Join Us For Our Holiday Home Tour & Victorian Tea!

The charming Victorian seaport town of Fernandina Beach, FL will be the scene of the
3rd Annual Amelia Island Museum of History Holiday Home Tour
Friday & Saturday, December 4 & 5, 2009 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.

The tour will feature five spectacular homes professionally decorated for the holidays. Docents will be stationed at each home to point out the rich history, architectural features, furnishings, and decorations. Good cheer and tidings of the seasons abound as Victorian carolers will add to the festive experience as they serenade guests with holiday music. Enjoy the spirit of the yuletide at this exceptional holiday event in historic Fernandina Beach, FL.

Victorian Tea

Enjoy a seated Victorian Tea in the fabulous Bailey House at the corner of S.7th and Ash Streets in historic Fernandina Beach. A choice of teas and an abundant assortment of sweet and savory treats will be served on the current owner's finest china. Adding to the festivities, Kate and Effingham Bailey, the original owners of the home, now portrayed by local residents, will greet and visit with guests to share stories of life in Fernandina in the late 1800s.

Reminiscent of Holiday Teas in the 19th century, this memorable event will enhance your holiday experience in old Fernandina. It is not to be missed!

Seatings are: Friday, December 4 at 2:00, 3:00 and 4:00PM and
Saturday, December 5 at 2:00, 3:00 and 4:00PM

This is a private home, seating is limited and advance ticket purchase is required. Tea Tickets are $15.00.

A Recommendation

Looking for a good history read, educational, but entertaining? A book you can carry to the Coffee House, and impress your fellow caffeine fiends with your erudition and intellect, even if you never read a word?

I recommend Kissinger: 1973, the Crucial Year

Alistair Horne who has to date specialized in British and French history has produced a clever book focusing on our Henry during that most difficult of years, 1973. Watch Henry out maneuver his rivals at the State Department and elsewhere, while managing the paranoid and mostly just plain nuts Dick Nixon. And, from time to time, also managing wars, peaces and assorted starlets.

And Henry’s old propensities can still lead him to strange places at age 83.

RUSSIA

Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

-Winston Churchill

I was there for all of two weeks, and from that limited exposure to a tiny fraction of the country, I find Winston’s puzzlement still as true today as it was when he said those famous words. Russia is hard to get a handle on. Dynamic and backward, corrupt and direct, capitalist to the core, while pining for the old easy Soviet life.

We visited Kiev, now the capital of the vast new country of Ukraine, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Tallinn and Helsinki. The best part of the trip was the thousand mile journey by river and canal from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

As we cruised north, few roads or settlements interrupt what is still a vast northern forest. Unbroken conifers and white birch crowd the banks. Occasionally an old wooden church came into view, usually in ruins. The air was cool, even on the sunniest of days, hinting at the savagery of winter here in one of the coldest places on earth.

I was listening to a podcast earlier today in which a professor at Berkeley made the point that all societies on earth have now made the transition from a traditional society, which may be very different from other traditional societies, to a modern society, which is like all other modern societies. In that sense Russia has made that transition completely. Its cities look like cities anywhere; its people behave like people anywhere, with a couple of exceptions.

One of those has to do with history. The average kid in the US has managed to remain blissfully ignorant of any real knowledge of history. He or she could not tell you anything about what happened in World War II except in the most general terms. Not surprisingly his teacher and parents know little more. Not so in Russia.

Every Russian and every Russian kid has seared into his or her brain two cataclysms in detail – the tyranny of Stalin and the devastation of World War II. Twenty million dead and the country destroyed. Of the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, half were Russian citizens.

Long before the fall of the Soviet Union, doing whatever is necessary to prevent recurrence is the highest priority. We cannot understand, I think, the intensity of these feelings. That insensitivity came very close to getting us all killed in a nuclear exchange.

It’s still all mulling, and maybe I will have some more thoughts when I get back from rafting the Salmon River in a week.

Six Russian Haiku

Basel’s onion domes ,

Guard the ancient Kremlin walls,

Waiting for the Tsar.

Mirrored Russian lake,

Angry gulls screetch overhead,

Soon the ice will rule.

Mother Russia lives,

Deep within the silent trees,

Waiting for the call.

Birches line the shore,

Volga flows on evermore,

Russian summer comes.

