Saturday, May 10, 2003
DIG IT?
I didn't know it was still lost, but I see in the papers that they have "found" what is thought to be the actual site of the village in which ought to be site from which Pocahontas' father Powhatan, held occasional sway over an amalgamation of twenty-some Early American groups.
I have been perfectly happy with the site we have been using for years. It is about twenty-three miles southeast of Richmond, Virginia as I recall and has long been considered to be the place at which the often told rescue of doomed explorer John Smith by Powhatan's sub-teen-aged (or, barely teen-ed, it is said) daughter. I have a feeling most of us agree the story itself has been romantically enhanced so where it is supposed to have taken place is moot. Some interpret the head bashing story as wrongful reading about what they say was a tribal ceremony or ritual in which an individual was being was being initiated into tribal secrets and as a friend and not an enemy.
The site called"“Wereowocococo" , was said to have been the main village form which Powhatan ruled over a total of , at best, fifteen thousand people. I have alway felt the name of that town would make a good tom-tom solo concerto. Sound it out a bit -WE-re-WO-co-CO-co!- three times in a harsh monotone and try to keep you feet still as you sing it
I have an idea they may have, at zeroed in on on some actual dwelling sites because the evidence is largely pottery shards extracted from the soil.. It is not too unusual to come cross surfaced specimens of arrowheads, beads, pottery shards and other such archaeological goodies almost anywhere in the area. Most people there have good collections of such Indian bric-a-brac.
This site has long been held to have been the eastern terminus of the trail westward. It crossed the Blue Ridge Mountains at what is now called Wood's Gap; came came down the west side of the range a bit southwest of where Grottoes is located today. It then worked it way southward along the edge mountains to find its western terminal at Beverley's Mill Place, which we know as Staunton, Va. The trail had a common-sense name. It was marked by trees along the trail being hit three times in horizontal chops with a sharp ax or hatchet. The name survives today as “Three Chopt Road” in the Richmond area.
Almost anytime someone sticks a spade in the soil of Tidewater,Virginia they seem to come up with a relic of some sort of interesting relic. Those of us looking to discover words have a good one in this particular dig. The name of the place is spelled and sounded as: We-ro-Wo-co-CO-co. Can't you imagine you hear the steady beating of a drum, maybe sounds of a flute carved from a twig, and lone voice singing:
”We-ro-Wo-co-CO-co!”
Sorta gets to you, doesn't it? Sing it again.
“We-ro-Wo-co-CO-co!”
A.L.M. May 8, 2003 [c749wds]
Friday, May 09, 2003
HO ME!
Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy are coming home!
They have been living in Germany for several years since a media firm there bought The Muppet Company from the originator Jim Henson's estate.
They paid around $680 million in cash plus some stock goodies in February 2000 and, now in 2003 members of the Henson family – five his children, in fact, have bought what is left of the company back. “Sesame Street” has been sold off previously. The purchase includes: The Muppets, The Muppet Babies, the Fraggles, The Hoobs, Farscape and the Bear in the Big Blue House.
EM-TV the Munich, Germany Tv operation which went under, had sold the “Sesame Street: rights for about 200-million it seems. Brian Henson, a brother and three sisters make up the new Henson ownership.
It seems particularly right that Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy and their friends and associates will come back to the land of their birth. Our entertainment treasures have been going overseas at far too rapid a rate in recent years. It is refreshing to find - even a portion of such a firm – coming back to the states. The deal still has to be approved of by the EM-TV stockholders in Munich at a meeting set for July 20th.
Of that list do you even remember the names of those other than Kermit and Miss Peggy?And, of course,, the Muppets. I did not, but now they, too, have a new chance to become well-known. Watch for the Fraggles, Farscape, The Hoobs, and the Bear in the Big Blue House. They are former residents to be returning from Germany and ready to move into our hearts and lives to join Miss Piggy, Kermit and the Muppets .
Watch for them! Welcome them all - back home once more!
A.L.M May 8, 2003 [c460wds]
Thursday, May 08, 2003
NUMBER TEN!
There are some very good reason for paying some close attention to what early candidates in the field are saying. They may be saying things in the early phases which they wouldn't repeat as weeks and months go by.
