Day 138/365 233 Years Later....

"We are called to remember how unlikely it was that our American experiment would succeed at all; that a small band of patriots would declare independence from a powerful empire; and that they would form, in the new world, what the old world had never known – a government of, by, and for the people." President Barack Obama, July 4,2009

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states.

To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.

A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren.

We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us.

We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here.

We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence.

They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.

We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do.

And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Source: The Pennsylvania Packet, July 8, 1776

How unlikely indeed.

Every single one of these men made their signature, knowing they would be executed for treason if the effort failed.

Day 137/365 Mississippi Turning

Recently I did a couple postings about some of the most grim moments of the Civil Rights movement, infamous moments like the killing of three men in Neshoba County, Mississippi.

I am delighted to report that the same year we have our first black president, Philadelphia, Mississippi (in the heart of Neshoba County) has elected it's first black mayor, James Young. According to CNN "Despite a 55 percent white majority, Young defeated Rayburn Waddell, a white, three-term incumbent, by the slim margin of 46 votes."

Meaning some of the white folks voted for him.

Mayor-elect Young will be sworn in this weekend, the Fourth of July.

I believe Neshoba Country is on its way to redemption.

Day 136/365 Up On the Roof

This morning I woke up to the sound of crowbars prying sheets of tin off the roof (a sound that is very similar to fingernails on chalkboard, possibly the only thing more irritating than my alarm clock).

For only the second time since 1866, my neighbors are having their house re-roofed, reminding me of The Time Machine, where the years whirl by the professor as he watches the changes in the world.


Underneath the tin sheets are the original wooden planks for the roof - in this case, American chesnut that's almost petrified and will probably last longer than the rest of the house.

In the Appalachian Mountains and the Blue Ridge, until the 1930's, the American Chesnut was king. The trees were huge in diameter, and they covered the slopes. When this roof was constructed, the builders had access to as much chesnut as they could want - they probably threw away more American Chesnut scraps than are available in all of America in 2009.

As young men, both of my great-grandfather's cut chesnut trees with two-man saws, using teams of draft horses and chains to pull the trees to the local saw mills - one to replace a house that had burnt down, the other to build the first log cabin he and my great-grandmother would live in.

Both structures are still standing.

My own house has chesnut log supports visible in the basement as well as thick joists that will long outlast me and my children - all put in place in 1858.

An enterprising curator of the New York Botanical Gardens imported a Japanese Chesnut in the 1930's, thinking to add it to their collection. Unfortunately he also unknowingly imported a blight with it - a disease the Japanese chesnut was impervious to, but one that was disastrous to the American chesnut.

Within several years, the huge groves of chesnuts were gone, not only in Appalachia but the rest of America as well. *


My neighbor's roof is getting a plywood sheath over the chesnut, simply because the chesnut is so dense (petrified), it's difficult to get enough nails into to hold the shingles. The chesnut wood itself is beautiful, almost like it's been stained and polished.

The original roof was wooden shakes - it went on just after The War (don't ask me which war - this is a southern-based blog, get with the program). The shakes lasted until approximately 1900-1910, just about 100 years ago.

The second roof was a layer of 2 x 4 foot sheets of tin, and at some point, the tin was painted black. I myself love a tin roof -my grandmother had one. It's like being under a waterfall when it rains and wonderful "white noise" for falling asleep.

During the last "airing" for this roof, the street in front of it was a dusty road, the hillside across that road (the lot next to us)was still an orchard, our house still had an outdoor kitchen, World War I was part of the future, and plans were being drawn up for a great ship called the Titanic.

Makes the 25 year warranty on my shingle roof look sortof silly.

*For information on the return of the American Chesnut: http://www.acf.org/meadowview.php

Day 135/365 Outlook Dismal

Somewhere in these mountains in southwestern Virginia is my bottom-line, most favorite of all places on earth: Dismal Falls.

Although I was a government brat who moved all over creation, seemingly every 15 minutes, during the summers we came home to the Appalachian Mountains and both sides of our extended family.

It was for all-the-world just like time travel. The deeper we got into the mountains, the further we were from 1960's America. My mother's side of the family still churned their own milk, slaughtered their own hogs, had no indoor plumbing, and got the worst TV reception I'd ever seen.

On Sundays, after church, Granddaddy would load everyone into a huge truckbed, and haul us all up the mountain on narrow, rutted dirt roads, just to go swimming at Dismal Falls. "Everyone" included my grandparents, my parents, myself, my cousins, my aunts and uncles, and anyone who happened to be stopping by whenever he decided it was time to go. If it was a really hot day, and we behaved, on the way back we might stop for cold Coca-cola's.

Dismal Falls is a tucked away secret - I suspect more people know about it now since the park service put up a sign, but at that time, just around a particularily sharp curve, there was a wide spot in the road, with enough space for maybe three or four cars to pull off. No sign.

