Eleventh day of each September, we remember, we remember

Twenty-five years ago tomorrow, I was in Orlando on business. At a smallish tech conference, one of those gatherings where a company (e.g., mine) paid to get in front of a captive audience to talk about the market (theoretically) and their product offerings (the true reason to be there). The conference was run by the Gartner Group, a consulting firm that sold tech research and advice. I have no idea what Gartner is about these days, but way back then, they were a big deal and quite high end. So the conference was being held at a pretty fancy golf resort.

I was tired. My mother had died a few weeks before, and I'd spent the weekend, with my sisters, visiting family in Chicago, which is where my mother was from. It had been a bittersweet but fun weekend, highlighted by the backyard second wedding of my Aunt Kay, my mother's baby sister - 24 years my mother's junior, more like a cousin than an aunt when we were kids. For years, Kay had lived in what had been my grandmother's summer house, where, throughout my childhood, we spent the first two weeks of July every other summer. 

So it was a bittersweet but loving weekend, catching up with my aunts and cousins.

We flew back to Boston on Sunday, and I had to turn around and hop on a flight to Orlando on Monday morning. There was some commotion with the flight - a last minute concelation, a rebook on an earlier flight (ugh!). But I made it to Orlando.

I was giving a captive audience presentation on web hosting when the first plane flew into the North Tower at the World Trade Center. When we walked out of the presentation - no one had thought to come in and interrupt us - the hotel had already rolled a few TVs into the open area outside the presentation rooms. It took a few minutes to figure out what was going on, to process what we were watching. After a few minutes, everyone pretty much fled to their rooms. Where I watched the first building collapse, then the other. I kept shaking my head in disbelief. I couldn't believe the buildings were gone.

Throughout the morning, throughout the afternoon, like every one else, I was glued to the TV, trying to piece together information. I took a break to grab lunch with a colleague, then back to the TV. 

The news was sparse, confusing, terrible. Beyond awful. Beyond belief. 

Somewhere, I learned that two flights had been out of Logan, both bound for LA. I had been on American Flight 11 a few months earlier. Gulp.

It was pretty clear from the outset that there weren't going to be any/many flights from and to anywhere in the States for a while, so I spent the afternoon trying to figure out how to get home, now that the conference was canceled. Fortunately, thanks to a family connection at Amtrak, I was able to book a train going north, with reservations for me and my colleague. (The other option we had was renting a car and driving, but those rental cars were going fast.) 

I hadn't brought along any comfy clothes, so I hit the resort gift store and bought some hideous golfware: black Capri pants, a white sleeveless tee, and a blue golf sweater. I felt like I was on the LPGA tour, but I wanted to travel in something other than my business-lady pantsuit.

We left Orlando in the evening, not knowing how far we were going to get. All they were promising was Richmond, Virginia. It wasn't known whether we were at war, the extent of the attacks. Was Washington, DC under full attack? Was NYC? Was this our Pearl Harbor?

My colleague had family in Richmond. Worst come to worst, we could stay with them and maybe his cousin could drive us further along - maybe even home. My colleague's wife was pregnant, pretty far along, and you never know. So he was particularly anxious to get home. Everyone we spoke to was. 

Approaching Richmond, we learned that we'd be heading to DC, where we could grab the train to NYC/Boston.

DC was eerie, eerily quiet. 

They held the train for us, and we rode to NYC in the same car as Carol Burnett. 

Leaving Newark, the car went completely silent as we watched a black cloud extending pretty much the length of Manhattan. All that was left of the Towers and the thousands who had died there. 

My husband met me at the Back Bay Station at around midnight. I was never happier to see anyone in my life. 

That night, I couldn't sleep.

I'm not sure if I went into work on Wednesday, but at some point, I had to go to Logan and pick my car up.

When I did go in to work - was it Wednesday? was it Thursday? - no one was doing any work.

We caught up with colleagues who'd been on the road and started to hear about their long journeys home. One colleague had been heading into our office in lower Manhattan when he saw the first plane hit. Somehow, he had the presence of mind to find the first car rental place and get the hell out of lower Manhattan. (Scott Something. I can picture him, but can't recall his last name.)

My company had a small network operations center on the top of one of the Towers. I didn't know the guys who worked there, but I was friendly with their boss. He was on the phone with them when their Tower collapsed. He heard the noise, the great rumbling. The guys had just told him that they had been instructed to head to the roof, that they'd be rescued by helicopter. At least they died with hope...

It was all so unimaginably awful.

For weeks, the images of the collapsing towers, of the people jumping to their death, would intrude unbidden into my mind. Again  and again, I would shake my head.

I had trouble sleeping. (Didn't everyone?)

I didn't know anyone on those Boston flights, in those Towers. But I knew people who knew people. 

I read the terribly sad writeups in the New York Times that gave us a glimpse into the lives of all who had lost their lives. 

I read the stories of heroism. Those brave firefighters heading into the buildings. Others who risked their lives. The men who for months worked The Pile, trying to find remnants of the lives lost. The men on the flight headed to DC who, having learned of the attacks, charged the cockpit and forced their plane down in a field, saving countless lives while losing their own. 

On 9/11, my niece Molly, nearly five at the time, saw her parents crying and asked them what was wrong. My sister had lived in New York for nearly a decade, and had met her husband there. She explained to her little one that something bad had happened to their town. "Was it my town, too?" Molly asked. 

From the first moment I laid eyes on Manhattan, when I was a senior in high school, New York has been one of my favorite places on earth. I only lived there for one year in grad school, but it was my town, too. And Molly's. And pretty much everyone in the United States during those grim days. 

Hard to believe it's been twenty-five years. 

Eleventh day of each September, we remember, we remember. 

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Image Source: AP

Red Scare

I don't know why anything should come as a surprise, but the R's trying to brand us D's as commies does somewhat take me aback. I suppose they're grabbing onto whatever straw they can to distract from their own stunning performance. I suppose that some of the pronouncements of the more extreme elements of the Democratic Socialists of America give them a bit of fodder.

But yikes-a-palooza. 

I don't know the Bible very well - it was never much of a Catholic thing - but isn't there something something something about taking the log out of your own eye so you can see the speck in the other guy's eye?

Given that the log in their eye seems to be contain elements that include fascism, dishonesty, racism, misogyny, corruption, grift, and incompetence, they might want to ease up on their messaging about communism, especially given that they probably couldn't find more than one or two card-carrying members in the entire Democratic party who believe that communism, as manifest throughout the 20th century and into the 21st wherever it manages to endure, is anything other than a discredited crock of hooey. 

But, hey, if you can find an audience credulous enough to embrace the blather, what the hell?

Anyway, commie this, commie that, has gotten me thinking about the Red Scare of the late 1940's through mid-1950's. 

I don't remember anything about it. When the Army-McCarthy hearings were underway, I was too busy watching Ding Dong School and Big Brother Bob Emery's noontime kiddy show, where each day he toasted the President of the United States by hoisting a glass of milk, and where we began each show singing "The Grass Is Always Greener" and ended each show with "So Long, Small Fry." Accompanied by Big Brother on the banjo.

