No Irish Need Apply

The Potato Famine of the 1840's drove thousands of Irish farmers out of the country.  Many immigrated to England, Australia and North America with the hope of starting over.  However, when they looked for work in their new country, they were often greeted by a window sign saying:  "Irish Need Not Apply".

The phrase turned up 29 times in the New York Times on November 10, 1854.  A variation, Irish Need Not Apply" appeared 7 times.  Other ads specified interest in Americans or Protestants, appearing several times on May 1, 1855, which effectively eliminated Irish Catholics.

A song "No Irish Need Apply", written by Kathleen O'Neil, was inspired by a young Irish woman searching for work as a maid in London.  She spots a sign in a window which reads:  "A small active girl to do the general housework of a large family, one who can cook, clean and get up fine linen, preferred.  No Irish Need Apply."
(The London Times, February, 1862)

Nineteenth Century British writer Anthony Trollope explained the pervading sentiment at the time:

"Often depicted as monstrous beings or apes in satirical cartoons, the Irish were not seen as welcome members to English society.  Irish immigrants were seen as lazy, drunk, anarchistic criminals whose sole purpose in life was to steal the jobs of English workers.  It comes as no surprise, then, that English employers were not very welcoming of Irish workers."(https://apps.cndls.georgetown.edu/projects/borders/items/show/86)

The city of Boston, Massachusetts was a common destination for the Irish.  In one year, the Eastern Seaboard city swelled from 30,000 to 100,000 Irish.  Boston shop windows often displayed the trademark "No Irish Need apply" signs, relegating the Irish to the most menial jobs.  In fact, in the mid-1800's, 70% of Boston's servants were Irish.  But they got their foot in the door.

The influence of Irish Catholics slowly grew when the Irish accepted jobs in the police force and in politics.  John Francis "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, father of the future Rose Kennedy, became mayor of Boston in 1906.  Joseph P. Kennedy rose to be the American Ambassador to Britain during the Second world War.  His son, John F. Kennedy, of course, became the 35th President of the United States in 1961, the first Catholic to be elected to the position.

Today, No Irish Need Apply signs are proudly mounted in the suburban Boston homes of third, fourth and fifth generation Irish. (http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2006/05/no-irish-need-apply/)

NINA sign circa 1916 courtesy Fulton Street Sign Co.

Bob Wells' & Mel Torme's "The Christmas Song"

And so I'm offering this simple phrase

To kids from one to ninety two

Although it's been said many times, many ways

Merry Christmas to you.

On a blistering hot summer day in 1945, singer Mel Torme showed up at the Toluca Lake House. Inside, Bob Wells, trying to think of ways to keep cool, sat down at his piano, grabbed his spiral pad and scribbled the phrases:  "Chestnuts roasting...Jack Frost nipping...Yuletide carols...Folks dressed up like Eskimos."  The chestnuts came from Bob Wells' childhood in Boston where street vendors would serve them in paper cones at Christmas time.  

The words caught the eye Mel Torme who started composing music for them.  "I think you might have something here," he said.  Forty minutes later, a hit was born.  

The Nat King Cole Trio first recorded The Christmas Song, subtitled Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire, in 1946.  Nat King Cole was the first black American to record a Christmas standard.  A second recording came later that year, this time accompanied by strings.  A 1953 Nat King Cole recording included a full orchestra.  The 1961 recording, however, is considered to be the most well known.

Mel Torme recorded the song as part of At the Crescendo in 1954.  A 1970 recording by Mel Torme included an introduction.  

All through the year we waited

Waited through spring and fall

To hear silver bells ringing, see wintertime bringing

The happiest season of all.

To hear the Nat King Cole version, visit http://www.metrolyrics.com/the-christmas-song-lyrics-nat-king-cole.html.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dhzxQCTCI3E/hqdefault.jpg

"Fledgling Invention" Hit by Lightning at Tutelo Heights

"The date of this letter, just two years after the patent was obtained, demonstrates the exceptional progress and evolution of this fledgling invention." (Bobby Livingston)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9026531/Alexander-Graham-Bell-letter-to-parents-about-telephone-sells-for-92000.html

It was on the shores of the Grand River at Tutelo Heights, Ontario, named after a Native tribe who migrated there after the Revolutionary War, that Alexander Graham Bell first conceived the idea for the telephone in 1874.  It was in a Boston laboratory that Bell, speaking to his assistant Thomas Watson, first transmitted speech through a telephone in March of 1876.  That July, back in Tutelo Heights, near Brantford, Bell first successfully transmitted speech over a telegraph line.  Four months later, the inventor, now a professor of speech at Boston University, received the telephone patent (http://www.brantford.ca/residents/WorkingLearning/Learning/BrantfordHistory/Pages/AlexanderGrahamBellBrantford.aspx).

