And We Shall March

Hey, That's My Spoon

I have this spoon! Or rather, I have a repro of it the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society people gave me many moons ago after an amazing two days spent with their researchers in their facility when they were in the middle of restoring the artifacts from the Henrietta Marie. The woman who was my primary handler was really sweet. Every once in a while when I'd burst into tears and drop my notebook, she'd pick it up, guide my blinded self to a chair, get me some water and explain how that sort of thing happened *all the time*, including among staffers when they first started working on this project. I was supposed to dive down to the site that week but wouldn't you know I came down with an ear infection? So I had to go back during the next year's vacation to do the dive, though due to scheduling I didn't do that dive with the society folks.

Here's another take on the HM. And another, from whence I swiped the pic.

I keep the spoon on the shelf above my writing desk. As soon as I can figure out how to mount my shield/assegai/knobkerrie on the wall, I'm going to put the spoon in a shadowbox with a little bit of the sand from the HM site, and bolt it on the wall next to the Zulu set.

Somebody Out There Wants To Know About This (Not Actually) New Book Collecting Stories Of The Roma. Not 'Somebody' In A General Sense, But A SPECIFIC Somebody.

Update! 1/17: The correct person has been located, and she already has the book. I can't believe that worked..

I just wish I could remember who it was. The book is called The Roads of the Roma. It popped up on the Endicott Studio blog last week but I didn't see it until Sunday night while doing the weekly check in over there.

I don't think this is somebody I know personally because the most likely suspects all said they have no idea what the hell I'm talking about. So it's probably somebody who came in over the ether. It *could* be somebody I chatted up at one of the bookstores I routinely haunt, but I doubt it. One thing about BGF Central is I find Moiself increasingly dealing with people I don't actually know. As I use the internet(s) more as a conduit for information rather than as a social networking outlet, it takes a while for these folks to exist in my head as fully formed beings. (Nothing personal...I'm just not of the tech generation.) But because of the impressionistic way my mind works, I know this person is not going to like that Endicott used the term 'gypsy' . Or rather, I feel it. And this person is really really seriously interested in Roma culture to the point where they did something in pursuit of that interest which had me thinking wow, that's bad ass. Most importantly this person did not irritate me when we talked, which is probably the main reason I remember that You, whoever You are, might want to know about this book.

Anywho, I give up trying to figure it out. Time for a different approach.

So! You! Out there! Who talked to me about the Roma sometime in the not so recent past! Does that sound like You? If so, then go to the Endicott Studios blog and read a little bit about this (not actually) new book to see if it's useful to you. (Unless you already know about it, in which case never mind. Take a look at the Endicott post anyway, as it mentions many books you may want to know about. At least six of them I've never heard of and shall probably add them to the For A Payday To Be Named Later list.) Also, if you don't already know about Endicott bookmark it. Someone with a Roma jones might vibe to much of the other stuff they talk about there.

Gonna push back a couple of posts and let this sit for an extra day. I wonder if this will work.

She Is Her Own Twin

"In her blood, she was one person, but in other tissues, she had evidence of being a fusion of two individuals," Uhl said.

It's a rare condition called chimerism, with only 30 documented cases worldwide. In Greek mythology, "chimera" means a monster: part goat, part lion, part snake.

In human biology, a chimera is an organism with at least two genetically distinct types of cells — or, in other words, someone meant to be a twin. But while in the mother's womb, two fertilized eggs fuse, becoming one fetus that carries two distinct genetic codes — two separate strands of DNA.


The twin is invisible, but for chimeras the twin lives microscopically inside the body as DNA.

When Uhl told Keegan she was her own twin, Keegan said she was shocked. "You wouldn't imagine that that could even be possible."

Digital Libraries!

UC libraries partner with Google to digitize books
UC becomes the newest partner in the Google books library project

The University of California libraries today (Wednesday) announced their partnership with Google to digitize books from the libraries' collections. UC becomes the latest partner in the Google Books Library Project, which was launched in December 2004 to digitize books drawn from the libraries of the University of Michigan, Harvard University, Stanford University, Oxford University, and the New York Public Library.

The digitized books will be searchable through Google Book Search. Google respects copyright law and has specifically designed Book Search to comply with it. Anyone will be able to freely view, browse and read UC's public domain books, including many of the treasures in the libraries' historic and special collections.

