Saturday, November 01, 2003
MOUNTAIN STATE
If one delegate attending the convention of 1863 to determine the name of the new, 35th state being added to the union, had been more persuasive the new state may have been called “Augusta”.
He didn't even come close. In fact, the name "Augusta"received just one vote - which we can assume to have been his own. Even though he failed to influence other delegates present, he had good reason to make the suggestion he set forth.
The general area which now makes up what is called West Virginia was, for about a twenty year period, called Augusta County, Virginia. It was formed at the same time as Frederick County, to the north, in 1745 but it took a few years for things to actually get organized and in the mean time, and interim government prevailed. For a time it was the largest piece of real estate under the adminstration of a county seat. Initally, it was governed from Orange Court House, Virginia, then in 1745 the power was shifted to a group of "magistrates" living west of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Staunton, formerly Beveley's Mill Place became the county seat for the entire area called Augusta County. They had been serving for years as the active arm of government in the area as appointed by Royal officials at Orange County Court House, Orange, Virginia.
It territory called "Augusta" was large. To this day, people still find it difficult to believe and to accept the fact that Augusta County was , by far, the largest adminstative unit to be found anywhere in America.
The bounds of Augusta County, Virginia, roughly, embodied the following limitations. If one choses to begin at some point on the Blue Ridge Mountains summit on the eastern side of the County, then he would go south-west down the ridge of that range to the North Carolina border. Then, westward until he came to the Mississippi River. The line then went up that waterway into Minnesota and Wisconsin, took in most of Michigan, all of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. From Ohio it crossed Pennsylvania at the general point of Ft. Duquane (Pittsburgh) and bent southward to go along the buldging edge of the newly created Fredrick County, and gradually worked it 's way across the Shenandoah Valley to the Blue Ridge Range.
To this day it is not uncommon to come across place names all over the affected area echoing the Augusta theme. The celebrated folk festival held each year at Elkins, West Virginia , on-in-and around the campus of Davis and Elkin Coillege, is known far and wide as the "Augusta Festival."
But in naming the 35th state to be admitted to the Union the conference voted heavily in favor of calling it "West Virginia." The choice was symbolic, no doubt, of a First Settlement and Colonial Heritage so many indivudals and families the area did not want to forego entirely.
The name "West Virginia" won with thirty votes.
"Kanawha" followed, then came "Western Virginia", "Allegheny" and that lone vote for "Augusta". Naming a state is not an easy task to undertake. It was especially trying to make such a decision at that point in our history. President Abraham Lincoln agonized until the very last minute to seperate the peoples of the Old Dominion/Virginia. Virginia was to be the only state in the entire nation to suffer the loss of more than one-half of her territory, to bleed upon more battlefields than any of the Confederate states, and also to suffer great losses in a materials sense.
The tremendous expanse of Augusta was diminished by time and events. New counties were fomed in Southwest Virginia, Kentucky and other areas and control from the county seat in Staunton, Virginia was relinquished.
Augusta...an historical chimera.
A.L.M. October 31, 2003 [c644wds]
Friday, October 31, 2003
IRONY
Among the many strange stories which will come from the current, continuing and costly wildfires in California, is one from which we can all learn a much needed and valuable lesson. It tells us to pay more attention to keeping our forests in proper conditon.
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By proper, I mean useful to man as he harvests its treasures and does so under conditions which encourage and maintain Nature's dominance.
One California resident in the fire stricken area has been clearing his property regularly for years, he has eliminated exessive undergrowth and cut those trees which were close enough to torch his home if they burned. He kept the trees trimmed as much as possible and even planted some new, varied ones set sufficently apart from his home to add variety and make it all more beautiful.
For doing all this, he has been scorned by his neighbors; even sued in the courts for "destroying the natural habitat" of several specified wilflife critters found throughout the entire area.
After the fire, which burned homes all around, but did not touch his, he became the only resident of the area who has living specimens of the various threatened biolocial and zological species on his property. They sought, and some of them actually found, sanctuary from the steadily approaching walls of flame.
