Battles That Changed History

A few weeks ago Gilda forwarded an article listing 11 battles that changed the world. Compiled by Sasha Putt, a history buff, for the publication “TheCollector,” the conflicts no doubt impacted civilizations of their time and future. Here’s a link so you can inform yourself (https://www.thecollector.com/epic-battles-changed-course-history/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_content=user/thecollector).

Don’t be embarrassed if you, like me, are not familiar with most of them. To make myself feel better, I composed my own list of civilization-shifting battles, with an obvious slant toward Western civilization experience. 

Battles, not wars: 

1. The fall of Jericho (circa 1400 BCE): As the first battle of the Israelite tribes inside the land of Canaan, the first battle after the death of their long-time leader Moses and his replacement by Joshua, the victory at Jericho solidified their endeavor to conquer the territory they believed God promised to their forefathers. Defeat might well have led to rejection of the covenant and its position as the foundation of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
2. The Battle of Hastings (October 14, 1066): English history and its fabled variations (i.e., King Arthur, Robin Hood, Ivanhoe) owe much to the invasion by a Norman-French army led by who we now call William the Conqueror, and his defeat of the English king, Harold Godwinson. Upon the death of King Edward the Confessor in January 1066 England suffered through a series of battles between would-be successors of Edward. William’s invasion came days after Harold defeated two contenders in northern England. To confront William, Harold’s army had to speedily march south. A tired lot, they fought William from 9 am to dusk before finally succumbing after Harold was killed, ostensibly after an arrow lodged in his eye. English and French history has since been forever linked. 
3. The Battle of Agincourt (October 25, 1415): Just one of many battles during the Hundred Years’ War between England and France, the hostilities in northern France demonstrated the importance of more modern warfare versus age-old strategies. The English employed longbows shooting arrows from protected areas overwhelming the French reliance on ground troops. France, however, later turned the tide by incorporating artillery in subsequent battles. 
4. Defeat of the Spanish Armada (August 1588): Effectively ended the competition for naval supremacy between Spain and England, stymied Spanish intentions to replace the Protestant rule of Elizabeth I with a Catholic monarch, and wetted English desire for overseas colonies in North America and the Indian subcontinent. 
5. Battle of Bunker Hill (June 17, 1775): Though a British victory over colonial America, the upstart militiamen served notice that they were a force to be reckoned with. 
6. Battle of Saratoga (September 19, 1777 and October 7, 1777): By defeating the British army, the American revolution earned the support of the French government. France provided financial, military and naval support. Spain and the Netherlands also sided with America against Britain. Without European backing it is doubtful the colonists would have succeeded in attaining independence.
7. Battle of Waterloo (June 18, 1815): The culmination of Napoleon’s 23-year campaign to rule Europe. His defeat at the hands of British and Prussian forces restored European borders, enhanced British influence, and helped usher in nationalism throughout the continent.  
8. Battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863): The turning point of the Civil War, in the Battle of Gettysburg Union soldiers repelled Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s plan to invade the North to force a peace that would have enshrined slavery in the South.  
9. Battle of Dunkirk (May 26-June 4, 1940): The successful evacuation of British and Allied troops from the French port represents one of the most glaring blunders by Nazi Germany. More than 338,000 soldiers were rescued. 
10. Battle of Britain and The Blitz (July 10-May 11, 1941): The successful defense by the Royal Air Force against Nazi Germany’s bombers aborted Hitler’s plan to invade England. 
11. Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941): Japan’s surprise attack and Nazi Germany’s days-later declaration of war against America brought the United States into World War II against the Axis powers. 
12. Battle of Midway (June 4, 1942) and Gaudalcanal (August 7, 1942-February 9, 1943): After years of Japanese supremacy invading  lands throughout the Pacific, the Battles of Midway and Gaudalcanal represented the first major victories for Allied forces. At Midway, the U.S. Navy sank four Japanese aircraft carriers. Gaudalcanal demonstrated that even entrenched Japanese forces could be beaten as part of an island-hopping Allied strategy leading to Japan itself. 
13. Battle of Stalingrad (July 17, 1942-February 2, 1943): East of Stalingrad are the oil fields of the Caucasus. If Germany had captured them the Nazis might well have won the war. The seven-month siege of Stalingrad is considered the turning point of the war along the eastern front. Until Stalingrad, Germany had never surrendered an army during World War II. After Stalingrad the Soviet Union aggressively pursued the German army back into Germany. 
14. D-Day (June 6, 1944): If the invasion of Normandy had not been successful Allied plans to end the war would have been prolonged by years. 
15. Battle of Dien Bien Phu (March 13-May 7, 1954): Colonial French rule in Vietnam and Indochina ended with its defeat by the Viet Minh. The United States filled the void left by France. America’s Vietnam War lasted until January 27, 1973. South Vietnam surrendered to North Vietnam April 30, 1975.
16. June 5, 1967: The first day of the Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors. On that first day Israel achieved air supremacy over Egypt and Jordan, advanced into the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip. Israel subsequently captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem ruled by Jordan and the Golan Heights from Syria, changing forever the dynamics of the Middle East. 

