Tire 'em Out! (reposted)

(Note from the webmaster: Mr. Newhouse is on holiday, so here's an older post of his, originally published on August 13.)


Murder. It’s so charged with emotion that it’s hard to think rationally about it.

Here are two facts: The New Day reported that 14 people had been killed between Friday and noon on Sunday; 30,000 people marched under a broiling sun from the capital to El Morro in a demonstration against the savage crimes committed on our streets daily.

I didn’t march.

Not because I didn’t believe in the cause. 

Because I think it’s the wrong approach.

And I was thinking of Harry, whom finally I saw last week. We talked briefly about a TED program he had seen given by a mediator who works in broken states, such as the Balkans.

Harry’s view?

We’re very close to becoming the Balkans.

And one of the first things that the mediator does?

Keeps young men busy.

Why?

They’re the ones killing.

OK—is that true? Well, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the US Department of Justice…

…yes.

In the years from 1976 to 2005, 65.0% of killers were between the age of 18 and 34. And 52.7% of victims were between 18 and 34.

Oh, and men are nine times more likely to murder than women. 

Bottom line—a guy in his twenties with nothing to do is dangerous. He drinks. He looks at other guy’s girlfriends. He joins gangs and starts abusing drugs. 

He murders or is murdered.

So the Balkan guy says keep ‘em busy. Wear ‘em out. Get ‘em good and tired and they don’t go out to the pubs and drink until daylight.

They go to bed.

And train them to do something. Make them carpenters or bricklayers or furniture reupholsters or something. Just put them to work.

In addition, get them to believe in something. This is our island. I’m part of rebuilding my country. I’m making a better place for myself and my family.

Send them out and get them to fix things. The schools opened last week, and were predictably a mess. Dirty halls, leaking toilets, trash in the playground—the usual nonsense we’ve come to expect.

What were all those twenty-year-old guys doing all summer?

Drinking and killing.

There’s a lot of stuff to be done. Take the orange bus, as I did for seven years, down highway 1. Look out the window. There’s trash all over the place. Go out to the kiosks of Luquillo, but skip the alcapurria. Go to the beach instead. Same thing.

Here’s my plan. Every boy serves a year of National Service—picking up the trash, building park shelters, repairing toilets. At the end of the year, the kid decides—do I want to go to college? If so, and if he is accepted, then let him go to school. And monitor that he actually completes the semester.

A guy doesn’t want to go to the university? Then he goes into a training program for a skill of his choice. Teach him to be a plumber, an electrician, a carpenter. Then let him get a job.

And monitor that for a couple of years.

Expensive?

Sure. So is sending millions if not billions of dollars in welfare payments to able-bodied kids who do nothing until they murder.

The people who marched yesterday heard words that we all should value: respect, integrity, tolerance. But it may be that we need a discussion on a simpler yet vaster scale.

We gotta tire these kids out.

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/homicide/teens.cfm 

Before I die (reposted)

(Note from the webmaster: Mr. Newhouse is on holiday, so here's an older post of his, originally published on July 30th.)


Well, she’s a talented lady, our Candy Chang.

Inventive too. Also fecund. Go onto her web page, and you’ll see (http://www.candychang.com).

And she fills me with envy! Why can’t I think of stuff like that? She’s out there in the community doing these goofy projects, but they’re wonderful. She’s stenciling “this would be a nice place for a tree” on barren sidewalks—tremendous idea, one we could use in Puerto Rico, which has major tree phobia.

Or what about putting the little red and white adhesive name tags—the kind that say “Hello! My name is _______”—on abandoned buildings? Only hers say “I wish this was a __________.”

But my favorite?

Before I die.

Here’s a building I’ve actually seen.

Unless I’m wrong, it’s Fredericksburg, St. Croix. But following Candy’s lead in New Orleans (where the project started), it became this.

What’s the big idea?

Well, Candy suffered a personal loss—know that one!—and decided that most people don’t think about the important stuff. What, she wondered, do I want to do or see before I die? And why did it take a major loss to force her to the question?