Russia’s soul runs deep,

Only Vodka plumbs the depths,

Truth comes glass by glass.

Bells ring clear and far,

Onion domes of red and blue,

Paint the Russian sky.

The Ukraine Today is a Mess

The Ukraine today is a mess. The Great Recession has devastated the economy, the political system is moribund and corrupt and the average person is desperately poor. On the other hand, this is a distinct improvement from the past. So people are pretty cheerful and optimistic. And it is summer.

Summer is the season where Ukrainian women dress minimally and the whole city is a bar. The local genes seem to produce girls with endlessly long legs, which are required to be maximally displayed. Every few feet and in every park there is a little kiosk selling snacks, and more importantly bottles of beer for less than a dollar. People buy a couple of brewskis and hang out. Foreigners are quite welcome.

In the back of the Israeli museum in Tel Aviv there is a small wooden synagogue. As you enter, music starts to play. This is one of thousands of synagogues belonging to the three million Jews here in Ukraine who perished in the holocaust. After the war one of their neighbors who survived found a copy of music that this particular synagogue used, written by one of its members. Both the synagogue and the music ended up in Israel. This synagogue and this music are all that remain of the people who worshipped in this synagogue, slaughtered like animals, each and every one. Their village no longer exists even as a name on a map. Not even their names are known, nor who wrote this beautiful music or why.

Kiev is a city built on hills. One deep ravine is called Babi Yar and it was used to kill Jews early, before the death camps were up and running. Thirty, forty thousand taken here, and shot. Thrown into the ravine, sometimes not quite dead, other Jews forced to shovel on dirt to hold down the stench, knowing that witnesses would not be allowed to live

A handful of Jews here took to the forest and fought as guerillas, and a handful of those survived.

But of course we had our holocaust on Amelia Island when around 1600 every Timucuan on the island died. They died of the viral diseases that the Europeans brought. Not as morally fraught but as tragic and horrible nonetheless

But life goes on and those beer drinking, mostly naked young people have no or little knowledge of this particular tragedy among all those visited on these people or this world. Nor do we ever have a thought for those long dead Native Americans.

Two of the Civil War Wounds: A Hero & an Irony

I hope you caught Bill Birdsong’s talk at the museum on three human stories caused by three different Civil War wounds. Bill could make drying paint a fascinating subject, and he had good stuff to work with. He is also a very humorous guy.

His first story was the ironic death of Albert Sydney Johnson during the late afternoon at the first day of the battle of Shiloh in April 1862. The second was Joshua Chamberlain’s many wounds, including at Gettysburg where he arguably saved the Union Army from disaster by holding Little Round Top on the second day.

Many people have argued that Gettysburg was the most important battle of the Civil War and that The South might have won the war, if they had seized Little Round Top and rolled down the Union line in flank, or if Picket’s charge on the third day had succeeded. There is, in my opinion, no truth to one assertion and doubtful truth to the other.

Lee did not go off to invade Pennsylvania with the idea of destroying the Union in decisive battle. His plan was to take some heat off Virginia so crops could be harvested and try to sway Northern public opinion further against the war. He accomplished the first, but not the second. While many in the North were against the war, Lincoln had solid backing in Congress, and, most importantly in the army to finish the job.

Lee’s problem was that Meade had just too many men and resources, and Lee too little. If Lee had managed to rout Lee and scatter his army, there were still plenty enough union soldiers in position to prevent Lee seizing Washington. Moreover, at the end of the third day at Gettysburg, Lee’s army was much reduced in size from deaths and wounded. Even more critical, he was virtually out of ammunition. Had Meade attacked Lee in retreat the war might well have ended in 1863. Certainly had Grant been in charge instead of Meade, he would have attacked.

It might be that Chamberlain saved the battle, but Oates confederates attacking Chamberlain had taken heavy causalities, and couldn’t have pushed on much further. Longstreet was not in a position to exploit gains they made. It is one this to seize a position on the flank. It is another to drive a determined enemy from good defensive positions.

But Shiloh was a much more critical matter. Johnston had caught the union army by surprise, which is to say he caught Sherman and Grant by surprise. Grant was some miles away at Pittsfield Landing when the attack came, and didn’t arrive at the battlefield until late afternoon. He immediately began to sort out the mess in his unflappable way. But it was a near thing. Grant was close to being pushed into the river, and losing most of his army, and then, providentially, Johnson was killed.

