On This Day - January 6th
This sense of impending doom has been hanging over my head for months. That feeling that nothing will ever get better; life will just continue on its subpar path, ultimately until death. While I am positive I am not alone in this feeling, I find no comfort there. It only makes me feel worse that the majority of the people I know are impaired by this looming darkness.
For the vast majority of my 40 years on this spinning shitshow, I have been blissfully unaware of politics. Despite living close to Washington D.C. for a portion of my childhood, I never felt that my participation in, and knowledge of politics ever had much of a direct affect on me. That being said, it didn’t. That is, until somewhat recently. September 4th of 2019, to be exact.
It was on that day that our fearless leader, Mr. Donald Trump, was the clown in the circus of what would be known as Sharpiegate. It was on this day that I realized that the person who was in charge of the future of the great United States had absolutely no working knowledge of geography or meteorology, nor did he possess one single ounce of humility.
Since that moment, my faith in the greatness of this country has dwindled little by little, scandal by scandal. I’m no longer proud of the country in which I reside. I’m ashamed to be an American, even though the decisions that have led me here are not my own. Once upon a time, it was only my own uninformed, hasty decisions that caused my life to tumble like a pebble down a steep cliff but now… now it’s the decisions of others that have begun to affect me deeply and I just have to sit here and watch as the stability of a once great country becomes not so great; The opposite of what this unhinged, orange man preached during his early days in politics.
It was at that moment last night, with my mouth full of delicious, juicy chicken, I decided to find a light in the dark. I thought of the quote by author Richard Paul Evans, “We can spend our days bemoaning our losses, or we can grow from them. Ultimately the choice is ours. We can be victims of circumstance or masters of our own fate, but make no mistake, we cannot be both.” While I have never read any of Evans’ books, I see his quotes from time to time, and they’re deliciously resounding and inspiring. I have vowed to read more this year. I just made a note to myself to check him out. This is my commitment to do so. Stay tuned.
This moment of reflection brought me to where I am right now. Drinking my coffee, following up to another commitment I made to myself during the Rachel Maddow show. A commitment to myself to halt my cynicism and negativity and apply a little pressure to the creative part of my brain. Just poke it a little. See if it’s still alive. I decided to start by putting my education to use by writing about history, reflecting on all the good that has occurred, instead of focusing on the seemingly bleak future.
This feeling, this moment, is fleeting. While there may be consecutive moments of “I hate this life”, they can be broken up by moments of light in the darkness. Not unlike lighters held by hypnotized singers during the greatest song EVER, with enough little flames… Well. Who am I kidding? It will still be dark as hell but at least there will be pretty little lights. Enough to zhuzh it up a little. So here I am, in the darkness, writing by the light of flame. Aspiring to set fire to my soul, and to make it come alive again.
My favorite art medium has always been words. The way you can twist and turn them to create a different experience each time is dizzying. The possibilities are infinite. They can be used to evoke emotion, and also to soothe that emotion away. They can be used to incite anger, passion, love and hate. They can be used to emote a sense of belonging or feeling alienated all in one sentence. In a sense, they’re magic.
Where would we be without words? How would we survive? Personally, I don’t believe we would have. I believe that words became the tool that kept us alive as early humans. Allowed us to communicate and learn to live amongst one another when it was vital to have another bro around to have your back during vulnerable times. Like in the morning after the coffee kicked in and it was time to make room for the next saber-tooth steak… that’s an important time to meditate and reflect on the day ahead. Imagine doing that with the threat of a wolf or bear attack, it had to have been extremely challenging. Communication is clutch. Which brings me to the main course of this meandering story…
On January 6th, 1838 in Morristown, New Jersey, Samuel Morse unveiled an invention that would forever alter the way in which we communicate.
Morse attended Yale, where he studied art and electricity. He received an offer in 1825 to paint the portrait of French nobleman Marquis de Lafayette, at which time he traveled to Washington D.C. from his home in Connecticut to complete the project. It was then that he received a letter from his father, delivered by a horseback messenger, stating that his wife was gravely ill. By the time he reached his home in Connecticut, his wife had passed and been laid to rest. It was this event that caused the devastated man to focus his skills and talent on the advancement of a new and improved form of communication.
Working alongside professor Leonard Gale and inventor Alfred Vail, Morse created the telegraph, a way to transmit an encoded message over a single wire using an electromagnet. Unbeknownst to him, two other inventors, Charles Wheatstone and William Cooke, were working to achieve the same thing, although their inventions would have used multiple wires instead of the single wire system that Morse had been working on.
After demonstrating his new invention and obtaining a patent, Morse was supported by Yale friend and classmate Henry Ellsworth. Ellsworth had been appointed the first Commissioner of the U.S. Patent office and worked tirelessly to lobby for Morse’s invention, attempting to get financial backing from Congress to build the first telegraph. This line of speedy communication would span from Baltimore, MD to Washington, D.C. In 1844, after what I would imagine to be quite the convincing rant, Ellsworth’s hard work paid off, and Congress granted the money for the telegraph to be built. In gratitude for the work of his friend, Morse asked Ellsworth’s 17-year-old daughter, Annie, to choose the text of the first formal telegraph message. Annie chose a message from the Old Testament’s Book of Numbers.
Mere seconds after the message was sent, Alfred Vail, who was posted up in a railroad depot 50 miles away, likely biting his nails in anticipation, received the much awaited message. “What hath God wrought?”.
By 1861, Morse’s company was known as the familiar Western Union, and the telegraph line across the U.S. had been completed. By 1866, the sensation had spread across the Atlantic and into Europe, forever changing communication from one continent to another. The telegraph was used until the last communication of it's kind would ever be sent, in January of 2006.
Morse died in April of 1872, leaving behind an unforgettable legacy. It struck me in my research that while Morse had been successful his whole adult life, the real success came when he was in his 50’s. It’s never too late.
I found the selection for the first telegraph to be somewhat odd, and I’ll be the first to admit that I could fit what I know about the Bible into a thimble. According to Google, this selection was symbolic, as it symbolized his scientific work as being equally as impactful as a work of God.
What would you have chosen for the first telegraph message? Let me know in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
Sources:
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/january-6/morse-demonstrates-telegraph
https://www.history.com/articles/six-things-you-may-not-know-about-samuel-morse
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