Shouldn’t we all be thinking that?

So she created a stencil—wow, that girl is a dab hand (hi, Franny!)—with the E-xacto knife! 

As you can see, it took off.

And it comes in Spanish, too!

It’s totally neat. 

So here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna send this to my friend Sonia (Nick has an abandoned house in Old San Juan) with the message…

…Let’s do it!

Oh, and my three wishes?

1.     finally see Harry.

2.     watch Helen Mirren in the role of Franny in the film version of Life, Death and Iguanas.

3.     attend the trial in the Hague of George W. Bush for crimes against humanity!

An ode to joy (reposted)

(Note from the webmaster: Mr. Newhouse is on holiday, so here's an older post of his, originally published on July 22, 2012….)

Readers, forgive me. I had a tantrum in yesterday's post. Hope this makes up for it! (Crank up the volume!)

Well, we know there are evil winds—Joan Didion wrote her famous essay about the Santa Ana winds almost half a century ago. The Santa Ana starts on the leeward side of a mountain, she writes, and warms up and becomes drier as it moves down the mountain. By the time it hits Los Angeles, it is intensely hot, intensely dry and…

…intensely strong. Hurricane force, at times.

California burning? It’s almost always because of the Santa Ana winds.

But other things happen as well. Crime spikes, tempers fray, kids become unmanageable in the classroom.

Oh, and blood doesn’t clot as easily.

That’s when Didion inserts her famous phrase: “to surrender to the Santa Ana winds is to accept a deeply mechanistic view of human behavior.”

(Or words to that effect—the damn Internet connection is still goofing off….)

Well, maybe that’s what’s needed—to accept a mechanistic view of human behavior.

It wasn’t, somehow, an easy weekend. I didn’t watch TV footage of the Aurora shooting—I’m smarter than that. But I read the accounts nearly compulsively (sometimes the same article, ostensibly to see if it had been updated). I thought about it. I wrote a post that was almost as incendiary as the Santa Ana winds.

Then I remembered—we’re being zapped by increased solar activity. Duluth reported blazing northern lights last week.

And I also remembered—the Santa Ana winds increase the ratio of positive to negative ions in the air.

Meaning a change in the electromagnetic field that constantly surrounds us.

It’s a subject that draws a lot of bunkum, and I almost hate to go there. Ghost hunters wander through houses at midnight, looking for dips in the electromagnetic fields. The UFO believers do similar things. 

But there is some scientific evidence. Solar flares occur normally three times a year. Investigators in Russia determined that suicides rise predictably in one extreme Northern Russian city with each period of flaring.

Aurora—which is seventeen miles from Columbine High School—is also a mile above sea level. Would they be more prone to the effect of changes in the electromagnetic system?

The advantage of thinking mechanistically is that it takes you away from things like “willpower” and “self-discipline.” Your drinking is out of control because of a change in genetic structure, for example, or proteins in the brain.

Might be true.

The disadvantage?

It leads straight to the Twinkie Defense. 'All that sugar made me kill Harvey Milk.'  

And my good friend Susan, I suspect, wouldn’t have it. “No woman suffering from the ravages of PMS has ever committed the massacres that men have.” 

Good point.

Whatever it was, it was intense. My mood was labile. Little things irritated me. And then, Pat sent me a link to the Beethoven clip above.

And I found myself flooded with tears in a coffee house in San Juan.

It’s something so moronic that I rarely admit to it, but here goes. I love orchestral performances because it’s one of the few occasions I can think of where one hundred people gather to do something beautiful.

And I loved this clip for the humor, the playfulness of it all. The musicians coming out of the bank (the Ode to Joy was a gift organized by a Catalonian bank to celebrate their 130^th anniversary). The people looking on, gathering, singing, filming, tapping their feet. The kids imitating the conductor.

The assassin in Aurora did more damage than the 12 / 71 he killed or maimed. But it’s also true that one person playing a musical instrument can…

…change the world?

No.

Yes.    

Absurd

Well, it’s time to get off the island. While the rest of the world is worried about the conflict between Israel and Gaza, we have our minds elsewhere.

