Private, personal historian?

September 21, 2008

Here’s a career you don’t often see touted at high school career days:  Professional personal historian.

I’ve known of companies and non-profits who hire a historian to document their feats of derring-do, but this is the first I’ve heard of a personal historian.  Dan Curtis appears to be trying to make a career out of it.

It’s counterintuitive, but it might work.  As lawyers, we see a lot of people who would rather hide their histories than have them known more broadly.  But in the public relations game, we see professionals helping to polish the image and the stories of organizations and people.  Why not do it for yourself?

Perhaps, with professional help, you can find the narrative of your own history that will give you the hope, tenacity and guts to change your life for the better?

Seriously, check out the guy’s site.  He proposes several solutions for problems we have all faced — capturing history from terminally ill relatives, will-making, resolving end-of-life concerns, and simply recording the family history for posterity.

3 Comments | Business, Capturing history, Family, History | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

What a road trip!

September 20, 2008

We may have crossed paths with P. Z. Myers — but he didn’t recognize the rented Saturn I was driving in Wisconsin, I’m sure.

He only drove across two states.  I flew to Chicago, drove to Appleton, Wisconsin, and then drove back to Dallas, Texas.  We didn’t take nearly the number of photos we should have, but there are some observations on technology and the open road to come.

In the meantime, readers were generally polite — but as always, not enough of you left comments.

Comments are open.  Always.  Take advantage.

Leave a Comment » | Administrivia, Family, Personal, Weblogs | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Ike, armadilloes, and a Texas send off

September 14, 2008

Younger son James is on his way to Wisconsin and college.  Assuming Texas is as sad as his mother about it, it has some odd ways of showing it.

Some time Wednesday or Thursday an armadillo, the quintessential Texas critter,  crawled into the bushes and undergrowth outside the front door, and died.  By Thursday night it had made its presence known.

James mowed the lawn in one last show of good deeds before he left, but in order to survive that section of the yard the ‘dillo influenced, he had to find and dispose of the corpse.  A dead armadillo (wounded by an auto?) isn’t the same as a horse’s head in your bed, but it makes you wonder.

Then, James and his mother drove out Saturday morning, just after the first arms of Hurricane Ike reached our area.  They drove in rain all day, but most of the rain was from a Pacific tropical depression.  They had left Ike behind, they hoped.

This morning they awoke in St. Louis to discover Ike had caught up with them.  For most of their drive to Appleton, Wisconsin, they’ll have Hurricane Ike cleaning the windshield for them.

James is the only native-born Texan in the family.  What is Texas trying to say?

4 Comments | Family, Personal, Texas, Travel | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Oops: International Literacy Day sneaked past

September 13, 2008

Dear Readers, you forgot to remind me!

UN poster for International Literacy Day 2008

UN poster for International Literacy Day 2008

September 8 was International Literacy Day. It’s one day a year to help promote the decade-long project of the United Nations General Assembly, through UNESCO, to improve literacy across the planet.

On International Literacy Day each year, UNESCO reminds the international community of the status of literacy and adult learning globally.

Despite many and varied efforts, literacy remains an elusive target: some 774 million adults lack minimum literacy skills; one in five adults is still not literate and two-thirds of them are women; 75 million children are out-of-school and many more attend irregularly or drop out.

But then, most of us missed each of the previous five International Literacy Days of the Literacy Decade.  The good news is that we still have five opportunities before the end of the Literacy Decade, in 2012.  The other good news is that the celebration will probably continue past 2012, as it has for nearly 40 years already.

But enough of the celebration — how about doing something about literacy and reading?  Start out with this great post from Farm School, with dozens of links to and about good, mostly sorta new books you ought to be reading and giving to your kids.

Who do you kiss on International Literacy Day? An author?  A publisher?  A bookseller?  A librarian? A teacher of reading?  A reader?

5 Comments | Books, Education, Family, History, literacy, Literature, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Looking for a great college to launch your life?

August 19, 2008

High school seniors should be firming up their choices for colleges to apply to in the next couple of months — early decision applications will be due in November for some schools.

Students looking for a great college should consider looking at one or more of the 40 outstanding small colleges and universities that have banded together in a group known as Colleges that Change Lives. Each is an outstanding institution that has a reputation for taking good kids and helping them transform into great people.

There are more than a dozen events planned around the nation where a score or more of the colleges will show up in one location to talk to high school students and their parents. You really should consider attending one of these events if one is close by.

