Betty watches the noon Mass at the Basilica of National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception every Sunday. This is after we watch the Saint Cecilia Mass from Boston at 9:30. I usually listen to the music from my office. Both the music and the photography appeal to Betty. The Shrine has been an important part of my life. In childhood we visited D.C. regularly (The shrine was just the crypt church then) I lived in D.C. for a year during the Carter administration when I did my postdoctoral residency in program evaluation at Saint Elizabeth Hospital (then a part of NIMH) I used to go there for Saturday evening Mass.
Today at the end of the Mass, they dedicated a new outdoor Way of the Cross
I like the shape of the garden which echoes much of the Basilica. The brief blessing service was obviously well choreographed and rehearsed. I think the woman in the wheelchair is likely the donor or at least a near relative. The whole Mass was broadcast on EWTN.
Interspersed with the video feed were stills of the stations themselves.
The service is only fifteen minutes long at 1:35 out of 1:50 minutes in this YouTube video:
The procession is accompanied by the bell ringing and you can see most if not all the stations.
I did not watch the Mass but did one of my current projects which integrates Betty's art with my photographs. As part of making a collage, Betty makes a couple hundred pieces of paper with various designs. They themselves are beautiful works of art. Before she cuts them up I photograph them and then integrate them with my photos.
For Lent I feature photographs of driftwood that collect on the shore of Headlands Beach State Part. I see this deadwood on the sands (echo of deserts) and near the water (echo of sea of Galilee and baptism) as dead life ready to be transfigured into art. My series in previous years has consisted of minimal transformations, cutting, orienting and minimal cleanup of picture. Betty's art offers the possibility of surrounding the driftwood with a transforming cloud.
There are three Icons (Pictures) in the post, one at the top, one before the optional readings and one before the Gospel Canticle. In my desktop computer using the Windows Edge browser if you click on any of the icons it displays it full page with a toggle at the bottom to move among them.
Betty is much improved. She is off the opioid caliber pain relief that was necessary for over a year and now can drive again! (I never understood how long, tedious and painful that process is; no wonder people become addicted to them). Very good news for me, since I no longer have to drive her places. Also, she is no longer traumatized by the grief. I credit most of that to Betty's artwork. When I met her, she was finishing an art therapy degree with hope to going into that field. At that time art therapists had hoped to have legislation making them independent practitioners. That never happened; doctors were too powerful. At least Betty has benefitted from her own art therapy.
ADDITIONAL LAETARE SUNDAY NEWS
We should always praise the rich, the famous and the powerful when they do good things just as we should praise our clergy, the bishops and pope when they do go things. We should however not be complacent about anyone virtue, especially our own.
Last year's Laetare Award went to:
She is another descendent of a wealthy family dedicated to the public good and the good of others that has made the family tradition into her own contributions. We don't want discourage wealthy people from these good endeavors. In fact we should pray for them since Jesus himself told us that it would be very difficult for them to get into the Kingdom of Heaven
Jack, I am so glad to hear that Betty is doing better!
ReplyDeleteI did watch the video of the procession and the outdoor Stations. It looks like they have beautiful grounds at the Shrine. I liked the "change ringing" of the bells with the procession.
I'm very impressed with yours and Betty's collaborative art. My favorite is the first picture with the blue mosaic tiles and the driftwood.
I always love the rose vestments for Laetare Sunday. I wore a pink sweater to Mass myself yesterday. Easter is a bit early this year, so late Lenten weather is unpredictable. We had spring like weather last week with one beautiful 74° day. But yesterday winter was back with a blast. Came out of 11:00 am Mass to 19° and 35 mph wind, and swept a bit of snow off the car. The unpleasant days make us appreciate the good ones! It appears that DC had favorable weather for the procession.
Fortunate that they had the procession yesterday. Today they are sending kids home from school at noon because the weather forecast for this afternoon and evening says possible hurricane winds (60-80 mph), thunderstorms, hail, trees down etc. I don’t ever remember them closing schools early in advance of bad weather unless a blizzard is forecast! We had an 86 degree day last week. It will be high 60s today and high of 40 tomorrow.
DeleteYes, glad to hear Betty is doing some better and is more mobile.
DeleteHoping the storms might help douse your wildfires, Katherine.
March is the worst month in Michigan, and is either more violent than it used to be, or I am old and feel more vulnerable about bad weather.
Fortunately, we live in a "sweet spot" in the middle of the state, so we usually miss the ice storms to the north and the tornados to the south.
Last I heard the fires were mostly under control. What we really need is some rain.
DeleteIt is good news that Betty is doing better. It’s a blessing that she has such artistic talent. I think that music and art are very healing activities. She is talented in both areas - a gift always, but especially important in healing - emotional and spiritual.
ReplyDeleteHappy St Patrick's Day. The Old English Martyrology celebrated St P more than 1,200 years ago:
ReplyDeleteOn ðone seofonteoðan dæg ðæs monðes byð Sancte Patrices tyd ðæs halgan bisceopes, se gelærde ða mægðe to geleafan Hiebernia, þæt is Scotta mægðe. His fæder nama wæs Calpurne, and his modor nama wæs Contablata. And he sylf wæs on hundteontigum geara and on an and ðrytegum ða he his gast ageaf. And ær ðam ðe he come on Scotta mægðe, ða cyld clypedon and cwædon: "Cum, Sancte Patrice, and gehæle us ec."
On the seventeenth day of the month is St Patrick's feast, that holy bishop St Patrick, who instructed in the faith Hibernia, the land of the Gaels. His father’s name was Calpurnius, and his mother’s name was Contablata. And he himself was 131 years old when he gave up the ghost. And before he came to the land of the Gaels, the children had called and said: ‘Come, St Patrick, and heal us too’.
The things that look like the letter "d" with a cross stand for "th." It's a letter still used in Scandinavian languages.
Patrick's parents' names suggest he was thought to have had a Roman father and British mother. Certainly the Welsh have claimed him, and there were Romans still in Britain at the time of Patrick's birth.
The Martyrology contains a number of Irish saints, testimony to the fact that the Anglo-Saxons had deep roots in the Celtic Church, which pre-dated the Roman Church's mission in the north and west.
Nothing about snakes ...
Happy St. Patrick's Day to you as well!
DeleteI don't know if this is true or not, but I was reading that his father was a deacon, and his grandfather was a priest (this would have been before mandatory celibacy).
There are a lot of St. Patrick legends. My favorite is the one where their enemies who were pursuing them saw Patrick and his followers as deer, and went on by. Hence one title of the prayer known as St. Patrick's Breastplate or the Lorica is The Cry of the Deer.
I was able to pick out a few identifiable words and phrases in that Old English example (or was it early Middle English?)