Wanna see?

Here’s the plaza in front of city hall last year at this time!

Beautiful, right?

Always looks pretty at Christmas, and why shouldn’t it? Nobody else is putting up lights—but little things like sky-high light bills are petty affairs to the politicos!

Hey, what about a Christmas tree?

OK—not especially heavy on the subtlety, but hey, the kids love it.

Right, so shouldn’t we do something festive with the city hall? It is just a bit sober for Christmas.

Right—no one’s gonna miss that!

And here, dear Reader, is the square today, two days after Thanksgiving….

Yup, not one decoration! Here we are, right smack in the Christmas season, and there isn’t a single light bulb, neon angel, or artificial Christmas tree. What!

What gives?

The mayor lost the election. And is nowhere to be seen. And has decided—no Christmas for us!

Well, that’s news. That’s dish. And the entire island is talking about it and laughing about it and spewing snakes and toads, as we say down here. This is gonna go down in history.

Doña Fela bringing snow? Nothing—the Grinch Santini stealing Christmas is how this is playing.

Puerto Rico, I’ve discovered, is an absolutely excellent place to live. Only two things: you must have absolutely nothing to do, no work to get to or business to start or anything but relax, have another beer, enjoy.

Second thing?

You really should cultivate a sense of the absurd.

Which is why I just love the clip below…..  

The Second Coming, Aborted

It was new and it was old, the trip to the hospital.

I went to see a lady I didn’t know. And what a charmer she was! She managed, despite her difficulty breathing, to entertain a stranger seemingly as effortlessly as if we were meeting in her home.

Almost….

Look, a hospital robs you of many things—usually starting with your dignity.

Which may be why I called her by the honorific “Mrs.” Everybody else, I’m sure, was calling her by her first name. But we chatted, she and I, and though she had no idea who I was, she carried on gamely.

Brought back memories. I spent a decade as a nurse, in a hospital that was virtually identical to the one I visited yesterday.

What struck me the most?

Oddly, the handrails on the walls. But there were familiar sights everywhere—the glassed-in nurses’ station, the waddling nursing assistants, the covered dinner trays.

I remembered the feeling of being in a hospital, and of being a nurse. Oddly, I have no particular memories of those days?

Why?

It may be the curious effect of depression on memory. Some people hypothesize that depression and especially anxiety hinder the ability to retain memory. I can recall bits of that past, but not much. I know that a lot happened, much of which should have been, and was, memorable. But it’s not there.

Wait—a patient. Manic as hell, and completely out of control. Admitted pregnant, by another patient, who was even worse. It was a nightmare—virtually no drugs could be given to her, because she was pregnant. And so she shredded the unit into chaos, and there was nothing anyone could do.

The doctors, of course, came and went. But it was eight hours of sheer hell for the nurses. The patients got the worst of it—24 hours. Well, no, 22 hours—the patient was sleeping only 2 hours a night, and that intermittently.

So the nurses were howling. One—what were we going to do about that unborn child? Sorry, but it was the clearest possible choice for an abortion. The gene pool was a disaster. And the parenting skills / home environment were even worse.

The problem, of course, was consent. We were documenting that the patient was running naked down the halls screaming that Jesus was humping her. Could we then turn around and attest that she had knowingly consented to an abortion?

It went on for weeks. There was pre-hell—the hours before your shift when you counted the minutes before you had to go in there. There was the hell itself. And post-hell, which generally meant several strong drinks and bed.

News alert to doctors—fetuses grow.

So there she was in her second trimester. Still untreated, still crazy. We knew, those of us aware of the past, what Bedlam must have been. Except that instead of one untreated crazy, Bedlam had a ward-full.

Somebody screamed loud enough, or perhaps long enough. Social services looked for some family member who could give consent.

Nobody—the patient had exhausted her family.

Eventually, the hospital went to court. Which meant, of course, a delay of some weeks.

The hearing was postponed….

The patient was now of the belief that she was carrying Jesus’ child, which would be the Second Coming. This excited ribald commentary in the staff; I wept.

