Ringing in the New Year

 

At the end of the year, we will ring in 2023 hoping for more peace, happiness and success than we’ve had in 2022. Toward this end we make resolutions to do things differently or to change our habits. But many of us have traditions which we observe as we makes these transitions.

In my family, we have two traditional soups that we associate Christmas and New Year’s. One is French Onion, and the other is my daughter’s specialty, Leek and Potato. Depending on who is cooking when, these recipes alternate between the holidays. This year it’s my turn to cook for New Year’s so we’ll be having French Onion Soup.

Here is my French Onion Soup recipe in case you’d like to try it for New Year’s or later in the new year.

French Onion Soup 

5 large yellow onions

3 tbsp. butter

1 tbsp. oil

2 – 13 ¼ oz. cans beef broth

2 tbsp. flour

½ cup dry white wine

Salt & pepper

6 – ½ inch slices French bread (I usually make more to use with leftovers as   

         I like   mine with lots of bread.)

½ - 1 cup Shredded Swiss cheese (again, I like it with lots of cheese.)

½ cup Parmesan Cheese

 

Day before: Peel and slice onions. Heat butter and oil; cook onions and 1 tsp. sugar slowly over low to medium heat, stirring often until soft and golden. (This may take an hour or more.)

 

Meanwhile, bring broth to simmer. When onions are done, sprinkle with flour and stir over low heat 2 minutes. Off heat, stir broth and wine into onions. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Simmer partially covered for 15 minutes.

 

Lightly toast bread slices on a baking sheet in a 325 degree oven for about 20 minutes. They should get dry, but not necessarily brown. Store in plastic bag until ready to serve. Do ahead to here. Let soup cool and keep in refrigerator.

 

To serve: Preheat broiler. Heat soup on stovetop until hot. Taste soup, add salt and pepper if needed. Ladle hot soup into oven-proof individual serving bowls. Lightly butter toasted bread. Sprinkle with Swiss cheese the top with Parmesan. Place under broiler and keep a close watch until cheese melts and browns lightly. Serve at once.

 

Do you have any New Year’s traditions in your family?

Best wishes for a wonderful 2023!

 

   Ann Markim

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The Great San Francisco Quake

 

Market Street, 1905

     On April 18, 1906, most residents of the San Francisco Bay area were still asleep. Those who were awake were already at work or preparing to begin their Wednesday activities.  At 5:12 A.M. there was a loud rumbling and the widespread shuddering of a foreshock. Approximately twenty-five seconds later, this was followed by violent shaking for about 42 seconds. This earthquake would go down as one of the worst natural disasters in history.

     People as far north as southern Oregon, as far south as southern California and as far to the east as Nevada felt the quake’s tremors. Bay area residents were knocked to the ground, thrown from their beds, or trapped under the weight of collapsing buildings. Even though the epicenter was two miles west of San Francisco in the Pacific Ocean, the earthquake was picked up by seismometers in Europe and Asia.

Market Street after the Earthquake

      Estimates of the magnitude of the quake range from 7.7 to 8.25, with the most widely accepted value being 7.8 on the Richter scale. The San Andreas Fault ruptured for a total of 296 miles, with varying degrees of impact along the length of the rupture, but San Francisco and the surrounding area sustained the most severe destruction.

     The force of the earthquake damaged and demolished buildings, tore gas lines open, snapped electric lines, and destroyed water mains throughout the city. Fires ignited by leaking gas, electrical sparks and in broken chimneys spread quickly without readily available water in many areas to fight them.  The police destroyed an estimated $30,000 in alcohol, in order to remove flammable materials from the path of the flames.

San Francisco on Fire

     In an attempt to stop—or at least contain—the fires, the S.F. Fire Department requested dynamite from the Army base at the Presidio. They planned to create firebreaks by demolishing buildings. Unfortunately, the fire fighters and the Army troops that helped them had little experience with using dynamite to fight fire. The Presidio sent black gunpowder, a highly flammable explosive, instead of nitroglycerine or stick dynamite. Consequently, the effort to establish firebreaks only created additional paths for the fire to spread by destroying buildings and walls that might have helped to stop the flames. Flaming debris created by the explosions ignited even more fires. Over the three days immediately following the earthquake, 492 city blocks burned.

     But the Army did provide many crucial services in the immediate aftermath. Soldiers patrolled the streets to help keep peace and discourage looting. They guarded government buildings. The quake itself and resulting fires left tens of thousands of San Francisco residents homeless. Initially, these displaced people established makeshift camps in parks and in or near burnt-out buildings. As the fires raged in the eastern part of the city, these people moved west in search of food and shelter. The Army assumed responsibility for feeding, clothing and sheltering the displaced men, women and children, housing 20,000 people at the Presidio and managing twenty-one of the city’s twenty-six official refugee camps.

