Greetings from your Friday guy as March is coming to an end. They say that March comes in like a lion and goes out as a lamb, and that is holding true this year - - - at least, up to now. It has been warm and snow is melting away quickly. I’m going to keep this intro short as I’ve got a lot to share with you this week. We’ll start off with a history lesson.
The following article was forwarded to me by an old friend, WFP colleague and longtime TGIF member and contributor. It is NOT about Vermont, but one of our neighbor northern New England states, Maine. Apparently, Maine joined the young “Union” of states on March 15th, 1820. Here is some history on how that all happened.
By the time most of you will read this it will be March 15, which is too important a day to ignore. As the man who taught me to use a chainsaw said, it is immortalized by Shakespeare’s famous warning: “Cedar! Beware the adze of March!” He put it that way because the importance of March 15 is, of course, that it is the day in 1820 that Maine, the Pine Tree State, joined the Union. Maine statehood had national repercussions. The inhabitants of this northern part of Massachusetts had asked for statehood in 1819, but their petition was stopped dead by southerners who refused to permit a free state—one that did not permit slavery—to enter the Union without a corresponding “slave state.” The explosive growth of the northern states had already given free states control of the House of Representatives, but the South held its own in the Senate, where each state got two votes. The admission of Maine would give the North the advantage, and southerners insisted that Maine’s admission be balanced with the admission of a southern slave state, lest those opposed to slavery use their power in the federal government to restrict enslavement in the South. They demanded the admission of Missouri to counteract Maine’s two “free” Senate votes. But this “Missouri Compromise” infuriated northerners, especially those who lived in Maine. They swamped Congress with petitions against admitting Missouri as a slave state, resenting that slave owners in the Senate could hold the state of Maine hostage until they got their way. Tempers rose high enough that Thomas Jefferson wrote to Massachusetts—and later Maine—Senator John Holmes that he had for a long time been content with the direction of the country, but that the Missouri question “like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union It is hushed indeed for the moment, but this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence.” Congress passed the Missouri Compromise, but Jefferson was right to see it as nothing more than a reprieve. The petition drive that had begun as an effort to keep the admission of Maine from being tied to the admission of Missouri continued as a movement to get Congress to whittle away at slavery where it could—by, for example, outlawing slave sales in the nation’s capital—and would become a key point of friction between the North and the South. There was also another powerful way in which the conditions of the state’s entry into the Union would affect American history. Mainers were angry that their statehood had been tied to the demands of far distant slave owners, and that anger worked its way into the state’s popular culture. The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 meant that Maine men, who grew up steeped in that anger, could spread west. And so they did. In 1837, Elijah P. Lovejoy, who had moved to Alton, Illinois, from Albion, Maine, to begin a newspaper dedicated to the abolition of human enslavement, was murdered by a pro-slavery mob, who threw his printing press into the Mississippi River. Elijah Lovejoy’s younger brother, Owen, had also moved west from Maine. Owen saw Elijah shot and swore his allegiance to the cause of abolition. "I shall never forsake the cause that has been sprinkled with my brother's blood," he declared. He turned to politics, and in 1854, he was elected to the Illinois state legislature. His increasing prominence brought him political friends, including an up-and-coming lawyer who had arrived in Illinois from Kentucky, Abraham Lincoln. Lovejoy and Lincoln were also friends with another Maine man gone to Illinois. Elihu Washburn had been born in Livermore, Maine, in 1816, when Maine was still part of Massachusetts. He was one of seven brothers, and one by one, his brothers had all left home, most of them to move west. Israel Washburn, Jr., the oldest, stayed in Maine, but Cadwallader moved to Wisconsin, and William Drew would follow, going to Minnesota. (Elihu was the only brother who spelled his last name with an e). Israel and Elihu were both serving in Congress in 1854 when Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act overturning the Missouri Compromise and permitting the spread of slavery to the West. Furious, Israel called a meeting of 30 congressmen in May to figure out how they could come together to stand against the Slave Power that had commandeered the government to spread the South’s system of human enslavement. They met in the rooms of Representative Edward Dickinson, of Massachusetts-- whose talented daughter Emily was already writing poems-- and while they came to the meeting from all different