A Great Week for America, Everybody

It was a great week for America last week (to quote Craig Ferguson, my favorite talk-show host). And I don't say this just because America's leading library science student got her first post-graduate job.

No, I'm talking about our sensibility regarding nuclear holocausts. Last Friday, for the first time ever, America’s ambassador to Japan attended the commemoration of the Hiroshima tragedy. The day the bomb was dropped, August 6, 1945, will be remembered longer by more people than the “Day of Infamy” that was Pearl Harbor. I say this not as a way of attacking the U.S., but rather as a way of saying we need to think about what nuclear weaponry implies for our world. One thing true of both Presidents Reagan and Obama is their stated belief that we can and should rid the world of nuclear weapons. Hats off to both of you, Sirs. Having America’s official participation in this year’s commemoration is a step in the right direction.






Hiroshima 1945













Hiroshima Today - An Enduring Reminder










 



Also last week, Warren Buffett, my favorite moneybags, helped organize a massive charity plan that has a passel of billionaires contributing half of their wealth to charity. Ever since the 1980s more and more of America’s wealth has moved into the hands of multimillionaires, and a charity giveaway like this is, I believe, a very good thing.

In my view, systems of justice -- economic and legal -- are like the circulatory system of a society. When these systems malfunction or get clogged up, a society is headed for collapse. A healthy society is a just society, and a just society is one in which people are rewarded in accordance with the contribution they make to the social body as a whole. Since the 1980s we have grown steadily less “just” in economic terms as more and more of the nation’s wealth has slipped away from ordinary working people who actually make and do things, into the hands of hedge fund managers and the like. So, if this charity giveaway is the beginning of a move in the other direction, I’m all for it. Of course it might just be a one-off gesture that puts the creepy guys who didn’t give away any of their wealth in stronger positions of influence. Hope not.

Finally there was a story in Sunday’s NY Times describing the anti-Muslim sentiment that is being pumped up by people of the same mentality that gave us Jim Crow and cross-burnings in the past. In those days the hostility was against blacks and Catholics, but now it’s Muslims that have attracted the bulk of America’s irrational prejudices.

The good news is that when the anti-Muslims take to the streets these days, open-minded Americans who support the Muslims’ religious freedom usually show up in even greater numbers.

This brings me to a complaint I have about someone I admire a great deal, Bill Maher. The thing is, he’s completely wrong about Muslims. I’ve heard him say that Islam is a religion that promotes violence, or something along those lines, but the truth is that Christians have certainly been more violent and death-dealing over the past millennium than have Muslims. I’m sure that if you add up all the killing done by Christians, including the bloodletting of the Second World War in which the Allies and some of their principal enemies – Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy – did most of the killing, you would find it is Christians that seem more bloodthirsty than any other religious group. In fact, I have 100 cool dollars right here in my hand (rustle, rustle) that I will give to anyone (including Bill Maher) who can prove that Muslims have committed more acts of violence than Christians in the last century or even the last millennium and a half. Of course the recent expressions of anti-Muslim prejudice by normally sensible people like Maher, are small affairs compared to the outright bigotry by the usual suspects on the political right, Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin, to name the most prominent of these.

To put this issue in perspective it’s worthwhile to consider the beginnings of the modern Muslim-Western conflict. They can be said to have been started by John Foster Dulles (the Dick Cheney of his day) and his brother Allen Dulles when these two conspired to destroy Iran’s fledgling democracy in 1953. The motive, of course, was corporate America’s interest in controlling Iran’s oil, and the story is well told in Stephen Kinzer’s book All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror.

The 1953 coup that Kinzer describes resulted in the overthrow of Iran’s elected leader, Mohammad Mossadegh, and his replacement by the Shah. The Shah turned out to be a ruthless dictator who used torture and intimidation to control his country until, under the leadership of hard-line Muslim Ayatollah Khomeini, the people of Iran kicked the Shah out of the country. This revolution also involved the seizing of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the taking of embassy personnel as hostages. Naturally, since the CIA had put the Shah in power and we had trained his torture-happy police, the Iranians blamed the U.S. for the misery they had suffered under the Shah’s reign.

The success that Ayatollah Khomeini had in leading his rebellion under the banner of Islam led a number of other Middle Eastern leaders to turn to Islam as a political tool. As the title of Kinzer’s book implies, the roots of Middle Eastern terrorism can be found in the CIA coup of 1953. So, whose religion is responsible for all this violence? Well, Mr. Maher, now that the big money is on the table, you don’t seem to have much to say. Hmmph.