He had not shared his battle plan with his second-in-command Beauregard who decided to stop for the night, and get organized to finish the battle in the morning. When the morning came, it was Grant who attacked and soon, Don Carlos Buell showed up with 40,000 fresh union troops. The Confederates were soon in a headlong retreat back to Corinth in Mississippi.

Had Grant and Sherman lost the battle of Shiloh decisively, they would have been busted out of the army. But instead the South was pummeled and took casualties it could not replace. It took Grant another 18 month to conquer The West of the Confederacy, but, at no time during that period, did the South have the men and material to stop him

The death of Albert Sydney Johnson was the critical turning point of the Civil War.

Gettysburg is easy to reach by car, and a fascinating place. I have been there at least twenty times. When the pressures of being a lawyer with lots of irons in the fire got to be too much, I would head there for the day and stay until dark. My own personal problems didn’t seem so important by the time I got back home.

Shiloh is hard to reach by car, but a moving experience. It’s tucked in the extreme southwest corner of Tennessee, very close to Mississippi. The battlefield is very well preserved – it looks just like it did when the battle raged – and the rangers are wonderful in evoking the events of those two days.

So now you know the rest of the story.

All For the Want of Silver

Did you know that the history of Amelia Island was largely determined by the fact that Chinese people 500 hundred years ago really liked silver? No? What an oversight!

It all goes back to Chris Columbus. Now Chris himself is not very important. If he had not discovered The New World in 1492, someone else would have done so within the next few years, likely the Portuguese. In fact, the existence of a large land mass to the west was well known in Europe. When Chris set sail, there were Danish and Irish fisherman on the Grand Banks, and drying their cods on the coast of Labrador.

The big deal is that within a few years after Columbus, the Spanish had figured out how to get rich from what they found. That’s why they built an empire here, which included Florida in general and Amelia Island in particular. And for the first century after Chris it was the lust for gold and silver and the successful discovery of lots of both that created the wealth. No money, no empire. It’s that simple.

Now gold has always been considered to have great value, and its scarcity ensures that will always be the case. I saw an exhibit in Quebec last year on gold and among other things I learned that all the gold that has ever existed in the world and that will ever exist can be fitted into a cube 3 meters on a side. That is not a very big box.

Silver is gold’s poorer cousin. It has never had the cachet of gold, in part because there is a lot of it around. It was used as coinage in the ancient world, but then so was copper and other metals and alloys.

The Spanish within a few years had seized all the gold that the Incas and Aztecs had accumulated over a very long time. They faced loss of the cash flow needed to carry on the conquests, but, by that time, they had discovered the incredibly productive silver mines of Mexico. The world supply of silver almost instantly went up by several times What should have happened is that the price of silver should have crashed, to the point that most of it wouldn’t have been worth mining. Had that happened, the Spanish might well have abandoned what was now an unproductive conquest, and just went home. No more Spanish Florida.

But, by coincidence, the Chinese economy was expanding at this time, and the Chinese people had a real love for silver, a love not shared in the same way by anyone else in the world. China at this time had 25% of all people on the planet and 40% of the world economy.

So the Chinese started buying up the Spanish silver, and that kept up the price, so Spain continued to enjoy cash flow that could support its conquest. The Spanish founded Manila largely as a place to manage the sale of silver to the Chinese, and buy their products in return.

Part of that silver bought textiles and other goods which were bartered in Africa for slaves, who mined the silver and eventually created the great estates in Mexico and elsewhere in the Spanish New World. But without that Chinese price support, the history of our little island would be very different indeed

We are off to Russia by the time you read this, what Churchill called a “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” My plan is to send back blogs from time to time, whenever I find WiFi or an Internet café. I hope to find that critical connection between Amelia Island and Russia. That may take some searching.

Well, it finally had to happen. I been censored!

