Video killed the radio star

 

 

They say keep these things short, but if I'd had more time I would have mentioned my turn from writing books about the Civil War to one partly about a famous pacifist (or someone about as famous as pacifists get). Seems like a good time to study how to avoid another civil war, or a world war.

The Detective and Dorothy Day, a novel by Robert C. Conner (updated)

 

First Amazon customer review is up:

• 

  Books That Inspire

  5.0 out of 5 stars Smart and compelling

  Reviewed in the United States on March 6, 2026

  Format: Kindle

  This book really captured the feel of the mid-1970s. I liked how Sy’s investigation uncovered more
• than just a single crime. The deeper he dug, the more complex everything became. The moral
• dilemmas he faces are handled thoughtfully. It’s a mystery that doesn’t rush its message. I’m glad I
• picked this one up.

Press release here:

(Sorry, original link didn't work. This one will.)

BioGamer Girl weighs in.

This is the dedication:

Today (March 9) in nearby Saratoga Springs was the first warm day of spring, nice walking weather for me and Bella. In my prior post Blog Name Change, I hinted about moving away from the Civil War, the focus of my first three books, to this new historical novel, which is partly about a pacifist activist. I don't know if I'm fully on board with Dorothy's views yet, but the quiet streets of Saratoga seemed in sharp contrast to Iran now, or Ukraine, both of which places are in urgent need of an immediate cease-fire followed by peacemaking.

Blog Name Change

 
This blog's name is changing because my upcoming novel is the first of my four books not to focus on the American Civil War. (It does, however, have one character who starts a couple of conversations about Ulysses S. Grant -- because I am apparently incapable of writing a book without mentioning the man.)

The book on the left is my only previous novel, set in 1885, and published in 2018 by Square Circle Press of Schenectady which did a good job with it. Unfortunately, that small press will be going out of business this year, so order now to get your copy. I had a heads-up something like this was coming when I contacted them last year regarding my new book, and that was one of the things pushing me toward self-publishing.

The other book pictured is a novel I just read by Jim Kunstler, who lives not far from me in upstate New York. It's an entertaining, sort-of historical novel set in 1963, just after the JFK assassination, and one of the characters is the author J.D. Salinger. My soon-to-be-published, sort-of historical but also detective story is set in 1975 in the same general area as Kunstler's. It has a major character who is about as famous as Salinger, a writer, social-religious activist, and pacifist. That last attribute seems timely these days, when the most pressing questions are not about old wars but the threat of new ones, around the world and here in the United States, where avoiding civil warfare seems like an urgent priority.

Which doesn't mean I'll stop writing about the 1860s here. But not everyone in America then joined up for the duration. Sam Clemens headed west for Nevada and California, while Martin Henry Freeman voyaged east to Liberia.

Battleship Cove

 

On a cold and windy Veterans Day yesterday, my friend Matt (a Marines vet) and I went to Battleship Cove in Fall River, MA, where I took this photo from the deck of a destroyer launched just after World War II and named after naval aviator Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., who was killed in that war.

The photo shows two ships that did fight in WW2, the submarine Lionfish (which we didn't go aboard) and, in the background, the battleship Massachusetts, the highlight of our tour. Wandering around the decks of this huge ship, where 2,500 men lived and worked, viewing their bunks, galley, hospital, offices, engine room, rooms for calculating gunfire, damage control, radio communications and so forth, all illuminated by informative exhibits, was an engrossing experience. The destroyer was worth seeing too, as I'm sure would be the submarine.

There was also a PT boat, which was bigger and carried bigger torpedoes than I expected. The exhibits there included this one about the most well known PT officer, Joe Kennedy's brother Jack. I hadn't realized that after his famous PT-109 experience, JFK went on to serve in combat on another boat, PT-59.

