Roses are red, violets are blue…

Posted on June 12, 2011 by Alice

Every once in a while (not often enough), I go through my shelves and identify those books in my personal library that I haven’t looked at in years and am unlikely to ever read again, either because my interests have irrevocably turned, or because the information they contain is more readily accessible on the internet. When I find one, depending on its value, I either convert it to stock and offer it on my website, or I  donate it.

Occasionally I find a book that appears to meet both of my deaccession criteria, but I keep it anyway. The Poet’s Manual and Rhyming Dictionary by Frances Stillman (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1965) is such a one. The RhymeZone does a credible (note: not incredible) job of substituting for its “rhyming dictionary”. As for the rest of its content, poetry-writing websites, offering a full education in rhyme, meter, stanza  and the various known forms that meld them, litter the internet. But I shall keep my book.

I have mixed emotions about poetry. Back in the day, I was a regular in WritingWest, the writer’s chat room that briefly lived on MSN (the Microsoft Network) when it was trying to supplant AOL as anyman’s interface to the internet. We had wonderful times there, mostly chatting, occasionally writing. We didn’t actually chat much about writing, but we decided that since all of life’s experiences were fodder for the writer, any topic could be justified.

Almost everyone in our little chat group tried writing poetry. The price of admission wasn’t high, and once free verse was understood to mean “no rules”, there didn’t seem to be any wrong way to do it.  We did have a few really good word crafters, but most of the verse was of the quality that you would expect from people who drafted a few lines in between reading emails and downloading meatloaf recipes. I believe it was significant that most of the poets in our group were far more willing to write and share their own verses than to read anyone else’s.

I can’t say that I was much different. I had taken to heart Robert Frost’s admonition that writing free verse was “like playing tennis without a net”, and I did tend toward poems that were more structured. I also didn’t care much for the melancholy stuff, mine or anyone else’s, and happily left the poems about misunderstood love, depression, and death to others. The YA’s (young adults) in our group rushed to fill that gap. Bless them. I would not be a teenager again for any amount of money.

But with free verse out, and deep subjects mostly eschewed, that left me with … what? With all the many forms presented to me in the Poet’s Manual.  I wrote a few sonnets, a few ballads, a few of a great many of the poems described. But my favorite turned out to be the cinquain (pronounced SIN’ kane), a short, counted syllble form created by the American poet Adelaide Crapsey (1878-1914).

A cinquain consists of five lines of two, four, six, eight, and two syllables, in that order. They are usually, although not always, in iambic meter. There are some forms that use the title as the first line, but that was not Miss Crapsey’s vision of the form she invented. She always titled hers in addition to the five lines, and I agree with her.

I like cinquains because their brevity forces a haiku-like sense of focus, and it’s also possible to finish one soon after it’s started. That could be why cinquains seem to have become a favorite exercise of elementary school teachers, and ESL teachers. The purist in me is unhappy, however, with the fact that neither of the teaching exercises I’ve cited perfectly preserves the most basic element of the cinquain, the syllable count.

A far better resource is cinquain.org, launched in 2005 as a master’s thesis project for  Aaron Toleos, then a graduate student at Salem State College. Here you will find not only all 28 of Adelaide Crapsey’s original cinquains, but an analysis of the form, a summary of her major life events, and references to additional resources. If the cinquain form intrigues you, cinquain.org belongs on your favorite bookmarks list.

Every once in a while, often after stumbling across the Poet’s Manual again, I draft a new poem. The example below is a recent attempt:

SPRING MAGIC
Trees turn
New leaves into
The sun, and then, Presto
Chango!, they turn the sun into
New leaves.

That was so fun, I may do it again. And that’s why the Poet’s Manual won’t be leaving my shelves any time soon.

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A cartoonist in wartime – WWII editorial cartoons

Posted on May 29, 2011 by Alice

'41 and '42: Cartoons by Shoemaker (Chicago: Chicago Daily News. 1942)

On a beautiful Midwest autumn morning, with sparse cotton candy clouds dotting a deep blue sky, I was walking across the parking lot toward my ten-story office building when a co-worker got out of her car and said there was a story on the radio about a plane that might have flown into a building in New York. Thirty-eight years after an assassin created the most unforgettable moment of a previous generation, Where were you when Kennedy was shot?, we had another event indelibly imprinted on our consciousness and would forever after be able to answer the question: Where were you when you heard about the attack on the World Trade Center?

