Saturday, March 22, 2003
STATE OF KENNEDY
On November 29, 1963 it was seriously proposed that the name of the State of West Virginia be re-named.
Two names were suggested, by the Beckley (W.Va )"Post-Herald", honoring President John F. Kennedy, who had been assassinated . Two names were suggested: either "Kennedy” or "Kennediana"
Laudable though the intent of the idea may have been, that would have been something that would have taken a bit of doing, if one is to judge by the troubles the delegates to the State Constitutional Convention of 1862 had in deciding on the present name of the state.
George Ellis Moore, who taught Government at Slippery Rock State College in Pennsylvania – a West Virginia native – gave a detailed account of the naming selection hassle in his excellent book “A Banner in the Hills”.The name West Virginia was not an unanimous choice.
“A Banner in the Hills” is a very readable yet scholarly history of West Virginia published under the official West V Virginia Centennial Commission (Appleton-Century-Crofts) The author, George Ellis Moore, traces the situation when sentiments concerning the Union grew,. An ordinance of l861 specified that the name of the new state was to be “Kanawha “ after the impressive river which, when joined by the New River flows through capital city of Charleston north to the Ohio.
This resulted in some opposition from other areas which was not unexpected expected, of course, but those who favored the Indian name of Kanawha did not look with favor on any any attempt to modify the ordinance. On November of 1861 a majority of the Constitutional Convention refused to recognize the earlier convention's action as being binding upon them. In December of that year the suggested the name was dopped form the list to be considered by a vote of 30 to 14, and the prevailing mood of the delegates seems to have been that they would try to retain the word “Virginia” in some form.
One delegate is said to have waxed emotional when he proclaimed that “'the name 'Virginia' reminded him of the glorious reign of Elizabeth, but also carried subtle information of the blessed Mother of Christ!” Other members of the convention, however, seemed to think of it only “as a reminder of oppression, slavery and treason.” Can't you imagine silvery-haired orators of the present day, holding forth for hours in C-Span dealing out such phrases should new names be suggested.
The matter was finally settled by a roll call of delegates. They were permitted to answer in one way only, not to to launch into another harangue, but simply to stand and state the name they had chosen.
Stubbornly, nine of those present stuck with the name “Kanawha”. Two answered “Western Virginia”, a name by which the area had been commonly called after it ceased to be a part of Augusta County in Virginia. Two other delegates wanted it to be called “Allegheny”and one lone delegate with Shenandoah Valley of Virginia connections, stood by “Augusta” as being the historically most accurate designation for the area. No one, it seems, ever suggested the logical geographic term of “Upper Virginia” with the mountainous terrain which contrasts so readily with the rest of the “Old Dominion” nor did anyone see the possibilities of forming a “New Dominion”, either.
Moore's “A Banner in the Hills”, developed the complex nature of a group of people who saw themselves as that portion of the old state which have remained loyal and say no reason to drop the name “Virginia.”
On May 13, 1862 the new state was officially formed, far smaller than many had insisted it should be, and on December 31 – tradition holds he did so just minutes before midnight - President Lincoln signed the official paper. He postponed his agonizing decision until the very last minute, stating that “the division of a State is dreaded as a precedent.” His proclamation was issued April 20, 1863.
Virginia became the only state to lose half of it's physical area as a result of the actions of the Civil War. West Virginia became our 35th state and, another oddity: JFK was our 35th president.
A.L.M. March 22, 2003 [c701wds]
Friday, March 21, 2003
UNDERWAY!
March 21, 2003
It makes a subtle difference even though it has happened in a curiously "'“quiet" manner.
Most of us went to bed last night realizing that the war to bring freedom to Iraq has officially begun and that things will be different for all of us from this point onward.
Instead of the massed bombings of Baghdad which were anticipated, the actions of the United States proved to be a relatively small missile attacks on what has been called “ targets of opportunity.”
Intelligence reports indicated that the presence of Saddam Hussein and his leading officers was known and the early-start project was undertaken to try to remove him and his military leaders. I find people in disagreement this morning on that concept. I see it it as yet another try at “diplomacy” although the word itself is eliminated by the use of force. The intent of the plan, however, might well have been “if we can eliminate the head of this evil body we will not have to undertake the mass bombing which were planned.
There is no indication this morning if the plan was, in any way, “successful” or not. It is assumed it did not take Saddam Hussein out of the picture since he appeared on Iraqi TV shortly after the attack, reading a speech from a stenographer's notebook. The immediate assumption by many was a that the speaker was one of those who have, from time-to-time, subbed for Saddam in public appearances before, but I think not. A fake Saddam might pass in a speeding motorcade going through the streets ,but not to deliver a major speech. No doubt a voice print of some sort had been made and any such duplicity revealed. We cannot afford to jump to wishfully devised tangents in our thinking concerning our enemy
The war is on. There is no turning back. We are sitting here waiting to be told if the raid was in any way worth the trouble. We expect a follow up and complete information at any moment. We ought to be disappointed. We are “at war”. We have given up our “right to know” all details of what has transpired. We should not be told.