But over time, I did - of course - learn plenty about the Red Scare: the hearings, the blacklisting, the lives ruined, and - of course - Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. And their two little boys, Michael and Robert. 

Ethel and Julius were both found guilty of espionage, of giving away atomic secrets to the Soviets, and were put to death in the electric chair at Sing Sing. 

For years, there were true believers who maintained that the Rosenbergs were innocent, including their sons. And there's little denying that the prosecution was flawed. But as more documentation was released, the brothers came to acknowledge that their father was guilty of spying for the Soviets. (But that he never gave away atomic secrets, which is what both parents were convicted of.)

Julius was, however, spying. 

Naive? Idealistic? A dupe? Someone who bought into the wonders of communism myth without figuring out the Stalin was a psychopathic maniac responsible for killing millions of people? 

(As an aside, an aside putting me a couple of degrees of separation from the Rosenbergs: During World Word II, my childhood dentist was stationed at Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, where and when Julius Rosenberg was working as an engineer (and stealing info for his handlers). I don't know if Dr. Wigdor actually knew Julius Rosenberg - or just knew of him - but on more than one occasion, he told me quite vehemently that Rosenberg was "guilty as sin.")

There was little or no evidence tying Ethel Rosenberg to spying. Yet when given the chance to save her own life - maybe by admitting she knew (or suspected) her husband was a spy, or offering up a name or two of people she and Julius were friendly with who might have been in cahoots, she chose to die. She could have lived to take care of her boys, but wanted to keep maintaining that she and her husband were innocent. 

Anyway, over the years, I had kept an occasional eye on what became of Michael and Robby Rosenberg, who became Michael and Robby Meeropol after they were adopted. I read their book, We Are Your Sons, when it came out in 1975, and would occasionally see articles on them.

The most recent article I read was in The Atlantic, an article which recounts their lives and how they've grappled with finding out their father was guilty, and that their mother wasn't - but chose to abandon her boys (who were by all accounts beloved by their parents).

The Rosenberg boys ended up with careers that were pretty typical of Red Diaper Babies - the children of old lefties who were caught up in the romance (unimaginable today) of communism. Michael became an economist of the lefty variety, Robby a lawyer of the lefty variety. Both have been involved with civil rights, the environment, and a non-profit organization that supports the children of parents who have been targeted for their progressive activism. 

Both men married and had children. 

And led what seems like pretty typical old lefty lives.

While unfortunate when it came to what happened to their parents, the boys were plenty lucky when it came to the couple who adopted them.

After spending time with their grandmothers, and time in an orphanage, Michael and Robby were adopted by Abel and Anne Meeropol, who first met them at the home of W.E.B. Dubois, of all things. 

Abel Meeropol was a high school teacher (who had James Baldwin as a student!) and a song writer, and the family pretty much lived happily on the residuals from his songs, which included Strange Fruit (a song about lynching, made famous by Billie Holiday) and the lyrics to The House That I Live In (a pro-diversity anthem sung by Frank Sinatra, Paul Robeson, Mahalia Jackson, and Sam Cooke, among others). No need to mention that the Meeropols were old lefties, is there?

Once the Meeropols normalized the childhood circumstances of the Rosenberg brothers, they have had lives that seem - to this outsider - to be happy, successful, and fulfilling, the overhanging scrim of their parents' lives and deaths aside.

Anyway, given the current red baiting, interesting timing to read about the Meerepol/Rosenberg brothers, no? Just hope that the red-baiting powers that be don't start rounding up those whose political thinking is not to their liking. Never mind looking for spies who are "guilty as sin," they've certainly shown themselves to be capable of going after anyone they don't like. 

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Image Source: History

Send in the Indianapolis Clowns.

When it comes to baseball, I'm not a 100% purist, longing for the return of men in baggy wool unis sweltering through a double header. I like that they've sped up the game by putting a stopwatch on the pitcher, and an automatic runner at second when game's go to extras. At Fenway, I enjoy singing Sweet Caroline between the top and bottom of the eighth, even when the Red Sox are losing, which these days they're mostly doing. And I actually like Banana Ball.

For those unfamiliar with Banana Ball, it's a Harlem Globe Trotter style game, centered on the Savannah Bananas.

The team tours the country playing what it calls Banana Ball: a family-friendly, souped-up, TikTok-ready version of the national pastime. Games feature singing and dancing and celebrity cameos, plus backflipping outfielders, stilt-walking batters, and the occasional double to the gap. Last year, according to the organization’s own data, the Bananas and their affiliated teams sold 2.2 million tickets—more than 11 different MLB franchises. (Source: The Atlantic)

I wasn't among those 2.2 million ticket buyers. The Bananas came to Fenway, and I entered the lottery, but didn't make it through to ticket purchase. I didn't score this season, either, although just as well. Walking to Fenway for a game is one thing, trekking to Gillette Stadium, where this year's games are being played, is quite another.

Still, I do like the Bananas. 

I also like baseball history. And if there's one sport that's full o' history, it's baseball. 

Part of this history is its sordid history of segregation, and the glorious history of the Negro Leagues. 

The most famous of the Negro League teams was probably the Homestead Grays, which featured superstars like Josh Gibson and Cool Papa Bell. Pitcher Satchel Paige played for a couple of Negro League teams, including the Kansas City Monarchs.  (In the early 1940s, my father saw Paige and the Monarchs play an exhibition game at Holy Cross' Fitton Field in Worcester.) Say Hey, Willie Mays started out playing with the Birmingham Black Barons. 

The Indianapolis Clowns, one of the lesser known Negro League teams, is being resurrected as one of the teams that plays as a foil for the Savannah Bananas. (The other teams are the Party Animals, the Firefighters, the Texas Tailgaters, and the Loco Beach Coconuts.)

The revival of the Clowns, which is being done in conjunction with the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, is interesting on a number of different fronts. 

One is that the Clowns in their heyday did a lot of clowning around that played into racial stereotypes - shuffling Stepin Fetchits of the diamond. The Banana Ballers are well aware of the stereotype, and have to walk the tightrope between presenting their players as athletes and performers. This is the case across all their teams, but has particular resonance for the Indianpolis Clowns, given their legacy as a Negro League team. (Their most famous player was none other than Hank Aaron, who briefly played for the Clowns before signing on with the Boston Braves.)

Another thread of the new Banana Ball Indianapolis Clowns story is the desire to promote baseball to Black kids. The Clowns are a diverse team, but they prominantly feature Black players. Former Red Sox player (and fan favorite) Jackie Bradley, Jr., is one of them, as he's now playing fo the Clowns. As is Mo'ne Davis, who famously made news a decade ago for being the first girl to pitch and win a game at the Little League World Series. Mo'ne, by the way, has a master's degree in sports management from Columbia University.