On that day, and the ones that followed, I experienced the gut churning sorrow, anger and determination behind every rallying cry I had learned from my history books. “Remember the Alamo.” “Remember the Maine.” I would never have imagined, having seen nothing but dirty tricks and bickering between the politicians of the two parties for most of my life, that the country could come together so quickly and unanimously, but we did. In a matter of hours, not even days, there was “no daylight between us” in our response to the attack. My generation rallied around and will forever “Remember the twin towers.”

For my parent’s generation, it was “Remember Pearl Harbor.”

PEARLS OF GREAT PRICE. America after Pearl Harbor

My mother was a teenager during World War II. I remember her telling me how bitterly divided the country was about whether or not America should involve itself in that foreign war. There were isolationists that thought we should just mind our own business and let the warring factions sort it out for themselves, and there were those who felt that if we didn’t intervene at the time and place of our own choosing, the war would come to us anyway and find us unprepared, with our potential allies already defeated.

As it turned out, that second group was closer to the mark. In my mother’s recollection, all of the arguments against going to war vanished overnight after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The country was one in its resolve.

The book, ’41 and ’42 A.D.: Cartoons by Shoemaker (Chicago: Chicago Daily News, 1942), bridges the time between America’s vacillation and our commitment to join the allies and defeat the Axis powers in World War II. It is a book of editorial cartoons which were published in the Chicago Daily News for the years mentioned, and it provides a fascinating lens through which to view America’s debate on whether or not to go to war, and the sacrifices that would be needed to win it.

WE MUST WIN. The first draft registration for World War II was held September 16, 1940 for all men between 21 and 36 years of age. This may be a commentary on a new draft round bringing in younger men.

Unfortunately, very few of the cartoons indicate a publication date, and they do not appear to be arranged chronologically, so there is less continuity than might be wished. Still, the subject matter is informative. There are cartoons warning against isolationism, against the treachery of Japan (published months before Pearl Harbor), and against hoarding. There are cartoon commentaries on the need for sacrifice, for a return to the God of our forefathers, and for the income tax. There are exhortations on buying war bonds, collecting scrap, and turning the industrial might of the United States toward producing aid for embattled Europe.

These picture editorials are snapshots of America’s struggles of conscience and debates on the need to, and the best way to, confront the Nazi menace. Though the times were perilous, the cartoons are, throughout, optimistic. Even as Europe is sketched in dark and dreary lines, its people suffering and starving, there is a sense that once America gets into the picture,  relief is inevitable. That optimism was so strong that the last printed page of the book, which was published in 1942, consists only of a large “V” painted above a brush and ink pot labeled 1943, though in fact, the war did not end until 1945.

Everything old is new again. Having lived through the 21st century version of an America shocked into war by an unprovoked and immoral attack on our innocent citizens, this book’s commentary, written more than half a century ago, takes on new meaning and poignancy against the backdrop of current history in the making.

Tomorrow is Memorial Day, a good day to “Remember to remember.”

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St. Thomas Aquinas church history – I wasn’t even looking

Posted on May 22, 2011 by Alice

I have always loved the word serendipity. For one thing, it’s fun to pronounce, being a kind of combination of serene and zip-a-dee (as in do dah!); it combines a happy sense of well being with a frisson of excitement. But more than the word, I love the phenomenon of finding something valuable or agreeable that I wasn’t even looking for.

So it was with the Golden Jubilee Book of Monsignor Edward J. Blackwell With a Sketch of St. Thomas Aquinas Parish Milwaukee, by the Rev. Peter Leo Johnson, D.D., 1937. I do keep an eye on eBay for books in my specialty area of Milwaukee history, but I don’t generally purchase parish histories. I have no reason for avoiding them except that they usually seem to be priced at about what I think I could sell them for, and I have to at least pretend that I’m trying to make a profit at this bookselling stuff.

However, this book was listed several times, at a diminishing price every time, and I finally “bit.” I bid, I won, I paid, and in due course, the the package arrived. I was, as is often the case, disapointed to see that the seller’s “very good” was my “good”, but the book is scarce, the content desirable, and I think it will sell, so oh well.

