The Codex Americanus

The Codex Americanus is a project to relate U.S. historical and current events in the pictographic style of the ancient Mesoamericans.  This style was developed by the Aztec and Mixtec cultures to facilitate communication between peoples speaking different languages in the area of what is now Mexico.  In the interconnected world of today pictographic writing is being used all around us to  to efficiently communicate information, road signage being an obvious example.  Certainly, the use of emojis has become an important cross cultural communication tool.  

I have chosen to use the rich symbolism of the Mesoamerican pictographic style to communicate for its beauty and expressiveness.  I invite you to explore the Codex Americanus  website as I continue to develop pages of what will become a pictographic book of American history.

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Codex Americanus Paintings

Each painting is followed by a short description of the event, then followed by a black and white copy of the painting with a key to some of the pictographs.  The rest is up to your interpretation! 

Signing of the Declaration of Independence

The 13 original colonies are illustrated by their current state flags or seals, with the number of representatives from each colony that signed the Declaration illustrated with red dots.

The signing of the United States Declaration of Independence occurred primarily on August 2, 1776 at the Pennsylvania State House, Independence Hall, in Philadelphia. The 56 delegates to the Second Continental Congress represented the 13 former colonies which had declared themselves the “United States of America,” and they endorsed the Declaration if Independence which the Congress approved on July 4, 1776. The Declaration proclaimed that the former Thirteen Colonies then at war with Great Britain were now a sovereign, independent nation and thus no longer a part of the British Empire.

 
1. King  George III – British navy above, “redcoat” troops  
    below
2. Atlantic Ocean
3. Thomas Jefferson
4. John Hancock
5. Independence Hall (Philadelphia) with the American
    Eagle above
6. Benjamin Franklin

The American Revolutionary War

The American Revolutionary War arose from growing tensions between residents of Great Britain’s 13 North American colonies and the colonial government, which represented the British crown under King George III. Skirmishes between British troops and colonial militiamen in Lexington and Concord in April 1775 initiated the conflict, and by the following summer, the rebels were waging a full-scale war for their independence.  King George  stated “Blows must decide whether they are to be subject to this country or independent.” In June-July 1776 a massive British war fleet arrived in New York consisting of 30 battleships with 1200 cannons, 30,00 soldiers, 10,000 sailors and 300 supply ships.  France entered the American Revolution on the side of the colonists in 1778, turning what had essentially been a civil war into an international conflict. After French assistance helped the Continental Army force the British surrender at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781, the Americans had effectively won their independence, though fighting would not formally end until 1783.

George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware River occurred on the night of December 25, 1776, and was the first move in a successful surprise attack against Hessian troops in Trenton New Jersey on the morning of December 26, netting the colonial troops prisoners and supplies. 

 

1. King George III
2. The British fleet crossing the Atlantic Ocean
3. George Washington crossing the Delaware River
4. British “red coat” troops
5. Troops of the American Colonies

Florida - "Forgotten" British Colonies 14 & 15

When we think of the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution most Americans consider the 13 British colonies.  But, in fact, there was a 14th and a 15th British colony at the time of the Revolution, East Florida and West Florida.  Spain ceded Florida to the British in 1763 as stipulated by the first Treaty of Paris.   The ceded territory was divided by the British into two colonies, the dividing line being the Apalachicola River.  East Florida covered most of the today’s state of Florida.  West Florida included part of the Florida panhandle and what is now part of Alabama and Mississippi.  The British capital of East Florida was St. Augustine and of West Florida, Pensacola.  The Florida colonies during the Revolution remained loyal to the British homeland.  British loyalists and Tories sought refuge in the Florida colonies, and these colonies became staging areas for British troops as they conducted campaigns against the rebel American colonies especially in Georgia and South Carolina.   The American revolutionary forces were aware of the danger posed by the British troops and loyalist forces in Florida and General George Washington specifically commented on the threat of these colonies in several writings to the Continental Congress.   St. Augustine was of particular interest to both the British and American forces as it was heavily fortified by the Spanish Castillo de San Marcos which stands to this day.  Several attempts by the colonial forces to take the fort at St. Augustine were unsuccessful.  In 1781 Pensacola was attacked by Spanish, French, and colonial troops and was surrendered by the British.  The Paris Peace Treaty which ended the American Revolutionary War reverted control of Florida to the Spanish but Spain lost the 1767 British northern expansion of West Florida to the U.S.  Due to frequent incursions into Florida by U.S. troops, particularly during the Seminole Wars which were, in part, incited by Andrew Jackson, and a lack of significant revenue from the territory, in 1819 Spain ceded Florida to the U.S. for a payment of $5,000,000.

The “Forgotten Colonies” painting shows on lower left the indigenous people of Florida of which there were many groups, and the flora and fauna of their homeland.  Upper right shows the early Spanish exploration of Florida (in heavy armor no less) with the Castillo de San Marcos fort at St. Augustine built to defend against the British.  Lower right is King George III, British troops in Florida during the American Revolution, and the cultivation of sugarcane and oranges in Florida by the British settlers.  The upper left portrays the Seminole Wars including the black African Seminoles, and a reminder of Andrew Jackson’s role in the passing of the Indian Removal Act which led to the elimination of most of the Indian population from Florida and the southeastern U.S. in general.  The central map of Florida is an adaptation of a 1765 map.  While there are many old maps of Florida, I chose this one because it shows Florida as it was, and in many ways as it still is, a water world.  Much of the Florida coast, particularly the southern tier, is built on dredged and filled swamp land.  The multibillion-dollar Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Project currently underway in Florida is an effort to partially restore the natural flow of water through the Everglades.

Jacksonian Era Forced Removal of Native Americans From Southeastern U.S.

At the beginning of the 1830s, nearly 125,000 Native Americans lived on millions of acres of land in the Southeastern U.S. – land their ancestors had occupied and cultivated for generations. When the government of Georgia refused to recognize their autonomy and threatened to seize their lands, the Cherokees took their case to the U.S. Supreme Court and won a favorable decision. (Worcester v. Georgia 1832). But Georgia officials simply ignored the decision.  Working on behalf of white settlers who wanted to grow cotton on the Indians’ land President Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) refused to enforce it.  In 1835, a few self-appointed representatives of the Cherokee nation negotiated the Treaty of New Echota, which traded all Cherokee land east of the Mississippi for $5 million, relocation assistance, and compensation for lost property. In 1838 President Martin Van Buren (1837-1841) sent General Winfield Scott and 7,000 soldiers to expedite the removal process at bayonet point while whites looted their homes. Thousands of eastern tribe Indians were marched westward to a specially designated “Indian territory” across the Mississippi River  on the infamous Trail of Tears.  Many died.

1.  United States Supreme Court

2.  President Andrew Jackson negotiates the Treaty of Echota

3.  President Andrew Jackson and Vice President  (later President) Van Buren disregarding Supreme Court decision in               Worcester v. Georgia and allowing violent removal of Native Americans to reservations in the West

4.  Supreme Court Justices with Lady Justice (center)

5.  Forcible removal of Native Americans by Federal troops and state militia from Southeastern states

6.  Native American lands cleared for cotton cultivation and homesteads following forced removals

President Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation

 The Emancipation Proclamation, or Proclamation 95, was a presidential proclamation and executive order issued by President Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865) on January 1, 1863. It changed the federal legal status of more than 3.5 million enslaved African Americans  in the designated areas of the South from slave to free. As soon as a slave escaped the control of the Confederate government, the slave became free. Ultimately, the Confederate surrender resulted in the proclamation’s application to all former slaves.  The proclamation was superseded three years later by the 13th amendment in December 1865.

