Category: History

Brief narratives about people and events in the American past.

Oklahoma!

…became a state on this date in 1907. It was the 46th state to enter the Union.

The official song and anthem of the State of Oklahoma is “Oklahoma,” composed and written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. Oddly enough, the song, arguably the best “state song” of them all, wasn’t mentioned when we tried to list a song for each state here last month.

Brand new state, Brand new state, gonna treat you great!
Gonna give you barley, carrots and pertaters,
Pasture fer the cattle, Spinach and Termayters!
Flowers on the prairie where the June bugs zoom,
Plen’y of air and plen’y of room,
Plen’y of room to swing a rope!
Plen’y of heart and plen’y of hope!
Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain,
And the wavin’ wheat can sure smell sweet
When the wind comes right behind the rain.
Oklahoma, ev’ry night my honey lamb and I
Sit alone and talk and watch a hawk makin’ lazy circles in the sky.
We know we belong to the land
And the land we belong to is grand!
And when we say – Yeeow! Ayipioeeay!
We’re only sayin’ You’re doin’ fine, Oklahoma! Oklahoma – O.K.

Startup: Albuquerque and the Personal Computer Revolution

Born from Paul Allens desire to give back to the city where he and Bill Gates spent their early years with Microsoft, STARTUP opens Nov. 18 to the general public, and offers countless items from Allens own collection. Dozens of displays take the visitor on a tour from the computer eras dawn to the present day.

Its relics carry a certain mystic power, starting with the entrance hallways pre-revolutionary murmurs. There is a Frieden S10 calculator from the 1930s. IBM 700 Series vacuum tubes sit before an ancient Big Blue ad describing them as “fingers you can count on.” A television plays a public information movie about “machines that can practically think,” a self-parodying artifact of the 1950s. Behind a glass screen stands a UNIVAC 1 mainframes control desk. Upon it is an OQO, nearly invisible amid the electromechanical monoliths myriad of buttons of lights.

“Its educating people about history,” Aydelott said. “When I started university, I was using punchcards. When I left I was using an Apple.”

Gear Factor: Wired

And where is the city Paul Allen and Bill Gates spent their “early years”? Why it’s Albuquerque — and Startup is in our very own New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.

[As elsewhere, the apostrophe key appears not to work at Gear Factor.]

The first Dodge

… was completed on this date in 1914. When asked why the Dodge Brothers wanted to build their own car, John Dodge replied, “Just think of all the Ford owners who will someday want an automobile.”

Some background from This Day in History from the History Channel:

On this day, John and Horace Dodge completed their first Dodge vehicle, a car informally known as “Old Betsy.” The same day, the Dodge brothers gave “Old Betsy” a quick test drive through the streets of Detroit, Michigan, and the vehicle was shipped to a buyer in Tennessee. John and Horace, who began their business career as bicycle manufacturers in 1897, first entered the automotive industry as auto parts manufacturers in 1901. They built engines for Ransom Olds and Henry Ford among others, and in 1910 the Dodge Brothers Company was the largest parts-manufacturing firm in the United States. In 1914, the intrepid brothers founded the new Dodge Brothers Motor Car Company, and began work on their first complete automobile at their Hamtramck factory. Dodge vehicles became known for their quality and sturdiness, and by 1919, the Dodge brothers were among the richest men in America. In early 1920, just as he was completing work on his 110-room mansion on the Grosse Point waterfront in Michigan, John fell ill from respiratory problems and died. Horace, who also suffered from chronic lung problems, died from pneumonia in December of the same year. The company was later sold to a New York bank, and in 1928, the Chrysler Corporation bought the Dodge name, its factories, and the large network of Dodge car dealers.

NewMexiKen applied for a job at Dodge Main in Hamtramck in 1965 or 1966, but ended up in an electrical equipment factory nearby. Dodge Main was the original Dodge factory, ultimately demolished in 1980. Though I heard that work at Dodge Main was particularly tough and dirty I always thought it would have been cool to build cars, even if only for a summer. Or, more likely, especially if only for a summer.

Semper Fi

Today is the 231th anniversary of the founding of the United States Marine Corps.

A colleague — a Marine — at the U.S. Department of State brought in a large birthday cake every November 10th. Before we could have cake we all had to sing “The Marine Hymn.” A lot of us would have honored the marines even without the cake.