We attended an event in Houston last year. Our younger son, James, eventually chose Lawrence University, a school he knew almost nothing about before that afternoon.  (It appears Lawrence recovered its sanity after recruiting me to play football back in, uh, a few years ago.  I didn’t attend Lawrence, and I’m greatly amused that my son will.)

Here, stolen directly from CTCL’s website, is the list of cities where events are scheduled this fall, and an interactive map. Clicking on the hot links will take you to CTCL’s site with details about the meet ups.

Colleges That Change Lives, 2008 events

LOCATION INDEX:
Atlanta, GA
Austin, TX
Boston, MA
Chicago, IL [2]
Columbus, OH
Denver, CO
Houston, TX
Indianapolis, IN
Kansas City, KS
Latin America
Los Angeles, CA
Minneapolis, MN
Nashville, TN
New York, NY [2]
Philadelphia, PA
Portland, OR
Raleigh-Durham, NC
San Diego, CA
San Francisco, CA [2]
Seattle, WA
St. Louis, MO
Tulsa, OK
Washington, D.C. [2]

7 Comments | College, Education quality, Education success, Family, Higher education, History, Life | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Tricks to deal with dementia: Give them a clue – lie if necessary

July 29, 2008

If your family has not been touched by a member with Alzheimer’s Disease, senile dementia, or some other form of memory-killing disease, you’re in a lucky minority.

A good friend told how her brother-in-law eased the pain of her mother’s slide into dementia, with little lies. The mother developed an invisible friend who had to accompany her on most outings. The problem was that the invisible friend was also invisible to the mother. The brother-in-law, frustrated at the mother’s refusal leave her room for an outing because the friend was not apparent to accompany them, finally told the mother that the friend was already in the car. Mom happily scooted to the car and forgot about the friend completely by the time they got to the car.

The friend was “already there” for much of the rest of the mother’s life. It was a lie, a falsehood, but it made things so much easier.

CBS Evening News tonight featured a story on a potential new treatment for dementia. In one segment, a husband was quizzing his dementia-affected wife, and she could not recall what he had told her just a few minutes before, how many years they had been married. Frustrating for the victim as well as the family.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “CBS report on Alzheimers“, posted with vodpod

A British psychologist, Oliver James, has a new book out that suggests such quizzes do more damage, and are unnecessary. Help the victim along with cues, he says. It’s a trick he got from his own mother-in-law, Penny Garner, from her experience working with her mother.

In Dorothy’s case, Garner found that while she [Dorothy] had no idea what she had done moments before, she automatically tried to make sense of her situation by matching it to past experiences. Dorothy had always enjoyed travelling, and so if she was asked to sit with other people for any length of time, she assumed she was in the Heathrow departure lounge. By not challenging this assumption, Garner found that her mother would sit peacefully for long periods. If she did wander off, Garner found she could encourage her to return by reminding her of her former skill as a bridge-player, telling her that the other players were waiting for her. “Given a properly set up bridge table, my mother would spend hours happily looking at her cards and waiting to play,” she says.

People with dementia are often exhausting to care for because they forget what they are doing during routine activities. Garner found that she could enable her mother to remain relatively independent by providing cues. “If while getting ready for bed, I noticed she had lost track of whether she was buttoning up the cardigan ready to go out or taking it off to go to bed, I would fiddle with my buttons alongside her and say ‘Oh good! No more travelling for us today! Glad we’ve got a bed for the night!’ I found that this simple cue was all she needed. Without it, she was inclined to get half-way through undressing and then start getting dressed again.”

We all look for such cues in everyday life, and we use them to remind us of what we are doing, where we are going, and why. Why not make it easier for victims of dementia?

Who is president of the United States? Half the time I’d prefer to forget it’s George W. Bush. Don’t quiz me on it. Ask me if it isn’t great that we’re electing someone to replace him, this fall.

Smart human tricks.

Resources:

4 Comments | Botany, Family, Health care, psychology, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Happy Birthday, Kathryn!

July 4, 2008


Je t’aime a la folies!

Image from Sotirov

1 Comment | Family, Personal | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Religious insanity: No sperm, no mass

June 8, 2008

A Quantum Diaries Survivor detours from physics to bring us news that in a small Italian town church authorities denied the rites of marriage to a paralyzed man, on the grounds that he can’t make babies.

Remember this case the next time some nut starts ranting about how marriage between two people of the same gender somehow endangers marriage. There’s no way to protect the “sanctity of marriage” when clowns with clerical titles work so determinedly to mock the institution of marriage, and the concepts of compassion, charity and family, from within the church.

