Good morning, Whitewater
Happy Birthday, General Mitchell. More on that, below.
The last week of your year.
There are no scheduled public meetings in the City of Whitewater today. I am sure that someone will talk about something with someone else at the Municipal Building, but nothing useful is likely to come of it. Your local government — committed by its own account only to a better community — at work for you.
The National Weather Service predicts a windy day, with a high of 38 degrees. The Farmers’ Almanac predicts that today will offer fair skies, and later in the week increasing clouds will follow.
There is no school today, of course. What is to be done with so much youthful energy set lose in the community? I see no risk in it, but there is a possibility that our school board may yet have left unexplored. Could we not harness so many unoccupied students for a group project, perhaps connected through a home computer network?
How about a project easy to undertake, that will require little computational power, to begin? Perhaps, this assignment: Effort and dedication of the District Administrator to the district from which she is compensated over the last few months?
I’d start there — the students of Whitewater could complete a scientific study (great for a college application), and still be back to World of Warcraft in short order.
In Wisconsin history today, the Wisconsin Historical Society marks the anniversary of General William “Billy” Mitchell’s birth in 1879.
On this date aviation pioneer Billy Mitchell was born in Nice, France. Mitchell grew up in Milwaukee and attended Racine College. During World War I, Mitchell was the first American airman to fly over enemy lines. He also led many air attacks in France and Germany. Upon return to the U.S., he advocated the creation of a separate Air Force. Much to the dislike of A.T. Mahan, Theodore Roosevelt, and other contemporaries, Mitchell asserted that the airplane had rendered the battleship obsolete, and attention should be shifted to developing military air power. Mitchell’s out-spokenness resulted in his being court martialed for insubordination. He was sentenced to five years suspension of rank without pay.
General Douglas MacArthur — an old Milwaukee friend — was a judge in Mitchell’s case and voted against his court martial. Mitchell’s ideas for developing military air power were not implemented until long after his death. In 1946 Congress created a medal in his honor, the General “Billy” Mitchell Award. Milwaukee’s airport, General Mitchell International Airport, is named after him.
He was right about airpower, of course — but then, Mitchell was right from the beginning. From Nice, actually — a fine place, a fine country, indeed.