 

How Am I Affected? What Can I Do?

Seven and a third months into the whirlwind unleashed by Donald Trump, how have I been affected? 

Aside from the depression of watching Trump progressively dismantle democratic values, the social services network, the bureaucratic underpinnings of our government, and our international standing as a nation devoted to the welfare of humanity, I cannot say my life has been materially changed. 

My retirement savings have gotten fatter. My Social Security checks arrive on time each month. Anything I have wanted to buy has been available. Gas prices have been stable. No one I know has lost their job. My lawn keeps getting cut by South American workers. At least for the next nine months Stephen Colbert will be around to skewer Trump on CBS. None of my children or grandchildren are in college and subject to campus antisemites. As a senior citizen I can get a Covid vaccine. I still watch the 6:30 pm national news, read The New York Times (at least the headlines) and keep abreast of most national and International affairs. 

Yet, life is not pleasant. Why? Because I am a product of the last half if the 20th century when America tackled inequality at home and abroad, when treaties were signed and legislation was passed to protect lives and the environment; when borders were opened for the free exchange of ideas, when medical advances suppressed, even eradicated, diseases that for millennia destabilized humanity; when we sought to right the wrongs of society within our country and other continents; when we believed in a collective responsibility to create a just and noble existence throughout the world, with America as a shining example of what every nation could someday attain. 

Brick by brick Donald Trump is dismantling what America has meant to its citizens, to the world. And, more sadly, half of our country is complicit in accepting his selfish, inward-looking, autocratic view of what America should be. Trump’s congressmen and senators have forsaken their responsibilities, willingly accepting his usurpation of powers the Constitution enumerated for the House and Senate. Judges and justices have enabled an imperial presidency. 

One wonders why we need legislative and judicial branches of government if they simply ratify despotic rule? Why are they collecting salaries when our national debt keeps rising? 

Don’t look to me for remedies. A return to normalcy, to decency, awaits the awakening of Trump’s America from its cultish miasma. Hopefully, it will happen  before it is too late to reverse his excesses, before the pain of reduced health care, fewer job opportunities, lower incomes, more inequalities make MAGA a nightmare of the permanent present. 

Honoring Those Who Help the Disabled

Next Sunday, September 7, six extraordinary women from Israel, ranging in age from 62 to 81, will arrive in New York to begin a 10 day visit connecting them with the Jewish community here while representing a special organization that serves close to 300,000 of their fellow citizens afflicted with disabling injuries. Shalom Yisrael of Westchester organized and is sponsoring their visit.

When we think of Israel, most people, I would venture to say, visualize a vibrant, even muscular, society. But the reality is that roughly three percent, some 276,000 Israelis, are seriously disabled. Three thousand a year under the age of 60 suffer a stroke. Two thousand car accidents per year result in serious injury.

For more than 70 years ILAN, a national nonprofit organization throughout Israel, has assisted the disabled regain function in their lives, to not let their limitations define them (https://ilan-israel.co.il/index.php/en/). 

The six women representing Ilan-Haifa have unselfishly devoted their time and energy to a special Ilan program incorporating dance with wheelchair-bound disabled. Performances are held throughout Israel (https://youtu.be/3652YU5TmEQ ). 

Their volunteer work goes beyond the dance program. They raise awareness about the challenges faced by people with visual, hearing and mobility impairments. They develop programs to promote understanding, awareness and accessibility for the disabled. 

During their well-deserved time in America they will speak to students at the Leffell High School and Westchester Hebrew High School. They will visit cultural institutions and tourist spots in New York, see a Broadway musical, and exchange ideas with professional counselors who assist the aging and infirmed. They will be housed by volunteer families and build lasting relationships between our two countries. 

The near 40-year old Shalom Yisrael program costs about $20,000 a year. We have no paid administrators. Volunteers handle all aspects of the program. I serve as treasurer of Shalom Yisrael of Westchester.

