Book in Mail: 1918-2004 WE BELIEVED FINALLY! WHY NOT US? . . . Boston Red Sox Fans . . .

Well, I have been buying books on the migration to California in the 1930s. So I telephoned DISCOVERBOOKS in Toledo. "Go to the back cover and look for a sticker."
OK.

Oh, embarrassing: "June 22, 2016--Obscene in the Extreme"--how shaming to have to tell the young female clerk my title. I could not remember.

Oh it's about the reviews of Steinbeck's THE GRAPES OF WRATH. That is the book I ordered.

Anyone really want WHY NOT US? It's about baseball.

Cool Day in Morro Bay

Morro Rock 29 June 2016

On the beach, snug in a yellow nylon jacket, was an elderly refugee from steamy Nashville who said this was heaven on earth. I told him my folks always liked getting to Nashville because Jackson had built that fine military road toward Natchez.

64 years ago--What No Longer Exists

Monday, June 29, 2016

64 Years Ago Today

What does not Exist Any More

64 years ago today, a month after I finished the 11th grade, someone who is not alive any more drove me to a town that does not exist any more (Howe, Oklahoma) to a gigantic depot that does not exist any more on a railroad that does not exist any more (the Rock Island) for me to take a train to carry me part way (to stay overnight with someone who does not exist any more) so I could take another train to a station that does not exist any more to take a job that does not exist any more, that of railroad telegrapher.

What I have been saying--and now Philip Bump says it Clearly

This is what I posted yesterday:


Donald Trump and Scott Brown are ignorant of how DNA works. After a few generations, and purely by luck, a brother can show a little American Indian DNA and his full brother may not. There is massive documentation of my Indian ancestry in the Dawes Commission and in the testimony of family members, but my Ancestry.com showed 100% European. The great marine biologist Roger Payne recently explained to me how few generations it can take for DNA to disappear. Well, I lived most of my 80 years knowing obviously part-Indian family members. One very dark great aunt who said her grandmother was a "Chockie" (Choctaw) lived in three centuries, but not very long in two of them, so she was around in 2001. I got the blonde European side, and not a trace of Choctaw or Cherokee in that DNA test.  So Elizabeth Warren may have had the same Oklahoma history. Scott Brown had a really long thin cute body when he posed naked, but he does not have great knowledge of human biology. And Trump is--well, ask Elizabeth Warren.

Today Philip Bump has a clear scientific piece on this in the Washington POST.

60s today along the Pacific

Trump & silly Scott Brown and "Pocahontas"--Warren is not Faking

Below, a quotation from ASK ANCESTRY ANNE--explaining how Indian DNA can be undetectable.

I asked the great marine biologist Roger Payne about this recently because my Ancestry.com test showed no Indian DNA. I have masses of testimony about Indian blood in the form of affidavits in the Dawes Commission files as well as testimony of dark older relatives on my father's side. We were part Cherokee and probably more Choctaw, but after enough generations it can run out. I will bet my dark oldest brother, long dead, kept a little of the Indian DNA, but I got the blonde side too many generations in a row. It happens, and it does not mean that my Indian heritage is any less real. I mean, my great aunts as late as 1990 were talking about their "Chockie" grandmother in some detail. I did not get enough to show in my DNA, but my Indian heritage is real, like Elizabeth Warren's. Silly Scott Brown, who wants to move back to Massachusetts so he can run for the next vacant Senate seat, is ridiculous in demanding that Warren show him her DNA test. I guess anyhow who has shown us his naked pictures thinks there are no boundaries. Now, he did look good in those ads, but lay of Liz, and stay in whatever that state was that you moved to and lost in.

If your great-great-grandmother was ¼ Cherokee, then it was her grandparent that was 100% Native American. And that would be your 4th-great-grandparent. Now your great-great-grandmother would get 50% of her DNA from her mother and 50% from her father. To make this easy, let’s divide by 2 for every generation.

