Merry Christmas History From The Ford Rotunda

Over a period of twenty-seven years, the Ford Rotunda hosted over 16.5 million visitors. In the 1950's, it was the fifth most popular tourist attraction in the United States. 

The building was ten stories tall. Its steel and aluminum framework was covered with Indiana Limestone to match the Ford Motor Company's Administration Building across Schaefer Road. The building resembled four gear wheels stacked in decreasing size from the top to bottom.

It was originally built for the Chicago World's Fair and opened to the public on May 14, 1934. After the fair was over, the building was reconstructed on a site in Dearborn, Michigan and used as Ford's World Headquarters for a brief time. The building was closed to the public during World War Two and used as a tech center for military training.  

The Ford Rotunda was reopened on June 16th, 1953 to celebrate Ford Motor Company's fiftieth year in business. It was used as an exhibition center displaying all the recent models of Ford automobiles. In addition to a Test Drive Track ride which circled the building, other exhibits were The City of Tomorrow, The Hall of Science, and something called The Drama of Transportation.

Fifty-six years ago on November 9, 1962, the roof was being waterproofed with hot tar in preparation for the annual Christmas Fantasy exhibition. The roof caught fire and within an hour, the building had burned down. The nine year long holiday tradition came to an end. 

Those of us from the Detroit area who grew up when the Rotunda was in its heyday, namely we Baby Boomers, sadly remember the passing of this great Christmas tradition.


For a video presentation of the Ford Rotunda from the Dearborn Historical Society, view this link: http://vimeo.com/46364168

For more detailed history of the Ford Rotunda, consult this link: http://automotivemileposts.com/autobrevity/fordrotunda.html

Happy New Year 2016--Why January First?

New Year's Eve in Kiev, Ukraine.

Historians have charted the origins of our New Year's celebrations to the ancient Babylonians four millennium ago. They marked the new year as the first full moon after the vernal (spring) equinox--sometime in March of our calendar.

Traditionally, the Roman calendar attempted to follow the lunar cycle which frequently fell out of phase with the seasons. After consulting Sosigenes, an Alexandrian astronomer, Julius Caesar was advised to discard the lunar calendar and adopt the solar calendar, like the Egyptians had.

In 46 B.C., two years before his political assassination, Caesar added sixty-seven extra days to realign the Roman calendar with the sun. A year was calculated to be 365 and 1/4 days long.
Caesar decreed that every four years an extra day be added to February. He named the first month of the new calendar after Janus--the Roman god of beginnings. His two faces could look back at the past and forward to the future.  While Caesar was at it, he also renamed the Roman month Quintilis to July, after himself. 

The Julian calendar was replaced in 1582 when Pope Gregory XIII commissioned Jesuit astronomer Christopher Clavius to devise a more accurate calendar. There was an eleven minute error per year in the Julian calendar. The revised Gregorian calendar was implemented throughout Christendom and is the one we use today. Pope Gregory designated January 1st as the first day of the new year.

New Year's Eve in Sydney, Australia.

New Year's Eve is celebrated the last day of the Gregorian calendar--December 31st. Common traditions through much of the world include huge public gatherings, private parties, making resolutions, and fireworks displays. In English-speaking countries, "Auld Lang Syne" is sung at the stroke of midnight. The Robert Burn's song is based on a traditional Scottish phrase which is loosely translated as "long, long, ago" or "for old times."

A tradition in America since 1907 is the giant ball drop in Times Square. The original ball weighed 700 pounds and was made of iron and wood. Today, the orb is 12 feet across and weighs 2,000 pounds. It is electrified with many thousands of LED lights producing millions of colors and billions of patterns.

One thing has not changed over the years. New Year's Eve lights the beacon to the future with hopes for a better year than the last.

Happy New Year, Everyone.


History Channel's short history of New Year's: http://www.history.com/topics/holidays/new-years

"The Rainy Day Murders" Spring Status Report

 

Writing has come a long way since its beginnings as cuneiform messages pressed into soft clay tablets over five thousand years ago. Once the tablets dried, they were permanent records of business transactions and simple messages primarily. A notable exception being the oldest known literature ever found, The Epic of Gilgamesh, discovered in 1853 buried in the desert of what is now Iraq.

Ancient scribes wrote their important messages on vellum, which was made of scraped and tanned sheep or goat hide. Charcoal was ground and mixed with oils to create crude ink and applied with crude reed brushes or sticks. Vellum was much more portable than clay tablets, but it was much more perishable also. 

It was the Egyptians who developed papyrus which led to the eventual development of paper. Papyrus could be rolled into scrolls for easy storage and portability. 

