Fiction and History

In my senior year of high school....the history teacher required us to purchase (cheaply, I must admit) a copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin and read it as a class history project.

I read the book in approximately two weeks.  It's around 400 pages long, and a fictionalized piece on the period before the Civil War, and intended to be some explanation to the necessity of the Civil War. 

As I wrapped up the book on a Sunday evening....I sat there quietly and contemplated...it was a decent book but it is entirely fiction.  For a literature or English class, it would have been appropriate.  For a history class?  No.....it wasn't fitting because of the fictional nature. 

The book was designed by Ms. Stowe to be some emotional piece.....bringing you to the cause of opposing the south and slavery.  Even by age 17, I'd read well over a thousand pages of history material and non-fiction analysis of the period prior to 1865.  I'll admit that UTC's slant on things is probably 95-percent correct, but there is little to cover the economics of America from the early 1600s to 1865, and how you got to this particular situation in life.

In simple terms, it's a lousy book on history but a decent book for getting your emotions to oppose southern values of that era. 

The instructor?  My general belief from a decade after this mandatory reading was that students were supposed to get a negative view of the south, and understand the pro-Union position.  Slanted?  Well.....yes.

The same behavior occurring today?  My guess is that it's a common theme and repeats itself often. 

The sad thing is that we actually had a test (maybe ten questions) which came at the end of the reading assignment, and you actually had to remember around six to eight major characters.  I made up some cheat sheet, with three lines to each character and I had around four people who copied to sheet.....who obviously didn't read the book and needed background material to the test.  The sad thing to this is that you are basically memorizing fictional names and events....for a history exam. 

'Empty Barrel' Talk

I've sat and watched Florida Representative Frederica Wilson over the past week and comical sequences or bickering with the White House. Then this 'empty barrel' verbiage came up.

Military people will use the term once in a while....but it's mostly the guys with history degrees.  I've probably heard this term used at least a dozen times in my life.

It tends to lead back to the 1600s/1700s and be used for a ship which has a high number of barrels onboard which are empty.  So as the ship rocks back and forth....creaking with hundreds of noises....the empty barrels will bump against each other and simply add to the noise.  A full barrel would have stability and not bump against the wall of the ship.  Eventually the ship term made it's way to land-usage and people would identify others who talked a lot....as 'empty barrels'. 

Representative Wilson went full turbo after that usage and claimed that this was racist in nature....mostly because she went to the dictionary and read it there.  I think she made up her mind that 'empty barrel' meant something over the slave-trade but it just doesn't fit that way. 

Back in 2009...the 17th district of Florida (Wilson's district) was a 50-50 blend of Republicans and Democrats.  In 2008....Obama ran and only got around 48-percent of the local vote. In 2012, after the Census results and redrawing of the Florida map (for more representation)....Obama got 86-percent of the vote.  Yes, it's a gerrmandered-district....heavily designed for someone like Wilson. 

The problem I see here for the news media is that every time you get Frederica Wilson up for a national interview....some Democrats watch the exchange and just shake their heads.  She's like some character dreamed up on WWE-wrestling.  If the Democrats were all hyped up to show intellectual landscape....with Wilson, you lose confidence.  I think the White House realizes that and will keep heat on her. 

Vampire Story

Last year, I sat and watched some TV travel documentary on Malawi.  It's one of those little countries in the east-central Africa.....mostly resting against Lake Malawi, and a fair amount of woods/forests and open plain.  It reminded me of Michigan to some degree (well....without Detroit).  To be honest, after watching the hour-long show, it kinda stuck out in my mind as a place that I'd prefer not to travel into.

They chatted for about five minutes on folks there, and their humble belief in spirits and ghosts.  It would be safe to say that about 90-percent of the public believes in things like this.

I noticed that Malawi came up in the news this week.  Over the past two months.....they've had this story going around the nation of vampires.

Yeah....vampires.

Mobs have gotten hyped up when accusations occurred and guys were pointed out as vampires (I assume this occurred at night), and the authorities say that eight guys are dead so far...dead over vampire accusations.

The authorities have discussed this problem.  One side of the issue is that virtually everyone believes in witches and evil spirits.  So it's not that hard to convince folks in the vampire story.

The dead guys?  Well....if you just got pointed out and had bad teeth.....that might get an ass-whooping.