My husband wants something Irish for dinner. I can't stand the smell or the taste of corned beef, so it will be roast beef and colcannon. And some green frosted cookies I picked up yesterday.
About the snakes, I saw a cartoon one time of St. Patrick driving out the snakes. He was driving a car and the snakes were in the back seat saying "Aren't we there yet?"
DeleteI don't think there ever were any snakes in Ireland. Lucky them!
The other Irish saints are interesting too. I was thinking of a poem attributed to St. Brigid, beginning "I would I had a great lake of ale for the King of Kings..." Probably apocryphal.
It's old English, but the Martyrology is pretty easy reading. Yes, the deer story has a lot of reverb in Celtic folklore.
DeleteMy Icelandic friend posted that there were never snakes in Ireland or Iceland. Somebody asked, "Did St Patrick go there, too?" Lots of genetic studies on native Icelanders show that they are roughly half Irish. So those old sagas about the Vikings stealing off with Irish women when they settled up there have some factual basis.
I read the Lake of Beer prayer at my parents' memorial service.
Happy StPatricks Day all, Are Katherine’s hiusbad and I the only Irish here?
DeleteOne of my favorite Irish blessings
“May God give you… For every storm, a rainbow, For every tear, a smile, For every care, a promise, And a blessing in each trial.
For every problem life sends, A faithful friend to share, For every sigh, a sweet song, And an answer for each prayer.”
My keyboard is a disaster.
DeleteHappy St Patrick’s Day all. Are Katherine’s husband and I …..
One of my favorite John Michael Talbot albums, God of Life, has an Irish flavor
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm2q7K5IEGk&list=OLAK5uy_kJoR0Uud1wNXDgcIXw2PHg4wRw4n8g1mY
My mother's family was Irish. I don't feel much affinity for my Ireland roots, but she was very proud of them. The Boy took her considerable collection of Irish music when she died, and I was happy someone wanted it.
DeleteMy mother's Aunt Grace once asked Dad if he was Irish. He said he was Welsh. "Well", said Aunt Grace consolingly, "that's almost as good."
The Famine is not a topic widely discussed in Ireland, but it's how we ended up here. Nuala O'Faolain's novel "My Dream of You" and the movie "Arracht" (Monster) look at that period. I think "Arracht" streams free on Tubi and Roku, but you might have to search for it as "Monster." Not a lot of laughs ...
I don’t feel any affinity for my paternal German roots even though they are generationally closer - my grandfather emigrated from Germany with two brothers. My mom’s two sets of grandparents were Irish immigrants in the 1840s so probably around the time of the famine. But somehow they ended up in the Corning NY area, farming, and they didn’t experience the horrors of living as poor Irish in New York City. I relate to that side, maybe because my physical appearance is more Irish like my mom ( but without her red hair) than my dad. But I barely knew him, didn’t like him much, so maybe that’s why I don’t relate to my German heritage at all. My mother’s family name was Walsh - common in Ireland. I have read that it is a corruption of Welsh. According to what I’ve read, most people way back in Ireland had only a first name and a descriptor name, often their trade or where they were from. So John the Smith became John Smith and Brian the Welshman became Brian Walsh. A lot of Irish arrived there from Wales. I know little about Irish music, but I do like the Irish harp.
DeleteMy husband's Irish ancestors were from County Sligo. My mom's side were Scots Irish from Derry. Before that they were said to have been from the Isle of Skye. They were Presbyterian. Both families came over around 1850, but I don't know that they were fleeing the Famine. I've read some things about the Famine, it must have caused terrible suffering. They may not talk about it, but I'm sure it left its mark even on the ones who stayed in Ireland.
DeleteThe Protestants in Northern Ireland were recruited by the English to move there. They were from Scotland ( Presbyterian) so the Isle of Skye is probably right. They didn’t suffer from the famine because they weren’t Catholic. There was enough food, but the English didn’t let them have it. The Irish Protestants including Church of Ireland and Presbyterian ate, the rest was exported to England. It was the Catholics who were starving.
DeleteMy dad's father was Polish, his mother Lithuanian. My mother's dad was English, her mother German.
DeleteMy grandmother's Lithuanian heritage tended to get submerged in my grandfather's Polish heritage. They talked in Polish which is what my dad and his siblings picked up.
My grandfather's English heritage got ignored because he was not Catholic like the rest of us. Personally, he was not religious. He had agreed to have the children raised as Catholic.
His family were Nazarene. Some of them lived in our little town, even some next door, but we were not close. We did not eat together or visit much indoors. We talked outside mainly in the summer. They were more like next door neighbors than family.
Religion is what separated us. The feelings were mutual. One of their family had married a Nazarene preacher, and I was planning to become a Jesuit!
Again, they were like neighbors who had a different religion rather than Catholic family members. They were horrified by my mother who was an early adopter of shorts. She also did manly things like paint the house, work on the house, move the garage, go fishing, and build our cottage with my dad. Obviously decadent Catholics whose son was planning to be a priest!
Jack, your mom sounds a lot like some of my pioneer ancestors. Women can do a lot when they see things that need doing!
DeleteHow close are the Polish and Lithuanian languages to each other? I know the lines between the two countries have been pretty fluid during history.
I don't know much about the Nazarene church's beliefs. We used to vote at the Nazarene church when it was our polling place. It was about half a block from our house at the time.
I think white Americans over 60 or so are the last generation to have much ethnic feeling. We're the last ones to remember relatives speaking anything but English, telling stories about life outside the US or about coming over, cooking ethnic food with funny names, etc. In our neighborhood, about half a dozen moms were brought home by WWII vets from England, France, or Germany as war brides.
DeleteI tried to inculcate some sense of ethnic identity in my kid because it was important to me, connecting me with a wider world. But it's irrelevant to him except to tease me about not liking to admit I'm Irish.
I think the Catholic-Protestant divide that Jack describes has also softened considerably. When religion is less tied up with ethnic and family identity, people drift away.
Katherine, for centuries until the partition of Poland, it was the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. This was not by conquest but by invitation. Lithuanian King Jagiello married a female princess of the Polish Piast dynasty and became a Christian. He became King of Poland and Lithuania. There was no domination of the Lithuanians by the Poles. No linguistic domination, either. My mother’s parents came from northeast Poland, close to Lithuania. My gene test came up 20% Baltic. My mother’s maiden name “Znorowski” is extremely rare in Poland and means nothing in Polish. I wonder if it is not from Lithuania. I have a book on Poland between the world wars. Haven’t read much of it yet but I’m curious as to how much it’s a case of “you can’t go home again”. Curious also because it might throw light on Israel trying to reconstitute something that was dissolved two thousand years ago.