You may donate by sending a tax-deductible contribution to: 

Shalom Yisrael

c/o Murray Forseter

11 Brad Lane

White Plains, NY 10605

Shalom Yisrael, a proud member of Westchester Jewish Council, is a charitable organization. No goods or services are exchanged or received in consideration of a gift. Tax ID # 74-3148036

***No A.I. was used in the writing and editing of this post. The only intelligence employed was my own.*** 

Oh, the Joy (?) of Learning to Ride a Bike

Wednesday’s New York Times carried a page 3 “Here to Help” feature on “how to use the balance bike method to teach your child to ride” (normally I would provide a link but The Times did not provide one on its web site). 

I can personally attest that learning the old fashioned way—with an adult running beside/behind you while holding the bike—is vastly inferior to the balance bike method. 

I never learned to ride a bicycle as a child, a deprivation of youth I attributed to my father (why blame myself when an adult authority figure is readily available and central to the story?).

Like any good father, my father was teaching me to ride without training wheels, a feat he had accomplished with my brother and sister. Behind our home in Brooklyn, we shared a T-shaped common driveway leading to the garages tucked into the back of each row house. The long portion of the paved driveway was at least the length of two to three football fields and was commonly used for many of the games we played such as ringolevio, punchball and blind man’s bluff. It was a perfect place to learn to ride a bike.

My father dutifully ran alongside the bike holding it steady as I attempted to maintain balance. All was going well. I turned my head to tell him something, but he wasn’t there. I must have been at least 10 yards past him, cycling on my own. But I panicked. I crashed down to the hard pavement. I ran back home, crying to my mother, “Daddy let go.” I was inconsolable, determined never again to trust him to hold me steady, resolute in my opinion that my large tricycle was just as good as a two-wheeler. All my friends pedaled circles around me on their two-wheelers. I countered I could run just as fast as they could bike.

No amount of coaxing could change my mind. It stayed closed-minded for the next three decades. Our daughter Ellie had just learned to ride. Gilda threatened to go on biking vacations with Dan and Ellie without me. So I learned to ride a bike after decades of disdain for the two-wheeled conveyance. I learned via the Amanda Steinberg system, as taught to Ellie and passed on to her father. Ellie was all of 7 when Amanda took her under her slightly older wing to teach the finer points of balance and pedaling. I was 40.

The Times article conveyed the approach Amanda taught. It works for young and old alike.

First, make sure your bike has no training wheels. For adult men, I recommend an old-style woman’s bicycle because there is no center bar to, shall we say, challenge your manhood. The bike seat should be low enough to enable your feet to fully touch the ground so if you ever feel yourself tipping over you can comfortably and without panic steady yourself without falling.

While balancing yourself on the bike, with your legs dangling at the sides, not on the pedals, paddle forward with your feet. After moving a few yards, lift your feet onto the pedals and try to turn them. Don’t be discouraged if you lose your balance. Try again. Sooner, rather than later, hopefully, your balance will become second nature and you’ll be able to continuously pedal.

There. You’ve just learned to ride a bike.

I won’t pretend it’s easy, especially when you’re older and fear consumes you, memories of prior falls and failures freeze you and embarrassment haunts your every attempt. What will the neighbors think?, is constantly going through your mind.

If you’re lucky (I use that word advisedly), as I was, you’ll have a life-partner who will shove you outside the moment you come home from work. Your spouse will exhort you to “man up” and do it before dinner is ready. Don’t go inside unless you’re bicycle-trained. If you do, it’s back outside after dinner, old man. Learn, or be forever left alone while the rest of the family pedals off on wonderful eco-friendly rides.

Futility engulfed my first attempt. I gave up when it became too dark even on our protected cul-de-sac. The next day I was sent out again before dinner. No luck. I moaned over meat loaf I’d never be able to learn. I just couldn’t coordinate more than two turns of the pedals before losing my balance. Ten-year-old Dan volunteered to observe and correct my faulty approach.

We marched out after dinner, I climbed onto Gilda’s old bike, and as I proceeded to explain to Dan how I couldn’t pedal more than two revolutions...I was halfway down the block, the wind in my exhilarated face, tension turning my smile into a grimace as I realized I had no idea how to stop or turn. While Dan called for Gilda to come outside, quick, I figured the only way to stop was to plow into a curb. I got back on the bike. Lo and behold, I was able to pedal again. I was riding a bicycle. Far from laughing at me, neighbors came out and applauded.

Oh, the joy of conquering a childhood phantom.

