Only the Stones Will Remain

Not very far from where I live there’s a winding rock wall, the largest non-mortared rock wall in the United States. Containing 8.5 million pounds of stone and 1.25 miles long, it is a memorial to a Native American woman.

 

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It was built by Tom Hendrix as a tribute to his great-great grandmother, a Euchee Indian, who as a teenager was forced from her home in North Alabama to the Oklahoma Territory along the Trail of Tears in 1839.

Te-lah-nay was 18 years old when she was relocated by the American government to Muscovy, Okla. She stayed one winter and wanted to return home. She walked all the way. It took her five years.

Tom Hendrix
 flickr photo by Paul Mashburn

Upon her return to North Alabama, she was called Mary Hipp and earned a living as an herbalist. She befriended a Methodist minister named Wiley B. Edwards by curing him of “a bad case of yellow toes and a disorder of the middle.” He recorded stories of the remainder of Te-lah-nay’s life in a 168-page journal.

Official records are scarce but Hendrix said she lived to be about 35 years old and is buried in Parsonage Cemetery in Lauderdale County.

Nearly 100 years later, when Hendrix was a child in 1936, he sat by his grandmother, Parmelia Hendrix, and listened to tales of his Indian heritage. It was there that Hendrix learned of Te-lah-nay’s incredible journey.

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In 1988, Tom Hendrix felt a need to honor his great-great-grandmother and began constructing a memorial, in stone, because his grandmother told him, “We all shall pass this earth; only the stones will remain.”

The wall contains 8.5 million pounds of stone. Hendrix kept track by weighing his trailer while empty and then weighing it filled with stones for each load.

In 2000, he wrote a book about his great-great-grandmother’s journey and the wall, and called it “If the Legends Fade.”

Please go here to watch a four minute video and see more photos. It will be well worth your time.

Also, here for additional info and another video of Hendrix speaking about the Wall.

Mr. Webster's Dictionary

Have you ever wondered why some English words are spelled differently in America? For instance, color rather than colour; center instead of centre; honor rather honour; program rather than programme?

Credit:viralread.com

I had often wondered this myself, and then I ran into some information about Noah Webster.

Webster (1758-1843) authored readers and spelling books that were dominant in the American market at the time. Believing in the developing cultural independence of the United States, the chief part of which was to be a distinctive American language with its own idiom, pronunciation, and style, he published in 1806 A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, the first truly American dictionary. He included technical terms from the arts and sciences, where previous dictionaries only used literary words.

An 1888 advertisement for Webster's Unabridged Dictionary
Credit: wikipedia

In 1828 he published his American Dictionary of the English Language, and in 1841, a corrected version with five thousand additional words.

His work was not well received in the beginning. The culturally conservative Federalist party declared it radical – inclusive in its lexicon and bordering on vulgar. Thomas Jefferson’s Republicans attacked Webster, labeling him mad for such an undertaking.

Daniel Webster
Credit: merriam-webster.com

One facet of Webster's importance was his willingness to innovate when he thought innovation meant improvement. He was the first to document distinctively American vocabulary such as skunk, hickory, and chowder.

Some of Webster’s  attempts at reform didn’t meet with acceptance, such as his support for modifying tongue to tung and women to wimmen.

Now we know why some American words are spelled differently than in the Mother Country. Now if we could just know why there's a difference in British English vs. American English pronunciation! 

Do any of you have an answer to that one?

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And this discussion doesn’t even touch on the reason why we call the same item by different names, does it?

Pet Talk

It's been a week filled with much time and attention devoted to pets, especially the dogs. They always get plenty of attention, mind you, but during the past week I made a trip to the veterinarian for both Kris, for his chronic ear infections, and Val for a recurring skin sensitivity.

Kris received injections and ear cleaner and drops to be applied twice daily. He knows what's about to happen and this is a typical posture he takes when he knows I'm about to "doctor" his ears.

Or he might give me this sad eye look as I get near him with the medicine.

