The Lost Colony of Texas

When people in Texas enjoy their barbeque and brisket, do they think to thank the Archduke of Nassau?

Southern American migration into Texas before and after the Civil War would have introduced barbeque as an excellent end use for all those longhorns in any case, but it got a real quality boost from some skilled German and Czech butchers who arrived in a colonization scheme known as the Adelsverein (the Nobility Society). Twenty-one German noblemen (the aforementioned Archduke, two regular dukes, nine princes, eight counts and a lone baron) met in Nassau's castle at Biebrich on the Rhine in 1842 and developed a plan to ease the pressure of surplus labor in the German states, while creating new markets and sources of raw materials, in line with 19th century mercantile colonial theory. The Republic of Texas was scouted; it had always been a destination for outlaws, filibusters and fortune seekers, after all, and its President, Sam Houston, could grant tracts of land to contractors who would colonize it. Old Sam only offered some frontier territory west of Austin filled with hostile natives, so the society purchased 4,428 acres of land in Fayette County at $.75 per. Twenty-five slaves were also bought.

The first immigrants, who'd paid $240 per head of household, arrived in mid-1844 at the port of Indian Point (now Indianola). They were short on shelter (there was no wood) and very short of medical care: 1,000 of the 1846 arrivals died of disease, exposure and starvation. By the end of the colony's official life in 1853 due to unpayable debt, 7,000 had made the journey, founding the settlement still known as New Braunfels and a second colony, Fredericksburg (both named after princes, of course -- naming rights have been around a while).

A signal accomplishment of Adelsverein beyond the excellent barbeque was a lasting -- because it was actually fair -- treaty with the Comanche. Indianola did not fare so well: two hurricanes, in 1875 and 1886, devastated it, the latter one collapsing the building pictured above, called Sophienburg, the former headquarters of the colony and in its last years just a store.

The flags (if they had any) of shadow states within the U.S. such as the Republic of Vermont, the State of Franklin, the Free State of Winston (Alabama), Scott County (Tennessee) and Adelsverein are furled and resting in the dusty closet of history. Little Scott County had the last chuckle: after seceding from Tennessee after it seceded from the Union, the plucky residents didn't officially rejoin the Volunteer State until 1986!

Are We Amused?

Like being a completely dark cave, we homo sapiens lose perspective quickly, even during the short tenure of a human generation or two. Despite being unnerved by Too Much Information -- and Everything Else -- we accept and adapt to the hugely exceptional, drastic change in our lives over the past 60 years (the normalcy bias). With huge energy inputs available as the Industrial Age accelerated and astonishingly increased efficiency in all phases of economic life, we have more discretionary time and money than we can handle well.

Leisure time was scarce when people were isolated and transportation slow, and there was much to keep everyone busy. Until WWII when other, higher-paying employment skyrocketed, there had always been servants; not only upper but middle class households worldwide had servants to handle the very time-consuming laundry and cleaning chores which took a lot more effort than they do now. Ask very old people what having a coal furnace and hand-washing then hanging out clothes was like.

Our culture has changed quickly from work-centered to entertainment-dominated. Television, that so-aptly named "vast wasteland," hit us along with good highways and a car in almost every driveway in a very short period. We liked it. Fun, freedom and a sense of individual empowerment. We were not on earth to serve, suffer and die, but to amuse ourselves -- formerly the province of the privileged.

Things started to get out of control (not that we noticed) with the advent of shopping centers, then malls. Buying things was no longer a well-considered choice, but seven-day-a-week entertainment. Then we had a blizzard of catalogs, followed by electronic commerce. Who knew we'd careen in relatively few years from huge computers in freezing clean rooms, running miles of magnetic tape, to mobile phones in individual hands worldwide. With apps. Lots of apps.

With all these choices, we're apt to get lost; manipulated into no real choices at all. You will buy junk from China and merchandise featuring Justin Bieber.