The ancient Egyptians also inscribed their writing on the walls and columns of their important civic buildings, as did the Greek, Roman, and other notable empires. Much of what we know of ancient history comes from the ruins of these monuments.

The printing press with moveable type was invented in 1436 by Johannes Gutenberg in Germany. Now, ideas could be mass produced and public opinion shaped. This invention helped change the political landscape of Europe. Bound paper books and libraries have been the repositories of the world's knowledge for close to seven hundred years of human history. 

In our own time, books have lost favor to digital methods of recording our thoughts and ideas in ways we couldn't have imagined possible, even twenty years ago. The digital computer age has revolutionized how we work and how we live.

What humans have used to write with has also evolved over the ages. The reed stylus created the wedge shaped notations in moist clay used by the Sumerians and Babylonians. The Greeks and the Romans used bone or ivory styluses to imprint notes and messages on wax tablets, not to mention metal chisels to immortalize their empire's achievements in stone and marble.

Quill pens were developed around 700 A.D. which was an advancement that lasted until the development of the first pencils and fountain pens in the 1800s. Then, in the late1860s, the modern typewriter was invented to mechanize how we write. Sometime in the late 1980s, word processing and personal computers took over from the mechanical typewriter.

 

Today, most humans tap out their messages digitally on a keyboard or a touch screen. Instantaneous messaging can reach a global audience, with far reaching implications for the future. Ironically, humans are once again writing on tablets, only digital ones this time around.

So that brings me to the subject of this post. With all the advancements in writing technology over the millenniums and today's high-speed computing, why does it take so long for a book to be published?

1. First, the writer needs a solid idea to develop and write about. That can take years.
2. Next, the book needs to be researched and checked for facts, corrected, rewritten, and revised.
3. Then, the writer must hire a qualified editor to help bring the writing up to current publishing industry expectations.
4. Finally, the writer needs to find an agent interested enough in the project to pitch the book to a publisher who is willing to invest time and money promoting it in the marketplace.

Interested readers of this blog have been asking me with increasing frequency, "When will The Rainy Day Murders be available?

Currently, I'm in the rewriting stage and have lined up an editor to help me over the summer. When I feel I have a quality, professional manuscript, I will solicit an agent. Then, it is anybody's guess when I can attract a trade publisher.

Despite the high-speed internet age we live in, the publishing business is notoriously slow. The only thing I can say about when The Rainy Day Murders will be available is "Stay tuned."


Check out this link for five charts showing the current trends in the publishing business. I have my work cut out for me.
http://janefriedman.com/2014/03/21/5-valuable-charts/

Gregory A. Fournier Speaks about Zug Island on the Michael Dresser Show

On Friday, April 19, 2013, I did a web radio interview for the Michael Dresser Show. It has been a while since I had done any live Zug Island promotion, but with summer coming, I thought it might be a good time to let readers know that Zug Island makes a great vacation read.

Despite its serious subject matter, race relations during the summer of the Detroit Riots, Zug Island is an often humorous account of a college dropout and an intercity young man who fall in and out of rhythm on Detroit's mean streets to discover that the face of racism comes in every shade of color.

Zug Island is a blue collar, coming of age, buddy novel which tells a slice of history much neglected in the telling of this horrible period of Detroit's history. It's been almost fifty years since July 23, 1967, and the city has yet to recover from its conflagration.


Amidst all the devastation, an unlikely friendship endures which suggests that hope for the city's recovery lies with its people and not its politicians.

Listen to my latest Zug Island web radio interview (15 minutes):
http://michaeldressershow.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Greg-Fournier-4-19-2013.mp3

Ypsilanti, Michigan - Coming of Age

A cholera outbreak in Detroit in 1832 prompted the Michigan legislature to pass an ordinance to prevent immigrants or travelers from spreading the disease throughout the territory. The overprotective frontier nature of the Ypsilanti residents gave the village the reputation of being a dangerous and fearful place to be if you weren’t a local. No one died of cholera that year in Ypsilanti, and the impression persists that the residents of the area are proud of their cantankerous frontier past. 

When a wave of lawlessness and terror swept through Ypsilanti in the late 1830’s, a vigilante committee was formed to clean up the village. Secret meetings were held at different locations monthly, and by all accounts, they did an impressive job. “By the end of 1839, one-hundred and twelve men had been convicted of crimes, hundreds of dollars in stolen goods were recovered, and many undesirables were asked to leave town.”

Ten years later, ground was broken on a three storied structure that became the first building of the Michigan State Normal College which later became Eastern Michigan University. The first term began with 122 students in 1853. Males had to be eighteen and females had to be sixteen. A statement of intent to teach in a Michigan school had to be signed by every student. 

