Walking the Berkshires

The Annual Armistace Day Post

There is but one verified veteran of WWI left alive out of the millions who served in the Great War.  She is Florence Green, 110 years old, who in 1918 was an officer's mess steward in the Women's Royal Air Corps.  She was recently "rediscovered" as a veteran of the Great War in January, 2010. She is also one of an estimated 300-400 supercentenarians worldwide who are >110 years old.  81 of these have been verified.

Extreme longevity is a rare curiosity.  From what I can tell, those who achieve it and are able to articulate their thoughts on the subject tend to be quite astonished that they alone of their generation have survived.  The last combat veterans of the War to End all Wars also routinely expressed their frustration that war is still a core human activity.  In twenty years when the soldiers of "The Greatest Generation" are winnowed down to the last individuals, I wonder if it will be the same for them.

It is not only the experience of past wars that recedes when there are none that live who remember it.  How we remember and understand those times becomes a matter of historiography and storytelling.  Our memorials have more to say as artifacts of the society that created them than the events and individuals they commemorate.  Whether carved in stone as Je me souviens or repeated by millions at Passover seders, the injunction "never forget" reinforces values and attitudes in the present time .  It may or may not reflect the experience,and motivations of those we remember who were social actors in earlier times. 

Memories are revisited and revised over a lifetime of reflection. What an eyewitness feels in the moment, the emotions it generates, and how that person responds to these stimuli is highly significant both to social historians as well as to psychologists trying to interpret individual and collective behaviors.  I understand the emotion "fear" but not in the way that those in combat may experience it.  Those who fight in modern wars with modern sensibilities may respond quite differently from those combatants with the world views of other times and societies.  If there is no one left to tell us how it felt at the time, we are left trying to interpret whatever remains in the surviving historical record of what they chose to record. 

As a genealogist, I often confront the regret that comes from no longer being able to ask a living relative about details from the past that I must now try to glean from other sources.  As a society, there is now only one tangible living link to the Great War, and it is too great an expectation to place on her to be Virgil to our Dante. Our responsibility to the past is both to remember and to revisit those memories, to test our assumptions and gain a deeper understanding about ourselves as well as those who have gone before.  Ultimately, for good or ill, the past is what we make of it.  So too our destinies.

 

Vikings in Worcester

There was an excellent Viking arms and combat demonstration at the Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester, MA today.  I went to meet a Facebook friend of a dear friend of mine, who was one of the two fighters who showed us what ten years of ongoing research into the lost martial arts of the Viking Age have allowed them to interpret and reproduce.  Our friend Matthew Marino paired up with Dr. William R. Short, clad in a chain hauberk and wielding a two handed battle ax against his round shield and hand ax for the demonstration.

The Higgins Armory Museum itself is a treasure trove of arms and armor from the bronze age to the 19th century, and along with its extensive European artifacts it contains over 1,000 non western pieces from Africa, the Islamic World, India and Japan.  I was particularly struck by one suit of Turkish chain mail, in which each individual link had the Arabic name of the Shiite Imams in succession from the prophet's daughter Fatima.  There is also ceremonial armor in the collection, along with those used in tournaments and in battle.

The Viking combat style we observed was deconstructed move by move by the participants.  Both Bill and Matt are deeply engaged in depicting this period, and have learned not only to use the body defenses and weapons of the Norse warriors but also to reproduce much of their material culture, including chainmail and wool and leather clothing. Historical interpreters often have a strong DIY ethic, and that seems especially true of these Viking reenactors.  They also are taking their Viking combat skills to the level of other martial arts.

This Shoe Belongs to Whom? Resolving a Cold Case from 1784

This is so cool.  An outstanding collaboration bringing modern forensics, knowledge of 18th century British army material culture and regimental muster rolls.  Shared expertise across national boundaries may have positively identified the remains of a soldier who died in Canada just after the American Revolution in 1784.  The Annapolis County Spectator has the story (image at left from the 12 July, 2011 article by Heather Killen).

CWCID: Don N. Hagist posting on RevList.

History Carnival 100

The venerable History Carnival celebrates its 100th edition this month.  It all began as a fortnightly affair back in January, 2005, and carried on that way through the first 50 editions.  It then shifted to a monthly schedule in April, 2007 and so it continues to this day. 

