What I am Reading for the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War . . . and Why

As you may know, we are in the midst of honoring the 150th Anniversary of the start of the Civil War.  The Washington Post has been printing excellent installments, and I have been collecting them.

I also highly recommend reading the masterpiece, "Reveille in Washington," by Margaret Leech.  It was published in 1941, but it remains a classic.   It is superbly written and well-researched, resulting in riveting detailed stories.

If you had any relatives who fought in the Civil War or lived and worked in the DC region during that time, this is a must-read.


But even if you do not have familial ties to that era, this book well illustrates the seismic transformation our country underwent during those five years that continues to reverberate to this day. 

For example, it chronicles well how DC transformed from being a Southern political power base to a Northern-dominated town, one of the most historically important transitions for our country as it signaled the demise of the Great Compromise of the Constitution (where slaves counted as 3/5 of a person in apportionment).  

As historians will tell you, that one compromise impacted our history in many ways, ranging from the election of Jefferson as president in 1800 to shelving the debate on slavery thereby ensuring generations of suffering and irreversibly setting the country toward a brutal Civil War.

And this book shows the macro aspect of that through the telling of countless personal stories. 


And for those thinking this book might be just another exercise of reading "dry" history, let me just say that the author showed that our "proper" ancestors certainly had a lustful side to them that would make even readers of today's tabloids blush.

If you live in the DC area, an added bonus will be that this book will make walking and driving around the region so much more interesting for you.

If you can't find the book in your library, (I found mine in a musty bookstore up in southern NY) it is available through Amazon.


If you get a chance to read it, I invite you to share what you think of the book.

Should I take offense? Que piensa?

Many of you know that one of my life-long goals is to be able to speak Spanish completely fluently.  Yeah, it's a modest goal compared to what so many others have been able to achieve in their lives, but still, it's one of my top personal goals, and I'm having fun working at it.

Actually, I'm getting pretty close, maybe 70 - 80%, but I still have a ways to go.  (As a side note, my daughter is now very good with her Spanish skills - better than I am in grammar and vocabulary at least -and we converse and text in Spanish all the time.  That's fun -- and about the only way I can get her to answer me! ;-)

I was fortunate to attend a rather progressive public school system in upstate New York where I began studying Spanish is sixth grade.  And I continued to study on through my first year in college.

I was also fortunate that my family set up a private exchange through my Dad's work at GE with a Mexican family in Mexico City.  Their kids stayed with us over the years and my brothers and I each spent a summer with them down there.

And then there was the formative summer I spent in San Jose, Costa Rica, working for a missionary.  That's a whole other story in of itself (i.e. how it started my eventual falling away from the religion), but I did get pretty good with my Spanish.

So I should have been able to achieve my goal of total fluency long before now.  But yeah, we get sidetracked in adult life, don't we?  Well, so what, it's now been a steady onward progress over the past five years or so.

A great assistance in my effort to improve my Spanish is the Hispanic population's tendency in general, at least in my experience, to be very patient with those of us who attempt to speak Spanish.  I've ended up saying some rather comical things in my attempts.  Like "How are you sitting down?" instead of "How are you feeling?"  But my Latino friends just laugh, graciously correct me, and genuinely appreciate that I at least try. 

Contrast that with my experience at attempting French. I am sure there are exceptions, and I do not wish to promote unwarranted stereotypes, but I think it's pretty safe to say that the French are less tolerant of those who imperfectly attempt speaking their language.

So, with that all said, you maybe can better understand why I listen to Spanish radio while driving around town.  We have about five such stations here in the Baltimore / Washington DC area.

I have found this to be a great way to improve my Spanish skills.

One of my favorites is listening to the morning news program, "Calentando la Manana" (Warming up the Morning), on Radio America, 1540AM based out of Wheaton, MD.  I really like the host of the program, Alejandro Carrasco.  He not only is very intelligent and an excellent interviewer, but he has succeeded in establishing himself as a good representative and yes, leader, of the growing Latino community here in the DC/Balt region.

