First Communions Past, Third Round

Okay, just a couple of more things: First, the Joplin, Missouri newspaper clipping for my first communion, from either the Joplin Globe, (morning paper, still being published) or the old Joplin News Herald (evening paper, long gone). Unfortunately, my cousin Linda Sue Hendricks appears here as Linda Sue Henderson. And speaking as a professional editor, I note immediately the "at at St. Mary's" in the headline. (Click on the image to read it.)

I am intrigued by how many of these people stayed with me through high school. Besides Linda, there is Jane Meyer, whom I took to the freshman Christmas dance (my first offiicial "date"), Diane Lichty, Pat Randall, Steve Patterson, Richard Baine, Mike Ellison, Leonard Orcutt -- some of these were a year ahead of me but stayed in Joplin and the Catholic schools -- and "Roddy" Harsh, now Rod, who is still promoting Joplin and Route 66 after years away from it, at his Route 66 Online
site. If the St. Peter's first communion class (there were two parishes in Joplin but we all went to the same grade school) were listed, more of those whom I knew through high school would show up.

Though the clip says we were 7 the dates say we were still first graders, most of us anyway, and the fact that Sister Mary Andrea was in charge confirms this. She was my first grade teacher and lived on into her 90s. She used to visit Linda and her family even, I think, when I was in college.

The other illustration is the record of my first communion from a little booklet given to us at the time. Again, click to read.

More First Communions Past

It's after midnight and I should be quitting, but continuing to put up some first communion memorabilia: Here's what we think is a picture of Tam's Mom (Mary Boylston Mehuron) and her first communion group. She's the girl on the left in the front row. (For all these pictures clicking on the image will give you a blown-up version.)

And, below, the priest who gave me my first communion, Father James J. Holmes. Later, I became an altar boy and served Mass for him (and for his successor); I remember him well though I'm quite sure he's been gone for many years. He was sweet man so far as I can remember him, but like most priests and all nuns in those days (the 50s) he seemed something almost alien to me. I was always surprised when I saw priests or nuns driving cars. It seemed to make them human, and it was hard to think of them that way. Any Catholic who wasn't around in those days will think this sounds crazy, I'm sure. Pre-Vatican II was different. That's me and Linda, of course, with him.

Do the cars in the background date me, or what? They're classics now, but what does that make me?

First Communions Past

As I've already noted, Sarah makes her First Communion this weekend. Non-Catholics may not have a clue about this, but it's an important rite of passage. Our Orthodox brethren, even our Eastern Catholic brethren with whom we're in full communion, give communion to infants, so even they don't have the same rite of passage around age 7. The Eastern churches have always given baptism, the Eucharist, and what they call chrismation and we Latins call confirmation, to infants, so even many Catholics of the eastern tradition don't do it the way we Latin rites do. (I think the Maronites in Lebanon are the exception, but may be wrong about this.) It may be comparable in some ways to the bar/bat mitzvah, but it's done at a younger age. The closest parallel I can think of is that many varieties of Islam think that Ramadan fasting should begin around age 7, though others put the age later.

Anyway, both Tam and I had mothers whose families had been Catholic for a few generations (including Irish lines that went all the way back) while our fathers were converts. I thought we'd honor Sarah's first communion with some photos from our families' past. That's me and my cousin Linda Hendricks (now Duncan) in the photo, taken, if my little booklet is correct, on May 9, 1954. If the date is correct I did it in the first grade slightly before turning 7, while Sarah is doing it in the second grade.

My cousin Linda and I were and are virtually the same age, born about three weeks apart, and as a result were in the same class from 1st grade through high school. We were both only children, which made us closer since we had no siblings of our own. We're still close.

To go back a generation, here's my mother's first communion photo at left, from sometime I would guess in the late 19-teens or 1920ish (she was born in 1912). For years I didn't realize this was she. Then someone sent me some other childhood pictures of her (she had brown hair later and is a blonde in the childhood photos) and I suddenly realized this must be her at her first communion. Some other family photos will be showing up between now and Saturday, when Sarah makes hers.

Sarah, incidentally, will be helping carry the altar cloth at the offertory, and has already proclaimed herself "nervous," so we're working on getting her prepared.

First Holy Communion Next Weekend

I was under the weather over the weekend and didn't blog, but following the big eighth birthday series of events, now we're cranking up for Sarah's First Holy Communion next weekend. She'll be one of the kids carrying the altar cloth during the offertory, and has told us she's "nervous" about it. We're doing our best to assuage the nerves.