This state of affairs makes it challenging to apply an appropriate commemorative modifier to History Carnival 100.  I suppose one might call it something along the lines of the "Demicentimensiversary Edition", but I'm no fan of the tendency in certain academic circles to invent needless, inelegant jargon instead of communicating in clear and lucid prose.  All this manages to accomplish is to problematize structural totalities under the rubric of hegemonic hermeneutics, n'est-ce pas?  Damn skippy.  History Carnival 100 it is.

Here at Walking the Berkshires, we serve up history the way we like our single malt: neat, with plenty of smoke and peat and a dry lingering tail.  Some light agitation helps to bring out all the subtle notes and complexity: less a kick in the jaw than warm oil on the tongue... 

Excuse me a moment...Mmmm....Ahhh.  Caol Ila, 12 Years Old.  Right, well, why not help yourself to the beverage of your choice, and we'll get on with the show!

Alternate History: The Good, the Bad, and the Downright Ignorant

 I am extremely fond of counterfactual history when it is done well.  So much of the actual history has to be right in order for the fabrication to hold together. There is also the possibility that 2nd order counterfactuals stemming from the first might well bring about the same historical outcome from a different direction. Sometimes, no matter where they begin, all roads must inexorably lead to Rome.

One of the first rules of counterfactual hypothesizing is to make as few changes as possible to the conditions leading up to the alternate reality.  We are talking about the lack of horseshoe nails, here, not the gun that won't exist until 2419 - cool as that is - as described by the National Museum of American History Blog. 

Speaking of events that may yet come to pass, the question of whether there should be a new monument to Virginia State troops at Antietam is the subject of a fascinating post at Kevin Levin's Civil War Memory.  Brian Schoeneman, a candidate for elected office in the Virginia House of Delegates, gamely weighs in at several points during an extensive comment thread - every bit as interesting as the post itself - in support of his campaign pledge to make this happen.

Elsewhere in the world of "what ifs", Blog or Die discusses how the outcome of Washington's surprise attack on Trenton may well have hinged on a game of chess, and The Jungle Trader muses that history may have been very different had Fidel Castro accepted that offer to pitch for the Giants in 1949.

An excellent example of alternate history done right is featured this month at Today in Alternate History, which speculates on what might have been, if only Austria's Archduke Franz Ferdinand had avoided assassination in 1914.  Would you believe resurgent Hapsburgs, giving rise by 1930 to a "Triple Monarchy of Austria-Hungary-Slavonia, Turkey, and a docile but resource-rich Romanov Russia under the frail hemophiliac Tsar Alexander IV"?

Certainly that is more believable than some of the self-deceptive mangling of American history perpetrated recently by some of the most prominent faces of the Tea Party movement.  I felt compelled to offer these candidates for the highest office in the land a helpful multiple choice quiz on our Revolutionary history, but J. L. Bell of Boston 1775 corrects the record on Sarah Palin's mistatements about the Midnight Rider with far more class and less snark than I could muster.  Quoth he;

"So did Palin share a correct and uncommonly knowledgeable interpretation of Revere’s ride? Or was she correct only in the way that a stopped clock is correct if you look at it in exactly the right way and ignore it a second later?  That argument might have raged forever, but then someone came along and made it impossible to maintain that Palin enjoys a detailed, accurate understanding of the start of the Revolutionary War. That person was Sarah Palin."

Millard Fillmore's Bathtub runs down something Lincoln never said but that keeps getting attributed to him.   Given the name of this blog, the author must have enjoyed including the following from historian Arthur Schlesinger; 

"...in his Houston speech to the Republican National Convention, Ronald Reagan fell for one of the great hoaxes of American history, surpassed in taking people in only by H.L. Mencken`s enchanting fable about Millard Fillmore’s installing the first bathtub in the White House,” Schlesinger wrote. “The author of the less than immortal words Lincoln never said was an ex-clergyman from Erie, Pa., named William J.H. Boetcker.”