And I was the nurse to prep her for the abortion that eventually the judge ordered. Oh, and to give her the medicines that would finally, finally sedate her.

“When Thorazine first came out, it was in a container about the size of a gallon of water. Had a little pump on it, and you were supposed to put precisely 100 or 150mg of the stuff in a glass of orange juice. Well, I did for a while. Then, I just started to take a look at the patient. If he was really crazy, I’d just pump away like hell!”

The words of an older nurse. And one I respected. So of course I topped up the pregnant patient’s drink, as it were, and put her on the gurney. We went down to surgery together. I signed off, another nurse took over.

You’ll have guessed what happened.

The abortion was performed, and the child was…

…born alive.

Which meant, of course, that a code had to be called, and every effort made to save the life of this poor child.

I left nursing soon after that.

Oh—and is that the reason I remember so little? 

When Thanksgiving Becomes Real

Susan leaves the following comment on my post about Jack:

I'm surprised he didn't recognize that not supporting the Equal Rights Amendment because "all my kids are normal" is no different from not supporting the Civil Rights Act "because all my kids are white." No doubt given the public education that has occurred in the past 20 years about the normality of homosexuality, he would get it today. His photo is on my fridge anyway -- and I never had the privilege of meeting him. You couldn't know Fran without loving John.

Well, that same sense of fair play impels me to say—he did get it in the end. I know because Johnny told me what Jack had said to him, a few days before he died.

“He said that he and Mom had gone to Puerto Rico, and then he started talking about these two old guys in Mineral Point….” Johnny reported.

I knew, of course. Their names were Edgar G. Hellum and Robert M. Neal. And they had discovered a little town with molding old buildings and done something with it.

Town was called Mineral Point, and nobody was particularly impressed with those damn old houses. Tear ‘em down, and use the stones for patios or garden walls!

Instead, Mr. Edgar and Mr. Bob—that’s how they were known—created Pendarvis House, and then Shake Rag Alley. Then went around collecting old recipes. Started restoring more and more buildings.

Provided jobs when jobs were needed.

And were good, honest people. Employed Mr. Curtis—an expert mason—who had retired from Taliesin, perhaps because Wright was so fond of that “stick-out stuff”: the stones not flush but sticking out and then recessed. Bad for the mortar—frost got in it….

Mr. Curtis on Wright?

“Mr. Wright was good to me,” he said, “but, let’s see, I think I still have seventeen hundred dollars coming from him,” which he never got.¹

A familiar complaint from the townspeople around Spring Green.

No whisper of it regarding Mr. Neal and Mr. Bob.

I was perhaps twenty when we all went to Mineral Point.

“How is Mr. Edgar,” asked Jack.

Or perhaps it was Mr. Bob. Doesn’t really matter. The two were a unit, and take away one?

“He’s not been the same since Mr. Bob died,” was the answer.

“Of course,” said Jack.

‘Right,’ I thought. ‘It’s all well and good as long as you don’t make waves. Here are two gay guys and EVERYBODY knows they’re gay, and they turn the town around and put everybody to work, and start a restaurant that gains national fame, but nobody says a word! What crazy shit is this?”

I was just coming out. I was young, and harsh. I made judgments then that I think—I hope—I don’t make now.

Now, of course, I marvel that they had the gumption to do it.

Like E.M. Forster, Jack believed in an aristocracy of the plucky, and knew it when he saw it:

“I believe in aristocracy, though -- if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few are great names. They are sensitive for others as well as themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but power to endure, and they can take a joke.”

And so, yeah—he had no respect for the married guys lurking in the shadows on the Capitol Square late at night, trying to figure out who was vice squad and who was legit—and available. Mr. Bob and Mr. Edgar he could get.

“I’m very sure that Jack would have expected you and Raf to get married, if you had the option,” said Franny, when we talked about him years later.

Was that why I spent a couple thousand bucks to travel to Massachusetts for “a piece of paper,” as guys who prefer not to make a commitment always say?