And I also like him because he enunciates very well, and that makes it much easier for me to understand him.  I understand that he is from Colombia, and that many of the on-air personalities of the Hispanic world are from that western equatorial region of South America.  Their accent is a easily understood throughout the Spanish-speaking world, much like many of the American on-air personalities have traditionally been from the MidWest. (eg. Tom Brokaw, Jane Pauley, David Letterman, etc.)

So, with that said, let me relate what I heard on the "Calentando la Manana" show recently.  There was an ad for legal services that ended with the tag, ". . . Es Roberto, no es Robert.  Es un latino."  Translated that says, "His name is Roberto, not Robert.  He's Latino."

Hmmm, granted the station's audience is almost exclusively the Latino community.  And granted, it has been a solid tradition in our American history for minority and immigrant communities to rely on their own members for strength.  I mean, we see it in the growing Korean immigrant communities. And yes, we even have religious groups, like evangelical Christians, marketing their services among each other via custom telephone books and directories.

But I really have not been comfortable with such advertising.  I mean, advertising that one's business speaks Spanish is one thing, but something about blatantly saying in an ad that your name is "Roberto and not Robert" seems offensive to me, especially now in the 21st Century.

I mean, what about the many North American lawyers who advertise on the same station who also are fluent in Spanish.  Is the lawyer Roberto saying that just because he is Latino that he can represent the community better than Robert?

What would be the reaction to an ad on the English-speaking newsstation WTOP that said: "My name is Jack White, not Juan Blanco . . ."

So yes, I think Alejandro (again, for whom I have great respect) and his team should consider having "el abogado Roberto" revise his ad.

But ok, yes, maybe I am being too narrow-minded about this.  What do you think?  I open to being convinced that I am blind to a certain perspective.  I welcome comments below.

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What am I doing eating lunch in a graveyard?

It was my definition of a great vacation day.  Sitting in an old church cemetery eating lunch at the grave of an ancestor.

Creepy? Nope, not for me.  And not for many cultures throughout the history of mankind either, from the ancient Gaelic celebration of Samhaim which eventually got wrapped into the Christian Halloween . . . and the pre-Spaniard indigenous people's festivals of the dead in Latin America which evolved into today's Dia de los Muertos celebration in Mexico and other parts of region.

Earlier in the day, I had taken a sharp turn east while heading home from a high school reunion in upstate NY.  I had granted myself the day to pursue what is a passionate avocation of mine, geneaology.

It works like this: whenever I vacation near a likely ancestral location (NY, CT, PA, OH, Ireland to name a few places) I give myself a "bite-size," manageable quest to research.  Sometimes my wife and daughter indulge my fun and accompany me; other times they, ahem, "encourage" me to head off on my own ;-).

Now let me state right up front. I for one do not get carried away with long lines of colonial ancestry. That has its place, but my experience has been that if you get too concerned with that, you very likely will become disappointed at some point. I find that the fun is in the search itself and tying together individual lives with what was going on in the world around them. 

Perhaps just as important, my findings over the years have also helped me to better answer the question we all ask of ourselves, "Who am I?"

I was traveling solo on this particular trip.  And on this day, I was hoping to locate more information about the Dakin line, the family of my 4th great-grandmother on my mother's side, in the area of Duchess County, NY, which is on the east side of the Hudson River near the border of CT and NY.



This is beautiful country, and I was there at a prime time of the year, the fall.



I got lucky with my search.

I had done some online research previously, and after a quick stop at the local library in Middleton in the township of North East, where I obtained some valuable clues from the friendly and knowledgeable staff, I ended up at a small church cemetery (the building is now gone) established in the 1770's by my 6th great-grandfather, Simon Dakin (1720 - 1803), a Baptist minister.

                                    

                                     

Many of the gravestones were illegible and/or overgrown.