And no warning that the trail dropped sharply downhill, maybe 60 feet, with nothing more to hang onto beside tree roots. If a person stopped to listen, they could hear the falls roaring below. Fortunately what little traffic there was for the most part just on drove by, unless they were locals, or trail hikers who'd been told about the falls.

That steep trail meant you really had to want to get down to those falls. No built-in steps, no handrails, and no place for any whiners who wanted a guidebook either. Occasionally we would run into another family, or a solitary hiker, or evidence of a campfire. Once I found the ashes of a campfire covered with hundreds of bright blue butterflies - they love the residue from the charred wood.

If you pay attention and watch your step on the slick algae-covered rocks, and the water is low, you can easily walk across the falls. Dismal Creek continues upwards across a broad rock shelf,and there's a smaller terraced waterfall that comes in maybe a quarter mile up the creek.

Looking back up at the falls you can see how it makes a little bowl that forms the main swimming hole. The deepest point is 10-15 feet deep, and unless it's rained recently, the water is fairly clear. When the water is low, the snakes may come out and sun on the rock shelves, so be careful where you put your hands (voice of experience here).

My memories of Dismal are permanently etched from this hot Sunday afternoon in August. That's me in my LSU t-shirt, around nineteen years old, helping my younger cousin out of the water, while her sister looks on. The water was crystal clear, and just cold enough to be slightly past refreshing.


But this picture, earlier by maybe 5 years, is my favorite. The colors have started to change in it, so I sepia-toned it. One cousin is walking across the falls, my aunt and uncle are standing on a dry rock shelf on the other side, my dad is to the left in the plaid shirt, and, right in the center are my grandparents, Charlie and Mary. I think I must have been behind the camera.

Granddaddy is probably deciding whether or not we merit Coca-cola's this particular day.

A year later everything changed - my grandparents celebrated their 50th anniversary, and a week afterwards my granddaddy was killed in a tractor accident up on the mountain.

I've been up to the falls many times since, taking potential boyfriends there (my version of a litmus test) and eventually my daughter. There's a few more people now, and some talk of it not being all that safe if you're alone, and inevitably more trash.

Still, even now, thirty-something years later, out of the corner of my eye, all I see are my cousins running across the rocks or diving off the top, and my grandparents, Charlie and Mary, sitting on the rocks.

Day 134/365 Four, Or Five, On the Floor

One thing you learn to appreciate when you homeschool (especially after 10 years of it), is a day off. Because the rest of the days are 24/7. No offense to my beloved daughter, and I'm pretty sure she feels the same way too, which is why she's off working at the museum's summer science camps, leaving me to revel in being childless for the day.

Reveling is what I did today while driving around running errands (I'm grownup now - reveling is not what it use to be, but it will have to do).

But it occurs to me I still enjoy doing exactly what I enjoyed doing years ago - driving on a hot summer day, with windows rolled down, and Zeppelin cranked up on the radio. Yes, it was a wasteful use of gasoline and contributed to global warming, and you can tell the eco-police I don't regret a minute of it, and will, in fact, do it again, every chance I get (which isn't often these days).

Today while I took the long road home I listened to (IMHO) the best driving song in the universe, Rock & Roll, courtesy of Led Zeppelin. This particular piece of music has sent me flying across more miles of road than I can remember and possibly not always within the posted speed limit.

But even before Zeppelin I was driving on little twisty, windy, unlit dirt roads up in the mountains -before I had a license - on account of my older cousin deciding I needed to learn to drive (me at age 13, in his souped-up car). Was he sweet or what - letting his baby cousin drive his precious Chevy SS? I remember when we started he kept saying "use the accelerator", and within an hour or so, started muttering: "you might wanna slow down just a tad".

When I actually got a license, we were living in Iowa. Iowa has to be the safest place in the world to learn to drive. Particularily if you're a teenager in the early 1970's. No matter what substance you've ingested, the only place to go is either on the road, or into a flat cornfield.

This is where I discovered my dad's 1968 Impala would easily go 123 mph. And just as easily blow out a tire at that speed. FWIW - 1968 Impala's just roll off to the shoulder when the front tire blows out, almost into the cornfield.

When I first started college it was in Louisiana, land of the elevated interstate with no median and nothing but swamp underneath. The first weekend I drove down to New Orleans, my roommate gave me one last piece of advice: Watch out for gators in the road, they'll pop your tires. And don't get out to move them.

Sometime around then ( my memories are justifiably hazy of this entire time period), I took a road trip out west - while driving across Texas I discovered every state has its little driving quirks. In Louisiana, driving with an open drink was almost part of the road manual. In Texas, everyone seemed to have a gun. I remember seeing a woman pull up next to me at a restaurant, open her door, and then toss her handgun back on the front seat after it clattered onto the pavement.

