| July 30, 2005 10:10 AM | ||||||
|
We had berry picking date night last night
and five couples (count 'em) came up to enjoy the Oak Glen sunset, a fine
meal, and each other's company. It was all put on by one of
our star cooks and employees, Krystle Bender. Huzzah,
Krystle! The berry patches are going strong, though they tell me raspberries are stronger now than the blackberries. Come on up and have a little summer! Here's what one Yucaipa resident wrote about "Berry Picking Date Night:" WHAT A GREAT IDEA! There were tables set in secluded areas ready for the "dates"... The view of the valley was breathtaking, however the best view was as the sun set and the stars came out. Now that is a setting for a romantic date! Picking raspberries with my husband was so much fun, we talked or were silent together away from daily thoughts. The raspberry patch is so large you don't even notice other couples are there as well. Miss Krystle is the perfect hostess and an awesome cook as well. Her sweet smile and confident demeanor shows she was prepared to offer us an exceptional night in this beautiful setting. The simple fare was so very good and served in hearty portions as is the Riley custom. From the beginning with homemade apple cheddar biscuits, fresh made chicken pot pie, to the final touch, homemade apple pie that beats any other, this meal could rival many others we have enjoyed. Krystle's homey touch mixed with the fresh air and lovely setting made our outing a memorable one. We left thanking Krystle and then promsing to our selves we would make this a regular "date night". This was wonderful. Thank you so much. Could this be the beginning of a national trend? A decision of discriminating couples to take their meal on the farm itself? We will keep you posted! |
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| July 29, 2005 1:43 PM | ||||||
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Here's a few of the hundreds
of letters
of
support
that came in the last three days. Thank you, one and all! This farm has enabled me to make American History and the blessings of life in our country alive to my California 5th graders. It is often hard for children in this part of the country to relate to the stories about the formation of our country. Riley's Farm brings the stories to life. I truly feel it is a gift to our communities that this place exists.
--Linda, Studio City
My colleagues and I have been bringing our
students to Riley's Farm for years...Please understand that the Living
History Programs offered by Riley's Farm are unmatched by anything in our
area.
Riley's Farm is gold. There isn't any other way
to put it. My family and I have driven over 2 hours to visit the farm, and
would do it again in an instant. I have told many friends about it, and
they have made the drive as well. As parents, my husband and I are tired
of the constant barrage of advertising aimed at our children for all the
new latest and greatest gadgets and toys. It is absolutely essential to
have a wonderful place like Riley's to spend time as a family, and to show
our children that there is more to life than Playstations and Disneyland.
We look forward to enjoying some of their fabulous apple pie when we come
out in the fall.
My husband and I were raised in the mountains of
North Carolina. Five years ago, we moved to Orange County. We have
missed our home immensely. Visiting Oak Glen and Riley's Farm is always
like going home. In this region of smog and freeways and shopping
malls, Riley's is the only place with real history you get to be a part
of. It is exciting to learn new things every time we visit the farm. |
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| July 29, 2005 9:25AM | ||||||
|
Eric Bucklein, a faithful customer, wrote me
yesterday about Evening in the Colonies with Patrick
Henry and suggested it might be good to partner with a four star hotel
in the area, so that guests from San Diego, Orange County, and Ventura
could take in dinner here, and then have a mini-retreat afterwards,
without negotiating the freeways until midnight. It's a
good idea; I think I'll work on it. If any
of you are travel people, and you know the particulars of setting up
something like that,
write me and let me know how it's done: if I sell a
dinner, limousine, hotel package, do I ask for a commission from the
driver and the hotel? Do we all sell it together?