A great many American are going to find it difficult to understand, but this small incident is the essence of what we are going to have to learn to accept on a far larger scale as the war goes on. To be told bluntly that the the facts – at that moment - “are none of our business!” strikes some as being totally wrong, but it is so very true if we are to maintain any sense of civic safety here at home we are going to have to curb our curiosity and comments.
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With such an assurance, we can do a far better job of supporting our sons, our daughters and other loved ones in the war zone itself. For every little detail of any action to be ”made public" is a great threat to their safety and ours. I would hope that our media can control its manifested tendency to do what has been called rightly an “overkill” on the war story. The way they appear to be going at it this morning, just as the war has started on this first day of Spring, They are seemingly going to go “all out” endlessly on the war theme. With repetition and guesswork by people who really are not qualified, the war story will have been beaten to death for many interested TV viewers before morning comes around again.
We are at war. Codes of conduct are required of all. That code calls for us to continue our daily routines in fulfilling our part of the obligations we have assumed - like it or not - to see this mess through to the end. Maintaining proper discipline and decorum at on the home front is one of the great challenges of every one of us when we were enlisted in the war effort by our leaders.
Do your part. Uncle Sam needs you!
A.L.M. March 20, 2003 [c689wds]
Thursday, March 20, 2003
BY BREAD ALONE?
What did early settlers here in Virginia have to eat?
Did they actually partake of the glamorous items we see listed in some magazines from time-to-time? Only on rare occasions, could they, even the so-called upper crust of society, the plantation owners, leading merchants and others such groups, actually dine with multiple courses of fine meats, seafoods, fowls, fine desserts and unlimited beverages? I doubt such meals were ever common, and we would have to agree that, by and large, the pioneer diet was dull, tiresome, often tasteless and at times inadequate.
It is quite evident that large amounts of corn were consumed in various forms:such as in cakes, pones, mush, flat breads, bread sticks, round, square and yard- long bread creations or corn which had been parched or even raw, plus boiled, roasted, baked, even “popped”, if only accident with certain types of corn and, of course, made into beverages of various strengths and intensities.
Wapatoo was an Indian good which settler came to find useful. The white men adopted the Indian food and variations of their name for it. Among themselves hey spoke of “duck potatoes” which we, today, call arrowroot We do not think of it as a food,but rather as a decorate wildflower we find along freshwater streams. They are found in pounds, marshes and lakes – even in more northerly areas, and may grow four inches to several feet high. They have olive green, striped leaves which point skyward in the shaped of an arrow head. They are listed in the fancy books as sagittaria latifolia for you botanically-minded people.
The lower leaves of the arrowroot plant usually grow just under the water line. They are grass-like in appearance always with pointed ends. The arrowroot blooms are white and about l-1/2 wide. There are three whorls, unisexual by nature, and with abilities to attract insects. The dragonfly is the chief pollinator of Arrowroot, as they are for Pickeralweed, a plant which has leaves which are rounded, and it resembles the arrowroot plant to the disadvantage of all concerned.
The tuber-like root of the Arrowroot plant was important in its time regardless of its name in any given area. The Lewis and Clark expedition found Indian women harvesting what they called “Wapotoo” in the Columbia River in 1805. The squaws waded into the water and broke the tubers from the plant roots with their toes, we are told.. Seventy five varieties of arrowroot have been classified. Fifteen types of ducks still love them just as the Indians and early white settlers did.
Closer to home, the plant gave a lasting name to an entire group of people from eastern Virginia. In 1610-11 Jamestown was in dire straits for food. A census of the pigs and poultry indicated that it would be wise for sixty to eighty of the settlers too move down river where they could live on seafoods and oysters. In the Old Point area, sturgeon was plentiful at that time and when dried, mixed with roe and sorrel it could be made into a flour providing both bread and meat. The well-known authority on Colonial homemaking, Annie Cash Jester wrote: “an edible root similar to a potato was gathered, pounded Indian-fashion to a meal from which bread was made.”
Those Jamestown settlers who had shipped downstream to stay alive, came to be known as people who ate Indian “Tockwaugh” - hence they became know as “Tuckahoes”.
A.L.M. March 19, 2003 [c583wds]
Wednesday, March 19, 2003
ICE COVERED
About 200,000 square miles of the State of Alaska are covered with a permanent veneer of ice.
An, oddly enough,most of those ice fields are in the southern portion of the state rather than in the frigid northerly areas. Have you every wondered why that should be?
