Posted by
Unknown
at
1:49 PMon Tuesday, November 5, 2013
The Prince William County Jail at Brentsville, Virginia has a colorful and tragic history.Construction of the Jail began in 1820 and was completed by 1822. A large percentage of the jail population during pre-Civil War days consisted of African slaves awaiting sale to plantation owners.Captured runaway slaves also made up a large percentage of the jail’s population.Runaway slaves attempted to burn their way out of the structure in the 1840s.The jail also housed male and female debtors and common criminals, segregated by race and gender.
The Prince William Historic Preservation Foundation is currently raising money to create a museum exhibit and interpretive services for the Jail, which is the final building to be restored at the 29 acres Brentsville Courthouse Historic Centre, which includes the 1822 Courthouse and Jail, an 1850s log home, an 1870s church, a traditional one room school house, an archaeology trail and a nature trail.
The Brentsville Jail Museum when completed will house a number of period rooms such as the Jailor’s Office, Maximum Security Cell, Debtor’s Cell, Victorian era dormitory (reflecting the building’s history as a school), and a Korean War era master bedroom (reflecting the building’s history as a private residence).
Posted by
Unknown
at
9:46 AMon Sunday, August 25, 2013
Custer
One of the enduring stories associated with George Armstrong Custer is that of his having an Indian mistress and child.
After the battle of the Washita in 1868, the battle which propelled Custer into the public’s perception as America’s pre-eminent Indian fighter, Custer took a number of women prisoners.According to Ben Clark, the chief scout of the expedition, “…many of the squaws captured at the Washita were used by the officers.” According to Clark, “Custer picked out a fine looking one (named Monahsetah aka Me-o-tzi) and had her in his tent every night.” Captain Frederick Benteen corroborated Clark’s story, relating how the regiment’s surgeon reported seeing Custer not only “sleeping with that Indian girl all winter long, but…many times in the very act of copulating with her!”The story is also common in Cheyenne oral history, which also alleges that that she bore Custer’s child, called Yellow Hair or Yellow Bird.
Monahsetah was the seventeen year old daughter of Chief Little Rock.Her name translates as “The young grass that shoots in the spring.”Although not acknowledging any intimate relationship, Custer describes Monahsetah in his book My Life on the Plains as “…exceedingly comely…her well-shaped head was crowned with a luxuriant growth of the most beautiful silken tresses, rivalling in color the blackness of the raven and extending, when allowed to fall loosely over her shoulders, to below her waist.”
Posted by
Unknown
at
12:56 PMon Thursday, August 22, 2013
Youngstown, Ohio 1953
Youngstown, Ohio 2013
Youngstown and America
Between the 1920s and 1960s, Youngstown, Ohio was an important steel producing hub dominated by such companies as Republic Steel, U.S. Steel, and regional giant Youngstown Sheet and Tube.Youngstown reached its’ zenith in the 1950s, with a prosperous population of 168,000.The city’s 1951 Comprehensive Plan envisioned a city of the future between 200,000 and 250,000 people, with 1,700 acres zoned for heavy industry.
The city’s bright future was upended on September 19 1977, when Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company announced it would close the Campbell Mill. More than 5,000 jobs were lost immediately. Fifty thousand jobs soon followed, as Sheet and Tube’s Brier Hill Works closed two years later, and mill closings at U.S. Steel and Republic Steel followed.
Unemployed workers were left to fend for themselves. City leaders and the federal government, withheld support from an employee initiative to take over and run some of the defunct steel mills proposed by the Ecumenical Coalition of the Mahoning Valley. The coming of the free trade era witnessed manufacturing at major factories throughout America fall into rapid decline as corporations moved jobs overseas.
Since 1950, Youngstown’s population has fallen by two thirds and now stands at 66,000. Most industry is now gone, and many neighborhoods have more homes vacant than inhabited. The city has demolished at least 2,566 blighted structures since January 2006. There are 4,000 to 5,000 vacant houses in Youngstown awaiting demolition.Many homes, however, fall to arson first.Arsonists torched 158 houses in 2005 alone.
