American History

[madupont]

I'm hip.  But I'm serious, if you can pinpoint when that was one of our favourite expressions,"Middle-class"? Probably in the Sixties into the Seventies with Tom Lear from Yale(?)recording songs, and Mary Hartmann,Mary Hartmann on tv.

Maybe that is why there is so much food poisoning. I am talking about "food handlers" who went to a vocational school out here so they could somehow make a living and stay where they were born.(they build careers in the "chains").  These are not the Farmers.   

The Mennonite kids go through high school whereas the Amish go to a one-room schoolhaus. If the Mennonites want more specified training including religion they can go to the religious college at Millersville University. Many of the Amish farm boys have done this also before marriage, so they could run businesses in which they have practical and  scientific-engineering experience. My friend Sadie's son(one of six; they have a sister)owns and operates a Power Tool company.

No, I am talking about the "Glenn Becks". And I know you have plenty but they work for Bush. Or, have. Or,will eventually; for whomever is next in line.  And you've got to admit that being surrounded by them is kind of dull and kind of dangerous. When I say  anything in posts, it is by now notoriously apparent that anything is  refuted by people born here in a radius of not many miles who have just such an education and believe neither what I say: about Bush was so dumb that he got lost somewhere short of Caernarvon in a campaign bus trying to find Smoketown in Lancaster; whereupon he built an airport as "a gift" to some of us from all our taxes. Of course in certain circles that is considered very smart. I was so pissed at Maureen Dowd after her smart talk between W and Bill Clinton!

And as I said, they have their own version of my life because I have got to be a liar;and not them. The topper most recently was the  unawareness, that admitting to using sources of information which they then post in here about, just goes into that bag of cyberspace that goes on forever.  So I was not kidding that I guess that I could post after I'm dead.  They seemed to have no idea that their self-incriminating evidence was computed  when they first found out that their remarks at nytimes had come back
" to bite them in the heinie" is what we used to say as kids. When they say that so and so went and got that information from a source which has removed my mention in their own material, that source did so to avoid prosecution themself. Because whoever has been bequeathed my copyright material will have grounds to proceed against the abuser, even when I'm dead.  Don't you just love it.

Besides, I don't feel like the Lone Ranger, I feel more like Tonto as in,"What do you mean?, 'White Man'." Probably an unfortunate  educational experience among the Chiricahua at San Carlos pre-war conditioned me.

I kind of wish what's his name was back at Immigration forum because he supplied me with the nicest information on the history of what was happening then,and if you remember when I said my great-aunt had this lawyer named, Crook(?) -- he was just a descendent of some villainous Military officer out there "civilizing" the Apaches.

So glad Thanatopsy is back; hope the Arizonan returns as well.

[madupont]

Gintaras,

"And his family name was Scotto, and was not Italian but of Scottish origin."

Oh, that accounts for it: why she has the blonde hair because some of his descendants must have arrived in Philadelphia.

That was the writer whom I was telling weezo about. I can't imagine why? Does it do any good? It came up about the Italo-Americans who were either detained here or deported to Italy during WW2. I knew because of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, one who had been very nonchalant about his book trips, until they carded him.   I posted sometime last year or so about how the City Lights Book Store was founded to give him and his Japanese-American partner a source of income.

[Gintaras]

I hope that the historian wasn't pinning too much on the name "Scotto," but rather traced back Columbus' lineage to Scotland.  Quite a few Lithuanized foreign names here, including our great emotional leader, Vytautas Landsbergis (currently residing in the EU parliament), whose family name is rather obviously of German origin.  Anyway, I thought it was a fun article.  It has been making the rounds.  My wife first told me of the Columbus-Scotto story in an article she read in the Vilnius daily paper.

[madupont]

http://www.cnn.com/search/?query=Mirador&primaryType=mixed&sortBy=date&intl=false

That is the connection to this. Europeans arrive and find there was a culture of indigenous people who built the foundations of their civilization a millenium earlier.

This CNN report has six videos which at first appearance, based on the same site, seem pretty much the same until you compare all of them over the course of the last month to give you an update of how difficult it now is to preserve this environment and explore in our time of increasingly complex interactions "narco-traffickers" (as they are called today), who are often also looters of artifacts, policed by locals who  have been patroling these sites their entire adult life because of their familiarity with the jungle's sounds, and todays loggers who have changed areas of the landscape over a generation ago when quickly building roads because of the demand for tropical exotic woods in furniture production, and last but not least the cattle ranchers pleased that the pasturage is being cleared for them.

Before the end of the 1960s,into the 1970s, I often met people who belonged to at least two of these categories  in one person, in a variety of combinations, and rather than being confusing, made perfect sense.  One might meet a rancher, inheriting his support who then finds income, by running a "dude ranch", which he can then use for exploration of ruins as an archaeologist.

Or, a drug-dealer, who is just as interested in the cultural history and, the art objects discovered, who can live with the rational, that I thought of immediately when watching the fifth or sixth video showing the opening of a clay mold that was cast aside by a looter who didn't discover what was on the interior. The moment you stand there realizing that someone else will come along and steal "art objects" after you have gone, you tell yourself,"why not?"; and start packing stuff away.

You also meet the off-spins of such ventures who return to "do good"; or "do-gooders" who bring something that will provide a livelihood to the locals, recycling fabric from contemporary mercantilism that it may be refashioned by the indigenous  who live on the edge of forests. Other commercial small business owners are happy to buy the product to stock their stores while traveling and opting for dealing along the way back in the Sixties.

(Nowadays, you are more likely to be buying clothing for yourself from some of these exotic locales where entrepreneurs have become importers of finished luxury goods and other locally produced works in textiles, beading,etc. that provide jobs for women; the entrepreneur then makes a contribution from the profits to something like medical research.)

There are so many interconnections of the variables  that we all end up being involved in the destruction and the preservation at the same time.

[thanatopsy]

History shows that when a Democratic is in the White House, the Yankees win the World Series.

All the more reason to vote Democrat!

[Gintaras]

That is if you are a Yankees fan.  I see Bloomberg survived a close one in NY, even with $100 mil poured into the campaign.

[thanatopsy]

''That is if you are a Yankees fan.''


Heck, everybody knows, God is a Yankees Fan!!!


 

[bosox18d]

God is a huge fucking asshole then.

[nnyhav]

Yeah, I'm no longer history round these parts, been watching as it happens.

A funny thing happened on the way out of the forum. A ho-lotta books hitting the press on financial crises, the Andrew Ross Sorkin effort looks strong, first cite in a long time of the Korean play for Lehman just before it hit the fan. But I'm not reading much of these treatments since my only interest would be in how the received wisdom was received. And we're not out of the woods yet ...

[madupont]

Glad to see you back,nnyhav.

[madupont]

http://www.theroot.com/multimedia/books-root-may-22-2009

publication at Harper Collins by W Ralph Eubanks director of publishing at The Libary of Congress.

[nnyhav]

Hi madu, good to be back.

A couple recommendations from what I've read since last time:
Rick Perlstein, Nixonland (Nixon being more the central motif rather than the subject; could be seen as sequel to his Goldwater book, which I haven't read)
David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America
Both also attempt to disentangle our present state through thematic influences past. The latter's probably old news to present company ...

[madupont]

Thanks are in order; I hear you.

[Gintaras]

I got through half of Perlstein's Nixonland, which I thought was very good.  Very opinionated view, but well researched and a lively read.  Need to get back to it.

[madupont]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/opinion/06bradley.html?hp

Op-Ed Contributor
Diplomacy That Will Live in Infamy

Did Teddy Roosevelt’s Japan policy set the stage for Pearl Harbor?