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A Reminder from Carl Sagan: Why Charlatans Succeed

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back."

—Carl Sagan, The Demon-haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Image: Carl Sagan (1951 high school yearbook photo, public domain).

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Women: Perspectives, Voices, Power.

"Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. It shouldn't be that women are the exception." — Ruth Bader Ginsburg

"And that includes journalism—in positions of editorial decision-making and in the research, writing and reporting of breaking and feature news stories. Women’s perspectives and voices matter." — Snyder’s Point

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Stitching a Nation Together

They initially sewed by hand. They subsequently used sewing machines. Their pay, however, has historically been small in comparison to the fondness Americans have had for the products that they and their co-workers before them have produced since the late nineteenth century.

They were, and are, the sewers and sewing machine operators of the Valley Forge Flag Company.

Founded in 1882, the Valley Forge Flag Company has operated almost continuously through war and peace, seeming to slow only for the national transition from a forty-eight to a fifty-star flag, following the admission of Alaska and Hawaii to the Union in 1959, and for the COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020.

One of the largest flag manufacturers in the nation, the company grew to become a multi-community operation with factories in Baumstown, Birdsboro, Robesonia, Royersford, Spring City, and Womelsdorf, Pennsylvania by 1967.

Four years earlier, a group of women from the Womelsdorf plant crafted one of the most important artifacts in the nation—the flag that draped the casket of President John F. Kennedy, following his assassination on November 22, 1963. The commanding officer of an honor guard unit that was involved in planning the late president’s state funeral later confirmed this fact.

Meticulously folded before it was presented to the Kennedy family, that flag was carefully preserved by curators at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston and remains there to this day, a touching symbol of a family's terrible loss and an artifact of reassurance that America's democracy is resilient and cherished.

Less famous variations of the Kennedy flag have waived gently over the graves of countless veterans of foreign wars since that dark period while others have flown over small-town government buildings, the U.S. Capitol, military bases at home, and American embassies abroad.

Chances are that the flag you pledged allegiance to in elementary school was, in fact, made by one of the sewing machine operators of Valley Forge Flag. Their stitches have held our nation together during some of its best and worst times, giving Americans a symbol to rally around, regardless of personal and political differences. Think about that—and about each one of those stitches made in each one of those flags since 1882, as you watch Old Glory fly proudly this Fourth of July. And then say a silent prayer of thanks for the many unsung women and men who have made it possible for you to look up with pride.

Image: Unidentified employee of the Valley Forge Flag Company's Spring City, Pennsylvania factory creating a new American flag on July 1, 1982 (public domain image courtesy of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration).

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The holiest of all holidays are those  Kept by ourselves in silence and apart; The secret anniversaries of the heart, When the full river of feeling overflows;— The happy days unclouded to their close; The sudden joys that out of darkness start As flames from ashes; swift desires that dart  Like swallows singing down each wind that blows! White as the gleam of a receding sail,  White as a cloud that floats and fades in air,  White as the whitest lily on a stream,  These tender memories are;— a Fairy Tale  Of some enchanted land we know not where,  But lovely as a landscape in a dream.       - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Holidays

Image: Reverie, Montara State Beach, California. Copyright, Laurie Snyder, 1999-present.

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Reflections on Not Speaking Out Against Wrongdoing

“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—but there was no one left to speak for me.”

Pastor Martin Niemöller fought to protect people he had never even met by using his voice to speak out against Nazi persecution in World War II-era Germany.

Photo: Martin Niemöller, courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, via Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz.

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#FlagDay: Second State Color, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry

Presented to Captain Daniel Oyster, commanding officer, Company C, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers, Sunbury, Pennsylvania, 7 March 1865. Captain Oyster then presented this flag to the regiment in late March/early April 1864 (following his return from military furlough). Emblazoned with the regiment’s major engagements, it was carried by the regiment as it defended the nation's capital in the wake of President Lincoln's assassination (April and early May 1865), during the Union's post-war celebratory "Grand Review of the Armies" parade (late May 1865), and during the regiment's post-war, early Reconstruction assignments in Savannah, Georgia and Charleston, South Carolina (summer, fall and winter, 1865).

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#FlagDay: First State Color, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry

First State Color, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. Presented to the regiment personally by Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Gregg Curtin, 20 September 1861.

Carried into combat during the American Civil War: Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina (October 1862). Red River Campaign, 1864: Battle of Sabine Crossroads/Mansfield, Pleasant Hill, and Monett's Ferry/Cane River, Louisiana (April 1864). Battle of Mansura, Louisiana (May 1864). Shenandoah Valley Campaign, 1864: Battle of Cool Spring/Snicker's Gap, Virginia, (July 1864). Battles of Berryville, Opequan and Fisher's Hill, Virginia (September 1864). Battle of Cedar Creek, Virginia (October 1864). Also carried by regimental soldiers as they defended the nation's capital in the wake of President Abraham Lincoln's assassination (April and early May 1865).

