Gilbert: Yosemite Protected
For an old rock climber like me, there’s no place in this country more beautiful, more sacred, than Yosemite Valley, with its soaring cliffs of granite. Well, it was a hundred and fifty years ago...
View ArticleGilbert: Civil War Stress Disorders
When we think about the Civil War, we may think of the uniforms made familiar through re-enactors, movies, paintings, even some old black and white photos. We may think of political giants and...
View ArticleGilbert: War and Irony
In one of the best books I’ve ever read, The Great War and Modern Memory, Paul Fussell wrote, “Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected. Every war constitutes an irony of situation...
View ArticleGilbert: Move-In Day
Our daughter is headed off to college this fall. She recently received an email from a dean, which she forwarded to her mother and me. It deals with where she’ll be living, her various advisors, and,...
View ArticleGilbert: Last Passenger Pigeon
In the fall of 1813, John James Audubon, the great ornithologist and painter, witnessed passenger pigeons flying overhead for three days; he estimated that at times more than 300 million pigeons flew...
View ArticleGilbert: Cultural Revolution
During this school year, many students will have the opportunity to shadow adults at their work for a day. When Anita Stern was in elementary school in 1963, her class took part in a job-shadowing...
View ArticleGilbert: The Joy Of Cooking... Game
I bought an old copy of Joy of Cooking at a library book sale. The red and blue lettering on the white dust jacket made it look patriotic, as American as apple pie, perhaps, or maybe that staple of...
View ArticleGilbert: Conspiracy to Burn
One hundred and fifty years ago this month things were not going well for the Confederacy. And so in a desperate attempt to force the Union to accept Southern independence in return for peace, a group...
View ArticleGilbert: Lincoln's Bixby Letter
Two of the greatest pieces of prose in English were written by the same person less than sixteen months apart: The Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural. That’s the speech with that...
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