Columbus, Anyone?

In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue...

Does anyone celebrate Columbus Day other than school children, who must
suffer again through the tale of how the sailors panicked, fearful that
the ship would sail over the edge of the world and drop into a void
during that voyage motivated by greed and the drive to conquer that
brought death and disease to the native peoples.

For me, it means I can spend the whole day at home, post offices closed,
no mailing of book orders. But for most working people it is just another
mark on the calendar, no three-day weekend for them.

Native Americans claim Columbus never "discovered" America, for the country
was never lost. Last year a tale was circulated about how some American
Indians were going to rent three ships and set out to discover England and
Spain. Nothing was said about whether they were to take along strings of
beads and other trinkets.

A Native American member of Biblio, the booksellers forum by listserv,
wrote that only the week before he had discovered New Jersey, but had
decided against making an offer for it, returning instead to the Canadian
province where he preferred to live.

The day after Columbus Day we had to resume mailing out books.

Closed For the Season

Another summer gone. The leaves are turning. The color gives depth
to the woods around me, no longer a solid wall of green. Individual trees
stand out on the hills and mountains. Through my window every day I
see the bronze of dogwood, the red of maples amidst varying shades of
yellow and brown deep in the remaining green across the creek.

Frost killed the tomato and pepper plants and blackened the tall basil
more than a week ago. Gone are the barefoot mornings, the freedom from
coats and sweaters, and no more sleeping with the doors left open all
night. No more standing by the garden bed and eating tomatoes warm from
the sun.

I used to dream of hot southern summers when I tried to swim in Lake
Michigan too early in the season. Louis Grizzard once wrote that Chicago
has two seasons: winter and the Fourth of July.

But I am glad to be living where there are four distinct seasons. Not for
me the endless summers of those much-advertised old folks' retreats in
Florida, nor Houston, where I spent last New Years weekend when it was
in the mid 80's and the sidewalks reflecting back the heat made walking
around uncomfortable. They may not have cold winters, but neither do they
have real springs.

Now I shall enjoy the crisp, bright days of fall. Highs are usually 50's
to 60's, falling to chilly 30's or low 40's at night. I won't have to travel
far to see a color display. In a couple weeks or so the trees on the ridges
and mountains should be clothed in all their glory.

One year the fallen leaves completely covered the creek. It was a moving,
undulating carpet of patchwork color. No water visible, it looked as if
one might walk across it. Leaves float down it now, but not since that
particular year has the creek been completely covered.
Every year is different.

When I drive to my small building where my books are stored, a drive
between trees turning and changing and color deepening. I think of the
Zen phrase: "Be Here Now."

Now I shall be here. Now I shall exult in being alive on each of these
beautiful fall days.

Red Was the Midnight

Atlanta, the City That Wasn't Always Too Busy to Hate, has more than one
chapter of shame in its past. The Coalition to Remember the 1906 Atlanta
Race Riot scheduled a series of events in September to mark the hundredth
anniversary of the riot, which wasn't a riot but a four-day rampage and
massacre of African Americans by a mob of about 10,000 whites. They
dragged Black people from their homes and from streetcars, and when their
rampage ended, a hundred or more Blacks and one white person were dead,
an untold number wounded and maimed. Many fled this most segregated
southern city, fearing for their lives. One account states that a white woman
died of a heart attack after seeing a black man hacked to pieces.

Inadequate affordable housing and competition for jobs between poor whites
and the blacks streaming into the city in search of work had caused a volatile
situation. Into this powder keg were dropped sensationalized and mostly untrue
newspaper accounts of whites being attacked by blacks.

Almost immediately when the riots subsided, the same newspapers played
down the violence, stating that all was now calm and peaceful. And so the
coverup continued until recently, with no mention of the events in history
books. But the study of the riots is now part of the new Georgia Program
Standards for 8th grade, and many of the teachers who were supposed to
teach this had never heard about what happened in 1906.

The Coalition to Remember's website has resources for educators and links
to further materials, as well as educational material for the general public. An
ongoing exhibit at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site is
entitled Red Was the Midnight- the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot. There's a
walking tour through the area where the riots occurred on every second
Sunday throughout the rest of this year.

Now Georgia 8th graders will learn about the 1906 riot. Maybe eventually
there will also be an effort to teach them some of the other parts left out of
the history books, such as the brutal treatment of workers of all colors
struggling to gain better wages and safe working conditions. Or will they still
read, as we did in school, mostly about how the kings, presidents, generals,
and other such great leaders accomplished everything.

A Fair and Tender Maiden

The war goes on. Global warming threatens to wipe us out.There are vexing
family problems, the prices of everything we need keep rising.

Sometimes I turn away from the news, my books, and anything else that might
be thought provoking. Sometimes I want to escape thinking for a little while.
One route I've found is to watch a bad movie. Not mediocre, they're simply
irritating, but those so bad they become hilarious. Something like giant rabbits
taking over the world, when I might cheer the rabbits on, or even Night of the
Living Dead, although for one who has stood on the street corner in any large
city and watched people emerge from the subway or bus at the end of a
workday, that film isn't always far enough removed from reality.

