Would Webster Be 404?

“Go look it up in the dictionary.” Mother’s oft-repeated words were an irritant of my childhood, but the habit stuck – as she intended. A well-worn dictionary is a short reach from the keyboard where I write. Spread throughout the house we must have a dozen dictionaries of various vintage.

My thoughts turn to lexicons because October 16 is Dictionary Day, honoring Noah Webster’s birthday.

Recently, I discovered a new Internet reference site that might leave Mr. Webster scratching his head. The NETLINGO dictionary explains text messaging shorthand, Internet acronyms and technology terms. Just the resource I need. In the world of text messaging I am 404 [“clueless” – originally an error code for a website address not found on the server]. NetLingo is now bookmarked in my favorites. Beware – text messaging language contains expletives that are listed by first letter and ***.

Old Wisdom

Our country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right.

- Carl Schurz, revolutionary, statesman and reformer (1829-1906)

 

This quote at the bottom of an “A.Word.A.Day” email first caught my attention because I recognized the source from my research. CARL SCHURZ, as U.S. Secretary of Interior, welcomed Chipeta as a member of the 1880 Ute Indian delegation that arrived in Washington, D.C. to discuss a treaty after the Meeker Massacre occurred in Colorado.

I saved this tidbit in my Chipeta files. Rediscovering it today, I was struck by the wisdom and timeliness of this German immigrant’s words. 

Kudos to Google

While searching for a photo of Lafayette Head (an early day Ute Indian Agent), I discovered he had a Wikipedia page. “First Lieutenant Governor of Colorado, serving from 1876 to 1879 under JOHN LONG ROUTT” was the sum total of information about the man. I knew more about him that that! I set aside other projects to give Mr. Head his due.

My research files focused on his work as Indian Agent. Colorado history books added tidbits including his participation in drafting Colorado’s state constitution. At Ancestry.com I connected with a descendant of Lafayette’s sister. He supplied information about the Head parents and grandparents who were Missouri pioneers.

Two out-of-print books provided the most interesting material. In a 1908 volume, Life of the Right Reverend Joseph P. Machebeuf, D.D., I learned that Head was a Catholic convert baptized by BISHOP LAMY and a settler of the Guadalupe community on the Mexican CONEJOS LAND GRANT. The 1890 History of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming, 1540-1888, outlined Head’s military experiences during the MEXICAN-AMERICAN WAR (1846-1848).

What amazed me was not the information I found in these two books but the fact that I read them on my computer screen. The volumes were digitized by Google from New York City and Harvard University libraries. I recalled the active debate when Google announced its digitization plans. I admit I was a skeptic, imagining a negative impact on book sales from this program. Yet, had it not been for these digitized volumes, I would have missed intriguing details of LAFAYETTE HEAD’s life.

Thanks Google, for bringing such valuable research material to my desktop! 

Good Job, Henry!

Finding one interesting research tidbit can make my day. In a recent Google search I spotted an 1880 Ute delegation photo advertised by Cowan’s Auctions, Cincinnati, Ohio. The item was part of a collection of Indian artifacts once owned by Henry W. Andrews. I discovered the auction had been completed in 2007. The Andrews’ collection brought $101,200.20.

The description of lot #322 noted, “The photograph of the Ute Treaty Delegation taken in 1880, and inscribed to Andrews from Ouray and his wife Chipeta, suggests Andrews must have been good at his job…”

Henry Andrews was a clerk in the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs when the Ute delegation arrived in Washington, DC on January 11, 1880. Andrews met them at the train station. He was assigned to supervise every detail of the Utes’ stay in the city so he took a room in the Tremont House with the delegation. The Utes had been national news since October 1879, when a small group of Utes killed their Indian Agent and the agency employees, then took three white women and two children hostage. Colorado’s GOVERNOR PITKIN arrived in Washington in late January to lobby for removal of all Utes from the state. Andrews had his hands full protecting the Ute delegation from eager newspaper reporters, curious locals, and angry citizens.

Delays in negotiations extended the Utes’ stay to almost three months, a long time for people used to wide open spaces to be cooped up inside a hotel. Andrews ate his meals with the Utes, arranged for entertainment and accompanied them on trips around the city. He learned to enjoy the Utes’ company and became a trusted friend. It was Henry Andrews who escorted Chipeta on a Pennsylvania Avenue shopping trip to buy fabric for “city clothes.”

Henry Andrews was indeed good at his job. By 1885 he had been promoted to Deputy Commissioner of Indian Affairs for the Northwest Territory.

Bathtub Power

Regular listeners to National Public Radio report “driveway moments,” features so compelling that they must hear the story all the way to the end.  They arrive at home in the midst of such a story and sit in the driveway to hear the conclusion on the car radio.  

I have bathtub moments. When I get stuck in a writing project, usually a short story, I fill the tub with a hot bubble bath and settle in to relax. Often, the solution to my writing problem forms in my well-steamed mind. I climb out of the tub, wrap myself in a towel, and dribble wet footprints down the hallway in my search for paper and pencil. My bathtub moments have become something of a joke around our house.

Last week I was pleased to learn I am not the only bathtub thinker. My husband caught the story in the History Channel’s Modern Marvels feature about The Manhattan Project. Hungarian-American Leó Szilárd was a brilliant, if somewhat eccentric, physicist who helped develop U.S. nuclear weapons during World War II. His habit of stopping to take a hot bath when he was stuck on a technical problem drove his Manhattan Project co-workers crazy but, he usually returned with a solution. When I reviewed a BIOGRAPHICAL CHRONOLOGY OF SZILARD I found common ground. He was a short story writer.