Or was it that I wanted to hear—and to say—words that Mr. Edgar and Mr. Bob would never have imagined two men would say in front of a judge?

“In sickness and in health….”

All of us owe a lot to people like the Messieurs Edgar / Bob.

As well, we owe a lot to the people who acknowledge, and celebrate the aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate, and the plucky. The legislators who vote for marriage equality and then go home to explain to the constituents. The straight people who march with us. The people who speak up, when remaining silent is so much easier.

Thanksgiving, and the serial holidays that trail it, is not a good time for me. The days are short, my mood grows dark. And yesterday, I experienced a little moment of sadness. How many years had I battled depression? How many defeats had I brought on myself? Now I, more happy than I have ever been, had to wonder: what would my life have been, without this darkness?

The answer, of course, is that my life would have been different.

But I wouldn’t be who I am now. Some sort of writer who trots each morning to the beach, plunges into the water, returns home and begins his work.

Someone who broke through the barriers of biochemistry and habit, badthink and depression, sorrow and sabotage. Someone who matter-of-factly hears the steps of his husband coming up the stairs, and waits for him to greet the cat.

“What’s for dinner,” he will say.

Chicken.

‘I’m so happy,’ I will think.

Robert Neal, 1942, baking a Cornish pastry

___________________________________________

1. Material and quotes drawn from the book On the Shake Rag, published by The State Historical Society of Wisconsin and The Memorial Pendarvis Trust. 

I come from good people

There’s an old saying—a wise man knows his father, but no man knows his mother.

Is it true?

Can’t say. I’ve spent a lot of time on Franny, lately—in fact, I can claim I wrote the book on her. Did I get it right?

Highly sanitized, is Eric’s take, and he’s right of course. There are significant omissions, a couple of slants not explored, and one chapter—I now come clean—entirely made up. I needed something funny, so I imagined a silly conversation between Franny and me about John Cage’s 4’33” (of silence).

Here’s the scary thing—now it feels that it actually happened.

Well, Jack wouldn’t have approved. Like Eric, he would have written the story straight and got the facts right and spelled people’s names right (I flubbed on Franzmann) and made the deadline and done it all over again the next day.

Or would he?

‘Cause he got pretty wrapped up in some causes. The police chief—Weatherly—who got embroiled in some issue, had to resign, moved to Texas and became a drunk. His wife shot him, one day, and was tried and given parole. Came back to town only once, sat in the green sofa, talked.

Hard woman.

“You’re the only person I’m gonna see in this town,” she said to Jack on leaving.

He was a big guy, and big on fairness. He hated the bastards getting away with things. Made him crazy when good people got stepped on.

Which is why he pushed for the equal right housing amendment in the early 60’s. And never saw a contradiction with the State Journal’s strong Republican stance and its support of the amendment.

Couldn’t understand why the Cap Times was silent on the issue.

So by chance, Eric came across a Taliaferro, and I wrote about it. Sent it up to Hesselberg—an old colleague of Jack’s, and fine writer. He came back immediately with this—a letter written by Odell Taliaferro after Jack’s death.

NEWHOUSE FOUGHT FOR RACIAL EQUALITY

   Now is the time when friends are moved to extol the virtues of John Newhouse and to soft-pedal any shortcomings of which they are aware, but we assure you this is not the case with us. We have been singing the praises of John for about 40 years - and we are aware of no shortcomings.

    He wrote profusely of the modern dance abilities of our daughter, Joan Taliaferro Hartshorne and we feel that his news stories and pictures were very influential in enabling her to acquire a position with the Jose Limon Dance Troupe. We offer this fact, not as a virtue, but as an example of effective reporting (though, to us, it was a virtue).

    Once we moved into a segregated neighborhood (it was all white - until we arrived) and the prospective neighbors divided themselves into three groups:

    1. A small number gave a party to welcome us.

    2. A large group paid no attention.

    3. A small group threatened to burn our house down the first night!

    When John heard of this, he came in person to the neighborhood and we visited all the nearby houses. In a calm manner he explained, there was nothing to fear. We have lived there for 30 years - and no one has ever been treated better by their neighbors.

