A Grisly Incident

Born in Virginia in 1752, George Rogers Clark spent his early boyhood on a farm just a few miles from Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. At the age of 20, he moved to Kentucky where he garnered a reputation as a military leader. He began his career as an Indian fighter and later in life gained the friendship and respect of the Native Americans who had been his former enemies. He is considered a hero of the American Revolution, where the greatest of his accomplishments was to capture the British-held forts of Kaskaskia, Cahokia Ka-ho-kee-ah, and Vincennes.

After his military service ended, Clark received 150,000 acres of land for his contribution to the war, but he struggled to maintain it. Unsuccessful at this, he lost most of the land and opened a small gristmill in Clarksville, Indiana, which provided a moderate income. In 1805, he was named to the board of directors of the Indiana Canal Company, whose mission was to build a canal around the nearby Falls of the Ohio River. His good fortune at obtaining this position didn't last long. Two of the other directors, including Vice President Aaron Burr, illegally plotted to seize Louisiana from Spain in order to open the Mississippi River to Americans. In the process, $2.5 million of the company's money ($65 million in today's dollars) turned up missing. Clark was not involved. Burr and the other director, Davis Floyd, were arrested for treason and the Indiana Canal Company folded.

A grisly incident in 1809 turned Clark into an invalid for the remainder of his life. Age 57 at the time, he suffered a stroke and fell into an open fireplace. He was unable to move and his leg burned so badly it required removal. When his doctor performed the amputation, the only "anesthetic" Clark received was music from a fife and drum corps playing in the background.

Clark lived with the crippling effects of the stroke and amputation until his death in 1818. Like his famous brother William (of Lewis and Clark fame), George Rogers Clark was a Freemason. Although his original Lodge is unknown, Abraham Lodge #8, Louisville, conducted his Masonic funeral.

"We Are One EMP Away From Losing Civilization."

Last week's episode of the Whence Came You podcast (https://bit.ly/2IhxBAr) is well worth a listen. Scott Hambrick, a member of Owasso Lodge 545 in Oklahoma, was Robert Johnson's guest on the show. Brother Hambrick is a founder of the Intellectual Linear Progression program, "an online community developing classically educated men and women using the great books of western civilization." (https://bit.ly/2GafSsU). With a decided preference for hard copy books, Scott notes, "One of the reasons I started this project is because I'm desperately afraid we're one EMP (electromagnetic pulse) away from losing civilization." Robert picked right up on that and they both agreed that is not an issue to be underestimated.

The discussion brought to mind some of the resistance offered when I was an officer in the Missouri Lodge of Research. We worked for a few years to establish the Masonic Library in Columbia. One of the arguments against going to that expense was, "We don't need books anymore. Everything is electronic these days. Books are old-fashioned and unnecessary in this 'modern' age."

I love technology. It was my profession. I want the latest gadget. I want every document I write to be in electronic format. Cloud storage is the way to go. With little reservation, however, I have a message for the world: Don't abandon paper.

In fact, along with that, don't abandon any of the "old time" analog archiving techniques. I mean it. Everything today should be digital... but not exclusively. Why? There are lots of reasons not to turn every document or historical item into a string of ones and zeros, but there are a couple of really good ones.

First, you've got to have the technology to use the technology. I have a boatload of old "floppy disks" around the house; not just the "modern" 3½ inch ones, not just the older 5¼ inch floppies, but the ancient 8 inchers. Try to find a way to read those bad boys today. They're obsolete. They don't even make good Frisbees.

Think that's going back a bit far? You think your CDs are safe? Studies have shown the average life of a CD is about 25 years. Uh-oh! You'd better run and check that Dire Straits CD you bought back in '85. Actually, the professional CDs have a life up to 100 years, but the ones you made... not so much. Besides, who knows if 100 years from now there will be a machine that can read a CD? A thousand years?

The solution? A good old fashioned record player. Really. As you read this, the little Voyager spacecraft has oozed out of our solar system into interstellar space. Know what's on board in case it encounters any extraterrestrials? Not a CD, not floppies, not tape, not an SD card, but a record and record player with pictorial instructions on how to use it. ET probably won't have CDs, but he'll be able to operate that simple gadget.

"Yes," you may agree, "but that's a really special case. There are no ETs around here." Well... probably not. But guess what: the official sound recording media our very own Library of Congress uses is 78 RPM records! Space age vinyl 78 RPM records to be sure but, still, Thomas Edison would be proud of us. And, naturally, original documents and books are its official hard copy storage media.