Lee’s Surrender at Appomattox

The last major engagement between the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac occurred at Sayler’s (aka Sailor’s) Creek.  On April 6, 1865, Grant sent a letter to Lee seeking the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. With his soldiers starving and deserting daily, Lee wrote to Grant on the morning of April 9, requesting a cease-fire and a place to discuss terms of his surrender.   On April 9, 1865, at around 1 PM, General Lee met General Grant at the home of Wilmar McLean at Appomattox Court House. Grant put down on paper the modest terms as directed by President Abraham Lincoln: all Confederate soldiers and officers were to surrender their arms and return to their respective homes and observe the conditions of their parole and abide by the laws of their individual states. Lee then asked Grant to permit those soldiers who owned their own horses and mules to keep them. Grant agreed. Lee also requested food for his starving army. Grant at once agreed, and gave Lee the food Sheridan had recently captured from the Confederate Army. Lee then signed the formal surrender.  

1.       General Robert E. Lee
2.       General Ulysses S. Grant
3.       The war’s devastation
           Sayler’s Creek (below)

The Sinking of the R.M.S Titanic

At 11:40 p.m. ship time on April 14, 1912 the Royal Mail Ship (R.M.S) Titanic struck and iceberg in the North Atlantic.  It sank out of sight 2 hours and 40 minutes later taking over 1,500 of her 2,223 passengers (119 Americans) with her to a watery grave.  The Titanic was on its maiden voyage leaving from Southampton England expected to arrive in New York City.  Icebergs were especially prolific in the North Sea in 1912.  The Titanic received multiple warnings of sea ice on April 14, nevertheless, at the time of impact it was traveling at a high rate of speed.   The Titanic, built to be unsinkable, had been designed to stay afloat if up to 4 of her forward compartments were breached and flooded.   The glancing blow that night opened 6 of her 16 compartments and it became clear that she would sink.  Several occurrences contributed to the disaster.  On January 4, 1912 two rare celestial events coincided, a supermoon, the moon being closest to earth since 796 A.D. (not to occur again until 2257), and a perfect alignment of the sun-moon-earth.  Together these events produced extremely high tides.  The extreme high tides are thought  to have refloated icebergs that normally would be lodged in the shallow waters off Labrador and Newfoundland.   Before leaving Southampton, a fire had developed in the coal bunker of the ship which could not be extinguished.  The intense heat of the fire is thought to have weakened the ships structure leading to a buckling and opening of the compartments upon impact with the iceberg.  To attempt to control the fire the burning coal was being rapidly fed to the boilers which had the effect of increasing the ship’s speed.  These factors, along with communication issues, insufficient life boats and poor crew training magnified the level of the tragedy.

Johnstown Flood of 1889

The 1889 Johnstown Flood

Johnstown, 56 miles east of Pittsburg is a city in Cambria County, Pennsylvania.  The region’s natural abundance of iron, coal, and limestone were central to the town’s development in the 1800’s. The industries lining the river bottom lands prospered, in part, from the demand in the western United States for barbed wire for which Johnstown was the Nation’s largest supplier.

The Conemaugh River, immediately downstream of Johnstown, is hemmed in by steep mountainsides.  Above the city, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania built the South Fork Dam between 1838 and 1853, as part of a cross-state canal system.  The dam controlled water from Lake Conemaugh, which formed the reservoir behind the dam. As railroads superseded canal barge transport, the dam was abandoned and eventually a group of wealthy speculators purchased the abandoned reservoir and converted it into a private lake resort. Development of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club resort included lowering the dam to make its top wide enough to accommodate a road and installing a fish screen in the spillway, although the screen trapped debris which reduced its functioning. While the original dam had a system of relief pipes and valves these had been previously removed making it impossible to control the lake’s water level.

On May 28,1889, the area was hit by the heaviest rainfall that had ever been recorded in that part of the United States. On the morning of May 31, it was clear that the dam might be breached, but warnings, sent by telegraph, were not passed to Johnstown officials. 

During the day in Johnstown, due to the heavy rains, water rose to as high as 10 feet in the streets. In the afternoon the dam was breached, and it collapsed sending nearly 4 billion gallons of water down the valley towards Johnstown.  The flood waters picked up debris, such as trees, houses, and animals on its way down the valley.

An hour after the South Fork Dam collapsed, the flood hit Johnstown. The residents were caught by surprise as the wall of water and debris bore down, traveling at 40 miles per hour and reaching a height of up to 60 feet. Some people, realizing the danger, tried to escape by running towards high ground but most people were hit by the surging floodwater containing debris which included barbed wire from the wire factory upstream.

At Johnstown, the stone railroad bridge formed a temporary dam and people who had been washed downstream became trapped and perished there.

The Johnstown flood, the most disastrous of the 19th century in the US, took 2,208 lives making the disaster the largest loss of civilian life in the United States up to that time.

In the years following the disaster, blame centered on the members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club for their modifications to the dam and failure to maintain it properly.  The club was successfully defended against lawsuits and was never held legally responsible for the disaster.  Members of the club, some of the wealthiest industrialists of the day, did contribute to the recovery.

In the top panel of this painting, we see the separation of working class Johnstown from the wealthy, elite resort owners.  In the panel below this separation is removed indicating the unanticipated fatal connection between the two.  

  1. The sun
  2. Lake Conemaugh
  3. The South Fork Fishing and Hunting Clubhouse
  4. South Fork dam
  5. Mountains
  6. Little Conemaugh River
  7. Johnstown
  8. Stoneycreek River
  9. Cambria Iron Mills
  10. Stone Bridge
  11. Storm, rain
  12. Tlaloc, the Aztec god of rain, lightning, and storms

1918 "Spanish" Flu

The 1918 influenza pandemic (January 1918 – December 1920), also known as the Spanish Flu, infected 500 million people world-wide and caused from 50 to 100 million deaths.  (three to five percent of Earth’s population at the time).  It is considered one of the deadliest epidemics in human history.  The Spanish flu was unusual in causing in a higher than expected mortality rate for young adults.  It is believed that this flu may have been particularly deadly in this group because it triggered a systemic inflammatory response that in the stronger, more active immune systems of these healthy individuals increased the severity of symptoms. Malnourishment, overcrowded medical facilities and generally poor sanitation which led to bacterial super-infections together contributed to the high rate of flu-related deaths.  Wartime (WWI) censors minimized reports of illness and mortality in Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States. Neutral Spain reported the death rate in that country giving rise to the label of “Spanish Flu.”

Compare this painting with the COVID-19 painting.

To be read in a boustrophedon manner from lower right, then left, up right, up to the top level and then read left.

  1. Transmission from birds then from person to person.
  2. Health workers attempt to treat patients.
  3. severe symptoms develop
  4. The deaths of many result from the infection.
  5. Cremation of the dead.

The Spanish flu was its name

But that is not from where it came.

Regardless of what its name is,

Some say that it came from Kansas.

From chicken yards is what we heard,

Perhaps then spread by wild birds.

Soldiers coming back from the war

for the virus opened doors.

It started with a cough or sneeze,

but then turned into a nasty wheeze.

It attacked the bronchial tubes and lungs

of the old and of the young.

But more than those who were old and worn

it killed the healthy and strong.

They reacted with a cytokine storm

and died in droves with families forlorn.

This storm is an overreaction

to an incoming viral infection.

Overcrowding and poor sanitation

was a problem in our nation.

With a dearth of disinfection

bacteria caused superinfection.

Massive bleeding was a sign

that one had left but little time.

The entire world was infected

in no  country undetected.

