Jim Bob: Please continue. I graduated high school in ‘65 and from UT in 69. Spent ‘72 to ‘73 in Southeast Asia in the Air Force during The War after failing to get an Air National Guard pilot appointment. My Dad had no political clout as an Air Force sergeant. I am currently reading your recollections in the Canadian snow looking out on Lake Superior. A resident of Austin, Texas, I fell in love with Canada and spend part of winters and summers here with our friendly neighbors. Your colorful description of the weather and the people truly paints a portrait for me of two generations of personal memories. Thank you, David PS my mother’s family were Moore’s from the hillsides and mountains of East Tennessee so we share a name and not “just” memories.
Hey David - thanks for the kind words. I guess we may even be related. All the Moores in the U.S. migrated out of North Carolina in a region about an hour southwest of Raleigh. Moore immigrants from England somehow landed there, some descendants of Sir Thomas More, who simply added a letter O to their name. My research indicates many of them became privateers off the coast, jumping and robbing merchant ships, which caused many of them to be chased out of the area. It's now known as Moore County.
Pretty great you are up at Superior. I missed the opportunity to enjoy that part of Michigan when I was young. Never saw a Great Lake until I hitchhiked over to Huron when I was 18. But we've been to Superior a couple times from Texas. I hope to spend some time at Grand Marais writing this summer. Canada and its people are hard not to love. I haven't been back to Newfoundland in many years since my mother passed, but if you are interested in the region's culture I invite you to look up the musical group Shanneyganock. It's my cousin's band out of St. John's. They are wonderful and travel and play widely.
You might also be interested in this piece, which I wrote about Newfoundland's sacrifice in WWI. My grandfather was part of a famed military unit called "The First Five Hundred" and known also as the "Blue Puttees." Their story has become legend since the opening day of the Battle of the Somme. https://jamesmoore.substack.com/p/the-island-at-the-center-of-the-world
Thanks for reading, David. Greatly appreciated. - JM
Thank you for your reply. I’ll definitely check out the “Shanneyganock” and the link to your grandfather’s.war experience. Perhaps one day we can meet up in Austin. I have a genealogy prepared by a Moore cousin I’d like you to see. It’s old style printed. May provide more background for kinship! Grand Marais was on our Circle Tour a couple of years ago- we got coffee at Java Moose. Now have a fav mug for coffee. We are on opposite side of Superior at Batchawana Bay.
No... The grave will supply plenty of time for silence, I believe this was one of Chrstopher Hitchens quotes. I view you journalist as our last line of defense for holding those in power accountable.
I'm not sure how you find time to sleep, but I'm glad you have the long distance runners mentality to continue writing.
Your candor is always refreshing. Not long after we were married I remember an enjoyable camping trip in the Canadian Maritimes including New Brunswick, PEI and Cape Breton Island. Crowded with our dog, a small German Shepherd mix, we sleeping bagged it in what was essentially a boy scout pup tent, so tight the dog would sometimes have to back out of it. People in the huge campers all around us would say things like, “We admire you young people truly camping like that.” All we could think of was “Are you kidding? We’re just ill-equipped!” Once in a heavily wooded area, incredulously, a huge camper pulled over and asked us to put our dog on a leash so theirs could get out and pee. I remember waiting several hours on the river outside of Moncton to witness “The Amazing Tidal Bore” roll by as it did twice a day with the incoming Bay of Fundy Tide. I remember remarking never was there a more aptly named natural wonder.
We seem to have been fellow travelers, Rog, though I never camped in the Maritimes, I've made a handful of trips up there through the years. Lovely in the summer, brutal in the winter. New Orleans friends bought a cabin on PEI a few years ago to escape the heat and humidity down on the Mississippi in the summer and then they went up in the winter and decided maybe long term the Maritimes were not for them.
