Walking the Berkshires

In Which I Lose My Head Over Hallowe'en

I never do pumpkins by halves.

Civil War Memorial in Stanford, NY

If you have occasion to travel through the Town of Stanford, NY on County Route 82, as I did yesterday, you might notice that in company with many northern towns and villages, it has its own Civil War memorial.  The monument does not dominate the Town square, nor preside over the community from atop a noble granite column. In fact, is is unique for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that despite the verdigris of its oxidized bronze, the memorial is not of great antiquity but a far more recent creation.  It certainly was not there when I grew up within the township.

In 1996, in fact, the Stanford Historical Society erected a statue commissioned from local artist Peter Wing to commemorate all of the Town's Civil War soldiers. The sculpture is quite unusual in that it depicts an actual person rather than a homogeneous representative soldier as was the practice with such monuments erected in the decades after the war.  The bronze statue depicts one native son in particular: Maj. Cornelius Nase Campell, one-time Town Moderator of Stanford and then 1st Surgeon in the 150th N.Y.S. Volunteer Infantry ("The Dutchess County Regiment").

This three year's regiment saw service in both theaters of the war, fighting with the 12th Corps at Gettysburg and then with the Army of the Cumberland in the redesignated 20th corps.  The sculpture of Maj. Campell wears the distinctive 5 pointed star of the 20th corps as a cap badge.  The 150th fought in the Atlanta campaign and marched as part of Sherman's Army through Georgia and the Carolina's, participating in the Grand Review in Washington before heading home in June of 1865, having lost 132 to deaths during its three years in service.

Peter Wing - himself a Viet Nam veteran - was able to consult this wartime image of Maj. Campell from the collection of the U.S. Army Military History Institute when sculpting his likeness.  His name is often recorded as "Campbell", with the notable exception of the dedication plaque on the Standford monument.

Maj. Campell is an intriguing choice for the subject of a late 20th century Civil War Memorial.  I would be very curious to know what was the impetus for the modern day residents of the Town of Stanford, only a small proportion of whom are likely to be descended from those veterans they chose to commemorate, to commission and erect this monument generally to those who served and specifically to Maj. Campell.  It may have been a happy chance that there was local talent available to create the bronze statue, for most 20th century memorials tend to emphasize names on plaques rather than images of soldiers.  In that sense, this memorial is a deliberate look back at an earlier aesthetic, yet it reflects the sensibilities of our era by depicting an actual person to stand for the whole.

In fact, most modern Civil War memorials are commissioned not for hometowns but for battlefields - those that will still accept them.  The motivations for erecting them may be genealogical, as with two monuments I observed at Perryville Kentucky paid for by the descendant of a particular confederate NCO who died on the field, or cultural, such as the relatively recent monument to the Irish Brigade at the Bloody Lane in Antietam.  When such monuments appear in our time, when no one's living memory encompasses the individuals and events they commemorate, it is worth considering what motivated these remembrances even as we acknowledge those they seek to honor.  

The Stanford memorial was dedicated even before the sculpture was created.  Freedom Square Park lies below the public school on the other side of a rail fence near Rte 82, and this memorial is its principal monument.  The quotation on the plaque at the base of the pedestal is from another native son of Stanford - Talmadge Wood, who died of wounds received at Gettysburg.  Clearly the Historical Society had access to material like this that enabled the Town to personalize its memorial and make direct links between our time and second hand memory of the past.

I grew up in an isolated corner of the Town of Stanford, although I was in both a different school district and a different postal district than the rest of the Township.  I remember celebrating the Bicentennial in Stanford, though, right where the monument now stands and still have the souvenir wooden nickel from the festivities.  I wish I had still been around in the mid 1990s when this statue was commissioned and the memorial was dedicated.  Now that my curiosity has been peaked, I will have to pay a visit to the Historical Society and see what else i can learn about this role of Civil War Memory in my old hometown.

Walkway Over the Hudson (and Back!)