Last Saturday we had specialists at the museum all night testing for ghosts. Personally, I don’t believe in ghosts, but polls consistently show most Americans believe otherwise. Anyway, it was reported to me second or third hand that they found a ghost, and it was an African-American boy (I’m not sure I got this right)

I got to thinking if there is a ghost, what could have been the circumstances that trapped it there, something horrible that happened at the museum. So I sat down at my computer and wrote a ghost story. I tried to make it as gory and scary as I could. I will never be Stephen King, but I can aspire. I called it “Ghost Story” (Okay, its not a very original title)

I circulated it to a few friends, and the reactions I got were fascinating. Some loved the piece, while others described it as gruesome and repulsive. Mostly the break was along generational lines. No one under forty thought this was anything bad, mostly they liked it. In general, the older you are the more repulsed you were. But sadly that tags me as either a perpetual adolescent, or a culture omnivore. Probably right.

Moreover, Ghost Story wasn’t censored because we don’t do ghost stories. We do ghost tours, and spin regularly the tale of Aury’s nephew who was decapitated during hanging. That’s pretty gross. It wasn’t censored for its sexual content, because it has none (Maybe next time)

My Ghost Story got censored because it is a really, really good ghost story.

I took even the negative comments as a complement, albeit a clearly unintended. I am not all that secure about my writing, and this was rave stuff, so I submitted it as my next blog.

Censored.

I didn’t even get my story reproduced with that big “CENSORED” stamp over it.

But this may be a great thing.

When I was a kid in the fifties, I watched the censorship battles over Lady Chatterley Henry Miller (Remember Tropic of Cancer? That one was an eye opener), Fanny Hill and lots more. I grabbed them and read them cover to cover the minute they were available.

I am hoping this censorship will make everyone want to read my little Fernandina Ghost Story.

So if you think you are tough enough, drop me an email at jrlpatent@aol.com, and back will come the whole tale (UNCENSORED). And this week only, if you order within twenty four hours, you get at no extra cost, a new ghost story on Halloween eve, guaranteed to scare the beejesus out of you.

Now, don’t you want to read it?

Ciao

A Clarification on Yulee

Until today, I understood that David Yulee – the guy that built the railway, served as Florida’s first senator and hosted General Grant at the Egmont Hotel in 1880 – was tossed into Fort Pulaski at the end of the Civil War because he had written a letter to the Florida legislature before the war advocating secession. The letter was reproduced in Harper’s magazine during the war, and is also reproduced in our Civil War room.

That explanation always seemed fishy to me. Some people have asserted that, whatever the ostensible reason, the real motivation was to get him to give up any interest in his railway to the rich New York financiers who had bought up his bonds. That makes sense, but they had to have something more on Yulee than just that letter to jail him for such an extended period. Yulee was still a rich, important guy with good connections north and south. He was not the kind of guy you could arbitrarily jail on specious grounds, and keep him there indefinitely.

But I have now run down multiple sources that say Yulee was tossed into the clink not because of that letter, but because of suspicions that he had aided that traitor Jefferson Davis and his cabinet after they fled Richmond just before its fall in April of 1865.

Davis was captured on May 6 in Irwinsville, Georgia, wearing a dress. Whether he was wearing it over his men’s suit or he was trying to pass as a woman is a matter of heated dispute. Obviously, whichever the case, he was not thinking of his image. He almost made it to Florida.

However, other cabinet members and the gold reserves of the Confederacy made it to and traveled furtively through Florida. At least one contingent and some gold stopped at Yulee’s plantation in Archer. He apparently wasn’t there, but his wife welcomed the fugitives and helped them on their way. A few made it to the Keys and thence to Cuba.

It was Grant who got Yulee out of Fort Pulaski, but that’s a story for another day. He probably was guilty of aiding Davis and his partying some way, but by 1866, no one cared.

Jose Marti

There is talk about placing a statute of Jose Marti somewhere around town. Sounds like a good idea to me. It occurred to me that I knew only a couple of basic facts about him, so I went looking for more information. The more I looked, the more I liked.