Two years later, in 1878, Alexander Graham Bell wrote a letter to his parents in their Tutelo Heights home to demonstrate the ins and outs of telephone wiring.  He explained:  "I was quite troubled by the accident at Tutelo Heights," referring to a recent lightning strike on his parents' 10.5 acre property.  "The accident shows that the earth terminals of your telephone line are defective for the current found a shorter path to the ground through two of your poles than by the proper path." (www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2083066/Alexander-Graham-Bell-drawing-telephone-auction.html) 

Bobby Livingston, a representative for the auction company which sold Bell's letter in 2012, stated: "The early mechanics of the device [telephone] were complicated and required extreme attention to detail, without which results could be disastrous -- even fatal."  Bell wanted to make sure that his parents did not have such results.  He even included a detailed diagram of two telephones in his letter.  

Even so, Livingston points out the success of Bell's contraption:  "The date of this letter, just two years after the patent was obtained, demonstrates the exceptional progress and evolution of this fledgling invention."

Bell Homestead at Tutelo Heights, now part of Brantford, circa 1870's, courtesy http://www.museumsontario.ca/museum/Bell-Homestead-National-Histor.

Jane Jacobs' "Downtown is For People"

"These projects will not revitalize the downtown; they will deaden it."

Jane Jacobs was a woman ahead of her time.  In 1958, she penned a prophetic essay for Fortune magazine called Downtown is for People.  City redevelopment projects were all the rage in the United States at the time.  Urban renewal was taking place in San Francisco, New Orleans, Pittsburgh and Cleveland, to name a few.  Jacobs warned that these projects would drive people away from the downtowns.  She suggested that city developpers focus on the buildings rather than on the blocks, focus on the people rather than the automobiles.  She said that rather than looking at the boulevards of Paris, city planners should "get out and walk" to acquire a feel for the city.  

Jacobs criticized the uniformity of these plans, the lack of originality:  "From city to city, the architect's sketches conjure up the same dreary scene; here is no hint of individuality or whim or surprise, no hint that here is a city with a tradition and flavor all its own." (http://fortune.com/2011/09/18/downtown-is-for-people-fortune-classic-1958/)

"All the truly great downtown focal points carry a surprise that does not stale," explained Jacobs.  She mentioned the Times Square Waterfalls and Boston's Arlington Street Church steeple (http://www.candidish.com/there-is-nothing-common-about-boston-common/).  To that list I add the Washington Monument and Chicago's Old Water Tower.  Jacobs' fear was that the downtowns would be razed, that the old classic buildings would be flattened.  The author praised New York's Rockefeller Center, a project that was planned around the existing buildings, a project that respected the existing streets.

Jacobs criticized American cities, stating:  "Waterfronts are a great asset but few cities are doing anything with them."  She mentioned how New Orleans remained detached from its river, the Mississippi; not one restaurant sat on its riverfront.  While Cleveland planned to build a convention centre on its waterfront, Jacobs thought that the choice of property was too isolated from the rest of the city.  On the other hand, Jacobs praised Chicago for the lack of barriers along the Chicago River, where the Wrigley Building and Sun Times Building sat, lending the city's visitors an inviting view (https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Chicago_River).

City planners might have read Jacobs 1958 essay for within a generation, waterfront regeneration had entered the American vocabulary, evident in projects like:  Baltimore's Inner Harbor, Boston's Quincy Market, New York's Pierhead Building, San Diego's Waterfront Village, and San Francisco's Ghirardelli Square and Fisherman's Wharf (http://www.fishermanswharf.org/).

Historic preservation entered the American lexicon as well, starting with the National Historic Preservation Trust of 1949.  Museums and historic homes fell under this umbrella.  Historic preservation as part of downtown redevelopment became popular by the 1970's.  Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' campaign to save Grand Central Station, which started with an eloquently composed letter to New York City's mayor, is one such example   (http://www.citylab.com/politics/2013/02/surprising-role-jackie-kennedy-playing-saving-grand-central-station/4596/).  Philadelphia was the site of the first historic preservation commission in the United States, which helped preserve the city's treasures (http://juh.sagepub.com/content/39/2/193.abstract?rss=1).

Note:  For a blogger's take on "Downtown is for People" Fifty Years Later, check out http://streets.mn/2013/05/07/downtown-is-for-people-fifty-five-years-later/.

Downtown is for People drawing courtesy http://fortune.com/2011/09/18/downtown-is-for-people-fortune-classic-1958/.

Christmas in Boston

1.  Christmas in Boston courtesy saskbiz.com.

2.  Boston Blue Christmas courtesy fineartamerica.com.

3,  Quincy Market courtesy wikimedia.org.

4.  Faneuil Hall courtesy www.thechristiangift.com.

5.  Boston Christmas Tree in Boston Common courtesy www.kensingtonboston.com.

Plymouth Rock

"This rock has become an object of veneration in the United States.  I have seen bits and pieces of it carefully preserved in several towns in the Union.  Does this sufficiently show that all human power and greatness is in the soul of man?  Here is a stone in which the feet of a few outcasts pressed for an instant; and the stone becomes famous; it is treasured by a great nation; its very dust is shared as a relic."  (Alexis de Tocqueville, upon the occasion of his visit from France, 1834)

Plymouth Rock, on which 135 Pilgrims first landed in 1620, courtesy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth_Rock.