Poughkeepsie was the place to be this Columbus Day Weekend, as the newest jewel in the NY State park system - the much anticipated Walkway Over the Hudson - is now open to the public. I am quite certain that the residential streets leading up to the old railroad bridge that spans the river never experienced such traffic on a Sunday, and if it keep sup they will need additional parking to accommodate all the eager pedestrians. before.

I drove over from Connecticut with the kids as an afternoon outing, along with thousands of others in the region who had the same idea on a crisp, cloud studded Autumn afternoon.  It was well worth it.

This bridge was the first of any kind to span the Hudson River south of Albany.  Erected in the late 1880's, it was at that time the longest bridge in the world.  The Central New England Railway crossed the span to access the Pennsylvania coal fields.  It was still in  use, though much reduced, when in 1974 a fire started on the Poughkeepsie side that ruined the tracks but left the structure intact.  The bridge was abandoned - too expensive to take down - and there it stood, a curiosity to motorists crossing over on the nearby Mid Hudson Bridge.

The vision of a pedestrian walking bridge utilizing the piers and trusses of the Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge had early proponents, and in 1992 a nonprofit organization was launched by dedicated but underfunded volunteers to try and move the idea forward.  More recently, substantial support from private foundations, businesses and government grants made the Walkway Over the Hudson a reality and a fitting capstone to the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's voyage up his namesake river.

"The Exersize of our Whole Stock of Philosophy and Religion": The Knox's and the Deaths of their Children

Henry Knox wrote a letter in 1797 to President Washington, in which he makes reference to the kind of personal tragedy which was then part of 18th century life - even for those of his wealth and potion - but which seems almost inconceivable today.

"The loss of two lovely children, on which you condoled in that letter [of last summer], has been recently revived and increased by the death of our son, of seven years of age, bearing your name. His health has always been delicate, having been born prematurely. We flattered ourselves that his constitution would mend with his years, but we have been disappointed. Unfortunate, indeed, have we been in the death of eight of our children, requiring the exercise of our whole stock of philosophy and religion. We find ourselves afflicted by an irresistible, but invisible power, to whom we must submit. But the conflict is almost too great for the inconsolable mother, who will go mourning to her grave".

Henry and Lucy (Flucker) Knox were married in 1774 against the wishes of her loyalist father, at that time the Royal Secretary of the Province of Massachusetts Bay.   Lucy Knox was traveling with Knox toward New York in 1776 when she had to be left behind in Fairfield, Connecticut to deliver their first born. She was with him at Valley Forge and for most of the remainder of the war, and her pregnancies came in quick succession, eventually giving birth thirteen times.  Only three of their children survived to adulthood.

By the time the war ended, both she and her husband had become very fat - he tipping the scales at 290 pounds, she at 250.  They eventually retired to her family estates in Maine, which she alone could inherit since they had been Tories.  Whenever our family makes the turn out of Thomaston toward Port Clyde en route to Monhegan Island, we pass their grandiose "Montpelier" which is now a museum.   Writing about "Lady Knox" in American Heritage, Diana Forbes-Robinson notes:

"Here William Bingham Knox, aged eleven, and Augusta, aged nine, died on the same day, probably of diphtheria, and within a year, Julia Wasdworth, an enchanting girl of fifteen, died of rapid consumption. Lucy’s final pregnancy brought her a stillborn child. A bedroom in Montpelier became known as the “dead room,” where each victim in turn was laid out. In the end only three children were spared her of the thirteen she bore—the eldest, Lucy; Henry Jackson, who caused endless heartache by his instability; and the youngest girl, Caroline."

Having endured the stillbirth of our first child, I cannot conceive of the grief attendant to the loss of ten, especially living children cut short before adulthood.  Mrs. Knox is described as "high-strung, demanding and stubborn", but who can say whether these character traits ossified around the hard lump of such losses?  And after the deaths of so many of his children, even as Henry Knox puts on a brave face for his old commander, he allows that the inscrutable ways of God had become a faith straining affliction. 