So the government has gotten involved and are discussing public media and advertising. How it would work?  Anyone's guess. 

We've been fortunate so far in America....with all the anti-Trump hype....no one has suggested vampire stuff going on and the need to get worried about a new Trump threat of biting folks.

My Opinion of the Russian Oligarch Troll Farms

For about ten months, I've followed this hyped-up story of the Russian Oligarch troll farms involvement in the 2016 election.

My observations?

1.  This is absolutely NOT a Russian government operation.  If it was, you would not have been so easily led back to the front door of the troll farm.  It's a commercial operation, financed by one wealthy Russian billionaire.  Putin might occasionally have lunch with the guy, but I don't see this as being a Russian government operation.

2.  Based on everything said....less than one million dollars was spent on this whole thing.  If you think about it....if you'd tried to do this same thing in the US....it would have cost you $300 million minimum.....which says a lot about them recruiting a couple of guys for a reasonable price and just giving them one single boss with simple instructions. 

3.  Do that many Americans even review news items off Facebook and Twitter?  So far, no one can cite any evidence that five-percent or ten-percent of American society is paying attention to the troll-manufactured news bits.  That's the odd thing about this whole story.  It's hyped-up by CNN, the WaPo crowd, the NY Times, and MSNBC, with Sunday talk-show enthusiasts running scared.  But there's simply not any real evidence that this effort by the Oligarch trolls has succeed at anything

4.  Finally, what happens in the spring of 2020 during the primary period?  Will the Oligarch trolls come out in force?  Will they hype up Bernie Sanders?  Will they hype Trump?  Will they hype anything?  It's a big unknown.

Thirty Pages

I sat and read over three or four stories early this morning over the FBI, the Lynch-Clinton documentation from the tarmac meeting to discuss Hillary, and the likely review to come out of this.

Basically, the FBI kept saying for months that no documentation existed from the Lynch-Clinton tarmac meeting in late-June of 2016.  Then in the last week, they found thirty pages of material and handed it over.

The basic story?  Lynch said that the whole meeting was just a casual meeting with Bill coming out to her VIP jet sitting on the tarmac in Phoenix, Arizona....to discuss grandkids, golf and travels.  Yeah, I know....it just sounds kinda hokey but she's more or less sworn to that story.

Why on board the jet?  I'm guessing it was out of the way from the public and they suspected that no one would spot Bill entering it.  It wasn't reported by national press (yeah, that's another odd part of the story).  It was the local Channel 15 reporter who spoke to the story, that swept the nation.

The thirty pages?  I'm guessing that there's three or four emails, with one final report over the entire trip that Lynch took, and the final report is likely a quarter of this entire thirty pages, with only three lines having to do with Clinton.

I seriously doubt that anything will come out of the thirty pages. 

Why Bill had to meet face to face?  He has some magnetic personality and thinks he can charm folks with that casual southern charm.  So the face-to-face meeting had to be part of the whole game.  Since there are no other witnesses to the meeting....you simply have to assume what Lynch wrote....is entirely true. 

Ethically?  Well, it's one of those episodes that really makes Lynch look bad.  A regular person with ethnics would have looked at the potential troubles and just said 'no'. 

So you can imagine the next couple of days while some folks pour over thirty pages and come to realize that there's really not much to say....Lynch bumped into Bill....maybe two lines of commentary about grandkids and golf, and she wished Bill good health.  A lot of drama, over nothing much.

Kerbow Family Connection

Over the past couple of years, I've spent some time looking at one single stretch of the family tree which ran to the Kerbow name.  It's an odd name....French in origin.

So, the story goes to this period around 1731 when some French Huguenots boarded a Dutch ship called the "Billender Townsend" out of Rotterdam, Netherlands. Jean Kerbo (spelled slightly different) boarded, and ended up in Philly.

The thing about this Huguenot group.....they'd lived in the Pfalz region of Germany for several decades....mostly because of religious persecution.  A lot of this religious fervor that occurred, comes out of the Thirty Years War period (1619-to-1650 era).  The war started originally between the reformers and the Catholics.  Halfway through this war, the religious side of this conflict mostly ended and it became a single community opposing another community....mostly over revenge-killing.

The family arrived in Philly on 8 October 1731.  What's generally said is that family united with other Huguenots in the Maryland region....going south into North and South Carolina over the next decade or two.  By the 1860 period, one division of the family had moved into Minor Hill, Tenn.  That's where my connection occurs.