Black players dominate the NBA and NFL, but their representation in Major League Baseball has fallen over the last few decades from a high of nearly 20% to a bit under 7% this season. There are a number of reasons for this, including a lack of urban organizations enccouraging partcipation in baseball, and thus a lack of opportunities to play, and the expenses associated with playing the game at a competitive youth level. 

While Black participation has declined, the number of Hispanics (many from the Dominican Republic and Venezuela) playing in the majors has grown to nearly 30%. Asian players are also coming on - Shohei Otani, anyone? - and now make up about 3% of the current rosters. 

I love the idea of increasing Black participation in baseball. More Mookie Betts, please! And I love the idea of anything that promotes interest in baseball, IMHO the best game ever. Even if it's the Banana Ball which, let's face it, is kind of silly. But it's entertaining. And it's baseball. 

So yay Indianapolis Clowns. LFG!

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Image Source: eBay

Guy Fawkes Day

It's Guy Fawkes Day, so across the pond there'll be bonfires and fireworks, and maybe some effigy burning. Guy Fawkes was a Catholic convert who was part of an early 1600's plot to blow up Parliament in hopes of killing the Protestant king and restoring a Catholic monarch to the throne. The plotters were apprehended and executed, and the date for the failed plot has been observed since.  

I will be not be celebrating.

• I am not a Brit, and Guy Fawkes is celebrated in the UK. (Pre-American Revolution, it was observerd throughout the colonies - including in Boston - where it mostly had an anti-Catholic slant).
  
• However erstwhile, I am  - or was, or something - a Catholic, Guy Fawkes Day has anti-Catholic origins. And still in the memory of some old geezers, the bonfires associated with the event included burning effigies of the pope. (Now if I wanted to burn an effigy of the pope - which I most decidedly do not, especially given the current pope and his predessor, who seem as if they genuinely want (Leo)/wanted (Francis) to make the Church and the world a better place - that would be quite another thing.)

Which is not to say that if I happened to be in the UK, and could look out my window and see the fireworks shooting off, I wouldn't look out my window.

Growing up in Worcester in the 1950's and 1960's, anti-Catholicism was pretty much a thing of the past. During that time, the population of Worcester was over 60% Catholic. My neighborhood was a lot more Catholic than that. 

The nuns used to tell us that we had to behave especially well when we were wearing our school uniforms, because someone - some "other" - might see us behaving poorly and judge the entire Catholic church based on our bad behavior. Even at the time, I was wondering who these judge-y folks might be, as there were virtually no non-Catholics out there to watch throwing snowballs or shoplifting 5 cent plastic toys at Woolworth's. Not that I was going either, but I wasn't blind.

That there was no anti-Catholic sentiment in my neck of the woods doesn't mean that it might not have been encountered, even in my day, in areas that weren't quite so Catholic. And might still be encountered in plenty of places in the USA. Many evangelical Christians harbor profound animosity towards Catholics. 

But even in good-old-Catholic Worcester, there was anti-Catholic sentiment that was experienced by an earlier generation. 

When my father died at the age of 58, a couple of his high school teachers came to his wake, and one told me that he had never forgotten my father because he was the most brilliant math student he had ever taught.

I asked my aunt why said teacher hadn't encouraged my father to go to college. She looked at me as if I had two heads. "Why, all the teachers were Yankees [i.e., Protestants] and they never would have encouraged a Catholic student to go to college." (My father, who was one of the most intelligent people I've ever known, did manage to get some college in via night school, but he never completed his degree, what with the war, and the wife, and the job, and the kids.)

My aunt had her own anti-Catholic story.

In the early 1930's, she and my uncle moved to the Boston area for his job. They had looked at a rental flat in a two-family house in Belmont, a near-suburb. When they were talking details with their potential landlady, my uncle (7/8ths Irish, but with a Yankee-ish sounding last name) asked where the nearest Catholic church was. The landlady drew back, apologized, and explained that, by tacit agreement, no one in her neighborhood rented or sold to Catholics. (Even if my uncle hadn't asked about the local church, that bigoted landlady would have figured it out soon enough once she'd asked where he was employed, which was with the Catholic Order of Foresters, a fraternal benefit society - sort of an insurance company - that had been founded in the late 1800's for Irish-Catholic immigrants who couldn't find beneficence or insurance elsewhere.)

And so it went...

A bit before my father and my aunt were dissed for being Catholics, there was a crazily outrageous anti-Catholic episode that took place in Indiana.

Sure, there had been crazily outrageous anti-Catholic episodes throughout American history, perhaps most notoriously the 1834 burning of the Ursuline convent in Charlestown, Massachusetts by a crowd of Know Nothing thugs. But this early 1920's one was completely, crack-pot crazy. 

It was rumored that the pope was traveling by train through Indiana. A mob of Klansmen, armed with a rope, met the train and confronted a traveling corset salesman who was able to convince them that he wasn't the pontiff. Phew!*

At about the same time, a pitched battle was fought in South Bend between a gathering of Klansmen and a bunch of Notre Dame students. Go, Fighting Irish!

American anti-Catholicism has never held a candle to its anti-semitism and racism, which have coursed through our country's veins since the jump and never seem to be going anywhere. But anti-Catholicism does seem to have mostly died down, and is a relic of the past. (What with anti-immigrant sentiment and violence growing, it may yet again rear its big ugly head, given that so many Hispanic immigrants are Catholic.)

Personally, I'm not a big fan of organized religions. But I'm also not a big fan of those who are anti-[RACE/RELIGION/SEXUAL-identity goes here], refusing to hire, sell to, rent to to those who they're anti. And sometimes far worse. (Think Dylan Roof massacring nine Black folks attending a Bible study group at Emanuel AME Church. Think the dozen souls murdered at Tree of Life, a Pittsburgh synagogue. Think the recent killing of four attending Sunday services at a Michigan LDS chapel. Etc.) 

Me, I wouldn't want to rent an apartment in my home to, say, snake handlers. But I wouldn't go out there hunting for them, either. And I def reserve the right to sneer (quietly, mostly in private) to some of the ludicrous beliefs that so many religions hold to be true. (It's no accident that the Unitarian Church is chocked full of ex-whatevers, including ex-Catholics.)

Anyway, in honor of Guy Fawkes Day, I thought I'd take this little wander through anti-Catholicism.

Meanwhile, oddly enough, the stylized Guy Fawkes mask from V for Vendetta is now widely used in protests of all stripes (but largely anti-government). If it becomes more dangerous to show my face at protests, I may have to get me one. 

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*Sadly, I can't actually track down the ur source for this story. But I'm a believer.

Image Source: Gia'zilo

Talk about a niche profession

This may come as something of a shock to my readers - it does to me - but I have never been to Walden Pond.