    John was a great man to have on your side.

Well, Jack was a good guy to have on your side. And when he wasn’t?

That same Norwegian-Lutheran backbone that led a black guy into a racist’s home and stared him down could get a little twisted—usually on sexual issues.

“I’m not voting for the Equal Rights Amendment (remember that!?) because it’s for homosexuals and ALL OF MY KIDS ARE NORMAL!”

Words converted to a slap.

In the end, he came around. Many people did. And many people made that change because of a phenomenon occurring in the plague years of the AIDS crisis.

The gay and lesbian choruses.

Virtually every major city had one. San Francisco, of course, had or has a famous one. Toured nationally, recorded. And once, did a heart-breaking rendition of the last act of Poulenc’s opera “Dialogs of the Carmelites.” The opera ends as the nuns, singing their prayers, are taken off to the guillotine, heard offstage. The sight of gay men, many of them HIV positive, reenacting the scene?

And I—not knowing whether the virus was flowing in my own blood?

Catharsis, in a way.

Yes, I will face it. Yes, it may come. Yes, I won’t back down.

Which is why I said to him, today, at the beach, “well, how did I do? Turn out OK? You proud of me?”

We plunged, the water was warm, and surprisingly clear for this time of year. Did the retrot back home. Then he reminded me of this….   

Chasing Down Taliaferros

Well, it’s a day that obviously wasn’t going to conform. To anyone fearing joblessness, I can tell you—it’s not hard. (As long as you have someone—thanks, Mr. Fernández!—who does have a job…) But there are rules.

Readers will know that the day begins with the trot. Actually, it’s now a modified trot-plunge-retrot. (Go the Escambrón beach, swim for five minutes, return home….) Right—did that. Then went to see Charisse’s brother’s wife’s mother (I think) in the hospital.

This, of course, only makes sense when seen through Puerto Rican / Caribbean eyes. Seen through gringo eyes, it would almost be an affront to visit someone on the strength of so—well—weak a connection. But Puerto Rico is blessed with excellent doctors.

The problem?

It’s also cursed with horrible hospitals.

And Cbwm’s (come on—I can’t be writing Charisse’s brother’s et cetera forever) is elderly and in frail health and—more importantly—doesn’t speak Spanish.

Well—I know about that. So I went off to the hospital, on the assumption that visiting hours would start at ten. (I can hear you—that maternal exasperation rising in your voice—“well, did you ASK???” Nooooooo!)

Good news—the hospital has a Starbucks—very nice doppio espresso….

A child of corporate America, I bring you the solution, not the problem.

I’ll go back at 1PM….

Right. So the post has not been written, and that’s major. That’s a sin. As you know, my international readership (curiously, the blog got 66 hits from Russia last week—don’t know what that’s about) is both famously discerning and way exigent. A day that goes by without a post provokes howls. Or at least nasty emails…..

Well, it’s now 12:30—and what have I done?

Worried my head about the Taliaferros.

Eric knows someone who knows a Taliaferro who considers Madison her home.

Well, Jack knew the Taliaferros, and talked about them, and deemed them a good, upright family—and no, that’s not condescension. You had to work hard to get those words outta the old man’s lips.

And I thought—couldn’t be sure—that the family was one of the oldest black families in town. Which would make them damn interesting—Madison being not known then for excessive racial heterogeneity. (Marc? Could you just talk straight? Town was lily white!)

Well, google Taliaferro and what do you get?

One of the fascinating things about Wikipedia is its variability. Sometimes it has a lacuna of information, other times it’s almost embarrassingly rich.

Well, I’d bet that the Taliaferro family has an ardent genealogist, and he / she certainly gets right down to business! Starts off with a bang!