As I examined the book more closely, I found that the name of the “jubilant” Rev. Blackwell looked familiar but it took me some time to place it. I finally found it on a copy of my grandmother’s marriage certificate. On the 17th of April in 1917, the Rev. Blackwell joined my ancestors in holy matrimony. My grandparents’ nuptials were among the 1,416 marriages performed at St. Thomas Aquinas parish by 1937.

This was not only interesting, but a genealogical tidbit that was new to me, since my grandparents’ place of marriage had been recorded by a genealogist as St. Thomas, rather than St. Thomas Aquinas. It also was interesting because I knew that my grandmother had worked in Milwaukee as a maid before her marriage, and the location of the parish would give me some idea of where in the city she might have worked.

St. Thomas Aquinas parish was established by the Rev. Blackwell in 1900 to serve the English speaking Catholics in northwest Milwaukee, and it made it almost to the century mark. But in 1994, it was merged with five other parishes to form All Saints congregation. Wherever the church building had been, it was no longer easily Googled. However, I was able to find a reference to the parish in an old obituary from 1950, which gave an address: 35th St. and Brown Ave.

A quick tour with Google street view confirms that the building still present on the corner of 35th and Brown, though minus its cross on top, is unmistakably the same as that pictured in the 1937 Golden Jubilee book.

St. Thomas Aquinas was an almost new church when my grandparents were married there. A look at the picture in the book provides  a view of the main aisle as they must have seen it on their wedding day.