Youngstown’s issues are, in fact, American issues. A recent New York University-Harvard study provides an explanation.Corporate profits have decoupled from corporate investment in America.Today corporate profits account for 12 percent of Gross Domestic Product, while net investment has shrunk to 4 percent.Investments can reduce companies’ quarterly earnings, to which most CEOs’ income is linked.The current business paradigm holds that share price is the sole determinant of a corporation’s value and that corporate management’s primary responsibility is to shareholders, rather than balancing the interests of shareholders, employees and consumers.The outsourcing of American jobs is another manifestation of this paradigm.Between 2004 and 2009 Americanbased multi-national corporations cut 2.9 million jobs in the United States, while outsourcing 2.4 million jobs to their overseas operations.
General Electric’s chief executive Jeff Immelt (former head of the Obama administration’s “jobs council”, who receives an annual compensation of approximately $15 million) acknowledges that the health and well-being of a company such as GE is now less connected to the well-being of the American economy (worker). Immelt says, “I’m a GE leader first and foremost. At the same time…I work for an American company.”
In 2000 some 54 percent of GE employees worked in the United States. In 2010 about 46 percent of General Electric’s 287,000 employees worked in the United States. GE laid off 21,000 American workers and closed 20 factories between 2007 and 2009.
The company, led by Immelt, earned $14.2 billion in profits in 2010, but paid no Federal taxes because the bulk of those profits, some $9 billion, were offshore. The year 2010 was the second year in a row that GE paid no taxes. General Electric states that it “pays what it owes under the law.”
Corporate focus on short term profits killed Youngstown, Ohio and is killing America.
Posted by
Unknown
at
2:20 PMon Friday, June 28, 2013
Scientists now believe that Easter Island was colonized by the Polynesians in the fifth century A.D.At first there were perhaps twenty or thirty colonists on the island.As the population grew closely related households formed clans, each with its own religious and ceremonial center.Competition between the clans produced the giant statues of Easter Island.At each ceremonial site the clan members erected between one and fifteen of the huge stone statues that survive today.
The statues were carved using only stone tools.Each statue is the same, carved to resemble a male head and torso. On top of the head was placed a 'topknot' of red stone weighing about ten tons. The carving was time-consuming rather than a complex task. The real problem was transporting the statues, most at least twenty feet high and weighing several tons, from the island’s quarry across the island and then standing them up straight on the clan’s ceremonial platform.The solution to the transportation problem sealed the fate of the island’s people.The statues were moved by human labor using tree trunks as rollers.
The population grew steadily from twenty or thirty in 450 A.D. to some 7,000 by 1550 A.D.As the population grew, the number of competing clans grew and the competition to create ever larger and more numerous statues intensified until by 1600 there were over six hundred huge stone statues dotting the island.When the society was at its peak, it suddenly collapsed because of massive environmental degradation brought on by the deforestation of the whole island.
The most demanding requirement for wood came from the need to move the large statues to ceremonial sites around the island. Larger and larger quantities of timber were required as the competition between the clans to erect statues grew. As a result by1600 the island was almost completely deforested and statue erection was brought to a halt leaving many stranded at the quarry.
The deforestation of the island spelled the end of statue building and the sophisticated ceremonial life of the island.It had even graver consequences.The shortage of trees forced people unable to build huts to live in caves.Canoes could no longer be built so people could not leave the island.Removal of the tree cover badly affected the soil of the island.Crop yields dwindled.The food base could no longer support the population. Conflicts over diminishing resources resulted in a state of almost permanent warfare between the clans. As the amount of food available fell the population turned to cannibalism.
By the time the Europeans discovered the island, the primitive islanders could no longer remember what their ancestors had achieved and could only say that the huge figures had “walked” across the island.
The real mystery of Easter Island is not the giant stone statues but the question: Why were the Easter Islanders, knowing that they were isolated from the rest of the world and totally dependent on the limited resources of the island, unable to find harmony with their environment when disaster was staring them in the face?
