The chief wonder of education is that it does not ruin everybody concerned in it, teachers and taught.

Today, I took my final exam for my history class, The US in the 20th Century. While I picked the class on purpose, thinking I would find it more interesting that early US history or similar classes, I was not expecting it to be my favorite class of the semester. So in honor of the class that rekindled my love of learning, of reading, and of asking questions, this blog post will be about some of the amazing things I learned this semester. First, though, tonight I enjoyed an American icon: Anchor Porter. 

This is a great beer, simply put. The mouthfeel is quite light at first, and then immediately filling. Minimal head. Chocolate and coffee aromas on the nose, both of which are very strong tastes, but there's also flavors of burnt toast (in a good way!) and even some dark fruits. Clocking in at 5.6% ABV, this would make a great winter lunch beer, paired with a roast beef sandwich and some potato soup!

I was surprised to learn that Anchor Porter has been around since 1972! I've got another Anchor beer coming up later in the month, and am really looking forward to it now.

Now, down to brass tacks. We covered so many interesting things this semester, and it was really hard to pare it down to a post-able level of material.

We discussed Theodore Roosevelt's road to the White House, including his efforts to clean up the New York City police force before being elected Vice President to McKinley, who was assassinated in September of 1901.

We learned about Moe Berg, the unlikely spy. Berg, a second-rate baseball player, was hired by the CIA (due to his lack of personal attachments and proficiency with foreign languages) to attend a lecture given by Heisenberg to determine if Germany had a nuclear bomb. In the chance Berg believed they did, he was instructed to shoot Heisenberg. Moe Berg left the conference believing that Heisenberg had not unlocked the secrets of the nuclear bomb, but in reality Heisenberg had. Heisnberg kept that knowledge from the Führer, though, due to fears of global nuclear war.

We talked about the Kent State shootings, which were immortalized in Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young's tragic classic Ohio, and we also talked about the University of Wisconsin-Madison Dow protests. The Dow chemical corporation, a producer of napalm, had received permission to recruit on the UW-Madison campus, and many students at the time were strongly opposed to the dubious ethical nature of having such a corporation on a college campus. The students staged sit-ins, the local police were involved, and the rest, as they say, is history. History that is being repeated in major cities even today as the militarization of police forces and lack of transparency is hotly contested in the wake of the killings of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Eric Garner.

We read The Unwinding, an in-depth look at the last 50 years of the 20th century through the eyes of three everyday citizens. The book chronicles the experiences of Jeff Connaughton, a political campaigner for Joe Biden; Tammy Thomas, a factory worker and firsthand witness to economic devastation and white flight; Dean Price, the entrepreneurial descendant of tobacco farmers; Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley mogul best known as a co-founder of PayPal; as well as short biographical passages about Colin Powell, Sam Walton, Jay-Z, and others. George Packer did a monumental amount of research to put this book together, and it shows. While dense and even somewhat preachy at times, this book was overall a very insightful look into viewpoints I might not have otherwise been exposed to. Great read.

Perhaps of most interest to me, though, was the in-depth look we took at the Suffragist Movement in the United States and the efforts of Alice Paul to secure voting rights for women. Her efforts included standing outside the White House holding posters decorated with quotes from President Woodrow Wilson's speeches, speeches guaranteeing liberty and equality for people of other nations. Alice Paul was even arrested and subjected to torture while in prison, including being forcibly fed egg yolks and raw chicken when she attempted a hunger strike; she contracted salmonella as a result and almost died. Today, she has been commemorated on her own $10 gold coin (and if anybody ever wants to give me one, I would treasure it forever).

We also talked about Margaret Sanger and her efforts to make early contraceptives available to women. Her efforts even included purchasing crates of diaphragms and smuggling them into the country. She also opened one of the first birth control and family planning clinics. While her life was fraught with controversies and bigoted beliefs, she is nevertheless an early champion of womens' bodily autonomy.

Whew! That was a long one, but this class has done a lot to build up my motivation to get through this phase of my college education and on to the next.

Until tomorrow, readers!