Over half a million Americans died,

worst hit were native tribes.

In poverty and poor health

they were shut out of our Nation’s wealth.

The Spanish Flu was in the past

but we knew it would not be the last.

With COVID the chance we fritted away.

Merrily we spent the day,

and now we see the price we pay.

Scopes "Monkey" Trial

In July 1925 John T. Scopes, a substitute high school teacher, was accused of violating Tennessee’s Butler Act.  This act made it unlawful to teach human evolution in state-funded schools. The American Civil Liberties Union put out a call for a challenge to the Butler act offering to provide legal defense to anyone challenging the law. The challenge was taken up by officials of the small town of Dayton, Tennessee in order to attract attention to the town whose economy was shrinking.  Scopes, who was unsure if he ever even taught evolution purposely allowed himself to be incriminated so that the case could have a defendant.

National reporters converged on Dayton to cover the big-name lawyers who had agreed to represent each side.  William Jennings Bryan, three-time presidential candidate argued for the prosecution, while Clarence Darrow, the famed defense attorney, and agnostic spoke for Scopes. The trial publicized the Christian fundamentalist Creationist – Modernist evolution controversy, with Modernists claiming that evolution was not inconsistent with religion, and Fundamentalists claiming that the word of God as revealed in the Bible took priority over all human knowledge. Judge Raulston frequently sided with the prosecution and barred testimony from experts in biology and theology.   During the trial Darrow took the unusual step of calling Jennings Bryan, counsel for the prosecution and ardent fundamentalist anti-evolution supporter, to the stand as a witness in an effort to demonstrate that belief in Bible and its many accounts of miracles was unreasonable.  One area of questioning Involved the book of Genesis, including questions about whether Eve was actually created from Adam’s rib. The case was a theological contest and a national trial on whether fact-based science should be taught in schools. Scopes was found guilty and fined $100 (equivalent to $1425 in 2017), which the ACLU paid, but the verdict was later overturned on a technicality since the judge in the case, not the jury, decided the amount of the fine. In 1968, the U.S Supreme Court  ruled in Epperson v. Arkansas that such bans contravene the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because their primary purpose is religious. Tennessee had repealed the Butler Act the previous year.

  1. John Scopes (R) and the defense lawyer Clarence Darrow (L)
  2. Judge John Tate Raulston
  3. William Jennings Bryan
  4. Adam and Eve
  5. Charles Darwin surrounded by Nature’s evolution of creatures

War of the Worlds 1938 Broadcast

On October 30, 1938 was broadcast perhaps the most famous example of “fake news” in the 20th century.  On that Sunday night during the highly popular “Chase and Sanborn Hour” Orson Welles, competing for audience with that popular show, broadcast an adaption of the H.G. Wells novel “War of the Worlds,” a presentation of the “Mercury Theatre on the Air.”   At that time, before the advent of television, radio was one of most important sources of news and entertainment.  Orson Welles worked with Howard Kock, one of the Mercury Theatre writers, to update the novel by changing the setting to the contemporary U.S. with the landing point of the first Martian spacecraft at rural Grover’s Mill, an unincorporated New Jersey village.  The program’s format was a simulated live newscast of developing events presented as news bulletins interrupting programs of contemporary dance music.   Beyond the initial introduction of the radio play the only notices that the broadcast was fictional came at about 40 and 55 minutes into it.  Some listeners missed the introduction or heard only a portion of the broadcast and mistook it for a genuine news broadcast.

Some reports at the time suggested that the broadcast caused a wave of mass hysteria of radio listeners between 8:15 and 9:30 pm with thousands believing that invading Martians were spreading destruction and death in New Jersey and New York.  In Newark it was reported that families rushed out of their houses with wet handkerchiefs and towels over their faces to flee from what they believed was Martian death gas.  I can add that my mother told me of her recollection as a pre-teen of panicked people running out of their dwellings into the streets in Brooklyn, NY during the airing of the Mercury Theater broadcast.  Later studies of the event suggested that the panic was not as widespread as previously reported.

The Fall of the Aztec Empire

This painting illustrates the Spanish conquistadors who sailed from Cuba and marched from the eastern coast of Mexico to confront the Aztec ruler Moctezuma (seated in the painting.)  Tenochtitlan, the seat of the Aztec empire, with a population estimated to be over 200,000, would have been the greatest city that the conquistadors had ever seen.  The Spaniards were intent on conquering the indigenous people of Mexico and as they fought and pillaged, they spread European diseases including smallpox for which the indigenous populations had no defenses.  After months of battle by the small Spanish force along with thousands of indigenous allies who were enemies of the Aztecs, Tenochtitlan fell.  Buildings were razed and toppled, and the Aztec city was destroyed along with libraries of painted codices which chronicled the history, religion and daily lives of the Aztecs.  It is estimated that over 90% of the Aztec and other Mesoamerican people perished due to disease, forced labor, and the Inquisition where the few remaining codices were rooted out and destroyed.  Only about a dozen codices were saved having been sent to Spain as curiosities. 

          It was said that in the years before the conquistadors’ arrival, eight omens foretold of their arrival and the ultimate domination of the Aztec Empire.  Two are illustrated in this painting, the appearance of a great fiery comet and of a woman roaming the streets of Tenochtitlan crying “My children, we must leave” and “My children, where will you go?”

The real War of the Worlds: The Spanish Invasion of Mexico 1519 and the destruction of the Aztec Empire

Written in the spirit of H.G. Wells “War of the Worlds”

No one would have believed in the first years of the sixteenth century that our world was being watched from across the timeless, limitless sea.   With infinite complacency we went to and fro over our empire assured of our dominance, our invulnerability.  No one gave a thought to the worlds over the great sea as a source of human danger or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life beyond that vast sea as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most we may have fancied there might be other men beyond the sea, perhaps inferior to ourselves and ripe for conquest. Yet so vain is man, and so blinded by his vanity, that no scholar or priest, up to the very end of the fifteenth century, expressed any idea that intelligent life might have developed across the sea or indeed at all, beyond our earthly empire.  Yet across the gulf of the vast and desolate sea minds cold, unsympathetic, and mercenary regarded our lands and our treasures with envious eyes, and slowly and surely they drew their plans against us. And early in the sixteenth century came our great disillusionment.

Before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own warriors have wrought upon our neighbors which, in spite of their likeness to us, were entirely subjugated and made vassals to our emperor.  Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Spanish warred in the same spirit? 

 

Pearl Harbor and the Pacific Theater of World War II

The Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 was followed by a deterioration of US – Japanese relations.  In 1940 President Franklin Roosevelt ordered the Pacific Fleet to be moved from San Diego to Hawaii with the goal of discouraging further Japanese aggression.  This hope was not realized.  The U.S. stopped shipping oil to Japan in July 1941.   Japan needed oil and other raw materials available from western controlled colonies in SE Asia.  By late 1941 it appeared that conflict between Japan and the U.S would erupt. The U.S. predicted that if the Japanese fleet planned an attack it would attack the Philippines and that it only had the ability to attack one location.  Contrary to expectations, the Japanese simultaneously attacked U.S.-held Philippines, Guam, and Wake islands, and British controlled Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong.  Attacking Hawaii the Japanese intended to destroy the fighting capabilities of the American fleet thereby preventing the U.S. Pacific Fleet from interfering with Japanese conquests of SE Asia and prompting the U.S. to seek a peace with Japan.  On December 7, 1941, just before 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes descended on the base, where they damaged or destroyed almost 20 American naval vessels, including eight battleships, and over 300 airplanes. 2,403 Americans died in the attack and 1,000 people were wounded. Five mini-submarines were included in the attack and caused some damage to American ships. The Japanese forces involved in the attack on Pearl Harbor were part of the Japanese Imperial Japanese Navy Combined Fleet led by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, until he was killed in an attack by U.S. fighter planes in April 1943, a result of a US cryptography coup.   Hideki Tojo, Japanese prime minister had given final approval for the attacks.  The day after the assault, President Franklin D. Roosevelt petitioned Congress to declare war on Japan. The Japanese had wanted to push the United States into an agreement to lift the economic sanctions against them; instead, they had pushed the U.S.  into a conflict that ultimately resulted in Japan’s first occupation by a foreign power.  The Japanese attack had left the base’s vital onshore facilities—oil storage depots, repair shops, shipyards and submarine docks—intact. As a result, the U.S. Navy was able to rebound relatively quickly from the attack.

