My genealogical research experience was a plus

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In my mid-30s, a decade after I started worshiping in the Society of Friends, I heard that my great-grandfather had been a Quaker who moved from North Carolina to Ohio after the Civil War.

I’d no clue and was shell-shocked, in a good way.

That soon got me into genealogical research with another, older, cousin, which in turn led me to others through correspondence. Many of the results can be found on my Orphan George blog.

Central to that research were Quaker Meeting minutes and learning to interpret those records. For family data, they can provide some of the best information before the census of 1850, the first to name everyone in a family, along with ages and some other facts.

Serving as clerk of Meeting and in other roles also deepened my understanding of the faith and practice.

While I gained some skill navigating this field, other researchers specialized in public records, such as wills, tax filings, and property maps.

Admittedly, working as a census taker in 2020, I did develop a sympathy for lapses and errors in the federal population documents.

When it came to researching Quaking Dover, I found myself returning to others’ genealogical summaries, where one version differed from another, as well as other records. I knew to treat what I saw there as tenuous but still helpful.

Somehow, though, it felt familiar.

We’ve come to appreciate the cruise ship visits

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

While Eastport has the deepest natural port in the continental U.S., that’s not often led to a lot of big-ship landings.

Cargo shipments, especially, have suffered over the past decade.

Last month, though, the city saw a record number of cruise ship visits, sometimes running one every other day over two weeks.

We’re getting what’s often termed mid-sized cruises, up to a thousand passengers, in contrast to the floating cities that might deliver five times that. Frankly, mid-size fits us fine.

One factor has been Bar Harbor’s reaction to being overwhelmed, down at the edge of Acadia National Park. And Portland, further down the coast, is a big city in contrast.

As a result, Eastport is being discovered as a place that offers a taste of a quintessential Maine fishing village without the hype.

As one younger woman said while walking past our home, “Today was AMAZING!” Imagine that, in a small town seemingly so far away from anything.

French liner Le Bellot, docked at Eastport’s Breakwater, visited town last week.

So far, these arrivals during the fall foliage season have extended our tourist season. The place typically shuts down by mid-September but these arrivals have extended that into early November. They’ve even given some, but not all, of our galleries and stores their best business days of the year. That’s a huge impact on a fragile, marginal downtown.

The landings also benefit the Breakwater and its workers, and let’s not sleight the purchases of junk food snacks at the IGA and Family Dollar by ships’ crews – sometimes up to another 600 people. They do load up.

We do enjoy seeing happy couples walking around our neighborhood with cameras in hand. Our conversations with them have been upbeat. Others have enjoyed bus tours to the Roosevelt compound on Campobello Island and the West Quoddy Light in Lubec or autumn foliage.

Economically, it’s an alternative to the Airbnb purchases that have been pulling housing away from working families, the very culture that’s a big part of the draw to our city. We do need more jobs that provide benefits, too, though that’s another big issue, one basically at the national level. I’ll save that for another time.

For now, let’s acknowledge what I’m seeing as a positive step, one that might even extend our spring shoulder season.

Nearly out of control

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

At some kind of outdoor affair. Summertime or so. I decide to leave and start to collect my papers and such from a table (picnic table?). Look up and see Ohio and some guy a hundred feet away or so … they haven’t noticed me, so I move frantically to escape undetected. Then I see that the vehicle I’m to take, which I’d previously seen only from the open back, is a black hearse – theirs.

Instead, I take a bus – a school bus, actually. Its route is more or less through Moraine and West Carrollton, and I wind up disembarking at a small, yellow-infused festival. (Spurred by memories of the Latin American restaurant my sister took me to?)

Somehow, I’m one of four (!) judges for a beauty contest. We’re given papers with the contestants’ names and info on one side and their photos on the other. Looking at the name I’m about to select, I see below it Ohio’s – only this time, there’s no married surname behind it. I flip the paper, see her photo in a skimpy bikini, and skewer the results so she wins. Afterward, she kisses me, tells me how desperate she’s become, which is why she entered the contest.

Do we ever escape the past?

Was getting a Covid booster and flu shot at the same time a good idea?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

At least we did it on a Friday, allowing for our being laid low over a weekend. It did involve a trip up to the Walmart in Calais, which was running way behind once we got there, but at least it’s one more thing we’ve crossed off our to-do list. These things add up as some kind of forward progress.

As for the condition of pharmacies in the USA? One more item ripe for a rant, from what I’m seeing. Fire away in the comments if you’re ready. At least we have a fine family version here in Eastport, except for getting that Covid booster or my insurance dealing with the flu vax. I’m not complaining. But they do refill prescriptions days faster than the Walgreens or Rite Aid another family member deals with down at the other end of the state.

I did plan for a “sick day” or two, perhaps reading if I was up for it. Don’t rule out the importance of such rebound days.