On this trip I just barely made it to L.A. - that last mountain range killed the compression in my VW Hatchback (my first car). I sold it to a friend, took the money and flew home to Minnesota.

Springtime in Minnesota. At least before global warming. I remained car-less because my dad thought I should save my money until I could pay cash for a vehicle. I went along with it until the winter of 1976 when I found myself stranded at a bus stop one night with too much snow for the buses to run and it was sub-sub-zero temps. I ended up walking almost two miles in -20 degree cold- since anyone else with any sense at all was at home.

The next morning, I got a ride to a car dealer (the first one I saw), and bought the first car I saw. None of this weighing decisions, comparing vehicles or checking Consumer Reports. Nope, I walked in and asked how much is that blue one, and I could pay $100 a month and what could they do. (I don't recommend this approach as a general rule).

I got so lucky. That little blue car was a Mazda GLC hatchback, the first year they were introduced to the States. And it really was a Great Little Car. My father was horrified I had gone into debt. Oh well.

No more waiting at bus stops late at night. No more frozen fingers. I loved that car. It never slid in the rain, never got stuck in the snow(not even in Minnesota), and once I drove through the West Virginia mountains in the middle of a flash flood. The GLC didn't blink once, just held the road and kept going. The dirt backroads up through Jefferson National Forest had ruts in it so deep they were almost up over the roof of the car (I am only slightly exaggerating), but the GLC ran down one side and up the other. And I couldn't count the times the needle was on empty and I sat explaining to the car that it just had to make it home on fumes - never, ever, once did it let me down.

This is the original ad for the car. That's not me. And my GLC was a deep royal blue.

Kinda like this one.

A number of years later, I got a corporate job with a company car, and figured I didn't need two cars. So I gave it to the then-current boyfriend, who didn't appreciate it and totaled it a couple months later. He immediately took the fast track to "ex" at that point.

Now I'm just driving reliable but not memorable cars (I am after all suppose to be a grownup at some point) - but occasionally - on days like today -with the help of Robert Plant and the Zeppelin, I have almost-flashbacks to my little GLC, and wonderful summer days.

Day 133/365 Can't Stop Till You Get Enough

Apologies to those of you who are Michael Jackson'd out - only one more.

And only because I was trying to gather up You Tube links for my DD, because she missed a VH1 show tonight of MJ videos.

I found my original all-time favorite MJ song - it's a remake of Smokey Robinson's 1960 Who's Lovin You - he wrote it for The Miracles, and it was such a hit eventually almost every Motown group recorded it. The song is an ex-lover's lament, mourning the loss of a relationship and remembering where it went wrong, and wondering who she's with now.

In 1960 Louisiana, Smokey Robinson records were only sold in "race" record stores, but the music itself was played on black radio stations, and some enterprising little white girls had transistor radios with dials that wandered all over the color divide. By 1963, most white record stores had added a store section (clearly labeled "race records") for R&B music. Then John Lennon got off the plane in NYC in February 1964, and told the reporters his favorite music was James Brown and the Shirelles. That sent all the kids scrambling towards the "race records". So I was in love with Smokey's version of Who's Lovin You from the start.

Then on October 14, 1969, Michael Jackson got his little 11-year-old hands on it, and it ended up being the B-side to their first single (I Want You Back), riding the charts straight to #1.

Michael's version sends shivers down my spine - I bet you can't listen to it just once:

Day 132/365 Shout Out To Mikki

The next few days will be veritable tsunami of Michael Jackson memories, videos, analysis, with all those folks popping out of the woodwork to be good friends a day too late, and all the "I knew it would happen" hindsight psychics.

I think this is where I'm suppose to insert my particular poignant Michael Jackson memory but truely, his name always reminds me of a friend of mine, who I have long since lost track of but can't stop thinking of this morning.

Back in the last weeks of December 1980, I was working in a camera store with a great group of people, including Mikki McNaughton -our long-suffering manager who we teased incessantly about pretty much everything (that is another post in itself).

Any Beatle fan knows what December 8 1980 was like for us.

I remember being at the bottom of a dark pit, absolutely in shock, frozen with grief. To the point where I ran very close to not making it through, nor caring if I did.

And Mikki was so very, very kind, even though she wasn't part of that whole Beatles generation.

I remember her telling me that she understood, because she'd feel the same way if it was Michael Jackson, that he was her Lennon. That he had always been there, and it seemed as if they'd grown up together - and she'd be devastated if it had been him.

So now it is him. And I know where she's at. Been there, done that, and 29 years later, it's something I still avoid thinking about, 'cause it still hurts.

Dear dear Mikki - wherever you are - let me know if there's anything I can do to make this easier for you.