DeleteMost of what I know about Poland was from reading James Michener's book by the same name. It was a work of fiction, but he did a lot of historical research for it.
DeleteNever read that one. Just google my mother’s maiden name and found new stuff. Apparently it’s a locational name and related to that region of Poland. So my baltic genes must come from diffusion. I am much psychologically closer to my Polish origins than my half-breed (haha) cousins. I also grew up in a Polish household. Maybe that’s what inoculated me against MAGA.
DeleteIt's rare to find a white American with one ethnic identity now. Raber is 100 percent German--Amish Bavarians and Catholic Westphalians who got together by way of some German Lutherans of unknown origin over in Wisconsin. They're all MAGA'd right up to the hilt, even the Amish. Some of the men actually registered to vote in 2024.
DeleteI guess it’s “All aboard the Pequod”. At least the Amish don’t use oil, at least directly. I don’t think they make all their stuff from scratch. Those carriages have metal parts and Amish don’t own smelters.
DeleteThe Amish are not self sufficient. They order stuff from huge catalogs--big kitchen wood stoves, buggies, those little white caps the women wear, men's big black felt hats, giant bells they ring in their yards for emergencies, kerosene lamps, generators for the dairy and sawmill operations, corncob pipes, blacksmithing equipment.
DeleteMany ordnungs now allow pretty much any convenience in a business including laptops and Android phones, but they can't use them at home. Plus the Amish and Mennonites live close together, and Mennonites buy black vans and their women make incomes hauling the Amish around.
Raber's Amish cousins also LOVE Burger King. When they come up here for funerals and whatnot, they hire a van and the highlight of the trip is their BK stop.
I guess it’s like they say, “everything is interconnected”. Whether you like it or not. Anyway, gas in the Poconos is hitting 4/gal. But a NYC real estate man has to know what he’s doing. They know everything.
Delete$3.99 here. It's going to jack up the price and availability of mass transit (which sucks in the US anyway) for low income people. But who cares about them. We are in good shape travel-wise because we rarely leave the village limits and Raber can ride his bike everywhere if the road isn't icy except to the vet. If we lose our grocery store like a lot of dinky towns, though, we're screwed.
DeleteFor a real estate maven, Trump is sure stepping on his own you-know-what. He brags about his Gaza Riviera and bringing back Cuba's night life, but a) who's left in the US who can afford to go there with fuel, food, and shelter going up up up, or b) wants to with Iran and the Islamicists bombing the bejesus out of everybody?
Regular gas here in the suburbs is still below $4, ranging from $3.29-3.79 at stations I’ve seen in the last couple of days. About $1.00 gallon higher in the city.
DeleteRe white Americans identification with their heritage. We old folk are not as mixed as our kids. But more mixed than our parents. But it seems to me that it is partly related to whether or not people are first generation or later. My Greek friend and her husband are fiercely Greek. Their two older kids married Greek, partly at the urging of the parents. They preferred born Greek. Their youngest, a daughter, had at least two serious romances ( including one engagement) break up because of the pressure on the boyfriends to convert. . Finally they relented on the born Greek because she was getting close to 40, had a broken engagement, and then fell in love with a Chinese American. Since they worried that she was getting too old to have babies if she waited much longer, they persuaded the boyfriend to convert to Orthodoxy ( he was raised Baptist in Texas. He was born in the USA but his parents were immigrants). So he had private instructions from their priest, was baptized, given communion and confirmed in the same ceremony just like the babies, and is now the only Asian - American in their church’s congregation. And they have a new, beautiful granddaughter. Their daughter turned 41 in January - first child last summer at 40. Probably last too.
I am 50-50 Irish heritage and German heritage. Nobody talked at all about the old country or kept the customs in either family. My father grew up speaking German but he never used it in our home. We never saw his relatives, his parents died years before I was born, so no German influence. My husband is 50-50 English and German. English roots back to the early 1600s. Plus a grandmother who was Scottish ( and Presbyterian); His German heritage dad was about the third or fourth generation and nobody kept German customs or spoke German. Our sons have English - Irish - German ( both maternal annd paternal) and, if you go way back to the late 1700s on my paternal side, French. But the grandkids are true mongrels. Add in Viet Viet Namese for one son’s kids, Polish and a whole lot more French for another son’s kids who are American and French citizens (our son is also now officially a French citizen as of two weeks ago) and Jamaican for the eldest son’s kids. Religion? In my Catholic family, only two of five married Catholics. My mother silently disapproved of three of her children marrying Protestants (including me), but said nothing. My mother- in- law disapproved of her son marrying a Catholic, but also said nothing.
I have no idea why I did identify with Ireland growing up. With all of the traveling we’ve done, from Asia to Australia, to Europe and more than a dozen trips to England, we never went to Ireland . Germany more than once, but not Ireland. I would still like to go. Although I’ve only seen videos and photos, there is something about the landscape of gentle, green hills, ancient ruined churches and monasteries, and dramatic sea coasts that really appeals to me. It looks so contemplative.
It sounds like Ireland would be lovely.
DeleteIt's fun to go down the rabbit hole of ancestry. I don't feel much connection though if they were so far back in time that I heard no stories about them. I feel more connection to the Danish and French ones. The French ones were the Catholic heritage. There were some early American ones that I know very little about. Including one with the first name of "Recompense". LOL, that didn't make the short list of any baby names!
I know much more about my father’s side of the family because of the interest his long lost relatives in Germany had in the
Delete“ lost” part of the family who moved to America in the 1880s. They found us in the 1990s - a switch from Americans seeking out their roots. My family name is exceedingly rare in both Germany and the US. We are at least distantly related to everyone in Germany and the US with the same last name. Last week my nephew was called by a relative here in Minnesota with whom we’ve never been in contact. . My grandfather and two brothers came to America together in 1880 something and joined the German immigrants in Minneapolis. My grandfather married and moved to California. His brothers stayed in Minnesota. The woman who called my nephew is older than I am. As far as I can tell, she’s descended from one of the brothers. I guess my second cousin? I called her and left a VM but she hasn’t called me back. She was interested in something about our genealogy . The present day Germans who found us connected us with a relative in Düsseldorf who had created a family tree going back to the 1790s, to a French ancestor. But nothing beyond about the French ancestor, because he had been adopted as a young child in Germany by a couple with our family name. His birth name is not known. The genealogist was Uncle Willi - I have a photo of him. We met the German family who tracked us down one year when they came to the US, which they did every year. They loved the sun and desert landscapes of the southwest and eventually found my brother in Arizona. We went to Arizona to meet them. Their great- great ( several greats) grandfather was the brother of our great- great ( several greats) grandfather. They looked in phonebooks everywhere they traveled every year but didn’t find us until the internet. Their Uncle Willi couldn’t find out anything about where our adopted ancestor in the 1790s or so was born or anything about his family. But Uncle Willi sent me the entire family tree as far back as he could. The adopted child ancestor’s French parents were killed in some mass persecution in the late 18th century in France and their German nanny took the child with her to Germany. I know something about the Irish side too, but none of what I know about either side came from my relatives directly. No stories like most of you heard before they came to America. One of my mother’s brothers put together a brief history of the Irish side after he retired. I learned more about them by taking what he had and using the internet. So I learned more about where they came from in Ireland. The husband of the only cousin I know on my mother’s side ( which is one more than I know on my father’s side, even though he had 8 older siblings) has built a genealogy on Ancestry because he’s interested in it. She’s an only child. Her two sons have no first cousins, but think of our sons as first cousins. To say I didn’t grow up with a close extended family is a true understatement.
