Parallels between Ramesses II and Donald Trump

Point of Curiosity: How much do these two empire builders have in common?

	Ramesses II	Donald Trump
Fair-skinned Redhead	✔	✔
Enemy of Syria	Captured the Hittite vassal state Amurru in Syria Battle of Kadesh, Syria Captured Edom-Seir, Moab and Upi in Syria Other temporarily successful campaigns in Syria	"Lastly, we must immediately suspend immigration from any nation that has been compromised by terrorism until such time as proven vetting mechanisms have been put in place. My opponent has called for a radical 550% increase in Syrian refugees on top of existing massive refugee flows coming into our country under President Obama. She proposes this despite the fact that there’s no way to screen these refugees in order to find out who they are or where they come from." Verbatim from Trump's acceptance speech.
Multiple Wives	Nefertari Isetnofret Bintanath (also his daughter) Meritamen (also his daughter) Nebettawy (also his daugther) Henutmire (his daughter or sister) Maathorneferure (daughter of Hattusili III) Hittite princess (not immediately finding her name, might not be known)	Ivana Zelníčková 1977 - 1991 Marla Maples 1993 - 1999 Melania Knauss 2005 While it was intended as a joke, it is nonetheless reminescent of Trump's infamous quote, "I've said if Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her."
Opportunistic Grandfathers	Ramesses I From a non-royal noble military family, rose to Pharaoh.	Frederick Trump From a poor German family, became a successful American businessman.
Prolific Namesake Monuments	Temple of Ramesses, Beloved by Amun, Abu Simbel, Nubia Ramesses II Temple, Abydos, Egypt The Ramesseum memorial temple, Luxor, Egypt Pi-Ramesses "House of Ramesses", Qantir, Egypt	Trump Towers, Istanbul, Turkey Trump Tower, NYC, USA Trump Towers, Sunny Isles Beach, FL, USA Trump Tower, White Plains, NY, USA Trump International Hotel and Tower: Chicago, IL, USA; Honolulu, HI, USA; NYC, USA; Toronto, ON, Canada; Vancouver, BC, Canada; Washington, D.C., USA Trump Plaza: NYC, USA; New Rochelle, NY, USA; Jersey City, NJ, USA Trump World Tower, NYC, USA The Trump Building, NYC, USA Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower, Panama City, FL, USA Trump SoHo, NYC, USA Trump Hotel Las Vegas, Las Vegas, NV, USA This list is almost hilariously non-exhaustive.

An Ancestral Highway in 18th century Vermont

I am in the good fortune of having an extraordinary book of my family's genealogy from my dad's aunt, my great Aunt Dot. I was re-reading it recently as an adult - the last time I did a complete read I was only 10! - and, of course, reading through it made me curious about several new things with adult eyes and a far more profoundly useful internet at my fingertips than what was available in 1987.

One point of curiosity was: my earliest patrilineal confirmed descendant, John Ramer, bought some land to build a highway in the forests of Vermont. My aunt found the land record, which recorded the following scintillating details in 1798:

John Ramer bought NE 1/4 pt of UR7 -50A+ for making a road from Sunderland through Stratton to Newfane.

Curious, I wandered over to Google Maps to see if there was any evidence of a highway or even a road from this intended endeavour. Nothing but green, baby.

Sunderland to Stratton, VT

But also, something useful: the land in question is largely within the boundaries of the Green Mountain and Finger Lakes National Forests. In very little time, I'd even found a web form to email the rangers who work on the ground there. We live in the future, y'all.

Thus, this Sunday, I wrote with only a little hope of getting a response (if the web form miraculously worked, which it did! Go Forest Service!):

I was reading an old genealogy book on my family and encountered this description of a land record from 1798: "John Ramer bought NE 1/4 pt of UR7 -50A+ for making a road from Sunderland through Stratton to Newfane." I was curious and looked up the area on Google maps but didn't see any evidence of a modern descendant of this road. Is there any remaining evidence that a road was built with this path? I figured if anyone knows, it's the forest rangers :)

To my great delight, I had not one by two replies in my email this morning!

First was the gentleman who received the initial email, Jeff, who re-routed my inquiry:

Good morning, Tim:
I had the cheek to label this "high importance, " simply because it seems to me one of those historical things  that we ought to be able to tell people, and I am hoping that as Forest Archaeologist you will suppose that an abandoned road is in your province (no pun intended).  If you tell me to turn elsewhere for information on this issue, then the person inquiring will know that there may be longer to wait or that the riddle may go unsolved.  Thank you in advance for your response, either way.

