the shrewdness of apes

the wife has already espoused the benefits of having the World Almanac in the house, so i won't go on at length about it except to say that even in this internet age, there's something about a reference book and it's segmented continuity that is especially pleasing to the left hemisphere of the brain. you never have to worry about pop-up ads or hyperlinks or plug-ins when you're reading a book.

so while flipping through the Almanac last week, there was a timeline of American history that led me to something i had never previously learned - the 1954 shooting at the U.S. Capitol carried out by Puerto Rican nationalists who shot off 30 rounds and injured 5 Congressmen. this is a huge story that - if my experiece is any indication - gets very little play in our schools and press and i have to wonder why that is. in these terror-addled times, it's almost calming to realize that this sort of thing was happening during an otherwise tranquil time in our history. perhaps that's why these things don't come up, because they poke holes in the "things were so much better/simpler/easier back then" nostalgia that we're constantly being spoonfed in order to sell us religions/wars/TV News*. or perhaps i'm simply in the minority for never having heard about it.

regardless, it seems pretty fascinating to me and the internet has proved its mettle by pointing me to several sources of information. i found an article from last year around the time of the 50th anniversary of the attack, the Wikipedia entry for ringleader Lolita Lebron and a copy of an article from last year's Washington Post Magazine about Lebron. amazingly, President Truman reduced the death sentences given to the perpetrators to life sentences. even more amazingly, President Carter pardoned them all in 1979 after 25 years in prison (some say the move was motivated by Cuba's release of several American prisoners around the same time). maybe that "soft on crime" label the Democrats have been lugging around for decades isn't so underserved after all. can you imagine something like that happening today? the outcry would be swift and overwhelming.

* my earlier praise for books was not so much nostalgia as simply pointing out how a book is a discrete, static entity that just feels different than reading on a computer. perhaps it is a function of my remembering a pre-internet world that for longer-form online pieces, i often prefer to print them out and read them in analog form. i find it easier to concentrate on what i'm reading that way. however, i certainly would not advocate for some sort of roll-back-the-clock Luddite Valhalla like some terrorists i could name.