clair055

I've had military memorials on the brain this week.   Perhaps it's because my high school Homecoming was this past weekend.  My last three years of school was spent on a campus heavily laden with military memorials pointing back to the time my school, Woodward Academy, operated as a military school.  Even today there are heavy auras of miltary attitude as you walk across the campus. Most certainly my military mindset derives from a  recent outpouring of support and grief for a local family who lost their son in Afghanistan.  Many citizens of my small town turned out to support the Harper family as they brought their son home.  During the last few days since the touching procession my thoughts turned to how we recognize fallen soldiers and my mind settled on a local park named for an Air Force pilot who lost his life during a bombing mission over Laos during the Vietnam War.  That particular military man, Robert G. "Jerry" Hunter, was a graduate of...

Mammy's little baby loves shot'nin', short'nin', Mammy's little baby loves short'nin' bread... If those lyrics don't immediately bring the song to mind, you can here a version here . It's one of the first songs I learned to play on the piano many, many moons ago. Most people believe this to be a song sung by slaves on the plantation, but it was actually first published with the lyrics I mention above in 1915.  It is considered to be a folk song. James Whitcomb Riley  is credited with creating an even earlier version in 1900. Shortening Bread is a  wonderful mixture of cornmeal, flour, hot water, eggs, baking powder, milk and shortening and instead of baking it you serve it fried.   Shortening is used to make various types of pastry and used for frying foods.  One of my favorite uses that I try to stay away from as much as possible is frosting such as the type of frosting on wedding cakes. Oh my!   What a wicked little pleasure that stuff is.... D...

Sometimes historians can group together a series of events and tag them with an overall identifying name that connects all of the events together such as the Civil War or the American Revolution, but certain events just stand out and beg to be treated special because they serve as pivot points such as the firing on Ft. Sumter or the Battle of Saratoga. Then there are certain events that might not be pivotal but shouldn’t be ignored in the classroom simply because they touch upon so many different instructional moments such as the Mussel Slough Tragedy.  Westward expansion, growth of the railroad including the impact on settlement, muckrakers and their role in the Progressive Era, perspective and accuracy regarding the historical record and even a bit of vocabulary instruction regarding geographic landforms can be handled by examining this little known event in California history. First of all….what the heck is a slough?   On the west coast of North America a slough is def...