I never have seen the Tidal Bore but I've seen sunup on the Bay of Fundy, which is beautiful, of course, and on the Gulf of Newfoundland. Too bad you all didn't make it over to the "rock," because the people are wonderful and the geography is stunning, especially Western NFLD and Gros Marne. I'm hoping to get my family up there as soon as this coming summer. My daughter has never seen the land of her grandmother's birth and childhood and we will have a grandchild come July, who I want to make certain knows of whence he sprang, very early in his life.
I remember some propaganda that said you could enjoy swimming at PEI because the gulf steam kept you warm. Not necessarily. Remember for some reason all the places on Cape Brenton had the best strawberry shortcake. Also a joke I used to make about PEI restaurant menus reading, "Potato salad -- when in season.
Four thoughts on this, a most excellent essay, Jim:
1) Thank you for sharing about your journey (physical and spiritual) through those times when the Vietnam War hung over the souls and futures of so many Americans. Ending the draft eliminated the burden of shared sacrifice that going to war required. There is at least a generation of Americans who have never felt they had anything at stake in Grenada, or Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Syria. Your essay caught the spirit of the 1960s.
2) I think it's fair to wonder how much impact you, and journalists like you, have on the course of human events. (I ask a similar question about my 30 years of public service.) But consider the counterfactual — how much worse off would Texas be, or how much more quickly would we have gotten to this wretched pass, without you and Ross Ramsey and Wayne Slater and Peggy Fikac and others who toiled day in and day out to tell us the story of Texas? "Let those who have ears to hear, listen!"
3) I share your alarm at what will happen in November. Donald Trump will not accept a loss, no matter how convincing it is (and it will probably be very close). We should steel ourselves for a period of social unrest and even violence to follow. God willing, the country will emerge intact.
4) Is now the time to quit? I'll let Alexei Navalny, martyred just this week, answer:
"Listen, I’ve got something very obvious to tell you. You’re not allowed to give up. If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong. We need to utilize this power, to not give up, to remember that we are a huge power, that is being repressed by these bad dudes. We don’t realize how strong we actually are. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. So don’t be inactive.”
Deece - always enjoy your takes on things because your insight tends to be spot on. It is odd what I was contemplating just as the Navalny quote came along. Makes me feel at bit like a weiny. He is another hero who belongs to the ages, but his words will never die. Time will only increase his stature, and Putin will end up in the same history pages as Hitler.
Thanks Jim Bob for what you do. Hopefully it's not just blue on black. Back in the early '00s I spent some time working in Canada from Moncton to Vancouver. Yeah the winters were a bitch. A couple of times I thought I might die. I was once caught in a blizzard in the Rockies, biggest snowflakes I have ever seen total whiteout, when I drove into a little burg who's name I don't remember. A restaurants light caught my attention and thank God it had a log cabin motel attached, liquor store across the highway. I spent the weekend stomach full drinking hot toddies watching curling. I really enjoyed the people, except the French speaking assholes in Quebec. Nicest people I've ever met, even when they were putting me to work on solid ice. Or perhaps because?
I was 16 in '74 so I never got to enjoy the wonder that was Vietnam. I'd been watching the news with my dad for years so I was politically aware. He hated LBJ and Nixon and told me of their shenanigans. He employed teenagers of draft age in his restaurants and watched them disappear never to return. The older brother of a friend across the street was KIA. We used to have China berry wars in our front yard and his brother would dominate. Once my mother snuck up on the older brother with a pan of hot water down his back! They were fast friends after that he, often came over for tea with mom. My friend wasn't the same after the loss of his brother he seemed empty and the China berry wars ended. Not long after they moved away. Dad retired and we moved to the country where I smoked my first marijuana with Vietnam veterans all of 19, 20 years old. Titus county was eaten up with weed after the war. That deserves another story later.
Anyway, thanks for the memories JB. Read 'ya soon.
Tolstoy is right about patience and time; he has answered your question. Sorry about that, but you picked it, or it picked you. As they said in Viet Nam, you gotta hump your gear. I for one, am glad you do, and believe we all are better for it.