As it turned out, I did feel a whammy and slept through much of the next two days. Oh, home sweet home, even with a very sore arm. It was ultimately mild.

The break in my usual routine also gave me time to finally examine two movie distributors’ offerings and reflect on how they might apply to our local film society in its revival after Covid, now that I’m on the committee. Am guessing I’ll share those thoughts here at the Barn, too, for any of you so inclined.

We do have a lot of arcane material here at the Barn and in our lives, too, don’t we?

Onward, then!

Doodling around with the origins of ‘Yankee’

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The label does have a range of applications, from residents of the six-state New England region or Connecticut in particular to a Manhattan professional baseball team to anyone north of Dixie (often prefaced with “damn”) to anyone from the USA who lands in a foreign country.

Along with the shortened “Yank.” Or its many uses as an adjective.

The word’s origins, though, are contested.

  1. The earliest recorded use is credited to British General James Wolfe in 1758 when he complained about the Americans under his command. The British continued to use it in a derogatory fashion. The pompous fools.
  2. A largely dismissed theory had it arising in a French word for English-speaker that the Wyandot rendered into Y’an-gee.
  3. Another had it being adopted when New Englanders defeated a Native tribe who had identified themselves as Yankoos – meaning invincible. Problem there is the tribe must have been invisible all along.
  4. More likely is a derogatory Dutch-language origin in the early 1600s through New Amsterdam, beginning with the name Jan, for John, pronounced Yan. One theory has Jan being applied to any Dutch-speaking English colonist, a kind of winking acknowledgement that they could converse. How about having it originate among those Dutch-speaking Englishmen? I haven’t seen that suggestion before.
  5. Or it may have been imported from the Old World as Jan Kaas, “John Cheese,” a generic nickname the Flemish had for Dutch in the north.
  6. Or Jan might have been combined with another popular Dutch name, Kees, into Yankee, as English-speakers turned it against the New Netherlanders.
  7. And then those New Netherlanders soon slapped the word on English colonists in nearby Connecticut.
  8. By 1681 there may have even been a Dutch pirate, Captain Yanky or Yanke. The Dutch settlers, now subsumed into the English colony of New York, may have seen the Brits as pirates. Sounds awfully late in the timeline for me. I think it was definitely widespread slang before that.
  9. By the time of the Revolutionary War, the song “Yankee Doodle” was well established. Whatever its original intentions of mocking the Americans as simpletons, New Englanders took it as a badge of honor, macaroni and all.
  10. Somehow, after the Revolution, it became a synonym for Protestants descended from New England Puritans and their values. Take “Yankee ingenuity” as a prime example.

None of these quite convince me, but I feel Scottish, Swedish, and even Persian roots are even less likely.

Living on $10,000 a day. Or even an hour.

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 5 Comments

The thought crept upon me the other morning as I was pondering simplicity and frugality.

Yeah, look at the flip side.

I remembered reading a recent New York Times piece on a Long Island boutique that catered to billionaires and noted the owner’s insight that they spent differently. I shrugged it off then but come back to it now.

Suppose your after-tax income came to $3½ million a year? That would be nearly $10,000 a day. (I did miscalculate and put that at $100k a day, a more interesting figure. Still!)

For perspective, the median pay for S&P 500 chiefs was $14.5 million last year, in contrast to an average $56,000 earnings for American workers.

The No. 10 guy on the list, Tim Cook at Apple, came in at $99 million in salary, benefits, and bonuses. More than $240,000 a day. That is, $10,000 an hour.

Ahead of him were the CEOs of companies like Alphabet, Peloton, Live Nation, Sarepta Therapeutics, and CS Disco, plus four I recognized. Please, can somebody tell me what the head of Pinterest is doing to make him pocket $123 million for the year? A tad under $337,000 a day?

As one scion of affluence told me a half century ago, there isn’t much real difference between a $20,000 car (today’s prices) and a $200,000 vehicle, as far as everyday performance goes. Let me add, today’s median family car is far superior to the luxury vehicles back then. Air conditioning? Seat warmers? Cruise control?

As I played with the $100,000-a-day figure, nearly twice the yearly earnings of real workers, I realized how little of that was needed for everyday expenses, even at inflated expectations – how many houses does one need, anyway, or how many hotel suites while traveling? What came into focus was the vanity opportunities: collections of antique cars, paintings, sexual playthings, political hobnobbing. Just name it and claim it.

And that’s where it gets scary, even when you scale back to $10,000 a day.

Conservatives like to quote Lord Acton’s “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” while they pursue the maximization of their personal wealth, which intensifies their power and, thus, corruptedness. Per the logic.

Renting a luxury yacht – $100,000 a week plus expenses, last time I looked – is peanuts in comparison. As is a private jet. They might even be business expenses, paid by the company.

Well, F. Scott Fitzgerald did quip, “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.”

But I am wondering what he’d make of today’s mutations.

What would you do, given that much at hand?