In the late 1930’s the United States took various substantive steps to check Axis penetration of Latin America. President Franklin Roosevelt, anxious to displace the influence of Fascist military missions in Latin America (which intermingled Fascist propaganda with military training), initiated a program of military assistance to Latin America which successfully displaced the Axis powers. The success of the U.S. effort centered on Washington’s willingness to underbid its competition and offer supplies and quality technical assistance at bargain prices. By acquiring a supply monopoly on military goods, the U.S., in addition to benefiting its own industries, gained a significant degree of economic and political leverage over Latin American military establishments, thus helping to prevent the rise of anti-American nationalism in the armed forces. Such leverage was a potent instrument in the defense of U.S. interests in Latin America. The roots of U.S. massive military involvement in Latin America in the 1950’s and 60’s were established during the Good Neighbor period.
By the late 1930’s defense considerations indicated that the proper course for the U.S.was to ward off Axis influence in Latin Americaby tying the Latin American economies more closely to its own. The U.S. economic offensive helped to curb growing Axis penetration in the Hemisphere. The Volta Rendonda steel complex, the Export-Import Bank’s most dramatic project, for example, was undertaken to pre-empt Brazil’s steel industry from German and Japanese interests. Similarly, other credits helped to circumscribe Axis influence.
Without the consent of the Senate, the wealthy and politically powerful Marcus Crassus decided to embark on a war of choice against the little known Parthian Empire (modern day Syria/Iraq/ Iran).There was nothing the Roman masses loved better than small wars of conquest.Roman legions had easily crushed armies of other eastern kingdoms such as Pontusand Armeniaand Crassus expected a similar result against the Parthians.
Crassus arrived in Syria in late 55 B.C.He had under his command thirty five thousand heavy infantry (seven Roman legions), four thousand light infantry and four thousand cavalry.This force was augmented by six thousand cavalry from the king of Armenia, a Roman ally.
Like many other Roman commanders, Crassus combined over aggressiveness with a penchant for poor reconnaissance.Crassus marched into the desert, guided by an Arab chieftain named Ariamnes who had previously served the Romans.Ariamnes, however, was now playing a double game.He was in the pay of the Parthians and led the Roman army on tiring marches far from water.Ultimately he led the Romans into the trap set by the Parthian general Surena.The thirsty and exhausted Romans encountered the Parthians near the town of Carrhae(in modern Syriain the year 53 B.C).
Well aware of the strengths of his own troops, but woefully ignorant of the capabilities of the enemy, Crasssus ordered the Roman infantry to form a square to repel a cavalry charge.The Parthians did not charge.The Parthian horse archers surrounded the Roman square and began to shower the Roman legionaries with arrows from a safe distance.
Unable to come to grips with the enemy, Crassus now hoped that the Parthians would simply run out of arrows.The Parthian general Surena had, however, not neglected logistics when laying his trap.Thousands of camels were resupplying the horse archers with fresh ammunition.The mathematics of the battle suggested that Crassus would run out of Romans before Surena ran out of arrows.
The next day Surena offered to negotiate a truce with Crassus.Crassus was reluctant, but his troops were in a near state of mutiny.At the meeting Crassus and his accompanying generals were murdered.The remaining Romans at Carrhae attempted to flee to the relative safety of the Armenian hills where the Parthian cavalry could not operate as easily.Most were killed or captured.Of the initial force, some five thousand returned alive, ten thousand were captured and the rest died.
The head of Crassus was presented to the Parthian king, who is said to have ordered that molten gold be poured into its gaping mouth, in disdain for Crassus’ greed for the possessions of others.
Posted by
Unknown
at
3:55 PMon Sunday, June 9, 2013
In the mid-nineteenth century, Arlington was an eleven-hundred-acre estate managed by U.S. Colonel and Mrs. Robert E. Lee; Fairfax, Prince William and Loudoun Counties consisted of rolling farmland and tiny villages. This peaceful region was thrown into chaos as South Carolina seceded from the Union in December 1860 and other slave states followed until Virginia finally joined the Confederacy in April and May 1861. The "invasion" of Northern Virginia on May 24, 1861, created a no-man's land between Yankee and Rebel armies. Some citizens joined Confederate forces, while others stayed to face uncertainty. William S. Connery offers new insights into this most important time in American history.
Author William S. Connery gives a fascinating account of his book "Civil War Northern Virginia 1861"in this Virginia Time Travel interview.