By the neck until dead

It was on this date in 1865 that Andersonville prison commander Henry Wirz was hanged. The Library of Congress tells us:

Henry Wirz, former commander of the infamous Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia, was hanged on November 10, 1865 in Washington, D.C. Swiss-born Wirz was assigned to the command at Andersonville on March 27, 1864. When arrested on May 7, 1865, he was the only remaining member of the Confederate staff at the prison. Brigadier General John Winder, commander of Confederate prisons east of the Mississippi and Wirz’s superior at Andersonville, died of a heart attack the previous February.

A military tribunal tried Wirz on charges of conspiring with Jefferson Davis to “injure the health and destroy the lives of soldiers in the military service of the United States.” Several individual acts of cruelty to Union prisoners were also alleged. Caught in the unfortunate position of answering for all of the misery that was Andersonville, he stood little chance of a fair trial. After two months of testimony rife with inconsistencies, Wirz was convicted on all counts and sentenced to death.

View a photograph taken just before the hanging and another just after the trap was sprung.

The Edmund Fitzgerald

… went down off Whitefish Bay, Lake Superior, on this date 31 years ago.

The Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald
©1976 by Gordon Lightfoot and Moose Music, Ltd.

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
of the big lake they called “Gitche Gumee.”
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
when the skies of November turn gloomy.
With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more
than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty,
that good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
when the “Gales of November” came early.

The ship was the pride of the American side
coming back from some mill in Wisconsin.
As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most
with a crew and good captain well seasoned,
concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms
when they left fully loaded for Cleveland.
And later that night when the ship’s bell rang,
could it be the north wind they’d been feelin’?

The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound
and a wave broke over the railing.
And ev’ry man knew, as the captain did too
’twas the witch of November come stealin’.
The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait
when the Gales of November came slashin’.
When afternoon came it was freezin’ rain
in the face of a hurricane west wind.

When suppertime came the old cook came on deck sayin’.
“Fellas, it’s too rough t’feed ya.”
At seven P.M. a main hatchway caved in; he said,
“Fellas, it’s bin good t’know ya!”
The captain wired in he had water comin’ in
and the good ship and crew was in peril.
And later that night when ‘is lights went outta sight
came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Does any one know where the love of God goes
when the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The searchers all say they’d have made Whitefish Bay
if they’d put fifteen more miles behind ‘er.
They might have split up or they might have capsized;
they may have broke deep and took water.
And all that remains is the faces and the names
of the wives and the sons and the daughters.

Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
in the rooms of her ice-water mansion.
Old Michigan steams like a young man’s dreams;
the islands and bays are for sportsmen.
And farther below Lake Ontario
takes in what Lake Erie can send her,
And the iron boats go as the mariners all know
with the Gales of November remembered.

In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed,
in the “Maritime Sailors’ Cathedral.”
The church bell chimed ’til it rang twenty-nine times
for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
of the big lake they call “Gitche Gumee.”
“Superior,” they said, “never gives up her dead
when the gales of November come early!”

The ship was thirty-nine feet tall, seventy-five feet wide, and 729 feet long.

Lightfoot’s lyrics had one error — the load was bound for Detroit, not Cleveland.

There were waves as high as 30 feet that night; so high they were picked up on radar.

The Edmund Fitzgerald was only 17 miles from safe haven (Whitefish Point).

The captain and a crew of 28 were lost.

Except for All Those Other Guys

Jill, official oldest daughter of NewMexiKen, called amused that in his concession speech defeated U.S. Senator George Allen thanked Senator John Warner and referred to him as “Virginia’s greatest ever.”

Well, except for George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, James Madison, Meriwether Lewis, John Marshall, James Monroe, Woodrow Wilson, and Tiki and Ronde Barber.

Don’t know much about history

From The New Criterion:

A college education—that is, a college degree: education needn’t come into the picture—can cost upwards of $200,000 these days. The average student leaves the old ivy-covered halls almost $20,000 in debt. And what do they get for their pains? Not a lot. That, anyway, is the sobering message of The Coming Crisis in Citizenship: Higher Education’s Failure to Teach America’s History and Institutions, a new study undertaken by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s National Civic Literary Board and the University of Connecticut’s Department of Public Policy. The ambitious study—its findings are available online at this web address: http://www.americancivicliteracy.org—canvassed more than 14,000 college freshmen and seniors about their knowledge of American history and political institutions. Some of the depressing highlights: Seniors scored 1.5 percent higher on average than freshmen. In other words, four years and a couple hundred grand doesn’t buy much knowledge of American history. If the survey had been administered as an examination, seniors would fail with an average score of 53.2 percent The more elite institutions do not perform better than their less prestigious cousins—far from it. The report indicates that at Brown, Georgetown, and Yale (among other elite institutions), seniors emerge from their studies knowing less about American history and foreign affairs than freshmen.