On December 8, Japan’s allies Germany and Italy declared war against the United States. Congress reciprocated, declaring war on the European powers, more than two years after the start of World War II.

On February 19, 1942 President Franklin Roosevelt (1933-1945) issued executive order 9066 in reaction to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.  Internment camps, constructed under order 9066, were located in California, Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado, and Arkansas.  Most of the 117,000 people interred were American citizens.  Canada relocated 21,000 Japanese residents and 2,264 people of Japanese descent were sent to the U.S. from Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Peru for internment.  In all, an indelible stain on U.S. civil rights.  (President Gerald R. Ford (1974-1977) on February 19, 1976 issued a proclamation titled “An American Promise” that rescinded Executive Order 9066.) 

Between June 4 and 7, 1942 the decisive Battle of Midway was fought. The Japanese hoped another naval defeat would force the U.S. to capitulate and ensure Japanese dominance in the Pacific.  The Japanese plan was to lure American aircraft carriers into a trap.  American cryptographers were able to determine the date and location of the planned attack, enabling the forewarned U.S. Navy to prepare its own ambush.  After Midway, Japan’s ability to replace material and manpower became insufficient to cope with its losses in materials and men, while the United States’ massive industrial and training capabilities made losses far easier to replace. The Battle of Midway is considered one of the major turning points in the Pacific War. 

With a long and costly invasion of Japan seen as potentially necessary to end the war, President Harry S. Truman (1945-1953) issued orders for atomic bombs to be used on Japan in an effort to precipitate a surrender.  On August 6, a uranium bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. A plutonium implosion bomb was dropped on Nagasaki three days later. Both cities were devastated with between 90,000 and  146,000 people killed in Hiroshima and 39,000 to 80,000 people in Nagasaki.  Japan surrendered on August 15, six days after the Soviet Union’s declaration of war and the bombing of Nagasaki. It is believed that besides the destructive power of the atomic bombs, the threat of invasion by the Soviets was a significant factor in the Japanese surrender.  The Japanese government signed the surrender documents on the US battleship Missouri on September 2, 1945 in Tokyo Bay ending World War II.

  1.  Hideki Tojo

  2.  Yamamoto Isoroku

  3.  Pearl Harbor

  4.  Japanese bombers

  5.  Japanese mini submarines

  6.  Japanese Fleet

  7.  President Franklin Delano Roosevelt

  8.  President Gerald Ford

  9.  Japanese citizens moving from California to  

       internment camps 

10.  Japanese Internment Camps

11.  Battle of Midway

12.  The assassination of Yamamoto

13.  The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

14.  President Harry S. Truman

15.  Signing Japan’s surrender on the US battleship Missouri 

       General Douglas MacArthur (L)

D-Day Normandy Invasion

The D-Day invasion of World War II took place on June 6, 1944 (the “D” in D-Day stood for “day” since the final invasion date was unknown and weather dependent.) The invasion’s code name was Operation Overlord.  The airborne assault into Normandy, as part of the D-Day allied invasion of Europe, was the largest use of airborne troops up to that time. It was also the largest amphibious operation of WWII.  More than 160,000 Allied troops landed along a 50-mile stretch of heavily-fortified coastline of Normandy, France. More than 5,000 ships and 13,000 aircraft supported the D-Day invasion, and by day’s end, the Allies gained a foot-hold in Continental Europe at a cost of about 4,400 dead and 8,000 wounded. Over the next several weeks, the Allied liberators expanded the beachheads and began preparations for Operation Cobra, the breakout from Normandy in late July that, less than a year later, led to the liberation of the rest of France and eventually all of Western Europe, and the surrender of Nazi Germany on May 7, 1945.

  1. Hitler, his death, and the defeat of Nazi Germany
  2. Symbols for the three countries of major involvement in the D-Day invasion: US (top), Great Britain (middle), Canada (bottom)
  3. General Dwight D. Eisenhower
  4. Date of D-Day, June 6, 1944

The Vietnam War and Agent Orange

In November 1961, President John F. Kennedy authorized the U.S. Air Force’s  herbicide program in Vietnam. Vietnamese forces dug hundreds of kilometers of underground tunnels which included living quarters, kitchens, ordnance factories, and hospitals. Guerilla troop movement through the tunnels made it impossible for the American army to make inroads in tunneled areas. As a countermeasure the U.S. Air Force sprayed herbicides that burned down forests. Agent Orange, a powerful herbicide that was contaminated with the highly toxic chemical dioxin, was commonly used. The U.S. program sprayed more than 20 million gallons of herbicides over Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos from 1961 to 1971. Agent Orange was later proven to cause serious health issues—including cancer, birth defects, rashes and severe psychological and neurological problems—among the Vietnamese people as well as among returning U.S. servicemen and their families.

1 and 2.  U.S. Air Force planes spraying agent 
                orange and other herbicides
          3.   Viet Cong tunnels with prisoner

John Glenn's Orbit of the Earth

On February 20, 1962, NASA launched one of the most important flights in American history.  The mission was to send a man to orbit earth, observe his reactions and return him home safely.  After three years of training, John Glenn was launched into space aboard the Mercury capsule Friendship 7.  In 4 hours and 56 minutes, John Glenn circled the earth three times reaching speeds of more than 17,000 miles per hour.  The successful mission concluded with a splashdown and recovery in the Atlantic Ocean, 800 miles southeast of Bermuda.The pilot of this historic flight, John Glenn, became a national hero and a symbol of American ambition.

  1.  American Eagle
  2.  Friendship 7 capsule
  3.  View of John Glenn inside Friendship 7
  4.  Earth
  5.  The date of the flight,  February 20, 1962

The Cuban Missile Crisis

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, leaders of the U.S. (President John F. Kennedy) and the Soviet Union (Nikita Khrushchev) engaged in a tense, 13-day political and military standoff in October 1962 over the installation, at the request of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles  just 90 miles from U.S. shores. In a TV address on October 22, 1962, President John Kennedy notified Americans about the presence of the missiles, explained his decision to enact a naval blockade around Cuba and made it clear the U.S. was prepared to use military force if necessary to neutralize this threat to national security. Many people feared the world was on the brink of nuclear war. However, disaster was avoided when the U.S. agreed to Khrushchev’s offer to remove the Cuban missiles in exchange for the U.S. promising not to invade Cuba. Kennedy also secretly agreed to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey. 

