Dear Commons Community,

On Tuesday, the National Archives launched its new website www.1940census.archives.gov in preparation for its first-ever online U.S. census release. Visitors will be able to search, browse, and download the 1940 census schedules, free of charge.  A National Archives 3:13 minute video short l is available on the site above to help you in searching for individuals.

After two tries, I was able to locate the actual census form used for my parents and grandparents.  Here is a tip for searching:  the forms are kept by house and street address within “enumerator code” order.  For New York City, an enumerator code reduces to a square block.  So for instance if you were looking for an address on the south side of 36^th Street between 5^th and Madison Avenues, you would need to locate the enumerator code used for the west side of Madison Avenue, the south side of 36^th Street, the east side of 5^th Avenue and the north side of 35^th Street.  There is menu of choices for all of the above which will help you in your search.

It was fun looking up family from the period.  Above is a partial image for the form used for my parents.

Tony

Dear Common Colleagues,

David Brooks has a most touching column today on caring for loved ones with Alzheimers.  Here is the lead-in.

“Last fall I asked readers over 70 to send me “Life Reports” — essays evaluating their own lives. Charles Darwin Snelling responded with a remarkable 5,000-word reflection.

Snelling was a successful entrepreneur who spent decades serving his community. He was redeemed, he reported, six years ago when his beloved wife, Adrienne, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. “She took care of me in every possible way she could for 55 years. The last six years have been my turn,” Snelling wrote.

“We continue to make a life together, living together in the full sense of the word; going about our life, hand in hand, with everyone lending a hand, as though nothing was wrong at all,” he continued.

He believed that caring for his wife made him a richer, fuller human being: “It’s not noble, it’s not sacrificial and it’s not painful. It’s just right in the scheme of things. … Sixty-one years ago, a partner to our marriage who knew how to nurture, nurtured a partner who needed nurturing. Now, 61 years later, a partner who is learning how to nurture is nurturing a partner who needs nurturing.”

On March 29, less than four months after we published his essay online, Snelling killed his wife and then himself. “

Anyone who has had to take care of relative with Alzheimers can relate to this story.  Read the entire column to get the full experience.  It is an important life lesson.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

It’s often said that the only certainties in life are death and taxes. But you can add “rehashing of the O.J. Simpson case” to that list — at least for the last 18 years.  So it should come as no surprise that a new book has been published about the 1994 murders of Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman.  The Huffington Post has an article that reviews some of the claims in this new book O.J. Is Innocent and I Can Prove It by private investigator William C. Dear.

“In the investigation into the murders of Brown and Goldman, Jason Simpson was never considered a suspect or a person of interest. The 41-year-old lives in Miami, where he reportedly works as a chef…

But Dear said he has spent nearly two decades looking into the case and assembled a mountain of circumstantial evidence, which, he said, suggests that O.J. Simpson had nothing to do with the murders of Brown and Goldman.

“I flew out two weeks after the murders,” he said. “I climbed over the back gate and walked the walkway to the front door, and that’s when I realized O.J. could not have done it. But he was there. He was either there at the time or there afterwards [and] became part of the crime.”

In his book, Dear claims that he has the knife used in the murders, along with photos and other evidence that suggest the true killer was Jason Simpson, O.J.’s son with his first wife.

“When I tell you we have the weapon — we found the weapon in Jason’s storage facility that he failed to make payments on. We know he carried it — his initials were carved in the leather sheath,” Dear said.

“We have emails from his former roommates that were in college with him. We have our suspect’s diaries. We have his forged time card, and we have the vehicle he was driving on the night of the murders,” said Dear.

The private investigator also claims to have photos of Jason Simpson wearing the knit cap that was found at the murder scene.

But why? Why would Jason Simpson kill Brown and Goldman?

During O.J. Simpson’s trial, prosecutors alleged that the defendant was obsessed with his ex-wife, that he was prone to jealous rages and that he would stalk her.

Dear contends that Jason Simpson has his own demons and suffers from “intermittent rage disorder.”

“Our suspect at the time was 5’11” and 235 pounds,” Dear said. “He was 24 years old, and he was on probation for assaulting his previous employer with a knife. In addition to that, he’s had three attempted suicides and has been in a psychiatric unit.”

Sound interesting and I am sure it is going to make the bestseller lists.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Thomas B. Edsall, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, and the author of the book The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics,  has an opinion piece in today’s New York Times.  He examines comments/positions of President Barack Obama and Republican candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum as an introduction to how college-educated Americans might be voting in November.  Here is a sample.

“President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob,” Santorum told a Tea Party meeting in Troy, Mich., on Feb. 25. “I understand why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image.”

