Paul Luvera Journal

Dennis Hevesi has written an obituary for Manfred Gans http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/world/europe/19gans.html that reads like a wonderful short story that could be made into a movie. Gans was a child, living with his parents in Borken, Germany. He had been born there April 27, 1922. His father was a well to do merchant in town and the first Jew to serve on the city council. As life for Jews became more and more difficult under Hitler his parents sent him to England when he…

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I was listening to a National Public Radio’s broadcast about President Obama’s new oval office rug http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129609461and was interested to learn about Theodore Parker who was a minister of the Unitarian church (1810-1860). It turns out that Martin Luther King frequently used things Parker had said or written and that one of the quotes in the rug was attributed to King, but had originally been said by Parker. Jamie Stehm wrote an article in the Washington Post Oval Office rug gets…

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The Industrial Workers of the World, the IWW,  also known as the "Wobblies" were a militant labor organization during a time when industry used goons, a willing police force or private guards to violently stop labor organizations. Beatings, shootings and arrests of union workers was common place. The IWW had some 100,000 members at its peak in 1923. They advocated a socialistic or communist ideology and had a reputation for sabotage and violence against industry to achieve labor demands. In Washington State  the…

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