Sure, I read Thoreau way back in the way back. And I've been to Concord plenty of times. I've been (multiple times) to the Old Manse, where both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne lived. (And where Hawthorne and his wife, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, charmingly etched messages in the windows using Sophia's diamond ring.) Multiple times to the Louisa May Alcott House, where you can see where and how Louisa and her sisters - the O.G. Little Women - grew up. Multiple times to the North Bridge, my absolute favorite Concord tourist site, "where once the embattled farmers stood and fired the shot heard round the world." And multiple times to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, wherein lie the bodies of Ralph, Nathaniel, Sophia, Louisa - and Henry David Thoreau. 

But never have I ever been to Walden Pond. 

And if I were to rectify this and put a visit to Walden Pond on my bucket list - which surely I should - I would miss the opportunity to see Richard Smith, who had been Thoreau's resident impersonator since 1999. Smith, a historian, hung up his tall straw hat for the last time on Septemer 6th, fittingly commermorating the day in 1847 when Thoreau himself left the pond, saying:

...I feel I have accomplished all that I set out to do. I have discovered what living is all about. I have discovered a great deal about solitude, independence and self-reliance. (Source: The New York Times)

Having been Thoreau for 26 years, Smith pretty much dittos these words. 

Richard Smith didn't start out to be a Thoreau impersonator, where his work consisted of hanging out in the one-room cabin and educating all sorts of groups - high school kids, Thoreau buffs, and Unitarian church groups - about Henry David. All while in character. 

A history buff from his childhood in Cleveland, and a history major at the University of Akron, here's how Richard Smith tells the story:

“I got really involved in Akron’s punk scene and started singing in bands,” he said. “It was the Reagan ’80s, and we were standing up to who we thought was this immoral clueless leader. That’s when I started reading Thoreau.”

“Thoreau questioned everything, and that really resonated with the punk rock side of me,” he said. “I became drawn to the transcendentalists, their belief of nature being divine, and it’s still part of my spirituality today.” 

In his thirties, Smith worked at a living history museum in Akron, where he played a brickmaker and a schoolmaster. He took a weekend off and trekked to Concord. There, he was delighted that people understood what he ws talking about when he told them that he was a transcendentalist. He found his way to a job at the Minuteman National Park (home of Concord Bridge) and occasionally came to work dressed up as Thoreau.

The Walden Pond park rangers knew a good thing when they saw it, and soon enough Smith was spending his days there in his little cabin, or outside in his big straw hat. 

The gig had its challenges. Besides having to wear an itchy frock coat on sweltering summer days and forcing himself not to utter contractions, the job meant setting some Thoreau fans straight about certain things. He was not a hermit, for one thing. The cabin on Walden Pond was near train tracks, and he often visited his family in town, where his mother did his laundry for him.

I am not a big fan of historic impersonators. I find the staying in character - not uttering contractions! - cringe, and have always tended to avoid reenactors. I don't mind a guide dressed in period garb talking about whatever went on in whatever ye olde house. But once they start in on the I vouchsafe to impart to thee the receipt for button and wattle soup I tend to lose my shit. 

A while back, my sister Trish and I went to the Farmers' Museum (now the  Fenimore Farm & Country Village) in Cooperstown, NY. We were in Cooperstown for the Baseball Hall of Fame (of course). But we had very fond childhood memories of a visit to the Farmers' Museum (when our family took a long weekend vacation to Cooperstown for the Baseball Hall of Fame (of course)). So we went.

It was on the cusp on the off season, so all the houses didn't have impersonators present. But we looked in every window, and if we saw someone who looked hell bent on impersonating, we took a pass.

But even I might have enjoyed meeting Henry David Thoreau.

Seriously, what's not to like about fringies, eccentrics? And I suspect Richard Smith topples headlong into this category.

Congratulations to him on a job well done in his very niche profession.

Tomorrow is Halloween. I'll be at my volunteer job, doing my customary candy give out. I was thinking of going as an old lady, which doesn't require much of a costume, and maybe adding a witch's hat to complete the look.

But if I had a nice tall straw hat and an itchy frock coat I would consider dressing up as Henry David Thoreau. 

Happy Halloween to all who observe.

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Image Source:  Metro Daily News

What a remarkable woman

 

Stephanie 'Steve' Shirley. I'd never heard of her. But what a remarkable woman. What a remarkable life.

After a brief illness, Shirley died in August at the age of 91 in Reading, England. But she didn't start out in England. She was born Vera Buchthal in 1933 in Germany, 

the daughter of a Jewish father and a Christian mother. Her father having lost his position as a judge once the Nazi's took over, Vera's family moved to Austria, where her mother was from.

Once Hitler took Austria over in 1938, that country was no longer a safe place to be. Vera's father made his escape to Switzerland, hiking a la the Von Trapps of Sound of Music fame, over the mountains. Shortly after, Vera and her sister were put on the train by their mother and became part of a Kindertransport to London, a program that saved thousands of Jewish children from the death at the hands of the Nazis. 

The family was eventually reunited in England, but Vera had developed a strong bond with the foster parents who took her in. When she became a British citizen in the early 1950's, she changed her name to Stephanie Brook. And began working in tech for the post office, where she worked on the development of telephone exchanges and a lottery-number generator. (As an aside, the girls' high school she attended didn't offer math, but she was allowed to take math courses at a local boys' school. She opted out of going direct to uni, because the only STEM option open to her at the time was botany. She eventually got her degree by taking courses at night.)

After the PO, Shirley moved on to a small tech company, working on computer design.

But she found herself bumping against a glass ceiling, as her suggestions were often ignored. So in 1962, by now married and a new mother of a handicapped child, she formed her own company.

When she started her software business, Freelance Programmers, in 1962, British women could not work on the stock exchange floor or even drive a bus. Her initial financing was six pounds (roughly $16.85 then and about $220 today), but she needed her husband’s signature to open the company’s bank account and deposit her own money. (Source: NY Times)

And when she established her company - which she founded sitting at her dining room table - Shirley was driven by a very powerful and innovative idea: "create a place where women could find a work-life balance."

At the time, many educated women left the computer industry after marrying or having a child. Ms. Shirley provided them an opportunity to re-enter the work force while remaining at home, writing code part time with flexible hours.

When Shirley was getting her business off the ground, the letters she wrote to prospective clients often went unanswered. (Hmmmm. Why might that be?) At the suggestion of her husband, she started using the name Steve Shirley, which turned out to be a door opener. (Hmmmm. Why might that be?)  

Admittedly, when Steve Shirley showed up for interviews, those prospective clients were shocked. But her business took off and she experienced quite a bit of success. 

The company designed software for the black-box flight recorder on the Concorde supersonic jet, and for scheduling buses and freight trains. It also developed software protocols that were eventually adopted by NATO.

Ms. Shirley disguised the flexible, work-from-home nature of her business by offering clients fixed prices for projects.

...“Who would have guessed,” she said in a 2020 speech to the British Computer Society, that programming for the Concorde’s flight recorder “was done by a team of 30 women working in their homes?”

In 1993, Shirley sold her business for "150 million pounds, or $225 million at the time." Oh, and lest we forget her greatness, a few years prior she had restructured the company around share ownership, which turned 70 of her employees into millionaires.  

