A Poem and a Puzzle - Utah to New Mexico

We’ve just ended a very long day

We drove all the way to Santa Fe

We stopped at Arches National Park along the way

A group of cattle went astray

Seeking their owner caused delay

A herd of deer joined the fray

And now we’re finally here – hurray!

Feeling punchy, Autumn?!  Why yes, yes I am, thank you.  I just drove for 12 hours straight...and I'm kind of wishing I'd worked harder at getting the girls their licenses.

I have a strange puzzle.  I’ve kept notes as we drive of interesting things I wanted to look up.  In Utah, we passed a sign about spotted wolves, but when I looked them up, all I found was this:

  Just a drawing - no photographs.

  I also found this.  The yellow-spotted wolf snake.  Please tell me this isn't what the state of Utah wanted me to pull over to see!  Is there such a thing as a spotted wolf?  Sounds plausible, but I'm beginning to think I should file it under "hoop-snake!"

Arches National Park pictures:

 That's a tank top, not a bra strap.  I'm just sayin'.

  

See the lizard?

Brennan wondered why the rocks in Utah are so red.  The answer is that since they come from silt, the rocks contain high mineral content, particularly iron.

Busy Bees and Seagull Salvation - Utah

Wednesday morning we continued south into Utah.  By 5:00 we had reached Salt Lake City, where we ate dinner at a Tibetan restaurant.  Tibetan food, intriguing as it sounds, turns out to just be Chinese food, but it was very good.

After dinner, we walked to Temple Square, aka Mormon Central, where we visited the Beehive House, home of Brigham Young.

The hand-carved wooden details were impressive.

And the garden was really pretty.

The beehive is a recurrent symbol in Utah and according to the Deseret News, "The hive and honey bees form our communal coat of arms…. It is a significant representation of the industry, harmony, order and frugality of the people, and of the sweet results of their toil, union and intelligent cooperation."  Looking out over the fertile valley that surrounds Salt Lake City, I can’t help but admire the industry and commitment of the Mormon pioneers.  "The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose."  Isaiah 35:1

Imagine all of this as a barren desert before the Mormons arrived.

Here is the famous Mormon Temple.

Up the street from Temple Square is a pretty little park featuring this statue.  If any of my lady reenactor friends are reading this, what's wrong with this picture?

This lady looks more like she's wearing a bra than a corset!

Guess what the state bird of Utah is?  You won’t believe it - the California Seagull!  Why, you ask?  According to Mormon folklore, seagulls miraculously saved the settlers’ 1848 crops by eating thousands of insects that were devouring their fields.  After Brigham Young led the first band of Latter-day Saints into what is now Salt Lake City, the pioneers had the good fortune of a relatively mild winter, and seemed to be well on their way to self-sufficiency. But then disaster struck.  Swarms of ravenous insects appeared, and threatened to devour the Mormon’s badly-needed first harvest.  These insects, now called "Mormon crickets” because of this incident, appear in cyclical hordes. Mormon crickets eat all plant material in their path, as well as any insects in their way, including the dead of their own species.  From Wikipedia

Utah History

Utah has a very dramatic history.  From 1856 to 1860 groups of European Mormon pioneers came west to join the faithful and escape persecution in the east.  But here’s the thing: they came on foot, pulling handcarts.  Amazingly, many of them made it, but a few did not.  From Wikipedia: Motivated to join their fellow Church members in Utah but lacking funds for full ox or horse teams, nearly 3,000 Mormon pioneers from England, Wales, Scotland and Scandanavia made the journey west to Utah in ten handcart companies. The trek was disastrous for two of the companies, which started their journey dangerously late and were caught by heavy snow and severe temperatures in central Wyoming.  Despite a dramatic rescue effort, more than 210 of the 980 pioneers in these two companies died along the way. John Chislett, a survivor, wrote, "Many a father pulled his cart, with his little children on it, until the day preceding his death."

After Salt Lake City, we spent a night in Salina, Utah, where we noticed a sign about a massacre.  When I looked it up on Wikipedia, I found this:

The Midnight Massacre occurred just after midnight on July 8, 1945, (two months after the German surrender), when an American soldier, Private Clarence V. Bertucci, killed nine German prisoners of war and wounded twenty others at a camp in Salina, Utah. It is remembered for being "the worst massacre at a POW camp in U.S. history," and the ensuing conviction of Bertucci made him one of only three American soldiers prosecuted during World War II for killing Axis prisoners.