Airminded examines British media claims during WWII that RAF precision bombing in reprisal for the Blitz was morally and technically superior to indiscriminate Luftwaffe bombing, and finds them wanting:

"Nearly everything in these articles is, at best, wishful thinking. Bomber Command's aircrew may as well have shed their bombs as aimed them, for all the difference it made: as the Butt Report revealed the following year, only one in four aircraft dropping bombs over Germany did so within five miles of their target point. The intention was 'accurate bombing', but the effect was indiscriminate (when the bombs didn't fall on open countryside, that is, which most of them did)...as things were, it's just not possible that what the RAF was doing to Germany in late 1940 was more effective (in any sense) than what the Luftwaffe was doing to Britain."

Still, for my money, if your history is going to be bad, it might as well be entertaining. 

 

Happy Anniversary to Somebody Else

Christopher M. Cevasco, author of an eponymous blog as well as works of poetry and historical fiction in a counterfactual vein, wishes the actual Mstislav I of Kiev a happy 935th birthday, and pauses to observe the feast day of St. Æthelthryth, the virginal and tawdry.  Meanwhile, Ice News celebrated Icelandic Independence Day, not coincidently also the bicentennial of the birth of national hero Jon Sigurdsson.

Matters of Material Culture

Quilt historian Barbara Brackman's Material Culture blog finds evidence of an unknown pattern in an old photograph.  At the end of the day, a mystery remains concerning an odd stripe across the snowballs. 

Historiann's blog of history and sexual politics, 1492 to the present, dives into the material culture of the modern Slut Walk and its feminist anticedants and in particular the symbolic power of women's clothing.

"This is a history that gets overlooked or ignored because of recent debates in the West over garments-as-oppression for other women–you know, Afghani women in burkhas, or other Muslim women covered by the hijab or la voile.  As though Western women’s clothing has never been an issue in their citizenship or their feminism!"

And then we have certain minted pneumismatic artifacts of scholarly interest blogged about at Hypervocal.  Be forewarned that these may be considered NSFW in some quarters.  Are they ancient Roman brothel tokens, or possibly pornographic gaming pieces?  At right, a proposed design for a modern token, suitable for use by disgraced US Congressmen in exchange for sexting services, appropriately priced at "sex asses", if I remember my High School Latin. 

(I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that certain internet search terms taken out of context from the preceding paragraph are going to single handedly make History Carnival 100 the most heavily visited edition of all time.  Just imagine if I had included extended pasages from The Satyricon...)

Blinding Me With Science

It seems appropriate at this point to bring up the subject of censorship.  Take, for example, the history of the active suppression of various lines of scientific inquiry.  There have been a number of mutually sustaining blog discussions this month on this topic, including one at Christopher M Luna that opines;

"the tendency to label pre-nineteenth century thinkers as scientists created the “possibility of a false impression that science is somehow eternal, separate from the people who practiced it, just waiting to be revealed” and that such an impression could lead to “a problematic faith in progress, a misunderstanding of the scientific method (as though it is static or eternal), and, perhaps most popular these days, a mischaracterization of the interaction between people investigating the natural world and religion."

Thony Christie at The Renaissance Mathematicus tackles the question in the early 17th century from a different angle;

"The heliocentric hypothesis says that heliocentricity offers a possible model to explain the observed motion of the planets; it says nothing about the truth-value of this model. The heliocentric theory says that the universe is in reality heliocentric. In 1616 the Church banned the heliocentric theory but not the hypothesis. This might at first seem like splitting hairs but in reality it is a very important distinction."

James at a Blind Thermometer raises the specter of the dreaded F-Word and declares; "If you want to cause the maximum of annoyance to a scholarly historian of tech with the minimum of effort, show her a First."

In a similar vein, Jeannie at Tripbaseblog offers her picks for the 8 Most Inspiring American Speeches of All Time and presents their settings as potential history tourism destinations.  I confess I would not have thought to include Swami Vivekananda in this lineup, but I wouldn't mind a visit to Chicago (when the Cubbies are in town).

Thomas Dixon's The History of Emotion's blog delves into emotional animals in history and offers up a  1705 account of a weeping horse in Augsberg.  I'll see your horse and raise you a Beagle - Schultz's, not Darwin's.

Reading and Misreading

Sandusky Library/Follett House Museum posts at Sandusky History about The Prisoner's Farewell by Irl Hicks, a confederate POW, who upon release at war's end was selected to give a Valedictory Address to the Young Men's Christian Association of Johnson's Island Ohio.

