Harriet Tubman, My Long-time, Historical Friend

Harriet, upon obtaining Freedom

It's Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. And Harriet Tubman will soon grace our twenty dollar bill. I rejoice as we've been friends for almost 50 years.

Scholastic Book Services was one of the great blessings of my childhood. My Mom loved reading and always scraped up some spare change to allow me one or two from the tantalizing list of books that my teachers at Thoreau Elementary gave me. In 1968, I believe in the Fifth Grade at 11 years of age, I chose a great one.

Racism Is Still the National Curse: Exhibit No. 1, Donald Trump

Please excuse the use of the N----- word. But this is the keystone to the historical problems of our Nation. And it still is.

A meme popped up illustrating the point. (This is where the racial epithet apology applies):

My Possible Choctaw Ancestry

My latest and last missionary son emailed me some family history work that he was doing for me to check over. It is on the Hartsfield line, ancestors of Carters, to Easterlings, then Petersons (my maternal line). They were Southerners with a family tradition that Sarah, married to Rueben Hartsfield in about 1783, was a Choctaw Indian.

Sabra Ann Carter

The best evidence we have is that Sarah's granddaughter, Sabra Ann Carter (1840-1921), looks like she could be the granddaughter of a Native American.

She appears to have the jet-black hair, high cheek bones, and long, straight nose that could indicate Choctaw ancestry.

This is entirely plausible as the Hartsfields (also "Hartfield"), along with the Easterlings and Carters, ended up in Choctaw Mississippi country. The Choctaw were a large language/cultural group but not united under any particular affiliation until President Jackson ordered removal to Oklahoma. Then there were two distinct groups, the Oklahoma Choctaw and the Mississippi Choctaw, the latter not federally recognized as a Tribe until 1945!

From Access Genealogy the Choctaw were noted:

"Fools give you reasons, Wise men never try."

The Utah Shakespeare Festival at Cedar City was great this year. We enjoyed good times with good friends and saw three plays. Only one was Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2. People are oddly apologetic for the historical plays and they are the reason I love Shakespeare (even if some of the history is subject to debate).

The greatest moment was when I met one of the actors who happened to sit in the row behind us in South Pacific.

My new buddy, Falstaff, and I

Yes, that's John Ahlin who played Sir John (Jack) Falstaff in Henry 4.2 the night before! And I impressed the actor by introducing myself as a descendant of Davy Gam (Dafydd ap Llywellyn) who is named in the lists of the dead in Henry V.

The character of Falstaff was my first introduction to the higher forms of the performance arts. It was in fourth grade when we had the blessed opportunity of loading up on school buses to attend a kids' program at the Seattle Opera. It was a few scenes from Verdi's Falstaff including a revelation of a bit of stagecraft with Falstaff falling off a bed and his corpulent body switched out for some brightly colored cloth matching his clothes. (Why Falstaff would be hiding in bedrooms they never quite explained). And that's all it took for me to fall in love with a stage full of music and action.

The Charleston Address

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

June 26, 2015

Remarks by the President in Eulogy for the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney

College of Charleston
Charleston, South Carolina

2:49 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Giving all praise and honor to God.  (Applause.)
  

The Bible calls us to hope. To persevere, and have faith in things not seen.

“They were still living by faith when they died,” Scripture tells us. “They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on Earth.”

We are here today to remember a man of God who lived by faith. A man who believed in things not seen. A man who believed there were better days ahead, off in the distance. A man of service who persevered, knowing full well he would not receive all those things he was promised, because he believed his efforts would deliver a better life for those who followed.

White War

Oh yeah, baby! The confederacy rises again as predicted!

Talk from an elected Congressman of the republican party, just revealed the whole game!

Why I Mess With Texas

Many of my friends (well, only a few) are Texans. I have some great relatives who live in Texas. Still, in the midst of a crisis of undocumented immigrant children, the Governor of Texas offers this photo-op in response:

Now, I don't think Gov. Perry is actually shooting immigrant children fleeing unbearable economic, political, and criminal disasters in their home countries in Central America and Mexico. But why would he choose this type of a macho photo-op? It reminds me of this one:

Tea Party Losing Their "Cause"

Tea Party Protest over the Shutdown - Attended by Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz, and Utah's one-and-only Mike Lee

"¡Muerte a los Tejanos!"

