Text 20980, 266 rader
Skriven 2006-01-04 20:55:21 av Carol Shenkenberger (6:757/1)
  Kommentar till text 20852 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
Ärende: Re: Adverse Times
=========================
*** Quoting Michiel van der Vlist from a message to Carol Shenkenberger ***

 > Ok, if it happens at some point, let us know and i'll try and
 > order a copy.

MvdV> There will be no "ordering a copy" if I get my way. They may have some
MvdV> copies left at the airborne museum in Oosterbeek, but otherwise I woul
MvdV> not know how or where to get a copy of the printed version. There will
MvdV> be no repint, too expensive.

MvdV> No, I will put it on my web site.

Free download?  That would be cool!  But if a paid for download, I would not be
adverse.

MvdV> But she said, she being the copyright holder I should have given it to
MvdV> her. So I said "Ok, I'll give you a disk". She didn't notice I said /a
MvdV> disk, not /the/ disk. <grin> And yes, /of course/ I will keep a copy.
MvdV> It is not safe with my sister, she was the one who lost the fifty or s
MvdV> copies that were left of the book...

Grin, sounds right to me.  Afterall, you have a right to a copy as well!


MvdV>> Something else they ate was sugar beet. And acorns.

 > Acorns would be natural to use over this side of the pond.
 > It's still used in lots of ways though seldom commercially
 > found outside of 'health food stores'.

MvdV> I have never seen acorns used in food here. Maybe they are different t
MvdV> yours or maybe it is because people do not want to be reminded of the
MvdV> winter of starvation of 1944.

Ah, old American times, from when we were still a colony.  Wheat flour was
scarce.  Possible we had to import the seeds and hadnt yet?  Not really sure,
but thats why they took to Acorn flour (the indians used them and several
other things) and 'corn bread' 'flours' (I know, 'corn' is a generic in parts
of europe but you know what I mean, the USA version that grows on a cob).

The 'rich' could buy imported flour but I think the USA didnt have widely
available 'wheat' flours til we got over the eastern mountain range.  I
suspect some growing conditions werent optimal east of those mountains. 
There's an area covering several states with various names.  'Breadbasket' may
be the most common name, as thats a huge area with tons of wheat though other
things are grown there too.  'Grain Belt' is another name I've heard.


 > Sugar beet of course would be a normal thing though it's grown
 > more often to just render sugar from.

MvdV> Over here sugar beet is only used as a raw material for sugar producti
MvdV> I have never seen it in a shop, nor ever seen it on the menu in a rest

I've seen them at 'farmers markets'.  They taste so very sweet, they are only
used to make candies but in a long ago time, folks would just dry them as they
were and eat them as a 'candy'.  I'm sure anyone really hungry, would eat them
in other ways as well.

 > behind you and moving forward.

MvdV> I spoke to my mother - she will be 86 next month - about this last sun
MvdV> She confirms what you say: people of her generation do not and did not
MvdV> talk much about it because they wished to leave it behind and move on.
MvdV> She agrees with me that we should not burden the next generation with

Yes.  Wise woman.  If you talk to her again and remember, tell her a stray
American says hello and wishes her well.

 > Possible, but I dont have much info to go on.  There's no one
 > left alive related to that long ago settlement.

MvdV> You will have to go there, I am sure there will be information availab
MvdV> locally.

Probably and if i went there, I'd probably try and see if i could figure it out
but I'd not know for *sure* if it was the same building unless i could track a
much later settlement to the estate of then gone 'Aunt' Elise who was only one
of several recipients.  (The laws then passed down her share as her will had
specified which meant I was in there among some 15 others in the USA though my
'cut' was smaller than my fathers as she had things marked out in
'percentages' with the closer blood relatives getting larger shares).

 > True.  BTW I wish it was presidential election year, I dont
 > happen to favor the policy of the one I have now.

MvdV> I have to say I am a bit surprised. Not for you not being happy with y
MvdV> president, lots of Americans share your feelings, but for openly sayin
MvdV> so. So far you have kept your opinions to yourself. I would have thoug
MvdV> that in your profession openly critisising what is your supreme comman
MvdV> would be discouraged.

Oh if I went on a march in uniform and said 'bad' things, I'd get in trouble
but it's ok to just say I dont favor his policies (getting no more specific as
then I could be stepping over a line).  He has an administration with many
many policies.  Some I am not fond of.  Grin, nuff said.  I'll still do as my
'Commander in Chief' (proper name for USAians to use but am aware elsewhere
the name varies) directs.  It's my profession to do so.

 > It wasnt a 'second language issue'.  His
 > choice of words definately indicated until now that he was
 > 'talking first hand'.  Perhaps he was in the Pacific theater,
 > or perhaps he was stateside support

MvdV> From his refusal to provide further details, I conclude
MvdV> that he never left US soil.

 > (nothing wrong with that if he was stateside).

MvdV> Indeed, nothing wrong with that. There is something wrong however with
MvdV> pretending to "have been there" when one was not.

I think as a person whom english is a second language, that would be an easy
conclusion to make, but I think (even though I admit to skimming fast over
many of the posts in the main thread) that it wasnt as 'deliberate' as that. 
I think it seems more like when a post came over that made it implicit the
other person thought he was there in Europe, he didnt correct it as it made
him seem a stronger arguement.  I peeked back at a few exchanges and it is
possible he was not aware of the level of assumption going on til it got
blatent and he finally corrected it?  Yes, he should have done it earlier, but
he's done it now.

