Cave News

Colliers Magazine July 8, 1944 Independence Day Cover

This is great old magazine cover before Collier‘s took a 55-year nap beginning in January, 1957.

The “new” Collier’s, which began publishing again in 2012 just doesn't have any of the old charm - especially the covers!

Fireworks at Mount Rushmore

Proud of this annual event in my home state of South Dakota

Not so happy Father’s Day

Remembering my father on this Father’s Day

Standing by his Piper Tri-Pacer at a sod landing strip on the south edge of Nebraska City Nebraska in a 1959 photo

What Memorial Day is all about

Americans mob beaches for Memorial Day Weekend amid lockdown fatigue

Americans eager to spend a day outdoors are flocking to beaches for Memorial Day Weekend after enduring lengthy coronavirus lockdowns.

Beach-goers showed up in throngs to popular summer destinations throughout the US — forcing some areas to start turning people away.

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Thoughts on Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address on this Presidents Day

President Lincoln was not a dynamic orator. In those years before loudspeakers, anyone making an outdoor speech had to speak loudly.

Some historians have suggested that Lincoln’s voice became a bit high-pitched when speaking loudly. Also, he had the strange habit of throwing his arms in the air while flexing his knees to make a point during a speech.

One eyewitness said the speech was followed by a “dignified silence.” A noted historian said the applause was delayed, scattered, and “barely polite.”

It is not surprising then to learn of negative reactions to President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

Noted orator Edward Everett, who spoke for two hours at Gettysburg, praised Lincoln saying, “I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.”

Praise from Edward Everett, one of the great American orators of the antebellum and Civil War eras was high praise indeed.

The Abraham Lincoln speech at Gettysburg is now considered one of the most famous speeches in American history. It emboldened the Union cause during the Civil War with perhaps the most stirring words ever spoken.

MLK Day

This surely must be the strangest Christmas tree of 2019

Christmas tree in a petri dish. .

When do your New Year's Resolution's start