Why Texas is Texas QOTD

"I humble myself before God and there the list ends."             

                                             ~  Sam Houston, Governor of Tennessee, leader in the Texas Revolution, first and third President of the Republic of Texas, US Senator, and Governor of the State of Texas 

 The image is a Matthew Brady daguerreotype in the Library of Congress, taken while Houston was serving as US Senator, representing the new State of Texas following annexation.

Why Printed Books Will Always Matter: The Armenian Genocide

I learned about the Armenian Genocide - or one of its  precursors "The Hamidian Massacres" or "The Adana Massacre" - when I was in third grade.

There was an old abandoned house on the block - one of those older than the homes around it, that had either been a rent house until it became too decrepit to rent out, or whose elderly owner had died with no local heirs to help keep it up or care about its gradual decay. Windows were broken out, and someone had taken the front door, leaving it wide open, airy, well-lit with sunshine... and perfect for neighborhood children to explore.

I don't remember whether I wandered through it with a friend or alone. It was empty except for a half-filled box of trinkets, cracked dishes.... and one very old book.

Even back then, I read everything I could get my hands on. This book was old... I want to say the copyright date was 1909, but it could have been Bliss's ""Turkey and the Armenian Atrocities. A Reign of Terror" published in 1896.  I don't think it was the  one known as the "Blue Book", Viscount Bryce's definitive "Treatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915-1916", published in 1916.

I opened it and started reading explicit, bloody accounts of unimaginable torture inflicted on innocent old men, little children, mothers, by Turkish soldiers in the name of their muslim religion. All because the Armenians were Christians.

I didn't take the book, I just stayed there and read for half an hour or so.

I didn't hear anything else about Armenia until I was grown.

Despite the herculean effort that America made through the American Committee for Relief in the Near East, efforts that are credited with literally saving the Armenian people from extinction, and which served as the model for all relief agencies that have been created since, despite that, Armenia was ignored in public school history classes.  The progressive agenda was already busy in our textbooks, deleting events and adding agendas even in the 60s.

Today, a hundred years later, the cultural descendants of the perpetrators deny those events. Events that look horribly identical to massacres happening right now in the same places, inflicted by people who claim the same reasons and use the same tactics and methods. They deny both the old atrocities and the new ones, and they convince some. Our own President is willing to acede to their fiction.

Over time, I've learned much more from that brief encounter with a book I never saw again. It taught me that a written record can be proof to fly in the face of deceit. It taught me to look for accounts printed within a few years of events, because those are the most accurate. It taught me that the printed word can survive even attempts to stamp out knowledge. It taught me that there was a great deal about the world I would have to learn for myself if I wanted to know what things were really like. And it was a powerful object lesson in the truth of that other "old book" that so many deny and try to destroy.

So thank God for that printed copy of that old book. A copy that can't be edited or deleted or removed from a search engine.  I hope we will remember that we still need printed history books, if only to witness the truth to generations to come. Like the Lord God told Isaiah:

"Go now, and write it down on a tablet in their presence, inscribing it in a book, so that for times to come it may be an everlasting witness" Isaiah 30:8

* The Image is a poster used in one of the many fund raising drives the American Committee for Relief in the Near East. Wikipedia says this about their work: "From 1915 to 1930, Near East Relief saved the lives of over a million refugees, including 132,000 orphans who were cared for and educated in Near East Relief orphanages. Near East Relief also mobilized the American people to raise over $116 million for direct relief. Nearly 1,000 U.S. citizens volunteered to travel overseas. Near East Relief workers built hundreds of orphanages, vocational schools, and food distribution centers. Overseas relief workers were responsible for the direct care of orphans and refugees, including the organization of vast feeding and educational programs. Thousands of Americans volunteered throughout the U.S. by donating money or supplies and hosting special events to benefit Near East Relief's work."

Letting History Talk For Fun: Reenactments and Historical Demonstration

 In the way these things usually happen, I accidentally started myself down the road into a whole new hobby a few months ago when I did a letterpress printing demonstration in period costume. They say historical reenacting is one of the fastest growing hobbies in the world, as people engage personally in their favorite time period. Meet the newest wannabe American Civil War era civilian reenactor!