I hope that Park51 (known by anti-Muslim critics as “the Ground Zero Mosque”) will eventually rise from the ashes of the prejudice that now surrounds it and shine like a beacon of American open-mindedness. Those who oppose this construction seem to have bought the absolutely nutty arguments about Islam being America’s enemy.

I think New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg was on target when he said in a recent speech, “Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11 and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values and play into our enemies’ hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else.”

In the mosque debate we have an outstanding example of a religious leader who is on the side of peace and righteousness, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, “the man behind the mosque.” It’s good to see the Imam’s decency and patience enduring despite the mindless hostility of those whose only thought seems to be “Ground Zero Good; Muslims Bad.” To me it is the Imam who expresses what is best about America. And anyway, how evil could a man be whose wife is named “Daisy?”

Here’s more on the Imam.

I don’t often cite Time Magazine, but I think they did a good job on this story. Now, can we have a little open-mindedness and compassion here? It’s what Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King would surely have wanted.

How Great Great Grandfather Flynn Won the Civil War, Maybe

On Genealogy and Cavalry

It may be difficult to believe, but my father, William R. Moore, was a bona fide cavalryman who rode with the 102nd regiment in the late 1930s. Of course Dad became an Air Force pilot once World War II started, but before that, he had volunteered for the cavalry and wound up being stationed in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, with the 102nd.

Cavalryman William R. Moore (aka Dad), ca. 1939

But wait, there’s more. On our mother’s side of the family we also had a couple of cavalrymen, as sister Betsy’s diligent research on Ancestry.com has brought to light. One was Jacob Goerth, our Grandmother Yost’s maternal grandfather, who was a veteran of Grant's Vicksburg campaign and who later rode with the 5th cavalry out west, at one time serving as a scout with William “Buffalo Bill” Cody. One of his sons (our great great uncle) was Frank Goerth, who was stationed in the Philippines and also spent time in Panama. Betsy has done wonders digging up all this information, though from an anthropologist’s perspective, it’s a little embarrassing to see all these family connections to wars of imperialistic conquest.






Frank Goerth in the Philippines ca. 1900













Jacob Goerth who rode with the 5th Cavalry out west and with Buffalo Bill





My favorite cavalry ancestor was Patrick Flynn, who fought with the Army of the Potomac during the Civil War. According to stories handed down to us through our beloved Grandmother Yost, her grandfather, Patrick Flynn, brought glory to the family as a veteran of the Battle of Gettysburg - the turning-point of the Civil War.  Since my adolescence, I have had a longstanding fascination with that war and so, some years ago, when I had a chance to visit the Gettysburg battlefield I wrote the following account of Great Great Grandfather Flynn’s heroic actions.


Patrick Flynn and the Thundering Guns of Gettysburg

Part 1: Brandy Station

According to our family lore, Patrick Flynn of Lafayette, Indiana,  was a veteran of the Battle of Gettysburg. Consequently, when I visited the Gettysburg Battle site, I was anxious to find out all that I could concerning our ancestor’s acts of daring during his service with Company I of the 2nd New York Cavalry Regiment, (also known as the Harris Light Cavalry). The information below is based on historical materials and the records collected by Grandpa Yost. Since Patrick Flynn was a private, the historical records say nothing about him in particular, but the information I provide here follows the records of the units in which he served. Patrick Flynn was present and accounted for with his unit almost continuously from August 1861 until he was mustered out on June 23, 1865. Also, as noted in the Lafayette Daily Courier article included by Grandpa Yost in his Flynn-Goerth-Ullrich Genealogy, Private Flynn was among several Lafayette residents who received a medal for bravery for participation in the Battle of Gettysburg.

A medal for bravery! "What heroic exploits," I wondered, "could have warranted this honor?" The following account summarizes what my sleuthing revealed about Private Flynn.

In June of 1863 Patrick Flynn's regiment, as part of the Army of the Potomac, participated in the Battle of Brandy Station, one of the first battles on the eastern front of the Civil War in which the Union cavalry showed it could match the renowned Confederate cavalry in skill and tactics. In fact, I have on occasion overcome my natural modesty to point out (with no more than a little imaginative reconstruction) that on the basis of the Battle of Brandy Station we might say that Private Flynn actually won the Civil War for the North.

