Dr. M.A. Davis
@mikedavis.bsky.social
2K followers 1.9K following 27K posts
Historian in WNC, working on THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW and how great WWIII will be (or not), teaching part-time at Lees-McRae College, opinions my own, available for professional consultation.
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mikedavis.bsky.social
I do not think what that man says is true
mikedavis.bsky.social
I like the fate for this universe’s Ted Grant, the only one of the JSA to avoid a sticky end. (He saw 50K of criminal money on the table, thought “payday!” and retired to open his own gym )
mikedavis.bsky.social
Carter's story is about how you may suffer real lasting consequences for personal righteousness in confronting collective sin, even being cast out of your nice respectable white Christian community. that's not their vision of what a good Christian is at all.
mikedavis.bsky.social
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_A... when your occupations are "astrologer" and "sexologist" on your wiki page you are going to have some stories and indeed he did.
Gavin Arthur - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
mikedavis.bsky.social
a lot of people get excited about the chance to rebut Michelle Obama.
mikedavis.bsky.social
I don't know how true this is but another friend reviewed it as a movie set in a world where the news is true, and that's a great line.
mikedavis.bsky.social
you kick the bad guy off the tallest cathedral in New Orleans in 1874. he hits his father's mausoleum on the way down and dies in front of his judgmental marble eyes.
mikedavis.bsky.social
everyone talking about the Garfield heir who invented Magic: The Gathering, not enough people talking about the grandson of Chester A. Arthur who

1. joined the IRA
2. worked as an astrologer
3. outed Walt Whitman
4. married this very interesting lady en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esther_...
Esther Murphy Strachey - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
mikedavis.bsky.social
he outed Walt Whitman (AFAIK) and was a coworker of Langston Hughes!
mikedavis.bsky.social
I am even more sold on the Arthur family after learning more about his grandson, the bisexual astrologer IRA member. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_A...
Gavin Arthur - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
mikedavis.bsky.social
I am sure there are some Victorian memoirs that would help Peter with this.
mikedavis.bsky.social
ah one more -

his granddaughters include Anna Roosevelt, a leading archeologist of the Amazonian basin, and Susan Weld, the wife of former MA Governor and Republican-turned-Libertarian-turned-Biden supporter Bill Weld. (honestly knowing Weld has TR ties makes him make more sense to me!)
mikedavis.bsky.social
he is played by Henry Fonda in THE LONGEST DAY - a good movie.
Henry Fonda as TR Jr in the Longest Day
mikedavis.bsky.social
an interesting life - hard to see him as President, though, just because even if he is elected NY Gov in 1924, the left wing of the GOP will already have a candidate for the next election, Herbert Hoover. and then no more Republicans will be POTUS in his lifetime.
mikedavis.bsky.social
he is buried next to his brother Quentin, who had died in the last war, at the American cemetery in Normandy.
mikedavis.bsky.social
he was a sick man, with a bad heart and arthritis, getting around with a cane, but he led from the front and did much of the post-landing organization at Utah. his divisional commander admitted later that he had expected Roosevelt to die. a month later he did, of a heart attack on July 12, 1944.
Despite a heart condition and arthritis that forced him to use a cane, Brigadier General Roosevelt led the assault on Utah Beach.
mikedavis.bsky.social
assigned to desk duty for a time, his personal pleas to Eisenhower for a combat command made him the only general in the first wave at D-Day, the oldest man (56) to land that day, and the only man whose son was also landing (his son Quentin came ashore at Omaha while his father landed at Utah.)
mikedavis.bsky.social
Though he fought from Africa to Italy, Roosevelt had a rocky relationship with his overall commanders George S. Patton and Omar Bradley - Patton felt Roosevelt dressed down too much in the field (which was true) and Bradley wrote of Roosevelt that he was "guilty of loving his division" too much.
mikedavis.bsky.social
out of office with his cousin FDR in the White House, he went back into business, all the while expecting another war in Europe. He got one - and by late 1941 (just before Pearl) he was promoted to Brigadier General. He took part in Torch and won the Croix de Guerre for his personal heroism.
From left to right, Brigadier Theodore Roosevelt Jr., Major General Terry Allen and Lieutenant General George S. Patton, March 1943.
mikedavis.bsky.social
he was a successful colonialist - popular with the locals, he actually sought to learn Spanish, and tried to encourage investment there despite the Depression. In 1932, Hoover sent him to the Philippines - where he went hunting again, for the dwarf buffalo.


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A tamaraw bull (Bubalus mindorensis) crossing a grassy field. Adult bulls are locally called toro and are rightly respected for their size and surprising agility.
mikedavis.bsky.social
He lost the election - and never again seriously sought elective office. In 1929, he went on an expedition to China with his brother Kermit and allegedly became the first Westerner to kill a panda. (yikes!)

That same year, President Hoover appointed him governor of Puerto Rico.
mikedavis.bsky.social
In 1924, when TR Jr. was the Republican nominee for Governor, his cousin Eleanor followed him around in a car fitted with a giant steaming teapot, and matched him speech-for-speech. (She regretted this as a dirty trick, but FDR and TR Jr. had viciously sniped at each other in previous years.)
Roosevelt shaking hands with President Calvin Coolidge, September 26, 1924