New product must be introduced daily, with almost 8 billion clamoring for it: from Hula Hoops on television ads and harmonizing chipmunks on radio a half-century ago to Silly Bandz, Pokemon and video games today, and movies about underground street racing. Disneyland Paris (with 15 million a year in attendance) is the number one tourist destination in Europe, where, ironically, they have the authentic stuff. It features a fabricated New York and American West (near Paris, remember). Don't get me started on the Hunter S. Thompson world of Las Vegas.

There are mental comforts to be enjoyed and skills to be developed in active recreation and hobbies. Passive entertainment, faked-up stage set environments and the world of the LCD screen is something different. The human eye evolved to view three dimensional images; its natural focal point is about 20 feet away. Computer vision syndrome results from working the eyes too hard when looking at a computer screen for more than two hours a day; what in the world does it do to our minds and spirits?

Have to go. There's a movie from Netflix waiting, and two things on DVR to watch.

Teenage Dropout Author, 33 Years Later

"After oxygen and carbon, humans are made up of stories." -- Paige Williams


Dolly Freed has done it her way.

She and her family were as typical as possible, living in a suburb of Philadelphia: Dad (an electronics technician), Mom (with a successful candle business), Dolly and her younger brother. Then things got unconventional. Father Frank joined his wife in the candle business as a way out of working all day for someone else, but she wanted bigger and better things and he just wanted to be his own boss and not work away from home all day.
So she left with the younger sibling, and teenage Dolly and Frank, being of similar dispositions, decided to follow their inclinations to be what they wanted to be: lazy, proud and honest. Not on a rural commune or in an ideological community, though; they just kept up the middle class facade and stayed clear of the law (Dolly was a truant -- and her name is a pseudonym adopted to keep her real identity anonymous. It still is.)
For several years, they did just that and lived well without jobs and almost no money (they earned less or more than $1000 a year at odd jobs). Their neighbor had five children to feed and Dolly wondered why he cut the large back yard of grass rather than growing food. With their garden, as well as fishing, rabbits and chickens, had more than they needed. Dispensing with school after the seventh grade, the surprisingly articulate and competent 18-year-old wrote and published her book about their adventure in suburban sustainability in 1978, Possum Living. I remember reading a book by a middle-aged woman doing the same thing in suburban Philadelphia; I wonder if they ever heard of each other.
When the desire to re-start her education struck, Dolly put herself through college and eventually became an engineer for NASA. If this were a Lifetime movie, you wouldn't believe it for a minute.
Now living in Texas, she's gone halfway back to her roots, making a small living as an environmental educator and following the low-impact lifestyle again. Her book was reissued last year, and there is a 10-minute film on YouTube made after it was first published. She says,
"possum living taught me that you need very few physical things to be happy."
Another feisty female story. I love 'em!

Fight For Your Right To...Get Screwed?

Between 2009 and 2011, Bank of America tried to confiscate Chief Warrant Officer Charles Pickett's home three times. CWO Pickett was serving in Iraq (making it very difficult to defend himself; you can't just ask for personal time off from an armed forces assignment) and was current on his mortgage payments. He was only one of thousands of service members, many overseas, who have been illegally foreclosed upon during this time period. These actions were too numerous to have been a mistake, and were taken in direct defiance of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act of 2003.
While CWO Pickett finally beat BofA back, his credit was damaged. This can affect his security clearance, and thus his career, seriously. Congressman John Yarmuth (D-KY) addressed the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about this ongoing criminal behavior of America's deregulated financial industry the other day. For many innocent people, it's too late.
Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan Chase have been fined -- not prosecuted and jailed. Fined = wink, wink/you can do what you want, it's the Free Market!
Zach's mortgage is with Chase. Not our choice; it was sold and re-sold, to the slimiest bidder, I guess.
CWO Pickett is half-way around the world in Iraq to supposedly, somehow, bring it democracy, justice and the rights of man. But he and thousands of others are being ambushed and attacked on the home front by the well-educated, well-dressed mafia that can't be touched. Exxon-Mobil has not paid all its bills and fines for the Valdez oil spill so many years ago, and never will.
If any of those who lost their homes to illegal foreclosure are Apache helicopter pilots, here is the address to program into your missiles:
Bank of America, 100 N. Tryon Street, Charlotte, North Carolina.