Leave a Comment » | Family, Politics, Rampant stupidity, Religion | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Pressure of trivialities

June 3, 2008

Graduation Part II comes Thursday night.  James leaves Duncanville High School with good memories of the 12 or 13 hours he wasn’t doing homework this past year.  The graduation is in Reunion Arena in downtown Dallas — same place all the Dallas ISD high schools hold their ceremonies.  Sometimes it seems the old basketball crowds stayed after the Mavericks decamped.  Remember somber and sober graduation ceremonies? 

Winding up the first year in Dallas ISD, with silly tests all over the place and procedures that would make Byzantium appear the model of efficiency.  I’ve never caught up from the mid-year landing here, and the next two days will be grueling, to get out on time.

Quietly, the Bathtub will roll over 800,000 visitor clicks in three or four hours from now — certainly before midnight.  The Berlin Wall continues to be the major topic day in and day out, followed by Sabat’s compelling cartoon of the African tsunami of drought, and that ancient jumping goat. 

So much to say.  So tired.

Leave a Comment » | Administrivia, Family, Life, Personal | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Marriage rights and civil rights giant, Mildred Loving, 68

May 5, 2008

We learned today that Mildred Loving died Friday in Milford, Virginia.  She was 68.

2007 was the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court Decision in which she played a key role, Loving vs. Virginia. In that decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state laws against interracial marriage are unconstitutional.

The romance and marriage of Mildred and Richard Loving demonstrate the real human reasons behind advances in civil rights laws.  They left Virginia to avoid facing prosecution for having gotten married; but when they wanted to be closer to family, they wrote to then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. He referred them to the American Civil Liberties Union, who financed the case to get the law changed.

Richard and Mildred Loving, screen capture photo from HBO documentary,

Richard and Mildred Loving, screen capture photo from HBO documentary, “The Loving Story.”

See the post from last year on the anniversary of the decision. The Associated Press wrote today:

Peggy Fortune [daughter] said Loving, 68, died Friday at her home in rural Milford. She did not disclose the cause of death.

“I want (people) to remember her as being strong and brave yet humble — and believed in love,” Fortune told The Associated Press.

Loving and her white husband, Richard, changed history in 1967 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their right to marry. The ruling struck down laws banning racially mixed marriages in at least 17 states.

“There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the equal protection clause,” the court ruled in a unanimous decision.

Her husband died in 1975. Shy and soft-spoken, Loving shunned publicity and in a rare interview with The Associated Press last June, insisted she never wanted to be a hero — just a bride.

“It wasn’t my doing,” Loving said. “It was God’s work.”

Mildred Jeter was 11 when she and 17-year-old Richard began courting, according to Phyl Newbeck, a Vermont author who detailed the case in the 2004 book, “Virginia Hasn’t Always Been for Lovers.”

Richard died in 1975.

History loses another hero.

Update: Just as one more showing of how things have changed, this is the headline of the story of Mrs. Loving’s death in the Fredericksburg, Virginia, Free Lance-Star, the local newspaper in Mrs. Loving’s home county, Caroline County:  “CAROLINE HEROINE DIES”

I’ll wager the Virginia headlines were quite not so glowing in 1967.

4 Comments | Bill of Rights, Biography, Citizenship, Civil Rights, Current History, Desegregation, Family, Famous trials, Freedom - Political, Good Deeds, History, Human Rights, Jurisprudence, Justice, Law, Politics, Racism | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

The last Morton Meyerson Marathon

April 12, 2008

It is done.

James Darrell and the trombones of the Duncanville Wind Ensemble leave the stage at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Hall

The curly-headed guy with the trombone at the center — that’s James.

For the last eight years we have attended what we affectionately call the Meyerson Marathon, an evening of concert performances by Duncanville’s bands, capped with an always-stellar performance by the Wind Ensemble. Duncanville borrows the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center for an evening. The bands always sound great, but sometimes the great hall adds a little to their performances. In Duncanville, even the junior high bands are very, very good.

Kenny played euphonium (playing trumpet with his braces was too painful; he’s gone back to trumpet for college jazz performances). James played trombone — and April 1 was James’ last performance at the Meyerson.

One more sign of time’s incessant march. Of course, On April 1, time’s march was accompanied with some fine band music.

Next week the Wind Ensemble decamps for Washington, D.C., for a Friday performance at the Festival of Music.