In this age of modern miracles, we expect our children to grow and prosper.  We set aside the "what if" chapters of the guides for expectant parents little thinking that a time will come when we will have recourse to their sober contents.  Once that happens, though, we discover a larger fellowship of grief than we suspected still exists in our society.  The scale of the tragedy is different in an age of smaller families, but no less painful and perhaps even more unexpected than in the Knox's day.  It still requires "our whole stock of philosophy and religion" to come to terms with our grief.

Nature Notes: Stacking Wood

Apparently the biweekly "Nature Notes" column that I write for the Lakeville Journal is only available in the print edition today.  [More: now readable here with free registration] The LJ switched last week to standard rather than large sized newsprint, slicing two inches off the margin, but that did not affect my article, which those of you who are able to pick up a copy will find in its regular place at the bottom of Page 1.   As a service to those who subscribe to the Journal on-line in order to read what usually follows after my "fair use excerpt" of Nature Notes at this blog, here is the piece that ran today in its entirety.

Stacking Wood
by Tim Abbott

Stacking cordwood is the sort of task that for me becomes almost a meditation. It has just the right mix of physical exertion and mental focus, translating irregular armloads into satisfying walls, neat and square.  Like putting food by for the winter, it provides a sense of security and accomplishment, even if the wood  was delivered to the house rather than personally felled and split.  However inefficient my fireplace or how much it increases my carbon footprint, burning wood is not a habit I would gladly relinquish.  It is too deeply ingrained in childhood memory and sense of place.

My father loved splitting wood, and as children my sister and I thrilled to accompany him on expeditions into the woods, perched in the trailer behind the antique tractor.  The chainsaw was too much for our tender ears, so we stayed at a safe distance, making fairy houses in the duff, while he selected the right trees to fell, limb and buck.  The we would ride back to the house, where Dad would unload the trailer and spend the afternoon splitting logs.  We watched him swing his maul and listened for the tell-tale ping when the wedge bit through.   Then we would help him move the pile to where he would carefully stack it in cords, fitting each piece of the puzzle with a careful eye.  Whole weekends might pass this way, and we never tired of it.  My own children have the same attraction to my woodpile and take pride and delight in helping to stack it in the cellar. 

Today the woods of Northwest Connecticut are managed less and less frequently for forest products.  If it were not for a renewed interest in heating with firewood, there would hardly be a market left for our hardwood.  Certainly the real estate value of our woodlands is far greater than the value of timber.  Across southern New England, the number of forest landowners is rising while the overall forest cover declines: the result of subdivision and development.  As working lands become less significant to our rural economy, a whole rural knowledge base recedes as well.  While not only foresters and farmers have keen eyes for the patterns and processes of the natural world and keep the old skills alive, they and the lands that they manage are at the core of our rural character.

I watch the living trees as I stack my firewood.  I note the ravages of a wet summer in the blotched and browning leaves.  I see the moss-grown bark of maples and the naked limbs emerging from their summer drapery. There are fewer insects now as the first frost approaches, and the smell of woodsmoke instead of cut grass drifts on the air.  I fit each wedge of wood in the growing stack, shifting to a different face here, placing a horizontal course there, to keep it level as it rises.  Even the odd bits find their place, and all will serve, until nothing remains but bark on the floor and white ash in the hearth as Winter turns once more to Spring.

"We are Avenging the Cause of Virgin Innocence" (Knyphausen's Raid Part VIII)

Photo credit: Portrait of Hannah Caldwell from the museum of the 1st Presbyterian Church, Elizabeth, NJ.

"Let us remember...in order to add vigour to our genius, and force to our descending swords, that we are avenging the cause of virgin innocence" said a student at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton).  The death of Mrs. Caldwell, wife of Rev. James Caldwell, reportedly at the hands of the Royalist army during Knyphausen's Raid, sparked outrage throughout Revolutionary America.  As discussed in the previous post, the circumstances of her death may never be precisely known, but the accusation that it was a deliberate murder did more to harm the British cause than even the muskets of the patriot forces.