His full name was José Julián Martí Pérez. He was born in Havana Cuba on January 28, 1853. Martí's father was a sergeant in the Spanish Army who was transferred to Cuba in 1850. Marti is recognized by almost every Cuban, including Fidel and those who hate Fidel, both as a true Cuban national hero and an important figure in Latin American literature.
I was lucky enough to visit Cuba three years ago and saw his image and statue, it seemed, on every corner. A tour was not complete there without some mention of Marti, and of course Che. I would guess Che will not be getting a statue in Fernandina.
From our perspective today, we look at his photo, and see a timid, little, mousy guy obviously more at home reading a book than leading men into battle. And that is not far off the mark. But you have to admire his bravery and tenacity, even thought his was planning was more than a little inept.
Vi sting Cuba also impressed me just how poorly most people in Cuba were treated under Spanish rule and the dictators supported by the United States who followed. Most people were no better than slaves and treated as such.
In his short life, Marti was a poet, an essayist, a journalist, a revolutionary philosopher, a translator, a professor, a publisher, and a political theorist. Through his writings and political activity, he became a symbol for Cuba's bid for Independence against Spain in the 19th century, and is sometimes referred to as the "Apostle of Cuban Independence".


He also fought against the threat of United States expansionism into Cuba. From adolescence, he dedicated his life to the promotion of liberty, political Independence for Cuba and intellectual independence for all Spanish Americans.
On 21 October 1869, aged 16, he was arrested and incarcerated in the national jail, following an accusation of treason and bribery from the Spanish government More than four months later, Martí confessed to the charges and was condemned to six years in prison on the dreaded Isla de Pinos. Eventually, Martí fell ill; his legs were severely lacerated by the chains that bound him. The Spanish authorities decided to repatriate him to Spain. In Spain, Martí, who was 18 at the time, was allowed to continue his studies with the hopes that studying in Spain would renew his loyalty to Spanish rule in Cuba. It didn’t. If anything, he became more dedicated to freeing Cuba.
Three years later, prevented from returning to Cuba, Martí went instead to Mexico and Guatemala. During these travels, he taught and wrote, advocating continually for Cuba's independence. After a short time in New York, Martí travelled to Venezuela in 1881, where he provoked the wrath of Venezuela's dictator, Antonio Guzmán Blanco, and Martí was forced to leave for New York.
By 1895, Marti decided the time had come for action. He moved to Fernandina where he stayed at the Florida House for several months, and assembled a secret expedition. However, he was betrayed by an informant, and, as a result, his plot was partially thwarted. On January 12, 1895, the authorities seized the steamship Lagonda and two other suspicious ships, Amadis, and Baracoa at the Fernandina port in Florida, confiscating the weapons he had put aboard to to overthrow Spanish rule.
He then decided to shift base to Montecristi in Mexico, to join Máximo Gómez who had agreed to lead the expedition into Cuba. The expedition finally took landed in Cuba on February 24, 1895.
It was a military fiasco, and Marti was killed in battle against Spanish troops on May 19, 1895. Martí was alone and seeing a young courier ride by he said: "Joven, a la carga" meaning: "Young man, let's charge!" This was around midday, and he was, as always, dressed in a black jacket, riding a white horse, which made him an easy target for the Spanish. He was promptly shot off his horse and died, but he also instantly became a martyr to the cause of Cuban Independence.
The death of Marti was a blow to the aspirations of the Cuban rebels inside and outside of the island, but the fighting continued with alternating successes and failures until the entry of the United States into the war in 1898.
Liberty is the right of every man to be honest, to think and to speak without hypocrisy.
Jose Marti

Florida's Most Important Naturalist

This year 2009 is the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Archie Carr, Florida’s most important naturalist.

What? You say. Who the Hell is Archie Carr and why is he so important?

When Archie was born, Florida was the last frontier. In the north were isolated farms scratching out a meager living. In the south were communities every bit as rough and rugged as Dodge City or Abilene. In fact, many of the desperadoes who the law ran out of The West, went to South Florida, just as mean and crooked as ever.

By the time Archie was fifty years old, most of the coasts were populated, and the plan, signed on by every politician and most Floridians, was to pave the entire state, replace marsh with green lawns and get rid permanently of the inconvenient critters. Archie by that time was a fixture at The University of Florida, and was showing generations of students the beauty and the value of what was slated for destruction. He wrote passionately of the natural world in Florida and argued for its preservation.

People listened to Archie, and slowly attitudes changed against destroying all of this unique natural environment.

His particular passion was saving the sea turtles from immanent extinction. He has been called the father of sea turtle research, and rightly so. Even beyond his field, his name is recognized for his commitment to the protection of these reptiles.

