Starr Center Director Debuts His Civil War Column in NYT Today

Disunion will follow the Civil War as it unfolds; today's, the first installment, is Nov. 1, 1860, "The Last Ordinary Day." The subject concerns how some of the principle players of the Civil War were occupied on November 1 in 1860.

Is this cool-io or what?

Though myself, I'm totally occupied with the War of 1812.  With V away for the week, hopefully I'll get the the first draft of this matter and slavery finished.

Downrigging Weekend

Harpoon boat, 1812, and crew

Coming into Port

1812 Flag -- O Say Can You See, From Deck and From Below

View of the Eastern Shore from the Lynx deck, on the Chester River





Kalmar Nyckel, The Tall Ship of Colonial Delaware

Ha! the Kalmar Nyckel was back in harbor last night. Both cats are aboard, though the younger, grey one, is the active, friendly feline, prancing about the piers and berths. I went down the pier for a closer look (the north star and the Dipper netted in her rigging). Ran into a volunteer who had just returned from a party close to the campus to relieve the watchman, so that one could have his party turn. 1625 -- that's still the Renaissance, so my guess was right as to her period. She does have cannon, and she was setting them off this AM. What fun! This too was one of my happiest days.

The geese are furious at this intruder, and are complaining loudly. They don't know what's coming! But the staff do at the Fish Whistle, the marina's restaurant-bar on the river front, and are not looking forward to it at all.

We went to the Superfresh Supermarket yesterday AM, just by ourselves, V driving us in our own wheels, for the first time. We're such simple people -- this is the sort of thing that makes us happy. In any case, we felt it wise to stock up on whatever since visitors are already arriving for Downrigging Weekend, and we are not giving up our residential parking spot to out-of-towners. Parking becomes impossible by Thursday. Lucky us though, we live right here by the water front, so we can walk. The reception and dinner after the sail are at the Customs House, ditto. Monday morning we ran into a fellow walking his dog up the middle of High Street, just dancing away -- "Downrigging Weekend is almost here!" he sang. It seems Downrigging Weekend is C'Town's Mardi Gras. Everyone's excited about being able to drink beer in the streets.

This AM he's driving to the Baltimore airport to fly to Cleveland for the R 'n R Hall of Fame gig. We have a rather nasty little storm going on this AM around here -- rain, fog, 45 mph wind gusts -- though it's supposed to be lovely in Cleveland post the midwest's really big ugly damaging storm yesterday.I'll make some breakfast for el V, and then it's back to William Fitzhugh's letters. It's gotten almost comical by now, the blahblahblah that is Virginia's early colonial history. It's always exactly the same -- wonderful, adventuous, powerful, courageous Queen Elizabeth, wonderful, adventurous, powerful, courageous first Virginians of that great race of Saxons mixed with Celtic blood blahblahblah, owning it all, blahblahblah, thinking it all up blahblahblah, not responsible for slavery which like little slave girl, Topsy, in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, somehow "jist grew,"* blahblahblah. We get it all in this in the editor's Introduction to his 1963 edition of Fitzhugh's letters and papers -- just as we still get it in the new 4th grade Virginia History textbook now in 2010.

* As I've learned, though I came to this HBStowe Topsy analogy independently, I am far from the first or only to have employed it. No wonder the slaveholders' 'philosophers' so loathed that little lady born and bred in 'black laws' Ohio -- she could take their own language and o so cleverly, so subtly, show how ridiculous it was, making us all laugh even now. When, that is, we aren't crying and / or so outraged we need to DO SOMETHING ABOUT THESE CONDITIONS.

O yes, among the books in the House's collections, are many that have to do with the south's colonial and antebellum philosophy, intellectual movements, etc. These include every form of publication from gazettes and newsapapers to pamphlets, letters, business papers, as well as books, with bibliographies. Digging so rapidly and so deeply into 3 centuries of all this simultaneously is eye-opening. Even when you already knew so much, it always seems as if you've merely scratched the surface.

Addendum: I love that I am able to generally recognize at least the general era of these vessels even though -- particularly -- because my o so small knowledge of ships is entirely from historical novels** and movies, and it's so gratifying to know tht the good ones do Do It Right.


** Keith Richards loves the Patrick O'Brian novels, and often characterizes the Rolling Stones touring enterprise as a pirate ship.

And What To My Incredulous Eyes Should Appear

Tonight, in the C'Town harbor? (Besides the pumpkin-sized and pumpkin-orange moon rising through the clouds at the top of the Chester River?)
A Renaissance era galleon come to anchor. Downrigging Weekend doesn't start officially until Thursday, but here's a ship already.
A man with his dog was dancing down High Street today, singing, "Downrigging Weekend, here we come!" Evidently this is Chestertown's version of Mardi Gras. Particularly since it includes Halloween.