Her granddad and his friend Marge were going to come but the logistics got too complicated, so it will just be us and her godparents, Tom and Cindi Gallagher.

Tam and I have been gathering photos of other first commuions in the family: both of Sarah's grandmothers, and several pictures of mine. We can't find any of Tam's but we did find a rosary she got for first communion. Mine took place in 1954, it seems, so 54 years between the events. More on this as we get closer, and of course reports from the scene.

Catching Up -- Again

Okay. The laptop is back up, after a week of adventures, and that makes it a bit easier to post. I don't have to run downstairs where the desktop is and be a recluse from my family to post. It was one of those Catch 22 situations. I got a registry problem in Windows ME (yes, I know; I'm thinking of putting XP on it before they take it off the market just in case the laptop survives a while longer, since ME is useless and it will never be able to run Vista) on this ancient laptop that dates from 2001. I needed a boot disc. Couldn't find mine. Downloaded what I needed from the Internet to a CD, but because my CD drive is unreliable (typical flimsy CD drive on a laptop, needs a lot of loving care to load these days), it wouldn't boot properly. So I needed a floppy boot disc. But the versions I downloaded would not let me copy to a flash drive: only to a floppy. My desktop has no floppy drive. So I ordered from Amazon a Sony floppy drive for about $25. With shipping, about $32, got it Thursday, and got the laptop back up. A cheaper fix than taking it into a geek place, but nevertheless, left me without a laptop for nearly a week. Oddly, it's amazing how dependent you become. How you resent having to walk downstairs to transfer money from one bank account to another! I'm old enough to remember when you actually had to go to the bank to do that. Now I resent going to the basement. We're betwixt and between Sarah's eighth birthday and her first communion (a week from tomorrow) so I should be posting more, and hopefully now that I have my upstairs portal available again, I can.

And I do feel as if I accomplished something by fixing it myself.

Eighth Birthday

As if I weren't having enough problems posting to this blog, my laptop is down. A "Windows Protection Error" which requires a reboot disc and well, you don't want the details. I haven't time to deal with it just now because the 10th (Thursday) was Sarah's eighth birthday and the 12th (Saturday) was her party for her friends at Providence Rec Center. I'll post more as time goes on but if you've ever tried to preside, at age 60, over a party of eight year olds (many of them boys) you know the meaning of critical mass.

Even when the first two kids arrived at the party, you knew things were going to go crazy. They and Sarah immediately started playing on the mats, big rolling things and other stuff in the rec center party room, and I had to take the pinata down lest it be broken early by the craziness. I'll try to post some video of this on YouTube for those who have access to our site.

Anyway, Tam and I both found ourselves pretty exhausted by Sunday; not only did we spend a lot on presents, party room, cake, etc. etc. but expended a lot of energy too. Eight is great, Sarah keeps saying, and I agree, but wow. Tired.

Sarah and General Braddock

Sarah often claims a certain nonchalant boredom with history because her Daddy is so avidly trying to teach her history, but sometimes it clicks. We went down to Old Town Alexandria today and discovered that at the Carlyle House reenactors were doing the meeting which took place there in April 1755 in which General Braddock met with the colonial governors before his expedition to the forks of the Ohio. (Okay, he didn't make it to the forks of the Ohio, but you know what I mean.)

Sarah watched the soldiers firing muskets on the lawn and looked over both the British soldiers and Virginia militia reenactors on the lawn. When we went inside Carlyle house we discovered that my old friend from college Ted Borek, whom I haven't seen since Sarah was a baby, and his wife Jamie were doing roles inside; they're avid historical interpreters and Ted was Robert Hunter Morris, the (Lieutenant) Governor of Pennsylvania. I had explained to Sarah that I knew him (she hadn't seen him since she was a toddler and wouldn't remember), but because he was playing a role he had to stay in character. But he was able to take a break, leaving Gen. Braddock at the table and talking to us for a bit.

Sarah enjoyed taking pictures of the soldiers and generally I think got a good idea of what was going on. We spoke to several of the characters but not to General Braddock. I think I'd have suggested he not take out any two-year magazine subscriptions.