My reasoning is as follows: The famous and flamboyant Confederate cavalry commander, Jeb Stuart, had been spending some time in northern Virginia in the spring of 1863 gallivanting and parading about for the local citizenry, glorying in the laurels he had earned by making fools of his Union adversaries in recent campaigns.

On June 9 at Brandy Station, however, the scene changed dramatically when Stuart was rudely surprised by a strong contingent of Union cavalry that included Patrick Flynn’s regiment. Stuart’s Rebels were driven back and only managed to regain their footing after a bracing dose of fierce fighting -- something they had not been anticipating on the basis of their previous engagements with Yankee horse soldiers.

There are some writers familiar with the Battle of Brandy Station churlish enough to point out that Private Flynn’s 2nd NY did not entirely succeed in obtaining its objective in this fight. According to historian Edward G. Longacre, for example, when the 2nd NY regiment charged the Fleetwood Heights position where Jeb Stuart himself was personally trying to save his crumbling line, the New Yorkers were taken in flank, turned back and, “swerved to the right, broke and fled in utter rout.”

Still, the picture in my mind’s eye has Private Flynn riding up to Jeb Stuart in the heat of the assault (before Flynn and his fellow cavalrymen reconsidered the wisdom of continuing their attack on the heights), making a slash at the Rebel commander with his saber, missing his head only by inches and slicing off the Rebel general’s famed black ostrich plume in the process.

As an aside I would add that the New Yorkers’ less than fully successful charge on Fleetwood Heights was ordered by Colonel H. Judson Kilpatrick, an officer not lacking in bravery, but of whom it can certainly be said “his bravery far outshone his wisdom.” Kilpatrick is described by Civil War historian Longacre as “meagre of stature, shrill of voice, and looking like a weasel in sideburns.” He had earned the nickname “Kill-cavalry” from his tendency to order idiotic and pointless cavalry charges whose main aim seemed to be getting the name Judson Kilpatrick in the northern newspapers. He harbored dreams of becoming the Governor of New Jersey on the basis of an army career that he hoped would be brilliant, and eventually of running for President of the United States.

To get back to our main story, the Brandy Station cavalry engagement took place less than a month before the Battle of Gettysburg, and the embarrassment it caused Jeb Stuart (especially in light of the prancing and strutting he had been indulging in just prior to the fight), disrupted his judgment and caused him to make a fatal error during the Gettysburg campaign.

Stuart was so upset by the Brandy Station surprise attack--and the sharp criticism he was getting in the Confederate press because of it--that he was determined to overcome this humiliation with another great cavalry coup against the Yankee Army. Consequently, when Lee marched north into Pennsylvania, Stuart did not stay with him, but rather rode far to the east around the Army of the Potomac, capturing supply wagons as he went. Since cavalry usually provided a Civil War army with information about enemy movements, General Lee was badly handicapped by the absence of Jeb Stuart’s forces in the early phases of the Battle of Gettysburg - just when the Union army was most vulnerable. So, it is not too much of an exaggeration to say that this, the most crucial battle of the Civil War, was lost largely because Lee lacked the information about the enemy that Stuart’s cavalry could have provided had it been on hand. But Stuart’s wounded ego (and trimmed plumage?) had him off on a mission aimed more at restoring his own glory rather than supporting the aims of his commander in chief, Robert E. Lee.  Thank you, Private Flynn.


Part II: Gettysburg

Anyway, during my visit to Gettysburg, I made up my mind to find out exactly what crucial part Great Great Grandfather Flynn might have played in this historic battle. At Gettysburg, Private Flynn’s 2nd New York Cavalry was in the Second Brigade (under Colonel Pennock Huey) of the Second Division (under General David McMurtrie Gregg) of Pleasonton's Cavalry Corps. Though General Gregg was a courageous and competent man whose professionalism prevented him from currying favor with the press, Colonel Huey’s only redeeming quality seemed to be that he was not quite as big a jackass as Judson Kilpatrick. At a crucial point leading up to Gettysburg, when General Gregg’s division was in pursuit of Stuart’s raiders, both Gregg and the second ranking commander of the division fell gravely ill. This automatically made Colonel Huey the acting division commander, but so concerned about his lack of abilities were Gregg and his second-in-command that they decided not to inform Huey of his new responsibilities, figuring the division would be better off with no leader than with Huey in command. When Huey eventually was informed of his temporary promotion, he was, according to one observer, “so swelled up with importance” that he began rearranging the division staff to suit his own whims. This infuriated the second-ranking division commander to such an extent that his rage apparently killed his intestinal virus and he rose from his sickbed to take the reins from Huey’s hands.