1. President John F. Kennedy
2. Nikita Khrushchev
3. Fidel Castro

The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

President John F. Kennedy (1961-1963) was assassinated on Friday, November 22, 1963, at 12:30 p.m. in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza. Kennedy was riding with his wife Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connally, and Connally’s wife, Nellie, when he was fatally shot. Governor Connally was wounded in the attack. President Kennedy was pronounced  dead about thirty minutes after the shooting. Former U.S. Marine and Marxist Lee Harvey Oswald  was arrested by the Dallas Police Department about 70 minutes after the initial shooting and  charged with the murder of Kennedy. At 11:21 a.m. Sunday, November 24, 1963, Oswald was fatally shot during his transfer to the Dallas County Jail by Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby. After a ten-month investigation, the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald assassinated Kennedy, that Oswald had acted entirely alone, and that Ruby had acted alone in killing Oswald. In 1992, the Assassination Records Review Board  wrote in a footnote in its final report “Doubts about the Warren Commission’s findings were not restricted to ordinary Americans. Well before 1978, President Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and four of the seven members of the Warren Commission all articulated, if sometimes off the record, some level of skepticism about the Commission’s basic findings.”

1. Lee Harvey Oswald
2. President Kennedy
3. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy
4. Date of the assassination November 22, 1963 in Mesoamerican calendrical pictographs

Neil Armstrong’s Moonwalk

Neil Armstrong was a NASA astronaut made famous by being the first person to walk on the moon, on July 20, 1969.  As he stepped from the Lunar Module on to the Moon’s surface he famously said, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Buzz Aldrin was the Apollo 11 Lunar Module Pilot. Michael Collins (not shown) was the Apollo 11 Command Module Pilot. Collins stayed on the Columbia command module orbiting the moon while Armstrong and Aldrin took the Eagle Lunar Lander down to the moon’s surface.  Armstrong and Aldrin’s walk on the moon’s surface lasted for 2 hours and 36 minutes.  In total, Aldrin and Armstrong stayed on the lunar surface for 21 hours and 36 minutes, though they spent most of that time inside the lunar module.

Twenty-four American astronauts have made the trip from Earth to the Moon between 1968 and 1972. Three astronauts made the journey from Earth to the Moon twice: James Lovell (Apollo 8 and Apollo 13), John Young (Apollo 10 and Apollo 16), and Gene Cernan (Apollo 10 and Apollo 17).

 1.  The moon
 2.  Moon craters
 3.  Neil Armstrong
 4.  Buzz Aldrin in the Lunar Lander showing speech or communication glyphs between the moon and earth
 5.  Earth showing speech or communication glyphs between earth and the moon
 6.  Date of moon walk – July 20, 1969 in Mesoamerican calendrical pictographs

Michael Collins Orbits the Dark Side of the Moon

While astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on and walked upon the surface of the moon, Michael Collins began his 21.5 hour orbit of the moon by traversing the moon’s far side in the Apollo 11 Command Module.  He was the first person to personally view this  mysterious moon landscape.  

Nixon and the Watergate Affair

The Watergate scandal began early in the morning of June 17, 1972, when several burglars were arrested in the office of the Democratic National Committee, located in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C.   Investigation revealed that the prowlers were connected to President Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign.  They had been caught wiretapping phones and stealing documents. The connection between the break-in and the re-election committee was highlighted by investigative coverage by The Washington Post and other news organizations. Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered information suggesting that knowledge of the break-in, and attempts to cover it up, led into the upper reaches of the Justice Department, FBI, CIA, and the White House. Chief among the Post’s anonymous sources was an individual whom Woodward and Bernstein had nicknamed “Deep Throat.”  On August 5, 1974, the White House released an audio tape from June 23, 1972. Recorded only a few days after the break-in.  It documented Nixon’s involvement in the cover-up. In August 1974, after his role in the conspiracy was revealed, Nixon resigned.  In 2005 it was revealed that FBI Associate Director Mark Felt was “Deep Throat.”

  1.  The White House
  2.  President Richard Nixon
  3.  Nixon’s tape recordings
  4.  The underground parking garage, meeting place
       for “Deep Throat”
  5.  The Washington Post reporters 
       Woodward and Bernstein
  6.  “Deep Throat” (W. Mark Felt)
  7.  The Watergate burglars
  8.  The Watergate Complex

Roe v. Wade

Roe v. Wade is a landmark decision issued in 1973 by the United States Supreme Court on the issue of the constitutionality of laws that criminalized or restricted access to abortions.  In June 1969, 21-year-old Norma McCorvey discovered she was pregnant. She was unable to obtain an abortion in Dallas, Texas. Her attorneys, Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington, filed suit in 1970 in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas on behalf of McCorvey under the alias Jane Roe. The Texas court unanimously declared the Texas law unconstitutional.  The case was brought to the U.S. Supreme Court. The defendant in the case was Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade representing the State of Texas.  In 1973 the Court ruled 7–2 that a right to privacy under the 14th Amendment extended to a woman’s decision to have an abortion and that states laws which made it illegal for a woman to have an abortion up to three months of pregnancy were unconstitutional.  The court further stated that the decision on whether a woman should have an abortion at up to three months of pregnancy should be left to the woman and her doctor.  Since that time anti- and pro-abortion groups have demonstrated for and against this landmark decision.

 

On June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision in a 6-3 vote. 

  1.  Multiple marches, over the years, of protest and  
       support of the Roe vs.  Wade decision
  2.  The U.S. Supreme Court
  3.  Multiple marches, over the years in support of   
       Roe vs. Wade decision
  4.  U.S. Supreme Court Justices
  5.  Lady Justice

Three Mile Island Nuclear Accident

On March 28, 1979 the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in Dauphin County Pennsylvania, near Harrisburg, was the scene of the most significant accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant history, a partial meltdown and radiation leak of one of its two reactors (TMI-2). On the seven-point International Nuclear Event Scale the incident was rated as a an “accident with wider consequences.”

It began with failures in the non-nuclear system, which provided coolant for the reactor.  A stuck-open relief valve allowed large amounts of nuclear reactor coolant to escape causing a partial meltdown of the reactor resulting in a release of radioactive gases and radioactive iodine into the environment. The mechanical failure was compounded by the initial failure of inadequately trained plant operators to recognize and properly react to the situation.  A key error was the failure to notice a poorly placed indicator light which led an operator to manually override the automatic emergency cooling system of the reactor. Although most studies found that the levels of radioactive leakage were minor and little above background radiation levels in the area, the accident amplified anti-nuclear safety concerns among activists and the general public resulting in new, more stringent regulations for the nuclear industry.

The incident provoked several major anti-nuclear demonstrations and was a contributor to the decline of new nuclear reactor construction programs, although a slowdown had already been underway in the 1970s.

Interestingly, on March 16, 1979, twelve days before the accident, the movie “The China Syndrome” premiered. Although the movie was criticized by the nuclear power industry as “sheer fiction” the fictionalized accident had an uncanny resemblance to the Three Mile Island accident.

Following the accident, the TMI-2 reactor was permanently shut down.  On September 30, 2019 the sister reactor on the site, TMI-1, was also shut down ending all nuclear power generation at Three Mile Island

The actual amount of radioactivity that was released from the accident was never fully established …

 

President Ronald Regan and Trickle Down Economics

President Ronald Regan (1981-1989) was a strong proponent of “Trickle Down” Economics. A 2012 study by the Tax Justice Network indicated that wealth of the super-rich does not trickle down to improve the economy, but it instead tends to be amassed and sheltered in tax havens with a negative effect on the tax base of the home economy. A 2015 paper by researchers for the International Monetary Fund argued that there is no trickle-down effect as the rich get richer.  The report concluded that if the income share of the top 20 percent (the rich) increases, then GDP growth actually declines over the medium term, suggesting that the benefits do not trickle down. In contrast, an increase in the income share of the bottom 20 percent (the poor) is associated with higher GDP growth.