When, one might ask, are we going to come to understand the importance of foresty care and maintenance. It is not a matter of simply refusing to use the forests at all and to allow them, even force them, to fall back into a chaotic state we call "wilderness." That is the foolish way out of the predicament in which we have placed ourselves
and one which does not solve any problems at all. Rather, it increases other dangers we must confront.
Living in the wilderness is a harsh setting for Man. It has always been so, and wild life as well. Our artists and poets describe a totally different paradise than the wilderness dweller usually found he had to conquer or die. The dominent form of life takes over in any specific area and the rest have a rough time of merely staying alive - much less prospering.
We have been victims of excessive and often hollow-headed enthiusiasms related to the serious subject of envionmental control. It has been warped into a social values thing far removed form the actual needs of a constantly changing state of being one in which Nature thrives at its best, for the moment. To think of the environment as being a packagable, bounded, concrete, pre-determined set of perfectly constant little compartments is sheer idiocy. It is time for us to begin to learn how wrong our attempts to rein Nature into our idea of what we think she ought to be. We must learn to us our natural resorces and not allow ourselves to be blinded by emotional considerations which are, at best, ever costly to both man and beast. We need to use our forests rather than to push them to disuse and ruin.
A.L.M. October 30, 2003 [c520wds]
Thursday, October 30, 2003
COMEDY TEAM
Certainly there must be a few of you out there who can recall a comedy team which worked under the strange name of "Stoopnagle and Bud."
They were popular during the same general period that "Amos and Andy" held forth as rulers of the radio waves. As I remember it, they were "discovered" by comedian Fred Allen and, for a time, they appeared as guests on his show.
The character Stoopnagle had a title. I don't remember if it was intended to be a military rank or one associated with industrial or commercial success, which was not uncommon in that era. He was always referred to as "Colonel" Stoopnagle. Every program began with his playing of electric organ music with a stentorian voice-over which said:
"You are listening to Colonel Lemuel Q. Stoopnagle at the console of the mighty gas pipe organ..." He knew only one composition which was a two-fingered, one-foot arrangement of the nursery rhyme titled: "Mama Sent Me To The Spring." Bud acted as the straight man most of the time and the conversations dealt with events of the day and the condition of society in a charmingly evasive and vague manner.
The Colonel's wisdom was available to listeners who might - or might not - write inasking for his help. Such "letters" served as springboards for learned lectures on or around just about any sub ject. He did Daffy-nitions, too. For Example:
Gasoline - “Gasoline is what, if you don’t use good in your car, it won’t run as well as if.”
Dust - “Dust is mud with the water squoze out.”
One more: Jazz - “Jazz music is a lot of noise in a hurry.”
Stoopnagle and Bud were generous with words praising the products made of their “sponsor.”
Listeners never quite knew what that product was, because it was a multi-purpose invention designed to benefit mankind in many ways. As was common in radio of that day the name of the product was often spelled out rather than merely being said. It was Phoithboinder”. It was spelled each time as “P-h-o-i-t-h-Paragraph-Boin-der.” Satisfied buyers from all aroud the world praised it for its superior qualities - as a cure for Ingrown Toenails or as being useful in covering pantry shelves in an effort to thwart the ravages of spilled jams and jellies; as a car polish or as a beetle bane, bug killer, or as a birthday cake decoration for someone you disliked.
I must take the time to Google-ize “Stoopnagle and Bud”. I don't remember the name of the perfomers who did all those voices and characterizations so well. Or course, as many of you already realize, I tend to forget that much of what I write about actually took placed half a century , or more, ago.
Just for repeated laughs, how many of you remember Colonel Lemuel Q. Stoopnagle and his buddy Bud?
A.L.M. October 29, 2003 [c499wds]
Wednesday, October 29, 2003
TRADE MARKS
What trade marks in use today, will be around half a century from now?
Judging by the accelerated rate of buy-outs, mergers, take-overs and consolidations taking place rapidly now, it may well be that only a handful of well-known trade mark symbols will be extant.