Surely no one else who presided over a major disaster for the British Empire has so many things named after him as Edward Braddock. It's like instead of Trafalgar Square, you named it for Percival at Singapore or something. Locally we have Braddock Road, a Braddock High School, Lake Braddock, Braddock Heights in Maryland, and so on. I wonder what they'd have named for him if he'd won. (Actually Forbes and Bouquet, the folks who eventually did retake the forks, don't seem to have as much stuff named for them, though my experience in that part of Pennsylvania is limited and I suppose they're well remembered there. I know there's some Forbes stuff at least up around Greensburg, PA.) And you may say that Braddock died in battle, but then wouldn't it be better to remember Howe, who after all won at the Plains of Abraham while dying heroically. (But I know, that was in Canada someplace, and we Yanks don't do Canada. The victory at Quebec can't have had any influence on our history, right?)

Okay, enough rant. I belong more or less to the traditional interpretation of Braddock, namely that he was pretty much an incompetent, though I am aware there has been a sort of pro-Braddock resurgence in the last century or so. (A good bibliographical summary is in Paul E. Kopperman's Braddock at the Monogahela, one of the most detailed accounts of the campaign I know of.) I have no doubt that Braddock played by the rules, and did everything according to the book, but it was the wrong book. To use a modern term, the French and Indians (mostly Indians with French officers and a few French forces) were fighting asymmetrically against British regular tactics. The colonial militia weren't completely innocent because they weren't used to operating with British regulars, or with each other for that matter, but the whole thing was a big screwup and when a combined operation is a big screwup, the person responsible is the senior officer in command. In 18th century Europe, the howling wilds of Pennsylvania (claimed by Virginia I should note), or in modern war as well. Braddock had the command. Let's name a lake for him.

Anyway, enough of a rant about Braddock. He paid the price for his errors. Of course, so did the folks in the Shenandoah Valley and Western Pennsylvania. (I'll rant another time about how the historical marker at Narrow Passage in the Valley used to read "Last Indian Outrage" and now reads "Last Indian Attack" or something like that. I suppose it will eventually read "Last Indigenous Resistance against Occupation" or some such. No doubt deservedly (I think Indian casinos are a wonderful revenge, frankly), but it's still interesting to watch the PC progression.)

Anyhow Sarah soaked up some history whether she will admit it or not. (Occasionally I overhear her lecturing her friends about stuff she's learned, so it is sinking in, despite her claims of boredom.) And Sarah also got to pet a great dog at the Alexandria Visitors' Center where Tam stopped for a restroom. And then we went to the Torpedo Factory where she enjoyed assembling the broken plates in the Archaeology center. As I've noted before she really does enjoy archaeology and has even enjoyed a dig at St. Mary's City. Alexandria's little center is more like the kids' room at Mount Vernon in that they let you put broken pottery together, but she is good at it. Archaeologist is still one of her chosen professions, though she has decided to combine it with fashion designing, being a rock star, and a Mom. Hopefully the rock star part will finance the rest. I certainly can't.

Besides, this opens a door. She's heard of Braddock. She's seen a big guy in a red uniform with lots of gold frogging on it. That can get us to Fort Necessity, Braddock's grave, and the site of Braddock's defeat, and excuse a trip to Pittsburgh. If I finesse it right.

We were at Harper's Ferry a week or two ago. I tried to sneak the John Brown and Robert E. Lee and JEB Stuart and other stuff in among the scenery.

Update: I realize that in a previous post I never explained why Sarah moved worms. It seemed important at the time, but all I can recall now is that they needed moving. I hope that clears that up.

St. Patrick, Moving Worms, etc...

I'm really slow these days. Today (yesterday now; it's after midnight) was St. Patrick's Day. We did Irish on the weekend, at Sarah's request, but I never do on Patrick's day when all the Sassenachs are there. We did chili instead.

This weekend Sarah moved worms. More on that anon.

Dad, When were the Jetsons On? And St. Patrick and such.

Huh? Where does this stuff come from. I couldn't remember when The Jetsons were on; they were a bit after my cartoon-watching time. Wikipedia says 1962-1963, when as a High Schooler I certainly had no use for cartoons. And then there were new episodes in 1985-87. But I'm never sure where Sarah acquires her cultural reference points.