There are Forest Archaeologists? Guys, my world is a better place. How cool is that? I want to be a Forest Archaeologist when I grow up. And I bet we have them where I live in Washington state. New goals!

Tim responded in quick order and as with the first, this new email and correspondent made me smile. I imagine these are the kind of gentlemen I could happily listen to the 99% Invisible podcast with and expect lively conversation about it afterwards.

Greetings and salutations!
This is of "high importance" in my book!  1798, hmm.  This would be "too new" to be portrayed on the Whitelaw's map of 1796.  Maybe try looking at some of the later maps.  There is a map by McClellan from 1856 and the 1869 Beers Atlas for that area.  There is a good chance that the road was still in use by the locals in the 1860's. I only have the overview versions of these maps, there are more detailed ones out there.  You could most definitely try your local library or the historical society to have a look at what they have, that's where I would start.  I would also check the roads records from Sunderland, this could help a bit.  Good luck!

So, next stop: an excuse to look at some very old maps! (Yes, Europeans, I know you think we Americans are cute with out "19th century is old" business. Just smile, nod and pat us on our proverbial little heads, heh.)

Self-inflicted harm as a response to Stress

Point of Curiosity: In an extreme stress situation, is banging one's head against a wall / floor / etc. a common response and if so, why (biologically speaking)?

About twice a year, I briefly and adamantly declare that I'm going to quit my job and dedicate the rest of my life to the study of Endocrinology. Ever since reading The Human Brain by Isaac Asimov in college, I've been deeply fascinated by this system that overshadows our decision-making processes, our interactions, our most basic perceptions of reality.

As a chronic sufferer of PMS (one ovary gives me horrific PMS, while the other one is almost totally symptom-free), I think about Endocrinology a lot. And I'm no longer a teenager; I've been through the experience enough to know that my mood-related symptoms due to PMS feel normal at the time because it's a lot like boiling a frog. The frog's normal evolves with the rising temperature of the water, and my normal evolves with the rising hormones of the over-zealous ovary. I spent years being convinced, at the time it happened, that I was completely justified in reacting to small infractions, only to be ashamed in hindsight. Sure, whatever the thing was, it did bother me, but at a completely different magnitude than PMS would have me believe. Chemicals fundamental to my perception of reality told me I was mad.

Recently, I've been thinking about our stress response a lot. My favourite framing of this comes from Ash Beckham in her outstanding TEDxBoulder Talk "Coming Out of the Closet" who notes:

When you encounter a perceived threat - key word 'perceived' - your hypothalamus sounds the alarm and adrenaline and cortisol start coursing through your veins. [...] this is a totally normal reaction. And, comes from a time when that threat was being chased by a wooly mammoth. The problem is, your hypothalamus has no idea if you're being chased by a wooly mammoth, or if your computer just crashed, of if your in-laws just showed up on your doorstep, or if you're about to jump out of a plane, or if you need to tell someone you love that you have a brain tumor.

I was also struck by parallels between Ta-Nehisi Coates' teenage experience in crack-era Washington D.C. as described in his autobiography The Beautiful Struggle and my teenage experience in a significantly safer suburban neighborhood in eastern Kansas. I was bewildered to find a lot of common ground in the hyper-vigilance we developed in our respective environments, and only the cluelessness of the hypothalamus in stress stimulus could possibly account for it. Our experiences were so wildly different.

To the point of curiosity at hand: I witnessed a self-inflicted head injury - literally banging one's head against a wall - due to a stress response that kept escalating. Warning signs prior to this included full-body shaking and an inability to speak.

And it made me wonder, is this a thing? Does the head-banging have a purpose, one that potentially has some kind of benefit? Could it, for instance, disrupt an escalating stress response in the endocrine system? Is it an instinct to become unconscious, or something else?

My Google Fu isn't always the best, but I quickly found a 2011 article that confirmed my hypothesis wasn't entirely without merit, that this head-banging may have an actual "positive" (for a specific and relative definition of "positive", admittedly) impact on the endocrine system. The journal Psychoneuroendocrinology has an article, "Alterations in the neuroendocrinological stress response to acute psychosocial stress in adolescents engaging in nonsuicidal self-injury", which concluded from a very small trial (28 participants) that women who engage in Nonsuicidal Self-Injury (NSSI) experience reduced cortisol confirmed by a saliva test.