But back to the Battle of Gettysburg: During the three-day battle, the Northern forces found themselves on the defensive from the outset.  For most of the fight, the Union line stretched in a fishhook shape from Culp’s Hill on the right, around through Cemetery Hill and Cemetery Ridge down to Little Round Top and Round Top on the extreme left.

The struggle for the strategic Culp’s Hill, which lasted for all three days of the battle, has been described as perhaps the most long-lasting, toe-to-toe slugfest in the Civil War. Since I knew that Gregg's cavalry division had been on the union right flank, it was here that I anticipated finding traces of Grandfather Flynn’s glory. So, almost as soon as we had arrived in Gettysburg, I set out for Culp's Hill to look for evidence of the 2nd New York's heroic participation.

On this hill, thousands lost life or limb as first the Yankees and then the Rebels seized and held strategic bulwarks on the wooded slopes which crucially anchored the Union right flank. From previous reading before my trip to Gettysburg, I had surmised that Patrick Flynn’s regiment was in the thick of this vital struggle. But, as I discovered on my quest, such was not the case. Culp’s Hill was an infantry battle, and General Gregg’s Cavalry Division, to which the 2nd NY belonged, was stationed much further east, protecting the extreme right of the Army of the Potomac. Private Flynn, in other words, missed the toe-to-toe slugfest on Culp's Hill.

The battleground far to the east of the Culp's Hill is known today as East Cavalry Field. It was here that General Gregg’s division along with George Armstrong Custer's brigade clashed with the superior forces of Jeb Stuart's late arriving Confederate cavalry. The fighting took place simultaneously with the renowned Pickett’s Charge, the Confederacy's high watermark according to most historians. Robert E. Lee's plan was to have Stuart’s cavalry support Pickett’s Charge by smashing into the Union rear just as the men of Pickett’s and Pettigrew's divisions hurled themselves against the Union front.

Pickett’s Charge was preceded by a deafening cannonade that was started by over 150 Confederate guns and was answered by a like number of Union guns. For hours on the afternoon of July 3 the two sides battered each other with thundering death that could be heard as far away as Baltimore and Washington--where Lincoln waited for news of the battle.

At this point Stuart wheeled around the Union right in order to strike at the rear, but he had not planned on running directly into Gregg’s and Custer's units, both of which had been stationed out on the right flank specifically to block just such an attack. The fighting at East Cavalry Field on July 3rd was one of the fiercest cavalry engagements of the Civil War. For hours men and horses charged against each other in demonstrations of valor made horrendous by the participation of artillery on both sides which bloodied the field with every volley. But Stuart might as well have charged against a brick wall as against these brave and sturdy Yankee horsemen who threw the Rebels back in disarray. Unfortunately Private Flynn cannot be counted among these brave and sturdy Yankee horsemen.

Huey’s brigade, which included Private Flynn’s regiment, had been detached from Gregg’s division and so was not engaged in the East Cavalry Field fight. Huey and his men had been sent about 20 miles off to the southeast to the town of Manchester, Maryland, in order to guard Union supplies there. Note that Maryland is right next to Pennsylvania and this would have placed Private Flynn within hearing range of the thundering guns of Gettysburg.

I should also add that after his defeat at Gettysburg General Lee sent a 17-mile-long wagon train loaded with wounded soldiers down one route while the bulk of his army retreated along another. According to Gettysburg Guide Charles Fennell, Huey’s Brigade saw action in attacks on that retreating wagon train. I have not yet confirmed whether or not Private Flynn’s regiment won glory as one of these ambulance-chasing units.

At any rate, we Yosts and Moores can definitely tell our descendants that in the summer of 1863, our ancestor, Great Great Grandfather Patrick Flynn, was in the 2nd NY Cavalry when that unit attacked Jeb Stuart’s position at Brandy Station on June 9, and that three weeks later during the Battle of Gettysburg his regiment was stationed in Manchester, Maryland. Assuming Private Flynn was not taking an afternoon nap during Pickett’s Charge (most unlikely considering the stern stuff of which the Flynns are made), he could, with little effort, have heard the mighty thundering guns of Gettysburg.



