Tent City - National Archives

     The refugee camps were small tent cities, arranged in street-like grids, with dining halls to serve meals. Some became organized like small towns, with residents establishing features of regular life, like children’s play groups and social events in the dining halls. The army oversaw the relief activities until July 1, 1906 when the city assumed responsibility for providing these services. More than two years later, many of the refugee camps were still in full operation. As new housing was built, residence at the camps gradually declined.

     Overall, around 75,000 people fled San Francisco, between 227,000 and 300,000 people were left homeless and more than 3000 people died as a result of the earthquake. Approximately 28,000 buildings were destroyed, along with the infrastructure to provide utility services to the city. Monetary damages from the earthquake and fires were estimated at $500 million. This would be more than $16.5 billion in 2022 dollars.

Post-quake Destruction - Library of Congress

      The San Francisco earthquake was the first major natural disaster to be extensively documented with photographs and moving pictures. Images of the city before and after the quake provide vivid evidence of the devastating destruction of a thriving modern city in the early twentieth century. It’s often said that “One picture is worth a thousand words.” In this case, that adage is clearly true.

  Ann Markim

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Trick or Treat

  

     In a few days, doorbells across America will ring incessantly for one evening. Adults inside the dwelling will answer the call, opening their doors. Charming (usually) children dressed in costumes of various descriptions – and sometimes winter coats - will greet them with expectant expressions and the familiar chant, “Trick-or-Treat.” The youngsters will hold out open shopping bags, pumpkin-shaped buckets or whatever vessel they have brought along to carry the bounty they collect. The inhabitants of the home will offer candy, cookies, fruit or even money, which the young callers will accept before quickly moving on to the next mark.

     Most of us have grown up with this strange, commercially lucrative, but usually benign, Halloween tradition. But did you know its roots go back to the Middle Ages?

     It all started in the eighth century when Pope Gregory III declared November 1 to be All Saints Day. Derived from Old English, the word ‘Hallows’ means ‘Saints.’ The night before it was the traditional night of Samhain in the Celtic religion. It came to be known as All Hallows Eve and many Celtic traditions were incorporated into the celebrations.

 

     One of those traditional rituals was dressing up as evil spirits at year’s end. The Celts believed that the dead and the living overlapped at the change from one year to the next and that demons roamed the earth during the transition. People dressed in costumes to trick the demons into thinking the humans were also evil spirits and, consequently, would not harm them. This practice moved to All Hallows Eve.

     In England, this custom was incorporated by poor people who would visit the homes of the wealthy where they would promise to pray for the souls of the rich peoples’ dead relatives. As payment for the promise, the poor received pastries known as ‘soul cakes,’ and the practice became known as ‘souling.’

     By the sixteenth century, young people in Scotland and other parts of Britain and Ireland had taken up the practice of donning costumes and moving from house to house. Instead of promising prayers, they would briefly entertain whoever answered the door with a brief ‘trick’ such as reciting a poem or singing a short song in order to earn their ‘treats,’ which were usually nuts, fruits or coins. Sometimes the visitors would threaten to inflict misfortune if they did not receive a treat. This tradition became known as ‘guising.’

     Over time, the term ‘All Hallows Eve’ was shortened to ‘Halloween,’ 

     In the 1840’s, large numbers of immigrants fleeing the potato famine in Ireland helped to spread the celebration of Halloween throughout the United States and by the early twentieth century the practices of guising and souling were common in areas where Scottish and Irish people had settled.

     Unfortunately, by the 1920’s pranks such as soaping windows and egging houses had become popular on Halloween. During the Great Depression, these ‘tricks’ devolved into acts of vandalism such as overturning outhouses and other property damage, physical assaults and other violence. To counteract this problem, in the 1930s many communities organized events in which costumed visitors would be given sweets by participating homeowners during specific hours on Halloween night.

Photo by Jill Wellington via Pixabay

     The United States’ involvement in World War II brought sugar rationing with it. This put a damper on the tradition as there were few sweets to hand out. But after the war, the troops came home, married, and initiated the baby boom. With it, Jack-O-Lanterns, trick-or-treating and Halloween parties became extremely popular. Many costumes of the time were homemade, but candy companies launched extensive national advertising campaigns to popularize the holiday and eventually created smaller versions of best-selling candies to take advantage of the lucrative market they had created.

     The tradition became prevalent throughout the United States. The origin of the term ‘trick-or-treating’ is not well documented, but in 1951 it appeared in a Peanuts comic strip and the next year Disney released a Donald Duck cartoon called Trick or Treat.

