Alexander Hamilton's "Hurricane Letter"

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Viewing clips of Dorian's destruction of the Bahamas, with 48 hours of pounding winds and storm surges, I remembered Alexander Hamilton's experience on St. Croix. He, aged 16-17, survived what must have been an extremely violent hurricane.

Christiansted, September 6, 1772
From the Royal Danish American Gazette—
By Alexander Hamilton

“I take up my pen to give you an imperfect account of one of the most dreadful Hurricanes that memory or any records whatever can trace, which happened here on the 31st of August at night. It began about dusk, at North, and raged very violently till ten o’clock. Then ensued a sudden and unexpected interval, which lasted about an hour. Meanwhile the wind was shifting round to the South West point, from whence it returned with redoubled fury and continued so ’till near three o’clock in the morning.

Good God! What horror and destruction! It is impossible for me to describe or you to form any idea of it. It seemed as if a total dissolution of nature was taking place. The roaring of the sea and wind, fiery meteors flying about it in the air, the prodigious glare of almost perpetual lightning, the crash of falling houses, and the ear-piercing shrieks of the distressed, were sufficient to strike astonishment into Angels.

A great part of the buildings throughout the Island are levelled to the ground, almost all the rest very shattered; several persons killed and numbers utterly ruined; whole families running about the streets, unknowing where to find a place of shelter; the sick exposed to the keenness of water and air without a bed to lie upon, or a dry covering to their bodies; and our harbours entirely bare….”

This is just sample of what was a much longer piece of teen prose, one which may have propelled this young literary up-and-comer out of the West Indies. The remainder of his discourse is as full of allusions to an All-merciful and/or All-punishing God as any 18th Century churchgoer might wish. Sometimes, however, unvarnished truth breaks through the flow of his pious public sentiments:

"But alas! how different, how deplorable—how gloomy the prospect—death comes rushing on in triumph veiled in a mantle of ten-fold darkness. His unrelenting scythe, pointed and ready for the stroke.—On his right hand sits destruction, hurling the winds and belching forth flames;—calamity on his left threatening famine, disease, distress of all kinds.—And Oh! thou wretch, look
still a little further; see the gulf of eternal mystery open—there mayest thou shortly plunge — ...

Hark! ruin and confusion on every side.—Tis thy turn next: but one short moment—even now—Oh Lord help—Jesus be merciful! 

Thus did I reflect, and thus at every gust of the wind did I conclude,—till it pleased the Almighty to allay..."

Alexander had been waiting to die; he now thanked God that he'd escaped.  At the end of the essay, he went a step further in his Christianity. He wrote an impassioned plea to his wealthy readers to help their less fortunate neighbors, the many who now had lost everything.

"—Look around thee and shudder at the view.—See desolation and ruin wherever thou turnest thine eye. See thy fellow-creatures pale and lifeless; their bodies mangled—their souls snatched into eternity—
...Oh ye, who revel in affluence, see the afflictions of humanity, and bestow your superfluity to ease them.—Say not, we have suffered also, and with-hold your compassion. What are your sufferings compared to these? Ye have still more than enough left.—Act wisely.—Succour the miserable and lay up a treasure in Heaven."

Hamilton, I think, truly wanted people to do the right thing, and he wasn't afraid to give men three times his age a lesson in scripture. It's an aspect of his personality that is endearingly boyish.

All I have is words, but for me they shall be a magical buckler and sheathe!


Juliet Waldron

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The Meek Shall Inherit...

So, I looked into the natural history of my marsupial buddies today, and here’s what I found.

Once upon a time, 70 million years ago or thereabouts, these little guys emerged from the Cretaceous North American underbrush. The proto-possums are called Peradectids, at least, that’s the latest research from the University of Florida and those sooooooutherners  should know a thing or two about possums, after all. They were sharing their territory with the dinosaurs, so things were probably pretty tough, but then, just 5 million years or so later—the mere blink of an eye in geologic time—that famous or infamous asteroid struck, putting a sudden, dramatic end to the long reign of dino domination. Possums somehow survived.