I doubt if you have. It’s never bothered me but I have often wondered how the cruise ships going north to Sitka seemed to have plenty of glaciers dumping tons of ice into the already frigid waters. I wondered which might be waiting o be seem in the rest of the huge state -further north.
The quality of the snow,I find ,determines what kind of ice will develop and how much.. It difficult to accept the fact that parts of Alaska get more annual rainfall than some locations on the Amazon River in Brazil can expect...a station called Manaus, for one. And it is also true that some coastal areas of Alaska get less annual rainfall that folks in El Paso in arid west Texas. Rainfall – and snow – are less frequent in some areas of Alaska...more in others, and much depends on how it falls.
If the snow fall and melts. Then the flakes pack down and recrystallize into solid glacial ice. Gravity moves the growing mass of ice down the mountainsides, across chasms and into valleys and flat fields, digging deeply into the earth’s crust on it’s relentless way to the sea And ,all the while new snows, melting and recrystallizing are adding yet another layer or two on the top along the way.
Each glacier is a living laboratory for the study of fibers, form and forces.
Some of the glaciers are positioned so as to be relatively easy for tourists to visit their edges. The Matanuska near Palmer, Worthington and Columbia near Valdez and Mendenhall about twelve miles from Juneau. Within fifty miles of the capital city, there are sixteen tidewater glaciers and you can witness huge chunks dropping off and forming bergs in the cold sharing he bay with seals, whales, and salmon. Bald eagles soar overhead and it is easy to think you might have traveled back into the Ice age. When bare rock appear in the spent path of the mighty glacier, lichen and moss form on the surface and soils and eventually support a rim of willows, alders, - in other areas – spruces and hemlocks.
Glaciers are a wondrous show of force which can be witnessed first hand by visitors. You can watch from a distance, or you can walk across their expanses and marvel at the fact that they’re, even then, moving on a steady, relentless, unstoppable trek toward the sea. Under the huge slabs of packed layers of ice, as you move about in comparative ease, there is little realization of the tremendous power on which you may be riding. The weight of the ice is pressing into the ground below, taking large rocks into it own skin to better scrape, scrape and smash its way to the shore overcoming any obstacles and leaving behind new rivers, new lakes, gorges and fantastic scars on basic rock which illustrate the tremendous force which is so unseen, and rarely felt, when you walk across the expanses of solid, seemingly steadfast ice.
Glaciers are truly one of the world’s many wonders!
A L.M. March 18, 2003 [c-568wds]
Tuesday, March 18, 2003
SPA SPOT
The resort area we now know as Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, was,in the early days, named "Bath" and it was in Virginia.
It was founded in 1776 and named after Bath England. It was hoped the area could emulate the prosperity of the ancient English city by means of its numerous springs and their curative waters.
And it did, for a time, prosper and the springs became well-known known and around them the dominant business of the a health-spa community developed gradually.
It was the post office department that changed the name, not the citizens. The new name honored the Virginia Governor Norbourne Berkeley 1768 to 1770, and recognized the importance of the springs themselves The old name caused confusion because there were other towns and areas called “Bath: The name chosen was “Berkeley Springs”, and take note, too, that the spelling includes a distinctive central “e”.
The community has had an interesting and complex history. It was situated in a vital area which was repeatedly a hotbed of confusion during the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. The people were very troubled about which side to support. Many families were divided, especially, during the C Civil War when residents served on one side or the other – or, served both sides as ”sutlers” and, in some strange way, neither side as they became Zuaves - a local “army” operated by and for its own good.
My first acquaintance with Berkeley Springs came from a l938 novel written by Hervey Allen. He was the author of the leading best seller novel “Anthony Adverse”. It was the leading best seller until Margaret Mitchell's “GWTW” took over the Civil War book scene. The book about the Berkeley, still a favorite war time novel with me, was titled ”Action At Aquila. It was felt to be too grossly realistic to some squeamish readers – dealing ,in the main, with medical needs of both Federal and Confederate troops. And, The Zuaves, locally organized and controlled, in their flaming Turkish attire and turban headgear provided an unusual note to the accounts of civil war actions in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Some curious ideas where practiced by both the Zouves and the Sutlers. The area is filled with such oddities. Six areas of present day West Virginia never got to vote for separation from Virginia, for instance, the Berkeley area among them.
Berkeley Springs was, for a time, the residence of James Rumsey “ the inventor of the steamboat. If you are one of those who hold that Robert Fulton did that...listen up! It happened in 1887 when Rumsey operated his mechanically propelled steamboat on the Potomac River near Shepardstown The President of the Potomac Company encouraged him and appointed him a Superintendent of Canals and to improve the steamboat. The Potomac Company failed and Rumsey went to England where he successfully raised funds to built a better boat. He died before putting any improved model on the Potomac, so the invention of the steamboat goes to someone else everywhere except in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia.