Late last summer, I heard about a museum-hosted event in nearby Stephenville, Texas: "By Gone Days on the Bosque". They were looking for demonstrators of old time crafts and life for the annual one-day fundraiser celebrating the post-civil-war period in this portion of Erath County along the Bosque River. Those were true Wild West Days, when the citizens really were  cowboys, outlaws, Indians, settlers, renegades, notorious lawmen, cattle ranchers, rustlers, fence cutters, farmers, and sheep herders.

I offered to show how a wanted poster would have been made, using wood type and my little portable press. They had never had a Printer and welcomed me. My sister served on the board of a local museum in her town, and lent me a dress she had made from a period-correct pattern. She also made me a "pinner" apron to wear. I didn't have a bonnet so I used a hair net and a doily gathered with ribbon to cover my hair. Given the short time frame, I cobbled together a fairly passable outfit (Marjorie, I have not forgotten that I do need a corset :-) ).

I went to the experts in letterpress history: the LETPRESS email list, and got wonderful advice on what to wear and how to approach it. They especially recommended the book "Newspapering in the Old West", filled with photos and detailed information that is essential for accuracy. It is one thing to tell people that women were actively employed in the printing trade, and even owned and published newspapers during that time, but showing photos substantiates it, important proofs for all of us who were educated in the myth that American women "didn't work" before the feminist movement of the 1960s.

I have attended reenactment events before as a tourist, been a vendor at antique shows, and have demonstrated printing as an art form and a modern day craft. So I expected to enjoy myself. I had the BEST time!!!! Paul's back was killing him (two days later was when we learned it really was killing him and the surgeon saved his life - see previous post for details), so I had to go by myself, but it was still loads of fun.

Since then, I have been absorbed in caring for Paul as he recovers, and have been reading up on Historical Reenacting as it plays out in Texas and considering how I can take part. Most groups accessible to me focus on the last half of the nineteenth century (Civil War, Wild West, Indian Wars). Although far from expert, my knowledge about printing and merchandise in that era would make it easiest to take on an impression of a civilian merchant ("sutler") and Job Printer.

So I guess, now,  I am nearing the stage of identifying people in near-by groups to learn about their focus and what kind of impressions their group needs, to see if any would be a good fit. It will still be quite a while before I have freedom to attend events or take an active role. In the meantime I can keep studying, read the various forums, prepare myself and some materials, and start putting together a nice, authentic costume.

Now I am wondering: is there anything I need to know that I don't know I need to know? ;-)

A Nook eReader: Make Room for the Library of Alexandria

Where have I been all week? Wellllll.....Devin and Sandy gave me a Nook for Mother's Day. Oh my!

Here was a gift I didn't know I wanted until I got it! I had been thinking I might "have" to buy an eReader to read some of the new indie work out there, self-published by writers who offer eBooks only.

The connection I had not yet made, though, is that despite a lifetime of avid, eclectic reading, there are still so many great books I have not read.

Among my favorite genres are exploration and true adventure. Many of these books were previously available only in expensive originals, or in hard-to-find reprints. Most of my reading in the subject has been serendipitous as a result. With my Nook, suddenly hundreds of truly good books can be at my fingertips, for free!

After downloading a Bible,  I searched the Barnes and Noble Nook site for "Exploration", sorted by "Price, Lowest First" (to bring up the free books), started with "A", and the first book I downloaded was a gem previously unknown: "A Handy Guide for Beggars", published in 1918 by Vachel Lindsay.

In school, I was exposed only to Lindsay's Jazz Poetry. I did not know he had written his own version of the Great American Road Saga. Like Travels With Charley or A Walk Across America,  A Handy Guide for Beggars records his impressions of the people who sheltered and fed him as he walked around the United States in the opening decade of the 20th century, paying his way with chapbooks and spontaneous lectures.

