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Should Stolen Art Be Returned—Even If It Hurts the Innocent?

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Stolen Art

Monuments Man Lt. Frank P. Albright, Polish Liaison Officer Maj. Karol Estreicher, Monuments Man Capt. Everett Parker Lesley, and Pfc. Joe D. Espinosa, guard with the 34th Field Artillery Battalion, pose with Leonardo da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine upon its return to Poland in April 1946. Source: Wikipedia Commons

The Thief’s Gambit—A Patriot’s Heist or a Crook’s Crime?

Vincenzo Peruggia slipped into the Louvre just like everybody else. Except he wasn’t.

It was Friday, August 11, 1911, in the middle of a week-long heat. Only two days before, the temperature in sunbaked Paris hit 100° F. Today, as the work week came to a close, local thermometers would read 36°. That would be Celsius. In Fahrenheit, that would be 96.8°.

The Louvre wasn’t merely one of the world’s most renowned art galleries. On this hot day, it offered a bit of cool shade from the bright yellow disk burning above in the clear blue sky. That wasn’t why Vincenzo entered the building. He had worked there. His job was to build a glass case that would display a particular painting. That painting was Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.

But ol’ Vinny didn’t happen into the museum for work. He calmly ventured in with all the other Continue Reading “Should Stolen Art Be Returned—Even If It Hurts the Innocent?”

Lafayette’s Farewell Tour: Rebuilt Buffalo

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Previous: To The Dunkirk Dinghy By The Dawn’s Early Light

Taylor, C.B., A Centennial History of the United States, 1876, p305

Cyrenius Chapin stood where no sane man dare stand. He knew exactly what he was doing. He also knew it was all McClure’s fault.

Nonetheless, there he was. He measured his pace as he approached the British line. Despite the noise and excitement about him, he could hear his feet crunch through the snow. Or maybe he imagined his cold ears picking up the sound.

Certainly, he could feel his feet crush the white blanket as he made his way up Schimmelpenninck Avenue (it didn’t get the name Niagara Street until July 12, 18261). The excitement of the night and now early morning kept his blood flowing to his extremities. His medical training taught him that would help prevent the onset of frostbite.

Cyrenius fully understood the consequences of his actions. With the cannon behind him Continue Reading “Lafayette’s Farewell Tour: Rebuilt Buffalo”

Ode to a Once Mighty Oak

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And in that brief moment, its reign ended.

We don’t know how old it really was, but the centuries had exacted their toll. Despite the efforts of the valiant few, the rot that builds with age had eaten its way through the internal fabric that once supported its mighty infrastructure.

When that final gust rushed through, the great citadel had fallen. It had stood for so long that those closest to it, stunned by the fatal reality before their own eyes, could only muster an anemic disbelief.

All that incredulity could not suspend the finality that was. It was gone. Not really. But really.

*          *          *

The Seneca tribe was a fierce warrior tribe. They had to be. They guarded the “west gate” of the Iroquois Confederacy. From that position, they both protected one flank of their Continue Reading “Ode to a Once Mighty Oak”

I’ll Have One for the Road and Two for the Sea

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And let me the canakin clink, clink,
And let me the canakin clink.
A soldier’s a man;
A life’s but a span;
Why, then, let a soldier drink.
– Othello

The reason James Fenimore Cooper strode into Hustler’s Tavern has disappeared into the hazy mists of history. By 1821, his life had been less than pristine. Kicked out of
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Yale after three years as a trouble-maker (he blew up a classmate’s door), the son of a (probably embarrassed) Congressman who founded the City of Cooperstown did what any other lost teenager trying to find himself did in the early eighteenth century – he joined the Merchant Marine.1

Perhaps he remembered his earlier, albeit brief, stay in the Niagara Frontier just before the War of 1812.2 Serving mostly overseas, he saw some of his best crewmates taken from their ships and forced to serve aboard British warships against Napoleonic France. Like the rest of America, he detested Continue Reading “I’ll Have One for the Road and Two for the Sea”

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