Senator Robert Graham, Democrat from Florida, dropped his chapeau into the the ring with others seeking the party's nomination for the Presidency ... that one man to be favored by party members to become President of the United States of America.
Senator Graham, you may have noticed, did not follow the script exactly. His exact words, before the crowd of relatives and friends responded to the applause, were: "I am running for the President!” Did he intend to say ..." for the Presidency ”or, maybe he should have read it: “I am running for the office of President”...or, even: “ I am running to become the next President of the U.S of A.”
Unless my hearing aids deceive me mightily, he did not say that. The words which came out, with just a flicker of hesitation and indecision, in the final syllables, created an unwanted image. He gave the idea, unintentionally, of course, that he was in the running now as the tenth candidate on behalf of the present holder of that title. He said: “President” not “Presidency” or “the office of..”
A small, embarrassing detail? Yes, little more that, I'm sure, but that sort of lapse is often found in pre-campaign campaign rhetoric. It can be interesting to tally them up and wonder if they were damaging.
It has been my observing in recent years since TV has come to play such an important role in presenting the potential candidates so far ahead of the actual race, that this is a time to listen to the candidate comment on what they believe. Later on it will be curbed, quartered, and cut to fashion as needed, but during the primary runs we get more honest statements.
I have also felt that the candidates who are most likely to “tell it like it is” ; to state problems and circumstances more realistically. They do so because they feel, deep down, they don't stand the traditional Chinaman's chance of being being nominated, much less elected. Since they can be relatively certain they are not going to be required to make good on such statements. They hold on to their existing friends and gain a few new ones by setting forth such ideas and thus force the others to take a position on which he can. ,in rebuttal, attach comments and questions.
I can remember being impressed during the presidential steeplechase portion of the last national election by a young man named Alan-somebody. He stood no real chance of being nominated and he must have know that to be a fact, The name was Freed, wasn't it? Allen or Alan-someone, anyway. And - he spoke “truth” 'ill it hurt. He did so knowing full well he would never have to back talk with action.
Listen to all ten of the incoming aspirants. By election time you may actually know how they stand as individuals and why. They are being “sifted” right now -”winnowed”, if you will - the valued wheat being parted from the tares, and the old adage applies: “It takes one to know one.”
A.L.M. May 6, 2003 [c892wds]
Wednesday, May 07, 2003
DEAD END
I thought I had heard all of the mortician's jokes, but someone asked me recently if I had heard about the young girl who was studying to be a mortician. She was asked why she had chosen that type of work?“Because",she replied,"I have always enjoyed working with people"”
It may be that my career has not been in the particular field to which that girl aspired, but in my army years I worked in the morgue at a military hospital long enough to become acquainted with he terminology and atmosphere associated so readily by many people when in the presence of Death. That was an odd experience to have in the army right after basic training days, but I have always been grateful for the opportunity which was mine for I was to witness Death many times in the years ahead.
It came about because the army suddenly found it had completed thirteen weeks of basic training for a battalion of infantry medics who were not needed. There was a sudden glut on the market for the type of medics we had been trained to be. More recruits were on the way. So, it seemed like a good thing to do might be to ship the maturing stock out. About six hundred of us were suddenly transferred from the U. S. Army into the U. S. Army Air Corp; trucked a hundred miles east toward the Atlantic coastline where we quartered in an empty aircraft hanger - all six hundred of us of us as one big, steel-cotted crew sleeping where fighter planes were warmed up every morning to help the sun rise.
Oddly enough, such illogical logic improved our lot, we felt.We would be needed in the base hospital area or in Air Corps cadre sent out to new bases from time to time. I responded to the situation and drifted into various jobs until my chance to ship out came up. More strange logic entered the picture when I was shipped out as a “Teletype Operator”. One buddy whom we had just taught to read and the write, who had a job of firing the hospital's coal-fired furnace was dubbed with a non-com rating, and shipped out as a"“ Surgical Assistant". He was about as experienced in his new work area as I was in operating a teletype machine.
Among my hospital jobs, I worked for a time in the hospital Morgue. It was really not that new. I had been in various funeral homes and morgues in my newspaper reporting days.
