19th Level

Today, January 15, 2019, marks the 100th anniversary of the Great Molasses Flood in Boston. On that day, around noon, a massive tidal wave of molasses flooded the North End neighborhood. Supports for elevated trains were damaged, buildings toppled. Twenty one people died and around 150 were injured. I've written of this before in my review of Stephen Puleo's Dark Tide , the best (and one of the only) source of information for this disaster. I find Boston of the 1910s to be a fascinating period in history and have been running a Call of Cthulhu  campaign set in 1914 - it's about to reach 1915. They might eventually merge with a previous campaign, one that began in France at the end of World War One - but whose second adventure was about the Molasses Flood. What makes the era so fascinating? It was a time of extreme tension. Immigrants were pouring into cities and traditional power bases were being disrupted as the immigrants found their voices. It was also a time of ...

In the American Civil War, Confederate General Lee's Special Order 191 fell into Union hands, providing Union General McClellan with the location of the Army of Northern Virginia. This allowed for Union victory at the Battle of Antietam which provided President Lincoln with the proper conditions to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, making the Civil War a war against slavery. This prevented France and the United Kingdom from recognizing the Confederacy. This is a common point of divergence in alternate history fiction. On its own, the rebelling states did not have a chance of victory if the Union chose to fight until victory. Their only real chances was to either convince the Union that victory was not worth fighting for or to secure foreign assistance. Harry Turtledove posited in this series that if the orders did not fall into Union hands, France and the UK would recognize the Confederacy, forcing an end to the Civil War. The first novel in this series, How Few Remain ,...

A few weeks ago, my older daughter Victoria and I paid a brief visit to Manhattan. Vicki's been giving some thought to going to New York's Fashion Institute of Technology (still a few years to go for that) but one thing we wanted to make certain of was that she'd be comfortable with the city itself - she'd only been there once before, and that almost ten years ago. Overall it was a great trip. She fell in love with the city. I got to meet someone from my virtual gaming group for coffee - it's always nice to really meet with people I initially get to know via email, social media, and webcams. I'm looking forward to meeting a number of people next June at North Texas RPG Con. One thing I wanted to make certain we did was spend some time at the World Trade Center. For Vicki  (and her younger sister, Jasmine, who chose to stay home in Massachusetts with mom), 9/11 will always be a matter of history. We first found out Vicki was on the way on the Saturday aft...

I am currently working my way through Mary Beard's SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome. She covers Rome from its legendary founding to the point where all free people of the Empire were granted citizenship. She closely examines the legends of very early Rome such as the founding by Romulus and Remus, the Regal period, and the early Republic. For all of these periods we have no contemporary written history, being forced to rely on archaeological evidence - any written histories of those periods were written centuries later. What I found striking was her description of warfare in the period around the end of the monarchy. She wrote: Military activity is another good case in point. Here geography alone should give us pause. We need simply look at the location of these heroic battles: they were all fought within a radius of about 12 miles of the city of Rome. Despite the style in which they are recounted, as if they were mini-versions of Rome against Hannibal, they were probably ...

There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured with what is right in America.  - Former President Bill Clinton How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore And a Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot In the Caribbean by Providence, impoverished, in squalor Grow up to be a hero and a scholar? - "Alexander Hamilton", Lin-Manuel Miranda  Fun fact - when I was looking for the source of the first quote  above I was fairly certain it was actually said by President Reagan, not Clinton. Some of my European and Asian/Pacific friends are puzzled by American patriotism, seeing it as strange to be proud of something that is an accident of birth. And some of my more conservative friends wonder how liberals can consider themselves patriotic, always complaining about the bad things the United States has done. Let me give you my own view. It is strongly informed by the Catholic social justice teachings I received at Sacred Heart High School as well...

We move under cover and we move as one Through the night, we have one shot to live another day We cannot let a stray gunshot give us away We will fight up close, seize the moment and stay in it It’s either that or meet the business end of a bayonet The code word is ‘Rochambeau,’ dig me? Rochambeau! You have your orders now, go, man, go! And so the American experiment begins With my friends all scattered to the winds "Yorktown (The World Turned Upside)" What first got my attention about the music from Hamilton was how bad-ass Lin-Manuel Miranda and his cast made The Battle of Yorktown sound. I love history in general but the founding of my nation has a sepcial place in my heart. The music of Hamilton captures this era so well - how a bunch of rebels against incredible odds managed to found a nation. How that nation needed a federal government and how fortunate it was in its first president was a man who understood the importance of refusing power - of teaching a nat...

