Marine Varnish for the Wood, Yet Again--Brave Painters Who Will Walk on That Storied Plank

P. S. Dictionary

The photograph reminds me that while I go to Google for definitions every day I also go to a serious dictionary every day. Google is good for 2014 but a dictionary is no good for research unless it is older than you are.

Protesting against Boston-Centered Histories of the American Revolution

My posting about Cousin David Dellinger yesterday reminded me of my disgust at Gordon S. Wood's THE RADICALISM OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, admittedly "old" by present standards (1992) but representative still of the arrogant ignorance New England historians have almost always shown toward the South, and in particular North Carolina. I am ridding myself of my Melville books, this year, I hope, and enjoying learning about the Revolution in the Carolinas. There is, in fact, a flourishing industry on that topic. Here are some of my recently purchased books acquired for "ORNERY PEOPLE: WHAT WERE THE DEPRESSION OKIES?"--all of them already looked through, some pretty carefully.

Oh, there are more, the really outsized books.

CAME 30 December 2014: FROM YALE TO JAIL: THE LIFE STORY OF A MORAL DISSENTER. Dust jacket intact, but (unmentioned by seller) water stained throughout. Readable, but I wanted a good copy after finding we are Dellinger cousins. So like all other Yankees he thought the Revolution began and ended in Boston. His mother's mother "was a leader in the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR).

He went on: "My father's ancestors were also pre-Revolutionary Americans, but they lived in the mountains of North Carolina instead of in a suburb of Boston. Boston was the Fountainhead of the American Revolution and the Center of Modern Enlightenment. The leading Boston paper called it the 'Athens of America' and the 'Hub of the Universe.'"

He did not know. Like my folks, his father did not know about his Revolutionary ancestors. I will bet he did not know about the Association which my Uncle John Dellinger and Uncle or Cousin George Dellinger signed in August 1775 in Tryon County. These men put their lives and fortunes on the line a year before the Declaration of Independence.

http://allthingsliberty.com/2014/08/the-tryon-county-patriots-of-1775-and-their-association/

That's my article in the webzine JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. In one of the endnotes I talk about how history is still written by the North.

Henry Dellinger, the estate files show, helped his sister, my GGGG Grandmother, settle her husband's estate even though Peter Costner died at Ramseur's Mill thinking he was there to stand for his German king, we believe, although he may just have been confused since his brother Jacob signed the Association too and his brother Tom Costner fought on the right side at King's Mountain. 

The South forgot and the North took advantage of our ignorance.

Cousin David Dellinger Read Only Northern Historians of the Revolution

CAME Today: FROM YALE TO JAIL: THE LIFE STORY OF A MORAL DISSENTER. Dust jacket intact, but (unmentioned by seller) water stained throughout. Readable, but I wanted a good copy after finding we are Dellinger cousins. So like all other Yankees he thought the Revolution began and ended in Boston. His mother's mother "was a leader in the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR).

He went on: "My father's ancestors were also pre-Revolutionary Americans, but they lived in the mountains of North Carolina instead of in a suburb of Boston. Boston was the Fountainhead of the American Revolution and the Center of Modern Enlightenment. The leading Boston paper called it the 'Athens of America' and the 'Hub of the Universe.'"

He did not know. Like my folks, his father did not know about his Revolutionary ancestors. I will bet he did not know about the Association which my Uncle John Dellinger and Uncle or Cousin George Dellinger signed in August 1775 in Tryon County. These men put their lives and fortunes on the line a year before the Declaration of Independence.

http://allthingsliberty.com/2014/08/the-tryon-county-patriots-of-1775-and-their-association/

That's my article in the webzine JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. In one of the endnotes I talk about how history is still written by the North.

Henry Dellinger, the estate files show, helped his sister, my GGGG Grandmother, settle her husband's estate even though Peter Costner died at Ramseur's Mill thinking he was there to stand for his German king, we believe, although he may just have been confused since his brother Jacob signed the Association too and his brother Tom Costner fought on the right side at King's Mountain. 

The South forgot and the North took advantage of our ignorance.

The Life Story of an Intellectual Dissenter? The Life Story of an Aesthetic Dissenter?

What an interesting cousin to have.

Normally I say don't talk about what is in the genes--talk about family attitudes instead

But today I am thinking about how so many of us take great risks with our careers and our lives and often pay the price for doing so.

David Dellinger. Who would have thought?

Did David Dellinger know John Dellinger signed the Tryon County ASSOCIATION?