(The country farmer is confused.) We had a great tour yesterday, hosting a Jewish boys camp exploring the American Revolution. I thought I would impress the Rabbi by telling him how many children I have, but he bested me. "Six?" he said. "Wonderful! I have ten." He jumped right into role-playing, ordering his boys into battle, and falling down on the field of honor with great fanfare. Mark Rizzo, a former Riverside resident, now moved to Tennessee, where he sells real estate, shamelessly taunted me by sending me a set of Tennessee listings. Here's one: 120 acres, woodlands streams, two story 6,000 square foot colonial mansion, barns, equestrian trails, all for $499,000. Another friend of ours just bought 40 fenced acres in Tyler, Texas with a stream running through it, heavy green woods, house, barn, and general store on the highway for $210,000. We have some other friends in Montana, where you can buy half the Northern Hemisphere by trading in your car. I don't know about you, but whenever I drive the country, my first impulse is to ask people "what do people do for a living around here?" It's a really obtuse question when you think about it. How can someone tell you what everyone does for a living? Still, I'm inexorably attracted to the question. I want the real estate listing, the guy at the gas station, the girl behind the coffee counter, to tell me--in two or three sentences--how we could fit in. I tend to think of myself as a converted country person, having wheel-barrowed pigs back into their corrals, having contended with blood-thirsty roosters and the like, but my friend, Mark Rizzo, warns me: "there are places so far back in the Tennessee woods that even the Episcopalians are snake-handlers." Premise for a movie: California family moves to Montana. They buy a small ranch. The deal is about to be signed, and the real estate man is desperate to get it done, because sales have been slow. At the last minute, the Californians make one demand: "We want you to be our friend." Real estate man responds: "Well, of course, I'll be your friend! It's a small town." Californians: "No. I mean we want it in the deal. Written down. We want you to stop by twice a week and chat--show us how to work the wood burning stove, show us how to really work the SUV. We've had an SUV for years, but this is first time, we'll really--" Real Estate man: "--need it. Right. ..uh" Californians: "The winters here. I mean, we've seen the Shining. We're just not sure we can take it. Even in the summer. The solitude. You'll be off the hook if we make other friends." Real Estate man: "..um" Californians: "Two one hour
trips per week, just to talk. One visit per month with
your whole family." |
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| July 28, 2005 8:44 AM | ||||||
|
C.S. Lewis said that writing is almost like
an itch. It's pointless to avoid scratching. I've apologized, two or three times now, for discussing the community plan, and land use issues. I'm going to stop apologizing, because, frankly, it's the biggest issue we face as a family. It's more than just an itch; it's a bad rash, brought on by a few members of our community who can't stand our family, our beliefs, and our way of conducting business. By way of introduction to the issue, if you look at yesterday's journal entry, you'll see a picture of some of our daughters picking raspberries. This year, we have a huge crop. I let Mario handle the patch exactly as he wanted, fertilizing and cultivating to his heart's content. (It was a tad expensive.) The vines are huge and we expect a lot of fruit, but on any given week day, we might sell, what, maybe, $200 worth of fruit out of the store. Do the math on this: we have property tax bills in the tens of thousands of dollars, liability insurance in the tens of thousands of dollars, and workers compensation bills, well, those match that or worse. Even with an absolutely stellar crop of apples and raspberries and pumpkins, it's very difficult to make a living, much less make any return on the land, if you are restricted entirely to u-pick fruit sales. Why do we plant trees, then? Why do we harvest corn and pumpkins? Well, we love it for one. We like the way a field looks under cultivation, and we know that our customers do as well. Economic realities, however, are what they are, and we have supplemented that income with retail, banquets, and our biggest success so far, living history field trips for school children. For every idea that has worked up here, a hundred have failed. We're finally, just now, beginning to make the farm pay for itself. That is where our problems began. No one objects to our u-pick fruit program. No one minds if we raise fruit, preserve the viewscape, and provide an attraction that draws tourists to Oak Glen's retail establishments. If however, we offer overnight camping, a neighbor worries that we will have children and teenagers wandering around