This snow and ice is never going to melt. Mostly because it has nowhere to go. The conditions have not been conducive to condensation, which would hurry the process along. Instead, the air has been cold, unceasingly, and relentlessly dry. Oh, you can see some rooftops now, asphalt shingles darkened by the moisture that has sat on them for almost three weeks now, but that’s just false hope. It’s nothing but this from here on in.
Those hours of sleet we had last month seemed like a lovely thing at the time. We had all the groceries we needed, no travel planned and I’d pulled out every light source and battery we own as a therapeutic just-in-case. We never lost power. You could get out and drive again on the bigger roads on the third and fourth day — if you could get to those bigger roads.
Mostly, it’s just boring. Going outside is nice. Looking out the window and seeing grass and trees and things is nice. Instead, I just stare through curtains and blinds, thinking about the things you can’t do.
It’s never about the things I should be doing, which is weird.
Today I did class prep for tomorrow’s classes.
It occurred to me when I was wrapping that up that this was a unique day of class prep. I always spend at least the day before building or finishing and polishing the next day’s classwork. Today was the first time I have ever not had to build it all out from scratch. Ever? Ever. Two classes tomorrow, and I didn’t have to start all over to get ready. I spent my time reviewing notes from previous lectures that I am going to use tomorrow. First time ever.
The first class I taught was in … what? In 2009?
The really nice thing is that next Monday/Tuesday this will happen again. Twice in a row! But then the streak ends. Still, this is nice, and the way it should be more often. One day it will be, perhaps. We’ll see. We don’t know that, but we’ll see.
I’ve never liked “we’ll see,” but it is an inescapable sentence.
We drove over the river this evening. Parked in a parking deck. Walked a few blocks to where we were going. Shivered part of the way, because I did not carry a coat, because I didn’t realize all of that. But, hey, that’s my fault and no one else’s. Anyway, it was warm where we were going. And they had a restroom and food, and also the evening’s entertainment.
We walked into this little comedy club, which was some slightly larger room behind an empty bar. Probably the joint sat 100, 120 people. Cozy little place. Unless you were sitting right at the back of the room you probably felt like you were sitting right at the stage. It felt both dusty, but clean. And a little shopworn. Three long steps would get you across the stage and the back wall was a faded old cityscape mural.
It made me think, as comedy clubs always do, about how comedians in my hometown would brag about our venue when they played there. The Stardome was one of the best in the country, they’d say. In my very limited experience, they were right! Also, that place has a real menu. This place offered three sandwiches, three pizzas and drinks. They didn’t have a drink minimum, they had an item minimum. Extortionate so-and-sos. But I choose to think that means all of the money from tickets goes to the performers, which is a nice thought.
We saw Kristen Key this evening. She got her break from one of those comedy variety reality show things, but we discovered her on Instagram a few years ago. This was the first time she was in the same city we were in at the same time, and so of course we went. (She was also at the concert last night, and now I think she’s following us.)
Her Instagram feed is full of clips of her Q&A period, but here’s a set piece from another show, which we saw this evening.
The questions she got during this show were … not good. Someone was looking for love. Someone else’s relative is a huge fan but couldn’t make it because of a medical procedure. A third person was looking for some sort of dating advice she could share. Someone asked about her favorite song from last night’s Brandi Carlile concert. And someone asked what her favorite Winter Olympic sport is and why is not curling. She said her favorite sport was curling.
She got the standing ovation in the little club at the end, and got a little teary about it. And then she was standing out front to meet people as they left, spending several minutes with anyone that asked, which was nice. She mad a video for the person who couldn’t be there because of health reasons. We talked with her for a moment, and she, of course, told us to come back the next time she’s in town, and we will, especially since I just thought I should ask her to record an outgoing voicemail message for me.
Today’s joke is the ice and snow and weather. Periodically throughout the day, I’ve dropped a random observation about it in the middle of conversation. I look around soberly. No one is watching, but this part of the performance is for me, a half-trained method actor, so that I may immerse myself in the role, as Stanislavski would want.
And then, with a fixed look upon my face, and in a sincere, likeable, confidential tone, I interject, “This snow and ice is never going to melt.”
Because it is never going to melt.
I’m also doing this out of the blue.
It’s not a funny joke the first time, but after three or four rounds it started hitting every time. And I can do this bit for a while, because it is never going to melt. Oh some of it may disappear this weekend, if the long range forecast is to be believed. It has been suggested in a tantalizing display of numbers, that we might enjoy something like almost 48 consecutive hours above freezing. I don’t believe it, and, yes, I have some method acting about that, too.