Though it's an older book, Barbara Tuchman's The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914  makes for a very readable presentation on what the world of 1890-1914 was like. It is worth noting her focus was on the western world, centered around the United Kingdom, France, Russia, Germany, and the United States, as well their interactions with other countries. Tuchman noted that she deliberately does not discuss World War 1. It's an interesting choice, given how well we know it is looming over this book. As she explained it, given the people she portrays were not aware of what was to come, she wanted to present their world free of it. That's not to say they were totally ignorant of the possibility of the coming war - many times she mentions the feeling that various personalities she covers have about an upcoming war - often looking forward to it with a nationalistic pride. But clearly, none could know what a disaster for humanity the war would pr...

Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.  That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances.  That a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective Colonies for their consideration and approbation. Text of the Lee Resolution, taken by the Virginia Convention in Williamsburg. Proposed to the Continental Congress by William Henry Lee of Virginia and seconded by John Adams of Massachusetts. The family spent school vacation visiting Colonial Williamsburg and the surrounding historic areas. This was the fourth trip trip my wife and I took. Our elder daughter, now 13, went once with us and our younger, now 10, made her first trip.  For those unfami...

“That there is a Devil, is a thing doubted by none but such as are under the influences of the Devil.” - Cotton Mather, On Witchcraft I'm trying my luck with a superhero campaign right now, something I've really wanted to do for ages. We've seen the evolution of Port Henry as a place for adventure and over the next few months we'll see how good a place it really is for adventure. While I'm not actively planning another game (I'm just starting this one folks), currently being in the Historic Triangle of Virginia (Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown) reminded me of another genre in my bucket list - that of Colonial America. I love the history of 17th and 18th century North America. Make no mistake, it's not some glorious noble epic. Jamestown was settled in search of cash. Plimoth was settled for religious liberty - but only for the pilgrims, not for anyone else. The many peoples living in North America were decimated by plague and war and Afri...

I first read Michael Dobbs' One Minute To Midnight  when it was first published, back in 2008. Both due to my general enjoyment of history and that I have an RPG campaign in the late 1950s (a few years before this) I recently listened to the unabridged audiobook version of this book. The impression I'm left with is amazement that humanity as a species survived the Cold War in general and the Cuban Missile Crisis specifically. Throughout the thirteen days of the crisis there were multiple points where war between the USA and USSR could have broken out - from the USA discovering the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba to a US spy plane getting lost near the North Pole and stumbling into the Soviet Union in the midst of the crisis. The horror of discovering it was Soviet troops, not Cuban ones, who shot down a U-2 plane over Cuba. Does the US retaliate? If so, where does it end? There were so many opportunities for things to have gone wrong that it almost seems unre...

Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe  Rosenbergs, H-bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom Brando, "The King and I" and "The Catcher in the Rye"  Eisenhower, vaccine, England's got a new queen Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye - Billy Joel, "We Didn't Start the Fire" It's a bit of an odd experience reading a history book and having it reach the period where I'm alive... My memories of the 1970s are pretty fuzzy, especially the first part of the decade, what with me being concerned with things like being born and learning how to use the toilet. In getting a game set in the late 1950s ready I decided to do a little bit of research. Given I enjoy history, James Patterson's Grand Expectations was already on my to-read list. Grand Expectations covers the period from the end of World War II in 1945 to 1974 as the economy began tanking after an unbelievable run. During the th...

I'm currently working my way through James Patterson's Grand Expectations , covering the history of the United States from the end of World War II and Watergate. Currently I'm in the 1952 presidential election, though the book isn't 100% sequential - for example, it covered the end of the Korean War before diving into the 1952 election.  One thing I'm finding fascinating is the multiple facets of American life in the late 1940s and early 1950s. On the one hand, we see the United States enjoying prosperity which, to our eyes, is hard to believe. But that assumes you were white. And not a farmer. Or a woman looking for her own career. Or non-straight. Or having unpatriotic views. There's a definite undercurrent of fear at the communist menace. The commies are everywhere. To be clear, there were unions whose leadership did indeed receive marching orders from Moscow. And the Soviet Union did indeed engage in espionage. But it is also clear how much ...