at night. (Our organized camping programs have 24 hour supervision.) If we speak of the Revolutionary War program, they worry our musket fire will be uncontrolled (it isn't; independent studies have shown the busses driving by are louder than the musket fire.) If we build an 18th century shop to house a Franklin Press, and show our guests how to do old-fashioned printing, one neighbor calls us a "theme park." (Another claimed we were "promoting war.") One neighbor observed that we should take the equivalent of a vow of poverty, seek federal grants, and sell our fruit to the Oak Glen fruit stands, at a loss, if necessary. The self-appointed mayor of Oak Glen compared our Revolutionary War living history programs to a strip club. I've never seen so much energy marshaled against good ideas in my life. I spoke with one resident who said, "I just wish it was like the old days, when Blackie Wilshire ran the orchards." Well, so do I. Can you imagine? Five cent gasoline, very little regulation, fewer lawyers, and no overnight fruit from Chile. Moms purchased truck loads of fruit to take home and can. Now they wander around and smell the blossoms. It's a different world; even I can recognize that and I'm 200 years behind the times. There is a way to preserve the orchards,
but it takes insight, passion, and flexibility. One of the
finest orchards in Oak Glen, Parrish Ranch, has its own commercial zone,
where its customers are fed, where they can enjoy a meal, or plan a
wedding. The Wildlands Conservancy, owners of Los
Rios Rancho, recently enjoyed the county's approval for a campground,
restaurant, and outdoor events center. |
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| July 27, 2005 4:18 PM | ||||||
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Thanks for all your great email and
petition signing!
We had a bad equipment day. The teeth on the Kubota backhoe needed replacing and all the welding rigs are over at Mile High Ranch, so the old orange girl broke down half way across. Poor Jim Creighton had to walk back up the widow maker trail, a couple of miles, by himself. We have one leg of the irrigation system left to fix, and it means some digging, but when all this is done, we should be able to support a lot more apple trees.  Picture it: Roxbury Russets and Maiden's Blush and Seek-no-Furthers, and Duchess of Oldenberg and Fearns Pippin and Summer Bellflower, all striping the hills in neat vernal rows--sort of a New Englander's Tuscany, except that it's here in California. Heck, I want to grow some grapes too. Old Oak Glen Cabernet. Think Oak Glen hard cider in a stone cellar. A 1760s New England Public House with roast beef and good honest talk and Samuel Adams regaling the public. The pastor teaching Latin and New Testament by the window. A father and son returning from the fields to rest an English fowling piece up on the wall and then order bread and cider from the serving girl. Two fiddlers playing "Road to Boston" in the corner. A milk maid brings in a redware bowl of fresh butter. I suppose the public house would need to be pretty grand for all of that to be going on at the same time, but what, really, could be better? Really. I mean it. What could be better? Why is it so hard to get a little invention, a little intrigue, a little romance into the General Plan of the County of San Bernardino? Why can't you have an old Victorian restaurant in the middle of a Citrus grove? Why can't a small farmer host an equestrian camp, or a pottery vacation, or a skeet-shooting workshop? Why NOT put a small country inn on the ridgeline hilltops of Oak Glen--not a steel and plate glass monstrosity--but a Monticello, a San Simeon, up there in the fresh air, among terraced apple orchards? Everyone leaves it up to the faceless committees, the anemic non-profits, the federal government to give them their camps, their culture, their nature. Life is about other people, other children of God, other stories, other songs, other families; it's not a regulatory check list that leaves us all looking exactly the same. So here's my idea, San Bernardino: if a family owns a piece of farm land, give them some incentive not to turn it into tract homes. If a family is silly and stupid and romantic enough to raise apple trees, or grapes, or oranges--in the middle of urban Southern California--let them have a restaurant and a lodge and a camp, for heaven's sake. Let them DO something with it. Lord knows, people want to see a farm, and Lord knows they want to stay a while, and Lord knows they need to eat. Why not let them? |
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| July 26, 2005 8:34 AM | ||||||
|
Mary and I took a date night last night--over
to the
new Las Fuentes down by the Krikorian theater. It's a nice,
pleasant little cantina with very good food--no, scratch
that--excellent food. I think I know why there are so
many chain stores of various kinds in America.