Saturday we did the St. Patrick's Day parade in Alexandria, our largest local St. Patrick's Day parade, though it was 16 days ahead of Paddy's day itself. Alexandria was founded by Glasgow Scots, but has annual Highland games with guys in kilts throwing hammers and tossing cabers and such, which the Glaswegian founders would have found very weird behavior indeed. Somewhere along the way they decided they were Irish as well (and of course we Irish taught the Scots everyting they knew except painting themselves blue and eating haggis*) and this year the Archbishop of Baltimore (an O'Brien) was the marshal of the parade and the master of ceremonies was one Pat Troy, a professional Irishman who runs a pub in Alexandria (though as I look at his site to link it I see he may be trying to sell it) and who has an inordinate and unjustified fondness for the "Unicorn Song," which wears very thin on me very quickly. There are two rival Irish pubs in Old Town Alexandria; the other, Murphy's, has always appealed more to me. Still, when we go as a family to an Irish pub (not often, but it does appeal to part of me) we usually go to Ireland's Four Provinces in Falls Church. Closer, easier parking, more family friendly and less smoky, less noisy, and sometimes has Danny Doyle, one of the few guys who appears locally who sings the old rebel songs (this isn't Boston: most of the Irish pubs do very anodyne stuff or even Simon and Gafunkely stuff).

*UPDATE: This on actual St. Patrick's day. I realized that, historically, I suppose there was one more thing that the Irish didn't teach the Scots, and that was how to fight the English, since the Scots were doing that long before Strongbow. But we've both made it the national sport. Now back to the original post:

And of course I don't go to any of these places discussed above on Patrick's Day. Let the Saxons and the Poles and Italians and everybody else go drink Guinness that day of the year. I'll take my cue from Ireland: it's a saint's day so let's not crowd into a crowded pub. We'll lift our glass at home. Play some rebel songs and talk about that old Briton named Patrick, who once you strip away the snakes and the Shamrocks and the other stuff, still comes through as one of the few people of the fourth or more likely early fifth century who left us anything directly in his own hand. at least outside of Italy. Bad Latin, they tell me (not that I can tell: my Latin education ended in high school). If you've never read it you can find it here and a lot of other places, and there's nothing in it about snakes or shamrocks, But it is a relic of late Roman Britain, roughly contemporary with St. Augustine. It's a better read on St. Patrick's Day than most of the crap that's out there.

Where was I going here? Anyway, after the St. Patrick's Day parade in Alexandria (selections up on the YouTube site), Sarah had a lot of fun at her friend Alisa's eighth birthday party. Sarah turns eight in just about 40 days, so we've got to brace for our own party.

As you've noticed if anyone actually reads this, we've been busy. But there will be more to come.

Another good day

Another good day. (Actually now yesterday, Feb. 17, Saturday of President's Day weekend.) We went out to Manassas Battlefield (known to the damyankees as Bull Run) and hiked on some of the hiking trails. Sarah declared that she loved hiking. She has never loved hiking before. She is going to find herself hiking a lot this year, I think. We identified deer tracks, horeshoe prints, dog tracks etc. in the mud; she found a good hiking staff and walked with it; she declared herself very happy. She got ice cream afterward.

This is the second day to get out of the urban environment, and we've both realized how long we've been missing it. The trips to Baltimore and Philadelphia and Norfolk were fine, but we'd been too long without country. I think we're really revived.

More thoughts on a broken logjam

I'm waiting for laundry to finish and it's past midnight but I've been having further thoughts about the work/blogging/everything else doldrums we've been in lately, and why the logjam seems to have broken.

I'm not precisely a country boy -- Joplin was (and is) a town of 40,000 people -- but I grew up in the Ozarks and was always used to getting outside of an urban environment pretty often. We've tried since our marriage to do the same, getting out to the Shenandoah Valley or the Blue Ridge, traveling in the small-town South or Midwest, keeping it pretty down home.

Now I look back over the last six months or so. Our vacation: Hampton Roads, the biggest urban concentration in Virginia (Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Newport News, Hampton, Chesapeake, Portsmouth -- all cities). Thanksgiving: Philadelphia, a city bigger and grittier than Washington. Christmas day trip: Baltimore. Great town, great food, but a city the size of Washington. In between: Washington.

I don't think we've been in the Valley since last summer sometime. Maybe we had one or two excursions to Solomon's Island in between, but that's about it. The latest issue of Blue and Grey magazine just arrived and is about Fisher's Hill ("the Gibraltar of the Shenandoah") and made me even more nostalgic for the Valley. My known ancestors who lived in the Valley left around the time of the Revolution, but I keep going back.