Taliaferro (/ˈtɒlɪvər/ tol-i-vər), also spelled Talifero,Tellifero Tolliver, or Toliver,[1] is a prominent family in the United States Commonwealth of Virginia. The Taliaferros (originally Tagliaferro, Italian pronunciation:  [ˌtaʎʎaˈfɛrro], which means "ironcutter" in Italian) are one of the early families who settled in Virginia in the 17th century. They migrated from London, where an ancestor had served as a musician in the court of Queen Elizabeth I. The surname in that line is believed to trace back to Bartholomew Taliaferro, a native of Venice who settled in London and was made a denizen in 1562.[2]

Right—notice how quickly we take an Italian name, make it Venetian, and then throw in the reference to Queen Elizabeth I! A nice way of saying—we’re no pizzeria owners here!

Nor does he relax his grip….

A legend exists about the name having originated in Roman times in what was called Cisalpine Gaul, which leads many bearers of the name to believe that their ancestors were actually French, not Italian, since Gaul is generally known to be the ancient name for today's France; however, Gaul was a term applied to a very wide region that also comprised the whole of northern Italy. Tagliaferro is indeed a common surname in northeastern Italy, especially in the area around Venice.

Arms of Tagliaferro family of Tuscany. Sketch sent from Thomas Jefferson to George Wythe, 1786

The origins of the Taliaferro name were of interest to George Wythe, Virginia colonial lawyer and classical scholar, who had married a Taliaferro. Wythe urged his former student and friend Thomas Jefferson to investigate the name when Jefferson traveled to Italy. Jefferson later reported to Wythe that he had found two families of the name in Tuscany, and that the family was of Italian origin.[3] Jefferson enclosed his sketch of the coat-of-arms of the Tagliaferro family as reported to him by a friend in Florence, Italy.[4]

Well—having Tom Jefferson poking into the family heritage is something of a feat! Then follows a list of some twenty prominent people, all bearing the name of Taliaferro.

Curiously, clicking on any one of the links brings the same vast quantity of information—could it be?

The plot thickens into something the consistency of oatmeal when the author of the article (why do I think it might be a Taliaferro?) throws in info on people whose middle name was Taliaferro. He starts with Dr. John Taliaferro Close—who has a daughter named “Glenn.”

Ends with Booker T. Washington.

Say whahhhh?

Yup, that “T” you’ve been saying for years is actually a Taliaferro. And guess what! Here’s a couple of lines from Wikipedia’s article on Booker….

Washington was born into slavery to Jane, an enslaved African-American woman on the Burroughs Plantation in southwest Virginia. She never identified his white father, said to be a nearby planter; he played no significant role in Washington's life. His family gained freedom in 1865 as the Civil War ended, and his mother took them to West Virginia to join her husband.

Well, mother may never have said who the father was, but ask me, and I’ll tell you.

She wrote it, and on the birth certificate!

Well, Booker, it seems, was a little more than just that nice verging-on-Oreo educator from Alabama. Here’s what one historian has to say….

Historians note that Washington, "advised, networked, cut deals, made threats, pressured, punished enemies, rewarded friends, greased palms, manipulated the media, signed autographs, read minds with the skill of a master psychologist, strategized, raised money, always knew where the camera was pointing, traveled with an entourage, waved the flag with patriotic speeches, and claimed to have no interest in partisan politics. In other words, he was an artful politician."[1]

Oh ho! Damn, that’s good! Why can’t I write like that? Here’s the citation, by the way….

Michael Scott Bieze and Marybeth Gasman, eds. (26 March 2012). Booker T. Washington Rediscovered. Johns Hopkins UP. p. 209.

Well, we’re a long way from Madison, Wisconsin and the Taliaferro. Except not. Actually, Booker T. Washington was invited to Madison, and spoke before 4000 people at—I’m guessing here—the Stock Pavilion.

OK—it’s clear. This day is wasted. I have produced nothing of worth today—barring having cleared up the mystery of Booker T. Washington’s biological father (send the check, historians, to POB 902…oh forget it!) So I might just as well call up Gary—who can clear up the mystery if anyone can.

He’s on it like a sailor in a whorehouse after a six-month stretch at sea. Takes him just an hour.

Odell Taliaferro—head of the Madison chapter of the NAACP.

Oh, and the Taliaferro whom friends of Eric know?

Here she is!