The PT boats, another exhibit said, were regarded as "expendable". The great film director John Ford was in the Navy during the war, at Midway (where he was wounded) and Omaha beach. His first postwar movie was about PT boat and associated operations during the Japanese conquest of the Philippines in 1941-2. It was called They Were Expendable.

The Massachusetts started the war in the Mediterranean during Operation TORCH, fighting the Vichy French navy at Casablanca. She was hit by fire from a Vichy battleship, which she soon disabled. But no man aboard the Massachusetts -- "a lucky ship" -- was killed then or throughout the war from enemy fire. She spent most of the war in the Pacific, where her campaigns included the US reconquest of the Philippines, begun by Gen. Douglas MacArthur in October 1944. She served at that time under Admiral Bull Halsey in the battles around Leyte Gulf -- but not in the gulf, where the fiercest fighting was and Halsey's fleet was not, being otherwise engaged in combat operations.  

Here's a photo looking over the forward guns of the Massachusetts.

Red Jacket and Ely Parker

 

The wife and I were in Penn Yan, NY, last week (Oct. 27), where on the shore of Keuka Lake we came across this statue of the Seneca chief Red Jacket, who was from the area. He is wearing the peace medal presented to him by President Washington, which is now in Salamanca, NY, in possession of the Seneca Nation.

The Tonawanda Seneca Ely Parker, a kinsman of Red Jacket who interacted with him as a very young child, inherited the medal in 1852 when he became Grand Sachem of the Iroquois Six Nations, and kept it the rest of his life.

Parker met Ulysses S. Grant before the Civil War in Galena, Ill., where he was working as an engineer for the US government. He later served on Grant's military staff, in which capacity he copied out the surrender terms at Appomattox. When Robert E. Lee was introduced to Parker, the Confederate general-in-chief told him he was "glad to see one real American here," to which Parker replied, "We are all Americans." Col. Parker resigned from the Army in 1869, when President Grant appointed him as Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

In 1884, Parker spoke at the ceremony where the bodies of Red Jacket and nine other Seneca chiefs were re-interred at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo.

Solomon Northup

 

Tomorrow, Sunday Oct. 19, is the last day to see this statue of Solomon Northup in front of the (former) Lincoln Baths in Saratoga Springs, before it moves on to Boston and then to its permanent installation site in Louisiana. 

Northup was a free black man, married with three children, who pursued various trades including violin player. He was lured away from his Saratoga home in 1841, then kidnapped, sold, and spent "Twelve Years a Slave", as he wrote in his best-selling memoir of that title. He was an anti-slavery activist in the 1850s, before disappearing from history. 

Grant's Great-Grandfather, KIA

 

I stopped at Crown Point on my way home this week, crossing over to New York from Vermont on the bridge seen above, next to the scant remains of the French Fort St. Frederic. Cannon could guard Lake Champlain at this narrow point, on the frontier between two colonial empires in the French and Indian War. 

Lieutenant Noah Grant went off to what turned out to be a relatively small-scale yet brutal war from Connecticut, a married American fighting -- like George Washington -- with the British. He was part of an expedition that failed to capture Fort St. Frederic in 1755. The next year he was promoted to captain, and killed at the age of 38 in a skirmish by one account not far from the lake -- by another it was farther south, near Fort Edward. His younger brother Lt. Solomon Grant also was killed that year, in Massachusetts.

Ulysses Grant referred briefly to these events in his Personal Memoirs:

"In the fifth descending generation my great grandfather, Noah Grant, and his younger brother, Solomon, held commissions in the English army, in 1756, in the war against the French and Indians. Both were killed that year."

There is more left of Fort Crown Point which the British built after the French abandoned and destroyed Fort St. Frederic in 1759.

But the British fort was mostly destroyed in an accidental fire in 1773, and its small garrison was quickly captured by Seth Warner's Green Mountain Boys when the Revolutionary War broke out in 1775. The captured cannons, along with those from nearby Ticonderoga, came in useful when Col. Henry Knox delivered 59 of them to Washington near Boston.