political parties, they left with one sole principle: to stop the Slave Power that was turning the government into an oligarchy. The men scattered for the summer back to their homes across the North, sharing their conviction that a new party must rise to stand against the Slave Power. In the fall, those calling themselves “anti-Nebraska” candidates were sweeping into office—Cadwallader Washburn would be elected from Wisconsin in 1854 and Owen Lovejoy from Illinois in 1856—and they would, indeed, create a new political party: the Republicans. The new party took deep root in Maine, flipping the state from Democratic to Republican in 1856, the first time it fielded a presidential candidate. In 1859, Abraham Lincoln would articulate an ideology for the party, defining it as the party of ordinary Americans standing together against the oligarchs of slavery, and when he ran for president in 1860, he knew it was imperative that he get the momentum of Maine men on his side. In those days Maine voted for state and local offices in September, rather than November, so a party’s win in Maine could start a wave. “As Maine goes, so goes the nation,” the saying went. So Lincoln turned to Hannibal Hamlin, who represented Maine in the Senate (and whose father had built the house in which the Washburns grew up). Lincoln won 62% of the vote in Maine in 1860, taking all 8 of the state’s electoral votes, and went on to win the election. When he arrived in Washington quietly in late February to take office the following March, Elihu Washburn was at the railroad station to greet him. I was not a great student in college. I liked learning, but not on someone else’s timetable. It was this story that woke me up and made me a scholar. I found it fascinating that a group of ordinary people from country towns who shared a fear that they were losing their democracy could figure out how to work together to reclaim it. Happy Birthday, Maine. |
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And now, back to Vermont. A story that appeared in a Vermont publication, Seven Days, a few weeks ago was forwarded to me by my brother-in-law (the same one who sent me the first and only joke that I used in my first TGIF message in 1995) last week. It’s a good story.
Vermont Car Stuck in Montreal Gets Delivered to Owner - One Year Later
By Sasha Goldstein (Seven Days)
Bon Retour!
A Vermonter's car stuck for nearly a year at the Montréal-Trudeau International Airport has been repatriated. Emmanuel Capitaine was reunited with his Toyota RAV4 last week in Williston.
Seven Days recounted Capitaine's story in this column last month: He drove the car to the airport to catch a flight to Paris on March 11, 2020. Days later, Canada closed its border with the U.S. due to the pandemic.
The border still isn't open, but the Seven Days article caught the attention of a native Vermonter now living in Montréal. Marie Hamilton is a dual citizen, and she wanted to help.
Hamilton admits, too, that she had an ulterior motive: to see her 93-year-old grandmother, who lives in Shelburne. So she got in touch with Capitaine, and they hatched a plan. He mailed her the car keys and documents asserting that she had permission to drive the vehicle across the border.
After nearly a year of no use, the car wouldn't budge. The battery was dead, the brakes had seized, and the tires were low on air. A tow truck hauled the Toyota to a repair shop for about $1,500 worth of work, according to Capitaine.
Once the car was road ready, Hamilton headed south. Any concerns about crossing the border were quickly alleviated. As she explained the backstory to an agent, he laughed. "I heard of that. I read about that!" Hamilton said he told her. She added, "It was incredibly smooth — like, one of the smoother crossings I've ever had."
Hamilton was grateful to be in Vermont for the first time since February 2020. She plans to quarantine before visiting her grandmother. Then she'll hitch a ride back to Canada with a Vermonter in early April. They connected on Facebook after both commented on this newspaper's original article about Capitaine's car.
"It was just a very Vermonty situation," Hamilton said of her unique travel arrangements. "All thanks to Seven Days!"
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Just love that phrase “it was just a very Vermonty situation”!
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The Irish Portrait Painter
An Irish painter by the name of Murphy, while not a brilliant scholar, was a gifted portrait artist. Over a short number of years, his fame grew, and soon people from all over Ireland were coming to Milltown in County Clare to get him to paint their likenesses.
One day, a beautiful young English woman arrived at his house in a stretch limo, and asked if he would paint her in the nude. This being the first time anyone had made such a request, he was a bit perturbed, particularly when the woman told him that money was no object; moreover, she was willing to pay up to 10,000 pounds.
Not wanting to get into any marital strife, he asked her to wait while he went into the house to confer with Mary, his wife. They talked much about the Rightness and Wrongness of it. It was hard to make the decision but finally his wife agreed, on one condition.
