Category Archives: Genealogy

Times Wastes Too Fast

Posted on July 5, 2009 | Comments Off on Times Wastes Too Fast

A remarkable, very readable Web-centric piece on Thomas Jefferson, warts and all. His Aunt Judith, his father’s sister, was Mr. B’s seven greats grandmother.

Via In Search of Jefferson’s Moose.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Genealogy, Library, Mr. Boy, Obituaries

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The Plexiglas Flight Deck

Posted on March 29, 2009 | Comments Off on The Plexiglas Flight Deck

b29_cockpit_500

Continuing my fascination with the B-29 Stratofortress Superfortress begun here, here, and here.

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Posted in Genealogy, Scribbles

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We fly off to D.C.

Posted on March 13, 2009 | Comments Off on We fly off to D.C.

We’re leaving the rancho this afternoon to fly to D.C. for a week of family reunion before the family there moves to Tyler and we’re no longer able to save money on a hotel. Weren’t able to get into the Spring Break mob converging on the Capitol and the White House. But we have plenty else to see and do, including visiting Mr. B.’s paternal grandfather’s grave in Arlington and, hopefully, catch the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns.

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Posted in Genealogy, Mr. Boy, Mrs. Charm, Rancho Roly Poly, Texana

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Solstice adieu

Posted on December 22, 2008 | Comments Off on Solstice adieu

Well, I made it past another solstice, without feeling the need for an Anglo-Saxon costume drama. Just a quiet day, despite the frigid aftermath of another overnight Blue Norther. Finishing Iron Sunrise, another good Charles Stross SF novel, and thinking of the seasonal carols of my youth, Adeste Fideles and Hark The Herald Angels Sing. Then I did the annual reading of his Maccabees book to Mr. Boy before we lit the first Hanukkah candle. For the next few days we will be singing Santa and Reindeer songs for his and Mrs. Charm’s secular celebration of Christmas.

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Posted in Genealogy, Israel, Mr. Boy, Mrs. Charm, Rancho Roly Poly, Weather/Climate

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High school Latin

Posted on November 22, 2008 | Comments Off on High school Latin

Victor Davis Hanson, a classics professor, wants high school students to have four years of it:

"…such instruction would do more for minority youths than all the ‘role model’ diversity sermons on Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, Montezuma, and Caesar Chavez put together. Nothing so enriches the vocabulary, so instructs about English grammar and syntax, so creates a discipline of the mind, an elegance of expression, and serves as a gateway to the thinking and values of Western civilization as mastery of a page of Virgil or Livy (except perhaps Sophocles’s Antigone in Greek or Thucydides’ dialogue at Melos)."

He’s right, of course, though I don’t think I’d want to take four years of it. I only had to take one year, in 1960-61, and I still remember how cool it was to translate text so old yet still recognizable in its human concern. My grandmother taught Latin at Southern Methodist University in Dallas in the 1920s. But that was college. 

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Posted in Blogosphere, Genealogy, Scribbles, Uncategorized

Diversity run amok

Posted on November 18, 2008 | Comments Off on Diversity run amok

Folks who think today’s politics are particularly vicious should read up on their American history. For instance, once upon a time, especially during slavery days, a speech-giving white politician might suddenly be interrupted by a handful of black children paid by his opponent to rush at him yelling "Daddy! Daddy!"

Nowadays the old slanders are being put to new use. Diversity Inc. magazine is giving away a poster (for a $19.99 one-year subscription) claiming that Barry isn’t the first black president but merely joins Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge in the distinction. The proof? Black People and Their Place in World History, a littleknown self-published 2002 book by an amateur historian and professional eye doctor named Leroy Vaughn. Vaughn uses hearsay, mostly from the aforementioned presidents’ enemies, to claim they were of mixed race.

Which leads me to the inevitable comment: that Vaughn’s and Diversity Inc.’s claim is an obvious case of eyewash.

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Posted in Genealogy, Obamalot, Scribbles

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Raparations for slavery

Posted on October 29, 2008 | Comments Off on Raparations for slavery

Money, in other words, for the African-American community of American slave descent. An old black woman I knew near Holly Springs, MS, dead now for several years, was a plaintiff in a lawsuit designed to win economic reparations for slavery. She, whose grandparents had been owned by my maternal ancestors near Oxford, never expected to win and, indeed, she died before the case was adjudicated. I believe it was thrown out.

But she didn’t need the money. She had inherited cotton land acquired through great diligence and prudence by her grandparents, the freed slaves, and their children, her parents. But she, who had taken to wearing African dress in her old age, wanted the raparations money for the symbolic value. That’s apparently what Barry had in mind, in 2001, with his talk of redistributing, which has now become a campaign issue. Ironic, considering that he is not descended from American slaves, or, on his white side, slave owners, as far as I know. Would it matter if he succeeded in passing out some money? Probably not to the spendthrifts. Would it be worth the symbolism? Perhaps, if that was as far as it went. But Barry, the Left’s stealth candidate, apparently has a great deal more in mind.

Meanwhile, Mississippi has thirty-four thousand unverified new voters to struggle with next week.

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Posted in Civil War, Genealogy

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