In the top picture, the first cars travel freely on West Green Street in Westminster, minutes after it was reopened early Friday evening, December 15th, 2006.
Westminster Street Department workers (LtoR) Wayne Reifsnider, Danny Schaffer, Larry Simpson and Alan Miller wrap-up the finishing touches on the crosswalk at Cover Lane and West Green Street just before the first phase of the $2.2 million project reopened December 15th, 2006 just as Westminster Mayor Tom Ferguson promised.
I was watching the current TV series “Studio 60” when this column came to life. In the curious and paradoxical world of word associations, there was an oblique reference to Anita Pallenberg in the show.
Ms. Pallenberg was a protégée of the early “Rolling Stones” and Marianne Faithful; who cut one of my all time favorite albums, “Broken English,” in October 1979. (One song, “The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan," was used in Ridley Scott’s 1991 movie “Thelma and Louise.”)
In a later conversation with my wife (pray for my wife) I segued into the current discussions about the history of English as the predominant language in CarrollCounty. English speaking Europeans came to CarrollCounty slowly at first, but in the end it appears that the English speakers write the history books.
Before 1744, the predominant government in CarrollCounty was the Haudenosaunee Nation – the “Six Nations.” The Haudenosaunee played a key role in the evolution of American democracy and paradoxically, they are why we speak English today.
Much of our current way of life is owed to the heritage and legacy of the Haudenosaunee Nation. Several main roads in CarrollCounty have their beginnings as Haudenosaunee trading routes. And several towns in CarrollCounty - Patapsco for example - had their beginnings as Haudenosaunee settlements.
It was not until after the Treaty of the Six Nations was signed on July 4, 1744 with the Haudenosaunee Nation, and the dispute over the Mason-Dixon Line was settled in 1767 that settlers started to come here in greater numbers.
It was near present-day Linwood, that the first recorded structure in the territory was built around 1715 by John Steelman. In 1744, approximately 65 families lived in CarrollCounty.
The Treaty of Paris in 1763 signaled the end of the North American portion of a global war between France and England, the French and Indian War, 1754–63.
It was one of the last pieces of the puzzle enabling settlement in CarrollCounty with relative freedom from violence. The last piece, of course, was the American Revolution, 1775-83.
But the very first “settlers” were the Algonquians who arrived around 800 B.C. The original Algonquians divided into a number of distinct tribe-nations, which formed a multi-nation government under a constitution that dates to approximately August 31, 1142.
The Algonquians called themselves the “Haudenosaunee” meaning “People of the Longhouse” and their government was one of the first true participatory democracies in history. It also incorporated full political and leadership rights for women.
The French term for the Six Nations confederacy was “Iroquois.” The term is considered a racial slur by many Native-Americans. The original Carroll Countians spoke one of many dialects of the Algonquian-Wakashan linguistic family of North America.
The Six Nations consisted of “nation-states” made up from different areas governed by the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas and the Tuscaroras. The Six Nations extended from Labrador to South Carolina.
Many historians to this day credit the multi-cultural and multi-lingual participatory democracy as exemplified by the Haudenosaunee Nation to be the inspiration for our nation’s founders’ ideas for our system of government.
Other historians have vigorously contested this theory as anecdotal and supposition. Read: history is written by the victorious. However, there is evidence, for example, that both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson in particular used material delineated in a famous speech made by the great Haudenosaunee “sachem” (chief,) Canassatego, in 1744 at the signing of the Treaty of Six Nations.
In the Constitutional Convention of May through September, 1787, the basis for the “federal system” of government advocated by Messrs. Jefferson and Franklin was based on the Haudenosaunee system of government.
Today it is a paradox that for 75 percent of CarrollCounty’s history, we did not speak English. But to this day, the English speakers are (re)writing history.
And Marianne Faithful; four decades later, she is currently victorious over many personal challenges, living in Paris and enjoying yet another successful re-write of her singing and acting career – and performing in French.
This clip from the longer video, Immigration by the Numbers, features Roy Beck demonstrating the catastrophe of the huge numbers of both legal and illegal immigration by Third World people into the modern nations. He uses standard statistics and simple gumballs to show this disaster in the making.
Dec 11, 2006 The family at “Le déjeuner des canotiers” Pierre Auguste Renoir 1881
From the family December 2006 Christmas card.
December 11, 2006
Kevin, Caroline and Evelyn had a fête galante attending the “Luncheon of the Boating Party” with friends of Pierre Auguste Renoir on a balcony of the Maison Fournaise along the Seine River in Chatou, France in 1881.
We went with Aline Charigot, a young seamstress, whom Mr. Renoir married in 1890. She is in the foreground playing with a small dog. Behind Kevin in the yellow hat is Alphonse Fournaise Jr., who was responsible for the boat rentals.
The woman leaning on the rail, wearing the yellow hat is Alphonsine Fournaise, the daughter of the proprietor. She is talking with a gentleman, whom we cannot see, who is the former mayor of Saigon, Baron Raoul Barbier.
Later he hit on Caroline. Not to worry, Caroline has had enough of mayors, she likes artists and writers. Seated in the chair with the yellow hat in the right-foreground, is fellow artist and close friend Gustave Caillebotte who is talking with Angèle, an actress, in the blue dress, and Maggiolo, an Italian journalist.
I did talk with him some later. He also likes semi-colons.
From right to left across the back is Jeanne Samary, an actress. She is wearing the blue dress and is behind Maggilo.
Hitting on Ms. Samary is the artist Paul Lhote and Eugène Pierre Lestringez, who is some sort of bureaucrat. All the way in the back, wearing the top hat is the editor of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Charles Ephrussi.
Editors are pretty cool and he was fun to talk with later. Here, he is talking with Jules Laforgue, wearing a brown coat and cap. He is a poet, critic, and Mr. Ephrussi’s personal secretary.
From the family December 2006 Christmas card. SDOSM 20061211 Xmas
Westminster Street Department workers (LtoR) Wayne Reifsnider, Danny Schaffer, Larry Simpson and Alan Miller wrap-up the finishing touches on the crosswalk at Cover Lane and West Green Street just before the first phase of the $2.2 million project reopened December 15th, 2006 just as Westminster Mayor Tom Ferguson promised.