Link via dangerousmeta!

What Abraham Lincoln Teaches Us about Email

On election day, here’s one more thing we can learn from Abraham Lincoln. An excerpt:

When he used an electronic message Lincoln maximized its impact by using carefully chosen words. His August 1864 telegram to General Grant, “Hold on with a bull-dog grip, and chew and choke” could not have been more explicitly expressed. Emails, on the other hand, have tended to become the communications equivalent of casual Fridays, substituting comfort and ease for discipline and rigor.

Good stuff.

The more things change, the more they remain the same

One hundred years ago today the citizens of New Mexico and Arizona voted on whether to join the Union as one state.

The Territory of New Mexico (1850) had originally included Arizona; Arizona Territory was split off in 1863. (The original boundary proposal would have split the two north (New Mexico) and south (Arizona), not east and west as it turned out.) New Mexico was 50 percent Spanish-speaking; Arizona’s Indian and Mexican-American population was less than 20 percent.

In 1906, congress passed a bill stipulating one state for the two territories, but the act stated that the voters of either territory could veto joint statehood. The Arizona legislature passed a resolution of protest; combining the territories in one state “would subject us to the domination of another commonwealth of different traditions, customs and aspirations.” A “Protest Against Union of Arizona with New Mexico” presented to Congress early in 1906 stated:

[T]he decided racial difference between the people of New Mexico, who are not only different in race and largely in language, but have entirely different customs, laws and ideals and would have but little prospect of successful amalgamation … [and] the objection of the people of Arizona, 95 percent of whom are Americans, to the probability of the control of public affairs by people of a different race, many of whom do not speak the English language, and who outnumber the people of Arizona two to one.

Joint statehood won in New Mexico, 26,195 to 14,735. It lost in Arizona, 16,265 to 3,141.

New Mexico entered the Union on January 6, 1912 (47th state), Arizona on February 14, 1912 (48th).

Black Tuesday of 1929

Today is the anniversary of Black Tuesday, the stock market crash in 1929 that signaled the beginning of the worst economic collapse in the history of the modern industrial world. Few people saw it coming. The stock market had been booming throughout the 1920s. Brokerage houses had been springing up all over the country, to take advantage of everyone’s interest in investment. There were stories about barbers and messenger boys who’d gotten rich off of overheard stock tips. Americans who ordinarily couldn’t afford to invest their money were taking out loans to buy stock so they wouldn’t miss out.

The stock market didn’t do so well in September of 1929, but nobody really noticed anything was wrong until October 23, when 2.6 million shares were sold in the closing hour of trading. It looked as though the selling would continue on Thursday, October 24, but a group of the most influential American bankers in the country pooled their money and began to buy up the declining stocks, supporting the market. By the end of that day it seemed like everything would be all right.

But on this day in 1929, the bottom fell out of the market. Three million shares were sold in the first half-hour. Stock prices fell so fast that by the end of the day there were shares in many companies that no one would buy at any price. The stocks had lost their entire value.

The front-page story in The New York Times on this day read, “Wall Street was a street of vanished hopes, of curiously silent apprehension and of a sort of paralyzed hypnosis. … Men and women crowded the brokerage offices, even those who have been long since wiped out, and followed the figures on the tape. Little groups gathered here and there to discuss the fall in prices in hushed and awed tones.”

It was the most disastrous trading day in the stock market’s history. The stock market lost $30 billion dollars, more than a third of its value, in the next two weeks.

— The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media

Blood and Thunder

Pulitizer Prize-winning novelist M. Scott Momaday has written a review of Hampton Sides’s Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West. Momaday’s summary paragraph:

“Blood and Thunder” is a full-blown history, and Sides does every part of it justice. Five years ago he set out to write a book on the removal of the Navajos from Canyon de Chelly and their Long Walk to the Bosque Redondo, hundreds of miles from their homeland, where they were held as prisoners of war. But in the course of his research a much larger story unfolded, the story of the opening of the West, from the heyday of the mountain men in the early 1800’s to the clash of three cultures, as the newcomers from the East encountered the ancient Puebloans and the established Hispanic communities in what is now New Mexico, to the Civil War in the West and its aftermath — and all of it is full of blood and thunder, the realities and the caricatures of conquest. By telling this story, Sides fills a conspicuous void in the history of the American West.

