My father’s fifth grade report card (1909), dated two years after his arrival on the Montana prairie from the Nebraska plains, records his grades in reading, penmanship, arithmetic, spelling, grammar, geography, and history. The family home was two miles south of the one room school house. I expect he and his two brothers had the use of a single horse to make their way to and from.
These children spoke Danish at home but their parents pushed for them to do well in English. In the early years, the churches did still have Danish worship services once a month or so but they didn’t see clinging to the language from their childhoods as being a virtuous thing. (more…)

Yid With Lid

If Alan Funt was still alive most of America would looking for him to pop out from somewhere and say “Smile You’re on Candid Camera.”  This president’s foreign policy has been worse than Amateur hour and somewhere in his Kremlin office Vladimir Putin is laughing his arse off at Barack Obama.
Look…at today’s strange occurrences. Please try and read the next run-on paragraph in one breath.

(note…could insert some hard returns to make the following easier to read, but that ruins the point…../sharon)

First while trying to get international approval for attacking Syria John Kerry holds a press conference where he makes an offhanded remark about avoiding military action if Syria gives up its chemical weapons to some sort of international force. Kerry’s comment was as intentional as Obama’s “red line”  Almost immediately the State Department tries to walk back Kerry’s comment saying it was hypothetical. But it was too late because Russia got involved and made the offer to Syria who said they were interested.  Now at this point Kerry and the White House was still crapping all over the idea (you following this?). The former Secretary of State who wants to be President  just happens to be in Washington DC to pick up a liberty award on the anniversary of when she allowed four Americans who worked for her to be killed in Benghazi and then participated in the cover-up of the terrorist attack in which the four Americans died. (a scandal the mainstream media is still reluctant to cover). Now while the present Secretary of State and Administration is still crapping all over the Russian proposal, the former Secretary of State endorses it.  Finally the President goes on six TV networks (he skips Univision because he doesn’t need the Hispanic vote anymore) and not only says he will try and pursue the diplomatic effort his current Secretary of State was backing away from…but it was his idea all along. OK maybe not his Idea but something he discussed with the Russian leader last week at the G20 Summit. The President said he would direct the Secretary of State to follow pursue, but he wouldn’t want Syria to use that as a delaying tactic, but this same President has allowed Iran to use negotiations as a delaying tactic for five years.  When the president was done, the Senate Majority leader and member of the president’s party announces he will delay the Senate war vote to give the president time to explain himself to the American People. But the real reason is the Majority Leader doesn’t have nearly enough votes to pass the war bill.And through this entire thing, one expects John Cleese to show up on the TV screen to complain that the parrot he just purchased was dead.  Continue Reading Yid With Lid ..

This MBOB begins with a daisy trail which will deliver you to the point of today’s essay a few paragraphs down the page.
Terry, Montana is 160 miles south of where our farm was.

The site where Terry is located was first called Joubert’s Landing, in recognition of the man who built a supply point along the Yellowstone River for freighters traveling from Bismarck, Dakota Territory, to Miles City, Montana Territory. When the Northern Pacific Railway‘s transcontinental rail line arrived in 1881, the town was renamed for Alfred Howe Terry,^[6] a General in the Union Army who commanded an 1876 expedition in connection with George Armstrong Custer’s campaign against Native Americans,^[7]specifically in the west. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry,_Montana

Terry had ground water (which we didn’t have) and some big trees near the Yellowstone river (which we didn’t have) that made some log houses possible. The planting of Terry’s first tree, however, was still documented for the history books.

The town was located just south of the Yellowstone River midway between the larger towns of Miles City and Glendive…Seen from a distance in 1893, it looked like a mirage on the dusty treeless plain. Sagebrush and cactus were its only vegetation. The first tree in Terry—a wild plum—would be planted later that year. (more…)

Here is Part 4 of President Calvin Coolidge’s speech, made on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, in 1926.
Part 1: http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2013/08/21/calvin-coolidge-on-the-ideals-of-the-declaration/
Part 2:  http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2013/08/22/calvin-coolidge-on-the-ideals-of-the-declaration-of-independence-part-2/
Part 3: http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2013/08/23/calvin-coolidge-on-the-ideals-of-the-declaration-of-independence-part-3/
Because of the delay in getting this final bit posted, I have looped back and picked up within Part 3. These (complete) paragraphs are the conclusion of his speech.

