“Let’s Not Be Scared, Let’s Be Prepared” Written by Parker A. Poodle™ ©2019 Every dog, every child needs a trusted chum, an adviser who can teach them the pees and queues. At age 16, never did I, Parker A. Poodle a Reading Education Assistance Dog, assume a howling need to explain a despicable decade increase in gun violence. Simply stated we must acknowledge America’s gun problem and teach children the particulars of personal and public safety. Including the new vocabulary—words like shots fired, active shooter, dangerous someone; inform, counter and evacuate. “Most children play with toy guns or use their hands to pretend they are holding a gun,” Rachel Schulson’s Guns What You Should Know explains. “Have you ever wondered about real guns?…A bullet shot from a gun can travel up to 5,000 feet per second. That means that if you and a bullet had a race, the bullet would get to the end of your block before you even took your first step…It is impossible to know exactly where the bullet will end up.” According to the U.S. Gun Violence Archive from January 1, 2019, to September 20, 2019, there have been 40,596 incidents of gun violence, including 10,744 deaths (26.5%). Today a hotel (Las Vegas), shopping center (El Paso), or movie theater (Aurora); office (Annapolis, Virginia Beach), church (Charleston) or school (Columbine, Blacksburg, Newtown and Parkland) is not always a place of safety. In October MGM International Mandalay Bay paid $800 million to 4000+ victims of the Las Vegas hotel shooting. About 228,000 students have experienced a school shooting since 1999—Columbine. “Let’s not be scared, let’s be prepared!” the National Center for Youth Issues, ALICE Training Institute suggests. I sometimes worry my dog house may not be safe should a dangerous someone draw near. …
Read America! By Parker A. Poodle™ Hello, Alexandria! I, Parker A. Poodle, am reporting from the backseat of my mistress’ car. We have just crossed the 14th Street Bridge en route to The White House. Massachusetts-er John Adams—slaveless property owner, husband of Abigail, father of three and dog owner of two—was the first President to inhabit The White House. His stay was short, four months. The election of 1800, Adams v. Jefferson, was bitterly fought. Adams dogs, Juno and Satan, were the first First dogs to dabble in Washington politics. To—how shall I say?—speak smartly, snarl angrily, perhaps pee on The White House lawn. March 2 is National Read Across America Day and, as biographer David McCullough confirms, children “should read history.” “If it should be the Design of Providence that you should live to grow up, you will naturally feel a Curiosity to learn the History of Causes which have produced the late Revolution of our Government,” John Adams wrote son John Quincy in 1777. “It will become you to make yourself Master of all the considerable Characters….” Reading Education Assistance Dogs are characters, of a type. We went home by way of the Alexandria library. Children are educated. Dogs are trained. I entered the library quietly. George Washington’s Breakfast, a book by Jean Fritz explains the library process. “The librarian smiled when she saw [a poodle patron] come through the door,” Fritz noted. “[I] walked up to the desk” and sat. The librarian “picked out four [children’s] books to take home,” then “promised that she would look at the rest.” “As [George] Washington was the father of our country and [Thomas] Jefferson the author of its ideals, John Adams was the champion of government,” Cheryl Harness wrote in The Revolutionary John Adams. “When the Congress…
Presidential Elections by ©2016 Sarah Becker “Differences in political opinions are as unavoidable as, to a certain point, they may perhaps be necessary,” President George Washington wrote Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton on August 26, 1792, “but it is to be regretted, exceedingly, that subjects cannot be discussed with temper [calmness] on the one hand, or decisions submitted to without having the motives which led to them, improperly implicated on the other….” Pundits now describe the Presidential campaign of 2016 as the “nastiest in our lifetime.” According to Republican President-elect Donald J. Trump’s campaign rhetoric he won “a rigged election.” His campaign strategy, reminiscent of Republican Richard Nixon’s 1968 conservative southern strategy, was ingenious. On November 8, 2016 Trump became America’s fifth President-elect to lose the popular vote—to Democrat Hillary Clinton by more than 2.7 million votes—and win the Electoral College. Trump may play fast and loose with the facts, but his appeal—especially to the undereducated, rural white male—is real. He is Mr. Brexit, an alleged nationalist opposed to globalization. A billionaire real estate developer disposed to improving the country’s infrastructure. A climate denier: Trump “Digs Coal,” was until recently invested in the Dakota Access oil pipeline and supports fracking. Windmills are unsightly and he opposes the 2015 Paris Agreement. Full-fledged parties, with national platforms, campaigns, and conventions, did not emerge until the 1830s. Andrew Jackson’s Democrats, the ongoing Democratic Party is the result of an 1825 split in Thomas Jefferson’s 1791 Democratic-Republican Party. The Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln formed independently in 1854. President elect Lincoln’s November 6, 1860 victory so upset the State of South Carolina it held a secession convention on December 20, 1860 and seceded from the Union; Mississippi on January 9, 1861. America’s Civil War began in South Carolina on April 12, 1861….
