Armistice Day 90 Years On

Not long ago, I wrote about the War to End Wars (which didn't), the war to make the world safe for democracy (debatable given the later events of the 20th Century), the Great War (until a greater came along). Actually that post started out being about 9/11 and other things, and so only tangentially counts as a World War I post, but as I noted there, three uncles and a great uncle (at least) fought in that war, and one of Tam's grandfathers, the great uncle losing the sight of one eye in a gas attack and fighting in Belleau Wood (he was one of the rare Marines in a family mostly associated with the Army).

Five minutes from now as I write we come to the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Once those coordinates (and the added, "eveventh hour," when the armistice kicked in), meant a great deal to a lot of people. Not since Appomattox had Americans endured such a war, but theirs was mild compared to most Europeans. Today it's no longer "Armistice Day" in America, but "Veterans' Day," which seems to include all veterans of all wars. The Brits and Canadians I think, and perhaps the Aussies and other Commonwealth types, still call it "Remembrance Day," which may be a tad more evocative. I still like Armistice Day, the day the guns fell silent, the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month when the Great War ended.

The war to end wars didn't; we're at war right now in Iraq and Afghanistan. The war to make the world safe for democracy didn't: ask a Russian. The Great War wasn't so great: the horrors of World War II have almost eradicated the Great War from our memory. I'm glad that November 11 survives as a holiday, even if it's a minor one. September 11 has replaced November 11 in our memory: far fewer died, but we were there to witness it.

In a scrapbook kept by my mother is a handkerchief stitched with the words "Paris 1918," which she noted was given her by her brother Herb. Herb was one of the black sheep of the family, with rather too many wives (we think three, that we know of) for a good Irish Catholic boy, a certain tendency to change his name and other quirks, but a man who served in both World War I (Navy) and World War II (Army). Even his military service has a cloud or two, especially the navy one, but the handkerchief seems to have been one of my mother's treasures.

I've already linked to my earlier post about WWI, but I think since most people don't click on links I'd like to simply repeat my earlier meditation on the poetry of and about the still Great War:

Back in 1915, after the battle of Ypres (pronounced by British soldiers not as ee-pr but as Wipers, an endearing sign of Englishmen's eternal refusal to learn French) the Canadian soldier John McCrae looked at similar rows of graves and famously wrote:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row...

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Such words, from the War to End Wars (it didn't, actually) can still inspire (and are, or at least were, iconic in Canadian patriotic rhetoric when it existed), but we should also remember the other observation by another poet (Wilfrid Owen) of the same war:

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

And a modern evocation of the same theme from 1976 in Australian Eric Bogle's Green Fields of France (also known as Willie McBride or No Man's Land and sung a lot in Irish pubs)

And I can't help but wonder, young Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you "The Cause?"
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain,
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.

Did they Beat the drum slowly, did the play the pipes lowly?
Did the rifles fire o'er you as they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sound The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?


Since we're doing the "British poets of World War I" (and a Canadian and a modern Australian to boot) seminar I should mention that one of my Dad's favorite poems was one that I think has been more or less neglected lately, Rupert Brooke's

IF I should die, think only this of me;
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.


That has little to do with the war as such, but my Dad liked to quote it as a poem many soldiers empathized with (it is in fact titled just "The Soldier"). And it's my blog and I can write what I want. Brooke did die in that war, not in combat but of a mosquito bite -- on his way to Gallipoli. His corner of a foreign field that is forever England is on the Greek island of Skyros.

A long time ago: this is the 90th anniversary. The last I heard, the US had one living veteran of WWI. Not sure what the rest of the world has. They'd all be centenarians. In Flanders fields, I assume, the poppies still grow between the crosses row on row, but another war has left more crosses in the European low countries. Europe seems to have learned its lessons. Perhaps the rest of us can.

Wars end, but never forever. We mark the end of the "Great" War, but greaters have followed it. Remember.

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Hell Freezing Over

I don't normally blog about politics as this is a family blog and our extended family are, I suspect, all over the political spectrum, but I'll post soon about my reactions to Obama's election. Meanwhile I want to note, following on my immediately previous post citing the Joplin Globe, about an unusual blizzard in the nether regions.