Romney, the all-but-certain nominee, was blunt when speaking in March at a metal assembly plant in Youngstown, Ohio: “It would be popular for me to stand up and say I’m going to give you government money to pay for your college, but I’m not going to promise that.”

There is a partisan logic to the Republican hostility to higher education: the well-educated — a reliable source of conservative support as recently as the 1980s — have been moving steadily toward the Democratic Party. In a head-to-head contest, a March 26 McClatchy-Marist Poll shows Romney ahead of Obama 47-42 among those without college degrees, while Obama leads Romney 51-42 among those with them. Similarly, those without college degrees lean toward voting for Republican congressional candidates 49-40, while those with them lean toward Democrats 46-44.

Edsall’s findings are interesting particularly in light of the shifts among educated Americans in their voting preferences.

“In 1984, those with college and advanced degrees made up 35.3 percent of the electorate. Reagan’s strongest margins were among the college educated, who backed him over Walter F. Mondale by a crushing 62.7-36.9 margin. Among all those with both college and advanced degrees, Reagan won 58.7 percent, a landslide margin.

Jump to 2008. Even though those with college degrees made up 27.9 percent of the population that year, they cast 45 percent of the presidential vote. These voters register and go to the polls in substantially higher numbers than the less well educated.

By 2008, the Republican advantage of the early 1980s among voters with a college degree or higher had disappeared. Barack Obama carried this demographic with 54.1 percent. He beat McCain 50-48 among those with bachelor’s degrees, and by a decisive 58-40 among the 17 percent of the 2008 electorate with post-graduate degrees.”

While voters are typically a fickle lot,  for the present, it appears that the more educated lean to Obama and the Democrats.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday, presidential candidate, Ron Paul, made several bold statements about the Republican Party and its penchant for militarism.

“The truth is, I’m trying to save the Republican Party from themselves because they want perpetual wars, they don’t care about presidents who assassinate American citizens, they don’t care about searching our houses without search warrants, .. Paul said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Responding to a question about whether he’d continue running for office, he said, “The votes haven’t been counted. … There’s no way I’m going to quit speaking out on this, and there’s no way I’m going to give up on the effort to get the Republicans back to their roots.”

The Texas representative criticized the way that Republicans, as well as the Obama administration, have been handling the Afghanistan War.

“It was a waste, there’s not gonna be a happy ending, and I think the Republicans have dug a hole for themselves because they’re trying to out-militarize the president, say ‘we should do more.’ Yet 75 percent of the American people say ‘we’ve had enough’,” he said.

The Huffington Post reported that  a  recent poll showed that support for the war in Afghanistan has hit an all-time low among Americans. Sixty-eight percent think the war is going badly, and 69 percent think the U.S. should not be involved anymore.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times has a commentary today that months after the Occupy Wall Street movement first used protests and encampments to turn the nation’s attention to economic inequality, the movement needs to find new ways to gain attention or it will most likely fade to the edges of the political discourse.

“They have fewer people, and it’s not a new story anymore that there were people protesting in the streets or sleeping in parks,” said Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress, a liberal organization that has strong ties to top Democrats and has encouraged the protests. “They need to think of new ways to garner attention and connect with people around the country.”

Driven off the streets by local law enforcement officials, who have evicted protesters from their encampments and arrested thousands, the movement has seen a steep decline in visibility. That has left Occupy without bases of operations in the heart of many cities and has forced protesters to spend time defending themselves in court, deterring many from taking to the streets again.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

David Javerbaum, an award-winning television comedy writer, has a clever and humorous op-ed piece in today’s New York Times that compares Mitt Romney’s political positions to quantum theory.  Here is a sample:

“Probability. Mitt Romney’s political viewpoints can be expressed only in terms of likelihood, not certainty. While some views are obviously far less likely than others, no view can be thought of as absolutely impossible…

Uncertainty. Frustrating as it may be, the rules of quantum campaigning dictate that no human being can ever simultaneously know both what Mitt Romney’s current position is and where that position will be at some future date. This is known as the “principle uncertainty principle.”

He concludes:

“What does all this bode for the general election? By this point it won’t surprise you to learn the answer is, “We don’t know.” Because according to the latest theories, the “Mitt Romney” who seems poised to be the Republican nominee is but one of countless Mitt Romneys, each occupying his own cosmos, each supporting a different platform, each being compared to a different beloved children’s toy but all of them equally real, all of them equally valid and all of them running for president at the same time, in their own alternative Romnealities, somewhere in the vast Romniverse.

And all of them losing to Barack Obama. “

Tony