President Bill Clinton and the Monica Lewinski Affair

The President Bill Clinton (1993-2001) and Monica Lewinski affair involved 49-year-old President Bill Clinton and 22-year-old White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The sexual relationship took place between 1995 and 1997 and came to light in 1998. Clinton ended a televised speech with the statement that he “did not have sexual relations” with Lewinsky. Further investigation led to charges of perjury and to the impeachment of President Clinton in 1998 by the U.S. House of Representatives. He was subsequently acquitted on all impeachment-related charges of perjury and obstruction of justice in a 21-day Senate trial. The Clinton-Lewinski affair led to a landmark legal precedent by the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled that a sitting U.S. president is not exempt from civil litigation for acts committed outside of public office.

9/11 World Trade Center NYC

The September 11, 2001 attacks were a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda against the United States on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. The attacks killed 2,996 people, injured over 6,000 others, and caused at least $10 billion in infrastructure and property damage. Additional people died of 9/11-related cancer and respiratory diseases in the months and years following the attacks. 9/11 was the single deadliest incident for firefighters and law enforcement in the history of the U.S.  Four passenger airliners were hijacked by  19 terrorists. Two of the planes, were crashed into the North and South towers, of the World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan. Within an hour and 42 minutes, both 110-story towers collapsed. A third plane, was crashed into the Pentagon, which led to a partial collapse of the building’s west side. The fourth plane, was initially flown toward Washington, D.C., but crashed into a field in near Shanksville, PA, after its passengers thwarted the hijackers.

  1.  The 4 hijacked airlines
  2.  The World Trade Center Twin Towers
  3.  The date of the attack, September 11,   
       2001
  4.  The number of deaths due to the 
       attacks (2,996)

President George W. Bush and the Iraq War

In his 2002 State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush (2001-2009) identified Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as the “axis of evil” due to their weapons of mass destruction programs and sponsorship of terrorism. Throughout 2002, the administration developed the Bush Doctrine, which called for preemptive and unilateral war when justified by national security interests. Vice President Dick Chaney was obsessed with Iraq after the First Gulf War and was said to be influential in the Bush administration’s focus on Iraq. Bush asserted in a March 17, 2003 public address that there was “no doubt” that the Iraqi regime possessed weapons of mass destruction contrary to findings of UN weapons inspectors. Two days later, Bush authorized Operation Iraqi Freedom, and the Iraq War began on March 20, 2003.  As of 2018, 4541 U.S. casualties have been recorded, 320 U.S. ally fatalities, and over 50,000 Iraqi deaths.

  1. President George W. Bush 
  2. Vice President Dick Chaney
  3.  The U.S. War Machine

President George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” Speech

President George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” Speech became identified with the banner “Mission Accomplished” which was displayed above President George W. Bush during his televised address on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003. (It is unclear who authorized the banner display.)  This speech  announced the end of major combat operations in the Iraq War.  President Bush stated at the time “Our mission continues” and “We have difficult work to do in Iraq,” He never uttered the phrase “Mission Accomplished”. Nevertheless, President Bush’s assertion that major combat operations were over became controversial after guerilla warfare increased during the Iraq insurgency.  

  1.  American Naval Air Support
  2.  President George W. Bush
  3.  U.S. Navy personnel
  4.  USS Aircraft Carrier Abraham Lincoln
  5.  Pacific Ocean

Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction Search

In the early 2000s, the administrations of George W. Bush and Tony Blair asserted that Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs were still active, and that large stockpiles of WMDs were hidden in Iraq. The United States asserted that Saddam’s frequent lack of cooperation with UN weapon inspectors was a breach of UN Resolution 1441, but failed to convince the UN Security Council to pass a new resolution authorizing the use of force due to lack of evidence. Despite this, Bush asserted peaceful measures could not disarm Iraq of the weapons he alleged it to have and launched a second Gulf War. Later U.S. led inspections found that Iraq had earlier ceased active WMD production and stockpiling.  No weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq.

  1. U.S. air support
  2. U.S. troops searching for WMDs
  3. Aztec symbols for stones

Hurricane Katrina

On August 29, 2005 Katrina, a category 5 hurricane, slammed into New Orleans.  At least 1,833 people died in the hurricane and subsequent floods. Two-thirds of the deaths in New Orleans were due to levee and flood-wall failure. Post-hurricane studies concluded that the USACE, the designers and builders of the levee system was responsible due to a decision to use shorter steel sheet pilings in an effort to save money. The journal of the World Water Council reported that the flooding during Katrina “could have been prevented had the Army Corps of Engineers retained an external review board to double-check its flood-wall designs.”  In the midst of Katrina and its aftermath President Bush appeared to remain aloof from the disaster as he continued a long-planned vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Michael Brown, a long-time friend of Bush who was given the position as head of FEMA and  whose previous non-White House job was as a commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association was severely criticized for his slow, uncoordinated, and ineffective handling of the crisis.

  1.  President George W. Bush
  2.  Tlaloc, Aztec god of water
  3.  Ehecatl, Aztec god of wind
  4.  Michael “Brownie” Brown, head of FEMA
  5.  Army Corps of Engineers insignia

  6. Number of fatalities (1,833) in ancient Mesoamerican numerical glyphs

President Barack Obama and the Affordable Healthcare Act

The federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (P.L. 111-148), signed March 23, 2010, as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, signed March 31, 2010, is also referred to as the Affordable Care Act (ACA).  The 900+ page act contains many provisions, with various effective dates. Provisions included in the ACA were intended to expand access to insurance, increase consumer protections, emphasize prevention and wellness, improve quality and system performance, expand the health workforce, and curb rising health care costs.   The passage of the ACA was a defining moment in the Obama Administration.  Nevertheless, the Act has been the subject of intense partisan battles, and efforts to repeal the ACA, or to significantly weaken its provisions  when repeals failed, have plagued the ACA since its passage.

Struggle for African American Civil Rights

Since the earliest days of European settlement in the Americas slaves brought over from Africa helped the white colonists settle the newly colonized lands that were usurped from the Native Americans.  These African slaves were owned and had no rights and they were treated as property to be used as their masters desired.  Their labor was critical, particularly for the production of tobacco, cotton, rice and other crops which were important products that provided much needed income for the early settlers and up to the time of the Civil War.  The abolitionist movement began before the Civil War and many northern states had outlawed slavery before the Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves with the Emancipation Proclamation Effective on January 1, 1863.  After the war, slavery was made illegal through passage of the thirteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution (December, 1865.)  Amendments 14 and 15 further expanded the rights of African Americans and other minorities.
Following the Civil War, many southern states implemented Jim Crow Laws requiring separate schools, restaurants, restrooms, and transportation based on the color of a person’s skin. Laws making it difficult or nearly impossible for a black person to vote were also enacted.  These unjust laws, in existence for nearly 100 years finally led to the African-American Civil Rights Movement which gained momentum in the 1950’s -1960’s through the work of leaders including Martin Luther King Jr., Booker T. Washington, and Rosa Parks.  This movement paved the way for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-69). This act outlawed segregation and the Jim Crow laws of the south. It also outlawed discrimination based on race, national background, and gender.  While it did not eliminate discrimination, the Act provided a solid basis for those fighting discrimination through the courts. The 1965 Voting Rights Act outlawed discrimination in voting based on race, literacy or voting fees.  While discrimination still exists in more subtle and not so subtle forms as evidenced by an upsurge in white supremacist movements since the election of President Donald J. Trump in 2016, great progress has been made through the passage of anti-discrimination laws and as demonstrated by the high level appointments of African American U.S. government officials and representatives in the U.S. Congress, and the election of Barack Obama as the 44th U.S. President.   