Jim Bob: Please continue. I graduated high school in ‘65 and from UT in 69. Spent ‘72 to ‘73 in Southeast Asia in the Air Force during The War after failing to get an Air National Guard pilot appointment. My Dad had no political clout as an Air Force sergeant. I am currently reading your recollections in the Canadian snow looking out on Lake Superior. A resident of Austin, Texas, I fell in love with Canada and spend part of winters and summers here with our friendly neighbors. Your colorful description of the weather and the people truly paints a portrait for me of two generations of personal memories. Thank you, David PS my mother’s family were Moore’s from the hillsides and mountains of East Tennessee so we share a name and not “just” memories.
Hey David - thanks for the kind words. I guess we may even be related. All the Moores in the U.S. migrated out of North Carolina in a region about an hour southwest of Raleigh. Moore immigrants from England somehow landed there, some descendants of Sir Thomas More, who simply added a letter O to their name. My research indicates many of them became privateers off the coast, jumping and robbing merchant ships, which caused many of them to be chased out of the area. It's now known as Moore County.
Pretty great you are up at Superior. I missed the opportunity to enjoy that part of Michigan when I was young. Never saw a Great Lake until I hitchhiked over to Huron when I was 18. But we've been to Superior a couple times from Texas. I hope to spend some time at Grand Marais writing this summer. Canada and its people are hard not to love. I haven't been back to Newfoundland in many years since my mother passed, but if you are interested in the region's culture I invite you to look up the musical group Shanneyganock. It's my cousin's band out of St. John's. They are wonderful and travel and play widely.
You might also be interested in this piece, which I wrote about Newfoundland's sacrifice in WWI. My grandfather was part of a famed military unit called "The First Five Hundred" and known also as the "Blue Puttees." Their story has become legend since the opening day of the Battle of the Somme. https://jamesmoore.substack.com/p/the-island-at-the-center-of-the-world
Thanks for reading, David. Greatly appreciated. - JM
Thank you for your reply. I’ll definitely check out the “Shanneyganock” and the link to your grandfather’s.war experience. Perhaps one day we can meet up in Austin. I have a genealogy prepared by a Moore cousin I’d like you to see. It’s old style printed. May provide more background for kinship! Grand Marais was on our Circle Tour a couple of years ago- we got coffee at Java Moose. Now have a fav mug for coffee. We are on opposite side of Superior at Batchawana Bay.
No... The grave will supply plenty of time for silence, I believe this was one of Chrstopher Hitchens quotes. I view you journalist as our last line of defense for holding those in power accountable.
I'm not sure how you find time to sleep, but I'm glad you have the long distance runners mentality to continue writing.
“Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. The grave will supply plenty of time for silence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
I would like to have had Hitchens mind for a day or two.
Ain't that the truth!?
Your candor is always refreshing. Not long after we were married I remember an enjoyable camping trip in the Canadian Maritimes including New Brunswick, PEI and Cape Breton Island. Crowded with our dog, a small German Shepherd mix, we sleeping bagged it in what was essentially a boy scout pup tent, so tight the dog would sometimes have to back out of it. People in the huge campers all around us would say things like, “We admire you young people truly camping like that.” All we could think of was “Are you kidding? We’re just ill-equipped!” Once in a heavily wooded area, incredulously, a huge camper pulled over and asked us to put our dog on a leash so theirs could get out and pee. I remember waiting several hours on the river outside of Moncton to witness “The Amazing Tidal Bore” roll by as it did twice a day with the incoming Bay of Fundy Tide. I remember remarking never was there a more aptly named natural wonder.
We seem to have been fellow travelers, Rog, though I never camped in the Maritimes, I've made a handful of trips up there through the years. Lovely in the summer, brutal in the winter. New Orleans friends bought a cabin on PEI a few years ago to escape the heat and humidity down on the Mississippi in the summer and then they went up in the winter and decided maybe long term the Maritimes were not for them.
I never have seen the Tidal Bore but I've seen sunup on the Bay of Fundy, which is beautiful, of course, and on the Gulf of Newfoundland. Too bad you all didn't make it over to the "rock," because the people are wonderful and the geography is stunning, especially Western NFLD and Gros Marne. I'm hoping to get my family up there as soon as this coming summer. My daughter has never seen the land of her grandmother's birth and childhood and we will have a grandchild come July, who I want to make certain knows of whence he sprang, very early in his life.