Anchora discusses the relationship between the use of inverted commas in early modern texts as commonplace markers and Kindle's "popular highlights" feature.   Here's mine from hers;

"Once you become aware of the significance of inverted commas in early modern books, though, you will never read them the same way again -- it opens up an entirely new (if, perhaps, still familiar to us) way of reading in which texts are mined for pithy, quotable passages."

Mark Liberman at Language Log takes his shots at the media bias toward "sensationalism, conflict and laziness" and offers up this post entitled "A Reading Comprehension Test".   Are you smarter than the designers of this American History test for 12th graders, the educational expert who assessed its results, and the news outlets that covered those findings?

Rebekah Higgett writes at Whewell's Ghost on a subject near and dear to my heart: the challenge of "how to make historiographically-informed books into readable texts."  

"My recent engagement with the wonderful world of blogs and Twitter has certainly shown me both more interest in and more misused history of science than I had previously come across. (I do not feel, in some cases, that misuse is too strong a word. What the Tea Party do to 18th-century American history, supporters of ID do to Darwin and both sides in the arguments about what Christianity has and has not done for science tend to do to the whole history of Western science.) "

Once again, the comment thread is as thought provoking as the post itself.  

Frank Jacobs is Mapping Bloomsday in his Strange Maps blog at Big Think. 

"This map is not much help in  reconstructing that walk, but it does capture the elementary narrative structure of Ulysses. And it does so in that perennial favourite of schematic itineraries, Harry Beck’s London Underground map."

Ralph Luker kindly passed along this highly visual post by Lili Loufborrow writing at the Hairpin concerning women with books they're not reading in art.  Mind you, El Greco's Penitent Magdalen has one heck of a Golgotha paperweight blocking her view.  I suspect that Christiane Inman's 2009 Forbidden Fruit: A History of Women and Books in Art , described as "a history of women's literacy, and the social forces that often opposed it", may offer a helpful corollary for those with interest in pursuing this topic further. 

As for me, though; "I've got the hots for the smarts."

 

Eye of the Beholder

The History of England gets a fix on the Anglo Saxon World View.  I was particularly struck by the  following citation attributed to Louise C., participating in a discussion at Historum Forum;

'A mappa mundi is a depiction of the world as a place of experiences, of human history, of notions  and  knowledge. It's more like an encyclopedia. It's certainly not - and was never intended to be - a chart to be followed by travellers"

History and the Sock Merchant explores Dejima: the 'Deep Space Nine' of Feudal Japan that was "the single place of direct trade and exchange between Japan and the outside world during the Edo period (1603 - 1868)." 

In part I of a series of posts at The Bigger Picture; Visual Archives and the Smithsonian, Mary Markey makes a startling discovery in the records of The Hancock-Pacific Galapagos Expedition of 1934; 

"The volunteers I was working with started turning up some startling items amid the field reports and correspondence—pulp magazines from the 1930s, newspaper clippings with headlines straight out of the era of yellow journalism, and gruesome photos of dead bodies...And what a story it turns out to be! It has everything you’d expect (and wouldn’t expect!) from a Smithsonian expedition to tropical seas—exotic islands, fascinating wild fauna, stout-hearted scientists, a love triangle, and, very likely, murder.."

Looks like excellent beach reading.  In other mysterious museum news, Galt Museum & Archives blog has one concerning Miss Edith Kirk, an artist "who came from an influential family in Yorkshire, travelled to remote towns in western Canada and then settled in Lethbridge. We don’t know why she left England, nor how she would find herself in the far northern reaches of British Columbia. Trying to fill in the many gaps of her life is an interesting challenge."

ThinkShop explores Joris Ivens and the Legend of Indonesia Calling, a film about the struggle for Indonesian self determination after WII that few saw at the time but which had an impact that was felt by many.

"By the mid-1960s Indonesia Calling had become a film that had a growing following in Holland, long before it had an audience. This made it unique in the history of the cinema. In its symbolic form it intervened in the historical process, shaping memory and providing a site for the articulation of diametrically opposing approaches to the national, and indeed international, past. The facticity of the film become tangential to it most significant impact. The film as fact had been replaced by the film as signifier."

The End, Beautiful Friend

Executed Today offers up the first federal execution under the newly ratified US Constitution, a case of maritime law in which a British national killed another British national in international waters on board a small time slaver and was ultimately hanged in Maine.