The aisle is long and majestic, and I imagine my grandmother as a young bride, walking down toward her husband to be, on her father’s arm, past the pews filled with family and friends. Perhaps she was thrilled, perhaps scared, probably a little of both.  And now I can join her, in my imagination, through the serendipitous discovery of this little book that I almost didn’t buy.

~~~

I don’t sell all of the books I write about, but if I have any books for sale of the kind that inspired this article, they would be found here, in my History – Milwaukee and surrounds category.
Posted in Book selling, Genealogy, Milwaukee history | Tagged | 2 Comments

Spine perished, a summer project

Posted on May 18, 2011 by Alice

Spine perished!

One of the most popular pages on my website is the one that describes remainder marks, although almost all the pages in my Illustrated Collecting Terms section get a lot of hits. Book buyers do care.

They understand, at least after their first few misadventures, that many unfortunate things can happen to books in the course of their lives, and book sellers spend a lot of time figuring out how to describe those things. The challenge is to be accurate without dwelling on the flaws any more than necessary.

Take my example book. In case you were uncertain, you are looking at the spine side of the book. If I were describing it, I would probably say: “Spine and all paper joints are gone, so that each leaf is separate and unattached. ” At least that’s how I would have described it before finding the perfect two-word description in the catalog of an antiquarian book dealer (I wish I could remember who). It said simply, “spine perished.” It’s lovely, short, and tells it all.

Well, it tells everything but what possessed me to purchase it in the first place. The book is Kitchi-Gami: Wanderings Around Lake Superior, by J.G. Kohl. It is the first English edition, published by Chapman and Hall, London, in 1860. (An 1859 edition in German preceded it.) First English editions of this book start in the mid three figures and finish in the lower four. Mine is worth considerably less, since it’s falling apart.

But Kohl’s account of the Ojibway of the Lake Superior region is considered to be one of the most objective, sympathetic and unbiased early accounts. He didn’t want to convert the Indians, or subdue them. He was simply fascinated by their culture.

I thought it would be interesting.

And I thought I might try to reattach the pages to each other, and stitch them together, possibly turning it over to a bookbinder to make a cover, if I got that far. Long, tedious projects have never intimidated me, and one beauty of this book (I believe) is that I could hardly make it worth less.

So Kitchi-Gami is my summer project. I will attempt the slow and careful mending of some 428 pages and a 32 page advertising supplement, and then we’ll see. If nothing else, I will be able to read it without losing more material to the chipping on the spine; in the best case, I will have added significant value to my bargain purchase.

And until then, I’ve got a new picture of a book defect that puts a mere remainder mark to shame.

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Judging Saddle Horses and Roadsters

Posted on May 17, 2011 by Alice

Judging Saddle Horses and Roadsters with a shiny mylar dust jacket protector

I purchased my first copy of James Barly’s only book, Judging Saddle Horses and Roadsters (privately printed, 1945),  in the Renaissance Book Shop, a fantastic four story warehouse full of books in downtown Milwaukee. Unlike so many of its ilk, Renaissance is still there, and apparently still thriving, with a branch at the airport of all places, even without a website to call its own.

But I digress. It is my misfortune that Mr. Barly seems to have lived almost completely in the copyright-protected era, and there is little to find about him in on-line searches. I did have some success, however, in searching the archives of the Milwaukee Journal (apparently not indexed by Google except internally), which reveals him to be a Milwaukee attorney who frequently represented government entities.  He was also the manager of the Wisconsin state fair horse show in August, 1940.

Joseph Barly - family photo, used with permission

I did better on Ancestry.com, where his great-grand niece, Christine Allswede, has cataloged the most important milestones of his life.

Joseph Anthony Barly was born in Menominee, Michigan on 9 Mar 1895. He died in Miami, Florida on either 15 Jan 1988 or 22 Jan 1988, depending on whether you believe the Social Security Death Index or the Florida Death Index respectively.

The 1910 federal census has him living, at age 15, with his parents in Michigan, but by the time of his 1917 draft registration, he had taken up residence in Milwaukee, where he worked as an automobile mechanic. He served 2 1/2 years in WWI in the Thirty-second and Second Divisions, Engineers and was mustered out as a first lieutenant in 1919.

He married Ceil Ann Sterling on 2 Jul 1922 and graduated from Marquette University of Law in 1923, after which he was admitted to the Milwaukee and Wisconsin bar associations that same year. He continued to live and practice in Milwaukee, probably until his retirement to Florida in 1964.

But those are the dry facts. Christine has given me permission to quote her correspondence with me:

I only knew Joseph as the encourager. We shared a passion for horses and he always cheered me on in my riding career through our many correspondences. I wish I had kept his letters, but I still have the song he wrote for me. His true passions in his life were his wife, family, horses, and writing music. While living a modest life in his older years, he used his wealth to build several churches in India, two of which are named after his wife and mother.

And in 1945, he wrote and privately published Judging Saddle Horses and Roadsters, a labor of love that is surely one of the high points in any Saddlebred enthusiast’s collection.  He renewed the copyright in 1973, which means the book won’t be in the public domain for a long, long time.

That’s OK. It’s scarce enough to give the collector a thrill when found, and common enough that the diligent and patient searcher will eventually find an affordable copy.  I have been privilaged to have found and cataloged a number of copies now, and if you are contemplating adding this worthy book to your collection, you might be interested in a few of the common flaws.

  • This book was issued with a jacket, although the jacket seldom survives. I actually thought it might have been issued without a jacket until I found one on my fourth or fifth copy.
  • The original color of the book was a dark maroon, with the title in gilt on the front cover and nothing printed on the spine. Many copies have faded to brown, and may be so faded that the observer isn’t sure whether a spine title was once present and has worn off, but there was never a spine title to begin with.
  • End papers have a tendency toward discoloration, and there may be some tanning of the text pages as well. If these are the only flaws, don’t pass the book up, because you may not find a better copy.

What makes this book so special? Joan Gilbert, in her article Paths of Glory Lead Where ? on the Horse Show Central site summarizes the content quite nicely, along with some philosophical meanderings on the fickleness of fate in obscuring the histories of even the worthiest subjects. I won’t retread her ground, but I will say that for me, it’s a combination of things.

First, the book was written by a Milwaukee resident and published in Milwaukee, and I have an affinity for unique things produced by my home town. Second, I am fascinated by privately published books in general, and I admire anyone who takes the time to craft and publish a good one. Third, I’m a Saddlebred lover from way back, and this book offers a fascinating insight into what it takes to present a winning show horse.

Christine writes: [Joseph] would be so pleased to know people were still interested in his book. More than 30 years after I found my first copy, I have to say, “Yes we are!”.

~~~

I don’t sell all of the books I write about, but if I have any books for sale of the kind that inspired this article, they would be found here, in my Horses – Breeds and breeding category. I actually have several categories of horse books. Links to all of them can be found on the Categories page.
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On naming things

Posted on May 14, 2011 by Alice

What's What: A visual glossary of everyday objects -- from paper clips to passenger ships. Ballantine Books, 1981.

