Something that seems to be left out of most accounts of travelling overland across the continent is how long it took, especially for those going west from the Mississippi River valley, and what the introduction of the railroad and then the automobile meant to the traveller. For the wagon going to Oregon, or the Mormon… Continue reading Some Rough Travel Comparisons
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The Creation of US20 – The Yankee Road
With the publication of Volume 3 of The Yankee Road launching August 2020 (here's a bit of the story behind US 20, America's longest highway. US 20 stretches across the United States nearly 3400 miles, from Boston to Newport, Oregon. It is a designation connecting a number of largely pre-existing roads rather than a singular… Continue reading The Creation of US20 – The Yankee Road
Lowell, Jack and Me: An Excerpt from The Yankee Road – Volume 1
Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?Jack Kerouac, On the Road What a long, strange trip it’s been…The Grateful Dead, Truckin’ Lowell is a former mill town to the north of Boston. It is named after Francis Cabot Lowell, who developed the first American textile mill in 1814. It is located… Continue reading Lowell, Jack and Me: An Excerpt from The Yankee Road – Volume 1
The Medium of Writing and Dunbar’s Number
Writing provides a way to transmit messages accurately into the future, but it also has the side-effect of increasing social cohesion by homogenizing and stabilizing a ruling class, as well as by distinguishing one society from another. The medium of writing, according to the late Marshall McLuhan, has a greater effect simply by just being… Continue reading The Medium of Writing and Dunbar’s Number
Involuntary Servitude
There is a notion, common in human history, that it is acceptable to force some people to labor for their sustenance alone, while others make use of the difference between the value of the forced laborers’ production and their sustenance. Reasons for justifying this involuntary servitude include national necessity, the fate of captives in war,… Continue reading Involuntary Servitude
Retailing “Yankee Notions”
Every inhabited part of the United States is visited by these men. I have seen them on the peninsula of Cape Cod and in the Neighborhood of Lake Erie, distant from each other more than six hundred miles. They make their way to Detroit, four hundred miles farther, to Canada, to Kentucky, and, if I… Continue reading Retailing “Yankee Notions”
Don’t Fence Me In
As the frontier pushed west past Chicago in the 1840s, a problem appeared with the change from forest to prairie: the need for fencing. Farther east, wood for fencing was easy to come by, but the prairie was nearly treeless. The most common kind of fencing on the Illinois frontier was a large bush called… Continue reading Don’t Fence Me In
Havana Dreamin’
I wrote this 6 years ago, before President Trump more or less established the Status Quo Ante in US Cuba relations. This is a lightly revised piece from then. I knew Cuba in the old days before President Obama unleashed the second American invasion of that Caribbean island. This one was not a military one,… Continue reading Havana Dreamin’
Amelia Jenks Bloomer: A Yankee Woman Goes to Iowa
Amelia Jenks was the daughter of Ananias Jenks, who was born in Yankee Rhode Island around 1786. He was a woolen clothmaker by trade who migrated, first to Oneida NY and then south to Homer, in Cortland County, on the eastern margins of the Finger Lakes. Here he operated a woolen mill and married Lucy… Continue reading Amelia Jenks Bloomer: A Yankee Woman Goes to Iowa
The Second Butterfield Stage (Sort Of)
When I was writing a chapter for the second volume of my book, The Yankee Road, I told the story of John Butterfield and his Overland Mail Company, which operated a stagecoach line between St. Louis and San Francisco between 1858 and 1861; its existence cut short by the outbreak of the Civil War. The… Continue reading The Second Butterfield Stage (Sort Of)
Old Professor by the Sea 