The last time I visited Berkeley Springs the population was said to be about 1500 or so, and, for some reason I have not yet divined, it was prominently noted that the Court House there stands 611 feet above sea level. I have had continuing curiosity about the place ever since I read the Hervey Allen novel:”Action At Aquila” (1938)
Read it. Let's see if you get hooked, as well.
A.. L. M . March 17, 2003 [c594wds]
Monday, March 17, 2003
WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT...
The "Dixie Chicks" really laid an egg on stage in London last week.
Shouting over the music, one of the girls...Natalie Maines, lead singer and guitar holder from Lubbock, Texas said "Just so you know, we're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas!”
We used to call that sort of gross error a “gaff” or a “flap”, and but most performers had enough common sense to avoid letting their personal political feelings overshadow their “work”
Folks everywhere, not just “back home”, have not taken too kindly to this caustic cackle from the Chicks and some see it as the Chick's suicide statement.
The media , in general, was pleased with the luscious plum which been dropped in their collective lap by one young lady with a loose lip and lame brain. Radio saw it as direct threat and eagerly sought to find some damage control. They stood alertly in line at strove to be named as “next” if they could not be “first” in their area to withdraw all Chick records from air play. One chain of twenty-five stations axed the chicks before the sun was up the next morning. To do so was considered almost a required action, if radio wished to remain popular to a great host of fans.
This incident is a sad one in many ways. It illustrates so well the truth of the old patriotic statement that it is right for any citizen to stand up and say what he or she believes. They often fail to consider the codicil that follows which says that, after doing so, one must face the natural consequences of their action an d accept responsibility for having said so. The consequence of their action is seldom worth the act of doing it. This blurted bit of bombast will may well mark the death knell of the “Dixie Chicks”.The animal-lovers leagues may bemoan the frightful way of killing fowls, for a time. The wringing of the bird's neck was a common method in my time and many a onlooker has witnessed the helpless, aimless flight of the de-headed bird trying fly away from danger already fulfilled . Doing away with chicks has never been a pleasurable memory for any of us. There are those who will take it all lightly, of course.
It is shame this incident was allowed to mar the growing popularity of this trio of girls singing and playing the traditional guitar, 5-string banjo and fiddle. They were a refreshing addition to a rather dull season. It is not the first time a sharp beak has caused trouble among birds of a feather flocking together. But, it's all gone now, girls.
Try changing our name, confer with Clairoil, don't be ”from“ anywhere - try a total rehab sweep and it might turn out well after all.
Thank you for being with us, even for such a sort time. Bye.
A.L.M. March 14, 2003 [c498wds]
Sunday, March 16, 2003
HABITAT TALK
It is not so much where you live, but how you live that really matters.
Knowing your exact street address can be important, of course. We try to teach little children where they live so, in the event they may become lost, they can be safely brought back to where they belong. And, the concept is valid for older folks as well:. We can easily get “lost”and in far more ways than small children commonly do. It is important we stay aware of where we live and it is critical that we begin to pay more attention to how we live wherever it is that we carry on that process.
And it is a continuing process, a series of replacements, a progression - much of which is trial-and-error by its very nature. Living has life. It is far too often viewed as a severely static thing when it is very flexible, vibrant and subject to changes unimaginable.
Give some serious thought to your situation, for a moment. You know where you live but “why” and “how” you live as you do, are often variables and sometimes even at odds with each other. Persons, for instance, who concentrate their efforts of every waking moment to the accumulation of possessions, making money, gaining wealth in some form or another, and who do so with the improper motive in mind, are inflicting harm upon themselves in a tragic manner. On the other hand, we see an opposite extreme which can be just as costly. Those individuals who tend, so often, to give their conduct a religious tag, as they work steadily to help individuals they deem to be less fortunate than themselves, can easily fall into the pit they help dig which is walled against collapse by ideas of self admiration, sacrifice, and even self-mutilation in the name of impossible goals involving unobtainable heights of perfection.
We see both of those extremes in the world about us, don't we? And - they are not without merit, but those elements which are good must not be allowed to take over the whole concept and mutate it into a gnome or demanding creature of some sort.
There is much good to be done in this world of Man; there is much evil which can be forestalled if we but set our goals at sensible levels and fine things as they really are, rather than the way we may think we wish them to be.
Right now when we a nation “on the brink”, as we say, of war this can all be of special importance to all of us. Where we are and what we do, and why, are all essential factors in deterring our future. Make it personal, too. It is something others cannot really decide on your behalf.
A.L.M. March 14, 2003 [c475wds]
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