These old milk bottles from the Gold Medal Dairy Company in Huron, South Dakota have been converted into salt and pepper shakers. The ‘proprietor’ of Gold Medal was a man named S. M. Jensen.
AJH
Monthly Archives: February 2011
Two Presidents, 100 Years
President Reagan, at a White House luncheon honoring the 100th anniversary of the birth of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, proposes a toast in his honor. Reagan’s 100th was on Sunday, February 6, coinciding with the Super Bowl.
AJH
A New Museum
A man in the San Diego area has started a museum, based around his map collection.
. . . Mike Stone has immersed himself in old maps, those ancient windows into what people knew, what they believed, what they feared.
He’s turned his extensive private collection — about 500 rare items collected over 20 years, some dating to the 1400s — into the city’s newest museum.
The Map & Atlas Museum is in La Jolla, “tucked into an office building on Fay Avenue.” There is no charge for admission.
“When you look back in history at decisions that shaped the world, there were people sitting around tables in rooms looking at maps. They used maps to form governments and start wars — to make decisions that still influence our lives today,” Stone said.
. . .
There is a map from 1617 that shows what is now Belgium and Holland shaped like a lion — a projection of power and national pride.
There is a map from 1714 that leaves the top of the world blank — and labels it “Parts Unknown.”
To Stone, the maps are more than just a celebration of cartography. They speak of history, of politics, of art. “They mean different things to different people,” he said.
. . .
He couldn’t afford much two decades ago, but it was possible then (and now) to find decent pieces for a few hundred dollars. His success in investing — Harvard Business School graduate, founder of Westwind Investors — has enabled his map budget to expand with his taste, although he declined to discuss how much some of his holdings might be worth. A fair guess, from Internet searches, is that some would go for six figures.
One of his earliest acquisitions was a German map from 1493, around the time Christopher Columbus was exploring the New World. It shows Europe and Asia and not much else. Around the border are “wind heads,” human faces blowing air in different directions. They were common on maps of the time to show the direction of the prevailing winds. Biblical prophets anchor the corners.
. . .
Similarly, other early maps show sea monsters. “They were decorative, and people believed they existed,” Stone said. “The seas were feared because they claimed people’s lives. The monsters were symbolic of the unknown.”
. . . He kept his maps in a climate-controlled closet, about 10-feet square.
But even though he lives on the West Coast, his reputation in the map-collecting world landed him on the advisory board of the map center at the Boston Public Library. It was there, during a discussion about offering more people a chance to see rare maps, that the idea for the La Jolla museum was born.
“I thought, ‘Wait a minute, I have enough of a collection to do this,’” he said.
Last fall, the Stone Map and Atlas Foundation took over space in the Merrill Lynch Building in La Jolla — previously occupied by a firm that makes background-music playlists for businesses — and gutted it. A private grand opening was held last night.
Stone said he hopes educators, collectors, historians, local residents and tourists will want to see the maps. “They really are an efficient way to bring people back in time,” he said.
ajh
Determining the Jobless Rate
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Two Cool People in the Pic of the Day
Max was a guest on NBC’s Today show.
AJH
Super Bowl Sunday
On Sunday I walked to a church on Market St. I’d never been there before, but a friend told me about a Super Bowl party there and that the community was invited. The game and events around it were mixed in with a sort of open house.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but a man from K-LOVE was there in a big promotional booth. The burgers were decent and the big screen was great. There were televisions all over the place, so anyone wanting to head for a free ice cream sundae or a free cheese burger, could keep up with the action or even the commercials.
Once, walking outside to grab another drink and some grub, I noticed someone talking to a kid and jotting things down on a notepad, and realized that the press had arrived.
Later I discovered that it was Thelma Guerrero-Huston, a reporter from the local paper, the Statesman Journal. (I generally despise her so-called reporting. She has a certain ideology and almost always writes with an agenda, usually political. Of course, coverage of the Super Bowl and the community is largely a noncontroversial issue. A photographer followed her around apparently snapping some shots.)
Fellowship Church Pastor Anthony Trask was excited about attendance at his church’s free tailgate party during Sunday’s Super Bowl game between the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers.
For him, the gathering was more about building relationships with neighbors than the National Football League’s championship game.
“The mission statement of our church is to be a community of faith, love and hope,” Trask said.
But, as should be expected, I guess, Guerrero-Huston has to bring in ‘race’ and multiculturalism into the equation. I’ve been interviewed a few times and know that a lot of writers use leading questions.
“We want to be a church that’s multigenerational and multicultural.”
Who uses the word multicultural without being led to it or, what most likely happened, asked directly?
