October 29, 2025
October 28, 2025
Declaration of Rights and Grievances & The Stamp Act
On October 7, 1765, Nine American colonies sent a total of 28 delegates to New York
City for the Stamp Act Congress. The delegates adopted the "Declaration of Rights and Grievances." which was passed on October 19.
There were eight rights outlined in the document, The penultimate right: 7th. "That trial by jury is the inherent and invaluable right of every British subject in these colonies."
Viewfinder Links:
Net Links:
US House of Representatives ~ Declaration of Rights and Grievances
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October 6, 2025
Thor Heyerdahl & the Kon Tiki
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~ Kon Tiki
photo: Kon-Tiki Museum, Oslo
Today is the birthday of Norwegian adventurer and ethnographer, Thor Heyerdahl. He is notable for his Kon-Tiki expedition in 1947, in which he drifted 8,000 km (5,000 mi) across the Pacific Ocean in a primitive hand-built raft from South America to the Tuamotu Islands.
I had switched my career ambitions a few years earlier from Paleontology to Archaeology (link below) with my discovery of the Tutankhamun explorations in Egypt in 1926; I became fascinated with ancient cultures and empires, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Aztec, etc.
Heyerdahl (born in 1914) is one of the greatest and most controversial explorers of the 20th century known for having crossed part of the Pacific Ocean in 1947 on an open boat, the Kon-Tiki, built of balsa wood, in order to question the origins of the Polynesian people.
The basis of the Kon-Tiki expedition was Heyerdahl's belief that the original inhabitants of Easter Island (and the rest of Polynesia) were the "Tiki people", a race of "white bearded men" who supposedly originally sailed from Peru.
He described these "Tiki people" as being a sun-worshipping
fair-skinned people with blue eyes, fair or red hair, tall statures, and
beards. He further said that these people were originally from the Middle East, and had crossed the Atlantic earlier to found the great Mesoamerican civilizations. By 500 CE, a branch of these people were supposedly forced out into Tiahuanaco where they became the ruling class of the Inca Empire and set out to voyage into the Pacific Ocean under the leadership of "Con Ticci Viracocha"
Twenty years later, he repeated the feat with the boats Ra II and Tigris, this time made of reeds, with which he crossed the Atlantic with Ra II and sailed along the gulfs of Oman, Persia and finally Aden with Tigris. Throughout his life, he tried to overturn the scientific consensus on the origin of the Polynesian peoples by trying to prove that they did not originate in East Asia but in South America. He alienated the scientific community with his work, but he participated largely in the popularization of these themes and of science in general. In particular, he contributed to popularizing the idea that there were probably contacts and therefore transoceanic links between the ancient cultures of the world.
Viewfinder links:
October 3, 2025
Captain Kangaroo on the small screen
Bob Keeshan & Bunny Rabbit
Seventy years ago today, on Monday, October 3, 1955, the television series, Captain Kangaroo premiered on the American television network CBS.
The show was conceived by Bob Keeshan,
who also played the title character "Captain Kangaroo", and who based
the show on "the warm relationship between grandparents and children".
Keeshan had portrayed the original Clarabell the Clown on the NBC The Howdy Doody Show (link below) during the network's early years.
I was familiar with the show because I had to baby sit my brothers who liked to watch all the kid shows in the early fifties; Howdy Doody, The Mickey Mouse Club, Kukla, Fran and Ollie, etc.
I hated them with the exception of two kid's shows, Tom Corbett, Space Cadet and Captain Video and His Video Rangers (no surprise there) but it was the only way to keep them quiet, so, I got to learn all the different characters in each of them.
His name "kangaroo" came from the big pockets in his famous blue coat (at the time I didn't know the color because it was black & white TV). Keeshan was only 27 years old when he created the kangaroo persona; he would perform storytelling,
meet guests, and engage in silly stunts with regular characters, both
humans and puppets. He performed as the Captain more than 9,000
times over the nearly 30-year span of the show.
Captain Kangaroo was the longest running American children's television show until 1997 when it was surpassed by Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, which itself was surpassed by Sesame Street in 2003.
Captain Kangaroo is still the longest running children's TV series by episode count with 6,090. When one counts the 65 edited versions (severely altered re-runs) that
aired on PBS the episode count goes up to 6,155. Second-place holder Sesame Street has aired 4,731 episodes till now.
w/Nipsey Russell - 1971
press photo
Keeshan once offered a stern rebuke to parents at the time. “I am so often asked: ‘How do I get my children to read?’ Well, your children are coming home and watching you watch television,” he observed. “You are the role model for your children. If you want them to read, try picking up a book once in a while.”
Captain Kangaroo was referenced in one of my favorite songs, Flowers On the Wall by The Statler Brothers in 1965.
with Bruce Jenner in 1978
CBS press photo
Keeshan teamed up with former Texas governor Lamar Alexander to launch Corporate Family Solutions in 1987. The company operated workplace childcare centers for companies including Sears, Toyota, and Turner Broadcasting, the Los Angeles Times reported in 1997.
Keeshan moved to Vermont in 1990 and made a home for himself in the town of Norwich. And later that decade came the publication of children’s books Keeshan wrote, including 1996’s Hurry, Murray, Hurry! and Alligator in the Basement, and 1997’s Itty Bitty Kitty and Itty Bitty Kitty Makes a Big Splash.
Keeshan died on January 23, 2004, at age 76, with his family saying in a statement the cause of death was a “long illness,
Viewfinder links:
TV Insider ~ What Happened to Bob Keeshan After the Show Ended?
YouTube links:
Captain Video and His Video Rangers (show intro)
The History Guy ~ Good Morning, Captain
Puffin' Billy (Captain Kangaroo theme) The Statler Brothers ~ Flowers On the Wall
The Statler Brothers ~ Flowers On the Wall (live)
Fran Allison articles/mentions
Nazi articles/mentions
Martha Schlamme ~ World Of Kurt Weill In Song
William Shakespeare ~ The Merchant of Venice
October 1, 2025
Jane Goodall & her Pan troglodytes
photo by Shawn Sweeney
Jane Goodall, one of my "Immortal Loves" (link below), died today; she was 91 years old. She was born on April 3, 1934, and was an English zoologist, primatologist and anthropologist and was considered the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, having studied the social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees for over 60 years. Goodall first went to Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania to observe its chimpanzees in 1960. I first learned about her sometime in the late sixties through a National Geographic article.
She proved chimpanzees had the same traits as humans, tool making, love, families, jealousy and even war. This in turn led us to consider what it means "To be Human", a question we have been asking for thousands of years. Priests and poets,
philosophers and politicians, scientists and artists have all sought to
answer this ultimate puzzle, but all fell short, never able to fully
capture the vastness of the human experience.
When she was a child she was given a book, Tarzan, created by Edgar Rice Burroughs; she fell in love with Tarzan and said "He fell in love with the wrong Jane!"
National Geographic ~ First Look at Jane
National Geographic Magazine articles/mentions
Marian Anderson ~ Sings
Gavin Bryars ~ The Sinkinig of the Titanic
Jane Goodall & her Pan troglodytes
yak butter tea pot
Gavin Bryars ~ The Sinkinig of the Titanic
Jane Goodall & her Pan troglodytes
yak butter tea pot
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