After the war I went into radio-tv and technical writing for some years and when retired I took a part-time job with a local undertaking establishment. I was a driver, as a rule, a "greeter”, I suppose you would say, at one of several parlors the firm operated, but I had not been there but a few weeks when the front office asked me what my"ffeelings" were concerning helping out in the morgue. They were often short-handed there and really needed help at times. So, back to the morgue once more! I was"working with people"”, just as I did when driving families from place to place.
I have been think about this all week, because the" front office" lady who asked me if I would object to helping out in the morgue for a few days, died the other day. She married into business, but, I think, she would have agreed with the young girl who was planning to be mortician. It may seem odd to people who have never done it ... been there.
A.L.M April 25, 2003 [c903wds]
Tuesday, May 06, 2003
URBAN PROBLEMS
Most cities have inherited some severe street problems.
. Many of such situations originated from the at-random growth from village to town to city
George Washington, has his share of such a problem, the city named after him which is now our national capital. George lived down river a few miles at Mt. Vernon , Virginia and he met an architect, born in France, who had joined and served as a private in the Colony's Revolution army. His name was Pierre Charles L'Enfant and Washington had seen what a fine job he had done remodeling the old New York City Hall to be the temporary capital of the new nation.
He was hired by the commission studying the need for a new national city which would be worthy of it's aspirations and promise. He had inspiring visions of what that new nation might become and with Washington's eager endorsement, the Commission hired L'Enfant to design a totally new city on the lands donated for that specific purpose by Maryland and Virginia. That was in September 1791.
The architect started work at once with great fervor and excitement. He laid out a wide, expansive city with broad avenues, long
straight streets as much as a hundred feet wide, parks and vistas galore. He named the long, spacious streets after each of the thirteen colonies.
The Commissioners and instructed the architect to number and letter his streets according to the simple system which has endured to our own day. They asked that he prepare a copy of it all for them. L'Enfant, it seems, was not the type of person who, once hired to do a job, can be “instructed” to “do” specific little things. L'Enfant refused tp give them a copy which he knew they wanted to use in conducting a public sale of lots. He let it be known far and wide that he would have no part in any scheme whereby “speculators might purchase locations and raise huddles of shanties which would “permanently disfigure” the city of his dreams. Without the detailed plats, the sale of lots was a dismal failure. The members of the Commission called on George Washington to smooth it all over and to “reprimand” the wayward architect.
For several weeks things went smoothly, until word reached L'Enfant that the largest landowner in the area was in the process of actually building his version of what a massive Manor House should be. He was building in the center of one of L'Enfant's most prized “vistas”.
The architect promptly sent word to David Carroll of Duddington. He was to demolish the structure a once. Carroll did not do so. L'Enfant did it for him.When the largest landowner complained to the Commissioners, they in turn, complained to George Washington and, together, they decided to send their architect packing. During his short tenure, the Frenchman had made enemies in Congress and a special foe in the person of Thomas Jefferson.
That was in January 1792. The previous builder was re-hired to take up the work of building the Federal city. L'Enfant was offered 600 Guineas - about $2500 - and a free lot near the site where the Presidential Mansion was the be built. He refused the offer and is said to have died in poverty in 1825.
We wonder what may have gone through he mind of those concerned during that period. His dream took shape., and it is evident that his plans influenced the growth of the city as it has grow to be one of the most beautiful of all capital cities.
Lest we think our treatment was too harsh. L'Enfant's remains were exhumed in 1909 and reburied with honors in Arlington National Cemetery [
A.L.M. May 5,2003 [c896wds]
Monday, May 05, 2003
DIT DAH KINDERGARTEN
I happen to be among those people who grew up during the days when a the telegraph was threatened by the development of radio.It was more of a fight than we might realize.
I remember quite well how we were fascinated by the clicking of the telegraph key at either the Western Union or Postal telegraph offices and, more dramatically, those at the railway station in our town where, on a hot, summer's day or night, a kid could sit on an unused American Express cart, on the station platform, and both watch and listen to the telegraph man as he sent coded signals on his shiny hand set. We could imagine the great feats he did by warning a speeding engineer that his train was about to go over a bridge which had been washed away in a flood moments before! It may have been he was asking the next train to stop at our small station ...perhaps to take a dying man to the hospital in the city miles away..
Whatever the actual message may have been about, it was known to be important if it merited telegraph service! The wires extended everywhere as the nervous system of our entire communications network. That was how we kept in touch with the rest of the world. All of our news of world events came in on the telegraph.