  1. President Abraham Lincoln Reads the Emancipation Proclamation at Gettysburg, PA
  2. Robert E. Lee signs the surrender at Appomattox ending the Civil War
  3. Congress passes the 13, 14, and 15 amendments that gave new and deserved rights to African Americans in the U.S.
  4. Reverend Martin Luther King
  5. President Barack Obama (2009-2017)

2017 Solar Eclipse

The path of the solar eclipse on August 21, 2017 had a path of totality exclusively within the contiguous land area of the United States, making it the first such eclipse since the eclipse of June 13, 1257, which also made landfall exclusively in the contiguous lands currently part of the United States.  The 2017 eclipse in its totality was first seen from land in the U.S. shortly after 10:15 am PDT at Oregon’s Pacific coast, progressing eastward through Salem, Oregon; Idaho Falls, Idaho; Casper, Wyoming; Lincoln, Nebraska; Kansas City, Missouri; St. Louis, Missouri; Hopkinsville, Kentucky; Nashville, Tennessee; Columbia, and finally Charleston, South Carolina at about 2:45 pm that day.

Some of the cities experiencing totality:

  1. Salem, Oregon
  2. Casper, Wyoming
  3. St. Louis, Missouri
  4. Nashville, Tennessee
  5. Charleston, South Carolina
  6. The five planets that the ancient Mesoamericans  recognized- Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, and the Pleiades constellation

U.S. Immigration 2016-

Immigration has always been part of the United States of America experience.  It has brought to our shores some of the best known and leading figures in U.S. history  including Madeleine Albright, Christiane Amanpour, Elizabeth Arden, Desi Arnez, Yul Brenner, Irving Berlin, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Andrew Carnegie, Jackie Chan, Gloria Estefan, Enrico Fermi, Anthony Hopkins, Audrey Hepburn, Henry Kissinger, Willem de Kooning, John Lennon, Joni Mitchell, Bob Marley, Rupert Murdoch, John Muir, Elon Musk, Martina Navratilova, Thomas Nast, Yoko Ono, Natalie Portman, Ayn Rand, Helena Rubinstein, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carlos Santana, Alex Trebek, Rudolph Valentino, and Bruce Willis to name a few; and let’s not forget the children of immigrants such as Steve Jobs and many, many others. 

There have been several important periods of immigration including during the early 1800’s and from the 1880’s to 1920.  Ellis Island opened in 1892 as the first Federal immigration facility.  Regulation of immigration began with the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, and proceeded with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, and the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act which strengthened immigration laws, improved immigration law enforcement, and sought to limit immigration by controlling undocumented migration.  Immigration Reform has been a much debated topic in Congress, addressing issues such as the need for both high- and low-skilled labor, border security, and the status of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. 

President Obama took several actions to provide temporary legal relief to many undocumented immigrants. In 2012, his administration began a program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), that offered renewable, two-year deportation deferrals and work permits to undocumented immigrants who had arrived in the United States as children and had no criminal records. The Obama administration’s enforcement practices drew criticism from the left and the right. Immigrant advocacy groups criticized the Obama administration for deporting more than three million people during his eight-year tenure. 

President Trump signed several executive orders affecting immigration policy in the areas of border security, interior enforcement, expanding the categories of unauthorized and terrorism prevention, blocking temporarily or permanently prospective immigrants from majority Muslim countries.  President Trump more than halved the annual cap of refugees admitted to the United States to fifty thousand, and he has sought to make it more difficult for individuals to seek asylum.  In July 2019, the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general reported over crowding Customs and Border Protection facilities, and investigators found that detainees, including children, were sometimes held without access to beds, showers, or clean clothes for weeks.  Immigration reform remains an issue that Congress has failed to come together to adequately address.

Below is the inscription on the Statue of Liberty. ‘The New Colossus’ a poem by Emma Lazarus written in 1883 to help raise funds for the Statue base and added as a bronze plaque to the Statue in 1903.

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles.  From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips.  “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

COVID-19

The COVID-19 Pandemic. To be read in a boustrophedon manner starting from lower right, reading left and up to the next level and read right, right then up to the next level and read left.  The reading starts with transmission with neither masks nor social distancing, then trying to treat with various medications, to Trump and Fauci, up to partisan disagreements on mask wearing and vaccination, then to the infected person of color pictured in the bottom panel being intubated, and ending with deaths he and and cremations as painted in the style of the ancient Mesoamerican codices.  Note (bottom right) the way that the infected person’s face is illustrated with the lines on cheeks and around eyes.  This is how the Aztecs indicated an elderly person.
Compare COVID-19 with the earlier 1918 “Spanish” Flu painting.

Climate Change

Climate change is an introductory painting to the screenfold book on climate change.  Screenfold books as produced by the Aztecs and Mixtecs of Mesoamerica are folded in the style of an accordion.  They were painted on both the front and back side.   

The Climate Change painting illustrates four panels each surrounded by a serpent threatening planet earth.  The painting is read in a Boustrophedon manner from bottom right, left, up and right.  The bottom right panel shows severe weather events and the Aztec god of wind and storms (Ehecatl), to the left the panel illustrates sea level rise and flooding with the Aztec god of rain and flooding (Tlaloc), up to the next level, the left panel illustrates forest fires and the god of fire (Xiuhtecuhtli). The upper right panel shows the current “gods” influencing governments and affecting economies and the environment – wealthy oil executives. Below them we see the migration of the poor caused in part by climate change due to the burning of fossil fuels. 

For over 800,000 years atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) had never been above 300 ppm.  It is currently nearly 420 ppm.  This increase in CO2 is causing a “greenhouse effect” which results from the trapping of heat radiated from the earth.  The major cause of the greenhouse effect is the burning of fossil fuels which combines carbon and oxygen to produce CO2.  CO2 and other greenhouse-producing gasses such as methane, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons are long-lived and remain semi-permanently in the atmosphere.  The effects of climate change on Earth include warming temperatures, heat waves, changes in rainfall patterns, causing increased severity of storms, drought or flooding depending on the region, and rising sea levels.  The warming of oceans will affect fish populations, coral reefs and other oceanic life.  Climate change will alter the habitats of plants and animals affecting the delicate ecological interactions that provide stability to our natural environment. 

 In the US, climate change is expected to cause, in the Northeast, heat waves and heavy rainfall events, affecting crop production.  Warming seas will affect fisheries.  In the Southeast, extreme heat will affect human health, agriculture, and reduce water availability.  Rising seas will affect coastal areas.  In the Northwest, water supplies may be reduced, and sea level rise will causing coastal inundation.  Oceans will become more acidic affecting ocean life.  Wildfires will increase and insect outbreaks and tree diseases will affect the NW forests. In the Midwest, extreme heat, intense rainfall events and flooding will have wide ranging effects on human health, agriculture, forestry, water quality, and infrastructure.  The Great Lakes will also be affected.  In the Southwest, increased heat, drought, and wildfires are expected.  Water supplies and agricultural yields are expected to be reduced.

 

The Washington Gun Lobby

Gun lobbies both advocating for gun rights and for gun control are among the most influential lobbying groups in Washington D.C.   Gun rights lobbies substantially outspend gun control lobbies.  In 2020, gun rights advocacy groups, including gun manufacturers, spent over $11.5 million compared to just over $2 million spent by gun control lobbying.  The National Rifle Association (NRA) alone has been listed as one of the top ten lobbying groups in our nation’s capital in terms of money spent.  The most active gun control lobbying groups are Giffords, and Everytown for Gun Safety.  In 2020 there were reported 19,379 deaths due to gun violence in the U.S. and 24,090 gun-related suicides.  While a 2018 Pew Research Center survey found that 89 percent of Americans supported preventing people with a history of mental illness from purchasing guns and 67 percent supported banning assault-style guns and high magazine capacity magazines, legislation to these effects have not passed Congress in large part due to gun rights campaign contributions. 

