This year’s largest annual gathering of historic schooners in America, the 37th Annual Great Schooner Race, is scheduled for Independence Day weekend.

“The appeal of the Race is getting the boats all together and recreating a scene that people might have seen a hundred years ago. There’s no other place I know of where guests can take part in such an exciting sailing event,” said Captain Brenda Thomas, owner of the 127-year-old Schooner Isaac H. Evans.

On Friday, July 5, at 11 am, dozens of schooners will race across Maine’s Penobscot Bay, from Islesboro to the Rockland Breakwater, where their mid-afternoon arrival will be reminiscent of the days when cargo-laden schooners raced to be the first to port so they might capture the best market prices. A century ago, every schooner trip was a race against time and a captain’s profits depended heavily on his crew’s sailing skills.

Immediately following the Race, the entire fleet will anchor in Rockland’s South End where an awards ceremony for participants will be held at the Sail, Power and Steam Museum.

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The last spike being driven into the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869

When we last left our hero, Capitalism, he was flexing his muscles, having laid a knockout blow on Mercantilism and turning his pugilistic attention to dominating the entire economy of the Western world and, before long, that of the rest of the planet as well. An offshoot of the power of the fast-growing nascent business class was its reach fully into the phenomenon soon to be called “Imperialism.” Undeveloped areas were conquered and their resources, on the cheap, absorbed into the Capitalist maw. “Taking up the white man’s burden” was the smarmy, advertised interpretation of this legalized thievery.

The U.S., because of its colonial past, was not originally in the same camp as Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, et. al. It took almost a full century before the U.S.A joined the rapacious pack, picking up a few stray dependencies like the Philippines, Hawaii, Guam, American Samoa and Puerto Rico, while keeping a wary eye and military invasion plans on most of Latin America.

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The Engineer and Conductor of the Narrow Gauge Railroad in Portland, Maine.

The Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad Company and Museum is pleased to announce it will be open weekends beginning March 24, 2012. The museum is open 10am-4pm, with train rides on the hour between 10am and 3pm. In addition to train rides, the museum offers exhibits on Maine Narrow Gauge history along with newly expanded activities for children. The popular child-sized play train now includes dress up clothing for children and railroad tickets with hand punches so children can explore railroad history through imaginary play.

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A protester of Occupy Wall Street. The movement is similar to the Bonus Army protests.

WordPress has reported to me a response to one of my earlier blogs, which was about the Bonus Army of 1932, a forerunner of the current Occupy Wall Street movement, and how on this occasion several thousand World War I veterans were dispersed from their tent city in Washington D.C. by orders to the U.S. Army from President Herbert Hoover.

The person who commented, citing this blog, was an Angelita Fisher and she appears to be connected with an Internet operation called INTEL HUB, which is heavy on support for Congressman Ron Paul and dedicated to opposing “globalism,” whatever that means.

The first part of her response, which is actually unconnected to my blog, seemed somewhat mystifying, asking me to “Examine U.S. military policy during the Cold War from 1946-1989” discussing “policy development, military strategy, nuclear weapons and targeting” and a host of other such esoteric subjects. Her final words, though, still unconnected, were more concrete and within my capability to respond. Ms. Fisher stated: “Despite fighting the Korean War to stalemate and suffering defeat in Vietnam, the U.S. emerged victorious in its four decade long conflict with the Soviet Union. Why?”

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A protester of Occupy Wall Street. The movement is similar to the Bonus Army protests.

Needless to say, various commentators on today’s economic and financial climate in the United States, have seen parallels with the time of the Great Depression. Admittedly. that economic disaster triggered in 1929 by conditions over here similar to ours at the end of the George W. Bush Administration, hit Americans on a much bigger scale. Unemployment, for example, was 25 percent, not 9.1 percent, which is high enough certainly, given that one major political party, the Republicans, have dedicated themselves to keeping it at that level.

Recently, the amazing overnight growth of the OWS, [Occupy Wall Street] movement has brought to mind a similar activity in the early 1930’s, albeit in this case on a much smaller extent compared to the flood of occupiers worldwide at the present time. It then involved the “occupation” of only a single city, Washington D.C., by some 40,000 people, mostly comprised of military veterans of the First World War and their families. They are known to history as the Bonus Army, although in their own eyes they preferred the term Bonus Expeditionary Force, reflecting the name, the “American Expeditionary Force,” under which they were sent to Europe in 1917-1918.

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