     In the years since, the popularity of Halloween and demand for costumes, candy, decorations and related items has continued to grow. The holiday is second only to Christmas in dollars spent on the celebration. According to the National Retail Federation, $8.05 billion was spent on Halloween in the U.S. in 2020—even in the throes of the COVID pandemic. The Federation is predicting that spending this year (2022) will reach $10.14 billion.

     With expenditures that high, it’s hard to determine whether the Halloween holiday is a Trick or a Treat.

 Ann Markim

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The Evolution of Uncle Sam

 

Samuel Wilson via Wikimedia

     Samuel Wilson had no idea he’d go down in history and not in a way he ever would have imagined. 

     Samuel joined the Continental Army on March 2, 1781, at the age of fourteen. He was not assigned to fight on the front lines, but to care for and guard the army’s cattle, an important food source for the soldiers. During the Revolutionary War, the enemies often tried to tamper with and poison food sources. As part of his duties during his seven months of service before the British surrendered, Wilson also slaughtered, packaged, and guarded the meat.

      When he was twenty-two years old, Samuel and his older brother Ebenezer moved to the emerging settlement of Troy, New York. Upon arrival, the brothers worked for the town and began a string of successful businesses. Soon Samuel bought property close to the Hudson River and established the first brick-making company in the area, which was unique because most of the bricks at that time were imported from the Netherlands. Today, many of the historical buildings in Troy include bricks made by Wilson.

     In 1793, Samuel and Ebenezer began the E&S Wilson meat business. Their slaughterhouse was located close to the Hudson River, which allowed them to easily ship their products, enabling the company to grow. According to the folklore of Troy, Samuel became known around town as Uncle Sam “because he employed a lot of nephews and was an amiable, honest fellow.”

     E & S Wilson was a prosperous, well-established enterprise by the time the War of 1812 broke out. The company contracted to supply meat, salted in barrels, to the Army for its northern campaigns. Since the barrels were United States property, they were stamped with the initials, “U.S.” Since much of the meat was sent to nearby troops, many of the soldiers and teamsters were from the local area. They joked that the initials belonged to “Uncle Sam.” Over time, any Army property marked with “U.S.” became associated with Samuel Wilson.

     Even after his death in 1854, the initials U.S. relating to the United States continued to be linked to “Uncle Sam” Wilson. In the next two decades, a political cartoonist named Thomas Nast utilized and evolved the image of Uncle Sam. He is credited with adding the white beard and a suit with stars and stripes to the character.  

J. M. Flagg Poster via Library of Congress

      This Uncle Sam figure was especially exploited when the United States entered World War I. James Montgomery Flagg created a recruitment poster with Uncle Sam pointing straight ahead, based on the design of a British poster that first appeared three years earlier. In Flagg’s version, Uncle Sam wore a blue jacket and a tall top hat with stars on the band. The poster was wildly popular and often reused with different captions.

World War II Poster via Wikimedia Commons

       During World War II, Flagg’s poster was resurrected and slightly revised. During the war, the Uncle Sam image was used so widely by the U.S. government that the German military intelligence service Abwehr assigned the codename “Samland” to the United States.

     Today, the Uncle Sam image is still employed for various purposes in the USA.

     On September 15, 1961, Congress recognized the original Uncle Sam with a resolution stating: "Resolved by the Senate and the House of Representatives that the Congress salutes Uncle Sam Wilson of Troy, New York, as the progenitor of America's National symbol of Uncle Sam."

     Thus, Sam Wilson’s legacy has been preserved in the annals of United States history.

.    Ann Markim

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Prohibition – A Constitutional Flip Flop

 

The temperance movement in the United States began nearly as soon as the country was founded. Many citizens considered drinking beer, wine and liquor to be immoral. Many others believed that widespread imbibing of alcohol would threaten the young nation’s future.

From as early as 1800, these citizens wanted to prohibit their fellow citizens from making and/or drinking all forms of alcoholic beverages. Their efforts grew the movement, and in 1826 the American Christian Temperance Union was founded, initially with 222 local chapters. By 1835, there were approximately 8000 chapters.

Image via Wiki Media

According to historian Ken Burns, by 1930 the average American over the age of fifteen consumed nearly seven gallons of pure alcohol per year. This is about three times as much as Americans drink today. The abuse of alcohol, primarily by men, wreaked violence on women and children and created instability in families in a time when women had few legal rights. Most women were totally dependent on their husbands for support.