Truth be told, I hated biking. My ass hurt after a short spin. My neck hurt from looking up with my back bent over the handlebars. My hands and wrists hurt from holding the handlebars too tightly. And I didn’t like falling, which I did repeatedly, so much so that after several years of biking mishaps, with occasional injury, I chose safety over accomplishment. I haven’t ridden a bike in close to three decades. 

But at least I learned to ride. I hope it’s true what they say about never forgetting how to ride a bicycle, just in case I find myself in a desperate situation, as Carl Reiner’s character did in “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming.” You never know when knowing how to ride a bike can help you save the world.

 

Memories of Gastonia Still Resonate

From the stack of newspapers resting on one of our kitchen counter chairs I pulled out last Sunday’s Opinion section of The New York Times. A teaser on the front page intrigued me: “They let their children cross the street to walk to the supermarket. Now they’re felons.”

Upon opening the section I was immediately drawn into the story by its dateline—Gastonia, NC (this post is not about the sad story which I urge you to read but rather a personal reflection on my experience in Gastonia. Here’s the link—https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/opinion/children-traffic-death-parents.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ek8.K_Aq.FymwxQNgL8-A&smid=url-share).

Just under half a century ago Gastonia almost became part of my professional career and family life. 

After spending four years reporting for The New Haven Register I left to be press secretary to a congressional candidate in a campaign I knew would be unsuccessful. Sometimes the experience is worth the detour. 

Weeks of unemployment turned into months as jobs in late 1976-early 1977 proved elusive. 

In early January 1977 I was invited to spend a week at the Gastonia Gazette. The paper needed two general assignment reporters. I flew down to Charlotte, rented a car and booked a room at a Motel 6 along a strip of road populated by fast food joints foreign to most Northerners. 

My only prior exposure to North Carolina came in the middle of a night in March 1972 during a bus ride from Syracuse to Miami Beach as part of a journalism school field trip covering the Florida presidential primary. I slept most of the way but for an unknown reason woke up as we passed the Virginia state line into North Carolina. Welcoming us to the Tar Heel State was a massive billboard depicting a horseback-riding robed Ku Klux Klansman holding a flaming cross. 

Gastonia was not yet a desired suburban community feeding off Charlotte’s financial services, energy and healthcare industries. I had covered small towns outside New Haven during my four years at The Register. Heck, there even was a rumor I could never verify that the Connecticut town I had lived in and covered had a KKK chapter. 

Gastonia felt different. It was the type of Southern town all too often depicted in movies, with miles and miles of winding two lane roadways, often with shanty homes set back on uncut plots of grass, and, most cruelly, factories no longer in operation as textile production shifted to cheaper, overseas operations. In its heyday Gastonia earned its nickname as Spindle City.

Today, Gastonia has about 84,000 residents. Back when I was there, just 47,000. 

Nothing eventful transpired during my tryout week. Neither the town, nor I, distinguished ourselves. I wasn’t surprised when the managing editor offered me a job. $200 a week. That was my salary when I left The Register. I wanted more. The editor countered with $250 a week, and a membership in the town’s country club (I never discerned whether he knew I was Jewish and if the country club had any membership restrictions). Significantly, instead of hiring two reporters he expected me to do the work of both vacancies. 

It required little contemplation for me to graciously reject the opportunity. 

***No A.I. was used in the writing and editing of this post. The only intelligence employed was my own.*** 

A Quest for a Nobel Peace Prize Turns Ignoble

Donald Trump traveled to Alaska to secure a golden platform for his bid to receive a Nobel Peace Prize. Instead, after his meeting with Vladimir Putin intended to achieve a cease-fire between Ukraine and Russia, he appears to be a shoe-in for the Ignoble Award for reincarnating Neville Chamberlain’s capitulation to Hitler over the future of Czechoslovakia. 

The Russian spymaster played him. He shifted Trump’s massive body into submission, getting him to back off his repeated threats of extreme sanctions if Russia did not agree to a cease-fire. No doubt, Putin prepared for meeting Trump, right down to the nickname Trump has earned as a TACO (Trump always chickens out). 

Trump told Sean Hannity after the summit, “In the sense we got along great, and it’s good when two big powers get along, especially when they’re nuclear powers. We’re No. 1 and they’re No. 2 in the world.”

Trump failed to use his position of superiority to sell Putin on a cease-fire. Instead, I’m not sure Putin had to use all his skills as a spymaster to turn Trump into mush.

He fed Trump’s ego. The “great negotiator” capitulated. Putin fed Trump all of his embittered talking points about being robbed in the 2020 election. That it was rigged. He burnished Trump’s abhorrence of mail-in ballots.