Culp's Hill, site of fierce fighting in which Patrick Flynn did not take part 

--------------------------

May 28, 2018 - final, humbling addendum: I discovered on looking more closely at Patrick Flynn's military records that he was in hospital for the second half of 1863 and so, missed the actual Battle of Gettysburg entirely. I'm guessing that he was wounded at Brandy Station or in a skirmish at Aldie, Virginia, about a week later where his regiment also suffered serious casualties. In any case my theory that he maybe won the war for us is not thereby undermined.

If It Feels Good, It Must Be True

One thing I know well nigh for sure is that it’s all but impossible to know anything for sure. Of course there are some things so self-evident that we might as well say we know them for sure. One is that Noah did not carry two of every animal on his Ark in order to repopulate the world after the flood and another is that “free markets” are neither self-regulating nor really free.

If the Noah story is so obviously bogus, why do throngs of the faithful believe it? I think it’s largely because people accept it as part of the religious tradition handed down from their parents – parents whose hearts would be broken were the child to move away from the sacred tradition. I’m guessing that Noah’s Ark believers are born, and almost never made. Most likely not many people start out with a scientific understanding of the natural world and then later decide, “No, Darwin’s idea doesn’t explain anything – I think Noah’s big damn old boatload of heterosexual animals makes more sense.”

To a lesser degree inherited belief also explains the prevalence of the “free market” fantasy. I’ve seen evidence of this among my students and other Generation Y youth over the decades. Someone will argue fiercely and with deep certainty that free markets can solve all our economic problems, and when the origin of their ideas is probed, it turns out that they almost always came from Daddy. One young lady, whom I will call Roxanne, stands out particularly clearly in my memory. I had met her father and found him to be a domineering and rather self-important business executive. His daughter, following in Dad’s footsteps, spent a good deal of time trying to convince me that free markets need no regulation, that Fox News was no different from other networks in its biases, and that rich people were rich because they deserved to be rich. This in spite of the fact that she was one of the richest people I have ever known though she had done nothing in particular to deserve her wealth.

I didn’t harbor any personal animosity toward Roxanne though I admit it was a little annoying to hear her father’s words pouring out of her mouth on topics she herself had not thought about carefully. But this is not an unforgivable sin. However, listening to her brought to mind the principle I’m talking about here: Young people with strong political views almost always hold tightly to these views because of the influence of one or more of their parents, often a parent of a domineering or otherwise persuasive personality. What they seem to lack is the capacity to let go of their inherited beliefs and accept the possibility that their loving parents inadvertently misled them.

The ones I run into are overwhelmingly conservative, and this probably reflects the surge in the 1980s of mindless conservatism led by Ronald Reagan.

And now it’s time to point out some of the other trends we’ve seen since the 1980s, particularly the unraveling of the socio-economic fabric that had held the country together for fifty years. It was in the 1980s that the rich began to take ever more of the nation’s wealth for themselves and institutions like savings and loan corporations wreaked unregulated havoc on the economy, while helping to line the pockets of a few already wealthy insiders. The financial collapse of 2008 is the culmination of the pro-free market, deregulatory fever that President Reagan inspired. But don’t try to tell Roxanne that – she’ll just dig in her heels and insist that it was Clinton’s fault, or Karl Marx’s. Maybe she is so attached to her father that she simply cannot muster the courage to see things clearly; that would put her in conflict with him and his fearsome convictions.

One well known individual (not a particularly young person!) who moved away from the bogus “free market” myth is Steve Eisman, an investor described in Michael Lewis’s "The Big Short." Eisman shifted his politics from strident Republican to become “the financial market’s first socialist.” His experience on Wall Street eventually led him to say, “I now realized there was an entire industry, called consumer finance, that basically existed to rip people off.” But Eisman, besides being very smart, is also an unusually bold and self-assertive individual. Would there were more like him among America’s youth – though I wouldn’t necessarily want them to be as abrasive as he is.

None of this is really new, of course. It’s just another version of the truism that both social psychology and common sense tell us: Most people prefer emotionally satisfying conclusions to realistic ones. Cherished beliefs often trump troubling truths, and this is especially so in cases where those beliefs are wrapped up with vital emotional bonds.






Darwin or Noah? Where did we come from?

   




Elephants in Tanzania, May 2008

The Gathering of the Clan

Every summer for the past two or three decades our clan has gathered in May or June for the MOORE FAMILY VACATION. There are about 20 of us spanning three generations. Since we are now all officially independent adults, the gathering has taken on some of the organizational demands required of an invading army, though we are different from an invading army because we do not leave destruction in our wake on purpose.