An interesting question appeared on one of the newsgroups I frequent. The poster wanted to know the name for the symbols publishers sometimes put between sections of a text. These symbols take a variety of forms. Someone working on a modern word processing program might use tildes.

~ ~ ~

Or perhaps asterisks, a manual version of the asterism, which is three asterisks arranged in a pyramid formation.

* * *

Other symbols are possible, including a wide variety of dingbats and other printer’s ornaments. But the really interesting thing, at least to me, is that while there are names for the individual symbols used, there doesn’t seem to be any generic term for the device(s) that are used.

This would be akin to being able to refer to a dictionary or a novel, but not to a book; to being able to speak of Ariel or Times New Roman but having no word that suffices for an unspecific font; or being able to mention a comma or period but not being able to refer to the entire class of punctuation marks. The wikipedia article on the subject, after admitting that there is no generally accepted term, has come up with a decent description: flourished section breaks, and kudos to the anonymous author, since with a little explanation, it works.

Grasses: An Identification Guide, by Lauren Brown. Houghton Mifflin, 1979.

Still, the lack of a widely recognized typographical term strikes me as odd, since we humans seem to love to name and categorize things. There are any number of field guides to help the amateur naturalist categorize ever more finely tuned divisions of wildflowers, birds, bugs, or rocks. Collectors of every ilk spend small fortunes on various guides that help them discern differences in everything from bone china to, well, first editions.

One of my very favorite tributes to our need to name things is the visual dictionary. As the sample at the top of this post shows, a visual dictionary will take a picture of something and then identify all of the subparts with call-outs.

It’s always fun to browse through a visual dictionary and learn interesting details like the name of that little loop on your belt that holds the extra length at the end of the belt after the buckle. No, it’s not a belt loop. A belt loop is on your pants. It’s a keeper.

And speaking of keepers, I think I’ll keep flourished section breaks in my vocabulary, since now that I know there is no generally accepted term for those decorative devices, I feel compelled to adopt one.

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Internet Sales Taxes – A Modest Proposal

Posted on March 28, 2011 by Alice

I’m not a tax expert by any means, but I know enough (I hope)  to keep me legal. I reside in Illinois, and I dutifully charge my Illinois customers the going rate, which I then turn over to the state at the appropriate time as specified by the tax code.  My other customers are on their own to report their purchases to their own state taxing authorities.

This arrangement had its roots in the mail order world, where it has long been determined that merchants would find it too cumbersome to calculate and remit sales taxes to the potentially thousands of taxing jurisdictions scattered over the land. Plus (this is just a guess on my part) states in which a vendor had no physical presence would be hard put to find any leverage for collecting the occasional fifty cents that might be due them from one of their citizens purchasing goods in another state, if they even know of such a transaction.

However one may feel about taxes (and I can’t think of anyone that likes paying them), I personally believe that sales taxes are coming to internet transactions no matter what we do.  There is already something called the Streamlined Sales Tax. For just a small dip into the waters of this proposed (and apparently in some cases implemented) future internet sales tax system, I recommend reading the FAQ.

It’s scary stuff. While states are required to standardize major portions of their tax codes, every little burg and village is still allowed to have its own tax rate. The system allows for a huge list of “taxed or not” items which will be different in each state, and even contemplates things like tax holidays. Granted, the states are required to provide an accessible list that can be accessed by “remote sellers” to determine tax rates by nine-digit zip code (who collects all nine digits, anyway?), but for someone like me, who might only sell three or four books a year in any given state, it would be a nightmare.

Not that anyone who could do anything about it is likely to listen, but just for the sake of venting, I’m going to provide my own suggestion for a really simplified internet sales tax that won’t cripple small, entrepreneurial businesses:

  1. There is one rate. That’s right. Just one rate, and it applies to all monies collected from the customer for both product and shipping. I would probably exempt food and medicines, and I’m sure there will still be definitions to work out, but I want it really simple. (States could still continue to require vendors with a nexus in their states to charge a state specific tax, but this would enable them to immediately begin collecting sales taxes on all the other transactions they currently get no piece of.)
  2. There is one reporting point. All I want to do as a small seller is send a list of zip codes (not nine digit zip codes either!) and receipts in a comma-delineated file to some central point with my check or EFT. That organization can divvy up the money and send it on to the participating states.