Among my favorite stories in the book are "House of the Loom" and the beautiful "Lady Iron Heels".  Politically correct? No. Incomplete? Maybe, but far less judgmental - and far more human - than most 60s anthropologists. Naive? Only the bored think that naive is a bad thing. I'll take naive over global sophisticates every day.

Arctic exploration fascinates me, probably because I shiver at 70 degrees. Peter Fruechen's books are favorites. When my grandson did a research paper on Matthew Henson this year, I gave him some Henson memorabilia I had collected: one of the cigarette trading cards printed in 1912 to honor Henson's achievement when he accompanied Peary in the race to reach the North Pole, and a school library book from 1957 that had a whole chapter on Henson.  Now, thanks to my little Nook, it is easy to read Matthew Henson's own 1912 book "A Negro Explorer at the North Pole".
 
Still in the "A's", I've added "Australia Twice Traversed" by Ernest Giles, 1880; "A Summer in Alaska" by Frederick Schwatka, 1893;  "An explorer's adventures in Tibet" by Henry Savage Landor, 1897; "Across the Everglades: A Canoe Journey of Exploration" by Hugh Willoughby, 1898, and "A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains" by Isabella Lucy Bird, 1879.  

When going through the list to download a book, be sure to scroll or page through to get to the free version - sometimes Barnes and Noble will mix in "for sale" versions that require payment.

I am still learning to use it, and still prefer to read an actual printed book when I can, but the e-reader is lightweight, and easy to carry in my purse. Sandy said she loves hers when traveling. I can see why - when I used to fly, I often carried 4 or 5 books in one of my carry-on bags, but today's weight and volume restrictions, that is no longer practical.

Reading free volumes on the Nook is like having a lending library next door that is open 24 hours a day. This is definitely a place where technology has its perks.

Heh! While I waited for Blogger to wake up from its Sunday afternoon nap so I could post this, I saw a similar post at "Mostly Cajun, All American and Opinionated". I'm guessing the time is not far distant when even the most passionate reader will no longer argue with the interior decorator over "merchandising" the book shelves!

Come, Holy Spirit

"All around the circle of human doubt and despair, where men and women are going out to enlighten and uplift and comfort and strengthen their fellow-men under the perplexities and burdens of life, we hear the cry for a gospel which shall be divine, and therefore sovereign and unquestionable and sure and victorious. All through the noblest aspirations and efforts and hopes of our Age of Doubt, we feel the longing, and we hear the demand, for a new inspiration of Christian faith."  

Henry Van Dyke, as quoted in "The Friendly Year", a collection of Van Dyke's writing edited by George Sidney Webster, in 1909.

Art: Nicodemus visiting Jesus by night, painted by Henry Ossawa Tanner. Nicodemus was one of those in power who secretly came to Jesus, and, with Joseph of Aramathea, assisted in our Lord's proper burial. I love Tanner's beautiful paintings. I don't think anyone painted Christian Biblical scenes with the sense of concrete spirituality that Tanner achieved.

Henry Van Dyke and Henry Ossawa Tanner both played roles of ministry in World War I, drawn to serve by their passionate faith, and both were deeply affected by that Great War for Civilization.

How to Prevent Weevils & Pantry Moths & Get Rid of Them Forever

In Home Economics class, they taught us how to sift flour, but never owned up to the real reason sifters were invented: to remove weevils from flour back in the days when throwing it away might have meant starvation. Some people call them flour moths, mealy bugs, Indian Moths, pantry webs... lots of names because good housewives everywhere have been plagued with them for centuries.

I will never forget how horrified I was in my first home when weevils were in my flour. It really freaked me out. That was when I talked to my grandmother to find out what to do. She told me 3 things: (1) Put a bay leaf in everything, (2) store in airtight containers, (3) if you have them, clean thoroughly to get rid of them, then follow (1) & (2).

Getting weevils in grains or moths in the pantry doesn't mean you don't keep a clean house but once you know how to keep them away, you never have to cope with them again. 