Gathering place - June 2010



 














Facing the camera, more or less: Beverly, Somebody's legs, Loren, Cole, Betsy, Brett, Reilly; Facing away: Shy person





Families come from as far away as Denver (Bob and Bev Reilly) and Philadelphia (Bill and Gail Hale), but most of us still live in Florida so this is where we have been meeting lately. A key requirement of our gathering place is that it have at least one room large enough for the entire gang to get together for such things as Happy Hours and Game Playing. The Happy Hours come around 4 o’clock or so, depending on when everyone shows up and how quickly Billy can whip together his famous whiskey sours or red snappers.

The Game Playing involves rounds of Trivial Pursuit, Outburst and other sociable contests that allow for spirited competition and its attendant “chirping” (by the winners) and whining and excuse fabricating (by the non-winners). Bill taught us the term chirping which, among his golf buddies, refers to a clever sort of gloating designed to get under the skin of your opponent when he or she is on the ropes. It’s quite vicious, actually, so the Moore clan has taken to it with gusto. Tracy seems particularly adept. I recall her shoving a scorecard under Bill’s nose just as her team had made the final winning point against his, and asking sweetly as she dramatically recorded the point, “Is this what you mean by chirping?”

“Yeah,” Bill chuckled somewhat uncomfortably, “you got it.”

We stayed at a couple of resorts on Anna Maria Island this year. As I mentioned in the last post, our cousins, John and Norma, came to spend the first day of the vacation with us. Norma and Betsy spent a good bit of time on-line at Ancestry.com tracking down the various horse thieves and ne’er-do-wells with which, I suspect, our family tree is festooned.













 

Betsy and Norma looking at Ancestry.com




There are lots of nice places to eat on Anna Maria and some of us particularly liked the nearby Habana Cabana, a funky lunch and breakfast café that featured shelves full of used books along with a Cuban-inspired menu.








Habana Cabana












Anna Maria Island is situated between the Gulf of Mexico and the outer reaches of Tampa Bay, each of these bodies of water offering very different environments and perspectives.





Anna Maria - Bayside












Gulfside






Something new for me on this trip was a fabulous kayak voyage along the marshes and mangrove swamps bordering Tampa Bay. Bill, Gail and I made the voyage together and I was grateful for their company since they are kayak veterans while I had never handled one before.














Bill and Gail's Excellent Adventure



The trip was fun, the weather was beautiful and the wildlife interesting. My favorite part was the side trip through the mangrove tunnel which not only offered some unique views, but featured a number of critters including packs of little black crabs that scuttled along the mangrove roots looking for all the world like prowling gangs of spiders.





Mangrove tunnel









 






Black creatures from the lagoon (if you look closely)






At the turnaround point of the trip we came to a tall wooden tower that gave us a great view of Tampa Bay and the Sunshine Skyway that straddles it.


The tower and views from the tower.








































Sunshine Skyway in the Distance
















Something slithering along the bottom of Tampa Bay




Other high points were the fishing ventures on Bill’s boat where Cole, Brett and Barbara tried to catch something for the dinner table. Brett and Bill succeeded, but Barbara’s catch was “too big” and had to be thrown back. I never realized there was such a thing as fish being too big to keep.

Brad amazed us with his reliably delicious cuisine: this time the freshly caught fish with beurre blanc took the prize, or would have if prizes were offered, which they are not because we are too cheap.

For Generation 3, aka “the cousins,” every vacation includes various ritualistic undertakings only vaguely understood by those of us in Gen. 2, such as “the long walk on the beach,” the “late night hanging out” and the general “mocking of the elders.” Some of these events took place in Grace and Loren’s room this year, since theirs was farthest off the beaten path. It was also shabby and beaten up enough that any collateral damage would be barely noticeable, but I don’t think that was a consideration in choice of venue.

This year we had an opportunity to meet Justin’s significant friend, Vanessa, who, somewhat surprisingly, at the end of the week, did not say she refused to ever take part in a Moore gathering again.

Naturally, we had the annual family banquet in which all twenty of us descend on a local restaurant where Dad generously treats us and, while doing so, helps boost the local economy. This year the banquet was at Euphemia Haye, a fine old Longboat Key restaurant located in a majestic two-story house with lots of racy pictures in the restrooms.