One reason for the coverage may be the fact that the church is an advertiser, placing a special ad at StatesmanJournal.com and perhaps in the print edition as well. The church appears to be a regular advertiser. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, especially from the pastor’s perspective. But reporters and news editors should know and act better.
The bottom line, though, is that I had a good time. The food was good. The people were nice. And the right team won. The Steelers played poorly and lost, which was pleasant to witness. The Packers looked good. I had my pocket radio with me and played some ball with a few kids outside. I haven’t played that much football in a very long time and had a blast.
ajh
George Johnstone (1730-1787)
DNA testing shows some sort of relationship among many men named Johnson and Hill in the United States, possibly linking back to southern Scotland. Therefore, I have been looking through a few biographical books such as the American National Biography series and the Dictionary of American Biography. This will be a continuing series of posts, looking for possible connections.
Today’s biography is on George Johnstone. He was born in 1730 in Dumfriesshire, Scotland to Sir James Johnstone, Laird of Westerhall, and Barbara Murray. George became an officer in the Royal Navy and served as the first governor of British West Florida. His brother was Sir William Pulteney, who was born with the name William Johnstone.
“He . . . dealt cleverly with colonists’ demands for constitutional rights. Overriding their complaints, he enforced the Stamp Act but accepted their demands for an elected assembly, even though it would give his critics a forum. He ordered an uncommonly wide franchise, allowing both householders and freeholders to vote for assemblymen of the lower house . . .”
In 1767, he returned to England and represented Cockermouth in Parliament.
“In the House of Commons he often spoke for the rights of the Americans, denouncing the Tea Act of 1773 as ‘criminally absurd,’ insisting, correctly, that the Boston Port Bill of 1774 would unite the colonies in forcible resistance to Britain . . .”
As a member of the Carlisle Peace Commission, Johnstone sailed for America and became embroiled in a bribery scandal.
“An outraged Continental Congress refused to deal with the commission while he belonged to it.”
During his time in Florida, he began a long-term relationship with Martha Ford, having at least four illegitimate children: George Lindsay Johnstone, James Primrose Johnstone, Alexander Johnstone, and Sophia Johnstone. Later he married Charlotte Dee, and had another son, John Lowther Johnstone.
“Johnstone’s career shows some of the flaws in Britain’s imperial system prior to the American Revolution, but that was not purely a case of promotion irrespective of merit. Although ambition rather than dedication to principle characterized him, he had virtues. Among them were energy, eloquence, and courage. His political gift, fully exercised in the East India Company’s Court of Proprietors and in the House of Commons, was for attack rather than compromise, for creating division rather than harmony. Johnstone, like his friends Isaac Barré, John Wilkes, and the earl of Chatham [William Pitt the Elder], did much with his speeches to encourage American resistance to British pretensions. He was commonly called Governor Johnstone for the final twenty-three years of his life, and getting the colony of West Florida off to a good start was the achievement of which he was probably most proud.”
ajh
First 360-Degree View of the Sun
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Greetings from Kinsman, Ohio
A postcard from yesteryear. My ancestor Martin Tidd is buried in the Old Kinsman Cemetery. His son-in-law James Hill and he arrived in Kinsman with their families in 1802, moving from Youngstown, where they settled in 1797.
ajh
Roger Williams Arrives
On February 5, 1631, Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island and an important early American religious leader, arrives in Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony. He came from England.
Some of my Walker kin, including Philip Walker and his mother, often known simply as the Widow Walker, possibly Elizabeth Browne, may have been followers. (The family house still stands. I wrote about the house previously.)
Williams, a Puritan, worked as a teacher before serving briefly as a colorful pastor at Plymouth and then at Salem. Within a few years of his arrival, he alarmed the Puritan oligarchy of Massachusetts by speaking out against the right of civil authorities to punish religious dissension and to confiscate Indian land. In October 1635, he was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony by the General Court.
After leaving Massachusetts, Williams, with the assistance of the Narragansett tribe, established a settlement at the junction of two rivers near Narragansett Bay, located in present-day Rhode Island. He declared the settlement open to all those seeking freedom of conscience and the removal of the church from civil matters, and many dissatisfied Puritans came. Taking the success of the venture as a sign from God, Williams named the community “Providence.”
Among those who found a haven in the religious and political refuge of the Rhode Island Colony were Anne Hutchinson, like Williams, exiled from Massachusetts for religious reasons; some of the first Jews to settle in North America; and the Quakers. In Providence, Roger Williams also founded the first Baptist church in America and edited the first dictionary of Native American languages.
AJH
AARON HILL’S NOTEBOOK 