Joplin, Missouri, my home town, is a conservative, Bible Belt place. Congressman Roy Blunt, who just stepped down as House Republican Whip, is from there, and the local Congressional district I think elected one democrat in the whole 20th century, for a single term. It's John Ashcroft's home district. Southwest Missouri's best known Congressman before Blunt was Dewey Short, a fierce opponent of FDR and the New Deal.

The Joplin Globe, reflecting the basic conservative Republican views of the area, last endorsed a Democrat in 1908, when they went for William Jennings Bryan. They opposed Roosevelt all four times, and in 1948 they opposed Harry Truman, the only Missourian to run for President, who was born the next county to the north.

On October 28, the Joplin Globe endorsed Barack Obama. That was the moment (though I didn't learn of it right away) when I realized something unexpected was going on out there. I know, Missouri's seventh district went solidly for McCain anyway, and McCain carried the state by a hair. But for the first time since free silver, the Globe supported a Democrat, and a black one at that. (Joplin's black population is under three percent; there was one black guy in my high school class. They've named a street after Langston Hughes, who was born in Joplin, but they don't usually mention his family left when he was five due to a race riot. It's not a bigoted place, it's just that blacks aren't a big part of the landscape.) I'll post more on the theme later. I love Joplin as my home town, but I was startled when the Globe endorsed Obama.

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Remembering Johnny Rose's Grocery Store in Joplin

Every now and then meandering about in the Internet one stumbles on something that awakens deep, old, nearly forgotten memories. Because the Internet lets one read one's hometown newspaper, I do so from time to time. The Joplin Globe, my hometown paper.

Somebody wrote in about the old Johnny Rose grocery store at the corner of 18th and Connor in Joplin. If y0u click on the link, you'll see that I posted a short comment to the letter. "Johnny's" was a place I remember extremely well. Read the post at the link or the rest may make little sense to you.

The earliest home I remember was at 912 West 16th Street in Joplin, on 16th between Connor and Bird, or just about two blocks from Johnny's store. When I was in the third grade (Sarah's current age and grade) we moved to 1618 Murphy, maybe three blocks from Johnny's. Johnny's was an old time mom and pop grocery: no refrigerated cases I can remember, just bulk groceries and, the key point, a big glass cabinet up front with candy and gum and a coke case. Across the street was the Lafayette public school, and Johnny's was, as the letter writer notes, a retreat and resource for the kids at Lafatette, I went to the Catholic school, but Johnny's was still the place to go for candy, baseball card bubble gum (Topps of course), and other treats. In an age before convenience stores these little neighborhood groceries were the convenience stores. And as I note in my comment, after a certain age, in that era when predators and child molesters were unheard of, I was allowed to walk to Johnny's on my own.

Johnny knew everybody by name. He was a classic old-style grocer. (Did he have a mustache? I'm not sure but part of me wants to think so. Black hair, usually in a white grocer's outfit I think.) The store was an old-time frame building with a (concrete or wood?) front porch. When you walked in there was the big candy case right in front of you, a coke case on one side, the big red refrigerated tub kind, and groceries on shelves around the walls. Just maybe there was a meat case in the back but I wouldn't swear to it now.

As the letter writer notes eventually Johnny moved to Range Line Road, Joplin's "bypass" which became its main shopping district. I don't think I went to the new store more than once or twice, just to say hello. I don't know when he went out of business.

Odd what ancient memories the Internet can surface. Johnny Rose, no doubt long gone, will be somewhere in my subconscious as long as I live.

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Catching Up: Halloween etc.

It's been busy lately. Over the last few weeks we have successively had our washing machine go out, and replaced it with a new one and a new dryer to match; our garbage disposal die, and a major leak in the bathroom require a major repair; and the digital camera freeze up at the halloween party, necessitating a new one. These were all things that were going to need replacing, but going out when they did meant a recalibration of what was left of our stimulus payment and tax refund, and our hopes of keeping some of it in reserve was pretty much obliterated, but at least we didn't have to go into further debt for this stuff.