With just about every week that passes we fnd a major tobacco company taking over another firm in that rather shaky business field. Banks seems to be most interested in buying other banks to become, usually,the “second largest” something or other in a complex field. Every time they do this or one grocery chain buys another – they eliminate a well-known logo marking their firm as being distinct from all others.
You have, no doubt, had your favorites. Mine include the Morton's Salt girl walking along through the rain with salt spilling from a carton she carries. She has changed considerably over the years to keep up with the times, but the logo idea is still intact.
Others have changed, too, but usually it has been done gradually and we have accepted the modification without even realizing they had been replaced.
One of the most clever transformations was one worked at the beginning of World War II. At that time most of us wrote with a yellow, wooden pencil - #2 lead - if we could get it, which bore the emblem of an ornate oriental imperial crown and the imprinted word name “Mikado”. After Pearl Harbor, that name had to go, of course, and, without even a ripple of publicity calling attention to the change, the manufacturer went with a more subdued royal crown in exactly the same position and the word “Mikado” gave way to the Spanish word “Mirado”. In many cases, people who still write with that make of pencil today have not yet realized it once shifted so adeptly under stress of historical change.
Others I recall from the early part of the past century: The attentive RCA dog, forever listening so intently, the Mack Truck Bull Dog - tough as they come, The bearded Smith Brothers on their cough drops packets, the distinctive shape of the Chevrolet sign and many others which pop into my mind's “eye” every now and then. Others have been either forgotten or combined.
I worked, at one time, with a young man in radio broadcasting who change cars quite often. Each time he changed cars he modified the name of the type of car he drove. He always took one physical part from his old car and had it affixed to his new car, in some way, - welded, if necessary - to the new one. When I knew the late Tom Gibson, back in the days before they started calling us “disc jockeys”, he told his listeners he was driving a ”Pont-Ford-a-Stude-a-Chevy-lac”. In a sense it was his verbal “'trade mark”and I remember it well.
A.L.M. October 28. 2003 [c498wds]
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Tuesday, October 28, 2003
DISTANCES
Ours is a very large country.
We seldom realize how large it really happens to be. We are puzzled at tines when we live among Europeans for a while to learn how they conceive it to be more compact. I remember talking with knowledegable Englishmen and women who could not undertsand why we Americans did not come to know each other since we lived in the same country. They spoke of visiting us and spending a day with me in Virginia, a day with so-and-so in Seattle, another with Carl and his family in Texas and, perhaps a week-end at Harry's in New England. They had no idea of the geographical expanse of the United States.
Considering the unusual diversity of the actual geographic structure of our land, it is amazing that we get along with each other as well as we do. I often hear people all under to the fact that such-and-such an area seems to be closer than it used to be. That magic is being worked out constantly by improved transporation systems , vehicles and highways as they bring people closer together. In many areas towns are actually building closer to each other even to the point of becoming one, so our nation, if anything, is getting "smaller" in size.
It is disturbing to me, however, to notice that there are other areas in which one can see marked preferences for dangeorus divisions.We need to pay some detailed attention to what is becomeig of the idea of "one nation" as well as the a nation "under God."
The problem of what should best be done concerning the placing of a monument to the "Ten Commandment" of the Judeo-Christian faith in the rotunda of the State House in Alabama has become headlined sensation throughout the land and beyond. Other indications of continued separations in religious preferences are brought foreward as a result of that rather severe controversy. Certainly a mere glance at world history should be enough to show us that such inclinations are suggestive of deeper confusions which can be dangerous to a nation's unity.
Other social and economic inequities can, and are being, set forth in some area and concealed in others. Many of these are quite obvious and listing them here would serve little purpose.
We, as Americans, need to re-define the terms we use to descibe what we profess to believe. Among them we are in dire need of a firm defintion of what we call a "democracy".
I get a strong feeling our present stance pretending ito model "democracy" for the world at large and to export it as a preferred manner of rule for eveyyone is an error. The greatest, most threatening divisions right now, is the gulf existing between what what we apparenty think democracy entails and what it has and will mean.
