CertainSeason

Don't Ask...

This sign greets us every time I pick up Bill from work and drive him home (click on it to enlarge to be able to read the sign). The other side says something about reading Romans. One wonders two things with this clown:

1. How closely has he read Leviticus? Right across the street there's a field with two different crops planted in it (by some farmer that I am certain is wearing two different kinds of fabric)...wonder if he's over there stoning that guy all day...and,

2. Just how much same-sex marriage demand is he experiencing?

Oh well...

Meanwhile our garden is becoming more interesting...red onions (red zeppelins), white (actually, technically I think they're called "yellow cranes"). some really nice jalapenos, squash (always squash), tomatoes, cherry and Romas...and some itty bitty garlic. Barely the side of a single clove. I think I should have cut the scapes and harvested them earlier...

The beans are about done. Thinking about a fall garden...spinach, beets, etc. I still have another tape of radishes.

Garden Color

I have been wanting to get some prayer flags for our garden and yard ever since I took the picture at the left at Pat in Barb's Thomaston Eden and I finally remembered to do so.

Don't they look beautiful?

And I love our beebalm...

Black Apostle To Yankeeland

Went to the meeting with the representatives from Senator Gillebrand and several other representatives from elected officials offices about appropriations for the Pember Museum & Library this morning. This is the project that Patty, the Pember executive director, and I have been working on, and it went very well. The mayor was there; all the elected officials showed up. Anyone walking in the front door of the Pember cannot fail to be impressed with this jewel, and has to be struck with the fact that this is nothing less than a National Treasure. That's my project now...to see if we can't get it declared a "National Treasure." Stay tuned. [A postscript: the United States has no such designation. Japan has a "Living National Treasure." But in the U.S. it's an "Historic Site" like our house. No National Treasures.]

 And in the middle of setting up for the meeting, I came across a book about the namesake of our house, Lemuel Haynes. It's title (which I used above) is Black Apostle To Yankeeland: Egalitarian Catchcolt Who Overlived his Caste. Written in 1972. More on that in a moment.

Haynes was a preacher of some note back in the early days of the American colonies. In fact, he was one of the many people who answered the call to arms of Paul Revere. He was an indentured servant from the age of 5 months (!!) until his adulthood, when he proved himself to be a scholar, and was educated as a preacher. One of the early claims to fame of Lemuel Haynes is that he is "the first person of Negroid blood to be ordained as a clergyman in the Congregational Church" according to this book. We have also heard that he was the first African American pastor to any white congregation in the United States, as well.

The book begins with a Title Glossary, in which terms such as "black," "apostle," Yankeeland" and "egalitarian" are defined for the reader. The most interesting word, to me, in the title is "catchcolt" which the author defines as "a colloquial Yankee expression describing a young horse of accidental breeding by an unidentified stallion with a straying mare; a child born out of wedlock." The body of the text of the book goes on to describe Haynes' "lineage" in this manner: "The boy was conceived in a clandestine tryst of a blueblooded girl and a black bondsman in West Hartford, Connecticut. The father's name is lost to history in miscegenation opprobrium. The mother's name, although known, is to this day adamantly policed by scions to shroud the blot [sic] on the family escutcheon. Thus born nameless, the child was called in a moment of anger by the woman who bore him a "Haynes," with the intention of dishonoring the family under whose roof the delivery happened. Friends gave him the first name of "Lemuel" to signify any unknown king of Massa."

Wow. Where to begin, right? There's a whole lot to think about in those sentences. The book claims a copyright date of 1972...but that sure doesn't read like 1972 English to my ears..."miscegenation opprobrium"..."caste"...and "the family escutcheon". Indeed. And the "catchcolt" term is entirely new to me. And I find it particularly interesting applied to Haynes as the offspring of a caucasian mother and African-American...or "Negroid"...father, as the book would put it.

I am just beginning to delve into the book, but a passage on page 25 was of particular interest to me and Bill:

 

Indeed, this is the house Bill and I bought. We had been under the impression that the house was built in 1793, not 1767. So this was a surprise. The reference to "Mrs C.W. Halderman, Jr, of Philadelphia" bore out what we already knew...we bought the house from her son.