That has kept us busy. The last weekend before this one we did get to the Newseum for the first time, a great, five-storey museum of the history of news-gathering, truly impressive though we didn't spend much time in the six or so theaters that are running stuff all the time, or the live news studio they have there. Sarah loved the interactive stuff. Unfortunately, it is -- unlike the Smithsonian, which is free and spoils Washingtonians -- a place with fairly steep admissions, and with only individual annual memberships, no family rate.

The next day, Sunday, we felt like getting out of town a bit and went out to Warrenton, Virginia, stopping along the way at Jammin' Joe's Barbecue, which we hadn't previously found open. (BBQ served in a little trailer beside the road, with parking and an adjacent sales place for playground equipment, which gave Sarah some place to play.) Good BBQ, though they seem to also have a place in Fort Myers, FL if you follow the links on the website. We also stopped at the Old Jail Museum in Warrenton, home of the Fauquier County historical society (that's Mosby country); stopped at a local Wal-Mart to stock up on discount stuff as there are none close to us, and so on.

On Thursday Tam had a couple of medical procedures (everything was fine but since she was drugged up for them I had to take the day off to drive her), so I had both Thursday and my usual Friday off. Friday was, of course, halloween. Sarah, as already noted, was a witch this year. I attended the halloween parade at her school (stills at the Flickr site; I'll be putting a YouTube together soon). I also attended as a helper the class party, but my digital camera died during the parade so I have no video or stills of the party, where everybody ate, danced, and covered classmates in toilet paper to make mummies. This, I think, explains some odd conversation, not otherwise explained, I noted in last year's post on the halloween party.

In the evening, we went trick or treating. Despite announcing plans to do every single house in our whole subdivision, we did our usual three streets or so, and after the first street joined up with her friend Catherine from across the street and jointly tricked and treated till Sarah's two plastic pumpkins were groaning with candy. The rest of the weekend has seen extensive sugar highs despite our attempts to ration the candy.

The new camera I bought to replace the one that died is a bit higher resolution so both stills and videos should improve.

More to come.

Witching Night

I'll post more on halloween's doings tomorrow (or later today as it's already the witching hour, appropriately since I spent the day with several witches). Went to Sarah's halloween parade, attended her class party as a volunteer, and then of course went trick or treating. She was a witch this year, an angel last -- whatever that may mean. Witches were big in her class -- there were at least four. Here's a shot that doesn't show her face; others are going up on the Flickr account.

I haven't posted for a bit and have other things to report as well, but give me a bit of time to get back to it.

I Shall Return

I'll be back with more soon, but I wanted to welcome Tam's new visibility on the blog, since she's now posted twice in a relatively brief period (October 6 and October 18), and note that while as usual the work week keeps me away from the blog, I'm still around and shall return. I think somebody said that once.

Waiting for Chili

All of a sudden, it's autumn. The leaves are red and orange, and the temps are falling. I'm chilled even with my jacket on. Now it's dark at 6:30 p.m., I am still used to the easy, relaxed late sunlit summer nights. (Never mind, I wish I was still on vacation, too!). It's the kind of Fall weather that makes one think of chili, so, we are letting our separate pots simmer on the stove. Washington, even though it's mild, has enough of a change of seasons that makes me look forward with anticipation to the newness of a fresh change, a chance to "start anew" with whatever, and have new hope.

It's been a busy week, with extra projects due at school for Sarah, a Venus Fly Trap model she had to concoct on Tuesday, and materials for a cactus desert habitat to school on Friday. This, plus homework, and extra reading: four books with the reports due Oct. 23. Since this is the first quarter, there is heavy parental intervention going on to read, prod, and force feed the accomplishment of the project.

Well, I should be checking on the chili, and Sarah, now. It's a busy but rich life!