(1) Put a bay leaf or two (a dried, culinary Bay Leaf) in each canister or bag. It will not put out any flavor or odor to the food, but will prevent weevils or moths. Mema told me that weevils come in the flour/grain, and that the secret is to keep them from hatching. That prevention is what the bay leaves do, and they really work. Even an airtight container may not prevent weevils, but the comination of a bay leaf in a closed environment well.

(2) Store everything in airtight containers. I like clear containers so I can see what I have. Otherwise I forget. And I like plastic because I'm a klutz, but glass is superior otherwise. Clear plastic, clear glass, or brand-name zip storage bags (like Zip-Loc heavy-duty gallon bags) are all fine. Tins and opague plastic, such as Tupperware, will work great too so long as you can remember how to find things.

I leave things in their original package, and use a container big enough to just drop them down into. The Bay Leaf can then go into the container and doesn't have to be directly in the package of flour or barley. Plus that way I can remember what brand I bought.

Keep birdseed and pet food in airtight containers too. These are notorious and easy to forget. If possible, keep both of these items outside the house, in the garage. Rubbermaid tubs are super for large quantities or for storing several kinds of items in their original packaging.  Airtight & watertight, Rover and the red birds will love you for keeping their food fresh. Birds don't mind the protein from the bugs but still I'm sure they'd rather have the sunflower seeds!

(3) To get rid of a problem with them if you already see pantry moths or weevils, empty the pantry and brush it thoroughly, including the joints, with a stiff brush, then vacuum using the crevace tool or a dust buster- including the joints. If you don't have a vacuum, use a whisk broom or other stiff brush and give it a good brushing on all surfaces.

If it won't hurt the pantry to get it damp, wipe it down after that with soap & water and allow to dry completely. Don't use pine oil or anything with a strong scent as foods might pick it up. Just use soapy water and wring out your washcloth well. No need to rinse - the soap residue will also help keep pests away.

When you put things back, put them into containers with a bay leaf first. Inspect the stuff you took out to be sure it doesn't have weevils before putting it back. Telltale signs are small holes in the packaging, webby
clumps in flour or meal, and of course, weevils themselves.

All of this may sound like a lot of work, but it's not really. Once you get the pantry set up, it's only a matter of keeping it up. So when a new bag of flour comes in, straight away it goes into the flour tub. New boxes of cake mix can go into the same Zip-Loc bag the others came out of. Easy-peasy.

And it doesn't have to cost much at all. Some will be free: recycle containers you'd otherwise throw away. Start one at a time, with flour and grains, as you get a container, put something in it. Any kind of containers that fit your budget are fine. My stuff is stored in pickle jars, Zip-Loc brand bags, mason jars, cannisters that rice came in, Tupperware from garage sales, big cannisters from the dollar store, sugar in a plastic sherbet tub.

Voila! Vintage living at its best: no more bugs, no more waste, and no poisonous pesticides. Just clean, all-natural remedies and a tidy house.

The Texas Declaration of Independence: March 2, 1836

I ran across the Texas Declaration of Independence the other day. It is intriguing to compare (especially in its list of grievances) to the earlier United States Declaration on which it was modeled.

Texas history is one of the most addictive areas of personal study there is. The circumstances that resulted in the citizens of Texas finally declaring independence from Mexico were complex and lengthy. If you want to read further about the Republic of Texas, there is a rich set of original primary source material at The Sons of DeWitt Colony Texas website, along with in-depth discussion:


"The majority of DeWitt Colonists were loyal Mexican Federalists, not slave owners and disfavored the institution, attempted to co-exist with the generally warlike nomadic aboriginal populations of the area, respected and learned from the native Mexican-born Tejanos that preceded them and disagreed with adventurous warlike acts against their adopted government as they built homesteads, ranches, families and a society in the wilderness. 

"When a racist centralist dictatorship [Santa Ana] took control of their adopted country[Mexico], threw out their [Mexico's democratic] Constitution and threatened their lives, property and pursuit of happiness as Mexican citizens, DeWitt colonists resisted actively and became participants in the struggle to re-establish the Federalist Constitution of 1824 and to establish an independent state of Texas within the Republic of Mexico.