NewMexiKen began reading the book the other day and, so far, it’s been very good — excellent reading. For whatever reasons, Sides jumps around in the chronology but, while unusual for a narrative history, it seems to work. It has the effect of seeming to move the story along more rapidly.

I’d noted three passages I found particularly amusing, informative, or resonant:

[S]tories like the one about the mountain valley in Wyoming that was so big it took an echo eight hours to return, so that a man bedding down for the night could confidently shout “Git up!” and know that he would rise in the morning to his own wake-up call.

As a baby in his cradleboard, Narbona [a Navajo leader] probably was not called anything at all, for Navajos, who tended to view early infanthood as an extension of gestation, did not usually give names to their children until specific personal characteristics began to show themselves—Hairy Face, Slim Girl, No Neck, Little Man Won’t Do As He’s Told. Although Navajo parents followed few hard rules about how to name their children, it was generally agreed that the watershed moment when a baby could definitively be said to have passed from infanthood into something more fully human was the child’s “first spontaneous laugh.” First laughter was an occasion for much celebration, and it was the time when many Navajos held naming ceremonies for their young; it is likely that this is when Narbona received his original “war name,” whatever it might have been.

Perhaps to dignify the nakedness of Polk’s land lust, the American citizenry had got itself whipped into an idealistic frenzy, believing with an almost religious assurance that its republican form of government and its constitutional freedoms should extend to the benighted reaches of the continent held by Mexico, which, with its feudal customs and Popish superstitions, stood squarely in the way of progress. To conquer Mexico, in other words, would be to do it a favor.

The Indispensable Founding Father

Washington’s importance has been so beyond question that, as one exhibition here shows, 155 towns and counties, 740 schools and 26 mountains in the United States are named after Washington.

But, James C. Rees, the institution’s executive director, said in an interview here, less is being taught about Washington in schools these days, and fewer visitors to Mount Vernon arrive with an understanding of his achievements. So after long planning and annual consultations with a panel of scholars, the expansion was designed to reaffirm his importance, elucidate his character and dramatize his life.

This is not an easy task: there really is a mystery about Washington in a way there is not with other founding fathers. The historian Joseph J. Ellis said that Benjamin Franklin was wiser, Alexander Hamilton more brilliant, John Adams better read, Thomas Jefferson more intellectually sophisticated and James Madison more politically astute, yet each thought Washington his “unquestioned superior.” Why?

From an excellent review of the extraordinary new exhibits at Mount Vernon.

Their Political Tombstone

Yesterday’s New York Times had an op-ed page piece on the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

Today, some 3,000 tourists will jam the streets of Tombstone to watch re-enactments of the event, aiming to come into contact with a piece of distant American history and encounter a time completely separate from our own. What’s odd about this, however, is that the social and political issues that created the context for the gunfight remain alive, and for the most part unresolved, in the American West today.

… federal versus local law jurisdiction
… gun control
… illegal immigration

Most Influential Americans Redux

For “The Anatomy of Influence,” a forthcoming feature in our December issue, we asked ten prominent historians—Joyce Appleby, H. W. Brands, Robert Dallek, Ellen Fitzpatrick, Doris Kearns Goodwin, John Steele Gordon, David M. Kennedy, Walter McDougall, Mark Noll, and Gordon Wood—to each pick and rank the 100 most influential Americans throughout history. We then tabulated their lists to come up with an Atlantic top 100, which will be published in the December issue.

We invite readers to submit their guesses as to who ended up as the top ten names on our combined list. Participants who correctly guess all ten will receive a selection of books by the panel of historians. Entries must be received by Thursday, November 2.

The Atlantic Online | Contest

The Gunfight at the OK Corral

Tombstone, Arizona, now a sleepy retirement community of 1,500 trying to milk its history, was a silver boom town of 10,000 in the early 1880s. Lawlessness was rampant — so much so that martial law was threatened by President Arthur in 1882.

Among the early residents were the Earp brothers, James, Virgil, Wyatt, Morgan, and Warren (ages 40 to 25 respectively in 1881). The Earps were, more or less, itinerant lawmen, politicians, security guards, and gamblers. By 1881, Virgil and Wyatt were established in Tombstone, seeking political office and running gaming tables. When the town marshal disappeared, Virgil Earp was appointed to the job.

The Clantons, father N.H. “Old Man,” and sons Ike, Phin, and Billy, were part of the town rowdy cowboy crowd, probably rustling cattle from Mexico and generally being unsavory — at least as far the the establishment was concerned. They were also Southern Democrats. The Earps were Union men (James had seriously wounded in the war).