So how much of your great-great-grandmother’s DNA are you likely to have?  Probably around 1.5625%! And that may not be enough to detect Native American ethnicity.

If you can find older generations on that line to test, I recommend that.  Also, get brothers, sisters and cousins tested.  You never know who might have enough DNA to be detected.
Even if you find the DNA connection, you will still want to follow the paper trail.  I recommend our Native American Research Guide to get you started.
Happy searching!

27 June 16 55-60 degrees, wind off Pacific

Friendly, Pleasant Visalia Visitors Sleeping in Their Car--No Room at Campgounds

But the beaches were pretty clear early in the morning.

Looking South:

Looking North:

Hoards of 3rd Generation Okies Throng Cool Beach

As a Depression Okie just now working on the years 1935-1942, and suffering from old memories, I welcome the grandchildren of the 30s migrants.

Morro Rock 24 June 2016

Percheron on Beach after Brexit & DOW Crash Today

Defrosting Wednesday's Buns for SLO Sports Therapy Picnic

Could not bake this morning.

Still some smoke from Santa Barbara but cool

I thought the smoke from Santa Barbara would show.

I suppose we would know if Cousin Kevin were not OK.

Summer in Morro Bay

Holiday in Morro Bay

Morro Rock today, no fog phantom worshippers

James N. Gregory's Problems with Terminology and Geography

I am very bothered still by Gregory's politically correct but historically absurd decision in AMERICAN EXODUS to use the "respectful" term southwesterners for "Okies"--for comparatively few of the migrants to California in the mid and late 1930s were from New Mexico and Arizona or other "southwestern" states.

In Gregory's THE SOUTHERN DIASPORA P. 64 HE DECIDES THAT AFTER ALL THE MIGRATION OF POOR FAMILIES IN 1935 WAS "FROM THE SOUTHERN PLAINS STATES OF OKLAHOMA, ARKANSAS, AND TEXAS."

Arkansas in the Great Plains? Really, in the Great Plains or Southern Plains?

But on 29 he refers to the "western South states of Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas."

Arkansas is by no stretch of the imagination a western state, but it can be considered  one of the most western states of the South while still being a state in the central United States.

"Western South states" is not inaccurate. "Southern Plains" for Arkansas is absurd.

I belabor this because Gregory never seems to understand who the migrants to California were, who their parents and grandparents were, any more than Steinbeck did.

So Arkansas in AMERICAN EXODUS was populated by southwesterners and in THE SOUTHERN DIASPORA by inhabitants of the "Southern Plains" or the "western South." Take your pick.

How Erroneous Terminology in a Standard Book Can Corrupt Many Later Accounts

The quotation below is Wikipedia; there are many other similar statements.
Characteristics of migrants

Historian James N. Gregory examined Census Bureau statistics and other records to learn more about the migrants. Based on a 1939 survey of occupation by the Bureau of Agricultural Economics of about 116,000 families who arrived in California in the 1930s, he learned that only 43 percent of southwesterners were doing farm work immediately before they migrated. Nearly one-third of all migrants were professional or white-collar workers.The poor economy displaced more than just farmers as refugees to California; many teachers, lawyers, and small business owners moved west with their families during this time. After the Great Depression ended, some moved back to their original states. Many others remained where they had resettled. About one-eighth of California's population is of Okie heritage.

 "Southwesterner" as I showed in a recent post is James N. Gregory's Politically Correct term for Okies (which would include immigrants from other south-central states) in AMERICAN EXODUS. Okies were not southwesterners. I can't find that anyone called them that in the 30s. Look at Newspapers.com for "southwesterner" and mainly you find sports teams. Nor (to look at Gregory's later THE SOUTHERN DIASPORA) is Arkansas in the Great Plains. Well, Steinbeck never dared to go to Oklahoma. Why should historians?

a bit from the new NEW REPUBLIC

A bit from the new New Republic