The Spirit of 1776

Today i had the priviledge of attending a lecture by David McCullough, the author of the most recent Spirit of 1776. The lecture was sponsered by the US Embassy as a cultural exchange. Mr. McCullough spoke mostly about his book, the leadership abilities of George Washington in leading a rag-tag army of exhausted, filthy, hungry soldiers in the various battles of the Revolutionary war. He then ventured into his take on the role of history in society, the importance of a liberal arts education, the difference between "information" and knowledge and intelligence. He suggested that we students should not only read the books written by and about historic figures, but to immerse ourselves in the books they read, imploring us to read, for example, Don Quixote by Cervantes. He said that before he writes any book, he reads everything that his book subjects have read in order to better capture their thoughts, ideas and dreams (e.g., John and Abigail Adams, who were apparently voracious readers). Wow, that seems like a pretty darn daunting task to me. He also told us to turn off our televisions.

One of the audience members (a Hungarian) asked about comparing the leadership abilities in 1776 versus the lack of leadership that was shown in the aftermath of Katrina. I felt kind of bad for McCullough at this point, as he was standing 3 feet from President Bush's cousin (the ambassador). The author hailed the leadership skills of Rudy Guiliani post 9-11 (the head of the fire department of New York city was also at the McCullough's talk, although Im not sure why, perhaps as part of the cultural tour with McCullough in an attempt to improve our image across the world). McCullough, who wrote his first book about the catastrophic Johnstown Flood in 1889 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, said that he saw the biggest weakness in governmental leadership as not recognizing (or doing anything about) the risk of the levee failure when it had been predicted by so many experts . But McCullough emphasized the need to hold judgment of those in power until after the crises has subsided. Overall, quite a fascinating talk from an incredibly knowledgeable, articulate historian.

On a side note: I received an email back from the gallery/artist that was displaying one of my paintings in New Orleans, they all made it out okay and are living in DC. They plan on returning to New Orleans at some point. There is an interesting article in today's NY Times about artists and their artwork in New Orleans post Katrina. (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/13/arts/design/13arti.html?8hpib).
The gallery/shop where I was displayed in New Orleans:
http://www.bestofneworleans.com/archives/2001/0410/feat-shop.html

On a second side note: Did you all see that Ebay bought Skype for $2.6 billion? Skype is the internet telephony company that i have been using, with great satisfaction, to call and receive calls from the states (2 cents a minute for me to call the US, the cost of a phone call to north carolina to call me using my skype carolina number(email if you want that number)). Its a pretty amazing service with great phone quality (now that i have a good phone to plug into my computer). This is generally cheaper than any phone service ive had within the US, but im a bit disappointed by the acquisition by ebay---while it will probably elevate the number of skype users across the world, by name alone, i fear an increase in fees and decrease in ingenuity. The brain-power programers behind skype (Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis) are two of the most brilliant, entrepreneurial programmers out there (they also developed Kazaa, a file swapping program) and have recently been covered by Vanity Fair. Definately two guys whose careers are worth following. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/13/technology/13phone.html