Anne, you might find this article about Ireland coming to terms with the Famine, by Colm Toibin, one of Ireland's great contemporary novelists, of interest. He sets up the piece:
Delete"Catholic society in Ireland in the 1840s was graded and complex, [and] to suggest that it was merely England or Irish landlords who stood by while Ireland starved is to miss the point. An entire class of Irish Catholics survived the Famine; many, indeed, improved their prospects as a result of it [by driving up food prices to workhouses or buying land vacated by the starving], and this legacy may be more difficult for us to deal with in Ireland now than the legacy of those who died or emigrated."
The article is from the 1990s, about the time the Republic was coming into its own economically, and the Irish seemed inclined toward a less black-and-white, Irish Catholics good/English Protestants bad point if view. Witness, for ex, the Famine Memorial erected (finally) in 1997. You can Google photos. It is very moving.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v20/n15/colm-toibin/erasures
That was an interesting article, Jean.
DeleteOne thing I didn't see mentioned was that the blight susceptibility afflicting the potatoes in the Famine was exacerbated by the lack of genetic diversity. I have read, I don't know if is true, that basically all the potatoes in Ireland at the time were descended from one plant. Maybe a lesson for the present time, to preserve genetic diversity in food crops. Odd that the potato originated in Peru, which has a different climate than Ireland.
Katherine: Yes, I have this article stored with my Irish family history stuff: https://evolution.berkeley.edu/the-relevance-of-evolution/agriculture/monoculture-and-the-irish-potato-famine-cases-of-missing-genetic-variation/
DeletePoor people in every country mentioned here--Ireland, Poland, the Baltic, France, Denmark--relied on cheap potatoes as a food staple, and they were all affected by the blight to some extent.
You are ashamed of your Irish heritage. I’m not ashamed of my German heritage but only because my German ancestors were here in the 19th century, long before the two world wars. My German heritage does not make me proud. The parts of Germany we have visited in several trips on the way to Italy or France etc - southern Germany - are beautiful but I don’t feel they are calling me there - not “home”. We always flew using points/ miles and finding free space was easier in Frankfurt or Düsseldorf flights. Then we rented cars to travel to our destination. Ireland attracts me because of the serenity of the rural landscapes and the magnificent coastlines. But I will probably never go. I used to research possibilities for going on a retreat there somewhere in the rural areas. Perfect settings for meditation.
DeleteI’m a US citizen but I have to say that I’m more comfortable with Polish history than American history at the moment. I guess you could say the peasants were slaves but they had a few days per week to their own projects. I think there was one effort to establish an African colony but, thankfully, it failed. Not having a settler colonial past, there’s not much white superiority syndrome. I have my friends here but, otherwise. I think I like the Polish society better. I wouldn’t mind living there a month just for an immersive experience to see if I’m right. If my health holds out and we don’t have a nuclear war or an economic collapse. Our boys are working on it.
DeleteYou had better hurry, Stanley, before Poland becomes just like the rest of us - fast- paced and out to make and spend as much money as possible. It now has the 20th largest economy in the world!
DeleteIn actuality, Anne, I don’t think there’s anywhere I can go to escape the coming catastrophe. I still sometimes think as if a universal catastrophe isn’t going to happen everywhere. At bottom, I think that I have to stay here and oppose the fascism. There’s no permanent escape anyway. I wake each morning knowing that “normal life” is now a daydream. I don’t worry about myself but can I even help those I care about?
DeleteI’m not traveling anywhere by plane now. Airports are infested with ICE goons. People should stop traveling if they have any sense.
DeleteI heard from family back home that the wildfires did burn the section of sandhill land that I own in common with my siblings. There are no cattle there in the winter, and there were no people there either. So I have to count that as a mercy. Grass will come back eventually.
ReplyDeleteA blessing that it wasn’t worse. Grass will grow again!
DeleteI’m not an expert in Irish history. I do know the famine was pivotal. There was enough food, but it was exported to England with military escorts because starving people were trying to attack the ships that were taking it to England. The country lost 25% of its population within a few years. About 1 1/2 million emigrated to America, another million to England (( Liverpool, Manchester especially), Canada, and Australia, and more than a million died, mostly Catholics. Starvation weakened them so diseases like typhus ran unchecked. Many also died in the workhouses for the poor who had lost what little money they had to rising rents as tenant farmers for absentee landlords in England. They couldn’t pay the landlords for their small farming so ended up in the workhouses, where most died. That population suffered the most from the blight as potatoes were most of their diet. Cheap. The Penal Laws imposed by the English contributed to the exodus. Many wealthier Catholic landowners had the eldest son and heir baptized in the Church of Ireland in order not to have their land confiscated when they died or be forced to break it up into very small parcels. Catholics could not go to school nor could wealthy Catholics send their children to school in Europe. No laws against homeschooling I think but the poor couldn’t do that. No time left in the day so illiteracy became rampant. To send their kids to public schools they had to convert to Protestantism. I know that at least one of my ancestors was illiterate when he came to America as an adolescent. There were many schools started by Irish exiles in Italy, Spain, Portugal etc and it was a crime to send the children to school there ( could lose everything but many wealthy Catholics risked it) or to teach Catholic children in schools in Ireland. The children often never came back to Ireland, just as those who went to America didn’t. All in all, the population dropped by 50% during the 50 years following the beginning of the famine. Apparently history texts in England still skim over this part of=their history just as German and Japanese history courses did for a long time after WWII.
ReplyDeleteI don’t know why my own ancestors left. Probably I;order to not starve to death. My mother had two sets of Irish grandparents, but I know little about them except for her father’s side. Her paternal grandfather was not a tenant farmer or small landowner. He had a small business - a “wellness” business. His family owned a seaweed bathhouse on the beach where people paid to soak in seaweed and seawater. It’s resort town and was one even then. There is still a business like that on the same beach, but it’s owned by a different family. That family opened their bathhouse 50+ years after my ancestor left the country. I actually saw a travel show once on TV that featured the seaweed bathhouse.