We talked about the Super Bowl in Rituals and Traditions today. Talked about the game for a few moments, but we watched the opening vignette and I tried to get them to think about what the production was trying to tell us here.
Then we talked about the halftime show for about 25 minutes. And then we discussed the postgame show, and it occurred to me: I never had a class like this, and while the productions back then aren’t as epic as they are today, I wish I had a had class where we walked in and talked about stuff like this.
We talked about interesting and important things, but this was a Tuesday lecture, and how fun is that?
Finally, I brought it back to the halftime show. Some 120-130 million people (the solid numbers should be out tomorrow) watched. Why did the NFL book Bad Bunny?
It’s good business, of course. We have here the world’s most successful musician — 16 Grammy nominations, six wins, 17 Latin Grammy Awards, 113 songs in the Billboard Hot 100, 41 in the top 40 and 12 in the top 10, while having also been the most heavily streamed artist in four of the last six years — playing to one of the world’s largest television audiences. And the NFL wants to expand it’s audience. They’re playing nine games overseas next year. Bad Bunny, meanwhile, was just recently the most heavily streamed musician in China. Plus, younger audiences, women, there’s plenty of crossover to explore.
Someone said: controversy. And, sure, controversy sells. We’d been talking symbolism and messaging for a half hour or so by then. I put this on the screen. Isn’t it something, I said, when this is controversial?
In today’s installment of the criticism class, we discussed a story that was, I thought, one of the more interesting pieces from 2024. I wanted the class to see the mechanics of how the writer wrote about the mechanics of deaf soccer. I played when I was a kid, and when I first saw this story I thought, “How do they do that?” Soccer is basically played, and communicated, from behind you. But if no one can hear …
The first thing to know about deaf soccer is that it is soccer, and a match looks the same as at any level of the sport.
Instead of a loud, profanity-laced pregame speech from the most extroverted leader on the team, players gather in a circle and execute a synchronized movement of quick fist bumps and back-of-hand slaps. During the game, the center official raises a flag in addition to blowing their whistle for fouls and stoppages of play, and games are typically quieter than the average match that features more verbal communication.
From a technical standpoint, players must have hearing loss of at least 55 decibels in their “better ear” to qualify to play deaf soccer and, crucially, hearing aids are not allowed in games, ensuring all players are on a level playing field.
On a hearing team, communication often comes from the back. The goalkeeper and defenders see everything in front of them and can direct their teammates accordingly — and verbally.
“For us, that’s not possible, that’s not realistic,” Andrews says.
The process is more about inherent understanding and movement as a team. If a forward pushes high to chase a ball, everyone behind her must follow. Halftime or injury breaks become more important, Andrews says, because they represent rare opportunities to look at each other as a group.
We also discussed this piece on the NWSL’s sexual abuse settlement. I find it somewhere between a process piece and a rote recap from someone, Meg Linehan, who’s been all over the story for a long while now. It’s a straightforward news story, and we need a lot of those. In this case, it allowed us to discuss how you can make that determination from the first three paragraphs.
The NWSL will create a $5 million player compensation fund as part of a settlement regarding its role in widespread allegations of abuse.
The settlement, announced on Wednesday, ends a joint investigation by the attorneys general (AGs) of the District of Columbia, Illinois and New York concerning systemic abuse across the league and potential violations of state and local human rights laws.
The three offices, as with the investigation by former U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates and the joint investigation by the NWSL and its players association that came before them, focused on “pervasive sexual harassment and abuse by coaches against players” and systematic failures by the league to “exercise adequate insight, institute workplace antidiscrimination policies, or appropriately respond to complaints,” as listed in the settlement agreement.
Then we talked about what’s not there. And we talked about the visuals included with the story. I had a different perspective on the photos than they did. I need to make a more distinctive point about that the next time it comes up.
And here’s the sun going down, from our 6th floor almost-corner office.
That was 5:37 p.m., proof that the days are getting longer. There’s some solace in that.
… This snow and ice is never going to melt.
We left at just about that time, because who wants to stay longer than that? Also, we had somewhere to be.
So we went over the river, and got to the arena just in time to see The Head and the Heart. I didn’t even know they were going to be there until they started playing this song while we were walking through the concourse, meaning we had to get to our seats.
That was a platinum single in 2011. And despite some early success — and a habit of getting songs on soundtracks — they’ve stuck to their indie Americana roots. Delightfully enthusiastic for their art, and quirky in their performance.