In a few minutes he returned. "The wife says it's okay. T'would be me pleasure to paint yer portrait, missus," he said. " I'll paint you in the nude alright, but I have to leave me socks on, so I have a place to wipe me brushes."
That's why we love the Irish.
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It’s been warm of late and the snow has been melting and the sap has been running. It won’t be long before they’ll open the local golf course, even if we do get some more snow, as usual, in early April. So, I’m looking forward to getting out on the course with my golfing buddies.
Sex & Golf
Professor Higgins at the University of Sydney was giving a lecture on 'Involuntary Muscle Contraction' to first year medical students
This was not an exciting subject and the professor decided to lighten up the mood.
He pointed to a young woman in the front row and asked, 'Do you know what your asshole is doing while you're having an orgasm?’
She replied, 'Probably golfing with his buddies.
It took 45 minutes to restore order in the classroom.
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While I look forward to the golfing, skiing season is nearing an end around these parts. Okemo (where I usually ski) is closing down on Easter Sunday, a bit earlier than the mid-April of a normal year.
My brother Nate sent me the following one, and he said he probably took it from one of my TGIF messages of years ago. He has used it frequently over the years. BTW – he and his wife, Karen, celebrated their 49th wedding anniversary on Thursday. Happy Anniversary! Let’s hope we can be together to celebrate your 50th next year!
Jack and Bob – Skiing Buddies
Jack decided to go skiing with his best buddy, Bob. So they loaded up Jack’s minivan and headed north. After driving for a few hours, they got caught in a terrible blizzard. So they pulled into a nearby farm and asked the attractive lady who answered the door if they could spend the night.
"I realize it's terrible weather out there and I have this huge house all to myself, but I'm recently widowed," she explained. "I'm afraid the neighbors will talk if I let you stay in my house." "Don't worry," Jack said. "We'll be happy to sleep in the barn. And if the weather breaks, we'll be gone at first light." The lady agreed, and the two men found their way to the barn and settled in for the night.
Come morning, the weather had cleared and they got on their way. They enjoyed a great weekend of skiing. But about nine months later, Jack got an unexpected letter from an attorney. It took him a few minutes to figure it out, but he finally determined that it was from the attorney of that attractive widow he had met on the ski weekend.
He dropped in on his friend Bob and asked, "Bob, do you remember that good-looking widow from the farm we stayed at on our ski holiday up north about 9 months ago?" "Yes, I do." said Bob "Did you, er, happen to get up in the middle of the night, go up to the house and pay her a visit?" "Well, um, yes..." Bob said, a little embarrassed about being found out, "I have to admit that I did." "And did you happen to give her my name instead of telling her your name?" Bob's face turned beet red and he said, "Yeah, look, I'm sorry, buddy. I'm afraid I did. Why do you ask?"
"She just died and left me everything."
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I received this following one this week and it reminded me of the one in last week’s TGIF about Leroy wrestling the crocodile. This one has a bit of a different ending.
The Crocodile Lake
A group of tourists were visiting this crocodile farm and lake and all of them one in a tourist boat in the middle of the lake, looking out at all the crocodiles. Suddenly, the owner yells out that he will give a million dollars to anyone who jumps in and swims to the shore. There was silence.
Then Walter dives in and swims frantically being chased by the crocodiles. He just barely manages to make it to the shore safely.
The owner exclaims “we have a winner”.
After he was awarded the winnings, Walter and his wife return to their hotel room.
Walter tells his wife, “I didn’t jump in, someone pushed me!”
His wife replies coldly, “Yes, I know; I pushed you in”.
Moral of the Story: Behind every successful man there is a woman ready to give him a push.
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I think that I have a woman like that, as she is “pushing me” to undertake (jointly) one home improvement project after another. As soon as we finish one, she’ll look at me and say, “So, I was thinking, ….. don’t you think it’s time to (choose one: replace, repair, or redo – such and such). And so it goes. One project after another. But I have to admit that up to now, the results are all very good. So, I’m not complaining too much. Especially because she also reads this! And it keeps me in and off the streets.
Looking forward to getting my second covid vaccine next week.
All for now. Until the next time, stay safe and be well.
TGI-Jeff