He didn’t win all the battles, he didn’t even win most. But he won a few, and most importantly he built a constituency of preservationists. By Archie’s death in 1987, even developers knew that had to pay at least lip service to the idea of preservation.

What makes Florida so special to most of us – the power dive of osprey fishing off a main beach, alligators sunning themselves in the Greenway, the abundant fish and shrimp we love so much, and so much more – we owe to a coconsiderable extent to Archie.

I am lobbying to dedicate the upcoming museum show on natural history to Archie. Its time for a thank you from Amelia Island..

So why is Archie more important than the Bartrams, Audubon, Catesby or Muir? Those people brought the glory of Florida’s flora and fauna to the world. Archie did that as well, but he saved it for future generations.

So now you know who Archie Carr was.

Public Enemies

We saw Public Enemies this morning. Almost a great flick and certainly a fascinating one.

For one thing, it’s outright beautiful in scene after scene, and styled perfectly. Some of the director’s tricks are just awesome. It’s shot in HD digital and that provides a level of detail that is startling, particularly at night. The sound too is superb, with bullets literally seeming to fly all around your seat. The movie successfully evokes the era of the 1930s

Johnny Depp is good, and so is the young actress who played Piaf in that flick. Billy Crudup is astounding at J Edgar Hoover. He just oozes slime. The various G men and gangsters all look convincing and it’s hard to tell them apart, in attitude and brutality, as well as appearance.

And there is a slight personal connection. Dillinger broke out of a jail in Indiana as depicted in the movie, allegedly using only a bar of soap be carved and painted to look like a gun. At that time my father was in college at Ohio Northern in Ada Ohio. He was as broke as it was possible to be, and the police in Lima Ohio a few miles away went to the college looking for students they could deputize to guard the jail and bank, because Dillinger was allegedly headed their way. My Dad got, as I recall, five bucks, enough money to eat on for a week or more, to occupy the roof of a building all night with a shotgun. After a while it became apparent that no Dillinger was coming, and they relaxed. My father as a result had a life time fascination with Dillinger.

The opening scene was my favorite. I liked the way Michael Mann started the movie with a blank screen, and then noises, and then the action explodes.

Be warmed. It is violent. Dozens of people get killed in violent ways, but its all cartoonish.

Oscar material? Certainly for technical things, and likely Depp and Mann for best actor and best director respectively. And with ten nominations now for best picture, this one surely will make that cut.

Go see it at a theater, the way it was meant to be seen. You won’t be sorry.

Jim

The Fourth Florida Naturalist

With its exotic flora and fauna (I was in college before I figured out which one was which) Florida has always been a destination for naturalists. There are at least four Florida naturalists worth knowing.

Probably everybody knows the name William Bartram, because he is memorialized in a sign by the marina at the bottom of Center Street. Less well known is the fact that the founder of the Sierra Club and savior of Yosemite, John Muir, came through here in 1866 on a walk from Louisville to Cedar Key.

A few of you may know that Bartram was in fact a father and son act, and both traveled in Florida in the 1700s when the Seminoles and Creeks still held sway.

In modern times, Florida’s own Archie Carr fought to preserve the unique Florida landscape with some victories and lots of defeats.

That’s three famous naturalists, so who is the fourth?

I bet you have never heard of Mark Catesby, in many ways the most interesting of the lot? No?

Let me remedy that


Catesby was born toward the end of the 1600s into a modest family in England. He was fascinated from youth by the natural world and heard stories about the Americas from relatives in The Carolinas. In 1712 he sailed off to visit them and stayed seven years. (And we think guests stink like fish after three days.) He collected specimens of every plant and animal he could find, and traveled within the limits of his budget. After returning to England he caught the eye of a number of rich patrons. On their nickel he returned to Charleston and this time stayed only four years. During this time, he was teaching himself to paint. The results you will be able to see shortly

His patronage ended upon his return to England and he began working as a gardener, quite a logical choice of profession. For the next eighteen years he devoted himself to the preparation his two volume Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands. That’s right! Eighteen years.

William Bartram (the one on the Marina sign) was inspired by the work of Catesby, and eventually headed to Florida to find the marvels that Catesby had depicted. The resident Lower Creeks dubbed Bartram Pus Puggy, which means Flower Hunter, probably not intended to be a flattering name.

Now, the really good news.