Here is how I think it could be implemented:

The Feds could create the central collection agency and reporting mechanism as a service to the states, but states could opt in or opt out. Why the Feds, you may say? I suggest you look over the FAQ for the Streamlined Sales Tax system again. (Even more enlightening, check out a state “matrix” or two to see how much mind-numbing the variations still are.) That’s what we got when 44 states put their heads together and compromised on something they could all agree on. Also, the states, as part of the deal they make to be part of this plan, could pass some enforcement abilities on to the internet taxing agency, and thus create a real incentive for out of state merchants to participate.

I want to note that Nathan Barker makes a similar proposal (in a lot fewer words!) on the Kayleighbug Books blog. I’m not trying to appropriate his ideas, but I have also felt this way for a long time, and I suspect many would agree.

Do I like taxes? Nope. But I’m a realist. I don’t see how states can pass up internet taxes much longer, especially since these would not technically be “new” taxes, but only a new way of collecting the use taxes that their citizens are already required to pay.

The difference would be, they could actually get the money without destroying the small businesses who would be collecting it for them.

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The Legend of Market Square – Milwaukee Indian lore

Posted on March 7, 2011 by Alice

Milwaukee 1820 - likely includes the area that became market square

Writing of any kind is as much about what the author chooses to leave out as what he decides to put in. One of the interesting things about reading regional history books published over the stretch of a century or more is to see what the authors put in and leave out as time progresses.

When writing about a city such as Milwaukee, there are any number of points of departure for the historian:

  • Prehistoric geography
  • The native inhabitants
  • The visits of the first Europeans (missionaries and traders)
  • The shifting political ownership and control (Indian, French, English, United States)
  • The first permanent settler
  • The city charter
  • The city before or after any of the great wars (Civil War, World War I or World War II)
  • The growth of the metropolis in the 20th century

Perhaps understandably, the later the history was written and the longer a time period it seeks to cover, the briefer the mentions of earlier history become, until they are summarized or neglected into obscurity to make room for later events.

That seems to have been the case for the legend of Nis-o-was-sa and As-kee-no, a tragedy worthy of classic Greek opera. It is told in full in the two earliest Milwaukee histories, Chronicles of Milwaukee by A.C. Wheeler (1861), and Milwaukee, by Rudolph Koss (1871), but I haven’t found it in Milwaukee histories after that.

Wheeler credits a Col. James Stanley “late of Fort Dodge, Iowa, and now a resident of St. Louis” for the story, which he presents as a tavern-tale told by an unnamed stranger, who was commissioned to accompany the Indians to Iowa when they were removed from the Milwaukee area. Wheeler’s narrator says he heard the story from an English-speaking Indian named “Powder”, or more properly Pough-gow, and that Pough-gow said the tale was often repeated among the elders of the tribe. Koss’s story has many similarities but some interesting differences from Wheeler’s, and they may both refer to the same original source. I mention these details in case some researcher with better resources than I can track the original story down.

Whatever its origins, the gist of the story — a blend of that told in Wheeler’s Chronicles and translated from the German in Koss’s Milwaukee — is this.

According to old Indian lore, the place on which Milwaukee rises was, to the original inhabitants of the area, a sacred ground. In particular, the wooded hill occupying what later came to be market square was dedicated to highly venerated deities and counted as neutral ground among the many tribes hostile to each other.

Annually, a great religious festival took place there, which sometimes lasted an entire month. Before the Indians entered the sacred place, the weapons were put down and the tomahawks buried, and before the opening, they performed the Pow-Wow, the great peace dance. At the end of the festival, each of the participants collected a natural product originating from the sacred mountain, we don’t know whether of animal, vegetable or mineral origin, which he took with him as a talisman. Apart from that, deep silence about the mysterious affairs at these gatherings has been preserved by the Indians.

To be buried someday at the foot of this mountain, on the banks of the Mahn-a-wau-kie, was the greatest wish of many an Indian from far away, a wish heard by the old traders at Green Bay and along the Mississippi. It was the wish of the Menomonees, just as of the Winnebagos, of the Pottawatomies, of the branch of the Chippewas, of the far Sacs and Foxes, and even of the wild Sioux.

The huge quantities of Indian bones, which people in our day (1870) found in the southern parts of the city, and the thousands of graves along the heights, and the rows of burial mounds on the banks of the neighboring Menomonee, give testimony to what a large degree this desire must have been fulfilled. For at no time was the resident Indian population in the local region so great that one could assume these countless bones to be the remains of them alone.