HSP's Hidden Histories takes us out on an uplifting note with selections from a useful but often underutilized historical resource: the 1850-1880 US Mortality Schedules. Alas for the likes of poor William Shuler, age 54 , who died in June of 1869 in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Norriton Township, "while disinterring a dead body in {a} Cemetery, having a cut on his finger, had his blood poisoned, from which he died." 

This concludes History Carnival 100, brought to you this month by the Roman numeral C, and respectfully submitted by your most humble and obedient servant, a sometimes Continental in the recreated 1st New Jersey Regiment who on occasion even manages to go Walking the Berkshires. The History Carnival returns in August and you could be the host! Trust me, Sharon makes it easy and it's much more fun than your viva or junior  prom ever were.  

The rest of you may submit nominations here or follow along on Twitter (@historycarnival).  Now if you'll excuse me, I need to see a man about a ray gun.  I'm leaving the Brown Bess at home for my next reenactment. Consider this my warning to the British, à la Palin's Revere; "You are not going to take our atomic pistols!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

The History Carnival's Centennial Edition will be at Walking the Berkshires on July 1

Next month’s History Carnival (the Centennial Edition) will be hosted by Walking the Berkshires on July 1st.  The last time I was host was History Carnival LVI , and have lost neither my sense of humor nor my eclectic tastes, so if you leave it up to me to showcase worthy history posts you will be in for a wild ride.  Actually, this is more or less a certainty, but bring out your best and I'll do the rest.

To nominate the best recent posts from the History blogosphere, you can send an email using the simple nomination form at this site., or you can email me directly.  Visit  the History Carnival at http://www.historycarnival.org,or follow the Carnival on Twitter (@historycarnival).

We Interrupt this Broadcast...

Please permit us to pause for a moment in the midst of our ongoing series on Sullivan's Staten Island Raid to note that the March Early Modern Edition of Carnivalesque is now up at the blog Contemporary Jacobean Society; where among other fascinating posts you can revisit Part the Eighth of my Sullivan's Island series concerning the alleged sexual misconduct of Continental soldiers during that fight.

The Congressional Medal of Honor: Selfless Acts of Courage Have No Gender

Commentator Bryan Fischer's persistent, incendiary remarks about the feminization of the Congressional Medal of Honor are his own deliberate fabrication and not some media distortion.   The backlash they have provoked is likewise his own fault.  He said them without apology and for effect, and is still saying them, even as he tries to frame his message around the point that we need to honor more "take the hill" acts of bravery as well as those who place the lives of their comrades above their own. 

This is disingenuous, to say the least.  In his repetition of "feminization" in the title of his published remarks (now stretched out in a three part series), Fischer unashamedly values "masculine" attributes - those who "kill people and break things" -  at the expense of "feminine" qualities of courage. Extraordinary heroism and uncommon valor does not make this distinction.

He says we have become squeamish about presenting the Medal of Honor to those who kill the enemy, noting there have been no "take the hill" MOH citations in either Iraq or Afghanistan (he could also have added Somalia, for the two special forces members killed in the Black Hawk Down rescue and extraction in 1993). 

There have been four Medal of Honor citations for soldiers serving in Iraq and four in Afghanistan, all of them but the latest for Staff Sergeant Giunta presented posthumously.  We are certainly not squeamish about recognizing those who make the supreme sacrifice defending their comrades. 

This is a very small sample size from which to draw the sort of conclusion that Fischer has made regarding one kind of valor being preferentially recognized over another in contemporary Medal of Honor citations.  He makes very selective and slanted use of history.  From the very beginning, there have been many Medal of Honor recipients  who have been recognized for saving lives, to name just a few:

• [Civil War] "During the attack on Charleston, while serving on board the U.S.S. Keokuk, Q.M. Anderson was stationed at the wheel when shot penetrated the house and, with the scattering of the iron, used his own body as a shield for his commanding officer."

• [Civil War] Seaman Avery and Quarter Gunner Baker "braved the enemy fire which was said by the admiral to be "one of the most galling" he had ever seen, and aided in rescuing from death 10 of the crew of the Tecumseh, eliciting the admiration of both friend and foe."

