Paul Luvera Journal

A friend sent me an E-mail with photos and the story about the Billingraph Gardens located in Theodore, Alabama ( http://www.bellingrath.org/).).The 65 acre garden estate is filled with beautiful flowers in a landscaped setting. The Bellingraph estate is a 10,500 square foot home built in 1935 by Walter and Bessie Bellingraph. The gardens were first opened in 1932. I found the story behind the Garden’s even more interesting. Walter Bellingraph (1869-1955) and his brother purchased a franchise to sell Coca-Cola…

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The Bucket List is a movie directed by Rob Reiner and staring Moran Freeman and Jack Nicholson. The plot involves two terminally ill men who fulfill a list of things they want to do before they die. ("Bucket list" things to do before kicking the bucket) I’m hardly objective about the great acting of Morgan Freeman and have seen few, if any, movies of Jack Nicholson that I haven’t enjoyed. Both are superb actors. While there are those who will…

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If you watched, as I did, Ken Burn’s extraordinary documentary on public television The War you know that he used excerpts of writing from a small town newspaper in Minnesota. The columns that were quoted were narrated by the actor Tom Hanks. The newspaper was the Rock County Star-Herald and the writer was its editor Al McIntosh. The small town paper was published in Luverne, Minnesota. McIntosh was born in 1905 in North Dakota as the son of a pastor…

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I've written about Al Mcintosh, owner and publisher of the Rock County Star Herald whose's writings were featured in Ken Burn's documentary The War. What follows is the editorial by Al McIntosh that made him famous when it was written in 1964 during the turbulent "60's." Newspapers all over the country re-printed it. While written almost a quarter of a century ago. How you react to it is determined by your view of American politics and American life.        …

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I’m slowly reading Sheridan Morley’s John Gielgud. The book discusses the 1957 Otto Premiger’s screen version of Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan. The movie cast included Richard Widmark (who just recently died) and Gielgud. Premiger cast an eighteen year old unknown & inexperienced girl from Iowa, Joan Seberg after a publicized search for the right actress for the part. Some 18,000 actresses were supposedly considered before she was selected by the director. However, shortly after starting the filming, Premiger decided he…

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Russell Miller has written a book Bare-Faced Messiah, The true story of L. Ron Hubbard. As we all know, Hubbard was the founder of Scientology – think Tom Cruise and John Travolta. Hubbard began as a writer of science fiction stories. Then he claimed he had made a discovery that would change the world – Dianetics. In 1950 he published a book Dianetics, The Modern Science of Mental Health. In his book Hubbard claimed memories were a "time track" where…

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One of my favorite Shakespeare writings is Shakespeare’s Saint Crispen’s Day speech from his play Henry V. The last part of the speech reads: This day is call’d the feast of Crispian. He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d, And rouse him at the name of Crispian. He that shall live this day, and see old age, Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours, And say ‘To-morrow is…

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Seattle attorney Jan Peterson sent me a note about my post involving Black Porters which I thought I should share with you: Paul, I read with interest, as usual, your piece on Rising from the Rails.  My family on my father’s side were railroad people and as a result we had a pass to ride on the trains whenever we wanted.  Even as late as my early childhood in the forties I remember Pullman porters.  They were all black men…

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"Taxation without Representation!" was the cry that’s behind the reason for our celebrations on the 4th of July. It all started with the thirteen colonies in America objecting to being forced to pay taxes to England’s King George III while they had no representatives in the British Parliament. While there was increasing objections to British control and British taxation without any say so in the British Parliament, the Stamp Act of 1765 and tax on imports were particularly hated by…

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Inez Milholland was an attorney, a charismatic public speaker and a beautiful woman whose role in the fight for the right of women to vote has been largely forgotten. I’ve posted before about the women’s right to vote movement and a history of Inez Milholland Boissevain can be found at "Suffragette Remembered." She was born in 1886 in Brooklyn to a rather wealthy family. Her father was a reporter and editorial writer at the New York Tribune, but his invention…

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