Update on Talking Chihuahuas

Just a quick update. Our Daddy Day on Columbus Day went well, and Beverly Hills Chihuahua was not as bad as it might have been. In the relatively limited genre of talking dog movies, I enjoyed it rather more than I did Underdog, for example, but those of you without kids probably will not find it necessary to see it, though as Sarah pointed out to me beforehand, Beverly Hills Chihuahua was the number one movie in America the past two weekends. This is either because 1) the economic meltdown makes everyone want to see talking chihuahuas who can fight off Dobermans and Mountain Lions; 2) has melted all our brains or 3) means only our kids can choose the movies.

Not too much else to report from the week. A new couch for the family room arrives tomorrow, and we're going to have to buy a new washer this weekend due to a distinct burning-electrical-wire smell on ours last night. Oh, why not. It's not like we have much left in the retirement accounts.

Eve of Columbus Day

I guess it's not actually the "eve" of Columbus Day since it's after midnight. For reasons not totally clear, Tam doesn't get Columbus Day off. (Theoretically the reason is that to give them the Friday after Thanksgiving off -- not an official Federal holiday-- they need to give up another holiday, and since as the Air Force Association they can't give up Veteran's Day on November 11, they have to give up Columbus Day. My office doesn't make you trade off, they just give you Friday after Thanksgiving anyway, but well, what can I say?)

So this means tomorrow is a "Daddy Day," a word from the old days of day care when I had Sarah two days a week. She still likes "Daddy Days," though they're less frequent. We have agreed to chili dogs for lunch and to see Beverly Hills Chihuahua (Sound warning if you're at work as the music starts to play). Father-daughter days are nice though I have much to do and it doesn't strike me as the greatest movie ever made.

Yesterday we went to the Smithsonian's new Ocean Hall in the Natural History Museum, since Sarah is always big on ocean life. A really extraordinary new exhibit, and a permanent one, so we'll need to go back to see it all. We also visited her favorite sites at the Natural History Museum, namely the gem collection and of course the dinosaur hall. And then home.

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Still Here

I've probably used "still here" more often than any other title. I am, however, still here. We just can't post during the work week much. More soon.

My Take on October 6

Since Tam has blogged below about October 6 I'll do the same. As she noted, we met on October 6, 1983, at an Egyptian Military Day Party. (Actually I'd met her before since I had regular contact with the Egyptian Military Attache's office, and she was a receptionist/secretary there despite having a Master's Degree in Middle East studies. But we didn't know each other except in a vague, "is the colonel in?" sort of way.) October 6 is a day with a lot of resonance for old Egypt hands. As Tam noted, it's the anniversary of the October 1973 war, which is celebrated in Egypt as the war that made peace with Israel feasible by showing Egyptians could regain some of their lost land. In 1981, at the Military Day Parade, Anwar Sadat was assassinated, but despite that, the date remained Egyptian Military Day, and only two years after Sadat's assassination, at the 1983 party celebrating the tenth anniversary of the "crossing" (of the Suez Canal), Tam and I talked for a while, she offered me a ride home, I offered to buy her dinner (the long-departed Blue Nile Restaurant, one of the earliest Ethiopian Restaurants in DC), and we dated for some months before she dumped me. I eventually got even: I married her. As she noted, October 6, 1993, ten years after that meeting at Fort McNair and 20 after the "crossing," was our first full day in Tunis on our honeymoon. This was, I believe, the day of our "STEAK!" story, told here on our old family website. So October 6 was a day with many resonances for us.

Having mentioned the "crossing" several times, which is how the Egyptians always referred to 1973, I need to quote one of those wonderful Egyptian jokes that, however, requires a lot of explanation since it involves several languages. "Crossing" in Arabic is al-'Ubur; it was the triumph that caught Israel off guard and began the war. But Israel recovered and sent a force across the Canal to the western side that cut off one of the two Egyptian field Armies in a salient known as Deversoir. Someone came up with this brilliant couplet:

Bonjour, al-'Ubur;
Bonsoir, Deversoir.

I wish I'd said that.

[And I suppose I've just confirmed the famous exchange when Oscar Wilde said, "I wish I'd said that," and Whistler responded, "You will, Oscar, you will."]



