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More fun with amateur historians

For reasons of my own (to make it sound mysterious and interesting, when in fact it's just another tangent in my own wandering intellectual path), I've been reading about Hernando de Soto and his reign of terror in the US Southeast, mid-sixteenth century. In the course of it, I encountered one of my favorite things, a bitter and acrimonious dispute among academics over exactly where he went. But the differences between the two most commonly - accepted routes, The Hudson Route and the Swanton Route, are minor, compared to the route proposed by the authors of the site Floridahistory.com, who have misinterpreted (or interpreted to suit themselves) some of the language in sixteenth century sources to suggest that the De Soto mob looted, raped, and pillaged their way to ... Chicago. Yes, Chicago. (Where they narrowly avoided being named to a vacant Senate seat by Rod Blagojevich.) The text on this otherwise entertaining and pretty-looking site says things like this:

The King's Agent with a scouting party for Hernando de Soto's ill fated Conquest of 1541 reported that, "...we traveled eight days (northward In the Illinois Reeds from Terre Haute, Indiana) through an uninhabited land ...

Note that the quotes don't stop when the writer gets to the parenthetical part, leaving the young and foolish to perhaps assume that the conquistador being quoted actually said something about Terre Haute. In fact, the whole thing is arrant nonsense, as anyone who can use a map and a pair of dividers would know. Interestingly, the Wikipedia article on the topic includes a representation of the doctrinaire Hudson route, showing (almost certainly correctly) that De Soto and company never got any further north than Mississippi. But they then cite the Floridahistory.com link, without comment. Another fan site presents an outraged attack on the Chicago version; significantly, no serious works I've found so much as mention this side-battle.

Why do I care? Well, basically, I don't. But something about this "enthusiast versus the world" thing just sucks me in. At one point, I had to deal professionally with some local amateur archaeologists, and it may have colored my point of view.

Backstory: for those who missed the chapter on "Explorers" in Social Studies, De Soto (not "Soto," as one of his more annoying biographers insists on calling him) was a thug from Extramadura who made a huge fortune helping Pedrarias Dávila and Pizzaro rob, kill, and enslave anyone in Panama and Peru who didn't look much like a Spaniard. Returning to Spain with his money and a resume that would have easily gotten him any number of executive positions in today's world, say, for example President of the Sudan, he convinced the Emperor of Spain to give him a licence to take over what was then called La Florida, but essentially amounted to the entirety of North America. His eagerness to do this was based on simple reasoning: new world = gold. Oh, and slaves.

So in 1539 (not 1546, as I unaccountably typed when I first posted this rubbish), he and 600 - odd fellow barbarians descended on the vicinity of Tampa Bay, and began a 3 year, multi-thousand-mile trek through the Southeast, fighting and kidnapping their way into the interior. Although exactly where they went is still the subject of dispute, what we know is that half of them died, as did thousands of locals. De Soto himself died of some disease, somewhere along the banks of the Mississippi river, and what was left of his army built boats (after a minor side trip to Texas, which they were wise enough to turn around and abandon,) and floated their way down river to the gulf. From there, they managed to make it to a Spanish outpost in Mexico.

After De Soto, not much in the way of contact with the interior took place until the Atlantic Seaboard colonies of England began to work their way inland. The Spanish had missions in large parts of Florida proper, but by "interior" I mean Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas. In what we can say for convenience was about 100 years, the populations of those areas crashed disastrously, to the point that later explorers found vast uninhabited tracts, and many of the remaining indigenous people no longer remembered who had built the ruins around which they lived.

Why? Like a number of similar crashes in pre-literate cultures, we ain't sure. European diseases are one good bet, although no specifics are available. The Mississipian was in decline already, by some measures, and the shock of contact with De Soto's horde may have pushed some over the edge. There is also some thought that climate change may have been an issue -- and of course, they were corn freaks, and corn depletes the soil, so to some extent, some of them may have farmed themselves out of a job. But it's a grim story, regardless of the details. Best book about it all by a country mile is Charles Hudson, Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun.

Dine locally -- before it's too late

Friday night, we had dinner at the Earle Uptown, in the Bell Tower Hotel. This is an off shoot of the old, original Earle, downtown on Washington street. It's generally more French in its menu and somewhat more upscale in decor. Probably has about 15 tables, seats maybe 60 people.

We got there at 7:00, and we were the ONLY diners. When we left an hour and a half later, we were still the ONLY diners. This on a Friday night. Now I grant you, it was the day after New Years', but come on ...

And by the way, the dinner was just fine. Good shrimp bisque, good braised short ribs. I admit I smiled at the menu a bit, simply because it seemed as though someone had recently read the Balthazar cookbook, but that's not a drawback. I like McNally's version of Brasserie food, and I'm happy if someone here wants to purvey it. But serving two covers on a Friday night, any Friday night, does not bode well. Whip out those credit cards, folks, and support your local bistros while they're still here.

