Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Needing inspiration and getting it from an unlikely source.."Silent Cal" Coolidge!


30th President Calvin Coolidge

You know sometimes you are looking for a light at the end of the tunnel and realize that there is none...  So you look around for inspiration so that you can keep going… Well… that’s when I play “type into Google” and wham…I am usually off on a history quest and forget my problems.

The “Googling” last night turned up a phrase from one of the most interesting Presidents of the United States…”Silent Cal” Coolidge.  His quote is a gem of realistic inspiration….

"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'press on' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."
I smiled and as usual was off head first on the quest.  I dug out some remembered thoughts on Coolidge, and then looked up some other information on our 30th President of the United States. Coolidge was a man of character.  He was the only President born on the Fourth of July (didn't know that).  He was well liked because of his honesty and good thoughtful action... a good President.
Vice President Coolidge became President at the death of Warren G. Harding…a President whose administration had smacked of corruption.  Harding died of a heart attack in the west while Calvin was at his father’s house in Vermont visiting in 1923.   The house had no electricity or phone….so a messenger had to run the news up to the house.  His father (a notary) administered the oath of office on the family Bible, by kerosene lamp... in the parlor!  It is said that upon hearing the news Calvin went to his bedroom, got dressed, took the oath of office, and then went back to bed.
History can be so much fun.  
He was called “Silent Cal” because he used few words in public...though a good public speaker.  My favorite stories about him come from the wit and poet Dorothy Parker.  Once while sitting next to him at a formal dinner she said, “Mr. Coolidge, I've made a bet against a fellow who said it was impossible to get more than two words out of you."  His famous reply was...."You lose."
Coolidge actually became a popular President and was re-elected yet refused to run again saying that it was a job tough on family and that no man should do it for more than ten years… his public statement was simply… “"I do not choose to run for President in 1928."
When he died in 1933, wit Dorothy Parker was noted as saying when she was told of Coolidge’s death…”How can you tell?”
   As I said history can be FUN and inspiring! 

**It is interesting to note that on Feb. 22, 1924 Calvin Coolidge became the first president to make a public radio address to the American people. President Coolidge later helped create the Federal Radio Commission,  now evolved into the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
For more history and videos visit my website at www.historystarproductions.com




Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Did you ever wonder where something came from? How about the monument in Peterboro???

Monument on Peterboro Green

We all drive our way to places using the same routes over and over, but do we ever notice things and wonder how they got there?  I drove past the Peterboro Green Civil War Memorial marker continually and never really wondered how it got there until recently.  Many would suspect that the Smith family put it there after the Civil War…but not so…the marker was never put there until 1893…and how it got there is an interesting story in itself.

The Peterboro Green has marked the center of Peterboro since the inception of the town by Peter Smith.  Smith had placed it there and wanted it to look like Boston Commons.  The Land Office and mansion of the Smith family faced it directly…though the house is now gone…burned in 1937.

The role played in the saga of the Civil War by Gerrit Smith, Peter Smith’s son, is well known in Madison County… but what about the monument?

It seems that a very industrious young man named Aaron T. Bliss, who worked in Morrisville and Madison…among other places as a young man… enlisted in the 10th NY Volunteer Calvary and served in the Civil War rising to the rank of Captain.  After his service he moved to Michigan and became a successful businessman, ending up in politics serving Michigan as a Michigan State Senator and later as a member of the US House of Representatives… eventually becoming the states 25th governor.

On a return trip to his native home for a visit, he realized that Madison County did not have a monument dedicated to the men who fought and died in the war.   So Bliss decided to donate one delegating John Woodbury to purchase a monument to be placed in Peterboro on the Green with the words…”Fraternity...Charity...Loyalty” carved on it.

So on July 4th, 1893 …many years after the end of the conflict…with a prayer and presentation, Bliss and other dignitaries dedicated it… and today it stands a reminder of a terrible time in the past …and honors the men caught in that struggle to preserve the Union.



For more history and videos visit www.HistoryStarProductions.com...

Saturday, January 19, 2013

The week in review, MLK Day, Lincoln, Guns & Gordon Lightfoot


This week has been another week of bitter and mean comments about guns, the president, elderly on social security - labeled as living off the system, families needing food stamps because of job loss or poor paying jobs, fracking, Hurricane Sandy relief, war, choking smog in China, snow in Europe, heatwave in Australia, death in Syria and Mali…. and on an on.  I just could not stand it …so I off’d Facebook comments that bothered me…..and tuned out the news.

Martin Luther King Day and the Inauguration are on the same day… I found that almost ironic.  The hatred and bigotry that he faced is still here today, it has just resurfaced because we have a “black” president. … Humorously he is half white so why not call him a “white president”?

It occurred to me that instead of going after food stamp people who are poor or elderly and need it, perhaps we should check those on programs that can afford to buy multiple guns and ammunition that cost over $1 per round?  I pondered this whole situation…no answers!

I wondered if the biggest haters of the newer gun laws were those who had run-ins with the law and were afraid they wouldn’t pass the background check...motivated by FEAR!!

The movies this week brought Lincoln into view.  The new Lincoln movie has shown a light on Lincoln as a “saint” of sorts and “Great Emancipator”, yet I know he was a racist of sorts…he only wanted to preserve the Union at all cost knowing slavery was the Union’s most divisive problem…and cost it did… almost 600,000 people died in that bloody conflict…

Really... it wasn’t until MLK and the peaceful freedom marches and the desegregation movement took place ... that blacks could finally see a small light at the end of the tunnel.