In her retirement, she wrote a memoir, gave talks (of course, she gave a TED Talk!), and became a philanthropist, giving away nearly $100M "primarily to support causes related to information technology and autism" (which her son suffered from). And she has received all sorts of British honors. She's Dame Steve, etc. 

Here's a picture of the travel document of the brilliant and beautiful little girl who survived the Holocaust thanks to the Kindertransport:

On BlueSky, I follow the account of the Auschwitz Museum, which regularly publishes the pictures of children who perished there. When I see the pictures of those bright and lovely children, I always wonder who they might have been. With Steve Shirley we get to know. 

“She was ridiculously ahead of her time,” Sue Black, a computer science professor at Durham University in England, said in an interview. “The thing is, we haven’t even got companies like that now, 65 years later, that really champion women in that way and are led by a woman.”

She should be “one of the best-known people in tech in the world, or at least in the Western world,” Professor Black said.

During her 2015 TED Talk, here's what Steve Shirley had to say:

“You can always tell ambitious women by the shape of our heads. They’re flat on top from being patted patronizingly.”

What a remarkable life. What a remarkable woman. 

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Image Source for Shirley at work: Science Museum UK

Image Source for her travel document: The NY Times article.

Oh, by all means, let's rewrite/whitewash our history

In grammar school, I learned a rather skewed version of American history.

Forget the Founding Fathers, or most of them, anyway. Other than Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence. 

No, the real founding fathers were Catholic explorers, like Pere Marquette, the Jesuit missionary who paddled his canoe around the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River, discovering all sorts of discoveries. And don't get me started on Junipero Serra, the great Franciscan missionary who when he wasn't fulfilling his personal quest to take part in the Inquisition, was plodding along the Camino Real establishing Catholic mission churches. (Not that we learned anything about the Inquisition thang.)

As an unenlightened public school learner, you may have been led to believe that John Paul Jones was the Father of the United States Navy. Tut, tut, tuttedy-tut tut. The one true founder was Ireland's own John Barry.

And whoever it is from the American Expeditionary Forces that you think won the First World War, we all know it was Fighting Father Duffy and the Fighting 69th, a NYC regimen made up largely of first and second-gen Irishmen. Faugh a Ballagh!

Anyway, I know all about learning a somewhat off version of American history, and it seems like the current regime is hell bent on rewriting our history so that it tells a pretty whitewashed version.

It was during Trump I that the witchhunts began, with a fatwa on any history that shone an even slightly unfavorable light on our past. In Florida, there was an especially stupid manifestation when a book on Rosa Parks was proposed that didn't mention why it was the Rosa Parks wanted to take a seat on the front of the bus. Wouldn't want innocent little white kiddos to know that there was a time when Black folks had to move to the rear of the bus, let alone try to take a drink from the whites-only water fountain or pee in a whites-only urinal. Fortunately, the fractured version of the Rosa Parks' story turned out to be too far gone for even Florida to accept.

But, increasingly, any mentions of things in our history that ain't so grand and glorious are being excised. Can't say we treated Indigenous peoples ruthlessly. Our destiny was manifest, baby.

Can't say slavery was all bad. After all, there were kind, benevolent massas who considered Black folks part of the family, teaching them useful skills.

Can't say that the Civil War was fought over slavery. Nope: states rights, with those poor, pure, noble Southern states so put upon and trampled. No asking just why the Lost Cause shouldn't have been a lost cause.

No Tulsa. No Jim Crow. No lynchings. 

No racial immigration quotas. No imprisonment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. 

Recently, the Smithsonian removed the parts of an exhibit on impeachment that mentioned Trump. (Last I read, the mentions had been restored.) But for how long? 

Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that: 

The White House plans to conduct a far-reaching review of Smithsonian museum exhibitions, materials and operations ahead of America’s 250th anniversary to ensure the museums align with President Trump’s interpretation of American history. (Source: WSJ)

Given that Trump believes that he should be on Mount Rushmore and win the Nobel Peace Prize, and that the treatment he has received is even worse than what Abraham Lincoln suffered, one can only imagine just what might "align with President Trump's interpretation of American history."

Trump wants to "restore truth and sanity to American history," but given his squishy relationship with both truth and sanity, it's hard to see how that's going to happen.

The White House claims it wants to make sure that the Smithsonian museums reflect the "unity, progress, and enduring values that define the American story."

“This initiative aims to ensure alignment with the president’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions,” the letter [from the WH to the Smithsonian] states. (Source: NY Times)

Somehow, I don't think this is going to restore much of my "confidence in our shared cultural institutions." (I was going to write au contraire, but that sure wouldn't be patriotic, so on the contrary.)

“This is about preserving trust in one of our most cherished institutions,” [Trump Special Assistant Lindsey] Halligan said in a statement. “The Smithsonian museums and exhibits should be accurate, patriotic, and enlightening—ensuring they remain places of learning, wonder, and national pride for generations to come.”

There is, of course, more. Because with the current regime, there is always more.

In July, the Trump administration sent a directive to the National Park Service asking the parks to submit for review anything that might not jibe with what Trump thinks Trump's impulses dictate. 

So the Cape Hatteras National Seashore is asking whether it's okay to talk about "how climate change is causing sea levels to rise." 

The Castillo de San Marcos National Monument in Florida wonders whether they can retain an informational panel that has:

...language referring referring to tribes having choice of extinction or assimilation. Language of U.S. Government giving the ‘choice’ of extinction could be considered negative towards the United States. (Source: NY Times)

For the Stones River National Battlefield in Tennessee it's a question of whether "text [that] addresses slavery as the primary cause of the American Civil War" should stand. 

Can the Cane River Creole National Historical Park in Louisiana keep up signage in an exhibit on slaves who were unsuccessful in their attempts to escape that "identified the enslavers by name and mentioned that returned slaves were publicly whipped."

“The national parks were established to tell the American story, and we shouldn’t just tell all the things that make us look wonderful,” said Dan Wenk, a former superintendent of Yellowstone National Park. “We have things in our history that we are not proud of anymore.”

I'm with Dan Wenk. But there is a counterpoint from Trump-landia: 

Elizabeth Peace, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, the parent agency of the Park Service, said the Trump administration’s move “is not about rewriting the past.”

“Interpretive materials that disproportionately emphasize negative aspects of U.S. history or historical figures, without acknowledging broader context or national progress, can unintentionally distort understanding rather than enrich it,” Ms. Peace said in a statement. “Our goal is to foster honest, respectful storytelling that educates visitors while honoring the complexity of our nation’s shared journey.”

Somehow, I'm thinking that if Ms. Peace truly wants "to foster honest, respectful storytelling that educates visitors while honoring the complexity of our nation’s shared journey," she won't be long for the Trump administration.  

We'll see where this purge review of National Parks Service information ends up. I'm not optimistic.

Especially after the August situation with respect to tinkering with the government website on the Constitution.  

