The Irish in America

March 17, 2014March 21, 20160

The immigration from Ireland in the early 1800s placed many Irish in America, and across the globe. But the paths to assimilation and success were varied

Monday Map – St. Patrick’s Day

GO HERE for an animated version of this map from PBS, and similar maps of other American immigration waves.

Tis a difficult thing to recall how the Irish immigrants to the United States and other places were viewed with the typical contempt heaped upon other ethnic minorities in later eras. By my own lifetime, being Irish seemed no different than having ancestry from France, or Sweden, England or Germany. While the appalling bigotry aimed at African-Americans, Asians and Hispanics was still with us, I remained ignorant of the fact that it was not so long ago an Irishman suffered much the same kind of prejudice.

In the early 1800s the Irish in America were viewed by many as uncivilized and an inferior people, delegated to ghettos and expected to be suitable only for the most menial jobs. Basically they were the target of the typical treatment from those small-minded people desperate to exalt their own superior position by inventing artificial reasons to view anyone different as inferior.

And like free blacks, and later waves of immigrants from other locations, many Irishmen raised their lot through hard work and determination, to amass wealth and property and take their place among the heads of industry and government. Many others earned their way into mainstream citizenship the same way immigrants have done since the time of Caesar’s legions, by serving in the armed forces during times of crisis.

Irish brigades fought with distinction during the American Civil War, on both sides of the conflict, with many re-upping to fight and often die defending settlers during the years of western expansion that followed. The stereotype of the affable, strong as a bull “Mick Sergeant” lovingly portrayed by Hollywood actors like American Ward Bond and Englishman Victor McLaglen, showed men of rough beginnings who attained rank and respect through the crucible of war, to eventually don white parade gloves at the regimental ball, often with offspring destined to rise to the level of an officer and a gentleman.

Of course, when it comes to such waves of immigration, it is most often the lower, least education classes who are forced to seek passage to a new life in a new world, and work their way upwards. Those of land and letters had no need of such desperate measures, and the English speaking world has been greatly enriched by the collective works of the Irish writers. Some remained in Ireland, while others made their way to the great cities of the world as respected poets and playwrights, essayists and novelists. Johnathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Becket, and Elizabeth Bowen shall remain high in the pantheon of the greats, with many others that could be mentioned alongside them.

My mother’s maiden name is Murphy, but really they were Scots who settled in County Antrim for a time before making their way to the Southern United States. But I retain a strong affinity for all things Irish, most particularly the playwrights and the music. In fact I shall be seeing Irish music tonight, on St. Patrick’s Day, at Freddy’s Back Room in Brooklyn, as I do most every year as a member of the Highland Shatners, who perform a mix of Celtic folk music, Paisley Pop, and even tunes from the original Star Trek.

So stop by for a Guinness if you are in the area.

And couple of Irish the day David Bowie died.

America’s Shameful Lack of Maternity Leave

March 3, 2014March 3, 20140

So much for Family Values, here in the old U.S.A, Unbridled Selfishness of America, where Maternity Leave is denied too many

Monday Map

Greed Costs Us All

Here, in richest land the world has ever known, full of selfish people who rail against the government regulation responsible for decent wages and humane working conditions, and sold the baloney that having a social contract where everyone insures all our neighbors have proper healthcare, as in civilized nations, is somehow a bad thing, we have an appalling rank among the peoples of the world in child mortality, childbirth-related fatalities, and of course, providing proper paid leave for parents when their newborns need them most.

As per the excellent website geocurrents.info, we could learn a lot from the Finns.

“The United States ranks merely 30^th in the Mothers’ Index, bested by such countries as France (16th) and Italy (17th), Canada (22nd) and United Kingdom (23rd), Israel (25th) and Belarus (26th). The relatively low ranking of the U.S. is based on several factors. One of the key indicators used to calculate the index is lifetime risk of maternal mortality. The maternal mortality in the United States is the highest of any industrialized nation: a woman in the U.S. is more than 10 times as likely as a woman in Italy or Ireland to die from pregnancy-related causes. The United States has the least generous maternity leave policy of any wealthy nation, both in terms of duration and percent of wages paid (except Australia, see the map on the left). Similarly, the U.S. does not do as well as most other developed countries with regard to child mortality. The U.S. under-5 mortality rate is on par with the figure of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Forty-one countries performed better than the U.S. on this indicator. A child in the U.S. is three times more likely to die before reaching age 5 than a child in Iceland, and twice as likely as a child in Denmark. Only slightly more than half of children in the United States are enrolled in preschool—making it the fifth lowest country in the developed world on this indicator. The United States also lags behind in regard to the political status of women: only 18% of its congressional seats are held by women, compared to 45% in Sweden and 40% in Iceland. Whether legislative representation accurately reflects the position of women in society is dubious, however, in light of such figures as 45% in Cuba, 39% in Mozambique, 31% in Guyana, 26% in El Salvador or Ethiopia, or 25% in Iraq.”