The bad blood between the two families seems to have grown out of finger pointing between them. The Earps would accuse the Clantons of some nefarious activity and the Clantons would point right back — and, of course, both were basically telling the truth. Wyatt, intent on a big splash to assure his election as sheriff, negotiated with Ike to reveal the identities of the Contention stage coach robbers and killers so he, Earp, could capture them. The negotiations fell through, but knowledge of them became public, making Ike look like the turncoat he was. He blamed Wyatt.

On October 26, 1881, Virgil Earp arrested Ike Clanton, who had been making threats since the previous evening. As Virgil hauled Clanton to the courthouse, Wyatt ran into a friend of Clanton’s, Tom McLaury. They had a heated exchange that ended when Wyatt hit McLaury over the head with a pistol. After this, Ike and Tom, joined by their brothers Billy and Frank respectively, considered their options, including leaving town. Billy Claiborne joined them. Virgil Earp, the town marshal, enlisted Wyatt, Morgan, and their friend Doc Holliday to help arrest the Clantons and McLaurys.

They met in a vacant on Fremont Street near the O.K. Corral livery stable. Thirty shots were fired in about 30 seconds. Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers were killed. Virgil and Morgan Earp were wounded. The two prime antagonists, Ike Clanton and Wyatt Earp, were unhurt, as was Claiborne. The Earps were accused of murder, but a justice of the peace found they had acted as officers of the law.

The gunfight was the end of the Earps political plans in Tombstone. Virgil lost his post as town marshal. Family and friends of the Clantons began a vendetta, seriously wounding Virgil in December and killing Morgan in March 1882. Wyatt killed a deputy sheriff and another man suspected of being involved in Morgan’s shooting.

Virgil and Wyatt took their skills and ambitions to California, Colorado, and Alaska. Warren Earp was killed in Wilcox, Arizona, in a gunfight that might have been fallout from the O.K. Corral. Virgil died of pnuemonia in 1906. Wyatt Earp died in 1929. He was 80.

It’s Trying to Be a Rainy Day

It’s a cool, almost dreary day here by the Sandia Mountains; a good day to curl up with a book. And so I shall, with Hampton Sides’s Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West, a new history of the conquest of the American southwest and California.

Reviews for Blood and Thunder have been positive, most finding the storytelling compelling. In the Times, William Grimes wrote it’s a “rousing, full-throated rendition of an old story, the making of the American West.”

I’ll let you know. [See here.]

4 cents an acre

On this date in 1803, the United States Senate ratified the Louisiana Purchase Treaty by a vote of twenty-four to seven.

The First Consul of the French Republic desiring to give to the United States a strong proof of his friendship doth hereby cede to the United States in the name of the French Republic for ever and in full Sovereignty the said territory with all its rights and appurtenances as fully and in the Same manner as they have been acquired by the French Republic in virtue of the above mentioned Treaty concluded with his Catholic Majesty [Spain].

France had lost control of Louisiana to Spain at the end of the French and Indian War (1763). In the Treaty of San Ildefonso (1800), Spain ceded the territory back to France (along with six warships) in exchange for the creation of a kingdom in north-central Italy for the Queen of Spain’s brother. Napoleon promised never to sell or alienate the property. His promise was good for about 10 months.

The purchase included 828,000 square miles — all or parts of the modern states of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana.

With interest the total cost was $23.5 million, or about 4 cents an acre.

225 years ago today

… the British army surrendered to the Americans and French at Yorktown, Virginia, in essence ending the War for American Independence.

The siege of Yorktown was conducted according to the book, with redoubts, trenches, horn-works, saps, mines, and countermines. Cornwallis had about 8000 men in the little town on the York river, which French ships patrolled so that he could not break away. The armies of Rochambeau and Saint~Simon were almost as numerous as his, and in addition Washington had 5645 regulars and 3200 Virginia militia. The commander in chief, profiting by D’Estaing’s error at Savannah, wasted no men in premature assaults. There were gallant sorties and counterattacks, one led by Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton. Casualties were light on both sides, fewer than in the naval battle; but Cornwallis, a good professional soldier, knew when he was beaten. On 17 October he sent out a white flag, and on the 19th surrendered his entire force. Pleading illness, he sent his second in command, Brigadier Charles O’Hara, to make the formal surrender to General Lincoln, whom Washington appointed to receive him. One by one, the British regiments, alter laying down their arms, marched back to camp between two lines, one of American soldiers, the other of French, while the military bands played a series of melancholy tunes, including one which all recognized as “The World Turned Upside Down.”