Under a system of popular government there will always be those who will seek for political preferment by clamoring for reform. While there is very little of this which is not sincere, these is a large portion that is not well informed. In my opinion very little of just criticism can attach to the theories and principles of our institutions. There is far more danger of harm than there is hope of good in radical changes. We do need a better understanding and comprehension of them and a better knowledge of the foundations of government in general.
Our forefathers came to certain conclusions and decided upon certain courses of action which have been great blessing to the world.
Before we can understand their conclusions we must go back and review the course which they followed. (more…)

There was seldom a day that the arrival of the mail didn’t bring magazines to our house. I suppose our parents subscribed to at least twenty or twenty-five — farm magazines, news magazines, church magazines, periodicals like the Reader’s Digest and Saturday Evening Post, and “the world out there” magazines like Arizona Highways, Naval Proceedings, and the National Geographic.
Most of the farm periodicals had pages reserved for the reading skills and interests of the young people on the farm. On those pages there would also be ads for items like this stamp album which was ordered for me when I was about eleven or twelve.
The penciled-in price in the front of the book indicates the 125-page hardcover album cost $1.10. Tucked within its pages is one of the envelopes in which I received a batch of 12-20 stamps every couple of weeks (which cost 10 cents per envelope). This single envelope still has 15 stamps from the Argentine Republic that never got pasted in place (more…)

Things change –
It was never called a living room.  That would have been a bit pretentious.
The front room had sheer curtains on the one south-facing window; an upright piano until about 1951 when it was replaced by a studio piano; a maroon patterned rug with huge flowers in the print; and a floor model combination Hi-Fi/radio after we got electricity in 1949 or ’50.
That Hi-Fi did amazing service. We could, and did, stack twelve 78 RPMs with music such as Her Royal Majesty’s Marine Band, or very special 33 1/3s like Bugs Bunny and His Friends. That was one of only two children’s records we had so it was played over and over and over. Eventually, my brother and I had it perfectly memorized and performed it for our own amusement, with sound effects, on long car trips to California or Iowa. Good times.
(more…)

Part 1: http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2013/08/21/calvin-coolidge-on-the-ideals-of-the-declaration/
Part 2:http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2013/08/22/calvin-coolidge-on-the-ideals-of-the-declaration-of-independence-part-2/
Continuing the excerpt from a speech President Coolidge made on the occasion of the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence

Ours is a government of the people.  It represents their will.  Its officers may sometimes go astray, but that is not a reason for criticizing the principles of our institutions.  The real heart of the American Government depends upon the heart of the people.  It is from that source that we must look for all genuine reform*.  It is to that cause that we must ascribe all our results.
It was in the contemplation of these truths that the fathers made their declaration and adopted their Constitution.  It was to establish a free government, which must not be permitted to degenerate into the unrestrained authority of a mere majority or the unbridled weight of a mere influential few.
They undertook the balance [to] balance these interests against each other and [to] provide the three separate independent branches, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial departments of the Government, with checks against each other in order that neither one might encroach upon the other. These are our guarantees of liberty. (more…)

Continuing the excerpt from a speech President Coolidge made on the occasion of the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (continuous/connected from previous text)
Part 1: http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2013/08/21/calvin-coolidge-on-the-ideals-of-the-declaration/ 

We are prone to overlook another conclusion.  Governments do not make ideals, but ideals make governments.  This is both historically and logically true.  Of course the government can help to sustain ideals and can create institutions through which they can be the better observed, but their source by their very nature is in the people.  The people have to bear their own responsibilities.  There is no method by which that burden can be shifted to the government. 
It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws, that creates the character of a nation.
About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful.  It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning cannot be applied to this great charter.

If all men are created equal, that is final.

If they are endowed with inalienable (sic) rights, that is final.

If governments derived their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final.  

No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.

If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people.  
Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress.  They are reactionary.  Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.
In the development of its institutions America can fairly claim that it has remained true to the principles which were declared 150 years ago.  In all the essentials we have achieved an equality which was never possessed by any other people.  Even in the less important matter of material possessions we have secured a wider and wider distribution of wealth.
The rights of the individual are held sacred and protected by constitutional guarantees, which even the Government itself is bound not to violate.  If there is any one thing among us that is established beyond question, it is self-government—the right of the people to rule.

If there is any failure in respect to any of these principles, it is because there is a failure on the part of individuals to observe them.

To be continued.

This is excerpted from a speech President Coolidge made on the occasion of the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence

Placing every man on a plane where he acknowledged no superiors, where no one possessed any right to rule over him, he must inevitably choose his own rulers through a system of self-government. This was their theory of democracy.  
In those days such doctrines would scarcely have been permitted to flourish and spread in any other country. This was the purpose which the fathers cherished.  In order that they might have freedom to express these thoughts and opportunity to put them into action, whole congregations with their pastors had migrated to the colonies.  These great truths were in the air that our people breathed.  Whatever else we may say of it, the Declaration of Independence was profoundly American.
If this apprehension of the facts be correct, and the documentary evidence would appear to verify it, then certain conclusions are bound to follow.  
A spring will cease to flow if its source be dried up; a tree will wither if its roots be destroyed. In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document.  It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions.  
Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man – these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in the religious convictions.  They belong to the unseen world. Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish.  
We can not continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause.

To be continued.