Read their full article

Flu, Flu, Flu Away Don’t Come Back Another Day

February 24, 2014February 26, 20140

The current flu is widespread, highly contagious,
and no fun at all

Monday Map

Latest view of this year’s flu

Source: Center for Disease Control and Prevention

Get The Flu Shot

That is what they always said. And for the past ten years, I did get the flu shot, at the annual “autumn health fair” where I worked. And I did not get the flu.

My job was outsourced over a year ago. So I did not get a flu shot this year. Instead, I got the flu.

I used to get the flu each and every year, at some point, basically since my college years. The flu shot changed all that. I would still get colds, including the one in 2012 that had me starting 2013 with pneumonia. I have even had West Nile Virus, six years ago or so. But I never got the flu.

Actually, since recovering from the pneumonia and leaving that job, I embarked on a year-long fitness and health regime, consisting of enormous amounts of vegetables, typically steamed or simmered in coconut milk and curry, supplemented with sauteed chicken breasts and other such things. And began and kept with an exercise program of my own devising, focused on my wonderful rowing machine, made by WaterRower, low impact dumbbells, and basic pushups and ab exercises.

On February 1st I considered myself to have lived for a full year without getting sick. This may be my longest streak of wellness ever. On Tuesday I started feeling a bit odd.

By that night I was feeling achy, and my throat was feeling prickly. I told myself it was probably nothing, I was far too healthy to get sick these days, and I went out to dinner as an emotional pick-me-up. All that positive thinking and endeavoring to ignore it all didn’t help.

Bed Rest and Plenty of Fluids

Chills and headache were constant, as my fever peaked at 101, which is not too bad for a flu. But my tonsils turned into enormous monstrosities, swelling to the point they came forward every time I coughed or cleared my throat, and would sit on the back of my tongue, like twin Jabba the Huts that had to be swallowed back down.

After two days of insanely painful swallowing and unmerciful insomnia, my tonsils and body temperature returned to normal size. I still remember the old Bayer Aspirin commercials extolling the virtues of “bed rest and plenty of fluids.” Who has time for bed rest, even when they are home sick? It is too boring. Well, this time I had little choice. Fortunately I was able to go to bed and stay there, for basically 48 hours. I believe that helped a lot in allowing my body to fight against the virus.

So, after two wretched days, the ride through the Fun House From Hell was over. But I was marooned on a plateau a long way from Vitality, where I have remained ever since. The sore throat got better each day, but it has been replaced by one of those scratchy throat coughs that only gets worse when laying down. The fatigue and sinus inflammation remain as bad as ever, so I am still spending a lot of time on my back, coughing. Many people claim to have the flu when they just have a bad cold. And I tried to tell myself that was my fate as well. But a cold does not last this long with this kind of soul-crushing fatigue.

I was supposed to attend two rehearsals and perform at a dinner later this week. Unfortunately my voice sounds something along the lines of an elderly Jeromy Irons doing a bad Tom Waits imitation. Perhaps some instrumentals are in order.

Alias Schmidtt and Jóns

February 17, 2014February 17, 20140

The most common surnames by European nation, are surprising.
Monday Map

Sure if my mother’s maiden name isn’t Murphy

And Unto the Seventh Son of the Seventh Son

This week’s map does not the whole story tell, however. For one thing, I find it fascinating that in Iceland they retain the ancient custom of a last name simply denoting who one’s father is (or mother in some cases.) Where having the English name Johnson once meant you were the son of someone named John, in Iceland a last name of Jónsson literally means your father’s first name is Jón. While everyone with last names starting with O’ or Mc or Mac, or with any number of endings, retain the vestiges of this custom, in Iceland it holds fast as the way things are done.

If your name is Baldur Jónsson, and you are an Icelander, and you name your son Árni, he is not Árni Jónsson, he is Árni Baldursson. If he decides to junior his own name, your grandson isn’t Árni Baldursson, he is Árni Árnasson. His sister Ása is Ása Árnadóttir.