It looks like several major university libraries are in on this. Score!

"His evil genius was upon him."

Within the past few weeks, the internet(s)  gifted me with a book from 1881 which is hugely fat with Morgan's Raid. It contains many things I didn't  know, fleshes out details I'd only seen brought up in passing elsewhere, and confirms a couple of facts that have always been slippery. It also tells me exactly how much money that man cost the state when it was all over (exclusive of transport and subsistence, of course).

*** Zulu dance of victory ***

I'm not allowed to continue reading this, now! This is for Later! I really should put it down! If I keep reading this and don't put it down, Goonan is going to kick my ass!! Wait ... what's this about he had scouted out the fords, ahead of time? WEEKS ahead of time?? That would mean that even as he told Bragg "yes, suh" he was well on his way toward designing the plan he REALLY planned to execute. Evil genius indeed.

No, really. I have to put it down, now. I'm gonna...soon...

(Post title is from a line in the book.)

Black Maestro: The Epic Life of an American Legend (about Jimmy Winkfield, pioneering jockey)

Excuse this brief interlude. Cannot lose this to the morass of links on the harddrive. Came across a small factoid when researching something unrelated last year, sniffed around, got a tip, hunted more and just now discovered this fascinating thing I must be able to easily snag again. Wowie. That's how the universe works.

Joe Drape's Black Maestro: The Epic Life of an American Legend is the biography of a black jockey named Jimmy Winkfield, who was born in 1882, four years after the first black heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson, a far more influential and famous athlete. He shared with Johnson the fact that he was born into a generation that had no firsthand experience of slavery, a generation white southerners of the day called New Negroes, a potentially troublesome lot. Winkfield was born in Chilesburg, Kentucky, in the heart of Bluegrass Country, the youngest of seventeen children. His parents died when he was very young, although the causes and even the dates of their deaths are unclear. Drape tells us Jimmy "was alone. . . . [He] was estranged from his siblings." So, as we are told, "he orphaned himself" to horses. Why he wasn't reared by his siblings and why they were estranged is uncertain. Like Topsy, one supposes, he just grew. The difficulty of reconstructing Winkfield's childhood and familial relationships is part of the problem with this biography; Winkfield seems, in many respects, an impenetrable subject, much more so than some of his black contemporaries like Johnson and bicyclist Major Taylor.

Winkfield began riding as a teenager and soon developed into a first-rate jockey, indeed, an extraordinary one with a great feel for horses. He traveled the thoroughbred circuit, which included New Orleans, Chicago, and Saratoga Springs, NY. It was in the North that he faced his greatest difficulty, as the white jockeys, particularly the Irish, moved violently and relentlessly to kick blacks off the horses. Race wars were fought on the tracks, sometimes resulting in serious injury. In this instance, it was the white southerners who were forced to acquiesce to the demands of the northern white jockeys and horse-racing moguls like August Belmont Jr. who wanted blacks out of the jockey business. They succeeded, but not before Winkfield won the Kentucky Derby, America's most storied race (though at the time not its richest one), in 1901 and 1902. (Black riders won twelve of the first twenty-two Derbies, which was first run in 1875.)

Pre-loaded CCI geekery continues on the morn.

I Think What He's Talking About Are Theistic Rationalists..

...but I'm not entirely sure as I can be slow, particularly when I'm tired and wandering in a realm beyond my normal zone of obsession. While in catching up mode this week, I came across this story about a recent speech given by the judge in the Dover case.

"The founders believed that true religion was not something handed down by a church or contained in a Bible, but was to be found through free, rational inquiry," said Jones, who was thrust into the national spotlight by last year's court fight over the teaching of evolution in the Dover school district.

"This core set of beliefs led the founders, who constantly engaged and questioned things, to secure their idea of religious freedom by barring any alliance between church and state."

I'd like to find the full text of his speech if for no other reason that I can send it on to He Who Knows More Than I and see if his reaction is you call THAT a description of theistic rationalists? HA!!! I'LL give you a description of theistic rationalists!!! And then he'll do so as I take notes to guide me through my later research.