Retired and replaced with the 47th Pennsylvania's Second State Color, 11 May 1865.

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Sergeant-Major William McCullough Hendricks, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, c. 1863

“Our Country, our whole country, may we ever have willing hearts and stout arms to defend it.” 

– William McCullough Hendricks

Learn more about Sergeant-Major Hendricks via his bio here.

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First Lieutenant and Regimental Adjutant W. Scott Johnston, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, c. 1863 (photo courtesy of David Sloan)

College man. Attorney. Soldier. Union Army officer. Civil engineer.

W. Scott Johnston was all of these—and more. A leader in times of war and peace, he continued to look after and help the men who served under him during the American Civil War long after the war’s end. Learn more about his life via his bio.

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Henry J. Hornbeck, Former Quartermaster-Sergeant, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry

A native of Allentown, Pennsylvania and son of U.S. Congressman John W. Hornbeck who represented Lehigh and Berks counties during the late 1840s, Henry J. Hornbeck was a quartermaster-sergeant with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry during the American Civil War and a prominent businessman and civic leader in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley, post-war. Learn more about his life via his bio here.

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Maj. Gausler's bio located here.

Major William H. Gausler, third-in-command, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, c. 1863

“Major Gausler was a man of great force of character. He was not in the field for fun, and prosecuted the war with all the energy of his fiery nature.”

— The Allentown Leader, 19 March 1914 (front page) Learn more about Maj. Gausler's fascinating life, including his connection with President Abraham Lincoln, via his bio here:

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Lieutenant-Colonel George Warren Alexander, second-in-command, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, c. 1863 (photo courtesy of David Sloan)

Born in Rockingham County, New Hampshire, G. W. Alexander relocated to Pennsylvania during the mid-1850s, where he became head of a local militia group known as the Reading Artillerists. During the American Civil War, he was commissioned as a lieutenant-colonel, and appointed as second-in-command of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, the only regiment from Pennsylvania to participate in the Union's 1864 Red River Campaign across Louisiana, a campaign which Alexander almost didn't survive. Post-war, he became the founder of a highly successful factory in Berks County, Pennsylvania. Learn more about his fascinating life via his bio here:

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Colonel Tilghman H. Good, founder and first commanding officer, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, c. 1864.

Following the American Civil War, Col. Tilghman H. Good became a three-time mayor of Allentown, Pennsylvania. A major street in the city was later named for him. Learn more about his life via his his bio:

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A Women's History Month Tribute to Women of the American Civil War and Reconstruction Eras

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Proof that the Humanities DO still matter:

Another summit reached for "47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment's Story." To learn more about the fascinating history of the only regiment from Pennsylvania to serve in the Union's 1864 Red River Campaign across Louisiana, visit our project's website.

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New Details Uncovered Regarding the Post-Civil War Lives of Formerly Enslaved Black Men Who Enlisted with the Union Army During the American Civil War

Important new details about the post-war lives of formerly enslaved Black men who enlisted with the Union Army during the American Civil War have been uncovered by researchers. Learn more in this article, "Research Update: New Details Uncovered Regarding the Post-Civil War Lives of Two of the Formerly Enslaved Black Men Who Enlisted with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry."

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The Choice

My Fellow Americans:

After the last four years, many of us who live in the United States have reached the point of being utterly exhausted by the relentless negativity we have been seeing and hearing on a daily basis. Some of us have even felt the need to inform our family and friends that we need to take a break from thinking about the state of our nation because we “just simply can’t think about politics for another second.”

But we really, truly can't do that right now because America needs us to be engaged as informed citizens—perhaps now more than ever before in the lifetime we have collectively shared these last two to eight decades.

So, I am posting this message to respectfully ask each of you, regardless of your political affiliation, to watch this CSPAN video (if you haven't already watched today's January 6 commission hearings live). It is not easy viewing, but it's important that each adult living in America right now does view this hearing session in its entirety, and that each of us listens attentively to each and every second of it.

How we choose to respond to what we have heard today and the continuing strife we may experience over the next several years will be studied in history classes of descendants of our current generation.

Will they admire us for our courage and tenacity, or will they be saddened and sickened by our lassitude and impotence?

Our parents and grandparents left us a tremendous legacy. Many risked life and limb to do so.

The future is now in our hands, and it's up to us to use the power of our voices and votes.