Previous to one of the annual gatherings at this sacred spot, there had been a war raging between a number of the tribes, and the convention that year was taken up mostly with the consideration of their quarrels. The oldest and worthiest of the chiefs advocated an abandonment of their differences.

But As-kee-no, a Winnebago, opposed all plans of reconciliation with the Menomonees.  While he was willing honor to the sacred ground and peaceful customs of the meeting, he vowed to take up arms again as soon as the convention was over.

He had a daughter called Nis-o-was-sa, who — as daughters in these tales usually are — was beautiful and good. She had many suiters among the braves of the various tribes, but had accepted none of them.  She loved her father fiercely, and he loved her.

On the last day of the conference, a final attempt was made by the chiefs to convince As-kee-no to reconcile with his brother Indians. One of the most eloquent chief’s made the case for red men to unite against the encroaching whites:

Manitou, the good spirit has given all of us us the red face, that we recognize ourselves as brothers of one family; he gave us the wolf and the panther. We should not destroy each other; our enemies come from the East. Our battle-axes were not made to be immersed in red blood, but they yearn for the white heart of our enemies. They were not created as his children, they are the children of the evil spirit. As the great water in the ground is churned by an evil spirit, they grew up from the depths and the winds drove them like scum into the present wilderness. They are numerous, and I hate them! Hate them with me! Let us be united in this hatred! and as they come they will pass away, a game of the winds and the water!

But the heart of As-kee-no was hardened against all entreaties. His answer was that the best way to achieve peace would be to wipe out the Menomonees.

Nis-o-was-sa, who, as a woman, should not have been attending the council at all, heard all of this. She realized that her beloved father was the single obstruction to peace among her people. Though the order of events differs somewhat in the Wheeler and Koss chronicles, they both agree that Nis-o-was-sa was moved and convinced by the eloquence of the chiefs who counseled reconciliation. She told the council that she was but a woman, and not wise like the braves of the council; but she had listened to the words of wisdom, and they were good, and pleased the Good Spirit.

She asked: “Is there a chief who will say Nis-o-was-sa does not look up to her father as the flower looks up to the sun?” None could deny her.

With that, she snatched the knife from her father’s belt and stabbed him in the heart. “You want peace, and the Great Spirit grants it. Now let the Winnebagos and the Menomonees be friends.”