I used Gemini to get a summary
DeleteThe laws focused on the teacher and the location rather than the act of a student learning to read. Here is how the law actually worked during the height of the Penal Era (roughly 1695–1782):
1. The Penalties for Teaching
Under the Education Act of 1695, Catholics were strictly forbidden from teaching.
• For Teachers: A Catholic caught teaching—whether in a school or a private home—could be fined £20 (an enormous sum then) and imprisoned for three months for the first offense.
• For Repeat Offenders: Subsequent offenses could lead to transportation (being sent to a penal colony, usually in the West Indies or later Australia).
• The "Capital" Confusion: The death penalty was generally reserved for Catholic Bishops or "Regular" clergy (monks/friars) who returned to Ireland after being banished, or for anyone who successfully converted a Protestant to Catholicism (which was considered High Treason).
2. The Ban on "Foreign Education"
The British government knew that if they stopped education at home, wealthy Catholics would just send their children to France or Spain. To prevent this:
• It was illegal to send a child abroad for a Catholic education.
• The penalty for the parents was the forfeiture of all their goods and land for life.
3. The Rise of "Hedge Schools"
Because teaching was illegal and could lead to imprisonment or transportation, Catholic education went underground. This gave birth to the famous Hedge Schools.
• Secret Locations: Classes were held in ditches, under hedges, or in remote cabins to avoid detection by "Protestant Discoverers" or authorities.
• Lookouts: Students would often take turns acting as sentries to watch for approaching soldiers or officials.
• Curriculum: Ironically, despite being illegal, many Hedge Schools provided a high level of education, often teaching Latin, Greek, and Mathematics alongside basic literacy.
4. The Goal of the Law
The intent wasn't necessarily to keep Catholics "illiterate" in the sense of not knowing their letters; it was to ensure they could only be educated in Protestant-run schools (Charter Schools). The goal was "cultural and religious assimilation"—to make the next generation of Irish children English-speaking Protestants.
“ The Gregory Clause (also known as the "Quarter-Acre Clause") was perhaps the most ruthless piece of legislation passed during the Famine. Inserted into the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1847, it was designed to "cleanse" the land of small-scale Catholic farmers.
How the Gregory Clause Worked
The law stated that any person who held more than a quarter-acre of land was not considered "destitute" and was therefore ineligible for any public relief, whether from a workhouse or a soup kitchen.
This created a horrific choice for a starving family:
1. Keep the Land: Stay on your ancestral plot but receive zero food or aid, essentially choosing to starve to death.
2. Give up the Land: Hand over your lease to the landlord to become "destitute" enough for a bowl of soup or a spot in the overcrowded workhouse.
Years ago I read a very interesting book about Ireland after the collapse of the Roman Empire.
DeleteSummary from Wiji
“How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe” is a non-fiction historical book written by Thomas Cahill.
Cahill argues a case for the Irish people's critical role in preserving Western Civilization from utter destruction by the Huns and the Germanic tribes (Visigoths, Franks, Angles, Saxons, Ostrogoths, etc.). The book presents Western history from the collapse of the Roman Empire and the pivotal role played by members of the clergy at the time. A particular focus is placed upon Saint Patrick. The book details his early struggles through slavery, mirroring much of the content in The Confession of Saint Patrick. Initial portions of the book examine Ireland before the arrivals of Patrick and Saint Augustine of Canterbury. Particular focus is placed upon Saint Columba, the monks he trained, and the monasteries he set up in the Hiberno-Scottish mission. These holy men, according to Cahill, "single-handedly refounded European civilization throughout the continent."
Anne, I read that book too, it was very interesting. My dad liked it too, but as far as I know he didn't have a drop of Irish blood (unless some of those Viking forebearers kidnapped Irish wives).
DeleteSad that sometimes the worst persecutors of Christians are other Christians.
Interesting about the seaweed bathhouse. Yes that does sound very "wellness" culture!
DeleteI wrote this above - “ Apparently history texts in England still skim over this part of their history just as German and Japanese history courses did for a long time after WWII.”
DeleteI should add that the US did this also in glossing over slavery and Jim Crow. And forcing Native Americans into reservations. It really wasn’t taught until after the Civil Rights era of the 1960s. Shining a light on this unsavory history didn’t last long. Now many states are only approving public school history texts that again gloss over this history. Trump is doing it with the Smithsonian museums, all Federal historic sites and National Parks. All government agencies are removing pages on websites that tell the histories of “ firsts” - such as the three black women mathematicians at NASA - segregated from the mostly white, male engineers - who played a key part in getting us to the moon and back. A famous quote (fact- checked true) was that John Glenn asked that one of them run the computations herself before his flight — “ astronaut John Glenn personally requested that Katherine Johnson (then Goble) check the computer's trajectory calculations before his historic 1962 flight. Skeptical of the new electronic computer, he instructed engineers to "get the girl" to verify the math by hand, stating: "If she says they're good, then I'm ready to go"
DOD is removing everything that honors black American servicemen during WWII who served in segregated units. They even removed a memorial honoring them in the Netherlands. Women’s history is also being removed. Apparently if women don’t have long blonde hair, ( maybe that was Noems real mistake - she never died her hair blonde) false eyelashes, heavy eyeliner,, collagen enhanced lips with fire engine red lipstick, they aren’t worthy of notice ( or a high level job in this administration). They are removing the true history of these dark parts of America’s past. They are also doing it with Native American history.
Ok - enough from me! Back to taxes.
DeleteI don't know much about Irish history and avoided it for most of my life. I have tried to rectify it a bit since my mother died and is no longer here to insist that her views are gospel.
DeleteInteresting about the educational situation. The English ran all the schools in Wales in an attempt to stamp out Welsh, and kids were caned and had to wear a "Welsh Not" board as punishment for speaking it. (When Welsh was reintroduced in the 20th century, native speakers started wearing little wooden "Welsh Not" pendants as a point of pride.)
I expect Irish was similarly repressed along with Catholicism in the educational system. The English didn't much like Welsh Methodists. But there was no perceived danger that the Welsh would align with foreign power urging a Methodist independent state.
Sir William and Lady Augusta Gregory were an awful pair. He was busily disposessing Irish farmers of their land while she collected her twee little Irish faerie stories as if nothing were amiss. Tho I don't think they were married during the Famine.