The religious side of the family?  If you go through things, this whole religious thing kinda 'dryed-out' after one generation in the US.

The original area of France?  If you gaze at a France map....it's on the southeastern side...about forty miles south of Nancy, in a region called Haute-Saone....a county-like area that is about forty by forty miles, and mostly all farms. It's about a 20-minute drive to the Swiss border, and there's nothing urban there....this is pure farming territory today.

The population shift for Haute-Saone?  Well, that's an interesting story.  From mid-1800s to 2005...it was a dramatic shift....dropping from the 400,000 level in the 1800s to 210,000 by the end of WW II.  Most of the shift?  This was a pure farming area, and lots of people left for industrial jobs by the mid-1800s to early 1900s.

Today?  You only find the Kerbow name around the US, to a smaller degree in Estongia and France.  My guess is that the bulk of the family left in the 1600s/1700s, and some ended up in Estonia as well.

Added note:  There are at least six different spellings to the name (Kerbo; Kerbow; Kirbo; Curbo; Curbow and Kuehrbeaux). 

On the Topic of Autodidacticism

As a kid, I had this reading interest.  Already by age ten...I had an interest in history, geography, cultures, etc.  I was lucky, this rural school I attended....had a decent library.  It might have been on a twenty foot by forty foot room....but they had an ample amount of books.  Added onto this, my mom would take me by the county library, which had a larger selection.

I never thought much about this interest or curiosity of mine...even after I left home and went off to the Air Force.  They offered various training segments, instruction in odd things (assembling and disassembling rifles for example), bigger libraries, and I simply broadened out my prospective.

I had what you'd call autodidacticism. Autodidacticism is typically a behavior where you are self-educating yourself, proceeding through life with some instructors, or an entire lack of instructors. Autodidact people tend to pick and chose their interest.  They are typically terrible students for the system used in most schools today.

An Autodidact kid might come up and shock you because he's actually interested in ancient Rome.  He wants to know about the construction of the Colosseum.....it's intended purpose....how they operated....who came out for the events.....and how the Colosseum fits into the spiral of the Roman Empire.  Naturally, 99-percent of high school teachers can't answer these questions.  In fact....probably over 50-percent of college history professors....can't answer his request.  This is the kid who reads forty books over the period in question....memorizes the names that matter....and has some poster over his bed of the Colosseum.  At some point, the kid will grow up....travel to Rome, and stand in awe of the Colosseum for several hours.

Autodidacts tend to skip regular college because they really can't provide an adequate education.  If they do attend college, you tend to notice that they may pick and choose various classes which don't fit to any major.  For example, you might have some kid who picks two or three economic classes just to understand capitalism, it's history, and the logical anti-capitalist motivation.  Beyond that, he has no other interest.

This is also the kid who might take a community college class on how to build a log cabin, but never actually go beyond that point or ever build a log cabin.

Education went through some odd periods.  The Catholic Church picked up education and operated a number of instructional programs, and ended up starting the college system as we know of it today.  Up until the mid-1800s....if you went to any US or European college program....what you found was a simplistic program built upon five central themes....debate, ancient history, Latin, philosophy, and theology).  Engineering and science got added in the mid-to-late 1800s. 

What you found a huge growth pattern upon in the 1800s were Autodidact people developing their interest....going out to study things on their own, and building a reputation as an expert. 

You can find cases where people would travel for miles to hear so-and-so speak to some topic, or some expedition to Africa, or some new medical idea. 

Oddly enough, if you peel away a lot of the Batman character displayed over the past twenty years....he's a Autodidact.  He is self-taught to some degree, and using masters to provide an education in other areas.

The world ahead for the Autodidacts?  That's an interesting topic.  The internet basically offers this vast landscape to go and learn odd knowledge that was difficult in the past to gain.  You can sit now via a YouTube lecture and get a two-hour lecture by some noted British professor from Cambridge on Roman war techniques.  Or you could sit and hear a sixty-minute talk by some Japanese professor on herbal remedies that were commonly practiced in Japan's 1600s. Or you could hear some gifted guy talk about horse-shoe procedures and how they differ from one culture to another.

In some ways, we are opening up a vast door now for Autodidacts.  They could go way beyond anything that we'd ever dreamed of.