• [Indian Wars] "At McClellans Creek, Tex., 8 November 1874, Captain Baldwin received his second Medal of Honor citation after he "rescued, with 2 companies, 2 white girls by a voluntary attack upon Indians whose superior numbers and strong position would have warranted delay for reinforcements, but which delay would have permitted the Indians to escape and kill their captives."

• [Spanish American War] At Tayabacoa, Cuba, 30 June 1898. Private Bell, 10th U.S. Cavalry,  "voluntarily went ashore in the face of the enemy and aided in the rescue of his wounded comrades; this after several previous attempts at rescue had been frustrated."

• [WWI] "During an operation against enemy machinegun nests west of Varennes, Cpl. Call was in a tank with an officer when half of the turret was knocked off by a direct artillery hit. Choked by gas from the high-explosive shell, he left the tank and took cover in a shellhole 30 yards away. Seeing that the officer did not follow, and thinking that he might be alive, Cpl. Call returned to the tank under intense machinegun and shell fire and carried the officer over a mile under machinegun and sniper fire to safety."

• [WWII] "For conspicuous devotion to duty, extraordinary courage, and complete disregard of his own life, above and beyond the call of duty, during the attack on the Fleet in Pearl Harbor, by Japanese forces on 7 December 1941. As Commanding Officer of the U.S.S. West Virginia, after being mortally wounded, Capt. Bennion evidenced apparent concern only in fighting and saving his ship, and strongly protested against being carried from the bridge." 

• [WWII] "During the early part of his imprisonment at Makassar in April 1942, [Navy Lieutenant] Antrim saw a Japanese guard brutally beating a fellow prisoner of war and successfully intervened, at great risk to his own life.  For his conspicuous act of valor, Antrim later received the Medal of Honor."

There are many more citations like these for recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor.  Despite all protestations to the contrary, Fischer's irresponsible use of the term "feminization" is not just insulting to men and women; it dishonors the heroism of these servicemen.

At the heart of Fischer's words, of course, are the culture wars, and a fundamentalist nostalgia for an American values system that predates the 1960s.  America today in fact does value minimizing casualties in modern wars.  Iraq and Afghanistan are very different conflicts than the battlefields of Europe or the atolls of the South Pacific, where territory was conquered at a tremendous cost, as Fischer bluntly puts it, in people killed and things broken.  

There were 16 million American men and women in uniform during World War II.  464 Medals of Honor were presented for actions taken during that war, 266 of them posthumously, and most, it is fair to say, for fearlessness and ferocity in combat, often when on the defensive.  All were for selfless acts, and it is this quality, above all others exhibited by Medal of Honor recipients past and present, that is in keeping with the highest traditions of the service.  Fischer's actions, however, belong in the ash heap of history.

The Annual Armistice Day Post: The Final Three

There are just three confirmed veterans of the Great War still living on this Veterans Day.  The status of one of these, Florence Beatrice Green (née Patterson), was rediscovered just this year and she joins Royal Navy veteran Claude Choules and American Frank Buckles as the final representatives of those who served in the War to end all Wars. Buckles supports a national WWI memorial in Washington, while Choules who lives in Australia does not wish to glorify war.

Light in October

Buzzard's Bay is cold enough now for the smell of its salt to permeate the wind.   By November the oaks along the shore will have turned, but now the duff beneath the pines has a layer of fresh needles and the shrubs are the color of green amber.  The low angled light of late afternoon brings out all the highlights in the sand and beach grass.

This weekend was made for Fall sailing, but there were very few who took advantage of it on Buzzard's Bay.  It was warm enough, even at night, to be comfortable under blankets without needing to turn on the heat, which in the big red house by the sea is not a one step process.  Only part of the Windrock house is winterized, and the upstairs hall needs to be partitioned by a sheet of plywood - known to us as the Wall of Jericho - to isolate the warm part from the cold.  

We awoke in the last hours of darkness last weekend to see the winter constellations advancing from the East, and Jupiter with three of its moons shining in the cloudless night.  We headed down Cape to Eastham and Wellfleet, finding the tide so high at the latter place that cars parked too close to the shore were up to their wheel wells in salt water and the trail to Great Island submerged at its very beginning.  Nothing daunted, we hiked instead at the Fort Hilll and Red Maple Swamp trails in Eastham, and gazed out over Nauset Marsh.  Little wonder that Champlain found this vast salt water wetland ringed with native habitations as he explored the coast in 1605.  Little wonder, too, that he found it treacherous to navigate and named it Mallebar.