A.L.M. October 27, 2003 [c490wds]
Monday, October 27, 2003
TAKE CARE - EVERYWHERE
I am writing this by candle light.
We had a power shortage at about one-thirty his afternoon. I took a short nap, played guitar for a while, and my wife and I talked of “cabbages and kings” and one of the “other things” had to do with the lack of power to keep us going one or two vague attempts to shame the Al Quida for zapping a transformer down the street just a block or so away.
“Funny” came out “silly.” Our security is not a matter to be taken lightly and it may be that we a not taking it seriously enough.
Each of us tends to think of our area as being one unlikely to suffer any such attack. Here in the western Shenandoah Valley area protected by the Blue Ridge Mountain range to the east and hundred miles of rolling hills and and pine-strewn flatlands slanting into the Atlantic, we feel ourselves to be relatively safe. As with many others the same designation come “relatives” can be dangerous. It is not always what our are, but what and whom you are next to, which creates a modern day war target.
Now is not the time to relax security measures. Many people, understandably, are fed up with regulations which slow down their hectic pace. Many can point the finger at specific enforcement efforts of existing measures and show how they inefficient they are at times. Only a fool would say that such laws are expected to b e foolproof. We need to respect and obey the ones we do have in place for our mutual well-being.
Even while we feel fettered and needlessly put upon, we are under far less restrictions than almost any nation of people in the world today. I view with alarm the continued massing of large numbers of people at specific sites throughout our country - sports gathering , in particular, and I am very much aware and thankful of the existing security regulations which control who. What and when can flow over, or even near, such massive gatherings of citizens.
The arterial nature of our Intestate Highway system with its connecting roads of all kinds with connecting roads of all kinds is of vital importance, as well. Security must be strict. So, you can see, sitting here in tiny Virginia hamlet, almost at the crossroads of I-81 and I-64, and less than a hundred miles to the north and east we are boxed in by I-60 and I-95.
Do you understand why I “wonder” about a blown transformer just down the block? Think about your area.
.What makes a “target”?
A.L.M. October 26. 2003 [c-455wds]
Sunday, October 26, 2003
RETRO ACTION
One enduring trait which seems to linger among men and women over the years of growth is that reaction to wrong which demands that we ”get even” with someone over a real or entirely imaginary slight or injustice done many years before.
We seldom realize that each of us has a few remnants of that sort of thing in our background which can pop up in curious and significant times. A major problem is that we don't admit we have such a tendency. Often we ascribe such childish actions as that of seeking revenge' of “"getting" even with” our foes, to semi-real characters such as “hillbilly” or ”mountaineer” people who are crafted to act as scapegoats upon whom we can pile our burdens to be lost in the wilderness.
As scapegoats to carry our burdens into the wilderness. We laugh at such childish actions and seem to see how silly it all can be. The very same people, however,if they are of Scottish decent, seem to overlook the fact their forebears lived with such a rule in their constant clan warfare .Other closely woven ancestral threads will show the same flaw.
How about you and I today? Right now, when we are in the process of electing a president for our nation, may well be one of those “significant times” in which we need to examine our attitude concerning the of attempting to “get even” for real or imaginary wrongs of the political past.
Far too many of the radio/TV sound bite being set forth - even this early in the campaign are flawed int two notable ways. On he one side every statement is issued in a glittering cloud of Florida “chads”,and the others are in some sort of a “gate”. Morality standards are touched upon repeatedly. Identical statistics concerning business statistics are voiced in two opposite ways. The primary stances are illusion and/or allusion. One seeks to make anything, either, fractionally factual or to show it doesn't exist at all. There are legal ways, of course, to “win” a victory, but properties held jointly commonly become troublesome.
Way back in the 1500's George Herbert (1593-1633) said “The worst of law is that one suit breeds twenty.” That is certainly true concerning any folk-law ideas about “getting even”, “taking revenge” or “repayment in kind”, or “eye-for-an-eye” tactic.
The use of one creates, at least, twenty or more.
A.L.M. October 24, 2003 [c429wds]
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