In the weeks and months that followed her killing, a barrage of outrage and charges of the most unforgivable behavior were leveled against the Royalists in connection with the death of Hannah Caldwell. Her grieving widower, no stranger to the power of the pulpit, wrote a letter for publication in which he dismissed British claims that her killing was no assassination, calling it "a violation of tender feeling, without provocation, deliberately committed in open day, nor was it ever frowned on by the commander."  

It was the custom in those times to publish letters anonymously or with a pseudonym, but there was one loyalist who wrote an account of Mrs. Caldwell's death for newspaper publication under his own name.  Ebenezer Foster was a former Justice of the peace from Woodbridge, New Jersey and among the Tory 'refugees" who crossed over from Staten Island in the wake of Knyphausen's invasion force.  Approaching the parsonage in Connecticut Farms, he writes:

"I soon saw a group of soldiers in and about said House, and on my nearer approach, heard some of them mention, (rather piteously), a woman's being shot in the house, as soon as the crowd dispersed, I entered the house and not without difficulty , found her laying on her back on a bed that stood in a small, dark, back bedroom, (for I don't recollect that it had any window) tho' it had two doors that opened into other apartments.  She was to appearance death, and had a cloth carelessly thrown over her face, which I did not remove but left her, expecting the troops would soon march, when her friends might take care of her..

...[I] did not return in less than three hours, when some person who was near Mr. Caldwell's house, told me the woman was stripped, and thrown off the bed, but that a British officer's coming in, had prevented the soldiers from carrying off her cloaths: On entering the house I found her laying on her face on the floor beside the bed, and most of what cloaths had been pulled off by her side.  I concluded that she had been taken off the bed that the bedding might be taken from under her..."

Foster's account is intriguing as much for what he confirms in the patriot claims about her death as what he contradicts. Regardless of how she died, there is no doubt that her corpse was mistreated and her personal effects plundered along with the house.  Foster is scrupulous not to identify any specific unit with this shabby looting, implying that it happened sometime between when the British advanced beyond Connecticut Farms and when they returned.  He claimed that he and another loyalist made a close inspection to determine the cause of Mrs. Caldwell's death:

"We found that on account of a pantry that was building on the back side of the house, a small spot of covering had been pulled off opposite to the bed whereon the Lady sat, the only ball we could discover that had touched the house was the one that killed her: It appeared to have come from a northern direction (in the course of the Rebel fire) and passed between the joints of the plastered wall, it seemed to have passed so far above the bed as to have hit her above the girdle and its passing through her left breast, I account for by supposing her to have been in a stooping posture..."

There is no mention of broken glass such as reportedly cut the face of young Abigail Lennington as she watched the soldier shoot through the window: no confirmation that there was even a window at all.  Mr. Foster's reputation as "a Gentleman of great integrity" as well as a very loyal subject was cited in the newspaper account to give weight to his evidence, but whether or not it is factual reporting on his part the court of public opinion was already convinced that the killing had been deliberate.  Furthermore, the outrages perpetrated in the burning of the village and looting of its houses were there for all to see, right down to the roads strewn with he stuffing of feather beds.

And what of the claim that the shot came from the American lines to the north?  That is an odd direction.  Maxwell's men were initially arrayed along a ravine running roughly southwest to northeast and facing a royalist advance from the southeast.  The patriots then withdrew to the northwest  along a road toward Springfield as their left flank was turned by another royalist column that advanced from the east or northeast of their position.  Shots "from the north" could therefore have come from either side.

Samuel Steele Smith's out of print Winter at Morristown 1779-1780: The Darkest Hour (1979) includes several surprises for students of Knyphausen's Raid in the form of material not generally encountered elsewhere.  Sometimes, as with the complete order of battle that appears in the Appendices, the information is indispensable.  At least once, Smith confuses the actions of one unit with another (but we will address that matter in due course).  Smith dispenses with the killing of Mrs Caldwell in a single line as he describes the melee at Connecticut Farms, but later returns to it when addressing how news of her death spread throughout the countryside.  He then includes this startling paragraph:

"Some years later, there was an admission.  A New Jersey militiaman, Private Frazee Craig, of Captain Amos Morse's Company, of Colonel Jaques Essex County Regiments, testified that he was 'at the Farms [Connecticut Farms] when Mrs. Caldwell was shot by one of Capt. [John] Craig's men', also of Col. Jaques regiment. The shooting by an American, if indeed, he did it, surely was accidental."

