Well life at school will be changing. My colleague of seven years has suddenly retired. Not totally surprising since he feels our program will be going the way of the dodo very soon. So if no one else abandons me, we will have two new staff in the ILC with me being the oldtimer. I will miss Joseph's expertise in finding speakers and other nonacademics that enhanced our students' lives.

I am finally digging into An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz. nearing the halfway mark and I am quickly running out of post it bookmarks. Learning so much, I have to thank James Loewen and Howard Zinn for recommending her book. It isn't that I thought Native Americans were treated well by the conquering white hoards, but it far worse than I could imagine. Ok, maybe not, but worse than I hoped. I also think my people may have been a part of the first wave of marauders to come to America. Ulster-Scots seem to fit into what Ancestry pinpoints as my ancestral origins. Reading about the Ulster-Scots caused me to take a quick look at one of my trees in Ancestry. My ancestors came to the Carolinas, the low country and spread out from there. I guess I will have to pay to find out more. I did find a few who fought for the blue in the Civil War, which is nice to see. Also a couple who fought in the war of 1812. Like my blog, I have a hard time spending a lot of time doing research on these ancestors.

On this July 4th, I find it a bit disconcerting about the posts lambasting thanking the troops. Also the friends on Facebook who counter my posts with fake news. I decided no response is best since you can't persuade someone who believes the fake stuff with a showering of facts or even a question about what they have posted. Facebook is an interesting place, I do try to post only what I have researched/checked for truth. Sometimes I make a booboo, buy mostly I think I am doing a good job of practicing what I will teaching in the Fall in regards to fact checking.

I am saddened that one of my go to historians Jared Diamond may not be as well-researched as I had thought. I always had an inkling his explanations were too simplistic and now as I read Dunbar-Ortiz I see where I went wrong in believing what he said about indigenous populations and their lack of "cargo." The indigenous definition of cargo before being conquered is far different than what the man on Papua, New Guinea asked of Diamond. "Why you white people have so much cargo, and we New Guineans have so little?" This was the phrase that sent Diamond on his quest, a quest tainted by a Eurocentric view of what cargo is and was. I have little problem with my views being smashed by facts and history. I love learning and someday I hope to set my learning into words. I guess this blog could be a step in that direction.

It has been awhile since i actually visited my blog. I don't know why I haven't taken the time to set my thoughts to words. I have never been a journaler and maybe that is why. I have friends who carve out time daily to write down their thoughts. I have never been that disciplined. I do have those moments that pop up in the wee hours of the morning where I have great thoughts, epiphanies even, and then I eventually fall asleep and those epiphanies seal themselves into a vault I don't have ready access to.
Here is hoping with my new tablet that I will begin to carve out time. My current passion is reading history, the history I wasn't taught even when I first started college those many many years ago. History is a passion because I don't know my history. it took me far too long from the time I received my original birth certificate to actually do a search on Ancestry. By the time I looked my birth mother had died. Mary Ruth Hoffman, my birth mom. I knew her name early on as I found an article in The Oregonian about a baby found in St. Mary's Catholic Church. That baby was me. I went on Ancestry and found names and photos. Then last year I did their DNA test and discovered, much to my daughter's dismay that my blood would make a White Supremacist proud. My childhood dream of being an Indian princess dashed. I then paid the extra fee to dig deeper and discovered that some branch of my family tree has Ale Hatfield in it. My people come from the Carolina lowlands, they fought on the wrong side of the Civil War and in the Revolutionary War. I traced them back to the 1700s, immigrants from England.
Now I have to decide to pay another fee to access records from England. Not so sure i want to do that. just yet. It's a fairly good racket, want to chase those green leaves around the world it will cost you more money.
My students are interested because I get excited about their history as much as mine. I have begun to ask them, "Do you see your face in our history books?" They sort of do, but mainly the history books tell the history of those who states will buy textbooks about. It's my job to find the books that tell their history. That's my plan for the coming school year. I have purchased several retired history textbooks and through my donorschoose project Knowing the Truth of history makes more powerful, four classroom sets of history books. Hopefully we will be able examine the textbooks and learn as we go.
Tomorrow same place, same time.... I hope.