Interesting, but not what I was expecting.  However, it turns out that Salina has seen several massacres.  Black Hawk's War, from 1865 to 1872, is the name of the estimated 150 battles, skirmishes, raids, and military engagements between settlers in the area and members of the Ute, Paiute, Apache and Navajo tribes, led by a local Ute chief, Antonga Black Hawk.  Black Hawk sent runners out asking Jake Arapeen's band to join Black Hawk's band in Salina Canyon. The settlers at Salina did not even notice that the Utes who had been living in the valley had all disappeared. The two bands together had about 90 men. They killed two white men in Salina Canyon and drove off Salina's entire herd of cattle and horses, bringing the total to about 125.

The eighty-four men of the Legion started up Salina Canyon on April 12. Thinking that the Indians would flee before such an imposing show of force, the militia failed to anticipate an ambush. In a narrow stretch of the canyon the Utes poured down arrows and bullets onto the mounted militia below. The instant panic that ensued among the untrained militia was a disaster. They left one wounded young man to his fate and the body of another behind. They didn't stop until they reached Salina and had to listen to the jeers and taunts of Black Hawk and his men that night.  Too afraid to go back to the canyon to retrieve the bodies, Snow persuaded Sanpitch, a Sanpete Valley Chief to scout Salina Canyon for them so the settlers could retrieve the bodies of the two young men.

On the way to Salina, we passed this mountain thunderstorm of Biblical proportions!  But fortunately it didn't reach the highway.

And finally, a lovely sunset.  The sky is so wide here.

B B/f C On the Road: Idaho

After a rainy Monday night around the campfire, and sleeping in a puddle, we packed up our wet gear and began our Epic Cross-Country US History Road Trip.  Driving south, we made it to Boise, Idaho, our first night.  Idaho is like a giant Settlers of Catan board.  We passed in succession each of the hexes: rough-hewn rock, golden grain, fields of fluffy sheep, brick-colored rock, and vast woods.  We’d like to give a shout-out to our friend Garrett, an Idaho native, for telling us to avoid highway 95.  Instead, we took highway 55 through southern Idaho and had a beautiful drive. 

Food takes on a greater significance when you are stuck in the car for hours on end. It’s very strange that as soon as I leave home, I begin craving food I don’t normally care about, but cannot have on the road. 

I’ve never noticed how ubiquitous Subway restaurants are.  Every tiny town has a Subway!  I think they've supplanted McDonald's.

We’ve seen a lot of these magpies as we drive.  Only we call them “magenpies”, because of this movie, one of our absolute favorites:  My Family and Other Animals

Notes from Idaho History

Idaho Firsts:  In 1836 Henry Spalding established a mission near Lapwai and opened Idaho's first school, created the first irrigation system, printed the first book in the Northwest and grew the first Idaho potato.  According to the Idaho Potato Museum (yes, there is one), "the mighty Snake River is the mother of Idaho’s potato industry. It has, through the centuries, transported and deposited much of the silt that farmers cultivate today in lower lying fields along the river course. It provides much of the water that makes possible the growing of a plant that needs a soil moisture of eighty percent for ideal growth. As it plunges a mile downwards in elevation along its course, the Snake generates electrical energy that makes pumping from deep wells possible, and most of the potato growing areas in the state lie contiguous to the Snake River Valley as it twists its way in a 550-mile arc across southern Idaho." (http://idahopotatomuseum.com/history)

And speaking of potatoes, grocer Joe Albertson opened his first supermarket in Boise in 1939 and entrepreneur J. R. Simplot dehydrated the first potato in Caldwell in 1941, pioneering the way for the quintessentially American frozen french fry.

In 1877 the Nez Perce Indian War occurred as pioneers and natives clashed, as the tribe was forcibly removed from their ancestral lands and forced to move onto the significantly  reduced reservation in Lapwai.   The skill in which the Nez Perce fought and the manner in which they conducted themselves in the face of incredible adversity led to widespread admiration among their military adversaries and the American public.  In the end, Chief Joseph surrendered, uttering his famous words, "From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever."

In 1884, the nation's richest silver was discovered in the Coeur d'Alene area.

Butch Cassidy and his Hole in the Wall gang made headlines by robbing a bank in Montpelier in 1896.

In 1920, a 15-year-old boy with the unlikely name of Philo Farnsworth from Rigby began to dream of concepts for the first television picture tube.  Young Philo was later known as the "Father of Television."

   Writer Ernest Hemingway died in his home in Ketchum in 1961.

I am strangely fascinated by some disasters, and this one caught my eye: the Teton Dam Failure.  As the newly-constructed Teton Dam was being filled for the first time on Saturday, June 5, 1976 at 7:30 a.m., a muddy leak appeared. By 9:30 a.m. the dam had developed a wet spot which began to discharge water at 20 to 30 cubic feet per second.  Local media appeared at the site, and at 11:15 officials told the county sheriff's office to evacuate downstream residents. Work crews were forced to flee on foot as the widening gap, now larger than a swimming pool, swallowed their equipment.  At 11:55 a.m., the crest of the dam collapsed into the reservoir; and the remainder of the right-bank third of the main dam wall disintegrated. Over 2,000,000 cubic feet per second of water emptied through the breach into the of the Teton River canyon.

