote three other books, The Population Explosion (1960), a children’s book Washington, D.C.; The Story of our Nation’s Capital (1967), and a memoir Events Leading Up to My Death: The Life of a Twentieth-Century Reporter (1996) (died 2002) : “They said it was against the rules to take sides on a controversial issue. I said, ‘I wish you had told me that during World War II, when I took sides against Hitler.’”
From The Recamier 