Over the past month, portions of Section 8 and all of Sections 9 and 10 were removed from Article I of the Constitution on the U.S. government’s official website. The changes to sections addressing congressional powers, states’ rights, and due process sparked concern amid threats from the Trump administration to suspend habeas corpus. (Source: ComicSands)

The Library of Congress said that it was a coding error, and restored the missing pieces. "Coding error" or trial balloon to see what they could get away with? Hmmmmm.

I am a big believer that there is an awful lot of American history to be proud of. 

However flawed they may have been as people - and aren't we all - the Founding Fathers were in many ways exceptionally brilliant to base a country on fundamental rights, not royal inheritance or religious decree. (Sure wish they could have done a better job on the Electoral College business. Was it worth it to keep the slave states part of the package?)

The assimilation of so many immigrants fleeing poverty and/or war, and/or persectuion into this country - back in the day when we believed that immigrants were worthy - was a tremendous achievement. Didn't matter where you came from, you could come here and become an American. As did my Irish great-grandparents, and my German grandparents. (And my German mother who came through Ellis Island as a toddler.) Sure, welcoming immigrants largely applied to yesteryear's largely white European stock. Still, the Statue of Liberty never fails to make me tear up.

We have been an exceptional country in terms of innovation, scientific achievement, arts and culture...The list is long and admirable.

We are a country of immense (and immensely diverse) beauty.

We have a lot of hokey myths, andI'm fine with believing (or not) that George Washington chopped down the cherry tree and could not tell a lie. 

But we can have all of the above and still acknowledge our flaws. 

We'll see if Trump lets us.

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Image Source: Upstate American

There's more to local murder history (female edition) than Lizzie Borden

You couldn't grow up in Massachusetts without knowing about Fall River's own Lizzie Borden. 

You know, Lizzie Borden, as in:

Lizzie Broden took an axe,
Gave her mother 40 whacks.
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father 41. 

And then there was the Chad Mitchell Trio tune. The Chad Mitchell Trio was a commercial folkie group popular in the 1960s. They weren't purists like Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Pete Seeger, Tom Rush, and Bob Dylan. They were more akin to the Kingston Trio. But I liked them just fine, especially in my snobby pre-purist days. (As I did the Kingston Trio.) I had something of a crush on Chad Mitchell, the lead guy and a cutie (IMHO). Anyway, they had a song about Lizzie Borden that had this as the chorus:

Cause you can't chop your poppa up in Massachusetts
Not even if it's planned as a surprise (A surprise)
No, you can't chop your poppa up in Massachusetts
You know how neighbors love to criticize

What you don't grow up knowing is that a) it was Lizzie's stepmother; and b) she was acquitted of their murder. For Lizzie, the jury is still quasi out, but most of history comes in with a verdict of she did it. And got away with it because she was a woman from a well-to-do WASP family, when killers were thought to be men from poor immigranty communities. (Sound familiar?)

Anyway, statistically, even if Lizzie was guilty as sin, more men than women are murderers by a long shot. Or a short shot. Or a stabbing. Or a strangulation. Etc.

And that goes for serial killers as well.

But there are female serial killers. Sure, there are lot fewer of them. And they also differ from male serial killers in that females tend to kill people they know, often the elderly, often by poisoning, often for financial gain. But they are out there. (Source: New-Medical)

One female serial killer I'd never heard of - until I saw a Blue Sky mention from Boston's West End Museum - was Jane Toppan who, largely in her capacity as a nurse, poisoned at least 31 people during a spree that took place between 1895 and 1901. What she lacked mostly was a financial motive. 

Toppan, who admitted to have committed the murders to satisfy a sexual fetish, was quoted as saying that her ambition was "to have killed more people—helpless people—than any other man or woman who ever lived." (Source for this and all other info on Toppan (including her picture): Wikipedia)

Yikes! "Sexual fetish." (She supposedly would fondle her victims while they were dying.) And wanting to kill more than anyone else? Sounds more like a guy thing, but whatever. She was quite the psycho, with quite the history. 

Jane Toppan - nickname Jolly Jane; ho-ho - wasn't born Jane Toppan. Rather, she was born in Boston in 1854 as Honora Kelley, daughter of Irish immigrants who, given the timing, likely fled the famine to make their life in Amerikay. 

Kelley's mother died of TB when Honora was young, and her father was apparently an alcoholic and batshit crazy. (His nickname wasn't jolly anything. It was Kelley the Crack, for crackpot.)

In later years, Kelley was said to have sewn his own eyelids closed while working as a tailor.

That sure sounds sane.

Anyway, at a young age, Honora and one of her sisters were sent to an orphanage. After a couple of years, Honora (now age 8) became an indentured servant in the Toppan home in Lowell. She took on their last name, and started calling herself Jane Toppan. 

It looks like Jane Toppan had an opportunity for decency and normalcy. (One of her sisters became a prostitute, the other was - not surprisingly - committed to an insane asylum.) She had the chance to become a nurse, training at Cambridge Hospital.

Unlike her early years, where she was described as brilliant and terrible, at the hospital she was well-liked, bright, and friendly, earning her the nickname "Jolly Jane". Once she became close with the patients, she picked her favorite ones, who were normally elderly and very sick. During her residency, Toppan used her patients as guinea pigs in experiments with morphine and atropine; she altered their prescribed dosages to see what it did to their nervous systems. However, she spent considerable time alone with patients, making up fake charts, medicating them to drift in and out of consciousness, and even getting into bed with them. 

How Dr. Mengele of her. Kinda sorta.

From Cambridge Hospital, she moved on to Mass General. "My" hospital. Shudder, shudder. But they apparently sussed something out, and after a couple of years she was fired. After returning to Cambridge, she "was soon dismissed for administering opiates recklessly." 

On to private duty nursing, where her killing spree really took off. She killed not only the people she was taking care of, but their family members as well. Eventually, the authorities figured out that Jane Toppan wasn't exactly Clara Barton or Florence Nightengale. 

Kelley/Toppan ended up spending the rest of what turned out to be a long life - she died in 1938, age 81 - in an insane asylum.

Toppan is often considered an "angel of mercy", a type of serial killer who takes on a caretaker role and attacks the vulnerable and dependent, though she also murdered for seemingly more personal reasons...She later described her motivation as a paralysis of thought and reason, a strong urge to poison.

That strong urge got her to, among other whack acts, poison "herself to evoke the sympathy of men who courted her." I'd say those fellows caught a lucky break when they broke up.

This is just such a weird and interesting story. You never know what you're gonna learn when something pops up on your timeline. Guess there's more to local murder history (female edition) than Lizzie Borden.

FIre next time?

I know all about water damage.