I wrote about my Uncle John Dellinger last August in the JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. Did David Dellinger know of this brave man?

http://allthingsliberty.com/2014/08/the-tryon-county-patriots-of-1775-and-their-association/

I'm reveling for half an hour at finding that David Dellinger kept up the family tradition of defying corrupt systems.

David Dellinger--A Famous Cousin! I was so ignorant of ancestry back in the 60s! Mississippi Cousins take note.

• 

This is from Andrew E. Hunt's DAVID DELLINGER.
Johannes Phillip Dellinger in this quotation is my GGGGG Grandfather. How fine to be a cousin of David Dellinger as well as the operator of the oldest living grist mill in the mountains of Western NC!
I'm closer kin to Kevin Costner, who is also kin to David Dellinger, I realize--but how very nice to be kin to someone so heroic.

People you miss--Sendak

19 December 2004 Walked on Montana de Oro Bluffs with Roger Payne and Lisa Harrow

19 December 1994 LANDENBERG printed 800 + pages of Melville biography at Smith in the form of 39 chapters.
19 December 1984 WILMINGTON got check for West 16th Street house
19 December 1974 LOS ANGELES taught Maggie and worked on Norton Anthology fns for HDT

19 December 2014 MORRO BAY worked on piece about David Fanning for the JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Teresa A. Sullivan Does Not Want to Focus on Punishing False Accusers?

In an interview Tuesday, U-Va. President Teresa A. Sullivan said her administration will continue to cooperate with authorities to investigate the case; she wants the university community to focus on prevention of sexual assault.

Means something to me--flag I had on the last time I kissed any part of Mae West's living body

What will happen to it when my treasures are junked?

Teresa Sullivan (the "Systemic Problem") still should resign.

Friday, December 5, 2014

Teresa Sullivan: A "Systemic Problem" that Should be Rooted Out

The only honorable thing for Teresa Sullivan to do is to resign.

 

Here it is the 11th and she has still not resigned and every time she tries to imitate Richard Brodhead's non-apology apology she digs herself in deeper.

 

A Systemic Problem!

Teresa Sullivan should have resigned long ago.

Bill Anderson on Teresa Sullivan:

It does not surprise me to see people at UVA swallowing a nonsensical story, given that UVA is an “elite” institution and it has been the “elites” that have most enthusiastically embraced the Alice-in-Wonderland thinking. Lest anyone think that sanity reigns in the administrative offices at UVA, the statement made by UVA President Teresa Sullivan after Rolling Stone retracted its story throws cold water on that notion:

Over the past two weeks, our community has been more focused than ever on one of the most difficult and critical issues facing higher education today: sexual violence on college campuses. Today’s news must not alter this focus.
We will continue to take a hard look at our practices, policies and procedures, and continue to dedicate ourselves to becoming a model institution in our educational programming, in the character of our student culture, and in our care for those who are victims.

A translation of Sullivan’s statement should be: “After our cathartic outburst at receiving the original story, we are disappointed that the story turned out to be yet another campus hoax, especially since we wanted every word to be true. However, even though it was a hoax, we will go on as though it were not so that we can continue to act like whiny adolescents who are incapable of discerning a lie from the truth. We must let nothing stand in the way of our self-righteous behavior.”

What responsible parents of a male child should do--home school him through college

Thinking of the ROLLING STONE article and all the cases of young men being denied the right to confront their accusers. . .

Surely there is a way of keeping him out of harm's way until he is 22 or so.

Hershel Parker's Interview in THE BIOGRAPHER'S CRAFT (December 2014)