In America’s Protestant churches, many leaders and congregations, who wanted to rid America of evil, came to consider alcohol to be nearly as sinful as slavery. Thus, during the nineteenth century, efforts of the abolitionist and the temperance movements frequently overlapped. Many of the activists in both efforts were women, so it isn’t surprising that these movements became entwined with the fight for women’s rights, including women’s suffrage. The associations among these movements had both pros and cons for each of the individual endeavors. For example, the link between temperance and women’s suffrage threatened to sink ratification of the 19^th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote, in the Tennessee legislature since most members of that body were not fans of prohibition.

By the turn of the twentieth century, communities across the country had local temperance societies. One of these organizations was the Anti-Saloon League which was formed in 1893 to lobby all levels of government to prohibit the manufacture and sale of beverages containing alcohol. Although much public-facing support came from evangelical Protestantism which considered saloons to be wicked, many factory owners also backed these measures, believing that having sober workers would result in increased production and fewer accidents. Throughout the early years of the new century, the fight for prohibition continued to grow.

  

18th Amendment - National Archives

When the United States entered World War I, President Woodrow Wilson established an order for temporary wartime prohibition to preserve grain for food production. Subsequent public pressure induced Congress to pass the 18^th Amendment, banning manufacture, transportation and sale of intoxicating liquors by the end of that same year—1917. Within eleven months, the amendment received approval by the necessary three quarters of the states. It was ratified on January 16, 1919 and was set to go into effect a year later. In the meantime, Congress passed the Volstead Act which laid out guidelines for federal enforcement.

                                           

Image from Library of Congress

While temperance societies rejoiced, much of the rest of the country did not. The sizable portion of the population who wanted to keep drinking alcohol found a myriad of ways to do so, ranging from bootlegging to development of speakeasies, spawning the culture of the ‘roaring 20s,’ Many times, the ‘bathtub gin’ or moonshine was produced in personal homes or on private land. Consequently, enforcement of prohibition was difficult at all levels of government. Not surprisingly, the law was applied more stringently in geographical areas where the population was supportive of temperance than those where the residents were not.

Outside the Krazy Kat Speakeasy in Washington, D.C.-1921 
Image from Library of Congress

Organized crime sprang up around bootlegged production, the operation of speakeasies and the transportation of illegal alcoholic beverages across state lines. This also led to increased violence, especially in cities where there were competing organized crime families. Attempts to bring this rise in lawlessness under control led to the transfer of federal responsibility for enforcement of prohibition from agency to agency. Desperate to bring the situation under control, the U.S. government ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols, which were routinely stolen by bootleggers. At least 10,000 people are estimated to have died as a result of this federal mandate.

21st Amendment - National Archives

In 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for president on a platform that included calling for the repeal of prohibition. The country was in the throes of the Great Depression, and legalizing the liquor industry promised to create numerous jobs and needed revenue. Roosevelt was elected in a landslide. In February 1933, Congress passed the resolution proposing a 21^st amendment to the constitution which would repeal the 18^th Amendment and end prohibition. By December of that same year, the required 36 states had voted for ratification and the federal prohibition of beer, wine and liquor officially ended. A few states initially continued to ban alcohol, but by 1966 all had abandoned prohibition.

  Ann Markim

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USA’s Oldest European Settlement: Maybe Not What You Think

 

     What comes to mind as the oldest European settlement in the United States? Jamestown, Virginia? Plymouth (as in: Rock), Massachusetts ? Not surprising as these are the two that we learn most about in history classes. But both are wrong. The answer is… St. Augustine, Florida.

  

Photo by Kristin Wilson via Unsplash

     This area of Florida was first explored by Juan Ponce de Leon in 1513. He called the area La Florida and claimed it for the Spain. At the time, de Leon was the Spanish Governor of Puerto Rico and searching for the legendary Fountain of Youth. Composed primarily of soldiers and their dependents, St Augustine was founded in 1565. It is the oldest continuously occupied European-established city and seaport in the USA.

Photo by Paul Brennan via Pixabay

     To guard the fledgling community of St. Augustine and hold the rest of La Florida for Spain, a wooden fort named Castillo de San Marcos was built. The original structure was wood as were a succession of replacement forts. Finally, in 1672 a larger and more permanent fortress was begun. The new walls were built of a local stone called Coquina. This surprisingly strong rock was formed by the compacting of colorful shells of the tiny coquina clam over centuries of changing environmental conditions. The new fort was completed in 1695 and still stands today in the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument.

Photo by and property of the author

     To augment the Castillo’s defenses, Spanish authorities also built a watch tower on Anastasia Island between the town of St. Augustine and the Atlantic Ocean. Just seven years after completion of the Castillo, British forces from the Carolinas attacked. After a two-month siege, the British troops were not able to take the fort, so they burned the town and retreated.