"When all hope for the latter was destroyed and with it the hope for the United States of Mexico to become a second democratic and multi-racial Republic in America, DeWitt Colonists along with native-born Tejanos fought and won an independent Republic of Texas which later joined the United States of America."

The Introduction is a good place to start, and the links on the Index page will carry you forward from there.
When you've exhausted that, additional source material can be found at the Texas State Historical Association's Lone Star History Links page. The Lone Star Junction website is another treasure trove of Texas History material.


Now, without further ado, here's the Texas Declaration of Independence from 1836,

When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty and property of the people, from whom its legitimate powers are derived, and for the advancement of whose happiness it was instituted, and so far from being a guarantee for the enjoyment of those inestimable and inalienable rights, becomes an instrument in the hands of evil rulers for their oppression. 

When the Federal Republican Constitution of their country, which they have sworn to support, no longer has a substantial existence, and the whole nature of their government has been forcibly changed, without their consent, from a restricted federative republic, composed of sovereign states, to a consolidated central military despotism, in which every interest is disregarded but that of the army and the priesthood, both the eternal enemies of civil liberty, the ever-ready minions of power, and the usual instruments of tyrants. 

When, long after the spirit of the constitution has departed, moderation is at length so far lost by those in power, that even the semblance of freedom is removed, and the forms themselves of the constitution discontinued, and so far from their petitions and remonstrances being regarded, the agents who bear them are thrown into dungeons, and mercenary armies sent forth to force a new government upon them at the point of the bayonet. 

When, in consequence of such acts of malfeasance and abdication on the part of the government, anarchy prevails, and civil society is dissolved into its original elements. In such a crisis, the first law of nature, the right of self-preservation, the inherent and inalienable rights of the people to appeal to first principles, and take their political affairs into their own hands in extreme cases, enjoins it as a right towards themselves, and a sacred obligation to their posterity, to abolish such government, and create another in its stead, calculated to rescue them from impending dangers, and to secure their future welfare and happiness. 

Nations, as well as individuals, are amenable for their acts to the public opinion of mankind. A statement of a part of our grievances is therefore submitted to an impartial world, in justification of the hazardous but unavoidable step now taken, of severing our political connection with the Mexican people, and assuming an independent attitude among the nations of the earth. 

The Mexican government, by its colonization laws, invited and induced the Anglo-American population of Texas to colonize its wilderness under the pledged faith of a written constitution, that they should continue to enjoy that constitutional liberty and republican government to which they had been habituated in the land of their birth, the United States of America. 

In this expectation they have been cruelly disappointed, inasmuch as the Mexican nation has acquiesced in the late changes made in the government by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, who having overturned the constitution of his country, now offers us the cruel alternative, either to abandon our homes, acquired by so many privations, or submit to the most intolerable of all tyranny, the combined despotism of the sword and the priesthood. 

It has sacrificed our welfare to the state of Coahuila, by which our interests have been continually depressed through a jealous and partial course of legislation, carried on at a far distant seat of government, by a hostile majority, in an unknown tongue, and this too, notwithstanding we have petitioned in the humblest terms for the establishment of a separate state government, and have, in accordance with the provisions of the national constitution, presented to the general Congress a republican constitution, which was, without just cause, contemptuously rejected. 

It incarcerated in a dungeon, for a long time, one of our citizens, for no other cause but a zealous endeavor to procure the acceptance of our constitution, and the establishment of a state government. 

It has failed and refused to secure, on a firm basis, the right of trial by jury, that palladium of civil liberty, and only safe guarantee for the life, liberty, and property of the citizen. 

It has failed to establish any public system of education, although possessed of almost boundless resources, (the public domain,) and although it is an axiom in political science, that unless a people are educated and enlightened, it is idle to expect the continuance of civil liberty, or the capacity for self government. 