Which, of course, immediately caused me a follow-up question:

What is an HPA Axis?

The HPA Axis is the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. Both the organs and their influence and interactions on and with each other make up this axis. This immediately lead me to a model called the General Adaptation Syndrome (yes, GAS) developed by Hans Selye which explains an organism's response to a stressor, real or imagined.

There are three core stages defined in the syndrome: Alarm, Resistance and Exhaustion.

During the Alarm stage, we get the familiar adrenaline rush and our body starts releasing cortisol. Shock happens during the Alarm stage.

During the Resistance stage, the cortisol really ramps up. All kinds of resources get thrown into the bloodstream to help us resist or deal with the stressor.

There's different ways to exit via the Exhaustion stage: either the stressor is eliminated and we enter a Recovery stage, or the stressor remains and eventually our body's resources are depleted.

For another time, my follow-up question from that is, could self-harm be an attempt to abort the Resistance stage before hitting the Exhaustion stage?

I have so much more I want to learn about all of this, but for the moment, my lazy no-libraries-only-internet starter answer is: I don't know if the head-banging is a common response but there's a maybe to it having a potentially cortisol-reducing effect if we can assume self-inflicted head injury is similar to other kinds of NSSI like cutting.

Anecdotes from Seattle public transit III

"BlackLivesMatter, but then they say AllLivesMatter," pausing to gauge his buddy's response, who gave that same level gaze he was giving to most of his friend's roller coaster ride of words.

On the evening bus home from work, two black dudes came to sit down at the back of the bus with me. Both light-skinned. The guy sitting in the middle next to me had a very Seattle vibe. Mellow, down-to-Earth, de-escalating in various subtle ways, had to get his bicycle off the front of the bus when they reached their destination. His buddy was in from out of town, and I got both a friendly Midwest and assertive East coast vibe from him, which made me wonder if he was from a military family.

Out of towner (OOT) was on a soliloquy bender, pausing only to get reactions from the Middleman (MM), which MM only offered up when he had information to add to the various topics OOT bounced around on. From how Seattle was changing to real estate, OOT jumped without segue to #BlackLivesMatter.

"TransLivesMatter," he continued, "Straight bullshit."

I bit my tongue and didn't say, "Straight being the operative word." I'm not generally quick-witted, but that almost happened. OOT's that guy who likes to Know Stuff without actually doing the research, and I haven't found much value in engaging with that personality type. They're not interested in education or actually knowing, they're interested in the impression they're crafting.

MM was half responding to his buddy, but half of his attention was on me as I attempted to - rather than actually - read Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor, a gorgeous-so-far sci fi that takes place in Nigeria. He cared that I was hearing his friend talk, though in what way I'm not sure. His increasing lack of response to his friend made me wonder if he wanted me to see there was some distance there, socially, politically. I know I do that sometimes, like if I'm out with a buddy who suddenly starts frothing at the mouth over something I find gross, like a rant about how all taxes are bad or something equally short-sighted and ignorant. He was dead silent about the TransLivesMatter comment.

I agree that responding to #BlackLivesMatter with #AllLivesMatter is total bullshit. The whole point of the entire meme and hashtag and movement is to clarify the value of life and point out that our current data is painting a really problematic portrait: that Americans value, that American infrastructure values, black life less. We need to fix that. It's embarrassing to recognize how far we've come and not come since the 1960s.

I prickled when he threw in #TransLivesMatter, though. Our current data is painting a really problematic portrait of that, too: that Americans value trans life less, too. These memes exist for damn good reasons. They give a voice to under-valued and under-represented groups who are, rightfully, scared, and help everyone - both the target groups and allies - find ways to fix all of the broken things in our society, culture and infrastructure (be it corporate or civil) leading to this terrible data around race, gender identity and murder.

If OOT'd said it to point out the self-centeredness of people trying to co-opt conversations about the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile for their own causes, I'd agree. When we talk about black Americans who are losing their lives for being black, we don't need to and shouldn't saturate the signal with other causes. Let's focus on black-targeted racism, identify the specific problems that lead us to this terrible data, have these fundamentally hard conversations that help us understand what we can do to make this better and safer for black Americans. When unarmed black Americans are dying, it's time to talk about #BlackLivesMatter.