As he did in previous summits, Trump swallowed Putin’s words as gospel, not those of his own first-term attorney general and countless election, cybersecurity and judicial officials in the months and years after 2020. 

Trump is so obsessed with securing “peace in our time” that he has forgotten who started the war in Ukraine, who  seized Crimea from Ukraine, who invaded Georgia under false genocide propaganda. 

Trump plays the bully when dealing with almost every world leader, corporate titan, university head. But with Putin he is an admiring sycophant.

Come Monday, Trump will turn into a bully once more as he meets with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky who he has now tasked with conceding land to Russia as part of an overall peace plan. He has the power to withhold armaments, intelligence, medical supplies if Zelensky does not comply with his demands, that is, Putin’s demands. 

I wonder what Zelensky will wear to his meeting with Trump. In a previous White House visit, Zelensky wore stylish black battle fatigues as a sign of support for his armed forces. Trump and his minions disparaged him for disrespecting the Oval Office. 

Trump is a fan of Winston Churchill. I wonder what Trump would have said about Churchill wearing military attire—a so-called “siren suit”—to his meeting with President Franklin D. Roosevelt? 

But then, Trump is not a student of history. Anything that does not align with his “reality” is “history,” as in no longer important or does not exist, as Zelensky and Ukraine, indeed, the rest of the world, are about to find out.

***No A.I. was used in the writing and editing of this post. The only intelligence employed was my own.***  

A Visit from an Unexpected Intruder

Have you ever looked a raccoon in the eye? Up close, with no barrier, no mesh between you? 

Ascloseasthissentenceoftype?

No? Well, I have, and let me tell  you—it was a scary experience. 

As Gilda and I were watching television Monday night, we were disturbed by the sound of our garage door opening. Gilda’s iPhone has an app that pings every time the door opens or closes.  

We feared a home invasion. Did we call the police? Of course not. We weren’t thinking. 

I slipped into my shoes, walked to our mudroom adjacent to the garage and heard clanking noises coming from the other side of the door. Quickly I opened the door a crack. Even more quickly I shut it as I realized a small raccoon was staring back at me from a storage ledge six feet off the ground. 

As I composed myself in the mudroom the raccoon knocked down several more cans of bug spray. 

A standoff began. We grabbed two small flashlights and went outside to the driveway. To get to the ledge the raccoon must have climbed up some lattice work stored along the back wall closest to the mudroom door, then touched the garage door opener as it made its way to the storage ledge. 

We shined our flashlights on the ledge. Two eyes were illuminated. We surmised the raccoon was a youngster, probably as frightened and distraught of his predicament as we were. He, or she, was not moving. 

We further reasoned that the raccoon had surreptitiously entered the garage about five hours earlier when Gilda  returned from exercising. We figured the only option was to leave the garage door open throughout the night while locking the access door to the mudroom and hope the raccoon fled. 

Our stratagem worked. But we did not know that until a wildlife control specialist came and checked out the garage. We engaged his services for a week—two traps, one outside near Gilda’s vegetable garden where some animal(s) had foraged on her tomatoes, one inside the garage just in case there was a secret hole in the wall that provided access. 

Thursday morning a poppa raccoon awaited his discovery in the cage near the vegetable garden and eventual relocation to Putnam County. 

The garage trap was moved to the yard. Both traps were baited with a raccoon’s delight—tuna fish (who knew?). No new guests Friday morning.

So far this experience has been just another joy of home ownership. But really, how stupid was I to open the door to what could have been a two-legged predator? I didn’t even have a bat or knife in hand to attack or defend myself. 

I would have known better had I recalled what transpired some 45 years ago in our first house, a small Tudor with a slate roof. 

After an especially deep snow fall, we were getting ready for bed when rumbling started, lasting about six seconds. I thought someone had rolled up the garage door and was breaking into our home.

I yelled to Gilda to call the police as I threw on a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt and sneakers, grabbed a baseball bat from the closet and raced outdoors to confront the intruder. 

Outside I saw the garage door had not been opened. I spotted a pile of snow on an otherwise smooth blanket of snow. I looked to the roof and realized the snow had rumbled down the slate. I felt foolish.

But not as concerned as Gilda felt. The police had cautioned her I should not be outside lest they suspect I was the suspected burglar, armed as I was, with a bat. The patrol car arrived just as Gilda opened the front door and screamed for me to get inside.

Not so fast. After due process, the police let me go with an admonition never again to play the brave fool. 

I remembered that sound advice too late for its appropriate implementation Monday night.