It has suffered the military commandants, stationed among us, to exercise arbitrary acts of oppression and tyrrany, thus trampling upon the most sacred rights of the citizens, and rendering the military superior to the civil power. 

It has dissolved, by force of arms, the state Congress of Coahuila and Texas, and obliged our representatives to fly for their lives from the seat of government, thus depriving us of the fundamental political right of representation. 

It has demanded the surrender of a number of our citizens, and ordered military detachments to seize and carry them into the Interior for trial, in contempt of the civil authorities, and in defiance of the laws and the constitution. 

It has made piratical attacks upon our commerce, by commissioning foreign desperadoes, and authorizing them to seize our vessels, and convey the property of our citizens to far distant ports for confiscation. 

It denies us the right of worshipping the Almighty according to the dictates of our own conscience, by the support of a national religion, calculated to promote the temporal interest of its human functionaries, rather than the glory of the true and living God. 

It has demanded us to deliver up our arms, which are essential to our defence, the rightful property of freemen, and formidable only to tyrannical governments. 

It has invaded our country both by sea and by land, with intent to lay waste our territory, and drive us from our homes; and has now a large mercenary army advancing, to carry on against us a war of extermination. 

It has, through its emissaries, incited the merciless savage, with the tomahawk and scalping knife, to massacre the inhabitants of our defenseless frontiers. 

It hath been, during the whole time of our connection with it, the contemptible sport and victim of successive military revolutions, and hath continually exhibited every characteristic of a weak, corrupt, and tyrranical government. 

These, and other grievances, were patiently borne by the people of Texas, untill they reached that point at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. We then took up arms in defence of the national constitution. We appealed to our Mexican brethren for assistance. Our appeal has been made in vain. Though months have elapsed, no sympathetic response has yet been heard from the Interior. We are, therefore, forced to the melancholy conclusion, that the Mexican people have acquiesced in the destruction of their liberty, and the substitution therfor of a military government; that they are unfit to be free, and incapable of self government. 

The necessity of self-preservation, therefore, now decrees our eternal political separation. 

We, therefore, the delegates with plenary powers of the people of Texas, in solemn convention assembled, appealing to a candid world for the necessities of our condition, do hereby resolve and declare, that our political connection with the Mexican nation has forever ended, and that the people of Texas do now constitute a free, Sovereign, and independent republic, and are fully invested with all the rights and attributes which properly belong to independent nations; and, conscious of the rectitude of our intentions, we fearlessly and confidently commit the issue to the decision of the Supreme arbiter of the destinies of nations."

Musing on Walt Whitman, Sarah Palin & American Archetypes

Walt Whitman wrote of America in this excerpt from "Song of the Broad Axe" in Leaves of Grass, the 1871-1872 edition. The Civil War had just ended.

Notice how modern the verse sounds.

After the describing new and independent, self-reliant civilization that was the building of America, after a cadence for the tribulation of civil war and an ode to Europe's bloody history, he began to speak of the future, and the rebuilding of America - and of the resurgence of archetypal American Timber itself:

"The voyage of those who sought a New England and found it—the outset anywhere,
The settlements of the Arkansas, Colorado, Ottawa, Willamette,
The slow progress, the scant fare, the axe, rifle, saddle-bags;
The beauty of all adventurous and daring persons,
The beauty of wood-boys and wood-men, with their clear untrimmed faces,
The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves,
The American contempt for statutes and ceremonies, the boundless impatience of restraint....
...

" What do you think endures?
Do you think the great city endures?
...

"The great city is that which has the greatest man or woman;
If it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city in the whole world.
...

"The shapes arise!
Shapes of the using of axes anyhow and the users and all that neighbors them,
Cutters down of wood, and haulers of it to the Penobscot or Kennebec,
Dwellers in cabins among the Californian mountains, or by the little lakes, or on the Columbia,
Dwellers south on the banks of the Gila or Rio Grande - friendly gatherings, the characters and fun,
Dwellers up north in Minnesota and by the Yellowstone river— dwellers on coasts and off coasts,
Seal-fishers, whalers, arctic seamen breaking passages through the ice.
...