We have a lot of data about women and sexual assault, but that, too, is its own thing. As a woman and a sexual assault survivor, I get how utterly inappropriate it is for me to try to turn #BlackLivesMatter or #TransLivesMatter or any other cause to my own very personal agenda. Sure, it overlaps with women of color, with trans women, but now's not the time. I don't think "what about me?" is ever a good response to civil rights movements, unless it's a representing voice from within that movement. When the Stanford rapist got off with a 6-month sentence, that was a good time to be outraged about rape culture and respond accordingly. Right? Right.

So, in principle, I agree with OOT.

However, the way he spat out #TransLivesMatter? What was conveyed in his tone was that he, like many of his fellow Americans, didn't value trans lives, didn't consider their lives to be a legitimate concern. And that made me sick, and tired, and sad.

If you could do one thing to advance the #BlackLivesMatter cause, what would it be?

If you could do one thing to advance the #TransLivesMatter cause, what would it be?

Point of curiosity: Do any of the things we need to do for either cause overlap?

That sure would be nice, wouldn't it?

It's a tricky question as I think about it. Addressing the trans panic defense, for instance, will affect trans people - especially intersex people and trans women who are either pre-op or no-op - and that includes black intersex and trans people. However, #BlackLivesMatter is largely focused on police killing unarmed black people, which has little-to-nothing to do with trans panic.

As I read various background pieces before writing this, I was heartened to see #7 "The movement does not care about queer or trans lives" on this list from blacklivesmatter.com: 11 Major Misconceptions About the Black Lives Matter Movement.

Most of the trans and trans ally activists I know - me among them - are also extremely concerned about both the violence targeting people of color and the ongoing exclusion of people of color in much of our mainstream media. Concern isn't necessarily action, though. It's something I think about pretty hard before I try to suggest that I'm an ally of a cause. Being concerned without taking action strikes me as a privilege, too. People fearing for their lives rarely have that luxury.

I think a lot of us are invested in the idea of making things suck less, for everyone who has data showing that, yeah, things are sucking in a really targeted, scary way against specific groups of people. Actually making things suck less is harder and most of us need guidance for people who are smarter and better versed in these causes than us.

Here I am writing about these causes, but I feel like I don't do enough for any of them. It does make me tired. There's a lot that needs to be fixed, and some days I'm so bone tired from the mundane daily grind, that I have nothing left to give. I think it makes all of us tired at some point. I enormously appreciate those who are focused on the single causes and can direct the energy of the majority of us: the over-worked, over-tired masses who really want to indulge in the privilege of turning off our conscience for some much needed R&R. We can accomplish much in sheer quantity, but we also - by spreading ourselves thin, or through ignorance - often fail to identify the real quality actions to take on our own.

As a follow up to this post, I'm going to try to reply occasionally with what, if anything, I'm doing for either the #BlackLivesMatter or #TransLivesMatter causes, or maybe any other cause for which I'm compelled to take greater action than social media lip service.

Anecdotes from Seattle public transit II

A white guy, scruffy goatee, boarded in a hoodie, on his cell phone, voice loud. Sun-baked so that you wouldn't know 23 from 48.

"Listen, listen. I need the money, what do you want me to do? [...] No, you're an asshole, fuck you, you never listen. [...] Ok, but I'll come over and work. Why would you say that? I did it right the first time. [...] Why are you such an asshole? No, you're the asshole. [...]" He was so abusive to the person on the other end, the person he needed money from. There was a lot more, but I've happily blocked it out already. I could feel and see - in shoulders and posture and eye contact - everyone else on the bus slowly tense as this guy went on and on.

Then some white ladies boarded a few stops later, one of the social service stops at 3rd and Virginia. Woman #1 in a wheelchair wafting alcohol sweat so strong that I could smell it at the back of the bus. Bus driver, "Is that alcohol?" to her bottle. "Water!" "Yeah, sure, ok." Blonde-grey hair stringy and unwashed. Belligerent, badgering the other woman who was trying to wrangle two dogs, into helping her. The bus driver wouldn't take woman #2's fare, and thanked her for helping woman #1 and being so kind.