Cahill's book was a lively read. I'm for anything that makes the Irish saints and their contributions to literacy more widely known. The Anglo-Saxons in the north, inspired by the Irish example, took up book-making and creating a body of vernacular literature with alacrity.
Cahill also wrote an engaging bio of Pope St John 23.
And my last post about the Famine specifically in the north, which, according to one story, is where my forebears came from. There are several competing narratives for how these people got here, each of them hotly contested as the "true" one by my grandfather and his sisters. The dysfunctional grudges and feuds over these stories created rifts among my grandfather's siblings. So it is not hard for me to understand the inability of Irish scholars to come up with a unified and balanced history of the Famine (after nearly 200 years!).
DeleteAnyway, I've enjoyed reading more this week about how historians (and partisans) have spun this story for so many decades, so thanks to those engaging on this topic:
"In recent years one of the most enduring and spectacular false historical narratives has started to unravel.
"It is that Ulster and specifically its Protestant population was relatively unaffected by the Great Irish Famine."
https://scopeni.nicva.org/article/the-famine-in-belfast-time-the-forgotten-story-was-told.html
I imagine if you weren't rich the famine affected everyone in some way. I don't think it is a coincidence that my mom's Scots Irish ancestors (who weren't rich) came to America during that time period. Things couldn't have been very good at home to induce them to come here to work in a coal mine.
DeleteOMG, could anything be worse than working in a 19th century coal mine?
DeleteI think both of you are right - the wealthy - Catholic or Protestant - didn’t starve, but only Catholics were under the Penal laws.
DeleteI started researching my grandmother’s Irish history. Her parents ended up in Pennsylvania. He worked in the coal mines, around the same time as my husband’s German Protestant ancestors did, in the same area of Pennsylvania. But I think my great- grandfather was a farmer in Ireland as a young man. After marrying and having 3 children in Pennsylvania they moved to Nebraska, probably because the government was giving away land seized from the Native Americans to homesteaders. They farmed it and has 8 more children. My grandmother was the first of their children to be born in Nebraska. So far I have lityle information about my grandmothers mother other than that she was from Ireland. I haven’t found out where in Ireland. According to one of the few stories my grandmother told me, in Nebraska, her mother was the mid- wife to the other farm women, riding a horse to reach them.
The US encouraged immigration and settlement around Native reservations to box tribes in and curtail their movements. There's an interesting history of the town of Deadwood that outlines how all that worked.
DeleteInterestingly, tribes figured out how to purchase land off the reservation and register it as trust land with the BIA. (An ex-boyfriend was the lawyer for a Michigan tribe that did this.) Trust lands were subject to tribal law enforcement and courts, and when they bought lands inside municipalities in northern Michigan, the city tried to fight it at great expense but in vain.
Jean, that’s interesting. I would like to learn more. On one of my visits to my brother in Arizona he told me that the land around the freeway we were on headed to Scottsdale from the Phoenix airport was Native American land. Naturally there were office towers, shopping centers etc - all on land owned by the Native Americans. When I was growing up in Calif there was a racetrack called Hollywood Park. Fast forward some decades and I learned that Hollywood Park racetrack has a casino - legal because the land is owned by a Native American tribe. I hadn’t ever known that. Right in downtown LA. On our cross- country road trips when traveling through long stretches of highway with almost nothing around we knew we had entered Native American land when we started seeing signs for a casino. At that time there weren’t casinos everywhere - mostly Las Vegas, Atlantic City, NJ AND on Native American land. They were still illegal in most parts of the country. I used to think it was Native American revenge on the white man - who are suckers for slot machines and blackjack and roulette tables, just handing over lots of cash quite happily. I would think to myself - “good for you. Take them for as much as you can.” Not a very virtuous sentiment but I really did think that.
DeleteIf white men (and women) are going to be suckers and waste their cash, I don't have a problem with Native Americans getting some of it!
DeleteIt's funny with all the online gambling opportunities, casinos still seem to be doing fine. Here, gambling is still illegal most places, but the law was changed that casinos can be legal if there is a horse racing track. (and it's legal if it's on a river boat in the Missouri River) So there have been a few horse tracks started up. The horses may run only a few weeks out of the year, but the gambling goes on all the time.
Seems like about 90% of the time when there is a crime of embezzlement with a non-profit, it turns out that someone had a gambling addiction.
When Maryland legalized 6 casinos (stupid, stupid) , the state set up a new office before they opened to provide counseling and relief to people gambling away their rent and food money. The head of the county in the Maryland suburbs that has the most poor people fought it as hard as he could, but of course the rich gambling interests won the vote. They knew that it would hurt the poor more than anyone but did it anyway. Before that locals here went to either West Virginia (casino at a racetrack on the border with Maryland - only about an hour drive from the greater DC- Baltimore area), or New Jersey ( site of a couple of trumps casinos that went bankrupt). They could also hop over the Potomac to Virginia where there was an off- shore casino on a boat. Not very glamorous though. The hardcore rich gamblers headed to Las Vegas.
DeleteThere are 23 Indian casinos in Michigan. They contribute 2 percent of earnings to local municipalities, which usually amounts to millions. They also hire a lot of locals directly, and they have boosted local lodging and restaurant operations. So, economically, they've been a big boon to Michigan's economy.
DeleteI think casinos are about the most mindless type of entertainment available, right down there with amusement park rides but slightly above freak shows, pig races, and demolition derbies. They certainly contribute nothing to the cultural elevation of an area. Funding for our state parks, nature preserves, historic sites, and libraries continue to struggle, but that's not the casinos' fault. And fears about casinos attracting vice and organized crime have turned out to be exaggerated.
Off topic and not of world impacting importance. I realize that people outside of this area don’t get the coverage we locals get of trump’s continuing efforts to destroy the historic beauty of DC. Most Americans never come here, or come maybe once in their lifetimes. DC is a beautiful city - the two most beautiful cities in the US IMO are DC and Charleston SC. I’ve been to many of the country’s great cities and Miami isn’t on my great cities list. trump has done nothing but trash DC - rhetorically ( it’s a great city - not the crime infested filthy place he talks about) - and even worse, physically. The Oval Office and the Rose Garden might be restored someday. The gargantuan out of proportion ballroom also I hope, although it’s a total waste of $400 million now. His Arch de Triomphe at the end of Memorial Bridge with Arlington Cemetery on one side and the Lincoln Memorial on the other is a horrific possibility. It’s again - so out of proportion, just like the ballroom. He wants the biggest ballroom and the biggest arch in the world, topped with gilded statuary. He’s destroying DCs only public golf course and using it as a trash dump for the rubble from the East Wing of the White House. He’s going to destroy the Kennedy Center. He just put up a statue of Christopher Columbus on WH grounds and is trying to get some statues iof Confederates that have been removed out back. He’s desecrating this city, step by step, using taxpayer money for most of it. And the presence of National Guard still littering downtown continues to destroy business at restaurants and cafes.