One advantage to your typical RPG religion is there isn't a whole lot of doubt. When you have priests who can heal injuries and turn away vampires, agnosticism and atheism are positions that make absolutely zero sense. In our own world, despite the claims of various prophets, saints, and the like, we've no conclusive proof of the existence of any supernatural being or beings, much less knowledge of what they might want or expect of lowly mortals. Moreover, even within a given religion, there is a lot of disagreement. You can find the greatest disagreement among people who are essentially in agreement - consider the great controversy in the news as I write this with the Anglican leadership censuring the Episcopal church for its permitting same-sex marriages. Watch the debates between liberal and conservative Catholics on matters like economic policy, immigration, birth control, etc. The Thirty Years War devastated Europe, a war with religious differences between Catholics ...

Since this post has to do with the 2nd Amendment, something that generates a lot of passion, I'll begin with a few points: The Founding Fathers were not a monolithic block. As a result it's easy for people, including me, to pick and choose from their statements to defend a particular viewpoint. In the United States, it is the Supreme Court which determines the Constitutionality of a law. The Roberts Court has determined the 2nd Amendment Guarantees an individual right to own a firearm. There is a history of Supreme Court decisions that many have regarded as "wrong". Many of the same people, for example, who support the Supreme Court decision on individual gun rights disagree with its decision on the Affordable Care Act, Corporations having a right to speech, Same Sex Marriage, Roe v. Wade, etc. Similarly the Supreme Court in its history has endorsed slavery in Dred Scott v. Sandford and racial segregation with Plessy v. Ferguson. Opponents of "wrong...

This post has spoilers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens . Please scroll past this lovely picture of Jar Jar Binks in order to proceed further. All Bettie's stories have happy endings. That's because she knows where to stop.  She's realized the real problem with stories -- if you keep them going long enough, they always end in death.  -  Sandman: 24 Hours by Neil Gaiman, Mike Dringenberg, and Malcolm Jones III The Big Bad to end all Big Bads has been brought to a crushing end at the hands of The Hero, his Ragtag Bunch of Misfits and his trademark BFS. The Negative Space Wedgie that was threatening all of creation has been un-wedgied, the Sealed Evil in a Can has been safely disposed of, all the plot threads that were left hanging have been wrapped up nice and neat and everybody lives Happily Ever After.  And then the sequel happens.  - tvtropes.org, Happy Ending Override One of the criticisms I've heard raised against Star Wars: The Force Awak...

A few years back I ran a brief Cthulhu by Gaslight campaign. It kicked off, as one might expect, in 1890's London. I was somewhat surprised when the game wound up relocating itself to New York City. Though I had some familiarity with late Victorian-era Britain, I discovered I did not know very much about the United States of that same period, typically referred to the Gilded Age. Having done a bit of homework as a result I found it to be an incredibly interesting era and one largely untapped in gaming. If an RPG takes place in the 1890's it is usually safe to assume it takes place in Britain (or is a globetrotting game with Britain as its base.) An excellent work of fiction detailing 1890's New York is Jack Finney's Time and Again , a novel I reviewed back in 2013. Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City  is a work of non-fiction about the construction and realization of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair - the Columbian Exposition, commemorating the 400t...

Stephen Puleo's book  Dark Tide  covers a remarkably forgotten tragedy. On January 15, 1919, a 2.3 million gallon tank of molasses collapsed, spilling its contents in Boston's North End in a wave traveling some 35 miles per hour. Twenty-one people lost their lives and some 150 were injured. It almost sounds comical until you consider the horror such an event would no doubt present. Consider how horrible it would be to literally drown in molasses. Yes this is an event that is not in the popular history of the nation or even Boston.  Dark Tide  is divided into three sections. The first, "A Monster in Our Midst" deals with the construction of the tank. Rather than being an exercise in engineering discussion it instead explains why it was built and what the nation and city were like at the time. Puleo explains how the United States Industrial Alcohol Corporation (USIA) distilled molasses in various plants, with one such plant being in Cambridge. A por...