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Stumpage Reports
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Tuesday, November 19, 2002 :::
I probably should call this blog "History Shmistory" since that is all I seem to do. The last couple of weeks I have done nothing but read and write history, work at my job in the archives, sleep, and eat. I'm not so into the minutae of my own life I'm gonna put my menu online, but you guys are gonna be hearing about some history stuff and some history classes.
Talkin' With the Weird Girl:
There is a lady / girl in my Colonial History Class that is probably the strangest person I have met in any of my classes. Most of the folks in my classes are pretty normal i.e. dull. She is a thin, pasty-faced little person and you can tell she just marches to her own drummer. She is the only other smoker in class so we frequently make stilted conversation during break. Today she was yawning and telling me how she had stayed up until 5 AM to watch the meteor shower. She then began talking about Halley's Comet and how if she lives long enough she will have seen it twice. I brought up the Hale-Bopp Comet and commented on some of the weird phone calls we got at the library while the comet hung in the sky. Weird Girl said, "The only thing I remember about that comet was everybody in that cult killed themselves. (huge cadaverous grin on her face) You know one of those cult members was Lt. Uhura from Star Trek's brother?"
I learned at least two things at school today. I thought she was weird, now I know it. And of course the useful cocktail-party-factoid about Uhura's brother.
Quote of the Day:
If I could only go off somewhere and have a good cry, put on some clean clothes, get a letter from home. I would be ready to come back and die like a man --
Paul Vaughn, Union sergeant, describing what he said to his commanding officer during the seige of Port Hudson, August 3, 1863.
Reading:
"Biological Warfare in Eighteenth-Century North America: Beyond Jeffrey Amherst," by Elizabeth Fenn. Journal of American History, March 2000, p1552-1580.
::: posted by tom at 11:13 PM
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