No more is known about the fate of Nis-o-was-sa, but she was regarded as a heroine who brought peace to her people. Koss closes his narrative with the hope that the people of Milwaukee, the German-Athens, will one day erect a marble statue to commemorate the memory of Nis-o-was-sa and As-kee-no. Instead, their story seems to have passed out of the history books, but it is now, at least, commemorated in this blog.

~~~

I don’t sell all of the books I write about, but if I have any books for sale of the kind that inspired this article, they would be found here, in my History – Milwaukee and surrounds category.
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The books of old Milwaukee

Posted on January 29, 2011 by Alice

People collect all kinds of books for all kinds of reasons. If you want to read a representative smattering, go to Google Groups rec.collecting.books and do a search for “What do you collect?”.

You will find people admitting to everything from Modern Library hardbacks to armed forces edition paperbacks, and from submarines to cookbooks. One collector will attempt to collect a first edition of every book written by Dorothy L. Sayers and another will want every edition of a single title, like Strunk & White’s Elements of Style.

Some collectors cast their nets wide and garner all they can find of a certain type of book, a certain author, or a certain subject. But there often comes a turning point where the collector becomes more selective, where he begins to research and actively look for specific titles to add to his collection. That point, some will tell you, is where the fun really begins.

When you have an interest in Milwaukee history, there are any number of ways to narrow the scope of the collection, and if one can find a specialty where books can be had at a reasonable price, so much the better.

I’ve talked about the main books written about Milwaukee history in previous blogs. The early ones are becoming more scarce, and the prices are correspondingly high. But if someone wanted to focus on parish church histories (as an example), they can be had for about $25 apiece right now.  One could collect books printed by a specific Milwaukee publisher, or written by Milwaukee natives or residents.  Or one could easily collect fictional works set in Milwaukee and could probably find many that are affordable.

But I’ve recently come across a most interesting book that I think would make the foundation of a great collection that would no doubt include many affordable books, as well as some that will stretch the patience and resources of the most determined collector.

It’s called Books and Readers In Old Milwaukee. A Checklist: 1837-1844 (Milwaukee County Historical Society, 1975), written by Donald Zochert. What Mr. Zochert has done is to make a painstaking survey of books publicly available in Milwaukee during its village period. He has included books available in early circulating libraries and from booksellers based on advertisements in the newspapers of the day.

The books run the gamut from texts on grammar school arithmetic to novels for young ladies, from classical literature and philosophy to inspirational religious treatises, from American history to practical how-to manuals on everything from farming to surgery.

Here are a few of the titles listed on the first three pages and some current prices:

  • Abbott, Jacob. The Young Christian (American Tract Society, 1832). Good condition, $8.00.
  • Abercrombie, John. The Philosophy of Moral Feelings (Harper, 1833). Acceptable condition, $8.00.
  • Johnson, James F. W.. Elements of Agricultural Chemistry and Geology (Wiley and Putnam 1842). Very Good condition. $30.00
  • Andrews, Ethan Allen and Stoddard, Solomon. A Grammar of the Latin Language (Crocker & Brewster, 1842). Fair condition. $15.00
  • Arnold, Thomas. Introductory Lectures on Modern History (John Henry Parker: Oxford, 1842) Good Condition, $5.00. (This is the lowest price. Other printers and edition dates before 1844 are higher.)

Several of the books I looked for didn’t show up in the data base I searched, however it does appear that many titles are affordable. If the goal was to match titles only and modern reprints were considered (rather than attempting to get contemporaneous editions), I suspect that much of this library could be assembled at an affordable price.

A collector in search of an area of focus could break this intriguing list of books down in any number of interesting ways. For example, one could collect all the classic titles, or just poetry or just fiction, or just the grammar school texts. But I think it would be wonderful, at the end of a collecting career, to be able to donate an entire room of these titles to a Milwaukee historical institution as an example of the literary and cultural climate of the early village of Milwaukee.

~~~

I don’t sell all of the books I write about, but if I have any books for sale of the kind that inspired this article, they would be found here, in my History – Milwaukee and surrounds category.
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The elephants

Posted on January 24, 2011 by Alice

The Elephants, by Georges Blond, translated from the French. Macmillan first edition, 1961.

When it come to animals, I’ve always thought of myself as a dog and horse person. I have nothing against cats and cows, but they don’t have the reputation of bonding with their humans the way dogs and horses do. I like my birds, too, and they do bond in their own way, but they’re not what you might call cuddly.

Nope. My emotional preference is for something that looks happy to see me, whether it wags its tail or nickers hello, and most of my reading time has been spent on those two species: dogs and horses. So I was suprised at my reaction to The Elephants, by Georges Blond (New York: Macmillan, 1961), translated from the French La Grande Aventure des Eléphants by Frances Frenaye (Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1959).

I admit to holding a stereotyped image of books about large wild animals. The are typically oversized, coffee-table tomes, long on breathtaking photography, short on interesting text, and they generally show me animals in places I will never see short of a PBS special.

This book is different. Though there are a few pictures, the book is a standard hardcover size, mostly text. And it is written by a man who loves elephants the way I love dogs: as companions to man as much as wildlife with which we share the planet. Without neglecting elephants in the wild state, the author spends considerable time telling how they are captured and trained, how they respond to their keepers and they jobs they do.

Though the author might have been projecting human qualities onto his subject when he wrote about the emotions and motivations of elephants, I venture to say that the book would have been considered more anthropomorphic when it was written than it would be today, fifty years later. Back then, the scientific view was that animals didn’t have emotions, only instincts, but we have since learned a great deal about the intelligence, strong family bonds, and, yes, emotions of this greatest of land animals. (I do watch those PBS specials.)

There were parts of this book that brought tears to my eyes. I like my stories to have happy endings, and when elephants are turned into economic assets it seems that a certain amount of exploitation and abuse are inevitable. Still, the author leaves one with the feeling that whatever the faults of the human-elephant relationship, a strong bond is nevertheless possible.

Perhaps, given the chance to know one, I would rank elephants right up there with dogs and horses as a species capable of winning my heart.

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