But when it comes to places that do use modern surnames, there are many of them with multiple spellings. As laid down in an interesting forum discussion on Reddit, prompted by the posting of this map, someone suggests that the most common name in Germany would be Schmidt, if one considers all the various spellings such as Schmitt, Schmitz, or Schmid. And that this may have disqualified many other common names with divergent spellings.

In response, someone quipped that the only reason Smith won in Scotland was because McGlauchmluchantire is sometimes spelled McGlauchmluchantyre.

And that reminds me of my dear college chum Diane Muldrow, who has at times been affectionately referred to by more than one of her friends as Diane McMacO’Muldrowskisteina.

As it happens, Diane’s latest book, Everything I Need To Know I Learned From a Little Golden Book reached Number One on the independent bookstore Best Seller List last week.

Way to go Di!

World Writing Systems

February 10, 2014February 26, 20140

It’s Greek to Me! World Writing Systems Tell An Interesting Story

Monday Map

Some friends where showing me their copy of the Talmud, written in English, but still set out so the pages of the book open outward to the right, basically backwards from normal English language books. And that got us wondering what other languages went from right to left? And that then got me wondering about just how many separate forms of writing are still in use today. And that led me, of course, to Wikimedia Commons and this map of world writing systems.

Dang foreigners. Got a different word for everything!

(click map to enlarge)

The history of writing is in itself a fascinating tale. Some systems, like Korean and Cherokee are relatively modern inventions, purposely devised so specific populations would have their own alphabet and written history. Others evolved in the depths of pre-history, but for perhaps the same reasons, while others were adapted from other peoples over time, for practical purposes of trade, or imposed by a conqueror. And I must wonder how many people across Europe and the Americas would answer “Latin” when asked what system of writing they use.

And that reminds me of a favorite movie quote…

“All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for US?”

This map of world writing systems and other versions, with notes in other languages, can be found at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WritingSystemsoftheWorld.png

Pangea – Old Family Photo of the World

January 27, 20141

Monday Map
Pangea, the prehistoric landmass, with modern day borders

Without accounting for changes in sea level, etc. here is a wonderful look at our world map reformed into the super continent known as Pangea.

Some 300 millions years ago, almost a 100 million years before the first dinosaur, things looked a little different than today.

And I thought my treasured globe from 1946 was exotic!

(Click for Larger View of Pangea)

Of course a rough approximation, it is still a fascinating study back through the long strange trip of geologic time.

An equally fascinating discussion exists at reddit.com, from whence this map was borrowed.

Reddit.com

Underground Rail Road Routes – Martin Luther King Day

January 20, 2014February 2, 20140

Monday Map
Underground Rail Road Routes Leading to Canada

I was surprised to find this on a U-Haul truck directly in front of my home in Brooklyn, NY.

As most schoolchildren learn, the Underground Railroad was a loose network of people throughout the United States who assisted runaway slaves trying to reach Canada, or other parts of America that refused to recognize the laws saying human slaves were property that must be returned to their owners.

In my little hometown in northwest Ohio, there was a house with a hidden room reputed to have provided sanctuary for fugitive slaves on their way to Ontario. And here in Brooklyn, the church where abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher preached had a secret tunnel that led to the East River, for the same purpose.

During the colonial period, Brooklyn contained a plantation with more slaves than anywhere else in the north. Across the East River, New York of the 1820s had more slaves than any city other than Charleston, South Carolina, and the area in Kings County around Brooklyn likewise had many people still enslaved. It is hard to imagine how anyone in a civilized nation could be capable of such monstrous barbarity. And yet, it was not all that long ago.

So, this seemed a most appropriate map for today, the Martin Luther King federal holiday, in this particular year of 2014, the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Half a century ago today, African-Americans were not yet afforded full protection of equal rights as citizens of the United States in many places in the country. And large populations of whites, including government officials, staunchly opposed the very idea, some going even as far as committing terrorist acts, including murder, to derail the freedom train that once road the routes of the Underground Railroad.

And 100 years before that, the nation was deep into a bloody civil war ignited primarily because of slavery, and the issue of whether or not individual states had the right to continue that institution regardless of possible prohibition under federal law. The outcome of that war was far from certain when, on January 19, 1864, General Grant, then leading the Division of the Mississippi, wrote to General George Henry Thomas to explain there was a shortage of troops, as many were sent home on furloughs to see their families, as reward for reenlisting. Once the winter ended they would begin the invasion of the Deep South, and the battles with the most horrendous loss of life lay ahead.