Smith's source is supposedly testimony given by Craig while applying for a veteran's pension in the early 1830s before Judge Lewis Condit. I have read a subsequent publication of the Condit testimony that includes an account from Craig, but while discussing Connecticut Farms it makes no mention of Mrs. Caldwell.  Assuming he did make such a statement, what are we to make of it?  It was certainly not a welcome revision to the conventional narrative.  When Elizabeth native Capt. William C. deHart, an aide to Winfield Scott who returned from Mexico sick and dying, attempted to make an impartial investigation into the evidence surrounding Mrs. Caldwell's death, he was pilloried for his efforts by his fellow townsmen.

In the end, whatever the cause of her homicide, Mrs. Caldwell's death became a symbol of what was at stake in America's fight for independence.  A year later, her husband was shot by a sentry, and their nine children - "baptised in blood" - were fostered out, including their eldest son whose education in France was sponsored by Lafayette. 

Rev Caldwell's statue, at right, may be seen on Walnut St. in Philadelphia.

Who Killed Mrs. Caldwell? (Knyphausen's Raid Part VII)

This is the latest installment in a series of posts I began more than a year ago on Knyphausen's Raid into New Jersey in 1780. 

The American Revolution was fought as often with the pen as with the sword.  Sometimes what was written was quite literally worth battalions to the Patriot cause.  Thomas Paine's American Crisis stiffened revolutionary resolve in the face of a series of military reverses in 1776.  The murder of Jenny McCrea by two of Burgoyne's native allies the following year brought out the militia in unprecedented numbers to confront the British at Saratoga.  It did not matter that the unfortunate Miss McRea was the fiancee of a loyalist officer;  what was done to her could have been done to any American woman and that was good enough for the patriot press and its readership.

Another incident occurred in 1780 that became as notorious in patriot memory as the death of McCrea.  This tragedy, occurring on June 7th at Connecticut Farms (now Union), New Jersey during Knyphausen's Raid, was kept alive for many months afterward in the press as a symbol of royalist barbarity, Once again, an American woman was killed, but this time she was not only a staunch patriot but also the minister's wife.  Her name was Hannah (Ogden) Caldwell - a very distant relative of mine - and responsibility for her death was laid squarely on the British.  It is not altogether clear that this was the case, but there was little doubt in the minds of the revolutionaries at the time - or indeed of their descendants and subsequent chroniclers - that she was deliberately and foully murdered by the royalist invaders.

The seal of Union County, New Jersey depicts the traditional version of her death at the hands of a red-coated soldier.   It is notoriously difficult to separate fact from fiction in the fog of war, and especially complicated with this conflict, when what was recorded - and by whom - may be just as significant as the gaps in the historic record (and there are many).

Hannah (Ogden) Caldwell was third cousin to my ancestor Aaron Ogden and his brother Matthias, both of whom fought at Connecticut Farms on the day she was killed.  She was the wife of James Caldwell, the Presbyterian minister in Elizabeth Town. Reverend Caldwell was chaplain in my ancestor Elias Dayton's Third New Jersey Continental Regiment in its 1st establishment,  and subsequently served as a Deputy Quartermaster General. 

We tend to overlook that the Revolution was in many ways a religious war as well as a civil one. The evangelical "Great Awakening" of the previous generation challenged traditional church hierarchies and helped establish the underpinning of many of the democratic principles of the Revolution.  The Congregationalists of New England, the Presbyterians of the Middle Colonies and the Methodists and Baptists of the Tidewater and back county were particularly affected by this revival and many of their congregations strongly supported the patriot cause.  George III, on the other hand, was the "Defender of the Faith" for the Episcopal church, while the Dutch Reformed church split into factions in reaction to the Great Awakening that foreshadowed where the loyalties of their parishioners would lie in the Revolution.