Since 1989 guns rights advocacy groups have given over $43.8 million to candidates, parties, and groups such as PACS with 90% contributed to Republican candidates.  Since 1989, gun control groups have spent $9 million, 97% of which has gone to Democrats. 

The inspiration for this painting comes from the Borgia Codex a pictographic volume believed to have originated from the central highlands of Mexico, painted in the late 15th or early 16th century, prior to the arrival of the Spanish in 1519.  Appropriately, for my purposes, it is dominated by a goddess of death which in my painting is hovering over Congress.  We see figures contributing cash and valued gifts to politicians, children born into a society of guns, and a scene of gun violence.  The bordering figures of the deceased, painted in the style of the Mesoamerican codices, represent the approximate proportion of black, brown, and white victims of gun violence in 2019. 

Santa

The legend of Santa Claus can be traced back hundreds of years to a monk named St. Nicholas. It is believed that Nicholas was born sometime around 280 A.D. in Patara, near modern Myra, Turkey. Admired for his piety and kindness, it is said that St. Nicholas gave away all of his inherited wealth and traveled the countryside helping the poor and sick.  Santa Claus may have even earlier origins among early Germanic tribes, where one of the major deities was Odin (a.k.a. Wodan), the ruler of Asgard, who was associated with the pagan midwinter event of Yule and led the “Wild Hunt”, a ghostly procession through the sky.  A number of similarities exist between some of Odin’s escapades and those of St. Nicholas.  Odin was typically portrayed as an old man with a long, white beard.  He was often depicted as leading a hunting party through the skies, riding his eight-legged horse, Sleipnir.  During the winter, children placed their boots near the chimney, filling them with carrots or straw as a gift for Sleipnir. When Odin flew by, he rewarded the little ones by leaving gifts in their boots. 

    St. Nicholas made his first appearances in American popular culture towards the end of the 18th century.  The name Santa Claus evolved from St. Nicholas’ Dutch nickname, Sinter Klaas.  In 1822, Clement Clarke Moore wrote a long Christmas poem for his three daughters entitled “An Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas” which influenced our modern concept of Santa Claus as a portly, jolly figure.  Based on Moore’s writing, political cartoonist Thomas Nast, in 1881, created the now familiar Santa Claus image.  His cartoon in Harper’s Weekly depicted Santa as a rotund, cheerful man with a full white beard holding a sack laden with toys.

     Rudolph, “the red-nose reindeer” appeared over a hundred years after Santa’s original eight flying reindeer, and was created by Robert May, a copywriter at the Montgomery Ward Department Store, who, in 1939, wrote a Christmas-themed poetic story to help bring holiday shoppers into the store.  In the story, Rudolf’s liability (a glowing red nose) was turned to a useful advantage, a lesson for us all – young and old.  

Santa and Mushrooms

Shamans, Fly Agaric mushrooms, and Winter Solstice ceremonies

Read the painting from bottom right then left, up, then right, then to the top panel. 

Many of the familiar traditions associated with Santa Claus and can be traced back to the ancient traditions of the indigenous people of Siberia.  These include flying reindeer, the ornamented evergreen tree, stockings filled with goodies, and Santa entering down the chimney.  

The Fly Agaric mushroom (Amanita muscaria) was widely used as an entheogen by many of the indigenous people of Northern Europe and Siberia. In northern European and Siberian shamanism, the shaman was responsible for harvesting the mushrooms. Fly Agaric mushrooms commonly grow under pine trees.  It is a red mushroom with white spots.  To honor the colors of the mushrooms shaman would wear red clothing with white dots or white trim when collecting the mushrooms.

Fly Agaric mushrooms are  quite toxic and can be lethal, but they becomes less toxic when dried out.    Shamans  would hang them on lower branches of pine trees under which the mushrooms were growing to dry out before taking them back to the village.  This may be the first evidence of a Christmas tree with ornaments.  The mushrooms could also be dried in stockings hung over a fire.  Once the Amanitas were properly dried, the shaman would gather up his harvest in a sack and then visit the yurts within his community in order to bring gifts of these sacred mushrooms to the people.  Since at this time of the year the snow cover would be very high the shaman would typically enter through the smoke hole at the top of the yurts as Santa now enters through our chimneys.

The people of northern Europe and Siberia were deer herders (Rangifer tarandus, also known as the caribou in North America.)  Over the millennia they found that another way to remove the toxins from the mushrooms was to feed them to reindeer, whose digestive systems would filter out most of the toxins.  Humans could then drink the deer urine with less risk of toxicity.  The reindeer appear to relish fly agaric mushrooms and naturally seek them out.  Amongst the people of Siberia and Northern Europe, the reindeer was likely an animal spirit with which, in a mushroom-induced trance, to journey on a vision quest to celestial realms.  From whence may have come the flight of Santa’s reindeer.

These traditions appear to have been brought to Great Britain by the druids, whose spiritual practices included elements that had originated farther north. As cultures interacted over the millennia these traditions mixed with Germanic and Nordic myths involving the Germanic god Wotan, the Nordic god Odin.  These gods were thought to go on  midnight winter solstice rides on an eight-legged horse. The exertion of the chase would make flecks of red and white blood and foam fall from the horse’s mouth to the ground, where the next year Amanita mushrooms would appear. Apparently over time, this European story of a horse with eight legs, united with the ancient Arctic circle story of reindeer prancing and flying around on the same night.  These stories likely melded together into eight prancing, flying reindeer.

That story entered the New World with the English and mixed with Dutch settlers, the Dutch having  traditions involving the Turkish St. Nicholas (known also as Sinterklaas by the Dutch) who roamed the countryside at Christmas time giving gifts. 

Lighting the Yule Log

The celebration of Yule is one of the oldest winter celebrations in the world. Ancient people were hunters and spent most of their time outdoors. The seasons and weather played a very important part in their lives. The custom of burning the Yule Log was originally a Nordic tradition. Yule is derived from jól, the name of the old Winter Solstice festivals in Scandinavia and other parts of northern Europe, including Germany.  midwinter festival centered around the winter solstice, which traditionally marked the halfway point of the winter season. After the solstice—the shortest day of the year—the days once again begin to grow longer.  It’s thought that Yule was a celebration of the re-appearance of the Sun, or a practice to entice the Sun to return and begin the rebirth of the land.

The Yule Log was originally an entire tree, that was carefully chosen and ceremoniously brought into the dwelling. The largest end of the log would be placed in the hearth while the rest of the tree extended out into the room. Today, “Yule” and “Yuletide” are largely synonymous with Christmas but the meaning behind Yule is quite different from that of the Christian holiday.  When Christianity came to the British Isles, Christians adopted aspects of the pagan festival into a celebration of the birth of Christ. As Christianity began to spread in the 4th century, the Christmas feast day was set on December 25 by Pope Julius I to align with the Roman pagan holiday Dies natalis solis invicti, “the birthday of the invincible Sun.”

Lighting of the Yule Log was adapted from a painting in the Codex Borbonicus, an Aztec calendrical folded book that illustrates deities, and ceremonies related to the Aztec calendar including the lighting of the “new fire” that must be lit at the end of the 52 year cycle.

Note the night sky in the style of the Mesoamerican codices and the rabbit figure of the moon.  The Mesoamericans associated the rabbit with the moon.