Twenty years ago this past February, a pipe froze and burst on the top floor of my condo building, and since water goes where water wants to go, a lot of it came cascading down into our home on the first floor. We took a real hit, and almost lost our plaster medallion LR ceiling, a hundred-year-old decorative feature that would have cost beaucoup to replace. With 17 basketball-sized holes cut in it, with four blowers blowing away - and the heat jacked up for a few weeks - we were able to save the ceiling. But we were out of our home for over a month, and had to have extensive repairwork done (first and foremost, the ceiling, but also floors refinished, woodwork - of which we have a lot in our LR - cleaned, drywall replaced, walls repainted...). Oddly, other than a framed poster over the fireplace and a few pictures, we didn't lose any furniture or other items. Trying to keep our TV - at that point one of those heavy old big box numbers - we dropped it, causing no damage to the TV, which we were about to replace anyway, but creating a dent in the floor. (Fortunately, between the building insurance and our homeowners, pretty much everything - including our hotel stays - was covered.)

Water damage, even on the small scale we experienced it, is awful, and every time I see a story about people being flooded out by raging rivers or hurricane surges, and see them in the ruins of their homes, my heart goes out to them.

The Great 71 Beacon Flood of Ought Five has created heightened sensitivities with respect to water damage, so it was no surprise when, a couple of months back, an article on the Johnstown (PA) Flood Museum caught my eye. This museum commemorates the 1889 Johnstown Flood, one of the worst flooding disasters in American history, second only in terms of loss of life to the Galveston Flood of 1900. Over two-thousand folks died in the Johnstown Flood; 99 families were entirely wiped out. 

The Johnstown Flood Museum's flooding wasn't caused by a raging river or monsoon-like storm. As with the flooding in my building, there was a burst pipe that sent water gurgling through the building, damaging walls, ceiling tiles, and carpets.

Fortunately for its patrons, the Johnstown Flood Museum said on its social media accounts that “nothing of historic significance was affected” by the interior inundation. (Source: The Guardian)

It could have been worse if not for the head's up alert sounded by:

... a volunteer docent at the museum, Nikki Bosley, who was working in the archives when she discovered the leak.

Museum officials informed the local news outlet WJAC that Bosley “sounded the alarm and allowed us to get in here and keep it from being much, much worse”. 

Unfortunately, the Museum had to do a lot of mopping up, and as of late February, it remained closed 

Anyway, while I know all about water damage, I don't have a lot of up close and personal experience with actual flooding, beyond the occasional minor bouts with water seeping into our common areas in the building's basement during really wild rainstorms. (We installed a sump pump a while back, and haven't had any water in the building since.)

But the article on the Johnstown Flood Museum got me to look up the Johnstown Flood. And got me to remember the one and only flood I actually lived through. 

I have very vivid memories of it, but I had to look up the date. And I found that, in late August 1955, in the aftermath of Hurricanes Connie and Diane, there was a flood in Worcester. (This was a couple of weeks before I started first grade, so I was five years old, pushing six.)

We still lived in my grandmother's three decker then, which was the first house on Winchester Ave, separated from Main Street by an empty lot (which in the next year or so became a Sunoco station). Worcester is very hilly, and we lived on a hill, and standing on our piazza (Worcester for porch), I remember watching water wildly coursing down the hill, heading toward Webster Square, which was where "our" hill leveled out. 

The picture here shows Breen's Cafe in Webster Square, which is pretty much exactly a mile from our piazza on Winchester Ave, and which is located just around the corner from where my grandfather's bar (Rogers Brothers' Saloon) stood. (Alas, the family saloon was a victim of Prohibition.) 

Breen's, by the way, is still in operation, and for many years now has been owned by two of the Hanlon brothers, fellows who grew up in the 'hood and were grammar and high school classmates of my brothers. One of the brothers, who was a good friend of my brother Rich, died very young. Just googled and Brian's been gone since 2002. 

Note to self: next year, when my sister Trish and I make our annual cemetery run to Worcester, we should have lunch at Breen's.

My other memory of the the flood of 1955 was that for day or so, while there was water, water, everywhere, our water was shut off. I remember taking a crap in a coffee can, and my father taking the can out to toss in the field behind our house. There were two paint stirrers in the can, I guess so my father could lift the turds out. Or something. Or maybe we got to use the toilet, but he had to remove the turds using the paint stirrers to retrieve them so he could ferry them out to dispose of. My memory is very clear of the coffee can, my poop, and the paint stirrers.

Blessedly, although we're all at present pretty much living through an unnatural disaster, I've never lived through a natural disaster, and have no desire to ever experience one. 

But all this brings to mind the words from a Black spiritual, “God gave Noah the rainbow sign, No more water, the fire next time!” 

Watching the recent LA devastation, I don't have any desire to experience a fire, either.

Here's hoping I stay lucky. 

Presidential Hobbies

A month or so ago, something fluttering in front of me caught my eye and I thought, hey, wouldn't it be fun to do a post on presidential hobbies.

That was, of course, BTU - before the unthinkable - back in the good old days when I thought I'd be cherrily writing about President Kamala Harris and her cooking - and not grinding my teeth over the idea of the malign and terrifying, manifestly unfit creature that is DJT once more occupying the White House. Where - when he's not out golfing so he can overcharge the Secret Service for their rooms in his mildewy hotels - he'll, no doubt, be indulging in his favorite indoor pasttimes: rage tweeting, retribution, watching Fox News and Newsmax suck up to him, and buttering up to (and sharing state secrets with) his autocratic buddies. And doing so with a vengeance. A literal vengeance.

Anyway, I ended up reading a short piece on (some) presidential hobbies on a site called History Facts, and found a couple of little gems:

John Quincy Adams was a skinny dipper. Sure, he had other more cerebral pursuits, like reading and writing, but Massachusetts' own liked to start out each morning with a walk and a dip in the Potomac. 

Abe Lincoln had given up the sport before he began his presidency, but he had apparently been quite the wrestler in his day and was, in fact, posthumously inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, OK. There he's enshrined with fellow presidents George Washington, William Howard Taft, and Theodore Roosevelt. And a bunch of wrestlers I've never heard of. 

If you're looking for wrestlers you've actually heard of - like Andre the Giant and Gorilla Monsoon, Killer Kowalski and Lou Albano - you're talking the WWE HofF, which is virtual.

Although he'd given up wrestling, Lincoln had other distractions to keep his mind off of, say, the Civil War. According to his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, Abe's hobby was cats.

Lots of presidents like to ride horseback - think of Ronald Reagan handsomely and presidentially astride some handsome and presidential steed - but Calvin Coolidge may have been the only president to ride a mechanical horse. 

The electric horse — a barrel-shaped contraption made of wood, metal, and leather — was installed in the White House for the president’s exercise. Coolidge, who loved riding actual horses, became rather fond of the mechanical version. He rode it three times a day both for exercise and as a stress reliever (and, one might assume, for pleasure). The mechanical horse even had two variable gaits: “trot” and “gallop.”

Well, ride 'em, Cowboy Coolidge! 

But back to Ronald Reagan for a sec. Years ago, I read a book in which a young American recounted the time she spent in Ireland. I believe the book was Whoredome in Kimmage by Rosemary Mahoney. There's one wonderful scene in which an Irishman is talking about Reagan, but he can't quite come up with his name. "You know," he tells Mahoney, "the cowboy married to the voodoo doll."