The foremost patriots in Elizabeth Town, and hence in New Jersey, were members of Reverend Caldwell's Congregation.  His parish house was burned by Tory raiders.  In January, 1780, the church was burned as well by a raiding party from loyalist Staten Island guided by fellow townsman Cornelius Hatfield, whose own father was a noted parishoner.Caldwell subsequently moved his family to Connecticut Farms, a settlement 4 miles outside the town center, and continued his ministry while also helping to acquire supplies for Washington's encampment in the Highlands at Morristown. There are accounts that he preached with loaded pistols before him, and with good reason.  One of the loyalists who burned the church in Elizabeth Town later expressed his regret that "the black-coated rebel, Caldwell, was not then in his pulpit."

As a prominent patriot, Reverend Caldwell was certainly a ripe target for kidnapping, if not worse, by loyalist 'refugees".  But even he considered his family safe from deliberate attack.  As it turned out, they were in great peril at Connecticut Farms, but whether from a stray bullet or intentional murder is an open question.

On the morning of Knyphausen's initial advance on Connecticut Farms, Hannah Caldwell was at home with several of her youngest children, an unrelated girl named Abigail Lennington who may have been a housemaid, and a nurse named Constance Benward.  Her other children had been bundled off in a commissary wagon and her husband had encouraged her to follow, but she insisted that she would stay to protect their property.  It was her misfortune that the battle developed near her home and the patriot defenders held off the royalists for several hours before they were pushed back through the little village.  She had lowered some of her valuables down the well and filled her pockets with other precious items, then sat on her bed near the window to wait out the battle, saying "Don't worry, baby will be our protection.  They will respect a mother."

At some time during the ebb and flow of the battle that day, someone shot Mrs. Caldwell.   Abigail Lennington and one of the servants subsequently gave testimony before a magistrate as to what occurred.  Numerous histories have referenced that testimony, although I have not yet had the opportunity to go to the source.  According to these accounts, Lennington was near the window when she saw a soldier come toward the house, raise his rifle, and fire through the window.  Two balls struck Mrs. Caldwell in the breast, killing her instantly, while broken glass cut Abigail's face.  Sometimes in these histories the soldier is described as "a shot squatty soldier in a red coat."  

Reportedly the British entered the house and rifled the clothes of the dead woman to get at her valuables.  The body was removed while the house was plundered and then most of the buildings in Connecticut Farms were burned (the parsonage among them, despite this account to the contrary).  It is difficult to know precisely what happened from contemporary writing filled with hyperbole.  There was such outrage, in fact, that the royalists in New York felt obliged to file their own accounts in rebuttal.  Rivington's Royal Gazette ran one such refutation by an anonymous British officer:

"Whilst the troops were advancing to Connecticut Farms, the rebels fired out of the houses, agreeable to their usual practice, from which circumstance, Mrs. Caldwell had the misfortune to be shot my a random ball.  What heightened the singularity of this unhappy Lady's fate, is, that upon Enquiry it appears, beyond a Doubt, that the shot was fired by the rebels themselves, as it entered the side of the House from their direction, and lodged in the Wall nearest the Troops then advancing."

This source is hardly less biased than the patriot press, and one wonders whether there was time enough between the killing and the burning of the Town upon the British withdrawal to go inspecting the wall for errant musketballs that may or may not have passed through the breast of Mrs. Caldwell.  Some accounts claim her body was left half exposed in the streets for several hours, while others claim a British officer covered it with his cloak and had it removed to another house.

The argument over what happened to Mrs Caldwell raged long after the smoke had cleared from the burning village. More than anything else, her death inflamed the revolutionary arbor of the defenders of New Jersey, who readily believed her killing was intentional.