What is more, they used the new space they’d acquired, after emerging from various fallout shelters—probably the gigantic ribcages of their now deceased neighbors—and, in a fit of exuberance, split into several families. Eating insects, fruit and eggs and other people’s leftovers, they trudged down Mexico way and over the land bridge into South America, where they continued to evolve. At this time, South America, Antarctica and Australia were still cuddled up together on a big comfy couch of floating basalt, and so from here, the proto-marsupials marched on to find new homes.

The three continents finally parted company and drifted away from one another. Eventually isolated in Australia, the marsupial line would proliferate into many strange and wonderful shapes. Sadly, most of these exotic critters, are now extinct or on their way out, like the legendary Tasmanian Devil, who is really—cartoon aside—quite a fetching little beast.   

Meanwhile, in North America, all the possums went extinct during a time when North and South America were no longer connected. Therefore, for an epoch or two, North America was deprived of this a vital member of Nature’s clean-up crew.   Fortunately, for fans, like me, a short three million years ago, the land bridge between North and South America rose again—or the ocean receded, locked up in the polar ice caps or whatever—and possums returned to their ancient point of origin once again.

Now, while you are laughing at possum—squashed by the side of road—no doubt intentionally driven over by some bully of an ape with delusions of grandeur because he sits in a machine with an internal combustion engine—well, think again! The “dawn of man” --and guess what, guys? There wouldn’t have been any “dawn” at all without woman, too—this “dawn” began a mere 3 million years ago, about the time possum was returning from his very successful South American road trip.

Now, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit—true proto-primates came on the scene some 55 million years ago—but essentially, a possum is, was and has been, a possum. You’d recognize a Peradectid as a possum, but you sure as heck wouldn’t recognize that little shrew thing with the forward facing eyes hanging in a tree as a member of your high-falutin' family.

There’s something to be said for plain and simple, for humility, for not making a fuss and aggrandizing oneself--that, and for a body plan which allowed possum to survive 70 million years -- plus that legendary asteroid that took down the grandest, over-the-top animal family our planet has ever given birth to. It has been said that "the meek shall inherit the earth" and perhaps they will--which is one of the reasons why I admire this mundane, gentle creature. 

Cute as a boxful of possums

--Juliet Waldron

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A restrained country romance about Post Civil War Pennsylvania--a young, too pretty German girl comes to America to the house of her well-married big sister and learns a few things about love, life and religion.

Cats Have Therapists, Too

“It’s all pretty far-out, Cat. You know what I mean?”

These are the kind of conversations you get around old people who have lived with a lot of cats.

The Cat stuck her face in the bowl and munched while I massaged her fluffy, thick back. Patting her was like patting a wide-beamed, long-haired Scottish sheep. The fur was sort of dry and oily at the same time. It left my hands smelling of the cast-off cellar rug, the one that my husband, as the one who promises Yes! Yes! I will vacuum it—but somehow never does—the rug that is an in-home super-fund site, redolent of fuel oil, cement dust, flea spray, cat hair and kitty litter, plus the assorted paints and chemicals which are stored down there. 

This icky basement is the place where our PTSD cat story began and is still the place to which it reboots whenever Kimi feels threatened. Even after six years of safety and kid gloves, she remains an anxious kitty. She’s blonde, and stuffed-toy-fluffy with a sweet doll’s face--but not the pushed in muzzle--of a Persian. She’s heavy and square, what, in the Cat Fancy is referred to as “cobby-bodied.”  She might be the offspring of some hobby breeder’s accident, a Ragdoll, or a Birman, and who knows what else, getting together. Anyhow, we’ve never had a cat like this one before, although, that’s what we say to all the special kitties who have come to live here over the years. She arrived through a friend, who found her, starving, tick infested, with a festering wound on one hip. She was terrified of human hands.

Kimi-Wah still has rules. There are rules about where she may be petted; rules about how she may be petted. Unlike most cats, she sometimes appreciates the sort of thumping you might bestow upon a small dog. She likes to have a blanket on the floor by the television. Here she sits and regards us from across the room as we couch-potato in the evening. Sometimes she calls to us with a plaintive little meow. Then one or the other of her people is supposed to get down on the floor with her and pat her—but only while she’s sitting on the fabric. You have to keep an eye on the tail. If that fluffy plume begins to flail, it’s time to stop.