Indeed.

According to History Facts, JFK collected model ships and scrimshaw. These, I guess, were his public, scrubbed down hobbies, given that his real hobby (kept hidden by a press who no doubt admired his prowess) was womanizing. Estimates I've seen of his White House trysts run from dozens to hundreds to 1,000's during his mythic Thousand Days. 

Yet he still found time to manage the Cuban Missile Crisis. 

As Marilyn Monroe said - or sang - it best, "Happy Birthday, Mr. President."

Fast forward a bit, and there was no womanizing in the Nixon White House. None of that sort of hanky panky. Just avid bowling when Tricky Dick needed a break from paranoia and going after his enemies, as well as from doing some actually decent presidenting. Like opening up China and starting the EPA. 

When he wasn't skirt chasing and having completely inappropriate sex with an intern, Bill Clinton wasn't just playing the saxophone. He was a crossword puzzle wiz. 

I love doing crossword puzzles. So, note to self, get some NY Times crossword puzzle books so I can hunker down and avoid the news.

Sure wish that news was going to include some cooking tips and recipes from Kamala.

Sigh...

Reenactors? So not cool.

I am not wild about reenactors.

I find it espeically cringe when they slip into ye olde spake thee-thou-thoust. When they were little, my sister Kath and I took our nieces Molly and Caroline to Plimouth Plantation, and we were mortified by the reenactors. Other than the indigenous woman off in the native village off to the side. I don't recall anything phoney about her presentation, maybe because she was actually a tribal member, and not someone who couldn't trace their lineage to the Mayflower who'd just been hired to play a Pilgrim.

Years later, my sister Trish and I were at the Farmers Museum in Cooperstown, NY, which is a recreated early 19th century village. It was getting to be the off-season and there weren't a lot of visitors or employees around. But before we went into any one of the buildings, we'd peek in to make sure there was no costumed person lurking there who might want to engage with us while in character.

I don't mind having experts around in these historic museums who have knowledge to share, who can answer questions. I don't even mind if they're in costume. I just can't stand their pretending to be back in the day. The best guides I ever encountered  in an historic site were at the home of Washington Irving House in Tarryton, NY. I can't remember if they were in early 19th century garb, but they were all great. 

Anyway, why I personally don't go for reenactors, I do get that there are history buffs and/or actors who enjoy the gig.

And some of them are floating around Boston, especially this time of year, giving guided tours while dressed up as historical figures. I don't know whtether these folks do ye-olde speak or not. I see them regularly, but I'm always just passing by.

What does strike me when I see them is how uncomfortable it must be to be in period costume, especially during the summer months. During winter, you can at least throw a cloak on. But in summer, you can't exactly strip down to shorts, flipflops, and a tee. 

This past June, when we were experiencing a brief but rotten heat wave - with real-feel temps well over 100 degrees - the Boston Globe caught up with a some of our local costumed reenactors. sweltering away in their frock coats, their waistcoats, their tri-cornerd hats, their multi-layered and petticoated dresses, their mobcaps. 

While Boston chafes under an oppressive heat wave that is bringing metro-area temperatures to the mid-90s, living history guides are among the many workers who can’t afford to spend the day in air conditioned offices. Their tour groups come from all across the world, and are often booked weeks or months in advance.

Considering their stifling wool-and-cotton outfits, working through the heat becomes even more of an occupational hazard. (Source: Boston Globe)

It makes me hot just looking at them when I'm passing by.

Back in the actual ye olde times, of course, those in their heavy clothing wouldn't have been as overheated as we would be in today's oven weather.

...there is historical evidence to suggest that the colonists around the time of the American Revolution lived through summers that were generally cooler and drier than today’s.

Summers were in the 70's anid low 80's, and, "thanks to fewer greenhouse gases trapping daytime heat," nights were cooler.

When there's a heat emergency in Boston, the reenactor-tour guides don't have to stay in costume. Most do. They believe it's a more enertaining experience for the tourists, especially the kids. (And, I'm guessing, being in historic garb may translate nto higher tips.) Plus one reenactor said that his being hot made his audiences feel less hot. 

While I'm never thought that reenactors were in the least bit cool, I hadn't given much (any?) thought to how so not cool they physically are in their punishing costumes when it's hot out. I have a new found, if grudging, respect for them. And I'd still rather see than be one. 

Never too late to exonerate the Salem witches

The Salem Witch Trials are certainly one of the more ignoble chapters in American history. Mass hysteria is never a good thing. In Massachusetts, more than 200 people were charged. They were mainly women and teenage girls, often indigent. Dorothy Good, a child of four, was among the ranks of those accused and jailed.

Of those charged, 31 were convicted. Many of them were executed by hanging. (Dorothy's mother, Sarah, was among those hanged. The child was "chained in a dungeon" for over seven months. When she was released, her father reported that his child had been driven insane. No surprise there.)

Over the (recent) years, those who were convicted have been exonerated.  But now:

More than 300 years [after the Salem witch hysteria], a group of advocates is pressing for recognition of victims like Dorothy, who have been left out of previous efforts to clear the names of those convicted or executed during the witch hunt hysteria of the Puritan era. Pardons and exonerations have largely focused on those executed in Salem, which leaves nearly 200 others unaccounted for, including those who were accused, imprisoned, indicted or lived elsewhere in the commonwealth. (Source: Washington Post)

The quest for exonerations is the work of the Massachusetts Witch-Hunt Justice Project. Their mission:

By clearing the names of the past victims, we honor the dead, educate the living, reduce the potential for future witch-hunts of all kinds, and send a message that we stand opposed to violence against persons accused of witchcraft. Exoneration is a way to show our respect to generations gone before us and provide comfort to the victims’ descendants. This is also an opportunity to learn many lessons applicable today. Through sharing the history of past witch-hunts, we learn how to identify and stop similarly oppressive actions in the present.

(For the record: I signed the petition and chipped in $25 to support their cause.) 

The witch-hunt justice proponents note that while actual witch-hunts and executions may be a thing of the past in America and Europe, they still take place elsewhere in the world. Not that we're exempt from mass hysteria. In the 1980's, there was the daycare panic, in which a number of daycare workers were wrongly accused of and imprisoned for molesting children. And then there's QAnon revving up satanic panic. Just before QAnon darkened our doors with their crazypants (and ultra-dangerous) nonsense, there was Pizzagate. Remember that one? Democrats were supposedly trafficking children out of a DC pizza parlor. One crackpot showed up with a gun to save the children...

There's also plenty of scapegoating going around: immigrants, members of the LGBTQ+ community, Muslims, et al. We're a nation on edge, made all the edgier because in the US, guns outnumber people.

But back to the exoneration: I'm all for it. It may mean something to the descendants of those accused over 300 years ago; it may make us think about present day parallels.

Too late is better than never at all.