ReplyDeleteSo - my request (even though it’s not a life and death issue ) is that people who care about the beauty and history of our nation’s Capitol contact their representatives in Congress, especially GOP, and beg them to stop him! It’s like destroying the Eiffel Tower or Windsor Castle or other historic symbols in other countries. Hope the gift link works
https://wapo.st/4bCaC1P
I'll be happy to make this my beef o' the week with my idiot congressman! Even if I believed "this isn't costing the taxpayers a penny" claim, the point is that these monuments belong to us, not him, and he is circumventing agencies designed to ensure public opinion is heard.
DeleteAnne, I am sorry that residents of the DC area have to put up with Trump's depredations of the landmarks of the nation's capital. I have never been there, but I have seen many pictures of the beautiful sites. Congress is derelict in their duty, in so many ways, of calling Trump to task.
DeleteThe “donors” to the ballroom are actually the bribers. The rest is all tax money.
ReplyDeleteSorry, late to the discussion of Irish ancestry. My father's mother was, by her lights, 100% Irish (a claim that, I think, subsequent geneological tracing has called into question), so I guess, if we take her at her word, I am 25% Irish. The parish we belonged to when I was growing up had a lot of Irish Americans (her family was among the founding families, according to my grandfather), but I don't remember a lot of talk of the old sod among the grown-ups. The Irish Sweepstakes was discussed occasionally, I guess. My grandmother's people came over in the 19th century, but if it was related to the Famine, I never heard. By the time my grandmother came along, I think the family was pretty solidly middle class.
ReplyDeleteIf you watch any of those genealogy shows, it's common for families to clam up about poverty and hardship. My kid has *no* idea what living with my alcoholic parents was like. He only knows that I'm a tee-totaller because it's a genetic problem that he needs to be aware of. Nobody wants to make their kids feel like they come from losers. And anybody who got on a coffin ship from Ireland 1846-1850 was a loser, at least at that moment.
DeleteOn my dad's dad's side of the family (from which I inherited by surname, of course), they always referred to themselves as Belgians, and the language that my grandfather and his family spoke when they immigrated here was "Belgian". I think that language was, at most, a dialect of Dutch. They were from the Flanders region, which had mostly Dutch speakers. There is also a Wallonia region, with French speakers. Belgium and the Netherlands together (and possibly Luxembourg?) were known historically as the Low Countries; I believe it was primarily religious differences that separated the Protestant Dutch in the Netherlands from the Catholic Dutch and French speakers in what is now Belgium. That happened in the 19th century.
DeleteI grew up with a more pronounced sense of Belgian ethnicity than Irish.
My mom's people on her dad's side were primarily WASP Protestants, including quite a few slaveholders in the Carolinas and elsewhere. My sister the geneology maven has traced ancestry on that branch practically to Magna Carta. On my mom's mom's side, they were Polish and Germans from Wisconsin. That's the branch I wrote about a couple of years back, where it turns out my great-grandfather, whom I knew as a tyke, wasn't actually my great-grandfather; the circumstances by which the man I knew married by great-grandmother aren't remembered in our family, AFAIK.
A few Dutch linguists are in my Old English group. Dutch and Frisian are closely related to Old English. A couple of them were interested in my Dutch heritage, and they knew all about Andijk, where my g-g-grandparents were from. It was a fishing village on the Zuider Zee. Explains why they made such terrible farmers Over Here. Now they grow acres of tulips there. We have shared stories, knitting patterns, and photos of ancestors and our cats like it was Old Home Week. They also sent me photos of the beguijnhof in Amsterdam. There is also a beguine house preserved in Mechelen, Belgium. Go there someday if you can!
DeleteHoping your work situation is tenable these days, at least until you figure out your next adventure.
“ And anybody who got on a coffin ship from Ireland 1846-1850 was a loser, at least at that moment.”
DeleteInteresting viewpoint. I see it differently. Those who were on the coffin ships were victims of oppression - religious or economic. For Catholics, it was often both. In other countries, immigrants were escaping wars, like my German grandfather. This is much like the immigrants now who leave their countries and risk their lives to get to our southern border. Those who were able to get away sometimes died en route but most survived. The Irish who left then were actually among the winners who survived when more than a million of their fellow Catholic countrymen died because they couldn’t afford the cost of passage to America or even to England. Or they were afraid of the unknown. In America, they had a chance to begin again - and they did,. Within a generation Irish Americans began to take their place in America’s success stories. The children of my illiterate ancestor (illiterate on arrival as a child because of the English laws but successful in America) all did well. One grew up to be a doctor. My grandfather moved to Calif and became a successful businessman with a large civil engineering company. In a city now known for its concrete - freeways- his company was first to pave some of the dirt roads that are now major streets of LA, like Sepulveda Blvd. LA was a small town when he moved there around 1905. Two of his sisters became teachers. Another became a librarian. One son became a priest who earned a PhD and taught in a Catholic men’s college - still around (Saint Bonaventure's). One daughter became a nun and a nurse. A very common story in the Irish immigrant communities. Southampton, known now as an enclave of the uber-wealthy, was founded by rich Irish who were banned from buying property in Easthampton by the WASPs who had founded that gilded summer getaway for the rich.
My kids know all about their Irish heritage. They are not ashamed of it, but proud. They consider their ancestors to have been risk takers with the courage to leave a country where they had lost their rights and move to another to make a better future for their families. Maybe it IS genetic - maybe that’s part of the reason our son - who married an immigrant who escaped poverty in Jamaica - and our d-i-l have the courage to move to Spain this summer. They are not poor - they are comfortable financially. But they believe that Spain offers a much better quality of life for their future, especially for their bi-racial children.
I think that America’s “greatness” is due to the courage and faith of our ancestors who took the risk of leaving home - usually due to oppression or war or poverty - and start over, instead of staying “safe” - and miserable. My husband’s Massachusetts Bay Colony ancestors were Puritans who escaped England because of religious oppression. His Scottish ancestors went to North Carolina for economic opportunity. His grandmother’s ancestors also eventually owned a couple of slaves - house slaves -they didn’t own a plantation. England, Ireland, Poland, Germany, Italy etc, etc, etc. Most Americans are descended from risk takers who came because things at home weren’t great. And they weren’t given land grants by a king!
All I mean by "losers" is that immigrants in previous eras lost their land, language, culture, livlihoods, and a good chunk of family to death or distance. In many cases, they lost their dignity by the way they were treated in their home countries.