This gets the research tag because it dovetails with stuff I'm learning about the persecution of Baptists in the colonies during slavery times which I stumbled across while researching for another project. I have much more to track down, but just the wee bit I've learned so far (which has my jaw on the floor) slots into  random musings that flare in my head at night whenever I come across yet another false claim by the fundamentalist Christian religious block that Everybody Is Out To Get Them.  Just as Blackitude Urban Legends about the origin of AIDS and the black night trains track back to true incidents we as a group remember that the mainstream culture does not, I wonder if the intra-cultural memory of what appears to have been a vicious campaign against fundies in the past is partial fuel to their current wave of paranoia-based activism?

I shall mull. I also think I need to supplement diving through scholar archives by hunting down a preacher man or four to chat with...

She Tried To Burn Her Master's House Down While He Was In It

A few days ago I was transferring research files from one format to another, and came across these two pictures I forgot I had.

This is Aunt Jonas, a former slave in Alabama, picture taken in 1915. She tried to burn the house of her master down while he was in it. All anyone ever says about her is she despised the man, and he KNEW she was trying to get him. That's all I've been able to find out about her.

I think She tried to burn down her master's house NEEDS to show up in my NYT obit down the road.

And on the other end of the spectrum, this is Murriah Flood, a former slave on the Faunsdale Plantation, where she was born. She relocated to Washington, D.C. with her husband after the Civil War, but then left him to return to Faunsdale. From what I have been able to piece together (and to hedge, it might not be completely accurate, she stayed on the plantation where she was once a slave for the rest of her life, becoming the nanny to the great-grandchildren of the woman who was her mistress during slavery times.

Funny old world.

Looky At What I Found!!!

Last night I found the architectural drawings for the mission that was the template for the design of St. Peter's Mission in Cascade. I also found a sketch of the site made by the priest who established the original mission. What's interesting about that tidbit is I never realized the Salish converts lived ON the mission grounds. I have them around, but I don't really get into where they live. Happily, this new information does not impact my completed script. Which is great because I'm not rewriting one more goddamned thing, swear to fuckin' god. Plus, I have plausible deniability; Amadeus' mission was smaller than this guy's, even though her mission did have 400 chickens. Also, his  mission targeted the Crows while hers was primarily Salish and Blackfeet, so maybe there is a difference in the cultural/comfort level approach between the tribal groups. Research revealed constant references to Salish children being around all the time at St. Peter's but not so much entire family groups. Yes, it ran a school, but that omission of Salish adults is odd to me, since the main point of the place was to convert the heathens. It *could* be because St. Peter's was run by women, so adult males wouldn't be allowed to live on the site. Or it *could* be because family groups living on site was a given, to the point where the primary source documents wouldn't see need to mention it. Or it *could* be because the Salish lived off site in their own communities, and only came in for the church stuff and schooling of their children. I have no idea. It's a level of detail I didn't actually need for any of the fictional Mary depictions immediately on deck, but nailing that down is on the list of things for the day I start in on the straight-up factual Mary & Amadeus book. (That one is going to be all text. And it'll probably be 10 years from now before I'm cleared up enough to get to it.)

Anyway, this discovery just gives Bruno more to work with, visually. I'm gonna leave that call up to him. If he wants to put Salish housing on the site, that's fine. If not, that's fine, too. We're not doing a documentary.

Thing is? This is a total fluke. I was just screwing around on the Library of Congress site because it's more fun than the hell of formatting the script. (For every hour of formatting, I need 1/2 hour of Doing ANYTHING Else.)

I'm wondering if it would be interesting to put up a little bit about the Glory And Tragedy of Research, specifically how it relates to this project. As I said, we're not doing a documentary, we're doing a story about people. While there is fact at the foundation of our story, there's a whole bunch of fiction on top of that fact. Additionally, when it comes to the real lives of Mary and Amadeus, "fact" is a nebulous and shifting concept.

Plus, I just learned that my buddy Didi is a baseball freak! If I talk about some of these research things I can go into what I learned about baseball of this period and place and why pretty much none of it is in the book. He might find that interesting.

But mostly, I'm thinking of talking about this sort of stuff because I am a research fiend. I love researching stuff/learning new things and talking about it. You know? I'll do it. New tag!

Okay. Shutting up, now. Pictures below. Just two of them, though as they're kinda big.