The Battle of Deep Creek 2013

We've got a lot of catching up to do.  I have pictures and stories for May, wherein I got too busy to post, but right now, we're on the road on a 6-week Epic Cross-Country US History Roadtrip!  Don't you just love roadtrips?!

On Memorial Day weekend, we were at a Civil War reenactment in Spokane, WA.  Oh, it was so wonderful to see our 15th Alabama friends again!  This is Jeb.  He's a museum curator, or something like that, and he's really cool.  Yes, he's shooting a bloody shirt.  Hailey pulled this shirt out of the company loaner gear and painted a bloody gut wound on it.  Then we got the brilliant idea to shoot the shirt.  Jeb happily volunteered for the job.

The results were explosive!  The shirt sustained a long rend down the front and a smoking hole in the sleeve, and this is without a bullet - a testament to the power of black powder.  Don't play with this stuff, kiddies.  (Except, of course, my kids do.)

Our fine soldiers have been without pay for quite some time, and we had begun to fear that Captain Brock had perhaps gambled our pay away, but it turns out he's invested our funds in the Bank of Nashville.  Here the happy soldiers hold their bond certificates.

Sergeant Lawless provided some skirmish training for the men this weekend.  Here they show "rally by fours," a maneuver designed to repel attacking cavalry.  From any side.  I'd aim for the little one.

We've had some changes in our leadership.  Brave Sgt Newton suffered a shoulder wound and will be sidelined for several events.  That moves Sgt Lawless up to breveted 1st Sergeant, (brevet = long-term temporary.)  Here he is during Cinnamon Roll Call.  Cinnamon rolls are a Sunday tradition in the 15th.

Corporal Long then became Acting 2nd Sergeant, which left an opening for a new Corporal.  The honor fell to young Sammy - isn't he cute?

And speaking of cute, something about the Confederate uniform brings out my husband's blue eyes.

But Calvin got in a bit of trouble this weekend.  Apparently he was muttering something during the morning lineup while the Captain was trying to talk.  Calvin was ordered out of line to march along the camp street with his rifle over his head.  As a show of defiance, he skipped down the road, muttering "I will not mutter in line."

On Sunday, the 15th Alabama played the 20th Maine in a new game called base ball.  Calvin took a turn as hurler, as the Alabama Roses attempted to lay a duck egg on Maine.

Since Maine came up several players short of a full team, we loaned them acting 1st Sgt Long, which turned out to be a very bad idea, since he scored five runs for them.  We taunted him with cries of "Go back to Hackensack," and "Run, you icewagon!" but if the truth be known, we would have lost even with his help.  Here's Clarence taking a turn as striker.  He didn't exactly hit the apple out of the orchard, but he stirred his stumps around the bases.

Here are some of the "lovely deadheads" watching the game.  The final score was painful.  Maine trounced us as badly here as on Little Round Top.  (The 15th Alabama confronted the 20th Maine on Little Round Top during the Battle of Gettysburg on July 2, 1863. Despite several ferocious assaults, the 15th Alabama was ultimately unable to dislodge the Union troops, and was eventually forced to retreat in the face of a desperate bayonet charge led by the 20th Maine's commander, Col. Joshua L. Chamberlain. This assault was recreated in Ronald F. Maxwell's 1993 film Gettysburg.)

Here are the lovely young ladies of the 15th heading out to the Saturday night dance.

Even after two weekends of Civil War in a row (more on that later), I was sad for the weekend to be over.  But now we're off to Gettysburg!

A Diversity of Ideas

The girls and I have begun looking at colleges.  Yikes.  Breathe, Autumn...

We've had some interesting experiences.  Claire and I visited a small liberal arts college.  She loved it.  It costs more than our annual income. 

Then the girls and I went to see a large state school.  Both girls gave it a thumbs-down.  Way too big and impersonal for them.  Makes sense I suppose: they've spent their whole lives in a school of three students.  Come to think of it, as homeschoolers, we have a reverse teacher-student ratio: instead of numbering "students per teacher", we number "teachers per student".  My kids have had a great many teachers over the years, but never more than a handful of students in a class.

As part of our college visits, we attended several classes at each school, an experience I found very eye-opening.  At the smaller school, all freshmen are required to take a year-long class in which they read and discuss a select literary canon, in order to form a common background for the remainder of their college years.  Claire attended a session of this class, which coincidentally was discussing the Holocaust, something she had covered in history only a few days before, so she felt right at home.