You'll note i warned him to not try to claim the 'assumptions' were due to
people's use of english being second language so not as firm in some nuances.
Those of us who have eglish as our primary, read him the same as the rest of
you.  You need not look to secondary language concerns at all.  Look to some
of my own posts to him based on the words he used in posts to me, and you can
see clearly that I too assumed from his wording that he had fought
specifically in Europe.  (IE:  assumption that he thought Americans were
everywhere was because he was traveling wint American troops and wasnt places
all by himself with other countries forces so wouldnt be as aware of what they
did).

 > take us on vacations to historical places and old homes and
 > the civil war was a favorite one to check out).  There are web
 > links to history of it with some of the pictures if you want
 > to see.

MvdV> Yeah, I found some...

Sorry, hope you didnt have any grandkids around when you brought those up but
then I'd warned ya so you probably didnt.


 > Now this may seem strange to you but my family (mom's side)
 > was very rich until the civil war.  Then, they were splintered
 > totally by it with some being 'North' and some 'South'.

MvdV> Not strange at all. We have had similar things here in Europe. The spl
MvdV> of Belgium and The Netherlands in 1830 and the splitting of Germany af

I imagine my German family side was a bit splintered too, but as far as i can
tell, the only ones we know much of were on the eastern side of the wall. 
Since my side came over almost 100 years ago, thats not strange to be unsure
of.  The only thing I am pretty sure of, is no one of the last name 'Pape'
that is in Europe, is a relative in anything but a very distant past, too far
away to count in any method beyond scientific DNA percentages at best.  Grin,
I'm closer to a mythical Ethiopian who seems to have been not but 4
generations back.

Umm, some of the family history records are pretty brutally honest about things
that one would expect a family over here to hide until the more modern times
;-).

 > war and earlier. She'd pull out real live letters written by
 > various ancestors, let us read them ourselves, then we'd go
 > visit some place related to that person or someplace they had
 > been.

MvdV> Your family has a rich history...

Only because there is some wierd trait that has cropped up someone every 3rd or
so generation who has been interested in family history.  My mom is the
current one.  They also saved lots of letters which my mom found in boxes when
her father died, left to him by inheritances from about 3 generations before
him and a few added by his mother, and others from my grandmother from my
mother's side got added to this.

Like, there's a town in I think is New Hampshire (may have the state wrong but
upper USA for sure).  We had the origional meeting notes from their first
meeting as they set up the township.  (They had some too but not that one
obviously as we had it).  Mom contacted the mayor and told him then followed
his directions on how to get them to him securely (so they wouldnt be lost). 
I remember looking at them and Mom trying to read them to us but while well
preserved, the flourishy script used made them hard to read.  There was enough
though we could tell they were pretty boring to anyone not of that towm. 
Mostly just deciding who'd do what and the only part i remember was one fellow
got the job of bugging his neighbors over any fences he found broken and was
supposed I guess to make regular checks of some sort.

 > wouldnt for example get a year's worth of 'American History'.

MvdV> You also have to keep in mind that The Netherlands has so much more hi
MvdV> than the US. The written history of the US didn't start until some 300
MvdV> years ago. Whereas Dutch history goes all the way back to the Romans a
MvdV> beyond. Over 2000 years of history. Naturally more is left out. Also t
MvdV> history as taught in school in my time stopped around 1900. After that
MvdV> it was too recent to be considered "history". I learned about that par
MvdV> later, long after I left school.

Yes, I can see that.  USA history is technically much longer but the Native
Indians didnt keep written records for the most part (a few had a sort of
writing but most did not) and the 'new comers' were not that interested in
their Native counterpart history.  (If you find any Americans saying we didnt
treat the natives badly, sic-em and we will join ya).  Canada though did quite
a bit better though they have a few imperfections there I am sure.

 > There have been very interesting speculations that had the war
 > broken out 30 years later, the south very well might have won
 > independance.

MvdV> Ah, yes. Alternate history... ;-)

Some of the specuations are also carried over to novels which can make for a
good read.


 > Very little is taught about how the American civil war
 > impacted those outside of itself but it actually did.  The
 > cotton trade stoppage caused major problems economically for
 > England which is just one of the things I can recall being
 > taught.  A British school therefore might teach a segment
 > about the American civil war because it had impacted them in
 > their own history,

MvdV> I guess it didn't impact us here in The netherlands as it was not taug
MvdV> in history as far as I recall.

If it would have been mentioned much at all, I suspect as a tie in to the
French Revolution, which many historians say was somewhat relative in some
ways related to human feelings about how a government should be run 'by the
people'.

MvdV> And that I only learned when I started frequenting Ireland after my pa
MvdV> bough a cottage there in 1964.

(On the Irish Potato famine).  Interesting!  What I know of it may be minimal
as i was taught about it only as how it impacted 'us' but they told of whole
families dying of starvation and many indenturing themselves or some/all of
the kids to pay for passage on a ship.

If the word 'indentured' doesnt seem to make sense, it was a system where one
'sold' one's work value for a period of years.  It was close to selling
oneself to slavery, but with an end date and the children you may have after
'indenture' were normally totally free of the parents obligation.

From what I gather, indentured servants (they were called servants, never
slaves) had legal protection to a degree and could be 'freed of obligation to
complete term' if they could prove they were being ill treated.

Slaves were used in the south.  Indentured servants were mostly I gather in the
north.

What family records we have now on my own family, shows clearly we had a few
slave owners, but most went the indentured servant route.  Mom's oral
tradition records says that most of the ones who had slaves, freed them on a
very regular basis and then kept them on for a very low pay while providing
all room and board and clothing etc.  There's a few gaps though she said where
the rest of the family suddenly 'refused to recieve' a relative.  She told me
this history when I was young (under age 16) and said she thinks they were bad
people who treated their slaves badly and the rest of the family just 'cut
them out' from their collective conciousness.
                                       xxcarol

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