Sometimes she calls for petting, but if she’s not on the rug, she’ll simply run away if you approach her. Sometimes she’ll run for her blanket and you will be allowed to pat her there, but, just as often as not, she’ll head to the cellar. Sometimes, I’ll follow her down there and hope to gather her up from the old flannel sheet that I’ve put down to keep her off that awful rug. I tell her “no one wants a basement cat.” I tell her that basement cats are almost as bad as ceiling cats, or under-the-couch cats—those top neurotics of the indoor cat world.

In six years, though, she has loosened up somewhat. She’s long-haired and needs daily grooming or she’ll mat and/or get sick from the hair-balls all that fur generates. I brush first and then gently comb. Initially, she had to be held down with all four hands available around here, even for the briefest beauty treatment. The whole time she’d snarl and growl and scream and try to slice us to ribbons with her needle claws.

These days, she’ll call to me while I’m at the computer—whiny meow after whiny meow—until I give up and fetch the brush and then head to the blanket. She’ll trot ahead of me, plumy tail waving and then lie down, all in anticipation of her beauty treatment. She’ll even let me hold her and trim her nails. Lately, she’s been getting up to couch-potato beside me in the evenings; she's even getting the hang of happy purrs.   

We didn't think she'd ever come round, but inch by inch, she has. It's been one of the longest lasting feline rehab projects we've ever undertaken, but in the end, her sweet sensitive self is beginning to reappear. 

A rare trip outside for the Wah

~~Juliet Waldron

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Books We Love Authors for more Sunday Snippets:

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http://connievines.blogspot.com.au/ Connie Vines

Revolutionary War Love, Adventure & Romance

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Revolutionary War Adventure

Jack and Angelica, on the run again from a fortune-hunting British officer.

Jack slowed the horse to a walk. He took one of the pieces of cornpone out of his pocket and passed it back to her.

Angelica studied the slab—a heavy, yellow slab dotted with black-eye beans—disapprovingly. It was overcooked and dry, certainly not the way she made it!

She soon decided, however, that in this situation, dry and hard was better. Although Jack doubtless had a pocket full of crumbs, there wouldn’t be mushy bean ooze as well.

“I believe,” Jack said, chewing, “we’re extremely fortunate Miss Grace possesses a romantic nature.”

“Unlucky, though, that we had to run like that,” Angelica observed with a sigh. “A cup of tea would’ve been lovely. Not to mention breakfast.”

“A few more moments in bed with you would’ve been lovely, too.” He flashed a grin.

“A gentleman would not mention that.” She enhanced the reproof with a smart, sisterly cuff to his shoulder.

Jack responded by chuckling. “Dear Miss Ten Broeck, you are quite right. Another few minutes of kissing that sweet mouth of yours, and I fear that I wouldn’t have been in a responsible frame of mind at all.”

“Shouldn’t we be going faster?” Angelica was cross, with herself, and with him, too.

“Well, I’m taking a chance, but the best thing is not to go off at a gallop. We should look as if we have no particular reason to hurry.”

Now, dressed and riding together again, the episode in the bedroom was swiftly taking on the fading tingle of a naughty dream. And what was that she had seen shining from Jack’s translucent eyes?

Danger? Or was it a—promise?

How sweet his kisses, how disarming his wiles! But, oh! What might have happened if they had been left undisturbed? How easy it would’ve been, she thought, allowing a delicious wicked thrill run through her, to just let him go on, to lie back in those strong arms and let his knowing caresses …

~Juliet Waldron

~Revolutionary War~

~Love, Adventure, History~

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Angel's Flight

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A Master Passion,
the story of Alexander Hamilton &
Elizabeth Schuyler

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Once a week you find them in the lobby of the grocery store.  I have a habit of reading through them. There are the usual advertisers, the churches, the realtors, the auctions, the used car dealers, restaurants that offer “early-bird” specials for seniors, and club listings—chess, photography, computers, knitting, quilting, and a host of support groups. There are a few obituaries, but I hope never to find the few people I do know featured.  There are classified ads, too, and these are mostly the reason I read it.

Every once in a while there’s something that makes me smile.  My most recent favorite said: “Found! One of those things you pick up things with in the 300 block of Mayberry Street.”  This writer had good intentions, but the words to describe the object he’d found eluded him.  Still, he did note where he'd found it, and perhaps that would reunite the owner with the lost object.