Bev took our “traditional family photo” outside the Euphemia Haye under a picturesque banyan tree. We didn’t notice the picturesque tree as much as we might have since our ankles were being relentlessly attacked by a mob of terrorist sand fleas as we posed for the two obligatory shots. After the second shot, Brad bolted from the line-up with an air that signaled unmistakably, “I’m done,” which prevented any prospect of a third shot and more blood loss to the vermin.















Still Life with Bow Ties


After dinner there was the annual NTB Award, given to the family member whose behavior over the previous twelve months revealed the most indisputable evidence of bodacious imbecility. Brett was the easy winner this year with a story that began, “I had a truck reserved for 7 o’clock that morning but I didn’t wake up until 11:30. So, I decided to get some breakfast and then go to the rental office.” I’m not saying the competition wasn’t stiff, but Brett’s story, only the beginning of which I’m giving you here, was unbeatable. For more on the NTB Awards, see the January 26, 2010, post.












 

Bill hands on the NTB Award to a richly deserving Brett







Bill and Gail;
Betsy, Newmy & Loren

Saying good-bye








All in all the vacation provided us with some good times, as usual. Dad (now alone in Generation 1 since our Mom died last year) enjoyed himself and we were all glad to see that. Now that the cousins are getting more scattered as they pursue jobs in different states, it becomes harder for us to gather. Still, I’m betting we’ll be together again about this time next year.

Must Be the Season of the Stitch

Every summer at about this time the Moore clan (all 20 of us) gather for a family vacation, usually at a beach resort of some sort. This year we are staying at Anna Maria Island - which we Floridians used to pronounce Anna Mar-EYE-a Island back in the 1960s, before someone came along and made us get our Spanish pronunciations right.

An unanticipated surprise was a visit by cousin John Moore and his wife Norma who live on the east coast near Fort Lauderdale. Sister Betsy had been in contact with Norma via email since they ran into each other on some obscure branch of the Moore family tree which they had both been following on ancestry.com.

This was a fun surprise since we had not seen John since he was about 16 and had never met Norma at all. We didn’t even know how they met and came to get married. All we really knew about John was that he went to West Point. This, it turns out did not shape him into a rigid, gung-ho army professional, but it was relevant to the way he and Norma met.

The story, as told to us by Norma goes like this: “I attended Ladycliff , a Catholic girls' school right outside West Point's main gate. It was a small liberal arts college with five hundred Catholic girls, forty-four nuns, and one Jewish kid. It was not the school I hoped to attend, but it did meet my father's criteria. The doors were locked each night precisely at eleven pm, and the only men around had haircuts and curfews. In the early 70's it was a Sicilian father's dream. [Norma had mentioned in our “family tree” discussions that her father was Sicilian.]

“I was dating John's roommate George. He was a Latino with a bit of an edge which I found attractive. John, I thought, was a stuffed shirt, boring and judgmental-- a real Dudley Doright. John described me as a "bubble head" so it's understandable why we didn't mesh right away. George would later get kicked out of the Academy, but that's a story for another day.

“Anyway, George and John thought it would be a good idea to send their laundry over for me to do. I don't remember why. Maybe they missed laundry pick up that week. I was mildly peeved at the presumption, as were my friends, who arrived in my room that night with sewing baskets in hand. I think we sang a chorus or two of “I Am Woman” as we methodically sewed closed every neck, arm, and leg opening in every garment, including socks and undershorts. We got the flies too. Elaine, who was particularly skilled with a needle, embroidered a pink Navy goat on the front of George's gym shorts and "Remember Me" in day glow orange on the fly of John's tightie whities.

“In hindsight, it may have been better to just stitch up the flies. Having the legs and arms sewn shut alerted them to the joke and prompted them to check the fly before they actually needed to use it. I so wish I could have been there to hear John explain the embroidered underwear to his mom.”

This as much of the story as Norma told us, and I don’t yet have John’s side. However, I can only say I absolutely understand the fascination a woman of such imagination and flair could have for a cadet living in the confines of West Point, or for any guy with an appreciation for the basics of life, for that matter. Anyway, the immediate result was a courtship that produced a warm and simpatico couple, and one with an off-beat potential that is surprisingly reminiscent of some of the nuttiness that occasionally makes itself felt on our side of the Moore clan. I hope we see John and Norma again before too long, not only because of their enjoyable companionship, but because they could provide new material for our NTB award (see previous blog) and might thereby screen me from potential embarrassment (not that I really need to worry about that given my scrupulous ways and highly dignified demeanor).