I did not find one for Simon nor of his son Joshua, who was my great-g-g-g-g grandfather (1744 - ?), but I did find one of the family.  It's the leaning gravestone in the foreground of the above picture, and it's the one behind me in the picture at the top of this post where I am eating lunch. 

Below is a closeup of the headstone.  It's of Jacob Dakin (1775 - 1836), a son of Joshua, and brother of my g-g-g-g grandmother, Charity Dakin, who married a neighbor (see census data below), Elisha Driggs.

And next to Jacob was is the gravestone of Olive Clark, his wife.

So I sat down and had a lazy picnic lunch with "family" on a beautiful fall day.  As I mentioned, there used to be a church standing next to this graveyard.  Hmmm, I remember how I used to run and play in the chuch graveyard after Sunday service while growing up in Schenectady.  So I could easily imagine my ancestors doing the same here.

As I said above, I like to ponder these finds in the context of what was happening in their world at the time.  For example, in the census of 1800, both Jacob and his father Joshua had a slave listed as being part of their  households. (see last column in 1800 census for these guys.) Wait, a minute, slaveholders? . . . in this rural area of Duchess County, NY?!

Well yes, it appears so.  I don't have all the answers, but here's a plausible explanation . . . and an example of why I find genealogy searching such an engrossing avocational pursuit: 

If you remember your history, the election of 1800 was where Thomas Jefferson defeated the incumbent Federalist president, John Adams.

The state of New York played a pivotal role in that election by being a swing state for Jefferson.  You may ask, how did that happen, a northern state not voting for John Adams of neighboring Massachusetts?  Well, that was partly enabled by the well-organized politicking of Aaron Burr, a Jeffersonian "Republican" who outmaneuvered Alexander Hamilton, a Federalist, on getting the vote out in New York City (yep, the famous duel of several years later had deep roots of simmering acrimony.)

But there was more to why NY was for Jefferson in 1800.

New Yorkers never have really considered themselves as part of New England, even when many of the migrations of Eurpoean settlers into New York over the centuries originated from neighboring CT and MA.  Something about leaving the Berkshire Mountains changed them.  My theory about that is that those that headed into New York were looking for a new life away from the "confines" of New England, much like pioneers in later decades who moved far to the Great Plains, Rockies and beyond.

For whatever reason, the agrarian populist theme of Jefferson's platform resonated with these rural New York farmers and pioneers.  You see evidence of the devotion by towns named in the region like Monticello and Jeffersonville.

In 1800, many in the country felt that the Federalists had overplayed their "aristocratic hand" by cozying up to England (ghast!) and stacking the federal judiciary.  And then this became a real palpable fear amongst many in the country with the passage of the ill-advised, Federalist-sponsored Alien and Sedition Act, which was meant to squelch raucous pro-French sentiments.  Result?  To a growing segment of the population, the Federalists threatened the sacred rights won in the Revolution, while Jefferson represented "a second revolution to save the first."

Few others in this area had a slave listed in that census, but hmmm, maybe, just maybe, if the famous patriot Thomas Jefferson was a slaveholder, perhaps having a slave in rural New York was also acceptable at that time?

But then I asked myself, weren't these Dakins fervent god-fearing Baptists?  How could they have been slaveholders?  History has an answer for that. While certainly not excusing the horrible practice, let's remember these were different times.  As escaped slave / abolitionist Frederick Douglass so eloquently wrote in his autobiography several decades later in 1845, it was certainly well known amongst the slaves themselves that the masters who were most pious were often the most fervent supporters of slavery.  Such believers followed the skewed theological reasoning that scripture ordained slavery as being part of the will of God.

But then again, maybe I have this all wrong.  Perhaps there is another completely different story to the marking of a single slave in these ancestors' households in the census.  For example, maybe these are instances of charity somehow . . . efforts to shelter runaway slaves -- claiming them as their own slaves so as to protect runaways from being sent back South.  And what about those entries to the left of that far-right column, for "free non-whites," which usually was marked to indicate native americans in the household?  Perhaps some sort of missionary effort?