So I slunk around the house all week chopping wood to relieve the stress by day and took out my old guitar and sung a few songs at night…The one song that kept coming back to me was by my favorite...Gordon Lightfoot...it is called “Too Late for Prayin’”…. and says it all eloquently in a nut shell…..

**Please take the time to view this video and listen to the words…friends, foes, teachers, preachers, poets, workers, haters, and everyone.  There is a message….and some harsh truth for us all to ponder!!


Sunday, January 13, 2013

Thoughts on cats ...Winston Churchill, History.. Eaton & Me


This week has been interesting with its weather to say the least...and I really wondered what to blog about until a deep fog fell over Eaton tonight.  The fog always reminds me of London, it also reminded me of my latest present from some friends.. a poster.   The poster was a copy of a historic poster put out just before Britain’s anticipated entrance into WWII in 1939.  Humorously, the poster was never publically displayed and recently was found and has become a new symbol...one I love… “Keep Calm and Carry On”.  What could be more British...perhaps only thoughts of Winston Churchill!

That brought me to Churchill’s mother who was Jennie Jerome, a beautiful American who actually has great ties to CNY.  The Jerome Family farms were in CNY and the land that my family built its house on was part of the Jerome Farm…home of Jennie’s grandmother. 

Thoughts of the Jerome farm led me to ponder the fact that for Christmas this year I gave my brother the gold watch dad had given me...he had found the old gold watch in the family garden as a young man...a garden that would later become the family compound of homes.  Repaired and running, I thought it was a great family history piece and a great present.

Picture I took on a trip to London
of Churchill's statue with
Big Ben in Background
Churchill was supposed to come to speak at a family reunion in Syracuse once, but had to turn back because of the presence of U Boats...he did send a telegram to the family group assembled…a piece of history I learned from the Wood-Eaton sisters who visited me years back in Eaton.  They were relatives and were to be at the reunion and remembered the trip.   They had come to Eaton to visit their great grandfather Allen Nelson Wood’s house, the house I live in.  Isn’t it strange how life is full of so much serendipity?

Mr. Wood was named Allen Nelson Wood...Nelson for Lord Nelson a hero his family honored with the name for many generations…and then suddenly my grey cat Rascal jumped in my lap…hint …one o f Winston Churchill’s most famous cat’s  (grey) was named Nelson to honor Lord Nelson.

Churchill was a cat lover, actually an animal lover.  Winston and his wife Clementine signed their love letters to each other with little drawn pictures…he a dog (Pug) she his cat...and their daughter the PK or puppy-kitten.

His cat stories are famous and many can still picture him speaking with a drink in one hand and the grey cat next to him. One story I love is... after one of his famous speeches (he had a lisp as well as drank) a woman MP in Parliament said, “Sir, you are drunk!”  His replay was “Madame that may be true, but in the morning I shall be sober whereas you will still be ugly!”

His favorite cat in later life cat was a ginger-marmalade colored cat he called  “Jock”, named after Sir John Coville his secretary who gave it to him.  Churchill loved the color and the cat so much that after giving his home Chartwell to the National Trust… he stated in his will that it should always have a ginger colored cat in residence…and to this day it does…and always named appropriately “Jock”.

Here is one of his most famous speeches....




Monday, January 7, 2013

The NYS Agricultural Society, Holsteins, Pecksport, and the Chenango Breeders Association


This year marks the 180th anniversary of the NYS agricultural Society a group that has helped forward agricultural education over its long history, a history that also includes its promotion of all of our county fairs. (Below a link to a great article on the society done by Debra Groom.)

An important part of that history of course, is the Holstein-Friesian breed of cattle that have become the staple of the milk producers in our rural NYS area.  The Holsteins always seem to be associated with Gerrit Miller of Peterboro, who helped forge the registering of that breed…but the breed has been in NYS in small numbers since the times of the Dutch and the Holland Land Company.

Alonzo Peck son of Josiah Peck owner of Pecksport
who ran the warehouse and was a teacher at
Madison University..today's Colgate.
In the 1870’s a group of businessmen called the Chenango Breeders Association, set off for Holland with the main purpose of bringing back a “breeding herd” of cattle. The trip was successful and this group of men managed to bring over 270 head back.  What is interesting is that not one was lost on an arduous voyage across the ocean and up (the then going defunct) Chenango Canal to Pecksport. 

Pecksport has always been a sort of mystery to some people… as today it is just a spot on the map located in the Town of Eaton…but in its day it had the first actual modern dairy in Madison County run by the Burchard family …a cheese factory...and warehouse company.  One of the Burchard sons, Sylvester Jr. was one of the Chenango Breeders Association members.  Burchard with other members...Charles Payne of Eaton….Alva Cole of Eaton… are actually credited with writing the points by which we judge the breed today.  Sylvester Burchard Jr. himself became a noted judge at the New York State Fair for many years.

These men actually lived and breathed cows, and I have many of the pictures of this early herd in the Eaton Museum with artifacts belonging to this noted family.  It is of course, Holsteins and milk production that helped replace the fading Hop industry in Madison County… as a matter of fact Burchard often referred to the hops plant as “the Devil’s weed”.

PS… Pecksport was also the busiest port on the Chenango Canal located at the end of Leland's Pond and the birthplace of famous baseball player Hooks Wiltse.  Also of interest is that just a few miles below Pecksport on route 46 near Munnsville, is the birthplace of another famous dairyman…William Dempster Hoard founder of Hoard’s Journal for Dairymen.

Enjoy a trip to the area......



Link to Debra Groom's article..