Sometimes, the ad reveals something about the mental state of the person who wrote it. This is unintentional, but here’s a good one, full of anxiety: “Lost blue tool box full of tools. I’m not sure where I lost it, but it’s blue, full of tools and says Erector on the lid. Reward! Thank-you.”  You can tell that losing that was a terrible thing, but you can also tell that the writer has probably lost a lot of other important things over the years. As someone who can relate to absent-mindedness and loss, I sincerely hoped someone eventually returned his toolbox (blue).

Another ad, one I responded to, said: “Help me please! I have 31 cats who needs good homes.  Bring cat food.“

I went to the place—the back of beyond behind a very small somewhere along-the-highway town and up a hill via a gullied dirt road. There I found a ramshackle house and on it's last legs barn. There were cats everywhere, running for cover. A woman, thin and tired looking, with tattoos all over her arms, came out and we sat down together on the grass. She explained that she had worked at a shelter, but couldn’t endure the weekly euthanasia, and so had ended up with all these cats. I could see straight-away that most of her cats had no use for people—probably with good reason. 

I watched cats skulking under the rusting junkers  and behind old engine parts that littered the yard. After a few minutes, she  opened the big bag of cat food I’d brought and spread it on the ground. Skinny cats came swarming from every direction.   After gulping hastily, all keeping one eye on me--the unknown--most ran away. I’d been watching an orange threesome, scrawny nine month adolescents. The kind weary woman pointed them out, calling them “my orange brothers.”

One, the skinniest and shabbiest, climbed onto my lap. As soon as I touched him he began to purr, a huge roaring purr. He drooled with joy as I began to pet him gently. His eyes were washed-out yellow. His fur was dry as straw and his nose ran. I could count ribs and feel his knobby spine.

I felt a strong emotional connection—and then he bit me, grabbing the skin of my forearm with his teeth and twisting like a bulldog. Just a millimeter short of drawing blood, he leapt off my lap, stood just out of reach and continued to gaze at me, trembling, drooling, and purring.

“He didn't mean that,” she said. “He just gets excited.” 

This desperate, sick, love-starved soul is the one I took home. You never know what kind of cool stuff you'll discover in the free paper...

 

~ Juliet Waldron

 

 

 

 

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First Turkey, 1964

The first turkey I ever cooked myself was in the year of 1964. I was a young married, an ex- student, as was my husband. We were living in a dismal basement apartment in NYC, with a front window whose view was the back of the building’s garbage cans. Needless to say, we kept the blinds closed. We shared a bathroom with some elder ladies who we never saw, but who, no matter how loudly I scrubbed the tub after using it, would come in as soon as I’d left and wash the entire bathroom all over again. I suppose I can’t blame them, for lots of poor people in the city lived in fear of all manner of dangerous unknowns.

We’d managed to buy the turkey, a small one, although it took some financial planning to get the cash together, as I didn’t have a job. Only my husband, Chris, did.  As a nineteen year old with zero skills, as expected, that didn’t pay much and rent took most of that. As for me, I’d left the hospital I’d been working in back in Philadelphia and come to NYC in order to be with him. Plus, I was violently morning sick—to the 9^th degree. I mean, Rosemary, in “Rosemary’s Baby,” had nothing on me. The only things I could reliably keep down were weird cravings: green pea soup, white bread, grapefruit and sardines. Anything else—upchuck! Maybe that’s why the invisible ladies next door were so diligent about scrubbing our shared bathroom.

On the big day we cleaned up our turkey as I’d seen my parents do, slapped it in a big bakeware pan that we’d found in the kitchen, turned the oven to 350 and then walked over to Broadway to see a little of the Thanksgiving Day parade. We were so far uptown that there wasn’t much to see, but there were bands and high school kids from out of town feeling really proud of themselves, and people wrestling with a couple of balloons—my favorite, Dino the dinosaur—being dragged about in the gusty wind. The other big event for me was seeing Fess Parker of Davy Crocket fame, waving and smiling from the back of an open car. Like a zillion children from my generation, he’d been my hero back in the fourth grade.  I’d wept while watching the Walt Disney show the night “Davy” died at the Alamo.