Ebenezer Foster, a loyalist and former colonial Justice of the Peace, wrote his own account of the Caldwell murder for publication. We will discuss its merits in a subsequent post.

American Dreamer

I had my first dream about President Obama last night.  At some point during every presidency of my adult life, I have dreamed about having some casual, one-on-one time with the current president.  In each case, whether I agreed with his politics or not, it made the man more human and accessible.  I am told that such dreams can be interpreted as anxiety dreams, where my unconscious mind tries to influence powers beyond my control. 

I can see that.  Obama was certainly non-threatening in last night's dream.  I said as much to him as we sat together, telling him I thought he was being very approachable and that I felt we could talk about normal stuff, like the Red Sox.  I then mentally kicked myself because he is a White Sox fan, but he just nodded and indicated that we were both wearing the same Fenway colors.  (I also noted that the curl of chest hair at his neckline had gone gray but am not going to try and interpret what that means).  In any case, I do not at any time recall him speaking to me, just that it felt comfortable in his presence.

I usually keep my personal politics apart from what I write in this blog.  Perhaps Obama was on my mind because of the consternation in some vocal quarters regarding his upcoming speech to America's schoolchildren.  The message to work hard and stay in school is hardly partisan, but apparently having it come from the President is perceived that way by many who oppose his politics.  The AP reports:

"As far as I am concerned, this is not civics education — it gives the appearance of creating a cult of personality," said Oklahoma Republican state Sen. Steve Russell. "This is something you'd expect to see in North Korea or in Saddam Hussein's Iraq."

I'm calling bullshit.  It gives the appearance of respecting the office of President and of encouraging students to dedicate themselves to learning and to being good citizens (things that partisan politics on either side lost track of long ago).

Public school is one of the bastions of our democracy.  Every single day, my children salute the flag and pledge allegiance, which is an indoctrination in civics and patriotism that few of those crying foul about the President's address find objectionable. I am not concerned in the slightest that my children may have the opportunity to listen to the President speaking directly to them about personal responsibility and developing their full potential.  I would not object to that message from any President.  I have the opportunity and responsibility as a parent to discuss what they heard and thought when they come home.

President George W. Bush asked America's children to donate a dollar to help the children of Afghanistan as we went to war in October of 2001: a far more overtly political message to our youth.  His father gave an address to America's schoolchildren that this transcript shows is exactly in line with what Obama intends to do next Tuesday.   A presidential address of this sort is not unprecedented, nor out of line with the respect usually accorded to Chief Executives of our nation since generations of American schoolchildren were taught to venerate Washington.  One can only conclude that it is an objection to this President, and what he represents, that is behind the calls to keep children out of school in districts that have elected to show the speech, and the decision by others not to show it at all.

I want my children to appreciate that there are many sides to the issues they will face in life, and particularly that there is more to history than what they are taught in school.  I want them to be critical and informed consumers of information.  The teachable moment in this case is sadly not about the President's message, but the reaction to it from those unwilling to trust their children to listen to it thoughtfully and discuss with them afterward what they heard.  Respect for the office even when you oppose the politics of the officeholder is a traditional value that has been abandoned in American politics.  There is nothing liberal or conservative about that dereliction.

The real risk here is that by speaking directly to schoolchildren, President Obama becomes more accessible to them, and with that familiarity perhaps more acceptable as well.  Then he may appear in their dreams, and we know what that leads to...

The Truth (and Tooth) Will Out

Traditional values in many American families include devotion to a benevolent and mystical Trinity.  I mean of course, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.  We encourage our children to have faith in unfair trade practices, endorsing the exchange of a plate of stale cookies, inexpertly dyed eggs or a bit of bloody enamel for disproportionate material gains. Those heretics that dare to question how that Jolly Old Elf manages to cover the entire world - chimneys or not - in a single night from his secret base in the warming Arctic are willing to suspend their disbelief in the face of mountains of loot.