President Lincoln was up for re-election in the fall, with considerable opposition to his policies. And the Senate was on the verge of debating the passage of Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. It would pass on April 8. But the House of Representatives would not pass it until December of 1865, nine months after the President’s assassination.

One hundred and fifty years later, in 1964, descendants of all those freed slaves were still suffering under the apartheid system known in America as Segregation. Even after the Civil Rights Act became law, there were many struggles ahead. Dr. King, the courageous and charismatic leader among civil rights activists was still on the front lines of that cause four years later, when he met his own death from an assassin’s bullet.

The U-Haul truck in question apparently originated in Ontario. But it had been rented in Brooklyn by the new lodger moving in to share my apartment. By no means fleeing slavery, she was escaping from a different sort of domestic hell, at less cost than professional movers.

It helps illustrate just how much effort one will put into labor when they are working for themselves, rather than working to make some rich guy even richer.

Bravo for U-Haul. You can find more interesting regional and commemorative artwork at

http://www.uhaul.com/SuperGraphics/

Metric System Usage

January 13, 2014October 10, 20217

Monday Map
Countries That Do Not Use The Metric System

Source: Wikimedia Commons

As a proud American, I join with my countrymen as I dig my heels in, fold my arms and say, “I am not budging one inch.”

Okay, while I might budge an inch in some instances, I will certainly not budge a centimeter. I do not even know what a centimeter is. I mean, I know it is a unit of measurement and that 10 centimeters is a decimeter and that 100 of them is a meter (or a metre, as those perplexing foreigners insist on putting it.) But how long is that? Don’t ask me; I am an American.

I can instantly project my thought out exactly one mile. I can picture the distance and multiply it so that I have confidence in just how far away from my present position is a point 3 miles off, or 5 miles.

I haven’t played football in maybe 20 years and much longer when it comes to suiting up in pads. But if it were Second Down and 4 yards to go, I know exactly where I would have to make the cut on my passing route if I am to catch the ball beyond the First Down marker.

But how long is 4 meters? I have not a clue.

I have always taken quiet satisfaction that a kilometer was not quite as long as (and therefore wimpier) than a good old mile. So I am a bit miffed when reminded that a meter is actually longer than a yard. The very idea!

But it is okay; this time next week I will no longer remember that. Why would I?

Like all right-thinking people, such as we Americans, along with Liberians and those staunch defenders of traditional values living in the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, no effort to brainwash us with logical Base 10 measurements can penetrate, let alone sink in. None of this newfangled metric nonsense for us. No sirree bob.

The metric system got its start in the French Revolution, perpetrated by that mob of malcontents who were inspired by long-haired radicals with names like George Washington, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin. Apparently the French had been using all sorts of measurement systems, many not all that easy to translate into others. So in 1799, these proto-terrorists scrapped the whole shebang and forced their single system on the people.

The English, on the other hand, already had one set of measurements for the entire realm, which for some reason is perfectly all right. And the English handed that system down to us, their more highly-evolved cousins, before it was too late.

Unlike the ludicrous metric system, where the meter is a Base 10 fraction of the circumference of the earth, and the liter is based upon the weight of water at its melting point, and with centigrade temperatures based on the freezing and boiling points of water, our superior system is based on things that actually make sense.

The mile, as everyone knows, is 8 furlongs in length, a furlong being 1/24 of a league. A furlong, sensibly enough, is the length of one furrow of plowed earth in a typical English field, or 40 rods. The fact no one could quite agree on the length of a rod, let alone the cupids making up a rod, or that the length of a field varies from place to place, is beside the point.

And when it comes to temperature, in 1724 Mr. Fahrenheit stuck a mercury thermometer into some icy saltwater and decided that was 0, and then he stuck one into a human armpit and decided that was 96, which was later refined to 98.6. See? Isn’t that so much better than having water freeze at 0 and boil at 100?

The metric system was officially recognized for use in the USA in 1866. It was refined and revised for the international community in 1960. Concerted efforts were made in the 1970s to indoctrinate the youth of America so that they would be ready for full conversion by the turn of the century. And while various Poindexters may have picked up some metric-savvy skills in Science class, the conversion rate of us true Americans has come nowhere near estimates.

Not by a mile.

And that is one man’s word on…

Category: Monday Map

The Irish in America

The immigration from Ireland in the early 1800s placed many Irish in America, and across the globe. But the paths to assimilation and success were varied

Monday Map – St. Patrick’s Day

America’s Shameful Lack of Maternity Leave

So much for Family Values, here in the old U.S.A, Unbridled Selfishness of America, where Maternity Leave is denied too many