They make for an energetic opener, which was great, because backstage, Brandi Carlile was waiting for her turn. She was fresh off singing “America the Beautiful” at the Super Bowl and, this very night, beginning her first arena tour. While the curtain was up, they played Madonna through the PA. And then they lowered the lights, and light the stage and curtain like this.
At the right moment in that first song the curtain fell and there was the whole band and this circular shot of the singer before revealing to us that she was, in fact, eclipsing the sun.
That’d be a little much, but Brandi Carlile is an exceptional performer. Each song made for a different style of visual treatment on the stage screen. And, from this, I have inferred that we are returning to an era of 1990s liner notes, which also looked like an earlier era of vinyl art. Suits me just fine.
Early in the set they did request gimmick. Years ago, she said, they did a tour like this. So this should be no sweat. It’s a deep cut of a tune they recorded 20 years ago, and apparently haven’t played live in a long time. Not that you’d know. She was 24 when she recorded this. It sounds like it. Still works. Still a great song.
She also did a cover of a Linda Rondstadt classic. And then a bunch of her rock tunes and a lot of her Americana. She also covered an Alanis Morissette song and it was so good that, according to American and Canadian law, Morissette can’t sing it anymore, because it belongs to Brandi Carlile now.
Vanity Fair once wrote a review saying her voice is the eighth wonder of the world. If that’s overstating it, it isn’t overstating it by much. See her if you can. That was a fantastic show. I want to go back again right now.
We — the cats and I — were watching BirbTV this morning. I might have, for a time, been more interested than the kitties. It was when this beautiful cardinal showed up. She waited patiently, and then waited some more. She approached the bird feeder, then hopped away to a distant branch, and then came back again. You’ll have to forgive the quality of the photo, I was stretching my phone’s digital zoom and shooting through a double-pane window. It was, however, a beautiful bird.
That’s looking to the east. I also stood and looked to the west, taking three photographs before the chill chased me back indoors. The windchill was three degrees. I walked out there in jeans and a long sleeve shirt and house shoes.
Pretty soon we get to the Stockholm Syndrome portion of the winter which, in this case, is when I look up the weather in Stockholm and see that it is essentially the same.
Sigh.
I had only one meeting today, which allowed me the time to catch up on the week’s reading, grading, and make sure my prep for next week is at least underway. (Sunday I’ll start next week’s reading, and Monday I’ll prepare a lecture. And this is the course of most weeks for a while. Unless I get a bolt of energy and get ahead of lecture prep. But that’s never happened, so I am not counting on it.) The meeting today was a virtual meeting.
Have you ever been in a presentation where the presenter reads from their slides? The only thing better than being in a presentation where the presenter is reading from their slides is being in a virtual presentation where the presenter is reading from their slides.
The slides, to be fair, were helpful. I downloaded them for later, and mostly kept making sure I was on mute so the giggles and chuckles didn’t break through the reading. Of the slides. Which were on the screen.
We went over the river tonight and made a little history. Unrivaled, the 3-on-3 women’s basketball league. There was a doubleheader, and also history. The crowd set a new record for attendance of a regular season women’s basketball game. There were 21,490 people announced. They watched the Breeze and the Phantom, both teams filled with stars the crowd knew.
The Phantom won, 71-68. I like the timing rules. They play on a slightly smaller court — which changes the style of play — and then play three 7-minute quarters. In the fourth quarter it’s a race, first to plus-11. At the end of the 3rd, the score was 53-60, so the first team to 71 would be the winner. That format takes out a lot of the timeout and fouling gamesmanship that characterizes the traditional version of the sport. And it adds tension, too. I assume that at that stage of the game the fatigue is setting in for one team and desperation for the other, because that race to the final score was frantic, and fun.
It’s also meant to speed up the game, which it seemed to do. But there’s a flaw in the doubleheader setup. The time between the two games was interminable, even with the assistance of the hype squad, the mic woman (who had to be paid in Red Bull, for she was, herself very hype), and also a local rapper who has a big viral hit. The second game was set to begin at 9:30, and it started at about 9:40. It was between the Rose and the Lunar Owls, which is a great team name, obviously.
Maybe there’s a media component to this, there can’t be any other reason to drag out a 9:30 start. You are certainly not waiting for anyone to get into the venue at that point. But you are getting in the way of my dinner.
The Lunar Owls won 75-85, on the strength of Marina Mabrey’s 47 points, including the game winner. She had 27 of those in the first quarter, which is a league record, and the hoop must have looked 12-feet wide for her. She’s played all over the world, but grew up about an hour away. Must have been a nice homecoming.