The University of Virginia has put on line a really good E version of Catesby’s book, together with some biographical material. Click on the text and out pops the illustration. Its at http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma02/amacker/etext/pre.htm

And that ends the blog for today because after you find Catesby’s pictures, you will have no interest in my insipid prose.

Ciao

The Washington Post is running a contest and I entered

Dick Cheney is now working on his memoirs, and the contest is to find the best opening paragraph that he might write. My entry follows

I will let you know if I win.

On 9/11, within minutes after Moslem terrorists began their cowardly assault on the people of the United States, I assumed overall command of the military and security forces of The United States, and began to meet the attack, and to prepare a devastating and merciless counter attack upon their lair. I had no doubt that God had put me in this place at this time to save his country. President Bush, I knew, would have to grow, with my guidance, into a war time president, and until that happened, the responsibility of saving this country I love was mine alone. From this time forward, our task would be not merely total victory over our enemies, but their annihilation, with the help of God. My entire life to that date had prepared me for this moment, and I was eager for the fray.

Radioactive Amelia Island?

Last year, I read Ted Sorensen’s newly published memoirs, which includes a detailed account from his perspective of the Cuban Missile crisis. It’s a well written tale, but not one apparently people want to keep in their libraries, since you can get a used copy at www.amazon.com for $1.75. (I love Amazon.com)

A couple of days ago, I listened to pod cast of a recent lecture by Sergei Khrushchev, the son of old Nikita, in which he talked about the Cuban crisis from the Russian standpoint and from the perspective of one who was in the room with his father throughout.

http://www.gilderlehrman.org/wp/?p=28

Sergei speaks good English and is an astute observer, as well a pretty funny guy. The point he made which got my attention was that Russians and Americans just think differently, because their cultures and experiences are so radically different. Because of this, both sides made serious mistakes in the Cuban Missile Crisis that almost got us all killed.

The Russians simply did not think putting missiles in Cuba was any big deal. Russians have for millenniums had “enemies at the gates”, Mongols, Tartars, Germans, Poles, Swedes, French, and dozens more. Russians have learned to live surrounded by enemies, and in1962 they were, by their way of thinking, surrounded again by America and American allies. No big deal.

The Russians, said Sergei, in 1962 were looking to be recognized as equal with the Americans, and thought this might be a way to move in that direction. Khrushchev thought there would be a “crisis’ like Berlin, or any of the other crisis since World War II, and then the US and Russia would get back to some serious negotiations. In the end, that is what Russia got from the crisis, recognition as an equal, although no one really saw that at the time.

The Russian didn’t see putting nuclear armed missiles in Cuba as disturbing the balance of power at all. At the time, Russia had maybe 25 missiles capable of reaching the US on Russian soil. The US had thousands and thousands of missiles and other delivery systems pointed at Russia. How could a few more missiles in Cuba make any difference? As Sergei said, if Russia wanted to commit national suicide, a few missiles in Cuba wouldn’t stop that from happening.


The Americans had never been surrounded by enemies, or even tolerated any hostile regime nearby. The placement of missiles in Cuba was seen as a huge change to the balance of power, and a threat, not so much by The Kennedys, but by the public they had to satisfy and the military and other political forces which wanted a first strike.

Sorensen’s account is very different, a kind of historical Rashomon. But they do agree on what a close thing it was, the closest we ever came to a nuclear holocaust.

Neither side ever understood this mutuality of mistakes, which I suspect still plagues US Russian relations.

So what does this have to do with Amelia Island? Had it all went down, a few miles from Mayport, this island would have been radioactive for a few tens of thousands of years and its inhabitants at the time would have joined the Timucuans and the Dodos, quite extinct.

Down load the pod cast. Worth a listen.

The Source of Magic

It is well known that we Amelia Islanders are trouble makers. But did you know it was someone from here, or roundabouts, that was responsible for the Salem Witch Trials? Or so says a noted historian writing for the Gilder Lehrman Quarterly Journal. http://www.historynow.org/06_2009/historian.html. The article is entitled The Years of Magical Thinking: Explaining the Salem Witchcraft Crisis.

Author Mary Beth Norton has reached some fascinating conclusions about the trial, which began when a local slave named. Tituba was accused of being a witch and then confessed, in great detail and naming many others as fellow witches.