 

 

Now that child’s life seemed incredibly distant. Chris and I looked at each other. We were married, pregnant and close to broke. Whether one or either of us would ever get back to college—and how the heck we would manage it--was still up in the air. Nobody's parents were happy. With all this drama swirling through our minds, the parade, so very pointedly an event for little kids, got old fast.  

 

We turned and walked back through the wind, weak November sun, and grimy uptown streets to our little pad. When we got there, the place was redolent with roast turkey and baked potatoes. The bird made snapping noises as the juice splattered about inside the oven, casting a kind of smoky pall around the kitchen. We decided that this must mean it was cooked. Chris fetched it out, and lo and behold, it was done, all crispy, juices running clear.  I was a little surprised that I was, for the first time in months and all of a sudden—genuinely hungry. It was quite a fine meal, our first Thanksgiving—meat, potatoes, squishy store bread and a freshly opened can of cranberry sauce. Who knew I’d be remembering it fifty-one years later?

~~Juliet Waldron
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THE GREAT APPLE HUNT

 

Every August, I wait and watch for the new crop of apples. I begin the process of filling my fridge with apples, and proceed to bake apple pies and apple bread. Then I fill my freezer with applesauce. The habit began early.

 

My parents had three acres in Skaneateles, NY which came with the remains of an orchard. There were seven trees in a row on the eastern side of the house, and I remember the shape and habit of each one well, blooming in spring or illuminated by sunrise. Nearest the road was a classic Golden Delicious tree with low, spreading limbs. It was my particular haunt, because it was easy to climb into. During hot summer afternoons, there were almost-comfortable notches you could get into with a book, but actually, the best thing was just to zone out and watch the ever-changing shadows of the leaves dancing across my skinny arms.   Besides this shapely tree there was also a Schuyler Plum, a Bartlett pear, and a single apple tree each of Rome and Cortland. We had one mystery tree which shed rock hard golden-with-pink-blush fruit very late in the season. To this last, my parents could not give a name until they consulted the local old-timers. This, we finally learned, was a Winter Banana. Although initially “hard enough to shoot through an oak plank”, we found that if you wiped these apples and stored them in a cool place inside a big cardboard box, by early January they would become tasty, juicy and delicious. These heritage apples kept so well, that we often made pies or sauce or even Waldorf salad as late as April. We rarely bought store apples.

 

 

Winter Banana

From:   http://adamapples.blogspot.com/

When my husband and I were first married, we lived in Massachusetts and so had plenty of excellent northern apples to eat, and so my craving—after dearth years in the West Indies--was satisfied. The newly developed, sweet and crispy Macoun, glowing in those picture-perfect Massachusetts orchards was a revelation. For work, though, we had to move south. The apples here came earlier, and what I found were of poor quality. At the farm stands, the Macs, Romes and Cortlands, and even the ordinarily good keepers such as Staymen, all too soon in the long southern autumns, became mush.  Friends who lived up north sent me fruit by post, but I was an apple exile--deprived.

Moving again, into Pennsylvania, I hoped to find better apples, but at first, I couldn’t locate them. People here liked Lodi, for they come early, but about all they are good for is a mild, soupy sauce. No, the early greens are not favorites—and don’t even mention the awful saw-dust-look-but-don't eat supermarket Red “Delicious”!  The antique varieties our grandparents knew had been destroyed by subdivisions and marketing. I’ve lived in PA for 30 years now, and that once world-famous Pennsylvania export, the York Imperial--of "Treasure Island" fame--has never crossed my seeker’s path.

  

Happily, we are returning to a time in which people crave good taste again, and at the renascent farmer’s markets I'm again finding the old favorites.  It’s catch as catch can, depending on weather, rain and whether I find them fresh off the tree. There are some new, tasty varieties—the Ginger Gold, the Braeburn, the Gala, and the magnificent, late season Goldrush.  Among the newbies, I confess to a weakness for Empires and Jonagolds. The older breeds, however, to my old taste buds, will always be tops. My heart leaps when I find a hard, tart Jonathan or a traditional Winesap, or even a Cortland or a Rome, fresh from a good tree. This year, during my  annual apple hunt, I encountered my Holy Grail of heritage apples—Northern Spy—and enjoyed a brief time of rejoicing in each crispy, crunchy, tangy bite.     

 

Heritage apples/Assorted

 

~~Juliet Waldron

Historical Novels @ http://www.julietwaldron.com