Valerie was put through the wringer, so to speak. Her tummy had to be shaved where she had scratched and bitten herself from the itching; received two injections; toenail clip; shaving of a hot spot on her face; plus two injections brought home and given the following day as well as two capsules twice daily for 10 days.

The conditions each dog has are caused by allergies to "something" and we just treat them as they occur.

Both dogs are really patient about getting treatments at home. I have found an easy way to give them their pills: hide them in a teaspoonful of peanut butter. They love it and are none the wiser!

Then there are the darlin' kitties. One night the wind blew quite hard and they were so afraid. I was back and forth trying to comfort them but they were restless, in and out until bedtime.

Here's Murtie hiding in a flower box. Look at those eyes!

Photo made another day, when Myrtle was sleeping peacefully in the sun room  their new home!

 

Carl checking out the fish in the pond.

I am hoping I don't have to make a trip to the vet's office this week. It's 25 miles from home, it's usually a long wait and it stresses out both the dogs and me as well!

I was advised to give each dog 1000 mg of fish oil over their food to "maybe" help their problems. It's not a 100 percent cure, but helps most dogs. I'm off to buy a large quantity of them!

A Halloween Treat

I was greeted this morning with the arrival in my inbox of a sweet, sweet video of Baby Katy in her Halloween costume. I could not download it as a video, and am instead sharing as a photo of her in her Minnie Mouse costume.

In the short video, she was cooing and gurgling, and it was the sweetest way to begin my day!

On this last day of October, on Halloween, the weather is wet and nasty, but we've had a glorious October, replete with blue skies and beautifully colored trees. 

Here are a few images I selected from Pinterest that reflect the glory of the season. The poems are two that I committed to memory in grade school, third grade to be exact, and they are very special to me.

I do love these vintage images; reminds me of the pictures we saw in our textbooks/story books long ago.

Moving right along, we'll greet November tomorrow. Where has the year gone?

See You In the Funny Paper

Sometimes you repeat a word or phrase – one that you haven’t used, or even heard in many years – and are left wondering, “Now what made me think of that?”

It happened today as I was leaving my mother’s house. Instead of the usual, “see you later” or bye” as I left, out came “I’ll see you in the funny paper.”

You may or may not be familiar with this phrase as words of parting. But it was in common usage at the house where I grew up.

Saying it today after not having uttered it in too many years to count not only made me question why it resurfaced after all these years, but also how it came to be used this way.

After a bit of reading at the Word Detective, here’s what I learned about the etymology of the phrase:

"It is a jocular farewell that dates, as far as anyone has been able to determine, to the early years of the 20th century, probably the early 1920s because the term “funny papers/pages/sheet” itself apparently didn’t appear in print until roughly that time. 

A glossary of humor published in 1926 included 'See you in the funny sheet,' and William Faulkner also used the phrase in his 1929 novel The Sound and the Fury ('Ta-ta see you in the funnypaper'), so it must have been widespread by that time. 

One reason that 'See you in the funny papers' sounds so dated to us today is because 'funny papers/pages/sheets' was eventually largely replaced by the term 'comics' for that part of the newspaper, a process that probably began in the 1940s and was complete by the 1960s.

The interesting thing about 'see you in the funny papers” is that originally it may not have been a very friendly thing to say. Saying “see you in the newspaper' or 'See you in jail' when parting, for example, carried the sardonic implication that the person being addressed would next be heard of for committing a crime or attaining some other newsworthy notoriety. 

Similarly, the original intent of 'See you in the funny papers' was probably to imply that the speaker considered the person either so ridiculous or so odd in appearance as to belong in a comic strip.

By the 1940s, however, 'see you in the funny papers' had become so common that it lost whatever hostile edge it had and became a good-natured humorous farewell. If 'see you in the funny pages' had any deeper implication after that time, it was that life in general was as silly as the Sunday comics section.

Are you familiar with this usage of the phrase as a goodbye term?