     Spanish Florida afforded protection to enslaved people who escaped to St. Augustine. The city became a principal destination for the first Underground Railroad. Arriving runaways were given their freedom by the Spanish Governor if they declared allegiance to the King of Spain and embraced the Catholic religion. Consequently, plantation owners and the southern British colonies were hostile to St. Augustine and continued frequent attacks.

      In 1738, Spanish authorities established the first legally sanctioned free community of former slaves, Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, as part of St. Augustine’s northern defenses. In 1740, a strong attack on the city, mounted by the Governor of the British colony of Georgia, General James Oglethorpe, again failed to capture the fort.

     At the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, the Treaty of Paris gave Florida and St. Augustine to the British and the territory served as a pro-British colony during the American Revolution.

Photo from the National Archives

      At the end of the war, a second Treaty of Paris in 1783 gave America's colonies north of Florida their independence, and returned Florida to Spain as a reward for Spanish assistance to the Americans. This began the Second Spanish period for Florida.

     During this time, Spain suffered the Napoleonic invasions and struggled to retain its colonies in the Americas.  The expanding United States considered Florida crucial to its national interests. They negotiated the Adams-Onîs Treaty, which peacefully turned the Spanish colonies in Florida over to the United States in 1821.

Photos by and property of the author

                                           

      In 1845, Florida became a state.  The United States Army took over the Castillo de San Marcos and renamed it Fort Marion. In 1874, a lighthouse was built on the site of the old watch tower and two years later a brick lighthouse keeper’s home was also built there. Both are still standing.

Photo by Philip  Arambula via Unsplash

      Today, the colonial architecture and other remaining historic buildings in addition to the Castillo and lighthouse, provide powerful attractions for history buffs to visit St. Augustine.

  Ann Markim

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The Perfect Setting

 

     Setting is as integral to a story as the characters and plot. It can also be important to backstory. When I was developing the backstory for Anna, the protagonist in The Legacy, I needed her to be from a location in Denmark that was just north of the German-occupied area of South Jutland in 1874. Farming had to be a major occupation in the area. I also wanted to be able to locate Anna’s family home near a sizable city, where her brother could have been employed by a brewery.

 

Photo is property of author

     At the time I had not been to Denmark so I looked at a map from the period and selected the city of Vejle. I researched the area enough to know it fit my basic criteria. Now that I’ve visited the city, I’ve learned that Vejle’s beauty and history make it a worthy main character.

     The city is situated in eastern Jutland. Businesses and residences stand in river valleys and on the slopes of wooded hills. Green trees provide a lovely backdrop for the numerous brick structures and tiled roofs.

Photo by K.A. Knudsen

     Vejle’s name comes from an Old Danish word meaning “ford,” because the city is located at the convergence of the Vejle and Greis Rivers at the head of the Vejle Fjord. In Viking times, area wetlands had to be crossed by the Ravning Bridge, a nearly half-mile wooden structure. Remnants of the bridge which were discovered buried in the ground date back to ca.890-985 AD. It is believed to have been built by Harold Bluetooth and his people, but its purpose is uncertain. Archaeologists’ theories vary from the bridge being built quickly for troop transport to more mundane purposes such as allowing traders to transport wares over the swampy area.

Photo via Wiki Commons

     The first known recorded mention of the city dates back to 1256, but archaeological digs in downtown Vejle have discovered that there were homes in the area as far back as 1100. The current St. Nicolai Church building, in the same downtown area, dates to the 13^th century. Dedicated to the patron saint of merchants and seafarers, the original church was built in late Romanesque style. Renovations have occurred over the centuries especially after incurring serious damage during the Thirty Years War (1618-1848). Since then there have been several major updates, the most recent being in the 1960s. The church houses many artifacts, including the remains of the Haraldskær Woman, one of the best preserved of the Iron Age bog bodies, on display in a glass-covered sarcophagus.

     During the Middle Ages, Vejle was an important market town. Through the 1500s and into the 1600s, the town experienced prosperity and growth, benefiting from rising exports. Vejle continued to develop along those lines up to the mid-17th century. In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the population decreased due to plague and war.

Photo is property of author

     The 1801 census showed that Vejle had approximately 1,300 townspeople. In 1827, a new harbor was established on the fjord, and in the latter part of the 19^th century, a railroad station and modern utilities set the town on the path to continued growth. Today, the city’s population is approximately 59,000.

     Although my selection was somewhat serendipitous, Vejle is a noble town near which to situate the fictional ancestral home of Anna and the other characters in the Stryker Legacy series.

 Ann Markim

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