When people walk into a restaurant, the servers, in a tightly run place,
make it look easy. There's ice water on the table almost
right a way, a glass of of wine within two or three minutes, and a girl
saying "watch this plate; it's really hot" within about 10
minutes. When you get to your booth, which
is spotless, the pretty hostess is smiling at you, and the really good
ones actually remember you. We've taken the kids to Las
Fuentes in Yucaipa, and the next time Mary and I went in, the girl said,
"no little ones tonight? Just you two?"
I should give equal time here to another incredible Mexican
restaurant--Casa Trejo in Calimesa. The owner sits
at the register and asks us about the farm every time we come in;
Our waiter--a Mr. Riley--knows what I'm going to order.
(We're regulars; but we're not that regular.) Behind the hospitality, which is hard to teach new employees, is a system. The kitchen is designed to get a lot of good food out quickly; the manager knows how to order; every employee has a work station, a list of jobs, that need to be completed and then checked. If it's done well, if people actually like the end result, it's almost an act of nature, a force of nature, that it will be duplicated. Someone will say, "I wish you had one of these in Trabuco Canyon," even as they lay down a 20% tip. That isn't to take anything away from the small family run shop; it's just to say that the same routines, the same expertise, the same service, that make it a jewel, are the same rules that beg to be duplicated a thousand times. I've seen a lot of little business people complaining about success, but they should remember what my older brother once said about a fellow insurance man who sold a five million dollar life insurance policy; "every body was complaining about him getting a lucky break, but then an older guy in the shop said, 'you guys should be happy; that means you can do it if you stop complaining and start selling!'" Speaking of selling, more and more people are coming up to the berry patch, which now features ripening raspberries. Picture yourself tonight with a surprise for the rest of your little clan; while you're taking in a reality show, you will be pouring real raspberries on top of your ice cream, real raspberries that you picked yourself. This sort of thing could catch on! |
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| July 24, 2005 7:33AM | ||||||
|
We had quite a
downpour yesterday, with one of those strange tropical storms that gather
fury and then explode without much warning. I was
worried about the pumpkins, but they look okay, as do the corn and the
berries. (This is the last day for cherry-picking,
so get on over to the Mile High Orchard.) |
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| July 23, 2005 8:26 AM | ||||||
|
Danny, our new super-secret G-man nephew came
home yesterday for a weekend stay. His training has been
difficult, and will get more difficult, but that's all he can tell us-or
he will have to kill us. Grandma and Grandpa sat by the
pond and squabbled with each other, during his homecoming party.
I created a super romantic dinner setting for berry picking date night,
and then the guests cancelled because of traffic. Starting a
national cultural fad is difficult work, but we press on. On other fronts--justice, sweet justice. The fight to save Riley's Farm will be a long and hard one, but you guests have been gracious beyond belief in helping us with that fight! Thank you, thank you, thank you! Some people think that a living history farm with u-pick fruit, a banquet facility or two, overnight camping for groups, historic retail, living history education for children, more apple trees, and battle reenactments are inappropriate for Oak Glen. If you do NOT agree, sign our our on-line petition! Tell Dennis Hansberger, our county supervisor, Riley's Farm is worth fighting for! (909-387-4855) A few facts to remember: independent noise studies now confirm our very limited musket firing does not violate county noise ordinances, there are no endangered species on the farm, and our proposal has no effect on street traffic. To our knowledge, these studies have not been completed by any other business in Oak Glen. We're doing our best to be good neighbors; it would be nice to have the favor returned! Raspberries are ready today and if you
want to include cherry-picking in your 2005
Christmas card letter to the relatives in Akron, you better get out here
this weekend, because Scott will be closing the cherry orchard for the end
of the season Sunday night. |
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| July 22, 2005 6:35 AM | ||||||
|
We met with some radio station people this
week who want to partner with us in the creation of a high dollar murder
mystery program here. I want it to be both
entertaining and accurate, so we're trying a couple of scenarios based on
assassination attempts during the Revolutionary war. We'll