Many recent historians assumed she brought these ideas of witchcraft with her from Africa. But Tituba was not African, but rather Native American; she probably had been captured by England’s Indian allies in a raid on one of the Spanish missions in the region that is now northern Florida or southern Georgia. One reliable source terms her a “Spanish Indian,” as such captives were known in New England. (Nineteenth-century authors concluded she was African or half-African because they knew she was a slave, and at that time historians did not realize how many enslaved Indians lived in New England.)

In the end, twenty-seven people were convicted, nineteen of them (fourteen women, five men) hanged; the last executions were on September 22, 1692. Our local Tituba was among the victims

The article is short and a nice read. The issue also has several other articles of interest.

Part II of II

Two Naturalists on Amelia Island

William Bartram was born in Kingsessing, Pennsylvania, then near Philadelphia, on April 20, 1739, the son of naturalist John Bartram. As a boy, he accompanied his father on many of his travels, to the Catskill Mountains, the New Jersey Pine Barrens, New England, and Florida. From his mid teens, Bartram was noted for the quality of his botanic and ornithological drawings. He also had an increasing role in the maintenance of his father's botanic garden, and added several rare species to it.

In 1773, he embarked upon a four-year journey through eight southern colonies, including wild and sparsely inhabited Florida. He kept a detailed journal which was eventually published as Travels Through North & South Carolina, Georgia, East & West Florida

March 1774 found Bartram on a ship near Cumberland Island headed for East Florida. Warning came of recent Indian massacres in nearby East Florida. Undeterred, Bartram insisted upon being put ashore on Cumberland Island to make his own way south, while his ship fled north.

Bartram soon came across the captain of a small fort on Cumberland Island who offered to take Bartram and another traveler who left the ship across the channel to nearby Amelia Island, where they headed for the the plantation house.

As Bartram recounts: ‘ … After walking through a spacious forest of Live Oaks and Palms, and crossing a creek, that ran through a narrow salt marsh, I and my fellow traveller arrived safe at the plantation, where the agent, Mr. Egan, received us very politely and hospitably. This gentleman is a very intelligent and able planter, having already greatly improved the estate, particularly in the cultivation of indigo. Great part of this island consists of excellent hummocky land, which is the soil this plant delights in, as well as cotton, corn, batatas, and almost every other esculent vegetable. Mr. Egan politely rode with me, over great part of the island. “

Egan accompanied Bartram south as far as Cow-Ford, now Jacksonville, and the intrepid Bartram then proceeded alone across Florida. The publication of his journal in the late 1880s made Bartram the most famous naturalist of his time.

The attention of a traveller, should be particularly turned, in the first place, to the various works of Nature, to mark the distinctions of the climates he may explore, and to offer such useful observations on the different productions as may occur.

William Bartram

John Muir, Scottish-born American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of U.S. wilderness was born 21 April 1838, almost 100 years after William Bartram. He was drawn early to the natural world, and tirelessly crusaded for its preservation through his letters, essays, and books. His particular passion was the Sierra Nevada mountain range of California. He alone was largely responsible for saving the Yosemite Valley, Sequoia National Park and other wilderness areas.

In March of 1867, as a young man, he injured his right eye in an industrial accident, and vowed to go on a long walk if his vision recovered. By August, 1867, his vision had largely returned and he set off walking from Louisville, Kentucy, bound for Savanna, Georgia, and then Florida.

On October 15, 1867, he reached Amelia Island, describing the island as ‘a flat, watery, reedy coast with clumps of mangrove and forests of moss dressed strange trees appearing low in the distance.”

”…I step onto a rickety wharf. A few steps more take me to a rickety town Fernandina. I …make for the shady, gloomy groves.”

Departing “rickety” Fernandina, Muir followeed the track of David Yulee’s railroad across Florida to Cedar Key, where his journay ended. The journal of his long walk, entitled Thousand Mile Walk to t he Gulf, was not published until 1916.

'Many good people believe that alligators were created by the Devil, thus accounting for their all-consuming appetite and ugliness. But doubtless these creatures are happy and fill the place assigned them by the great Creator of us all. Fierce and cruel they appear to us, but beautiful in the eyes of God. They, also, are his children, for He hears their cries, cares for them tenderly, and provides their daily bread.

John Muir