Anyway, back to my dinner. We ordered Chick-fil-A from a nearby store. Went through the drive-thru. They’ve updated their app and now there’s no upsell point. This is why that’s a problem. You plug in your order, put in your car, and now, instead of seeing a person, you scan a QR code when you get there. Used to be, that person would confirm the order. They’d ask “Would you like to add anything?” But now there’s not an option for that. What if you’d changed your mind? What if you needed to add something? We got our sandwiches and then went through again, just to prove the point, and also to get a milkshake.
The new app and mobile ordering process violates Smith’s First Rule of Economics (1997): Don’t make it hard for me to spend my money with you.
A breezy, chilly day. And, later, downright coolish. That’s the season, and that’s a point we must concede. This comes with this season.
In today’s Criticism in Sport Media, we watched “It’s Time.” Here’s a little clip where Billy Brewer talks about how Chucky Mullins got to Ole Miss.
The problem was that I was able to find nine minutes of the doc to skip, but we just couldn’t cut out anything else out and keep the story together. So it ran the whole class. But this will be an interesting experiment. What will the class say when we talk about it on Tuesday?
In my org comm class we talked about different types of conflict, the way behaviorists used to see it, the way we view it today, the structural and contextual factors that create it, and why it is sometimes good.
And then we played a bit of the prisoner’s dilemma. I broke the class into two groups and sent one of them outside. This group played as the Las Vegas Raiders. The other group played as the Los Angeles Chargers. I told them each the circumstance. Last game of the season, if you win, you make it to the NFL playoffs and the other team goes home. If the two teams tie you both make it to the playoffs. What do you do?
I made the groups argue this out separately amongst themselves. I brought them back together to reveal the choices they’d made. This scenario actually happened a few years ago, and some of them actually remembered it, which made the internal conflict a little more interesting. Ultimately, though, both sides decided to play for the win.
This is how it played out in real life.
So one group won, basically. One student rightly noticed that if both groups had been left in the room they could have figured this out. But that’s the prisoner’s dilemma for you.
It’s an applied approach to understanding people and groups, this class, you see.
I took a grad school class with a guy who literally wrote the book on game theory. (There are about 6,000 books on game theory, to be sure.) He talked about it for an entire semester. And so, today, I was laughing to myself about his many ridiculous stories.
After class we went over the river. Had dinner at McGillins the oldest Irish pub in the city. The food was not the best I’ve had at an Irish pub, but the experience was fine. It was just up the street from the venue where we saw.
He does laugh funny.
It’s all one-liners and bawdy dark comedy. He does a lot of good crowd work. And he laughs funny.
Then every now and again he’ll do something very thoughtful, almost philosophical, which gives away the other nonsense. The problem with one-liners, though, is that they’re almost immediately forgotten. But the laughs remain! Even the funny ones.
For a grading break, and before an afternoon and early evening meeting, we went to the Museum of the American Revolution. It’s one of those things you wonder why I waited so long to do. And it’s one of those days where my lovely bride braced herself when she said, “What time should we go?” There was that meeting we had to attend, so we were backtiming the day.
I said I’d found that if you want to read things you could spend a three hours there.
And this is where it pays off to do things with a person who knows what’s in your heart, but are afraid to say out loud. This incredible woman bought tickets for 10 a.m., which would give us more than four hours at the museum.
Worth it. And we didn’t even get to see one of the rooms. But here’s a quick look at some of what we saw.
Outside, because of course you must start outside, there are modern brick walls, nondescript, but for this sculpture.
(This is the first of three panoramas in this post. And it’s beautiful. Click to embiggen.)
This is a really, really fine museum. But there are a few silly things. For tactile people, like me, there are a few things you can touch. You remember reading about the Stamp Act. Here’s an oversized stamp you can touch. It is made of plastic.
There are a few areas where they’re trying to create an immersive experience. You walk under a recreation of a Liberty Tree, where you can touch a bit of wood salvaged (and preserved) from an actual Liberty Tree, the last surviving Liberty Tree, which was felled by a hurricane in 1999 in Maryland.
Pasted up in some of those areas are reproductions of handbills that the revolutionary-era people might have seen. This one was printed by E. Russell, who notes his shop is set up “next the Cornfield, Union-street.”