You can take the boy out of the hills but you can't take the hills out of the boy. I need country now and again. I think Tam and I both, and maybe even Sarah, have all been suffering from country deprivation. Today was brief and late starting, but it was outdoors, open, involved a certain amount of fresh air, honking geese, and manure, and there were moments when nobody else was in sight. We watched flocks of geese migrating overhead at Washington's birthplace today, stepped in sheep doo-doo (Sarah's term), and looked some turkeys in the eye. May even have seen an eagle nest, though we weren't sure till we blew the picture up on the computer.

As spring comes, I'm going to push hard for more country. It's a tonic.

President's Day Weekend

I'm glad I don't blog for a living. I'd make even less money than I already do. I've been away for a while. I blame winter. It's been cold, there's been an ice storm, we've been inside a lot, and I've fallen behind at work and at home.For the first time since Baltimore (just after Christmas) we finally got out of town today, down to George Washington's birthplace National Monument in Pope's Creek, Westmoreland County, in the Northern Neck of Virginia. It's here. An attractive place, where Pope's Creek enters the Potomac; the home in which Washington was born burned over 200 years ago, but there are some reconstructed buildings, farm animals, exhibits, and nesting bald eagles at the moment. We thought we saw the nest, and blowing up the pictures after we got home, there may even be an eagle in them. Sarah enjoyed it; most of all we got out of town on a nice day; temps probably in the 50s after ice last week. We needed this.

It's not news that we're a family that needs to get out of Dodge occasionally. I've been suffering from the doldrums lately: behind at work, behind at home, behind in trying to get The Estimate out of hiatus and back on its feet. We've been iced in even without the weather doing it. Today helped a great deal. The Martin Luther King holiday wasn't as productive, and colder weather is coming in for the rest of the weekend.

I'm uploading today's video though there's about two months worth that haven't gone up; in fact the last one up is the one of Sarah's pre-Christmas concert. It shows what dullards we've been, frozen in, wintering.

I hope today breaks the ice. More soon if it has succeeded. We haven't spent an overnight out of town in ages: not, I think, since Philadelphia. We did Baltimore with Kate and Brenda, and spent a day with museums and an evening at a Moroccan restaurant (Marrakesh, one of the oldest in these parts), when Tam's old friend Lauren and her two daughters passed through town a couple of weeks ago), but we tried to do too much, the kids got too tired, the parents tireder, and it didn't provide relief. Those interludes didn't really relieve the too-urban, too-cold environment of winter. Today did, at least a bit. At Marrakesh, though, Sarah got to see her first belly dancer ("awesome!"). Someday I hope she sees the real Marrakesh, since the Jamaa al-Fana', the great open space where evrything from musicians to food to snake charmers to fortune tellers, to well, just about everything, can be found, is unlike anyplace else I know, even in the Middle East. And I haven't been to the real Marrakesh in 25 years or so. Somewhere I have a photo of me in the Jamaa al-Fana' with a snake around my neck. Maybe I'll find it and post it here someday.

More soon. I feel a thaw coming on.

Really, I'm still here

Life, work, and everything has been busy. Sarah makes her first confession tomorrow, as a runup to first communion. I've been busy with work, with bugs I've had, with other stuff. I'll be here eventually. Really.

Brief Christmas Report

Okay. Here I am. Last heard from on Christmas except for a brief message a few days ago.

Tam's sister Kate was here over Christmas; the day after we went to the National Museum of the American Indian, one Sarah enjoys. Then Kate headed for Baltimore for an academic philosophy conference. On the weekend after Christmas, on Saturday, we headed to Baltimore. One of Sarah's all-time favorite cities (see here). We met Kate and her friend Brenda, and visited the Baltimore aquarium. As I've often noted, Sarah is a very strong marine life fan.

After that, Tam came down with a sore throat and apparent flu symptoms and had to lie low for a few days. Since, we've done the International Spy Museum and one or two other interesting things, but haven't been recording it much. We saw in the new year at home, and have been pretty busy with many things ever since. Some video and photos will go up, perhaps over this coming Martin Luther King long weekend.

Today (Jan. 17) we had a winter storm: snow, ice and sleet, but close enough to 32 all day that it wasn't a major issue. More will follow, hopefully with more detailed reminiscences, but this is a quick take.

After the holidays

I haven't blogged since Christmas, but that was mostly because of family commitments, being busy at work and at home, several bugs we were fighting off, and so forth. I'm going to try to remedy that starting now. Watch this space for a longer post soon.