I remember some propaganda that said you could enjoy swimming at PEI because the gulf steam kept you warm. Not necessarily. Remember for some reason all the places on Cape Brenton had the best strawberry shortcake. Also a joke I used to make about PEI restaurant menus reading, "Potato salad -- when in season.
Potato salad when in season. Man that is so Canadian.
Four thoughts on this, a most excellent essay, Jim:
1) Thank you for sharing about your journey (physical and spiritual) through those times when the Vietnam War hung over the souls and futures of so many Americans. Ending the draft eliminated the burden of shared sacrifice that going to war required. There is at least a generation of Americans who have never felt they had anything at stake in Grenada, or Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Syria. Your essay caught the spirit of the 1960s.
2) I think it's fair to wonder how much impact you, and journalists like you, have on the course of human events. (I ask a similar question about my 30 years of public service.) But consider the counterfactual — how much worse off would Texas be, or how much more quickly would we have gotten to this wretched pass, without you and Ross Ramsey and Wayne Slater and Peggy Fikac and others who toiled day in and day out to tell us the story of Texas? "Let those who have ears to hear, listen!"
3) I share your alarm at what will happen in November. Donald Trump will not accept a loss, no matter how convincing it is (and it will probably be very close). We should steel ourselves for a period of social unrest and even violence to follow. God willing, the country will emerge intact.
4) Is now the time to quit? I'll let Alexei Navalny, martyred just this week, answer:
"Listen, I’ve got something very obvious to tell you. You’re not allowed to give up. If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong. We need to utilize this power, to not give up, to remember that we are a huge power, that is being repressed by these bad dudes. We don’t realize how strong we actually are. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. So don’t be inactive.”
Deece - always enjoy your takes on things because your insight tends to be spot on. It is odd what I was contemplating just as the Navalny quote came along. Makes me feel at bit like a weiny. He is another hero who belongs to the ages, but his words will never die. Time will only increase his stature, and Putin will end up in the same history pages as Hitler.
Thanks Jim Bob for what you do. Hopefully it's not just blue on black. Back in the early '00s I spent some time working in Canada from Moncton to Vancouver. Yeah the winters were a bitch. A couple of times I thought I might die. I was once caught in a blizzard in the Rockies, biggest snowflakes I have ever seen total whiteout, when I drove into a little burg who's name I don't remember. A restaurants light caught my attention and thank God it had a log cabin motel attached, liquor store across the highway. I spent the weekend stomach full drinking hot toddies watching curling. I really enjoyed the people, except the French speaking assholes in Quebec. Nicest people I've ever met, even when they were putting me to work on solid ice. Or perhaps because?
I was 16 in '74 so I never got to enjoy the wonder that was Vietnam. I'd been watching the news with my dad for years so I was politically aware. He hated LBJ and Nixon and told me of their shenanigans. He employed teenagers of draft age in his restaurants and watched them disappear never to return. The older brother of a friend across the street was KIA. We used to have China berry wars in our front yard and his brother would dominate. Once my mother snuck up on the older brother with a pan of hot water down his back! They were fast friends after that he, often came over for tea with mom. My friend wasn't the same after the loss of his brother he seemed empty and the China berry wars ended. Not long after they moved away. Dad retired and we moved to the country where I smoked my first marijuana with Vietnam veterans all of 19, 20 years old. Titus county was eaten up with weed after the war. That deserves another story later.
Anyway, thanks for the memories JB. Read 'ya soon.
Tolstoy is right about patience and time; he has answered your question. Sorry about that, but you picked it, or it picked you. As they said in Viet Nam, you gotta hump your gear. I for one, am glad you do, and believe we all are better for it.
Now is most definitely not the time to quit. Thank you for your work and for persevering.
Ultimately, those who write the stories of this time will be the ones who are the most important.