Cape Codders have the sea in their blood, and the old cemeteries record many among the lost and drowned.  This stone lies in Wellfleet's Duck Creek Cemetery, and records the deaths of two half brothers: one drowned in a harbor on the north shore of Prince Edward Island and the other lost from ther Schooner "Telegraph" in an arm of the St. Lawrence between the Gaspé Peninsula and New Brunswick.

I love this time of year at the shore, when the crowds have withdrawn and the sun is bright and the wind is not yet honed by winter ice.  There are crimson creepers in the trees, and asters among broom sedge tussocks attracting the late butterflies.  Apple mint is still green by the pump, and woodsmoke drifts from the first laid fires.  It has a beauty all its own, the brown beach glass and gray driftwood and the pink flecked granite that the glaciers left behind.  I love the great show of the sugar maple that shuns the shore, but I love as well these autumn days of blue water and low angled light when russet and straw are in their glory.

Wrong Then and Wrong Today: a Review of "My Country 'Tis of Thee" (1950)

Buried within the DVD extras for the 1951 classic Captain Horatio Hornblower - along with a Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam send up - is a 20 minute piece of Red Scare era "hystery" called "My Country 'Tis of Thee."  Warner Brothers felt obliged to preface this archival short film with the disclaimer that

"these depictions were wrong then and they are wrong today. While the following does not represent the Warner Bros. view of today's society,[this film is] being presented as...originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming that these prejudices never existed." 

What it should have said was that the massively distorted presentation of American history it represents would require an even longer short to enumerate and interpret.

 With the obvious exception of "Indians on the warpath" who did the decent thing and faded away shortly after the Pilgrims landed on Plimoth Rock, one is left wondering what prejudices and stereotypes Warner's legal department recognized that required such a disclaimer without further explanation.  As a service to any viewers who may be tempted to sit through this 20 minute piece of manifest malarky, here are just a few of the remarkable aspects of American history captured in Technicolor in "My Country 'Tis of Thee."

• The Civil War had nothing to do with slavery.  Aside from some archival footage of FDR's funeral, we do not see a single person of color apart from those Indians on the warpath.
• The Monroe Doctrine was our gift to the rest of the nations in our Hemisphere to protect them from foreign influence.
• There was no Great Depression, and aside from various wars, no hard times either.
• Not much happened during the Revolution between the Declaration of Independence and Yorktown except for a bit of flag making by Betsy Ross and the heroic efforts of John Paul Jones and the American Navy.
• Thomas Jefferson could tell just by looking at a map that he should buy the entire Louisiana Territory for 4 cents an acre.
• There wasn't a soul on the continent except for those inconvenient natives before the godly pilgrims stepped off the boat.  Unless you count the Virginians, but they were in it for the money, so the less said about them, the better.
• The only presidents you need to know about are those on Mt. Rushmore, along with Monroe for his doctrine (and John Quincy Adams for listening to it) Madison for the Constitution, and those "First in War" (FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Wilson and Jackson), but not Grant.  Then again, between Washington and Ike, who else was there worth mentioning?  Fillmore? Harding?  Anyone remember the Coolidge Doctrine?
• The only women worth mentioning are Betsy Ross and...um,  Betsy Ross.  See, if they had included Jamestown in the narrative, we could have said Pocahontas.  Too bad the Indians had all faded away by then.
• The nation in 1950 had 50,000 pulpits, or one for every 3,000 people.  Actually, this may be true.  The film seemed proud of this number, but unless they were all the size of cathedrals there must have been an awful lot of our fellow citizens sitting out the Sabbath.

Well, what do you want?  In 1950, this was Oscar material - though it lost out to In Beaver Valley in the short subjects, 2 reel category.  I can only ascribe this to blatant Communist sympathies on the part of Academy voters.  Good thing Tail Gunner Joe nipped that in the bud, tout de suite.  We'll have no foreign influences in these parts, sonny boy.  On the other hand, the UN and the North Atlantic Alliance get full marks in this film, so it is a good thing it makes no mention of that bit about "the mischiefs of foreign intrigue (and) the impostures of pretended patriotism" in Washington's Farewell Address. 

It would only confuse the masses.