E. Russell was Ezekiel Russell, a printer of minor importance. He apprenticed under his brother, and then bounced around New England trying to make his business work. For a time he dabbled in auctioneering, but he returned to slinging the lead. He wrote a royalist publication for a time, but history seems to think that he just needed the money. Most of his work is remembered as small pamphlets. His wife, Sarah Russell worked in the print shop, and took over the business after he died in 1796. She’s remembered as a pioneer of female publishing.
And before we get too far into this, let me direct you to Museum’s site, for a look at what they consider the crown jewel of the collection, which they don’t let allow you to photograph, George Washington’s war tent. It’s a living piece of history, lived in during war and well documented in peace, it is a piece of linen that’s 250 years old, so there’s no flashes or bright lights allowed.
You’ll see a few glimpses of it, and the mini-doc that visitors watch before seeing the tent, in this video.
Washington didn’t sleep in it every night during the war, but that tent got it’s share of use. It makes sense that this is well protected, but you still want to walk under those flaps when you see it. You want to stand there, and try to understand the sense of the size of the space, and the great men — scared, cold, hungry, determined — that stood there.
This is the second panorama in the post, and this is thought to be George Washington’s sword. And, remarkably, it’s just … sitting there.
(Click to embiggen.)
When they read the Declaration of Independence in New York City on July 9, 1776, some of the soldiers and sailors tore down symbols of the king. British flags, tavern signs, the royal insignia, were all removed. Including a statue of George III, that had been sculpted in London. Much of the statue — he’d been riding a horse, wearing a Roman-style toga — was carried off to Connecticut and melted into musket balls, some 42,000 in all. A few fragments of the statue survived.
They’ve dug some musket balls out of a few battlefields that matched the composition of lead and tin here, so historians think some of this statue was sent back to the British in anger.
The Declaration of Independence was distributed, by design and format, as a fragile thing. John Dunlap was the original printer, in Philadelphia. It is thought that he printed about 200, some of them in great haste. Just 26 copies of the Dunlap broadsides are known to survive. (Including one that was found behind a painting picked up for $4 at a flea market in 1989!) The Library of Congress has two of the Dunlap originals, and only one of those is complete.
I got to see one of the Dunlap broadsides in a museum exhibit in 2003. No photographs allowed.
This is not a Dunlap broadside.
John Gill, Edward E. Powars, and Nathaniel Willis printed the first copies of the Declaration in Boston, both in newspapers and in this broadside. This is a second printing of the Gill and Powars broadside. (The bottom line is the differentiating clue.)
Historians don’t know how many of their broadsides were made or survive. But you can still go to the print shop when you’re in Boston. (I’m going there.) A master printer, Gary Gregory, does historical reproductions in the traditional style. (I’m going to talk him into letting me print a copy.)
Ssshhhhh … I think this one is a reproduction, but it is historically faithful version of that second printing. It even has the Gill and Powars errors off the Dunlap original. I wonder how much thought the museum or other experts give to the amount of creases and wear should be worked into reproductions.
General Hugh Mercer fought and was killed at the Battle of Princeton. Born in Scotland, Mercer was a surgeon during the Jacobin uprising in his homeland. He fled to Pennsylvania, in 1747, after the Jacobites were put down. He worked as an apothecary, and then served in the French and Indian War in the 1750s. He was wounded twice, once badly, and he became George Washington’s lifelong friend, moving to Virginia to dispense medicine there, and then came the American Revolution, where he quickly was appointed as a general in the Pennsylvania militia.
He and his men, a vanguard of some 350 soldiers, ran across two British regiments and some attached cavalry. Mercer’s horse was shot from under him. The British thought he was Washington, and so they moved in and demanded he surrender. Mercer, instead, drew his sword. He was bayoneted seven times and left for dead.
You’ve seen the painting that commemorates his death. And maybe history is like that sometimes. A high profile person was killed, and he was well-liked enough to become the centerpiece of John Turnbull’s first war painting. (When you look at the painting, you see Washington arriving on horseback. In the foreground Mercer was wounded. But you don’t see Hugh’s face. Turnbull used Mercer’s son, Hugh Jr., as a model.)
Mercer survived the battlefield. He lived, in agony, for a little more than a week. He gave this sword to his friend and adjutant, a Welshman named Jacob Morgan, and it stayed in their family for two generations. The photo above, the sword is paired with a bayonet that belonged to one of the units that Mercer ran across on that fateful day.
This is the hilt of his sword, posthumously engraved.
“Sword of General Hugh Mercer of the Revolutionary Army born in Aberdeen Scotland 1725 He came to Philadelphia from Scotland in 1746. Died January 12 1777 of wounds received at the Battle of Princeton, N.J.”