During the boarding, woman #1 was going on and on about how she was meeting a friend to fill her Orca card up for her, and she just needed to get the courthouse at 5th and James. Getting to the courthouse is a super common theme among the bus-riding belligerents, it's got like a one in three incidence with the out-expressers. She was having trouble moving her wheelchair around and paused in her monologue to yell at the second woman, who was trying to rearrange her dogs and help.

This caused angry needy cell phone dude to shout, "FUCK! Why isn't anyone helping her?" with a huge sigh. He got up to storm to the front of the bus as woman #2 moved woman #1 into place, while managing both dogs.

Dude backed off and retreated to his seat, middle of the bus, to bitch loudly to anyone who would listen about how long it was taking to get anywhere on the bus. At least he was off the cell phone for the moment.

Woman #2 came to the back with us, and it became clear to everyone that she didn't even know woman #1. She had tears in her eyes and I could see she was angry with herself about that.

Everyone perked up to see the dogs. Several petted Lady, the mournful-eyed basset mix on a leash. Once woman #2 had a minute, the various men nearby started talking to her quietly about dogs. A black guy with long dreads, a gold winged angel pendant, maybe on a cross, I couldn't tell, and such a gentle smile. A mixed race guy with a Vin Diesel voice who had a dog walking service, and had talked to woman #2 on a bus about dogs a few months ago. The black guy sitting next to me in a black leather jacket and shades, who was determined to not interact until Lady asked him politely to please pet her with those impossible-to-deny Basset eyes. I laughed as they all shared stories, in my odd outside-looking-in participating-not-participating kind of way, and the woman would look sideways to me from time to time (it was all men except for us) and give me this bewildered smile. Those little sisterhood moments women constantly share.

Woman #2 gets the King County Bus Passenger Heroine of the Day award, which I just made up. And good on the bus driver, too, for his plethora of small kindnesses and his carefully kept temper as woman #1 talked at him all the way to James.

Jains after Dark

Point of Curiosity: Do Jains go for walks after dark?

I was walking home after dark in the rain two weeks ago, and there was a crunch. I knew instantly what it was: I had crushed a snail. It's been haunting me since.

It also made me wonder. I have a ton of respect for the Jain approach to non-violence - "ahimsa" - which extends beyond humans to also include animals and insects.

It was as I was beginning to study religions and become a more educated religious tolerance advocate, that I first learned about the Jain dharma. I have made an effort to "walk lightly" ever since. To pay attention to what my feet walk on, to not disrupt ant hills, or step on a beetle when I could've avoided it. I had already been a vegetarian for several years at the point, under the philosophy that if I was going to eat an animal that had died for another purpose, I would have to learn to do it by my own hand. So, I'm a vegetarian. Tangentially: I also wildly approve of Temple Grandin's improvements in humane slaughter.

Do Jains go for walks after dark?

I believe the answer is no, though I didn't discover a definitive Thou Shalt Not for it. This is based on the following behaviours practiced by Jains:

1. Jains do not eat or drink after dark. I'm finding that in earlier references this is justified with reference to insects attracted to cooking fires being brought to harm, as well as the possibilities of insects enjoying the food and being eaten by accident when they cannot be seen. In later references, it is justified by killing the micro-organisms that grow on food overnight, which it seems to me must be an extension of the don't-use-cooking-fire-at-night concept. I'm vague on how refrigeration plays into all of this, but that strikes me like a question I'll keep on reserve for the next time I meet a practicing Jain.
2. Jains do not walk in over-grown fields where they cannot know what they are stepping on.
3. Aesthetic Jains walk to avoid harming what they cannot easily see if they were instead driving.

The combination of these things implies to me that Jains will avoid situations that are difficult to evaluate for practicing ahimsa, which would include walks after dark. This goes well with the concept of carefulness - "samti" - that a Jain monk is required to cultivate.

Great podcast for the perpetually curious: Pigeon milk, among other things

Point of Curiosity: What is pigeon milk?

A friend of mine recommended this podcast about a book. I'm not very aural, but this completely captivated me. Do you KNOW what pigeon milk is? Find out.

This is a podcast, and a book, for those of us intrepid urban hikers who wander out into cities and still find and admire the nature all around us.

The podcast (99% Invisible):
http://pca.st/pCFE

The book:

Unseen City: The Majesty of Pigeons, the Discreet Charm of Snails & Other Wonders of the Urban Wilderness by Nathanael Johnson

Anecdotes from Seattle public transit I

I was standing at a bus stop for King County Metro, reading.