Ah, the search continues . . .  But first, where did I put that delicious apple cider I bought along the roadside?

clips from Gilbert & Sullivan's "Trial by Jury"

Are you a Gilbert & Sullivan fan?

Check this out:



Other clips from the operetta tv presentation are avail on my YouTube channel http://tinyurl.com/2933fdr, including this one, a recording from the control room:



See credits below.  Thanks to all who made this production so much fun those many years ago - David

"Metro Musings" video

Just like our parents?

"I will not be like my parents, I will not be like my parents . . ."

So the generational chant goes.  And in many ways we succeed, but then in others, forget it.

When I was young, each month my mother would bring out the newly arrived Readers' Digest at the dinner table.  It was a ritual to which I rolled my eyes.

She would then proceed to test me on the 20 word vocabulary list that was in each issue.

Any words I didn't know, got put up on a chalkboard next to my bathroom sink.  She would feature each of the unknown words throughout the month.

Flash forward 40 years.

My daughter has been studying Spanish in school for the past five years or so.  Her teacher gives the class a Spanish vocabulary list that she tests them on every two weeks or so.  I've regularly been helping my daughter study for the tests.

As you may know, I enjoy speaking and writing Spanish, and it remains my goal to become totally fluent antes me muerto (before I die.)  I'm maybe 70% fluent at this point.  One weakness is my vocabulary.  So I as well have been enjoying learning the Spanish words that my daughter has been studying.

Maybe it's the age, but my daughter memorizes the vocabulary A LOT faster than I do.  So, what am I doing?  You guessed it, I make photocopies of the study list . . .

and post them on my bathroom mirror.

Hope you're watching and smiling, Mom.  Ciao.

I invite you to also check out my "added value: website/blog: http://www.davidryanmediasolutions.com/

Also follow me on Twitter: www.Twitter.com/DRMediaSolution donde frecuente hay descuentos en espanol para los servicios de replicacion de media.


   

Are things getting better? Hmmm, let's check out Coffee News . . .

One admittedly unscientific way that I have been monitoring the economy over the past 18+ months is to count the number of sold ads published in the local version of Coffee News http://www.coffeenewsusa.com/whatis.html

Coffee News is a weekly standard-templated "news sheet" that is distributed free to restaurants, libraries and other local entities where there is high public traffic.

Here's how it works:  The national Coffee News company provides the local publisher/editor with most of the content, leaving a bit of room for some localization.  Keep in mind, this is not heavy journalism.  It is meant to be a nice light reading diversion, often with a humorous twist.

The business model works like most any distributed free periodical.  The local publisher/editor sells advertising and then entices locations around the region to host a Coffee News rack for free, with the idea that it would add value to their business.

I have to admit, given the way folks are glued to their smartphones these days, I have wondered whether a print vehicle like Coffee News is still relevant.  Hmmm, I'll see if I can get the local publisher/editor listed above, Pat Huber, to comment on that. 

Anyway, throughout the economic tsunami, I have been counting the number of ads sold in each issue I come across.  To my count, the Coffe News template allows for 32 available ad spaces in each issue (8 spaces down along the left and right on both the front and back.) 

This weekend, in the version I picked up at the diner we frequent, I counted 18 of the 32 being sold ads. (Unsold spaces are filled in with free PSA-type spots and written promos urging readers to consider advertisiing with Coffee News, etc.) At one point over the past 18 monts, I counted just 12 of 32 sold ads.

So, does that mean we are on the road back economically speaking -- or is Pat becoming a more savvy seller in these challenging times?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

I invite you to check out my "added value" website/blog for my work activities http://www.davidryanmediasolutions.com/ where I cover a lot of media tech and marketing topics for my network of clients and contacts.

I also invite you to follow me on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/DRMediaSolution