Farm Day

Today was one of the several during the growing season when Spiral Path Farm, whose CSA we sort of belong to (we split a weekly shipment with our neighbor) hosts an open house. So, despite the heat wave, we're zipping along roads west and up into Perry County, that I remember from the 60s as narrow two-lanes without even a painted stripe, and now have development sprouting everywhere. Between the small and large farms that look much the same, there are horrifically large McMansions growing like alien mushrooms.

The further west you go toward our destination around Loysville, though, everything looks the same, just a little more prosperous than 50 years ago. I was surprised by the number of motorcycle riders in groups, until we realized that this is Bike Weekend at the Fairgrounds in nearby Carlisle. Very few sport bikes, though; mostly large Harley types. I never see my beloved old British bikes on any of these event weekends -- how I'd like to see and hear a Vincent Shadow go by.

Just before we get to the private dirt-and-gravel lane that threads back to those organic acres, we pass by old (mid-18th century) Centre Presbyterian Church. I point excitedly to the large pavilion in the trees to the left; that's where the annual anniversary all-day "supper" is held near the end of each August, where Grandad took me (and much later, both of us) and I discovered homemade ice cream. I enjoyed the barbequed chicken and tried the pink "teaberry" flavor which is way too sweet for me now, but was pretty perfect for an 11-year-old. We'll be elsewhere on the date this year, but I think next year we'll go back (in time, too).

When grandad and I traveled over the ridge at Sterret's Gap where Cumberland County is left behind and Perry looms, he always told me the story of The Robber Lewis, which he had heard as a boy. I can't pass that way without remembering that Treasure Island-like tale. Born in 1790, David Lewis had a stellar career as counterfeiter and highwayman, operating all along the mountains that run southwest to northeast. He holed up in several caves in the immediate area, and it was near here that his most famous exploit as Pennsylvania's Robin Hood took place. He heard that a widow owed $20 for her half-year's rent and was about to lose her cow to the constable since she had not a dollar to her name. Lewis lent her the $20 and advised her to get a written receipt; after the constable left he ambushed the official on the road and made away with his loan and $40 more. He performed similar deeds, calling them "equalizing." In 1820, he died after a gun battle with a county posse. One hundred and forty years later, my grandfather was telling me his old story, accurate in every detail. Now it's yours.

Some of the road signs are poetic, referring to birds, sunshine and harmony; some are a little odd, like Dunkleberger Lane and Rambo Run. A directional sign that reads Bloserville: 2 has the "B" rubbed out. Country humor! No graffiti and no litter -- pleasantly surprising.

Spiral Path is not nearly as crowded as when we were here last year; probably because the heat is in the mid-90s. Their mint green tea and lemonade behind the stone and wood farmhouse is our goal right after we cut some sweet and purple basil, mint and Italian parsley. There are big boxes of produce to help yourself to, not all of it seconds. A few neighbors have vendor stands set up, with artisan bread, raw milk cheese (Nancy said this had a pretty strong flavor!), soups and honey. Two were there to promote their organic, grass-fed beef and lamb CSAs.

It looks like the back-to-the-land movement of the late 60s through the 70s has a new life through the CSA concept, and there are several restaurants throughout the area which source locally either somewhat or almost completely; we also see the products of family establishments in all the grocery stores, something that was rare before. Think about the lucky offspring and relatives who will never have to apply for a job, hard enough before in these rural areas but probably downright scary since 2008.

The refrigerator is crammed full; it was a good trip.

Compost Cowgirl

"Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers."

-- Mignon McLaughlin

In our continuing series on feisty women, let's drop in on one Julie Bass, who resides in Oak Park, a Detroit suburb. As I mentioned way back, Detroit, with its thousands of vacant lots, is doing some bold experimenting in using formerly urban land for local food production/consumption, based on the common-sense "make lemonade" approach instead of academic theories or imported political ideologies which normally have a stranglehold on city management. There is a backlash in the press and blogosphere, of course, because humans are alarmed at change and react with fear. Poor Julie got her backlash from the local codes enforcement gendarmes.