"The shapes arise!
Shapes of factories, arsenals, foundries, markets;
Shapes of the two-threaded tracks of railroads;
Shapes of the sleepers of bridges, vast frameworks, girders, arches;
Shapes of the fleets of barges, tows, lake and canal craft, river craft.

"The shapes arise!
Shapes of doors giving many exits and entrances;
The door passing the dissevered friend, flushed and in haste;
The door that admits good news and bad news;
The door whence the son left home, confident and puffed up;
The door he entered again from a long and scandalous absence, diseased, broken down, without innocence, without means.

"Her shape arises,
She, less guarded than ever, yet more guarded than ever;
The gross and soil'd she moves among do not make her gross and soiled;
She knows the thoughts as she passes—nothing is concealed from her;
She is none the less considerate or friendly therefore;
She is the best beloved, it is without exception, she has no reason to fear, and she does not fear.
Oaths, quarrels, hiccupped songs, smutty expressions, are idle to her as she passes;
She is silent—she is possess'd of herself—they do not offend her;
She receives them as the laws of nature receive them — she is strong,
She too is a law of nature—there is no law stronger than she is.

"The main shapes arise!
Shapes of Democracy, total—result of centuries;
Shapes, ever projecting other shapes;
Shapes of turbulent manly cities;
Shapes of the friends and home-givers of the whole earth,
Shapes bracing the earth, and braced with the whole earth. "

I ran across this when trying to whittle down the bookshelves. Whitman personified the self-possessed naivete of the "can-do" American as the mythic mother, the queen that shares democracy with abandon: the Lady Liberty herself.

Walt Whitman would have loved Sarah Palin! The passionately patriotic "poet of the Civil War" was an expansive feminist of the old school:

"Where women walk in public processions in the streets, the same as the men,
Where they enter the public assembly and take places the same as the men"

He'd have loved her plain speaking, her artless assumption of her true place within our common life, her unabashed recognition of the unique magnificence that is America.

Walt would have understood why Sarah Palin resonates so powerfully with so many Americans: not because she is like us or stronger or braver or wiser (although she is all of those things), but because she reminds us all that we are too - that our American heritage is to be the archetype our own selves: this is who we are.

She's proved it. And if she can do it, we can do it too. We need not cast about for heroes: they are here in our own hearts.

What it means to be American is to be people who look within and find the shape of the leader that is in each of us. And then we go forward into a confident and egalitarian future for us all. That's the direction Sarah points toward, that's the continuing frontier that America will always win.

Yes, I think Walt would be very proud that America is still being shaped today by the likes of Sarah Palin.

Part Two: 18th Century Business Women in Publishing: Limited Only By 20th Century Interpretation

We like to recognize "firsts", but so often that's the least interesting part of the story. Mary Katherine Goddard's career is most fascinating to me because it was neither unusual nor controversial in its time. In fact she reflects the ordinariness of a successful business woman in the 18th century, when women published 16 newspapers in the colonies - nearly a quarter of the 78 papers put out each week.

And that is only the women who owned the presses: how many more were employed in all these various shops, as unheralded as the also forgotten men who worked beside them?

Printing was actually a rather common occupation for a woman in the 17th and 18th (and 19th) Centuries. So common that it was little remarked. In 1638, Elizabeth Glover (who later married Harvard's first president) founded the first press in Massachusetts. Her Cambridge Press published the famous "Bay Psalm Book", the first book printed in the colonies.

A publishing dynasty began in 1738 when Elizabeth Timothy took over publication of the South Carolina Gazette as Benjamin Franklin's partner, then left the press to her son who operated it until his death, when he was succeeded by his wife Ann. Cornelia Bradford succeeded her husband as publisher of Philadelphia's American Weekly Mercury in 1742.

Anne Catherine Hoff Green continued the family publishing business in Anapolis after she was widowed in 1767, and became the official printer for the Maryland General Assembly in her own name. Her business was later renamed "Anne Catherine Green & Son, Printers", but she retained control of the reins and they worked for her. Two of her sons and her granson followed her in earning their livelihood as printers.