A late-20s alabaster-white goth woman with red-orange lip stain sat on the bench, smoking. A light-skinned black woman who turned 71 over the weekend asked if she could sit, and joined goth girl on the bench.

A white-and-grey shaggy haired white guy somewhere between prematurely grey late-20s and Pacific-Northwest-age-deceiving 40s paced in front of us, well-dressed, two of his backpack compartments unzipped and open to the world. The older woman called out to him to ask if he knew his backpack was unzipped. He swung it around to fix it.

The older woman noticed [the size of] my feet - I wear a women's US 4.5 - and it started a conversation between the three of us women about shoes. The pacing guy announced, "Hey! Hey, watch this!"

We turned and he hiked his leg and pretended to pee on the bus stop sign post.

"I peed on the sign!" he declared in a high voice with bright eyes.

Goth girl and I exchanged looks. I never know what to say in moments like this, and neither did she. We'd both been riding Seattle public transit plenty long enough to abide by the unspoken rule of not engaging unless something critical was escalating.

The older woman looked at the sign post, looked on the ground to see if there was a puddle, and then calmly looked up at him and said, "I missed the show. Can you do it again?"

Garveyites and the Back-to-Africa movement

Point of Curiosity: How many Garveyites returned to Africa and what happened to them?

I've just read the restored version of Black Boy by Richard Wright that was originally intended for publication. The version I read in the 1990s was Part 1: Southern Night, Wright's upbringing in Southern poverty and eventual migration to Chicago. This adds in ~130 pages of Part 2: The Horror and the Glory, Wright's early dealings with the Communist party in Chicago and his first successes as a writer.

Wright has two quotes in this book that made me curious about the Garveyites.

The one group I met during those exploring days whose lives enthralled me was the Garveyites, an organization of black men and women who were forlornly seeking to return to Africa.

Those Garveyites I knew could never understand why I liked them but would never follow them, and I pitied them too much to tell them that they could never achieve their goal, that Africa was owned by the imperial powers of Europe, that their lives were alien to the mores of the natives of Africa, that they were people of the West and would for ever be so until they either merged with the West or perished.

The Garveyites are named for the movement's founder, Marcus Garvey. Garvey was born in Jamaica in 1887. Among other things, Garvey founded a passenger line called Black Star Line which "promoted the return of the African diaspora to their ancestral lands."¹ It was considered one of Garvey's key contributions to the Back-to-Africa movement.

Yarmouth, the first Black Star Line ship (src)

^{Work in Progress: a Timeline of Returns to Africa}

^{For now, I'm collecting data about any returns of slaves or free people descended from slaves to their homeland or their ancestors' homeland, not just self-identified Garveyites.}

^{1815-1816 Sierra Leone}

^{Captain Paul Cuffee, a wealthy multi-racial Native American man also of Ashanti (modern Ghana) descent, and a group of Philadelphia Quakers sent 38 blacks (18 adults and 20 children of eight families) to Freetown, Sierra Leone. This included provisioning their first year upon resettlement.}

^{1855-1856 Liberia}

<sup>Reverends Moses Tichnell (Methodist3) and Samuel Rutherford Houston (Presbyterian4) freed slaves and financed their voyages to Liberia5 TBD: Details

To be continued... need to read up on the American Colonization Society (ACS) which looks like it's going to be wildly controversial, and I suspect there's going to be a whole separate interesting wonderlust rabbit hole post about the founding of Liberia. I'm embarrassed that I knew nothing about its history. And obviously more post-Civil War stuff, since my first data points are before the war.
1</sup> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Garvey
² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-to-Africa_movement#Religious_motivations_for_colonization
³ Sayre, Ralph SAYRE FAMILY: another 100 years, Volume 4
⁴ Houston (Samuel Rutherford and Family) Papers 1781-1940 Mss. 3451
⁵ Rabbit hole: neither of these gentlemen have Wikipedia biographies. I'm going to make an effort to fix that. Rev. Houston's correspondence is archived at LSU which may or may not be a good place to start researching.

Charline Fay Howard Conyers

Point of Curiosity: Who is the author of Cheyney University's early history?

Follow up from Coppin State, Cheyney University and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU)

When I added A Living Legend: The History of Cheyney University, 1837-1951 by Charline Fay Howard Conyers to my Goodreads to-read list, I noticed that there was no information available about the author. Even her alma mater (one of many, as I'm discovering) failed to list her birth and death dates. Did that mean she was still alive and being coquettish about her birth date, or did they not know? And if they didn't know, why not?