It seemed to be a strange world of mystery most of us. It seemed impossible that a man, seated before such a small apparatus could tap messages heard all over the world!
We came to know that it had all started during and after our Civil War time here in the United States. The code used by devised Samuel F. Morris and it has served us well in various forms.
We, as small children respected, admired and sometime, even feared, the men who could tap out coded messages. Many of us wanted to become “wireless”: operators when radio began to filter into the communications field. We wanted to learn how to send secret messages in code form. In some way, I suppose “wireless” sounded less expensive during Great Depression years, too, and in mixed innocence and ignorance, we learned how to handle it as a sight rather than a sound.
In the public mind the use of what was commonly called The Morse Code was complicated by the many ways in which it could be use. Our “Boy Scout Manual” manual gave us the basic knowledge required. We took to sided-issues such as learning to do semaphore messages waving small flags to the right or left in accordance with the dot-dash instructions in the Manual. A main reason for using flag was, of course, that they could be home-made, made while telegraph keys and the electrical apparatus needed to power them, were costly.
How many people people of my age learned the code from the Boy Scout Handbook, I wonder? I have long been grateful, as a ham radio operator of many years, for that kick-start assistance, but there is one flaw in that magic ointment of beginning which is that we learned it all as “dot” and “dash”. We have all have had to unlearn that visual concept and re-learn code as an aural thing. To get any speed and clarity ratings at all, we had to re-learn that the basic sounds are just that – sounds.
They are what they have always been: sounds - “dit” and “dah”
.- .-.. -- -- .- -.-- ....- ..--- ----- ----- ...--
A L M M A Y 4 2 0 0 3
[c902wds]
Sunday, May 04, 2003
FOOT IN MOUTH
We have all had moments we would rather not remember.
Anyone who has said anything at all, is sure to have said something at one time or another which they now wish they could un-say.
This is not “show-and-tell-time” at all, because, I usually feel sorry for the victim who who's loose lips, disconnected brain or plain old big-mouth tendencies take over. I've done some doozies in my own time and cannot point to things others might have said and are forced to claim as their own faux pas collection. For example, this past week I placed our President George Bush aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Atlantic Ocean instead of the Pacific.. I can say “Thank you” to those who have not told me about it, as well as to those who did so.
I feel that most offenders do not mean what they find others seem to have said. There are occasions when things come out like ketchup from a the narrow, mouth of a bottle. It was not intended to do that. It just “came out that way.”
I think we have been very unfair to people in the political area, in particular, where so much depends on what is “said” as compared to, or contrasted with, what they are really thinking and have been so careful top avoid saying. Dan Quayle has been much maligned in print and on radio and TV more than any other human being in modern history, and accused of saying things Joe Miller must have left out of his celebrated joke books books as being too commonly used to quote.
Few escape. People pointed French-frying fingers at General Charles de Gaulle when he was supposed to have said: “China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese.”
Jason Kidd, when he was drafted by the Dallas “Mavericks” announced:”We are going to turn this team around 360 degrees!”
Bob Dole is reported to have said that “The Internet is a great way to get on the net” We assume he was making reference to the Internet Al Gore had said he invented when he was nine year of age or so down there on the tobacco farm in old Tennessee.
Some quote these saying because they think they see little seeds of wisdom within them.:
George Stephanapolis ,in the Larry King Show, said: “The President (Clinton) has kept all of the promises he intended to keep.”
Hillary Clinton raise a few hackles when she voiced her opinion related to a search for missing papers in the White House. “I 'm not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers .We are the President!”
Ike irked some with: “ Things are more like they are now than they every were were before.” And, there was one by Mayor Daley in Chicago years ago: “The police are not here to create disorder. They are here to preserve disorder.”
Each and every one of them ,no doubt, regretted saying what they did, if they, indeed, said it at all.
I have recognized more than one old clinker attributed to to a famous personality of recent times, some of which my Granddaddy used when he wanted to make someone appear silly or mis-informed. Ears, it seems, can be fine-tuned by incompetents so listeners can think they hear pretty much what that want the hear rather than what was really said.
A.L.M. May 3, 2003 [c846wds]
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