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Our Own Oct. 6

Yes, it's me. Tam, the other half of the Dunn parenting duo who has written only one or so blogs, because I am just ... too ... busy ... dealing with work, the family, the house, the bills, etc.

But I wanted to dash something off today, as it is Oct. 6. Why? Because the Dow closed down below 10,000 points today? Because it is the 35th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War? No and No.

I write because today's date is the anniversary of Michael's and my meeting, at the Oct. 6th Egyptian Military Day celebration at Ft. McNair, in 1983, and also the subsequent happy day during our honeymoon in Tunis in 1993.

Our actual wedding anniversary was last week, Oct. 2, but I've been in a reflective, happy and sentimental mood for all of these days. It's partly why I suggested we go out of town on the spur of the moment on Friday night (echoing Sarah's desire for a hotel, too). Fifteen years is a healthy chunk of time to share your life with someone, and deserves comment, reflection, and no small amount of gratitude, to Michael, and Sarah, and life in general.

Yes it is true we are all going through some rough uncertain times these days. But how much worse would it be if we did not have each other to help negotiate these rough waters? So, despite the gloomy times, I've been celebrating, and appreciating, all the goodness in our life together.

The fact that I married a man who can drop everything and just go off for a quickie overnight to an area of the region we three love, and cherish, as much for the history (see Michael's blog entry on mustering militia) as for the natural beauty of water, sand, and sky, and delight in the geology and paleontology of the area as well, are great gifts in our marriage. I am so blessed. We all came back from that foray much refreshed and renewed.

And I find myself also appreciating these trips even more, partly because the gasoline prices are still so high, but not nearly as high as they were in July (a gallon at Dawson's now goes for $3.32, versus 4.10 in July--the peak). So I feel a little better about venturing out these days. It is a gift that we really do not have to travel great distances to be in wonderful renewing places, I have always felt fortunate to live in Virginia. I know Michael and Sarah feel the same way.

So, here's to the last fifteen years of a good, happy marriage, which has seen plenty of good days, some hard and challenging and sad days, and some spectacular joys. I'm grateful to Michael, and to Sarah, for all of them!
Tam
Monday Oct. 6, 2008, 5:26 p.m.

Second Day of the Getaway

It's past midnight but I want to get at least the basics down while the other computer is uploading videos to YouTube.

The second day of our unscheduled getaway went very well. We got off to a late start, after sleeping in, but then began with the Calvert Marine Museum in Solomons, Maryland, an old favorite of Sarah's and ours, which had opened a new Paleontology exhibit since our last visit, not to mention that they now have an "eco-invaders" exhibit including the infamous snakehead, first found just a few years ago in the Potomac. It is, as Sarah noted, "Uhhhhhgggllyyyyy." I hope that gets the pronunciation across.

We saw a snake in the water, visited the otters and other residents of the place, saw some tracks in the mud of raccoons and herons and other stuff, Sarah got a fossil shark's tooth from the "find a fossil" exhibit and we decided to go look for real fossils later on the beach.

In the gift shop/bookstore we went a little overboard. I bought some books, bought Tam as an anniversary present a little thing for one of the bathrooms, and splurged and bought Sarah a lovely enameled butterfly jewel box she fell in love with, after making her swear that she would treat it carefully, not play with it, etc. So far only half successful but at least it isn't broken yet.

From there we went into Solomon's Island, just adjacent to Solomons and on an island, if you couldn't figure that part out already, an old oystering town, now mostly for tourists, only an hour or so out of DC. We ate at Stoney's Kingfishers, a crab house on the water, and had crab cake sandwiches (except for one of us who had Kraft Mac and Cheese. Guess which one). A splurge but worth it. Then across the street to an ice cream stand on the boardwalk adjacent to a playground and called (sorry) Cone Island, which Sarah has known since she was a toddler and is a de rigeur stop in season on Solomon's Island.