As a reader of non-fiction on ancient Cretan and Egyptian history from the early 20th century, I have evolved a bit of a crusade to undo some wrongs done to women during that era. Namely, women who researched or even wrote whole sections of these books are often not credited. It is our good fortune that the male authors whose names adorned the covers of these books sometimes took the time to include thanks to their helpers in a foreword which often reveals the byline-worthy contributions these women made. These women weren't just typing a manuscript, they were often Linguists, Archaeologists, Egyptologists and Historians in their own right. One such example is Edith Williams Ware and Caroline Ransom Williams' contributions to the transliterations and interpretation of The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus which is credited exclusively to James Henry Breasted.

At least in this case, Conyers is credited for writing the book. However, a preliminary search to expand her biography only gave me enough information to make me very curious. And that's when four hours passed without my noticing as I dug deeper into her digitized history during the 1930s and 1940s.

My eventual goal is to update her Goodreads Author Profile to be more complete (ETA: done!) and possibly create a Wikipedia page on her depending on what I am able to learn. Here is my current list of things I've learned about Conyers since wandering down this tangent:

Dr. Charline Fay Howard Conyers, 1989 (src, Clarence Harris)

• Born 9 October 1911 (thanks to my buddy Phil who utilized his genealogy resources to appease my curiosity)
• She was in the class of 1928 for something, but unsure what; HS graduation? (src)
• In 1933, she was the "Interracial Secretary" at the Pennsylvania branch of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and had a brief correspondence about the capitalization of "Negro" with W. E. B. du Bois (src)
• She was a pianist, and a 1936 graduate (or hopeful for the 1936 class, pending further research) from the Froehlich School of Music in Harrisburg, PA (src 1, src 2)
• In September of 1938, she was a Maid of Honor at the wedding of Hermione Hill at St. Simon's Church on 22nd and Reed St. in Philadelphia, PA and wore a yellow tulle gown with a brown velvet poke bonnet (src) 
• On 15 June 1940, she was married to William Conyers
• In 1942, she was the Chairman of the "Subcommittee on Lectures" at the Cheyney Training School for Teachers which would later evolve into Cheyney University (src)
• Died 23 September 1989 in West Chester, PA at Chester County Hospital and is buried at the William Howard Day Cemetery in Steelton, PA (src)

And then I hit the jackpot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE58amcjqZM

The Evening News 25 June 1935 (Harrisburg, PA)

Coppin State, Cheyney University and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU)

Point of Curiosity: What's Coppin State's context in Black History?

I just finished reading The Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nehisi Coates.  In it was this mention of Coppin State and I wanted to understand the broader context.

We were one of six gifted classes on the Thurgood Marshall Team. I don't know how gifted any of us were - more likely we had parents in the race, mothers who worked for the city, got their degrees from Coppin State. They'd gone far enough to know what was out there and what they'd missed in the manner of their coming up. These are the parents the intellectuals erase in their treatises on black pathology. But I saw them in effect at Lemmel, that and teachers always with an eye for children who were two seconds faster and seemed to be bound for something more than the corner or Jessup.

Coppin State University (CSU) is in Baltimore, MD. It was founded in 1900 to train African-Americans for teaching in elementary schools. Over the course of the 20th century, it evolved from a one year program taught at a local high school to today where it offers 53 majors and nine graduate programs including Teaching and Special Education. One of its interesting projects is the reform and management of local Rosemont Elementary School starting in 1998. In 1997, the school was put on the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE)'s watch list as below acceptable standards. With guidance from CSU, it was removed from that watch list in 2003.

As I read about Coppin State, I hit on an interesting wonderlust tangent: Coppin State is one of 107 historically black colleges and universities (HBCU) in the United States. Most were created after the Civil War and prior to the civil rights changes that came in the 1960s. Two were created for black education prior to the Civil War, and the founding of Cheyney University in particular caught my eye.

Emlen Hall Reading Room, ca. 1900s (src)

In 1837, Cheyney University was founded in Pennsylvania by a Quaker philanthropist named Richard Humphreys. He bequeathed $10,000 - one-tenth of his estate - to the endeavour, after the race riots of 1829. I would love to have learned about Humphreys in my American history classes in public high school, and about the men and women who first got their education at this institution. Humphreys, to me, is a patriot. My favourite patriots are the ones who saw problems unique to the United States and pro-actively enacted solutions at a grassroots level.