It's even harder to find the truly bad book. Here again, mediocrity rules, and I
lack the patience to read more than a paragraph or so of such drivel. However,
I did stumble across one this week and it's a gem. I read a page here and there,
then went back to read some that I had missed.

Dainty's Cruel Rivals or the Fatal Birthday, by Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller,
copyright 1898, published by The Arthur Westbrook Company, Cleveland.

Shades of Cinderella, although the fairy tale is a great classic compared with this
pot boiler. Not stepsisters, but two cousins are out to get poor Dainty Chase and
prevent her from marrying Lovelace Ellsworth, heir to the fine Ellsworth estate
and tons of money. Judith Ellsworth, currently in possession of the estate, has
invited all three of her nieces to visit the Ellsworth mansion. She schemes to
maneuver her stepson, Lovelace, called "Love" for short, into marrying either
Olive or Ela, thus keeping the mansion and money within the family. Dainty she
had invited as an afterthought, not considering her in the running for Love, who
would only be interested in attractive women, and Dainty's father, Judith's half-
brother, "was a very homely man and I never heard that his wife was a beauty"
so Dainty could not possibly be pretty.

But Olive and Ela, both beautiful women and educated as well (they were
schoolteachers), "feared the rivalry of a girl as fresh and lovely as the morning,
and with the rounded slenderness of eighteen, piquant features, rose-leaf
complexion, delicious dimples, a wealth of curling golden hair, and large, deep,
violet-blue eyes full of soul and tenderness." She was also empty-headed, a trait,
I believe, as undesirable as the maliciousness of the sisters. Nevertheless,
Lovelace takes one look at her and falls head over heels. Olive and Ela had
taken a night train, knowing if they did not wait to go the next day Dainty
would be too cowardly to go by herself. The next day, while she is weeping
and complaining bitterly to her mother about how they have tricked her out
of her holiday, for indeed she is too timid to travel alone, Lovelace happens
by on his way home from his many travels, offers to accompany her to the
mansion, and falls in love with her during the journey. (Dainty likes him too,
but she says she wouldn't be happy away from her mama.)

He is so blinded by love - or lust- that he fails to see the spineless,
tear-sodden creature that we are shown, even as the narrator keeps telling
us what a lovely, pure and sweet creature she is. The sisters are must more
interesting as they and Aunt Judith race about trying to prevent the marriage.
The press of time spurs Lovelace on, for he must marry by his 26th birthday,
about 3 weeks away, or lose his inheritance.

When Olive and Ela tell Dainty there are ghosts at Ellsworth, she goes into
hysterics every night believing that she is seeing and hearing the ghosts, even
though the servant who is forced to sleep in her room never sees nor hears
them. Olive masquerades as a gypsy telling fortunes.Dainty staggers from the
tent, "her face as white as her lilies. and the tears hanging on her lashes like
pearls in the moonlight" She was scarcely able to stand as she was being
urged to relate her fortune from the "gypsy". "..her eyes turned mournfully
to [Love's] while she faltered, fearfully: ".[The 'gypsy' said:]..'You do well
to choose lilies for your adorning, for they are funeral flowers, and you will
soon be the bride of Death!'" And she "dropped like a broken flower and
hung fainting on her lover's arm".

After Lovelace proves that the "gypsy" fortuneteller was actually Olive, the
doctor states that "the dreadful prediction..would have preyed so deeply on
[Dainty's] sensitive mind as to cause her premature death" had the farce not
been exposed.

Ela's boyfriend, Vernon, whom she had jilted when she thought she had a
chance at marrying a rich man, followed her to Ellsworth. Lovelace is told
that it was Dainty who had jilted Vernon, and that she had been meeting him
and exchanging notes on the sly. This gives her another chance to weep
copiously and prove again how pure and virtuous she is.

Later, someone pretending to be the ghost starts carrying her from her room,
drops her when attacked by a servant, and she lies in a coma for a few days.
She gets a lot of mileage out of this while Lovelace hovers over her lamenting
her fate. After she revives, she is kidnapped on the eve of her wedding day.
Lovelace is shot in the temple by Vernon, Ela's old boyfriend, which destroys
his memory. Dainty finds he doesn't know her after her rescue. She is ordered
to leave the Ellsworth mansion, fed some poison, and when she stubbornly
refuses to die, the cabin in which she has sought refuge is set on fire.

While reading this silly tale, I thought of the old movie serial "The Perils of
Pauline". But Pauline's many brushes with death were the result of her active
involvement in one adventure after another while Dainty seems to do little
but stand around waiting for the next attack. And I'm sure Pauline didn't
weep buckets even when she was tied to the railroad track or when the
saw whirred inches from her head.

All works out in the end, of course, Lovelace miraculously recovers. They
had been married secretly days before the planned wedding day, so he
inherited the loot after all, the three who connived to separate them are
exposed, and Dainty's mama comes to live with Lovelace and his bride in
the Ellsworth mansion. And Dainty stops fainting and crying for a page or
so at least. Lovelace orders Aunt Judith, Olive and Ela to leave, and "the
veil of a merciful oblivion fell over their future fate as scheming adventuresses
to the end of their days."

This was no. 88 of The Hart Series, issued weekly, one of 103 titles listed
on the back cover. It could be ordered from the publisher for 20 cents in
coin or postage stamps.