DeleteIn Ireland, there was forced emigration. "By invitation" in ship's rolls meant that they were herded to the quay and forced to leave. Anybody on the boats had a 50-50 chance of dying at sea.
Once here, they were often sitting ducks for business owners who exploited them for low wages. Their kids assimilated as fast as possible and rolled their eyes at their parents' bad English and old-world ways.
If families made a go of it in subsequent generations, the immigrant ancestors become brave and courageous, full of grit, adventuresome, with an eye to a better future. And, of course, that reflects well on us as the recipients of these values.
But I think there was also a lot of sorrow, loss, resentment, and confusion. In lionizing our ancestors, we miss the pain that deserves to be considered along with the endurance.
A lot of immigrants never saw the family members they had to leave behind again. My Danish grandfather came over in 1916. He always intended to go back for a visit. But two world wars and the great depression intervened. His parents died during that time. He died himself in 1953. My grandma ( who wasn't Danish) tried to maintain contact with her sisters-in-law in Denmark. She had a friend who spoke Danish whom she got to translate their letters. We still do have a tenuous contact with relatives who by now are second cousins through Facebook.
DeleteI am aware that some were forced to leave. Many who landed in “poor houses” were also sent to Australia as “criminals” because they had been robbed of their land or exploited by landowners and were in debtors prisons. The Irish and many other immigrants were exploited in the US by businesses, especially the robber barons, and especially in New York after they landed. The WASPS especially didn’t like Catholics - Irish, Italian, Polish etc. I don’t think many descendants of these immigrants are unaware aware of the pain and loss that were experienced.. But it didn’t stop their ancestors from rebuilding and I personally find that admirable. I”m grateful for what they did.
DeleteThe parents of my Viet Namese daughter in law (born in a refugee camp where her parents almost starved to death) will still not talk of the horrors they experienced in Viet Nam before fleeing. Or much of life in the refugee camp. I felt complimented when on one visit they showed us a couple of photos from the camp and told us of their experiences there. They had come to trust us. My son says they seldom talk of any of it. And they do miss their country and culture and language to this day. They arrived in Calif with little money, no English, no connections except for the little bit of help the US government provided to Viet Namese refugees who were resettled here. Many were resettled in Australia and I think some in France also. My son’s wife and parents lived with other family members who escaped with them (boat people) - two or three families to a small apartment in the worst neighborhood in San Francisco. The two younger children were born in the USA. Two of their children (including our d- i- law ) have PhDs - one from Cal Berkeley and one from Penn. Their parents had the courage to escape, great faith (they were among the very small Catholic minority in Viet Nam), were very hard workers, thrifty, and now they are literally multi-millionaires. But they live in a modest house (one of several modest houses they own now and one expensive property with two small homes on one lot overlooking the beach in Long Beach.) They were good at buying extreme fixer houses and fixing them! They didn’t flip but rent them out, saving their money until they could buy another small house. Those small houses in Silicon Valley have appreciated very nicely over the years. Two years ago they bought a fixer condo in Honolulu because it’s too cold in California. They plan to rent it after it’s renovated when they aren’t there. They experienced great pain, sadness, fear, confusion and resentment also. But like most of our immigrant ancestors, they survived. Our Viet Namese extended family especially thrived! None of my own relatives going back to Ireland and Germany became millionaires, but all did fine, became educated and sent their children to college. Even my mother, in an era where few women went to college (UCLA Class of 32). I admire my immigrant ancestors and my son’s immigrant in- laws tremendously.
Is it “lionizing” my son’s in-laws - or my own ancestors or other immigrants who came here - to understand what they did and admire them for it? Maybe, I’m wrong, but that’s not how I see it.
I think we forget how big the world was before interstate highways, air travel, and leisure time.
Delete"Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey" ed by Lillian Schlissel notes that women setting out from the eastern US to territories beyond the Mississippi assumed they'd never see their families again. The distances were too far, the roads bad, and there would be no time off from building a new life.
In 1898, when my Gramma was an infant, her parents bundled her up in a wagon so her dad could see his mother one final time. It took them two days to cover the 60-mile distance, so the whole excursion took a solid week while the hired man and two older kids kept the farm going.
When my mother went to the ICU for the last time, I covered the same distance within an hour and a half of receiving the call from the hospital.
Oops, sorry. Anne posted ahead of me. The above is a response to Katherine's observation about immigrants hoping to visit their families in the home country.
Delete"I think we forget how big the world was before interstate highways, air travel, and leisure time."
DeleteWhen Dwight Eisenhower was a young military officer after WWI, he and some fellow officers attempted to drive a convoy of vehicles from the east coast to the west coast. They succeeded, but it it took them two months to complete the journey. I believe there were long stretches in the West withoug paved roads - in some cases, they took paths or cart tracks.
That's interesting. Seems like Jack London (or one of the California writers) talked about the preferred mode of coast-to-coast travel being by sailing to Panama, crossing the isthmus by land and then boarding a steamer to New York. Trains were available, but they were less safe and comfortable than the water journey.
DeleteMaybe that’s why Ike started the National Interstate Highway system.
DeleteMy grandmother took her 4 children to and from New York State by train every summer in the 1910-1925 era. They were fine. Taking a ship to Panama and another beyond the isthmus/canal might have been slower than Ike’s military convoy! All my cross country drives (seven of them) were completed in days. My husband and I did it in 2 overnight stops /three 13 hour driving days during the Covid lockdowns from beginning of Dec 2020 to late March 2021. Nothing open for sight- seeing. Just stops for gas, bathroom and drive- through fast food.
The train ride started in LA every summer
Delete" A couple of them were interested in my Dutch heritage, and they knew all about Andijk, where my g-g-grandparents were from."
DeleteRight - seems there were quite a few Dutch who settled in Michigan. I think Dr. Pol the reality-television veterinarian from one of the low-rated cable stations is sorta-kinda in your neck of the Michigan woods. And I believe the historically strong Reformed Protestant presence in Michigan is due at least in part to Dutch settlers. I've wondered whether my Flemish ancestors - who, as I mentioned, are essentially Dutch, albeit Catholics from the Belgian side of the border - ended up in Michigan for the same reason that Calvinist Dutch did.
And thanks for asking about my job situation. As of this day and hour, still employed. But the corporate reswizzling continues, so it could end at any time. And then I have to figure out what to do with that segment of my life.
Just as an FYI - for some reason, Jean is now listed as "Unknown" in these comments.
ReplyDeleteI noticed that too ???
DeleteNow Jean is called Anonymous instead of Unknown.
DeleteCould be some identity protection something-or-other.
DeleteActually, just saw a private note from her, she is doing some admin stuff on the Blogger platform unrelated to our little group, and somehow it impacted how she appears here.
Delete