And on a similar topic, what comic strips did you read and enjoy when you were a kid?  My favorites were Priscilla's Pop, Blondie and most of all, Peanuts and Charlie Brown. In the 1970s I became addicted to Doonesbury.

Saying Goodbye to Summer

While most people correctly tie the end of summer to the calendar, for me it is marked by the first frost of the season. Where I live, that usually means the third or fourth week of October and that time is here.

I’ve spent the past few days dragging/lifting/situating into the sun room the plants I want to overwinter. This, after I had loudly proclaimed I was not bringing much inside for the winter!

Here’s what “not much” looks like:

Many aloes and a few begonias. I colored and dried hydrangeas during the summer (top shelf) and now I don't know what to do with them! 

Creeping Fig

Brazilian plume plant

The three kitties who formerly stayed in the garage have taken up residence in the sun room for the winter. Here's Myrtle, sleepy after not showing up last night (worry!) but now ready to sleep all day and pull the same trick tonight, no doubt.

One day ago the mid-morning temperature was 53F; last night the temperatures was high-30s, but tonight we anticipate a full-blown frost.

The fishpond has provided much pleasure this season. The fish have grown from half-finger to half-a-hand size. The white impatiens and sweet potato vine have softened the edges.

The Sweet Potato Vine has really done well at pond side.

Here's the fish. Can you see them? There are 10.

The potted impatiens have gone from this:

 To this:

The cold weather will put an end to these two Diamond Frost plants:

 And the white petunias, which have already dwindled drastically:

 The hydrangea have turned a nice purple:

 Bocappia, a new favorite, will soon be history:

 The white moonflower on the arbor has tried to outdo itself this year. 

 Oh well, at least the ivy around the little water fountain will provide a spot of greenery throughout the cold months:

This little creeper, whose name I've now forgotten, is "supposed" to stay green all winter. We'll see!

Surprisingly, one of the gardenia plants has formed a ton of buds at this late date. One bloom, with others to follow. I don't believe the low-30s will hamper the blooming, but a hard freeze will.

OK, the yard/garden has been winterized. Now it's time to snuggle in with blankets, books and indoor endeavors.

POLIO An American Story

This month’s selection of the book discussion group I attend was Polio: An American Story. When I first saw the title I thought it was not a book I would particularly enjoy, but boy, was I wrong.

Credit: David M. Oshinsky

It was an engaging read and hard to put down once I started. Having lived through the yearly polio epidemics of the mid- to late 1950s, I recall so well admonitions to stay out of the mid-day summer heat, stay clean and avoid swimming pools. I have such a vivid memory of being herded into the school auditorium and lining up to be given the sugar cube that contained the vaccine.

I learned many things I didn’t know about polio, such as the furious rivalry between Salk and Sabin to find a cure. The book also gives an insightful look at the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which was founded in the 1930s by Franklin D. Roosevelt – himself a polio victim and later President of the U.S. – and his law partner Basil O'Connor.

I actually remember seeing a duplicate of this this poster in my school back then.
Credit: wikimedia

In baby-booming America--increasingly suburban, family-oriented, and hygiene-obsessed--the specter of polio, like the specter of the atomic bomb, was a cloud of terror over daily life.

Oshinsky states that polio was never the raging epidemic portrayed by the media, but in truth a relatively uncommon disease. I do not agree with this statement, however. Thousands of children came down with polio each summer, and many suffer its after affects to this day. Many children died.

Once a successful vaccine was found and the disease eradicated, research on the disease pretty much ceased, thereby leaving many unanswered questions such as why were more boys than girls affected? why did it occur mostly during hot summer months? why were children and young adults more susceptible?

Iron lungs provided temporary, or sometimes permanent breathing support for polio victims.
Credit: Smithsonian magazine

In addition to a gripping scientific story, the book provides a provocative social and cultural history of postwar America. I highly recommend this book, which was the 2006 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Best History Book.

Polio exists in only four countries today: Afghanistan, Nigeria, Pakistan and India.