With all false gods, though, there comes that time in every child's life of First Disillusionment, when the scales fall from their eyes, adults are fallible, and they must learn the vital life lesson that you can't trust everything you hear from those in authority.  My own parents decided when I was of tender years that they would no longer be complicit in the cult of the Dread One in the Red Suit who knows if you've been bad or good, but like all good fundamentalists I insisted that they were wrong and Santa Claus was as real as the rising sun. 

If you are going to deny all the evidence of modern science and put your faith in magical beings, then beware the Tooth Fairy, for she is fickle and prone to nodding off before you do and neglecting to stash a windfall of cash beneath your pillow.  Santa and Peter Cottontail pile on the sugar plums and gum drops when we have not yet reached the age of reason, but the Tooth Fairy waits until we are six, already well acculturated by our peers in school, and master of such exceptional achievements as the rudiments of reading, counting by tens, and riding without training wheels.  We may have seen elder siblings triumphantly gap toothed and clutching the ever inflationary rewards of their biological achievement, and so we block out any nagging doubts about who it might be who actually stuffs the stockings while we wait for our seat at the tooth exchange. 

Elias is six, and has a loose tooth.  Already I sense him wavering about St. Nick, although like the second child he is, he wants to be sure before he proclaims his disbelief.  It has never bothered him that the Easter Bunny hides the very eggs he made, but that house of cards is also ready to topple, because this is the year - just as he starts to cash in on his toothless status - when the Tooth Fairy will slip up and reveal all.

It happened that way for his sister Emily three years ago when she was in first grade.  It may have been her third or fourth tooth - the first had fallen out in the car and only a tear stained letter to the tooth fairy had accomplished the traditional exchange.  In our house the task of tooth fairy falls to the night owl, rather than she who retires with her books and is out like a light by 10:00.  There was great wailing and lamentation the next morning, when the bloody tooth was still beneath the pillow and NOTHING ELSE.  My daughter was inconsolable thanks to that inconstant pixie, so I was forced to peel back a layer of the onion and declare;

"I'm the Tooth Fairy"

And so, it quickly followed, I am also the Easter Bunny, and Santa Claus.  Emily was quick to catch on that far from crashing disillusion, this in no way meant a halt to the seasonal swag.  It also was her initiation into the Grand Secret, for her brother still believed.  And believes to this day, but he has no younger sibling to smile at knowingly when he learns the Truth.  He may only have a passing acquaintance with the tooth fairy before he sees through those gossamer wings.  I suspect he will take it in stride, for there is still the same effect even if he needs a new hypothesis for the cause.  It will probably affect his parents more, our dissembling exposed, the secret out, and another milestone of childhood passing before our middle aged eyes. 

The tooth fairy will remember to set her alarm clock this time.

Shifting Seasons

This last day of August feels like someone pulled the switch and sent us abruptly into Autumn.  The sky is overcast and the air is almost too cool for short sleeves.  It is easy to believe that we could get our first frost by Labor Day, while in other years  I can often stretch another several weeks out of the garden. The nodding sunflowers and straggling tomato vines have the look of the end of the growing season to them, though maybe the cooler weather will drive back the clouds of mosquitoes so that I can confirm what is left of the harvest.  Thanks to the incredibly wet and buggy weather this summer, the lawn has certainly gone to seed and I'd like to get at least one more cutting done before the leaves start to fall.

The bright yellow bus that took my 1st and 4th graders to their first day back at school this morning looked as freshly scrubbed as they were today in their new clothes.  The trees are still that deep shade of summer green, but late season asters and goldenrods grow in profusion in the woodlands and along roadsides.  A restless humming bird visited the cardinal flowers and white turtleheads in my wildflower garden over the weekend.  

There are signs on every side that the seasons have cycled another quarter turn, and perhaps I feel them more acutely for having been driven inside for most of the summer by cool wet weather and profusions of insects.  We never did use the patio table, or watch the fireflies after dinner from our chairs in the the backyard.  I am looking forward, then, to the onset of crisp Autumn days with crackling leaves underfoot and nary a cloud or a biting pest to be seen.  Just as well that summer left before school began.