The Yarn Spinner

  War is Over   You would think this was cause for celebration. It wasn’t. . The reason April 9, 1865, the day of General Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House, is not widely celebrated as the official "end" of the American Civil War is due to a combination of political, social, and logistical factors. And in fact, some people believe it never ended. Many of them are from the Southern states, but the sentiment isn't exclusive to that region. The perception that the war's unresolved issues persist can be found among people across the U.S. In the South the legacy of the war looms especially large. The defeat of the Confederacy, the history of slavery, and the "Lost Cause" narrative, all play a significant roles in shaping regional identity. The "Lost Cause" narrative is a post-Civil War ideology that romanticizes Confederacy’s cause and downplays the central role of slavery in the war. It portrays the Confederacy as fi...

        Smoke If You Got Them   Bad advice….. Free and subsidized branded cigarettes were distributed to soldiers (on both sides) during  WW II and even afterwards. As a kid in the fifties, I recall watching   Navy Log   and hearing an announcer say over the ending credits, “The R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company has donated 5,000 cartons of Camel cigarettes to the following Army and Navy hospitals……”   I thought that if cigarettes were distributed at hospitals, they must be OK. How   about   that for subliminal advertising? In the early 20th century, German researchers found  plenty of evidence to show how smoking harms your health  which strengthened the  country’s anti-tobacco movement . and it led to a state-supported anti-smoking campaign. But the propaganda minister's view was decisive; Joseph Goebbels felt that cigarettes were essential to the war effort. Cigarettes were distributed free to sold...

  Skycraft   Look…up in the sky…It’s a bird…It’s a plane…It’s a… Yes, it’s a plane….a Skywriter.   Skywriting can be traced back to the beginning of World War I, when Royal Flying Corps Major John “Jack” Savage perfected a way to spew oily smoke out of his airplane’s exhaust   to help hide war ships at sea. Later, Savage’s war buddy and airman Cyril Turner modified a S.E.5a biplane   to make use of Savage’s concept to generate arial smoke signals – essentially brief messages on cloudless days. He called it skywriting - a way of advertising and communicating by writing messages in the sky with airplane exhaust smoke. The first documented use of skywriting for advertising purposes was in March 1922 when Savage used it to write "Daily Mail" over Epsom Downs in England.   A few months later, to attract attention, Turner flew over Manhattan and wrote HELLO USA into the sky. The next day, he puffed CALL VANDERBILT 7200 out of the rear of his bipla...