For the four raised-bed gardens in her front yard, she was threatened with 93 days in jail. There were Victory Gardens in yards during the world wars, and even today in old, rural small towns you see a garden in most back yards. On the west coast, urban and suburban homesteading is being tried in a variety of locations and ways and there have been not only great successes, but several very amusing books written by the experimenters. When the first planned suburbs were designed (I think around Chicago), two of the main principles were monotonous front yards of grass and a generous set-back from the street. Mr. F. Law Olmstead, who was there at the beginning, was and is America's greatest park and landscape designer, but rigid, unchanging, unthinking conformity about suburban living does him no honor.

Mrs. Bass' local codes are both overly specific (tomatoes cannot grow over 30 inches) and unenforceably vague (like everywhere else, come to think of it). The ordinance cited to scare her into abandoning the too-visible vegetable project states what is allowable: "...or suitable live plant material." She went public, raised a defense fund, and even got an interview on MSNBC. The exposure resulted in a dismissal of the charges pending further review, but they can be reinstated any time. Probably after the dust, as it were, settles.

Far away in British Columbia, under a controlled substances law, officials have been raiding homes and outbuildings where food and flowers are being grown inside. Now, they live there, and should know that people do this because the growing season is short, the Springs are cool and rainy, and plants need to be started indoors. After no marijuana was found, they still imposed fines of up to $5200. They intend to collect them, calling the charge an "inspection fee."

The Conformity Police should know that we're armed with large zucchinis and aren't afraid to use them!

The Roaring Girls

Mary Reed and Anne Bonny

Moll Cutpurse

 

 

I haven't watched the games, but watching the reaction to the U.S. women's soccer team has been inspiring. On the other side of the world, geographically and culturally, I saw a similarly inspiring story about increasing cell-phone usage by women in third-world nations, and how it is liberating and connecting them one at a time. An Afghan woman had enjoyed her phone to keep in touch with family, but her enraged husband took it and beat her, fearing loss of control. I'd like to turn that soccer team loose on him.

Traditionalists were probably upset over iconoclastic women like Katherine Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich wearing men's clothes, making their own rules and upsetting gender role preconceptions. They were in a position to get away with it, and did it with unassailable class. Others have taken a much lower road, in a colorful and outrageous manner; despite being attacked relentlessly by the religious establishment and the law, they did it their way.

When I did 18th century re-enacting, the women did a very good job of portraying all classes of conventional ladies, but there were in fact some woodswomen (like Ann Bailey and Mrs. Pentry) who abandoned the voluminous dress and the suffocating corset to find adventure in the wilderness. Mary Read and Anne Bonny had brief but intensely exciting careers as pirates (and quite competent ones) in the early 18th century; their actual fates are lost in myth, unfortunately. I'd like to think they got away with it.

In the Renaissance and later times, students and tavern carousers who brawled on the streets were called "Roaring Boys;" one woman who was immortalized as The Roaring Girl in a 1611 play, a 1662 biography and a 1985 novel surpassed them all in bad behavior. Mary Frith (ca. 1584 to ca. 1659) of England became known as Moll Cutpurse early on in a very successful career as a thief, pickpocket, fence and pimp. "Moll" is a nickname for Mary, and also means a disreputable young woman; gangster's "moll" is the only current usage. According to a contemporary history, she "was troubled with none of those longings which poor maidens are subject to." A tomboy from the beginning, she dressed in men's clothes and smoked a pipe ("a great many of her sex have followed her example," it was said). She married, but probably only as a legal ploy. Her greatest defeat of the law, however, was during her time as a highwayman when she robbed General Fairfax of "250 jacobuses," shooting him through the arm in the process. Her horse failed her in the escape and she was taken to Newgate Prison, but got out by giving the victim 2000 pounds. This may be mostly legend, but makes a good story that Errol Flynn should have filmed (now that would be gender confusion!).

She was a ham, also: Moll performed in a stage show in which she bantered, sang and played the lute; this was during a time when women did not act or perform in any public venue. That didn't stop her for a minute.

Moll would have liked our soccer team, I think.