Per the history on Cheyney University's web site:

Born on a plantation in the West Indies, Richard Humphreys came to Philadelphia in 1764. Having witnessed the struggles of African Americans competing unsuccessfully for jobs due to the influx of immigrants, he became interested in their plight. In 1829, race riots heightened and it was that year Richard Humphreys wrote his will and charged thirteen fellow Quakers to design an institution: "...to instruct the descendents of the African Race in school learning, in the various branches of the mechanic Arts, trades and Agriculture, in order to prepare and fit and qualify them to act as teachers...."

I'm frustrated at the difficulty I'm having in finding more information about Humphreys and the Cheyney foundation that isn't just parroting the sparse Wikipedia article. A few to follow up on:
The Crisis Aug 1940 "CHEYNEY: Quaker Heritage"
Sing to me David by Thomas McCavour, which mentions that the education was provided free to qualified students.

Follow-up questions:

• Are there any biographies by early students of Coppin State or Cheyney University?
• Who are some of the interesting alumni of Coppin State and Cheyney University?
• Is there a book on Richard Humphreys or any of the 13 board members designated to design what would become Cheyney University?

the Cross of Lorraine, the Cross of Anjou

Point of Curiosity: Tuberculosis has a Symbol?

I recently attended a Queen Anne Historical Society and Pacific Northwest Historians Guild lecture on the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition (AYPE), which was the World's Fair in Seattle before the 1962 one we now refer to without qualification as the World's Fair. The AYPE took place in 1909 and was a crossroads of culture and commerce between the Pacific Northwest, Alaska and the Yukon territory and the Asian-Pacific.

Dan Keslee of http://www.aype.com gave an excellent, impassioned slideshow of rarely-seen photographs from the AYPE. I came away with about 100 questions, and one of them was about brief imagery concerning a symbol related to tuberculosis. I didn't know there was a symbol for that.

Croix de Lorraine / the Cross of Lorraine
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Croix_de_Lorraine_3.svg

The symbol can be inserted into HTML with &#9768; which appears in Unicode as  ☨

Other Names

In 1161 C.E., Lazar Bohsha crafted this cross for the order of St. Euphrosyne of Polatsk where it was known as a Russian Orthodox religious relic called the "cross of St. Euphrosyne." During the 15th and 16th centuries C.E., the cross was known as the "cross of Anjou." An evolution of the cross of Lorraine is the "cross of Jagiellons" with equal-length horizontal bars and is a national symbol of Lithuania.

Timeline of Symbol Adoption

1161 C.E.

Made as a Russian Orthodox relic for the order of St. Euphrosyne of Polatsk.

1172 - 1196 C.E.

First used as a symbol of royal power by Béla III in Hungary in the 12th century. This may have been borrowed from earlier use in the Byzantine Empire.

12th - 14th centuries C.E.
Used by the Knights Templar in the Crusades.

1409 - 1480 C.E.

Used as the personal sigil of René the Good of the House of Anjou. He had thirteen children, three of whom were illegitimate. Interesting wonderlust tangent... the three illegitimate children all held titles: son John, Bastard of Anjou and Marquis of Pont-à-Mousson; daughter Jeanne Blanche the Lady of Mirabeau; and daughter Madeleine the Countess of Montferrand. I love that there was a guy known as the "Bastard of Anjou."

15th century C.E.

Used to symbolize the Duchy of Lorraine from whence its name "croix de Lorraine" arises.

1750 - 1810 C.E.
French Jesuit missionaries brought the Croix de Lorraine with them to the New World where it was a recognized symbol by the native peoples of the Wyandot Nation. I haven't found the definitive citation about this symbol and its use in the symbolism of the Huron a.k.a. Wyandot Nation; the original reference is from a book called The Museum Called Canada. 

1902 C.E.

Paris physician Gilbert Sersiron suggested its use in the "crusade" against tuberculosis. This is the origin of the symbol's use by the American Lung Association and other related international organizations.

1939 - 1945 C.E. (World War II)

Symbolized Free France during the war.

Perhaps most amusingly - interesting wonderlust tangent! - is its appearance in the embossment of Oreo cookies. There's a whole big conspiracy theory about it.