Following her husband's death in 1773, Clementina Rind ran the Williamsburg Virginia Gazette and was named official printer of Virginia.

Again and again we hear feminists say these women "don't count" because they were only in business by default through their husbands or fathers. They are excluded from lists of Firsts and from lists of accomplished women.

These stories do not show what they are assumed to by people who fail to understand the substance of legal marriage in a predominently Christian or Jewish society as a full joining of male and female into a single social and economic entity as well as a spiritual and physical one. In older days, widows were frequently elected to political positions, including Governor, in
their own right, by a citizenry that fundamentally credited women as full partners in all the achievements of the marriage, recognizing either party's success as stemming from a united purpose.

Is that an old fashioned way of looking at things?

Strangely, even this common occurance in our earlier history of electing women as Governors is poo-poo'ed. Texas tied with Wyoming, both electing women as governors on 1924 - the same year than New Mexico's Hispanic Woman Secretary of State served as interim governor of New Mexico.

These stories are ignored, discounted, and actively hidden by agenda-driven feminists and progressive writers & academics, playing with semantics. One wonders why they refuse to admit to those early accomplishments, and even more why they dually ignore similar husband/wife mutual interests today.

Why? It does not lessen any person's own accomplishment to admit that others have also achieved a position. It does not make the one greater to ignore history and accuracy in reporting.

Did anyone blink when Kimora Lee Simmons took over as CEO of Phat after her ex-husband & company founder Russell Simmons stepped aside? Do people say her achievements "don't count" because her husband started the business or because they ran it as partners? No? Of course not - it would be outrageous to apply that logic. It is just as outrageous to discount the talent and earned prominence of other wives in earlier eras.

Consider how the legacy of Mrs. Coretta Scott King was her own yet inextricably joined with that of her husband, Dr Martin Luther King.

Or the appointment of Missouri First Lady Jean Caranhan, widow of Governor Mel Carnahan, to the US Senate in 2001 in the place of her husband who had passed away during the campaign for Senator and been elected postumously. Had Hilary Clinton been more focused on winning the nomination and less intent on proving she was not running as Bill's wife, she'd be our President today.

Margaret Chase Smith still holds the record as the longest serving, most successful female US senator - and she was originally elected as the widow of the Congressman upon his death.

Does anyone discount the achievements (or controversies) of Indira Gandhi because she succeeded her father Jarawalal Nehru as Prime Minister of India? Or claim that Benazir Bhutto was twice elected Prime Minister of Pakistan only because her father had held the office before her?

Just so, these women in Colonial times were not mere tokens thrown by chance tragedy into business, struggling ineffectually against an adversarial society. Far from it. The original sources show they were accepted without question and with full confidence in their capacity to run a profitable business and meet the exacting needs of their clients.




Photo: From an 1865 issue of Harper's Weekly "The Magazine of Civilization", image of workers (both women and men) in a large commercial printing operation.

Other articles in the theme:

Read Part 1 - 18th Century Equal Opportunity & Success: Some Women Printers in Colonial America

Read - Working Women in Earlier America: Not so Uncommon After All

The Great Horace Greeley on Funding Education

Horace Greeley on having only the education one's parents can afford:

"The last Summer that we lived in New Hampshire, an offer was made by the leading men of our neighborhood to send me to Phillips Academy at Exeter, and thence to college, — the expense being so defrayed that no part of it should fall on my parents. They listened thoughtfully to the proposal, briefly deliberated, then firmly, though gratefully, declined it; saying that they would give their children the best education they could afford, and there stop. I do not remember that I had then any decided opinion or wish in the premises ; but I now have; and, from the bottom of my heart, I thank my parents for their wise and manly decision. Much as I have needed a fuller, better -education, I rejoice that I am indebted for schooling to none but those of whom I had a right to ask and expect it."

Horace Greeley "Reflections of a Busy Life" 1868, page 47