My favorite thing about Kit Carson. That was the battle cry of the New Mexican Volunteer Regiment he organized in the Civil War. Let us remember there were Spanish-speaking people in the American Southwest long before there were any African-American or European "Texans." Like 200 years or so. The Tejano guys came by invitation of a new Mexican Republic and then they proceeded to break all the rules, most egregiously, slavery. One of the first things the Republic of Mexico did was free the slaves. The Texans were a bit more difficult to convince.

My Multi-Religious Scout Sunday

Sunday, we went to the LDS services at Philmont with the nice, little, roofed chapel. A large trek group from Illinois was there along with the few from the Training Center (PTC) and the usual smattering of staff members who were not otherwise assigned Sunday morning.

The meeting is always interesting with heavy emphasis on the Scouts going out or coming in from the backcountry mountain treks. I did that myself as a 14-year-old and again as an adult leader. The most fascinating is to watch the Aaronic Priesthood boys called up out of the miscellaneous attendees and instinctively know what to do to administer the emblems of the Sacrament to the body of the Lord’s Church. And looking over the Scouts above the stand is the blue-tinged window with the flor-de-lis and rather muscular Savior. He did have His mountain treks after all.

Messing with Texas

My daughter just went to a conference to San Antonio. I suggested to her that she mess with Texas a little if she got a tour at the Alamo. The ideas were to ask about the Slaves and what was the Mexican government's view of Slavery? Or at least to ask where the basement was.

She reported after the trip that she did not do the messing I was attempting to encourage. Instead, she brought me something from the gift shop:

South Carolina Republican Debate (not-live)

The South is rising again, at least to stand and applaud the newt as he turns moral indignation on the MSM when John King asks him about his former wife appearing on ABC tonight. (The one he asked for an "open marriage" while he was attempting to destroy President Clinton for his infidelities--that's what she said).

So, I don't know what to say about this. Politics is an ugly business. But I think it's ugly principally because of people like Newt Gingrich.

The Civil War Isn't Over

Hat tip to Ardis at Keepapitchinin.org who linked on her Mormon History blog a fascinating clip from the National Archives of elderly Confederate Civil War Veterans giving the "Rebel Yell." It is entertaining, informative, and absolutely chilling.

Also, in the same Smithsonian article is reference to another clip of film that I haven't been able to find yet on-line--an elderly Union Veteran, William Smallwood, of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment performing the manual of arms with a wooden crutch. That I would like to see. The 54th Massachusetts was the all African-American Regiment honored in the film Glory. If I were King of the World, I would require every U.S. Citizen to see that movie. Of course, the whole point of that film is to inspire us beyond the divine right of kings and the ownership of humans in chattel slavery. But it is so much more than that.

Remember the Slave Masters! er, the ALAMO!

The headlines screamed, "ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS INVADE TEXAS TO IMPOSE SLAVERY!"

Actually, it would have been Mexico City in Spanish in 1836. It reminds me of the time, quite a few years ago when it was safer to stroll the streets of Ciudad Juarez, I was in the museum reading the interpretive signs on the exhibits about the settlement of "Tejas" by someone named Esteban Austin. As I was reading and thinking in Spanish (no English translation) my head was pronouncing it "ow-STEEN." And I stopped. And still in my head I said, "Wait a minute! That's Stephen Austin!" It was interesting to see a little of the history of Mexico from a different perspective.

Odd Brushes with History at the OK Corral and a Tragic Day in Memphis

Two good reads came from History Book Club recently, Hellhound on his Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assasin by Hampton Sides and The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral-And How it Changed the American West, by Jeff Guinn.

My dad took us to Tombstone when we were kids and it was a fascinating place to drink sarsaparilla and stand in the shadows of the Earps and Clantons at the OK Corral (even if it did really happen just down the street.) Even then, my dad, Western fan that he is, wisely cautioned that it isn't always easy to tell who were the good guys and who were the bad guys.