Sometimes a flawlessly written song gets a flawless performance. Patty Loveless, a Kentucky girl, has tinkered with the lyrics a little bit in her cover version – the original songwriter’s words are somewhat more immediately personal and autobiographical. First released in 1997 by singer-songwriter Darrell Scott (who is also a sublimely gifted and much-in-demand session […]
We are currently living through hyper-tribalistic times. I will go out on a limb, and say I do not expect certain tribes to follow this blog, ever – however much I wish they would. Yet no tribe is immune from what might be called “the allure of truthiness”. Whether leftist, conservative, liberal, red, blue, […]
This is as good a day as any to re-iterate and to clarify the aim of this page/podcast. There are many excellent Facebook groups and online resources dealing with the history and genealogy of various communities who are now commonly referred-to as “people of color” – whether of indigenous, African, or other ancestry, free […]
It is simple human nature to see what we are expecting to see. Atheists or Buddhists do not tend to see the face of Jesus in the patterns on burnt toast – we are all conditioned by the culture around us. This tendency carries-over into our understanding of American history. We see what our […]
Much of my interest in the hidden multi-ethnic past of America stems from a strange discovery made many years ago. While doing research on my first “official” genealogy, I began to notice an unfamiliar word being applied to ancestors on both sides of my family tree. “Melungeon”. This came as a major surprise. While […]
America’s Underground River: Case 1, Will Geer, actor As a child growing-up in small-town Missouri, weekends spent “out in the country” visiting grandparents were special treats. Saturdays were spent fishing, climbing cherry trees, chasing grasshoppers and lightning bugs, or just sitting on an old rail fence beside the smokehouse, talking to “Bessie”, the […]
Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker were ripped to death in a hail of automatic rifle and shotgun fire on a dusty road in Louisiana in May of 1934. Their bloody end was befitting the wider American sense of mythic justice still common today – “live by the sword, die by the sword“, or “an […]
Is anthropology a legitimate “science”? Or is anthropology more like history? A personalised interpretation of data, where the things we see are often merely the things others choose to reveal? Or perhaps the things we were looking for in the first place? What true inferences can be drawn from studying the cultural behaviours of […]
“Why waste your money looking up your family tree? Just go into politics and your opponents will do it for you.” Mark Twain The family tree of virtually every American family descended from “non-elites” is riven with mysteries, questions, dead ends, and dubious claims of lineage. By “non-elite”, we mean people with little access […]
1929. Imagine being born into a dirt-poor Shawnee family in North Carolina in the first year of the Great Depression. Imagine getting sent away to fight in Korea at the age of 21, where you manage to contract tuberculosis. Imagine having a lung removed in your 20s, and being told that you will never sing […]
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