That brings us to the other big reason – the aforementioned EMP. Even if we do have the technology to read all this material, a single coronal mass ejection (CME) from the sun or, God forbid, a nuclear war could wipe it all out in a single instant. Granted, if we ever have a disaster of that magnitude, our biggest problem wouldn't be whether or not we had last year's copies of the Short Talk Bulletin. Still, if we could survive such a disaster, in the long run it would be nice to have our historical documents. Hence, paper, vinyl and analog copies would be mighty handy. That's why the Library of Congress is making sure we keep them around. We all should — with both our personal and public treasures.

Oh, and by the way, such an EMP episode already happened. Known as the Carrington Event, a major CME hit the earth in September 1859. The only reason it didn't fry every iPad on earth is there weren't many of them around back then. More recently, a small CME in 1989 brought Hydro-Quebec's electricity transmission system to its knees. It can and will happen. Guaranteed.

In 2013, the Masonic Library in Columbia became a reality. It was a vision of Harry Truman that finally came into fruition. Much of its material is online, with more documents being added daily. At the same time though, the library doesn't put everything exclusively into electronic format.

Let's be optimistic and assume there won't be a nuclear war. Doesn't matter: the next coronal mass ejection is right around the corner.

So let's keep pumping out the paper copies. Luddites of the world unite!

My Two Bank Robberies

When Carolyn and I were newlyweds we lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Macomb County, Michigan. She worked for a doctor and I was a methods analyst – an industrial engineer of sorts – for the National Bank of Detroit. We only had one car, so on those occasions when the bank observed a holiday that "normal people" didn't get, she drove the car to work and I was stuck at home in the apartment.

On one of those occasions I decided to go shopping at a grocery store located across 16-Mile Road from our apartment. I set out on foot for what would be my quarter-mile trek and came to a ditch on the south side of 16-mile. There I spied several small bags scattered in the grass. Upon inspection I saw they were bank bags, each ripped open. The bags had various bank names stamped on them, including the bank where I worked, NBD. Inside each were wads of checks, all of different stock. I do not recall if the checks were canceled. It seemed to me there had been a robbery and upon ripping the bags open and discovering nothing but checks, the robbers had thrown them out on the side of the road. Rather than going on to the store, I picked them up and took them back to our apartment.

The next morning, bank holiday over, I took the bags to work and immediately gave them to the bank authorities. Good deed done, I got down to work.

Later in the day I received a call saying some bank bigshot, probably a vice president (NBD handed out vice-presidencies like Bed, Bath and Beyond hands out 20% discount coupons) wanted to see me. "Wow," I thought, "they want to reward me for my good deed. They probably want to do a story on me in the corporate newspaper – complete with picture, of course.

So Steve the junior-executive hero trotted on down to the administrative offices ready to tell my story and accept whatever certificate of achievement they might have for me.

I entered the room to find a couple of guys in suits along with three bank security guards. They wanted to know all about my adventure. Where did you find the bags? Are you sure they were ripped when you found them? What were you doing crossing 16-mile, a busy four-lane thoroughfare, on foot – a dangerous proposition at best? And on… and on.

Holy cow! I was a suspect! The grilling went on, it seemed, endlessly as I tried to convince these goons I had nothing to do with the robbery and thought I was doing the right thing by bringing the bags in. I finally convinced them or maybe they just got tired of giving me the third-degree. They let me go and I went back to my cube farm, a bit shaken. There was no certificate of recognition, no story in the company newsletter and no picture of me shaking hands with the bank president.

No good deed goes unpunished.

Epilogue: Nothing more ever came of that incident. I never heard exactly what happened that led to the bags being on the side of the road; no newspaper story, no word from the bank, no nothing. Unrelated to that, however, I had yet another encounter with iniquity at NBD a few months later.

Someone robbed a savings and loan institution across the street from NBD. The police issued a sketch of the suspected robber. I was, at the time, working on a project in the bank's Safekeeping department. As I walked in for a meeting there I was greeted by the staff with, "Steve… It's you!" They said I was a dead-ringer for the guy in the police artist's sketch. They had it posted on their bulletin board and I went over to take a look. Sure enough, it was me. The likeness was so close I now regret not taking it down and keeping it. Of course, that might have aroused suspicion and I definitely wouldn't have wanted that, given my past experience with the bank's "rubber-hose squad."