Red Jacket & Religion By Sarah Becker ©2016 In 1754, during the French and Indian War, Benjamin Franklin presented his Plan of the Union to seven colonies at a meeting in Albany, New York. He acknowledged the Iroquois League, its national structure then explained his proposal. His Plan rejected, the Articles of Confederation followed in 1781. “It would be a strange thing if Six Nations of ignorant savages should be capable of forming a scheme for such an union, and be able to execute it in such a manner as that it has subsisted ages and appears indissoluble; and yet that a like union should be impracticable for ten or a dozen English colonies,” Franklin a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly wrote in 1751. The Iroquois League included six nations or tribes: the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, and Tuscarora. Seneca Chief Otetiani was born in 1758. A British ally during the Revolutionary War Otetiani was also known as Red Jacket. In the 1770s the British employed him as a messenger. Red Jacket who could not read, write or speak English became famous not only for his oratory—the Seneca renamed him Sagoyewatha—but also his opposition to Christianity and religious conversion. The United States Constitution, as ratified in 1788, gave Congress the power “To regulate commerce…with the Indian tribes.” In 1790 President George Washington nominated Colonel, and soon-to-be Postmaster General, Timothy Pickering to serve as Indian Commissioner. Pickering’s goals: “peace and gradual civilization of the Indians.” George Washington first met Red Jacket, leader of the Six Nations, in Philadelphia in 1792. “One of the General’s greatest wishes was to make peace with the Native American nations bordering the United States,” Mount Vernon historian Mary Thompson said. “As President he frequently welcomed delegations of Indians to the presidential mansion.” “In managing…
By Sarah Becker © 2016 “Alexander Hamilton spoke in paragraphs,” 36 year-old playwright, composer, and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda told 60-Minutes. Miranda’s Broadway musical Hamilton is New York’s hottest new show. Who-da thunk an 18th century politician of Hamilton’s type capable of drawing record-setting crowds? Former Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, a Democratic-Republican, did not think him swell. Jefferson served as Secretary of State from 1790 until 1793. Aaron Burr, Hamilton’s 1804 dueling partner, serves as the show’s narrator. The hip-hop, rap-style musical starts: “How does a bastard orphan, son of a whore and Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean by providence comma grow up to be a hero and a scholar?” The song My Shot is the show’s anthem. Hamilton, a transplanted New Yorker, was General George Washington’s aide de camp (1777); a Federalist and Secretary of the Treasury from 1789 until 1795. His is the threatened face of today’s $10 bill, or maybe not. The musical, which opened on Broadway in February 2015, generates $500 million in profit weekly. “After so long an experience of your public services, I am naturally led, at this moment of your departure [as Secretary of the Treasury]…to review them,” President Washington wrote in 1795. “In every relation, which you have borne to me, I have found that my confidence in your talents, exertions and integrity, has been well placed,” Washington said. “I more freely render this testimony of my approbation, because I speak from opportunities of information wch cannot deceive me, and which furnish satisfactory proof of your title to public regard.” Like Washington, critics and audiences give Hamilton rave reviews. “Alexander Hamilton, an illegitimate orphan from the Caribbean, was painfully aware of his lack of status; an outsider trying to fight his way into the inner…
In February 1790 Benjamin Franklin, on behalf of Pennsylvania’s anti-slavery society, petitioned Congress to abolish slavery; “to devise means for removing the Inconsistency from the Character of the American People.” The petition triggered a national debate and slave owners were displeased. President Washington’s cabinet—which included Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, a Virginia Democratic-Republican, and Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, a New York Federalist—divided politically. The slavery debate coupled with Hamilton’s post-Revolutionary War debt remedies confirmed the conundrum. “That I have utterly, in my private conversations, disapproved of the system of the Secretary of the treasury, I acknowledge [sic] & avow: and this was not merely a speculative difference,” Jefferson wrote on September 9, 1792. The Secretaries squabble was fueled by partiality; Jeffersonian newspaper editor Jon Freneau and a partisan press. President Washington was hopeful “some line could be marked out by which both [men] could walk.” But he could not resolve their disputes. “I do not require the evidence of the [enclosed] extracts to convince me of your attachment to the Constitution….,” Washington wrote Jefferson on October 18, 1792. “But I regret—deeply regret—the difference in opinions which have arisen, and divided you and another principal Officer of the Government….” Virginia Congressman James Madison and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, fearing Hamilton’s influence, “launched an orchestrated attack on the [Washington] administration.” Jefferson, also a former Minister to France and then retired, opposed not only Hamilton’s handling of the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion but also Envoy Extraordinary and US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay’s November 1794 commercial treaty with Great Britain. The Treaty, its publicly debated pros and cons marked the organizational beginning of America’s two-party system. The pro-Jefferson newspaper “Aurora joined the chorus of criticism, going so far as to suggest that Jay had been chosen because sending the chief…
I am not just a kibble-eating poodle. I am a trademarked™—notice my byline—kibble-eating poodle. Pure blooded, I am a mix. I am both personal and intellectual property. My mistress and I went to Alexandria’s Patent and Trademark Office, the National Inventors Hall of Fame and Museum to learn more. Intellectual property is protected in one of four ways: patents, trademarks, trade secrets and copyrights. My stories; this story is copyrighted ©. Simply stated, I am a canine combo. Parker the dog is personal property, chattel. Like the slaves of yore, I sleep on the floor. I am owned by someone who leashes me. Parker A. Poodle™ the writer is an idea, an expression of my mistress’ emotion. I have a dog’s heart and a writer’s soul. More than a pet, I am my mistress’ imagination made real. Admittedly Parker the dog has a certain je ne sais quoi. I walk with a pedigreed prance, play with Potomac River fishermen, and enjoy cottage cheese with breakfast. I cuddle effortlessly, like a daring dog should. Nathan Poodle, now deceased, was the first dog in our family to publish. His sunglasses, my sunglasses, are distinctive if not trademark. In 2000 Nathan Poodle’s popularity was such that Southern Living magazine profiled his work. Work, in his case, implied original written compositions. Nathan’s Duck Walk to the River remains a regional classic. It was James Madison who, in 1787, asked the Constitutional Convention “to encourage…the advancement of useful knowledge and discoveries.” Article 1, Section 8:8 of the US Constitution states that “The Congress shall have the power to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive rights to their respective writings and discoveries.” Copyright protects the written work, also…