1 Comment | Family, Music, Point of personal privilege | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Best April Fool’s

April 1, 2008

Steaming into the final days of law school. Papers due. Finals coming. The job demanded extra hours, too.

I had been up well before dawn for some fool reason — job interview? We were closing down the President’s Commission on Americans Outdoors, and I didn’t have a job lined up. Full day at the office, the race through D.C. traffic at rush hour to get to class, three hours of lecture (probably punctuated with that dark, French roast coffee from Au Bon Pain), the train ride and late night walk home, writing the paper and fighting the printer of the crude computer we rented just for the month. It had been more than 20 hours since I’d seen bed.

It was all I could do to stay awake to get up the stairs and into bed. “1:30 a.m.” the clock radio glowed. Three and a half hours to sleep, maybe. I remembered it was April 1, and I smiled as I wondered what odd stories might pop up on the news wires in the morning.

“Get up. We have to go to the hospital!” Kathryn said. I looked at the clock again. 1:31 a.m.

I was concerned, but I was sleepy, too. I asked why.

“My water broke. We have to go.” I felt her side of the bed, and it was wet. I thought it was pretty sneaky of her to go so far as to keep a pan of water close by to make the joke. Just as I got to bed, she had to get up. Riiight!

I kept waiting for the “April Fool!” She’d planned this one well, but I didn’t think it was very funny. I wanted rest.

I turned over to go back to sleep.

“Do I have to drive myself?” Kathryn yelled from the bathroom. We were in Cheverly, Maryland, and the George Washington University Hospital was across town. I jolted awake, and smiled that there would be no significant traffic on the trip. It wasn’t a joke. I hoped I could stay awake for the drive.

kenny_s_new_guitar.jpg

Just about 13 hours of terrifying (for a first-time dad, not to mention a first-time mom) labor later, Kenny was born. Give him credit: He was born so that we got him cleaned up, got Kathryn comfortable, and unshaven and unshowered I could make it to my next class across the street from the hospital (to turn in work and say why I was missing the class).

21 years ago today, I well remember what I was doing. Happy birthday, Kenny!

Notice, Dear Reader, the great attention and homage to history demonstrated in the snapshot above (from last year, really): The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame t-shirt, the denims, the Gibson Les Paul, the “Abbey Road” cover poster on the wall, the topographic map of a favorite hike (near Woodstock, New York, with the Camp Rising Sun crew), the guitar strap his father used in the late 1960s, and the vintage light fixture with just one bulb burning.

Best April Fool’s ever.

5 Comments | Family, Fly your flag today, History, Point of personal privilege | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Houston loves Lucy! Go see

March 16, 2008

We drove down, saw Lucy, had a great dinner, watched some television and drove back. About eight hours in the car, three hours in the museum with Lucy (click here to see a photo of Lucy as displayed — no amateur photos allowed in the Lucy exhibit).

Lucy, Houston Museum of Natural History, via AP photo

Well worth it. The entire exhibit is a travelogue about Ethiopia, really — but I got chills looking at real bones. You will, too, I suspect.

The exhibit closes in Houston on April 27. Wouldn’t it be great if the demand were so high that they had to hold it over a few months? If you’re in Houston, you owe it to yourself to see the bones. If you’re near Houston, if you’re within a half-day’s drive, go see. If you’re within a day’s drive, plan some other activity (there are other special exhibits at the Houston Museum of Natural History, on Leonardo DaVinci, on CSI and forensic science, marshes, and cowboys in Texas; there are regular exhibits, including one on gemstones that is better than anything similar at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.) — but go to Houston.

This exhibit was controversial, taking such a treasure out of Africa at all. You owe it to yourself, to your children, to Ethiopia, and to future policy, to see the exhibit if you can.

Photo:  Lucy’s bones, Houston Museum of Natural History photo, via Associated Press

3 Comments | Africa, Family, Museums, Paleontology, Travel | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Marilyn Christian Gearing

February 14, 2008

A personal note: My cousin, Marilyn Christian Smith Gearing, died last night after fighting lymphoma. She was about 74.

Marilyn was the daughter of my father’s sister, Marion. Her father, Roland Christian, was a minister in the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, who traveled a lot. We saw him and my father’s sister about once a year, when they’d pass through our town. Other than that, we had little contact with my father’s family, and my cousins. (Isn’t that a great name for a preacher, by the way?)