Michigan State Normal College was the first teacher training school west of the Alleghenies and was, for fifty years, the only “normal” college in Michigan. As it grew, it became Eastern Michigan College in 1956, but by 1959, Eastern had been granted university status by the state legislature because of its widening educational mission.

The signature landmark in Ypsilanti has long 

been The Water Tower built on the town’s 

highest point several hundred feet above

sea level. Built in 1889-1890, it is a limestone 

clad, elevated reservoir that once was topped by

an octagonal cupola, removed in 1906 due to

fears of strong winds hurling it 147 feet below.

The Water Tower is located on a small triangular patch of land that

stands opposite Eastern Michigan University’s McKinney Student

Union building on the southwestern edge of the campus. 



On a frigid January day in nineteen sixty, John F. Kennedy
  
metaphorically passed a torch to a new generation in his

inaugural speech. Little did the new President know what history

had in store for America by decade's end. 


It was a tough decade that polarized the nation like nothing else had

since the Civil War. It was the age of the Vietnam War, political

assassinations, the Civil Rights movement, urban riots, the

Black Panthers, the draft, and the heyday of the Cold War. 


Is it any wonder that by the end of the decade university campuses

all over America felt the dissonant chords of political dissent and

civil disobedience? The campuses of Eastern Michigan University 

and The University of Michigan were no exceptions.


Next post: Ypsilanti, Michigan - The Turbulent Sixties

Ypsilanti, Michigan - The Frontier Years

Demetrius Ypsilanti

The Huron River Valley has been a thoroughfare for humans since ancient Native Americans used the river for their transportation and their village sites. A main trail from the big river to the east, which the French called “de troit” (the strait), led west along the Huron River where it crossed over at a narrows and led into the thick, game rich forests which the local Indians called home for many generations. The spot was the crossroads for several Indian tribes, primarily the Huron, the Ottawa, and the Pottawatomie.

Ypsilanti began its pioneering life in 1809 at the edge of the frontier known as The Michigan Territory. Three enterprising Frenchmen opened a trading post known as “Godfrey’s on the Pottawatomie Trail,” where the Indian trail crossed the narrows in the river. They traded gun power and other French goods to the local Indians for beaver pelts and other Indian products from the forest. When the Indians began to feel the squeeze of frontier civilization in the form of treaties pushing them westward, the traders followed them and left their trading post in ruins.

Ten years later in 1819, General Lewis Cass, the governor of the Michigan Territory, signed the Treaty of Saginaw. What was to become Washtenaw County passed out of the hands of the local tribes and into the hands of the Territory. In 1823, a full-fledged settlement called Woodruff’s Grove was established, and in 1825, the territorial government commissioned the surveying of a road linking Detroit and Chicago. 

The surveyor, Mr. Orange Risdon, found the job an easy one. Over many generations, the local Indians had blazed the most convenient trail west - the old Indian trail from Detroit.

Judge Woodward

Three Detroit businessmen, the most notable of whom was Federal Judge Augustus Brevoort Woodward, purchased the original French Claims from the families of the original deed holders and plotted out a village as soon as the Chicago Road, later known as Michigan Avenue, was surveyed. 

The judge loved history and anything Greek it was said. Americans of that era were interested reading in their newspapers about the War of Greek Independence, as the United States had only fifty years before gained its independence from England. 

A courageous Greek general, Demetrius Ypsilanti (1793-1832), held the Citadel of Argos with only 300 men against a Turkish army of 30,000 men. When their supplies ran out, General Demetrius Ypsilanti and his men escaped without losing a single man. He became an international figure of his time.

Woodward wanted to name this new town after his hero -Ypsilanti - much to the chagrin of his co-investors. They wanted the town’s name to reflect the area’s easy access to water power from the Huron River, so they proposed names like Waterville and Watertown.  

But Judge Woodward had a forceful, dominate personality, and he was the lead investor with the highest public profile, so he got his way. The town has been known as Ypsilanti ever since.

Next post: Ypsilanti, Michigan - Coming of Age

Movers and Shakers - People Who Made a Difference

Open the link for a better view of this awesome oil painting. See how many of these famous historical figures from the ages you can identify. Hover the cursor over a face for a name and click on it for information. For starters, that's Dante in the upper right hand corner; everyone else is contemplating eternity with him.

http://cliptank.com/PeopleofInfluencePainting.htm

Detroit Riots 1967

Take Me Back To The Sixties

Take Me Back To The Sixties

As close to being there again as I dare get! Enjoy it along with me.