At the state school, we all attended an English class that was discussing Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, as well as criticism of it by Chinua Achebe, (best known for his novel Things Fall Apart.)  The teacher, with her cropped hair, black dress, coffee cup, and sardonic, slightly superior manner, was almost a caricature of a typical modern English professor.  She said something I found very interesting: she pointed out that if you read Heart of Darkness in the 70's (which I nearly did - early 80's), you probably discussed its symbolism and the characters' descent into madness (which I did.)  However, students reading the novel now read it as a racist tract, rather than a work of fiction by a writer even Achebe admits is "...undoubtedly one of the great stylists of modern fiction and a good storyteller into the bargain."  Achebe further states that "[Conrad's] contribution therefore falls automatically into a...class -- permanent literature -- read and taught and constantly evaluated by serious academics. Heart of Darkness is indeed so secure today that a leading Conrad scholar has numbered it 'among the half-dozen greatest short novels in the English language.'"  But then Achebe goes on to say, "...the question is whether a novel which celebrates this dehumanization, which depersonalizes a portion of the human race, can be called a great work of art. My answer is: No, it cannot."  (Chinua Achebe quotes from: http://kirbyk.net/hod/image.of.africa.html) 

The professor of this class alluded to the "Great Books" (with an eyeroll) as an antiquated notion dating from the 1920's and 30's, and clearly rendered irrelevant by enlightened modern thought.  Enlightened modern thought of course, states that we must not only include great works by a diversity of women and people of color in our curriculum, but that we must denegrate and eliminate (racist, sexist, narrow-minded) works by dead white men.

The problem I have with this notion is not the inclusion of a broader array of fine literature.  I believe that the very notion of "great books" should include great works from any culture.  And in fact, this is what the freshman curriculum of the liberal arts college we visited sought to do: to introduce students to the greatest works from a broad array of cultures, covering the Bhagavad Gita as well as the Bible.  Great books should not be defined by any authorial criteria, either the necessity of being a European male with classical training, or of being anything but.  Rather, great literature should be defined by its own meritorious content -  Does it tackle the great questions of human experience?  Does it bear re-reading?  Is the language elegant, the syntax memorable?

In the class we attended, I saw only a snapshot moment of what may well have been a broad and multi-faceted discussion of Conrad's work, so I hasten to say that it is in no way fair of me to make a snap judgement about this class, or even about the state of the classics in modern education.  But the experience did bring up some troubling questions to me: to what extent is modern literature education devoted to the demolition of the literary canon, a body of work that has been read, discussed, analyzed and valued for centuries?  Who are we in this supposedly enlightened age to dismiss out of hand the greatest works of all humankind, simply because they were written by people who do not share our modern perpective?  I'm all for thoughtful analysis of literature from a variety of perspectives, including the post-colonial lens.  If the discussion centers around approaching a piece of writing from a number of viewpoints, that can only deepen a student's experience and analytical abilties.  But if, as I fear, some professors are teaching an agenda of indoctrination into a particular politically correct viewpoint, then education as a mind-expanding experience is lost.

Apparently I'm not the only person who sees a danger in this approach.  I just read this article today.

Academia's Unexamined Assumptions

The author, Thomas Sowell, writes in part:

Education is not merely neglected in many of our schools today, but is replaced to a great extent by ideological indoctrination. Moreover, it is largely indoctrination based on the same set of underlying and unexamined assumptions among teachers and institutions.
If our educational institutions — from the schools to the universities — were as interested in a diversity of ideas as they are obsessed with racial diversity, students would at least gain experience in seeing the assumptions behind different visions and the role of logic and evidence in debating those differences.
Instead, a student can go all the way from elementary school to a Ph.D. without encountering any vision of the world that’s fundamentally different from the prevailing political correctness.
A moral monopoly is the antithesis of a marketplace of ideas.

As I prepare to send my children off to college from our admittedly very insulated homeschool environment, one of the most important things I want for them is a diversity of ideas and angles from which to view the world.  I want them to have the opportunity to cut their teeth on discussions of substance and depth about a variety of topics.  It doesn't much matter to me what my children study, or where, if they come away learning to think, question, apply logic, debate, and deepen their understanding.  What a colossal waste of eighteen years of my life, (let alone theirs), pouring my heart and soul into providing them a variety of thoughtful experiences, only to have them spend four years being indoctinated into the party line.  Is anyone else disturbingly reminded of Nazi Germany by this trend?

I can only hope that my snapshot experience was just that: a snapshot, taken out of context and in no way representative of the real state of higher education today.  But I fear it might not be...