Having already discussed several options for the afternoon (none of them going home and getting work done), including a sail on a cruise on the Bay, and looking for real fossils on a real beach, we decided on the latter, and for the first time visited Flag Ponds Nature Park in Calvert County Maryland. It's just a little north of the Calvert Cliffs State Park, famous for its strata of fossils that erode out onto the beach, but a specialist at the Calvert Marine Museum told us that the beach was much easier to get to than at Calvert Cliffs. It's also just north of the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, I believe the only nuclear plant in Maryland. It was visible from the beach.

The beach was relatively empty and, if you check our YouTube videos, quite nice; besides lots of seashells there are a lot of fossils to be found. We got there late on a Sunday when it was presumably picked over, but found several pieces of coral, and my immediate thought was, "Coral? We don't have Coral in the Chesapeake." So I asked a conservationist/ranger (or whatever) and he said no, it's old. "Is it a fossil." "Getting there." "How old do you think?" "A couple of million years." That seems a bit young for these supposedly Miocene cliffs, but it's old enough for me. (It's older than me, and these days that itself feels like an accomplishment.)

By the end of this I was tired, sore, and ready to go home, so we did. But we were grateful that we got away. I'm uploading the videos now, the first on YouTube since the fourth of July (never have put together the vacation videos). Forgive. Till I got the new laptop I had real trouble editing video on the road, and am too busy at home. If you're close kin and aren't yet accessing our YouTube and Flickr accounts send me an e-mail and I'll invite you again. It's free. Either tonight or tomorrow (depending on how slow the upload is as it's late and I need sleep) there will be five [COUNT THEM: 5] new videos on YouTube. Some new stuff at Flickr too.

UPDATE: A very late addendum. As uploading was taking longer than I hoped, I did it double-barreled, using two computers on the same broadband link. One result was that two of the shorter videos from today went up in reverse order: the "Calvert Marine Museum" video comes chronologically just before the "Family Time on the Bay" video. In the greater scheme of things, this probably does not rank with whether the Trojan War occurred (a question Sarah asked this weekend, which I answered with discussions of the recent German discoveries of the upper city of Troy VIIA, which was not a third grade answer) or certain other issues. But for the record, "Calvert" came before family time, not after.

Check it out.

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Militia Muster at Saint Mary's City

We spent part of the day in Historic Saint Mary's City, Maryland. I'll post more later, but here's Tam in the pillory, Tam with a helmet and musket, and hoisting a musket. We also witnessed a display of firing (repelling a raid by pirates) which will go on You Tube, probably in two pieces since it's longer than YouTube's 10 minute limit. As I noted yesterday, the promotion spoke of the need for militia to repel pirates and Virginians, and soon after we arrived someone fired a cannon. They must have recognized us for what we are.

There was an encampment as well so we spent some time watching the reenactors; Sarah's seen reenactors doing later periods but the 1600s stuff was a bit new for all of us. We have a friend who does 18th century and have seen a fair number of civil war reenactments, but the 17th century stuff was different enough to be interesting -- although Sarah declared that the battle part "stunk," she showed interest in visiting the encampment beforehand.

Reenactors of course can never recreate the past, which really is and always remains another country; a reminder of this came at the end of the battle when a group of girls in bikinis, possibly from the college adjacent or from a boat on the river, wandered through the reenactment area, in rather stark contrast to the guys in 17th century halberds and helmets. I have no idea what the girls were doing there (it was a bit warm but still October) but it made for considerable comment. [UPDATE: It belatedly occurred to me the next day that this could have been a deliberate college prank, showing up in bikinis -- I don't think any were in one-piece suits -- at a 1600s reenactment. Assuming college students still do stunts like they used to.] [UPDATE 2: When I mentioned this to Tam she said, "Sure, I figured it was a prank all along. They were all in black, skimpy suits. What else could it be?" Okay, I'm slow, but I got there eventually.] The pirates, having been repelled, retreated in the same direction as the girls, but that may have been coincidence. It would have made a great picture but it happened too quickly and I had the camera turned off.

The 17th century reenactors, like civil war reenactors, tend to be on the heavy-set side: rather more so than I suspect the first settlers of Lord Baltimore's proprietary really were. (The movies "Gettysburg" and "Gods and Generals" used renenactors for battle scenes, but some of them look a lot better fed than your average Confederate infantryman.)