Parker was a 1997 Pulitzer Prize finalist for Herman Melville: A Biography, 1819-1851, the first of a two-volume work on the author. Member Interview Six Questions with Hershel Parker What’s your current project and what stage is it at? On the beach I brood daily about a short biography of Herman Melville told as a story into a speech recognition program. Meanwhile, I’ve devoted massive research to a sort of family biography in relation to episodes of American history, Ornery People: Who Were the Depression Okies? Which person would you like most to write about? Melville, although I can hardly hope to discover many documents as dazzling as those I used to telephone Hayford, Sealts, and Sendak about. And now, after Bezanson, the grand old Melvilleans are all gone! What’s your favorite biography? James Boswell’s Life of Johnson. In the translation Melville used, Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. My aesthetic: More is more. One research/marketing/attitudinal tip that failed? Maurice Sendak’s new cover pictures would boost sales, we thought. No, the pictures were ignored, even the astonishing one for the second volume, Melville behind vines. What was your most frustrating time as a biographer? I had to break my contract with Norton after my first volume was finished. Whole days passed before Bill Regier drove up from Johns Hopkins with cash to repay Norton’s advances and leave change left over for picture permissions. Whew! Most satisfying? Early in 2013 in TBC Carl Rollyson said that in Melville Biography: An Inside Narrative I was concerned “with much more than Melville.” I was “really writing a fascinating study of biography as a genre.” The 2014 Year’s Work in English Studies says that Melville Biography “is a book about biography as a genre. Whilst it is not a manual for the budding biographer, this collection of insights, which explores the difficulties of taking on such an enormous, theoretically fraught task, will serve as a useful case study to anyone wishing to engage themselves as a chronicler of literary lives.” My extensive endnotes, I said, “discuss problems in Melville biography that other biographers and theorists have confronted in their work,” so that “a reader can think critically about issues while being lured on to thoughtful works by writers such as Paula R. Backscheider, Robert D. Hume, Paul Murray Kendall, Ray Monk, Stephen B. Oates, and Barbara W. Tuchman, as well as being lured back into further reflection on my own expositions on Melville biography and historiography.” Too few biographers, I said, “have had their dicta applied, tested, and sometimes challenged by later biographers,” but Melville Biography “puts forward ideas of many biographers and theorists of biography and all sorts of life-writing in order to test them against what I have learned in working on Melville and writing my biography as well as what I have learned about autobiography and biography in writing this book.” Writing the biography was satisfying, but it is also immensely satisfying to contribute, as Year’s Work said, “to the relatively new field of biography studies.” We are in this together.

The critical issue of false accusations--Glad the Pres of UVA is addressing it!

“Over the past two weeks, our community has been more focused than ever on one of the most difficult and critical issues facing higher education today,” [Teresa] Sullivan said today in a statement. “Today’s news must not alter this focus” and students well-being remains “our top priority,” she said.

Teresa Sullivan: A "Systemic Problem" that Should be Rooted Out

The only honorable thing for Teresa Sullivan to do is to resign.

At the Local Library Today an Old Man opened his shirt to show his Sweat Shirt

He had been looking for the notorious ROLLING STONE issue, just loudly enough that I knew what he wanted. I told him not to bother finding it but to read Judith Shulevitz in the New Republic or just look online for the retraction of ROLLING STONE. Then he slowly unbuttoned his shirt to show his UVA Sweat Shirt . . . .

Charlotte Thanksgiving Day Parade 2014--The Hornets' Nest of the Revolution--and a suggestion

They are celebrating Charlotte's role in the American Revolution including the historically valid MECKLENBURG DECLARATION. Now, why can't they produce inexpensive historical tiles so folks who can't afford to live in Charlotte with their cousins can have a little MecDec on the wall of their bathroom, the way I have Arrowhead in the middle of tiles in my little study room in a Spanish Colonial California house?

You could put some stirring prose on some of the plaques . . . .
And Captain Jack, who was kin to one of my aunt's husband . . . . There's an image to inspire.

Scott Syfert has become a Mecklenburg hero. Go Scott!

Morning: Cousin Margaret Gist as Author; 2 Parasurfers; 1 California Condor

Maybe I should round the afternoon off with SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT to keep in the mood of the morning. First, Double-Cousin Margaret Adams Gist (double because the Scots believed in keeping the blood lines pure) as author of big articles in 1930 on the "South Fork Boys" and on the work of the women of her "Kings Mountain Daughters" association. She must have known that Robert Ewart (brother of Margaret Ewart Adams) and his son and sons-in-law made up almost a tenth of the 60-odd South Fork Boys at King's Mountain.

The to the beach in a fierce South Wind (unusual) and 2 reckless Parasurfers covering miles of the water from the Rock toward Cayucos and back.

Home. Scalini demanded out on the south battlement (where the oat crop is) so I propped the door open for her and went out to check her water supply.  Biggest damn buzz---NO--

A California Condor, checking out the Rock, swooping back--oh mighty wing span--gliding very high over the hill toward Cayucos and Big Sur.

Cousin Margaret Adams Gist in Charlotte Observer 5 Oct. 1930 on King's Mountain

What a pleasant surprise to see this article. Cousin Margaret had Wm Adams's powder horn used at King's Mountain and told the story of Margaret Ewart Adams's 12 mile ride through Tory territory to get to King's Mountain the day after the battle, to see if her husband and son were alive (not to mention her Ewart brother and nephew nephews-in-law.
I have a pdf. Now to figure how to quote some of it.

Ziah Packer and Hershel Parker 1 December 2014

Dalyon Packer and Hershel Parker 1 December 2014