A handsome, large weapons display. Touch the screens to learn about each of the items in this giant case.
On the left you see weapons that were commonly in action from 1775 to 1777. Some, the display notes, were local, some captured, some left over from previous conflicts. On the right are weapons that show up later in the war, including some standardized French weapons were so important in the fighting.
I wonder if historians and docents got a little giddy putting all of those things on display.
And why is this humble little canteen just as intriguing?
The UStates branding suggests it belonged to the Continental Army, somewhere around 1777. The other initials might be people who carried the thing.
The every day items are just as fascinating as all of the big ticket items here.
These buttons adorned soldiers’ coats. They also date to 1777.
The museum then, note that gunpowder casks in 1776 also were stamped with USA, but these coat buttons, 25 per coat, were the first widespread use.
Archeologists found these all over the place at Valley Forge and other camps.
There’s a naval section. More pamphlets set the scene.
Here, friend, learn this MANLY SONG, and then join the American fleet. “A privateering we will go my boys, a privateering we will go!”
I wonder when they had time to do much sailing, singing 10 verses of this MANLY SONG. You know it’s MANLY because of all of the bravely dying and cheerfully dying going on in this song. Between this, and my 2009 experience learning about what life was like aboard the U.S.S. Constitution I don’t think the sailor’s life would have been for me.
That exhibit tells of 14-year-old free African American James Forten who volunteered aboard a privateer ship. He survived the war, became a prominent abolitionist, a wealthy Philadelphia businessman and the head of a hugely prominent regional family name.
This is the flag of the 2nd Spartan Regiment of South Carolina. The sign says that this is the first time it has been displayed since it flew over arms.
This sword belonged to Maj. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, Washington’s second-in-command at Yorktown. Yorktown was where the British surrendered, you might recall. When General Cornwallis sent his second-in-command to surrender, Washington sent Lincoln to receive him.
This is a panorama.
(Click to embiggen.)
One of my ancestors, a great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather according to online genealogy, was at Yorktown. He was born in 1751 in colonial Virginia, served twice in the militia and helped guard an estimated 500 British prisoners after they quit the field in Yorktown.
There’s also an ax head on display with Lincoln’s sword. The continental soldiers used axes like that to chop their way through British fortifications at Yorktown. (If you were wondering, Benjamin Lincoln was apparently the fourth cousin, three times removed, of Abraham Lincoln through his mother’s side.)
These beautiful buttons, the sign says, were sold as souvenirs of George Washington’s 1789 inauguration as president. They were sewn onto clothing.
Don’t you want a copy of each of those? (Real ones, of course. Not repros. Never repros.)
Just read the text on this sign. Go ahead and read it. I’ll be waiting on the other side of the photo.
“Charges spread through the partisan press that the state’s inclusive voter laws encouraged election fraud.”
We’ve been fighting this same stupid “Can’t let ’em vote, that’s how cheating happens” battle for more than 200 years. We’ve been fighting it because it is powerfully effective rhetoric. It’s nothing more than that, but still we are fighting it
At the end of the part of the museum we saw — because we didn’t get to see everything today, despite four hours! — there was a section of digitized reproductions of photographs of Revolutionary War era Americans. (Much later in life, obviously.)
Jonathan Harrington had seem some things. (And if I knew this story beforehand I would taken a more careful photo.) Harrington was, at 16, a fifer in a company at the battles of Lexington and Concord. His uncle and namesake was killed at Lexington, the boy escaped, only to rally and reengage the enemy soon after.
And, lastly, Daniel Bakeman, at a remarkable 109, was the last survivor receiving a veteran’s pension for service in the American Revolutionary War. If you believe his story, that is. It seems he might have served in some militia units. And then was a teamster for the military, then became a farmer in New York.
He had difficulty proving his service, but was eventually judged credible for pension purposes. Congress, on February 14, 1867, passed a special act which granted Bakeman a pension of $500 a year. Presumably he collected that twice before dying in 1869. Two other men were his last contemporaries to be pensioned for the Revolutionary War. By that point in the late 1860s the government was busy fending off requests from Civil War soldiers. (We have a history of treating our patriots poorly.)
My (apparently) great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather was not on the photo display. Of course I looked. But here he is.
He is buried in Illinois, in some woods between two fields, an all-but-forgotten family plot, I’d guess. He was laid to rest in a place that, even now, is quite rural. That photo, if it is indeed the man, would have been taken sometime in the first five years of the Daguerreotype style of photographs, and he would have been between 89 and 93 there.