Lafayette announced the surrender to Monsieur de Maurepas of the French government, in terms of the classic French drama: “The play is over; the fifth act has come to an end.” Lieutenant Colonel Tench Tilghman carried Washington’s dispatch to Congress at Philadelphia, announcing the great event. Arriving at 3:00 a.m. on 22 October, he tipped off an old German nighr watchman, who awoke the slumbering Philadelphians by stumping through the streets with his lantern, bellowing, “Basht dree o’gloek und Gornvallis ist gedaken!”

Windows flew open, candles were lighted, citizens poured into the streets and embraced each other; and after day broke, Congress assembled and attended a service of thanksgiving.

— Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People, 1965.

Three for Saturday

Last week’s New Yorker was particularly good and these stood out.

Surgeon Atul Gawande surveys recent developments in childbirth — as he describes it “How childbirth went industrial.”

Historian Jill Lepore reviews Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West, a new history of the conquest of the American southwest and California.

Mark Singer has a profile of murderer and escapee Richard McNair. The article is not available, but here’s a video of the suspect confronted by a police officer the day of his last escape. Priceless.

Thinking About Columbus Day

Today is the second Monday in October and the day we celebrate the federal holiday honoring Christopher Columbus. Last year I posted some thoughts on the matter. Here they are again (with a few inconsequential edits):

NewMexiKen is well aware of the feelings among many American Indians and others about Columbus Day. One Lakota woman who worked for me used to ask if—as a protest—she could come in and work on Columbus Day, a federal holiday.

My feeling is that we can’t have enough holidays and so I choose to think of Columbus Day as the Italian-American holiday. Nothing wrong with that. We have an African-American holiday on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. We have the Irish-American celebration that is St. Patrick’s Day. And Cinco de Mayo is surely the Mexican-American holiday, a much larger celebration here than in most of Mexico.

So, instead of protesting Columbus Day, perhaps American Indians should organize and bring about a holiday of their very own. Given the great diversity among Indian nations (and, lets face it, a proclivity for endless debate), the tribes might never reach agreement, though, so NewMexiKen will suggest a date.

The day before Columbus Day.

America Unabridged

At Jill and Byron’s, NewMexiKen was poking around the magazines and found the December 2004 issue of American Heritage with its outstanding bibliography of American history. This list is worth saving.

So here it is, certainly the most challenging editorial task we’ve ever attempted—and one of the most rewarding. We have drawn on the knowledge and enthusiasm of leading historians, writers, and critics to offer a compendium of the very best books about the American experience. Divided into both chronological and subject categories ranging from the rise of the Republic to sports, from the years of World War II to the African-American journey, each section presents the writer’s choice of the 10 best books in a particular field, along with lucid, lively explanations of what makes them great. The result, we believe, is both a valuable reference work and an anthology of highly personal views of the making of our country and our culture that is immensely readable in its own right.

— American Heritage: America Unabridged.

Johnny Appleseed

A second grade class in Austin, Texas, took a look at Johnny Appleseed.

Johnny Appleseed

And so does the Library of Congress:

Jonathan Chapman, born in Massachusetts on September 26, 1775, came to be known as “Johnny Appleseed.” Chapman earned his nickname because he planted small orchards and individual apple trees across 100,000 square miles of Midwestern wilderness and prairie.
…

Chapman, sometimes referred to as an American St. Francis of Assisi, was an ambulant man. As a member of the first New-Church (Swedenborgian), his work resembled that of a missionary. Each year he traveled hundreds of miles on foot, wearing clothing made from sacks, and carrying a cooking pot which he is said to have worn like a cap. His travels took him through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois and Indiana.

Then there’s the Johnny Appleseed Heritage Center and Outdoor Drama.

A modern day Johnny Appleseed would wander the prairies planting ideas for future tourist attractions.

Poor Aidan

Just three Tuesday, Aidan found out from his mother Wednesday that Abraham Lincoln was dead and they couldn’t go visit him. The little guy cried for 20 minutes.

I feel the same way some times.

Which reminded me of a meme1 I saw at Shakespeare’s Sister.

“If you could sit down to a meal with a president (any president) and ask him one question: who is the president and what is the question?”

Shakes’ Sister suggested George W. Bush and her question was “What the f**k?”

I think I’d have to choose Lincoln. And, being from New Mexico, of course I’d have to ask him, “Red or green?”

1 A meme is an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation.

“Red or green?” is the official state question of New Mexico. It refers to the kind of chile you’d like on your New Mexican cuisine. Check it out.