Well, that decision was four years too late for me!

September 19, 1969 — President Nixon announces the cancellation of the draft calls for November and December. He reduced the draft call by 50,000 (32,000 in November and 18,000 in December). This move accompanied his twin program of turning the war over to the South Vietnamese concurrent with U.S. troop withdrawals and was calculated to quell antiwar protests by students returning to college campuses after the summer. (Source: History.com)

A Complaint and a Blogging Note — 

Here’s my complaint: I was drafted in December 1965, after my student deferment had expired, so the federal government’s draft cancellation decision in ‘69 was four years too late for me (and certainly it was too late for vast numbers of other young men, many of whom died in Vietnam while fighting a war that made no sense except to greedy weapons manufacturers and irrational anti-Communist politicians). Hmm. 

Well, now, for whatever it might be worth, here’s my blogging note: future postings (and my reading) will be more concerned with American history. I want that to be my blogging focus while I still have a bit of time left until I’m forced to leave this planet. To that end, I’m currently reading the book shown below. And so it goes.

“Is there anybody there?” said the Traveller

The Listeners

BY WALTER DE LA MARE

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,   

   Knocking on the moonlit door; 

And his horse in the silence champed the grasses   

   Of the forest’s ferny floor: 

And a bird flew up out of the turret,   

   Above the Traveller’s head: 

And he smote upon the door again a second time;   

   ‘Is there anybody there?’ he said. 

But no one descended to the Traveller;   

   No head from the leaf-fringed sill 

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,   

   Where he stood perplexed and still. 

But only a host of phantom listeners   

   That dwelt in the lone house then 

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight   

   To that voice from the world of men: 

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,   

   That goes down to the empty hall, 

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken   

   By the lonely Traveller’s call. 

And he felt in his heart their strangeness,   

   Their stillness answering his cry, 

While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,   

   ’Neath the starred and leafy sky; 

For he suddenly smote on the door, even   

   Louder, and lifted his head:— 

‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,   

   That I kept my word,’ he said. 

Never the least stir made the listeners,   

   Though every word he spake 

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house   

   From the one man left awake: 

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,   

   And the sound of iron on stone, 

And how the silence surged softly backward,   

   When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Source: The Collected Poems of Walter de la Mare (1979)

“There the thing was, right in front of me”

It's the birthday of poet William Carlos Williams (books by this author), born in Rutherford, New Jersey (1883). His father was a businessman, born in England, and his mother was Puerto Rican. His mother spoke and read to him in Spanish. He went off to school in Switzerland and France and learned French. But then he came back, went to medical school, and settled in Rutherford, where he was born, and lived there more or less for the rest of his life with his wife, Flossie. He practiced medicine full time and wrote his poems during breaks, on scraps of paper, without time to revise. He was often asked how he had the time and energy to pursue two professions, but he loved them both, and he couldn't imagine writing without medicine. In his Autobiography of William Carlos Williams (1951), he said: "I have never felt that medicine interfered with me but rather that it was my very food and drink, the very thing which made it possible for me to write. Was I not interested in man? There the thing was, right in front of me. I could touch it, smell it. It was myself, naked, just as it was, without a lie telling itself to me in its own terms."  (Source: The Writer’s Almanac)

Williams is best known for his shorter poems like "The Red Wheelbarrow" (1962): 

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

“The Mormons must be treated as enemies”

September 16, 1845 — Phineas Wilcox was stabbed to death by fellow members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Nauvoo, Illinois, because he was believed to be a Christian spy. The murder of Wilcox reflected the serious and often violent conflict between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the surrounding communities. Joseph Smith, who founded the religion in 1830, had been living with his followers in Missouri, where they had various conflicts with locals, including an armed skirmish with the state militia. 

In 1838, Governor Lilburn Boggs signed a military order directing that the Latter-day Saints be expelled or exterminated: “The Mormons must be treated as enemies and must be exterminated or driven from the state, if necessary, for the public good.”

Smith and his followers fled across the Mississippi to Nauvoo, Illinois, which quickly became the second most populous town in the state. But there were conflicts and tensions in Nauvoo as well. When a local newspaper printed editorials claiming that the religious leader was a fraud, Smith sent a group of followers to destroy the newspaper office. He was then arrested and sent to jail, where a lynch mob tracked him down and killed him.

Brigham Young, who quickly took command of the church and its followers, tried to stifle any dissent and banish his rivals. The killing of Phineas Wilcox was part of his consolidation of power. Tensions with other communities continued to escalate, and, a year later, over 2,000 armed men marched on Nauvoo. Young decided that it no longer was wise to stay in the area. He led his flock west and settled in the Salt Lake Valley, where he and his followers would become instrumental in founding the state of Utah.

Source: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/murder-in-illinois

The Wilcox incident is, indeed, a disturbing bit of history. In fact, the entire historical record of Mormons in the United States does contain some shocking chapters. 

However, here is the link to what might be a more reliable and better written perspective on the incident.