Doing a little shopping

So these days, our Saturday morning trip to Kerrytown and elsewhere has taken on a new feature, namely Coney Dog accompanies us, and she and Linda have their walk around the area while I shop. This used to involve walks through the neighborhoods and around the periphery of the Farmer's Market (no dogs allowed in the market, sadly, where I'd far rather have them than the infants in double-wide strollers.)

However, a week or so ago, we took Coney to Dogma Catmantoo, a boutique for pets which offers a particular kind of smoked bone she prefers. This morning, Linda says the doggo made a bee line there, and they spent most of their time in the store. What that implies, of course, is that she (the dog) understands where we've gotten to, after a 10 minute (somewhat complicated) car ride, and remembers what's nearby that destination, in terms of retail storefronts and routes down urban sidewalks.

Some authorities say dogs have essentially the mental capacity of a human four-year-old. I have to say, I've known human forty-year-olds who couldn't find their way from the parking lot behind Kerrytown to the 200 block of North Forth with a map, a compass, and a Boy Scout troop.

Found on line

99% of you won't care, but I just found one more example of why the Internet is a good thing: Strapworks.com. Periodically, I need something like a couple of feet of webbing or some Velcro or something like that. Of course, there's an on-line source. If you ever fabricate or repair gear, book mark these folks against the day when you just gotta have a side-release buckle or a sailor's awl or something.

Another pointless piece of satire

Lyrics, Movies, Bands, Organizations, and the intellectually challenged:

• Darlin', darlin', darlin', save the last dunce for me
  
• Safety Dunce
  
• Invitation to the dunce
  
• Urban Dunce Squad
  
• Lord of the dunce
  
• Duncing down to Rio
  
• Flashdunce
  
• Dunce Fever
  
• Dunce with my father
  
• They dunce alone
  
• The Alvin Ailey American Dunce Theatre
  
• Morris Duncers in a minefield ("ching, ching, ching, boom!")
  

Not another list!

Yeah, so if all your friends wrote list posts at the end of the year, would you do it too? You bet I would, but I wouldn't be constrained by quantity, like "top 10," or "bottom 4" or something like that. I'm just gonna write a list and see what happens.

• Most annoying lexicographical slide: "comprised of" is creeping into acceptance. Never mind that it's dead wrong, rhetorical democracy is making it right -- as recently as 1996, according to one on-line dictionary, only 35% of respondents to some survey found it objectionable. For the record, comprise means include, not compose. So saying something is "comprised of" something else is a) wrong and b) a clue that you don't really speak the Queen's English. ("Don't you know the Queen's English?" "So's the King!" Haw haw.) You can say something comprises something, or something is composed of something. Take your pick.
  
• Runners up: additional s suffixes where they're not needed and modify meaning, specifically when added to the terms "bottom up" and "head up." "Bottom up" means doing something like budgeting, starting with the details or with the input of the lower-ranking members of a team, and aggregating the results. "Bottoms up" is a colloquial encouragement to drink, as in turn the bottom of your glass up. Likewise, "head up" is an attribute of a display, as for example in an aircraft, that the user can read with his head up -- not having to look down or otherwise away from the view out the windscreen. "Heads up" is a term for a warning or alert, as in Let me give you a heads up that claiming our product has a "heads up display" will be looked upon with disapprobrium. It's astonishing to me that otherwise intelligent leaders will publicly describe a planning process as being "bottoms up." Granted, a lot of planning this past few years probably was, but even so ...
  
• Best reasons to rethink one's opposition to cruel and unusual punishment: a tie among Robert Mugabe, Rod Blagojevich, that Madoff guy, and any member of the Kennedy and/or Johnson administrations who wants us to buy a hardcover book detailing how really, really sorry he is for the war in Vietnam.
  
• Guy who should never work in politics again: the person who first took John McCain aside and whispered, "One word: Sarah Palin." The Governor of Alaska: the first woman ever to become James Stockdale.
  
• Biggest crew of slackers and goof-offs: America's (and the world's, for that matter) political cartoonists. With all the targets of opportunity out there, all they can do, most of 'em, is draw pictures of Santa Claus in rags, laying off reindeer, or delivering coal to some disgraced public figure. The best of a sad, disheartened, demoralized lot: Pat Oliphant. The absolute rock-bottom, knuckle-dragging, Neanderthal worst: Chuck Asay.
  

So that's enough bile for now. What's on your list?

I thought it was the Wall Street Journal ...

... that was acquired by Murdoch, not the New York Times. Can you say "anecdotal evidence?" I knew you could.

Again, in a sunbeam

Late Christmas morning, asleep with her present, which was quite a hit.

Happy Holidays

I was planning on writing something snide and cynical about the holidays and the economy and the polar bears and so on. But I got distracted by a dog. Pure zen in a beam of sunlight.