More on the day in a bit. As usual I don't post pictures of Sarah's face on the blog to respect her privacy.

A bit later: Although I knew Sarah hadn't enjoyed the "battle" that much (there weren't that many reenactors and 17th century firelocks take a long time to reload, so the musketry was scattered at best), I asked her what she had enjoyed most about the day: was it the reenactors' encampment where we were shown how they lived? No, she said: it was when I turned on the GPS in the car. And it does indeed work.

More tomorrow. This was an unplanned weekend but it's a fun one. I may not get the YouTube videos up till tomorrow or so.

The reenactor in the pic with Tam has obviously lost his helmet and musket to a Virginia plunderer, by the way.

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Road-Testing the New Toys

Friday night. Sarah, who got 100 on her spelling test today (much improved over last week), is sitting with me and when I say "let's have a family fun weekend" she answers, "It would be nice to stay in a hotel." Well, the problem is it's already Friday and we haven't made plans. "But I haven't tried out my Nintendo DS on a road trip." It isn't clear to me how the Nintendo DS would play any differently on a road trip than it does at home or in a restaurant, but I note the point.

Then Tam comes home. I mention the conversation. She says she was thinking the same thing. Thursday was our 15th wedding anniversary, so we've been celebrating, and despite the horrors on Wall Street, we still have some tax refunds and such. Tam says that she's missing water, since we did mountains for vacation and haven't seen the Bay or the ocean all year. So she's thinking of our old haunts in southern Maryland, on the western shore of Chesapeake Bay. Only an hour or two away.

Well, now that you mention it, I have a new laptop, and a new little GPS receiver, neither of which has been road tested. (The GPS finds Red Pine Street just fine, and requires the laptop to function -- couldn't afford the freestanding kind -- but I've been wanting to try it out.)

Okay, I'm supposed to finish a book chapter this weekend, but not for work -- for a reference book that pays only 100 pounds sterling. It's already late so an extra day or two won't matter. This will be an anniversary getaway.

So we made a reservation at our old haunts in Lexington Park, Maryland, near the Patuxent River Naval Air Station (Pax River), which lies near such sites as Solomon's Island, Point Lookout, Old St. Mary's City, etc. We'll road test the new toys and get away overnight on Saturday. This post from more than a year ago gives you the basic geography.

Ah, thinks I, I'm pretty sure St. Mary's City, the old historic site of Maryland's first capital, of which we are members, sent me something recently, so I check the old E-mail and sure enough I discover that tomorrow is a militia muster with colonial reenactors. Adding to the fun is the fact that the E-mail, like the web page I just linked to, mentions that you can:

• Discover how able-bodied male colonists were required to arm themselves and be prepared to defend the colony against pirates, Virginians, and others intent on plundering.

We are, at least officially if not by birth, Virginians, so this could be fun. I haven't plundered nearly enough lately. (Also note that in the pc era, "Indians" aren't mentioned.) I presume this is a reference to the Kent Island War, which doesn't even google up, but you can find the basics in the Wikipedia article on William Claiborne that I've linked to. If you're a Catholic Marylander, Claiborne was an evil puritan pirate; if you're a Virginia Protestant, he was a Virginia patriot defending the English Commonwealth against the papist infestation of Maryland. I'm a Virginia Catholic, so I have no idea what to make of him, but Virginia lost and Kent Island is Maryland's still. The period of the English Civil War was known in Maryland as "the plundering time," and it was Virginians and Cromwellians who were plundering. Though the picture of Claiborne on the Wikipedia site suggests he was at least more a cavalier by hairstyle than a roundhead, if you make much of haircuts. I think he was mostly fighting for William Claiborne. It's complicated, and fortunately Maryland and Virginia only fight over water rights in the Potomac these days. Only five years ago the Supreme Court had to get involved in that, though. We won.

And, of course, I realize that most American kids these days probably don't even study the English civil war. Most American history books jump from Jamestown and the Pilgrims to the preparatory stuff for the Revolution, like the French and Indian War.

More from the road test.

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