Forty years ago, when my family visited Boston, we made the pilgrimage to Plymouth Rock.  Two things stood out in my seven-year-old mind:  the fact that my dad had to bend over when we explored the decks of the Mayflower and the bronze pilgrim figurine that my mom bought me at the gift shop. Here is the history of the great rock..

Plymouth, located on the Atlantic Ocean 45 miles south of Boston, is where the Pilgrims chose to land in 1620.  Alexis de Tocqueville called them outcasts as they were a group of separatists fleeing the persecution of the Church of England.  The group, numbering in the dozens, had first landed at Provincetown, Massachusetts on Cape Cod in November.  After stealing some corn, getting in a skirmish with the Natives and failing to find a good place to settle, they set off again.  

Henry Bacon's painting circa 1834 courtesy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth_Rock.

On a blustery December day, they landed at Plymouth where they happened upon a giant rock which served as a natural dock.  They decided to call it Plymouth after the town that they had disembarked from in England.  Relieved to have reached land, grateful to have survived that first winter and thankful for God's bountiful harvest that first summer, the Pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving the following November.  

Elder Faunce, in the "Story of the Pilgrim Fathers" (1841), confirmed that his father landed at the same rock in 1623 upon arriving from England.  In 1774, on the eve of the American Revolution, the giant rock was split in two, the top half remaining at the site, the bottom half being relocated to the town's meeting house in Plymouth.  Passersby would sometimes chip pieces off the stone as keepsakes.

The 1867 structure courtesy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth_Rock.

The rock remained there for 50 years.  In 1834, it was relocated to Pilgrim Hall where a Victorian Canopy was built around it in 1867.  As in the past, tourists would sometimes steal pieces of the rock as souvenirs.

In 1880, the top half of the rock was re-attached to the bottom half of the rock at the Atlantic shoreline.  The 1620 date was carved into the rock at that time.  Estimated to weigh 20,000 pounds in 1620, the rock now measures about a third of its original size.  

While the rock has lost much of its weight, it has not lost its intrigue.  Nearly one million people flock to Plymouth each year to view the rock, a tad more than first landed on it almost 400 years ago.

The Parthenon-like portico circa 1970's, the way it would have looked when I visited on my Boston trip courtesy dreamstime.com. 

America in Autumn

1.  Boston's Charles River in autumn courtesy fineartamerica.com.

2.  Washington's Potomac in autumn courtesy shutterstock.com.

3.  New York's Hudson River in autumn courtesy www.vimbly.com.

4.  Chicago's Lake Michigan in autumn courtesy superyukon.org.

5.  Philadelphia in autumn courtesy staticflickr.com.

6.  Nashville, Tennessee in autumn courtesy www.visitmusiccity.com.

7.  Charlotte, North Carolina courtesy photoshelter.com.

8. St. Louis courtesy midwestliving.com.

9.  Richmond, Virginia courtesy staticflickr.com.

10.  Louisville, Kentucky courtesy louisvillekentuckyhomepros.com.

Nukel, Lachen & Washlappen

My husband Rob, the son of German immigrants, spoke only German until he attended school at 5 years of age.  He also attended German school every Saturday morning until he was in Grade 7. Although his parents have long since learned English and he no longer speaks German on any consistent basis, he has retained much of the vocabulary.  Occasionally a German words slips past his lips, words that the rest of us have adopted.

When Thomas and Jacqueline were babies they sucked on a "nukel".  While the official German word for a soother is "schnuller", "nukel" is the company that makes soothers.  It is the equivalent of English speaking North Americans using the term Kleenex rather than tissue.

When we go to the beach at Long Point, we wear "lachen".  We can never find "lachen" big enough for Rob's feet, though, so he usually wears a pair that are one size too small.  

When we wash the dishes, we use a "washlappen".  In my house, we called it a J-cloth, but the term "washlappen" sounds so much more fun.  The "washlappen" literally laps up the water.

When someone seems to thrive on chaos in his or her life, he exhibits "schweinerei" or "a pig's mess".

Jacqueline's giant stuffed green animal is a "frosch".  Jacqueline chose Mr. Froggo, out of her giant stuffie pile, to travel to Boston with us a couple of weekends ago.

The furry black creature named Midnight that lives in our house is a "katze",  Rob's mom used to refer to their pet as a "katze" and we kept the tradition going.  Midnight eats "katze tuna" and drinks "katze milk".

At Christmas time, our kids open an "Adventskalendar" or Advent calendar; the original version, without the chocolate, was started by German Lutherans.

When I tuck Jacqueline in each night I say:  Guten nacht"  "Schlaff gut!  (Good night!  Sleep well!) This is a holdover from when Rob used to say goodnight to me in the Teacher's College dorm.  I was on the 4th floor, he was on the 1st.

It goes to show you that what you learn as a child often stays with you for the rest of your life. Maybe our children will pass some of these German word on to their children.

https://www.onlinebabystore.com.au/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/t/n/tn_hb1.jpg