So when I got to know Marilyn when I was an adult (and she about 20 years older than I), she was a constant bundle of surprises. We knew she was a nurse. Found out she was dean of nursing at Loma Linda University. Learned in one visit that she was a pilot once, the better to carry out public health missions for the State of Virginia.

Marilyn retired, and traveled. Taking up where her father left off, she’d drop in on my parents, unexpectedly, every year or so. In my father’s last two years, he was greatly pleased when she and her husband would drop in to sing at his bedside.

No, I didn’t take my own advice and debrief her fully on her life. Our history sources are leaving us. Call one of yours, today: Thank them for their contributions, and write down what you learn.

Some of Marilyn’s exploits were picked up in Loma Linda Nursing in 2003 — it’s in .pdf form, starting on page 16, with the cover photo.

Her husband, Walt, said there is a memorial service scheduled for February 16, 3:00 pm. at the University Church Chapel at 11125 Campus Street in Loma Linda, California.

More:

2 Comments | Family, Heroes, Personal, Point of personal privilege | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

On the night before Christmas: Untangling the history of a visit from St. Nick

December 24, 2007

Thomas Nast invented Santa Claus? Clement C. Moore didn’t write the famous poem that starts out, “‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house . . . ?”

The murky waters of history from Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub soak even our most cherished ideas and traditions.

But isn’t that part of the fun of history?

  • Below: Thomas Nast’s first published drawing featuring Santa Claus; for Harper’s Weekly, “A Journal of Civilization,” January 3, 1863 Nast portrayed the elf distributing packages to Union troops: “Santa Claus in camp.” Nast (1840-1904) was 23 when he drew this image.

Santa Claus delivers to Union soldiers, "Santa Claus in Camp" - Thomas Nast, Harper's Weekly, Jan 3, 1863 Yes, Virginia (and California, too)! Thomas Nast created the image of Santa Claus most of us in the U.S. know today. Perhaps even more significant than his campaign against the graft of Boss Tweed, Nast’s popularization of a fat, jolly elf who delivers good things to people for Christmas makes one of the great stories in commercial illustration. Nast’s cartoons, mostly for the popular news publication Harper’s Weekly, created many of the conventions of modern political cartooning and modeled the way in which an illustrator could campaign for good, with his campaign against the graft of Tammany Hall and Tweed. But Nast’s popular vision of Santa Claus can be said to be the foundation for the modern mercantile flurry around Christmas.

Nast is probably ensconced in a cartoonists’ hall of fame. Perhaps he should be in a business or sales hall of fame, too.  [See also Bill Casselman’s page, “The Man Who Designed Santa Claus.]

Nast’s drawings probably drew some inspiration from the poem, “Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas,” traditionally attributed to Clement C. Moore, a New York City lawyer, published in 1822. The poem is among the earliest to describe the elf dressed in fur, and magically coming down a chimney to leave toys for children; the poem invented the reindeer-pulled sleigh.

Modern analysis suggests the poem was not the work of Moore, and many critics and historians now attribute it to Major Henry Livingston, Jr. (1748-1828) following sleuthing by Vassar College Prof. Don Foster in 2000. Fortunately for us, we do not need to be partisans in such a query to enjoy the poem (a complete copy of which is below the fold).

The Library of Congress still gives Moore the credit. When disputes arise over who wrote about the night before Christmas, is it any wonder more controversial topics produce bigger and louder disputes among historians?

Moore was not known for being a poet. The popular story is that he wrote it on the spur of the moment:

Moore is thought to have composed the tale, now popularly known as “The Night Before Christmas,” on December 24, 1822, while traveling home from Greenwich Village, where he had bought a turkey for his family’s Christmas dinner.

Inspired by the plump, bearded Dutchman who took him by sleigh on his errand through the snow-covered streets of New York City, Moore penned A Visit from St. Nicholas for the amusement of his six children, with whom he shared the poem that evening. His vision of St. Nicholas draws upon Dutch-American and Norwegian traditions of a magical, gift-giving figure who appears at Christmas time, as well as the German legend of a visitor who enters homes through chimneys.

Again from the Library of Congress, we get information that suggests that Moore was a minor celebrity from a well-known family with historical ties that would make a good “connections” exercise in a high school history class, perhaps (“the link from Aaron Burr’s treason to Santa Claus?”): (read more, below the fold)

Read the rest of this entry »

10 Comments | Art, Business, Cartoons, Family, History, History and art, History images, Holidays, Newspapers, Poetry, Political cartoons | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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