We're going to take many photos. Maybe one can be the cover for The American Slave Coast. Hopefully. Since shipping plays such a role in this project. So, whether I'd wanted to or not in the past, I'm now fascinated by rigging, sailing, etc. And steam. Most of the slaves went via steam, because it was so much faster. A lot died that way too, considering how often steam boilers blew up.

This is going to be wild. I have the perfect footgear for the privateer, Lynx, sail. I spent a lot of boot leather and back pain to find them. I'm doing this sail right.  I still can't believe I'm going to be sailing on a full replica of that Baltimore Clipper privateer from the War of 1812!   We're going to learn so much important data, first hand this weekend. Ted Widmer is going to be the 'host' for our sail, and the Starr Center's weekend activities.

Ted was the first director of the Starr Center; he and his family used to live in the House. Who knew when we told him at his book party that we'd read the book out loud to each other, that we'd be meeting down here in the future -- we'd never even heard of the Patrick Henry Writing Fellowship then -- or even yet, at this time last year
\
o way can we make the celebrations and observances of our other C'town friends; this weekend we are the totally owned subsidiaries of the Starr Center. As it is they are being very tolerant of all our outside activities (though this morning they were all saying how much pleasure they got out of telling to various people at the College that el V was playing at Lincoln Center, and that he's off to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Wednesday).

We hashed it out at dinner tonight. For the sake of my back, etc. I AM NOT going to Cleveland then, for the R 'n R gig, nor am I going to NYC next week (so he can do something in the apt. alone about CLEARING THE MANY IMPOSSIBLE MESSES OF HIS-HIS-HIS-HIS TOWERS OF STUPHS), nor am I going to New Orleans for the Congo Square conference, plus the two days of him mastering Kiss You Down South.  I will go to NYC for the premiere of the John Guare play, A Free Man of Color, though.

I can get more accomplished on the book, and not do so much house stuff.  I'm about to commit to writing this long study of slavery, the Civil War and the confederacy as portrayed in popular culture starting with the Wister novel, The Virginian, in  popular fiction / historical fiction / film.  I'm ready to do this now.  Whether it will get included in any great length in The American Slave Coast or not, is beside the point, since I'm ready to do it.  As el V says, I can always use it for a paper-presentation at a conference.

This NYC Visit Is Much More Pleasant Than the Previous

Probably because it's a shorter stay (so I didn't have to carry so much back-and-forth -- though this time we did also have V's two (2!) laptops, the guitar and the guitar stool) el V's performance at Lincoln Center.  Also because we made money.  A lot because el V finally has his glasses replaced!  Most of all because it's non-stop friends.

Tonight it's Chucho Valdéz at Jazz at Lincoln Center.  In fact, this visit has been pretty much non-stop Lincoln Center.

We'll head back to C'town tomorrow night.

Loudoun schools remove textbook that claims black soldiers fought for South

Breaking news.

Presumably, she says cautiously, this is just the first of many Virginia school districts to do so.
Evidently the embarrassment of national front page and cable talk shows was too much even for those true born sons of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

However, as the story points out, many districts say they are unaware there's been 'controversy.'  This is also stated:

A state official said yesterday that the book was approved by the Department of Education without the input of a single historian or content specialist.

Virginia 4th Grade History Textbook Criticized

We read a 1957 Virginia history textbook last night, mandatory for all the Virginia grade schools. Guess what? West Virginia is an unfit subject for 4th grades -- nary a mention of it in its history of the Civil War. Nor a mention of the 200,000 + African Americans who fought in various capacities for the Union -- however, almost all slaves happily stayed on the plantation, or fought the Union. How about that? Also, the history of the United States? It's only Virginia history. We also have the 7th and 11th grade texts that are part of that series for Virginia public education, that we got on Inter Library Loan from the U of VA. They are equal to the 4th grade text.


So if you wonder how we get the o'donnells here you go. War on history taught with facts and real information, which has been going on by the right since at least 1950 -- when all those uppity black men came back from fighting in WWII and Korea. If you couldn't get rid of public education all together, then teach lies. They've taught the lies so well that even the people telling the lies don't know they are lies.

Here's the WaPo story on the contemporary version of this kind of so-called history taughtg in the public schools.
 
This is the conclusion of the article, about the person who wrote this so-called history book, who, by her own admission, is no historian:
 

The book also survived the Education Department's vetting and was ruled "accurate and unbiased" by a committee of content specialists and teachers. Five Ponds Press has published 14 books that are used in the Virginia public school system, all of them written by Masoff.
 
Masoff also wrote "Oh Yuck! The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty" and "Oh Yikes! History's Grossest Moments."