see... As I hinted in the commercial yesterday, we harvested our wheat two days ago and the cider barn now smells something like bread, with all the grain piled up in the corner. I created a "Visual Analysis Impact" report, via video, for some of the planners at the county. It documents, in addition to our own curb appeal, some of the Oak Glen business establishments who have never been graced by a civil engineer quantifying the aesthetics of the roadside. They found it quite enlightening. The pumpkins were thinned and weeded yesterday. Our vintage, heirloom flowers are coming in on the roadside very nicely, with some really beautiful deep purples and saffron colored petals. If you want cherries, this is the weekend to come out, as Scott believes this heat spell will cause most of the fruit to drop soon. There's still a lot left , so don't wait another year to experience a cherry harvest. Very important: Follow these directions. Mario says the raspberries are ready now too, so come on out! |
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| July 21, 2005 12:47 AM | ||||||
 I'm
up late because I just finished watching a very powerful Paul Feig movie,
called "I am David" with Jim
Caviezel. I'm sort of an easy mark, but it got me
big time. I also worked on another farm commercial tonight--really slap dash. You can watch it by clicking on the picture of the wheat on the right. This one is kind of atmospheric, doesn't sell anything very well, and would probably not pass muster in any marketing 101 class, but it does impose kind of a nice guilt trip. Good news on the county planning front. I finally got to read the expensive studies we have paid for--in response to the Oak Glen tolerance platoon--and it confirms what I've been saying all along. The acoustic engineers reported that the tour busses themselves make more of a noise impact than our musket shots. Since the complainers cater to tour busses as well, it's difficult to see how their complaint could stand. The county people have been very nice in helping us get our conditional use application through, but they have an annoying policy check list they need to follow. The next thing they want--and I'm not at all sure we're going to give it to them--is, get this, a "Visual Impact Report." A Visual Impact Report. We're building a living history farm for heaven's sake. We've created vistas to 18th century style homes and cider barns. We've planted over 100 new trees a year. We're one of the few farms in Oak Glen, (there aren't that many apple orchards left, by the way), actually  planting
new trees. Why should we pay a civil engineer to tell us
whether or not we have curb appeal? Our primary detractor, by
the way, offers the view on the right to the public.
Believe it or not!Poor Dennis Hansberger, our county supervisor, actually has to field complaints from the owner of the business on the right, against us. He knows the supporters of Riley's Farm far outweigh the small band of Oak Glen business competitors who are complaining about us, but it might be a good time to remind him again. (909-387-4855) The Rural Living zone allows specifically for agricultural support services, and within the last two years, the county has approved restaurants, camps, retail outlets, and wedding facilities, all under the banner of agricultural support. We believe a living history farm should certainly be afforded the same courtesy, and we believe Supervisor Hansberger agrees. Let him know! He's a great friend of Oak Glen. |
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| July 19, 2005 3:54 PM | ||||||
|
Huzzah for summer salesman, Tom Topoleski in
our front office! He booked over 500 guests today
on new tours for the fall and late summer. On another front: land use, if you couldn't tell, is one of the passions I have inherited, along with my other siblings. Ignoring our own venerable community of Oak Glen for a moment, I turn to a sign I saw on the Cayucos "downtown" exit off Pacific Coast Highway. Cayucos is a little beach town, about five minutes north of Moro Bay. The houses crowd each other on 30 foot wide lots, and someone had pinned a piece of cardboard to a street sign that read, "Welcome to Cayucos; now turn off your car alarm." I suppose there are at least a dozen possible stories behind that sign, but it seems to me a perfect example of rights in conflict. On the one hand, you have someone who wants to get some sleep, and on the other you have someone who wants to protect his property. The guy who wants to sleep, unfortunately, has purchased a home in a tourist community, and the tourist, who has committed the sin of installing a car alarm, wants to visit the tourist community without losing his car. We live in an age that values "tolerance" at the same time we are losing tolerance for each other. Our system requires compromise and balance between competing interests, and it simply won't work if we adopt the peevish, Stalinist absolutes of the neighbor with the shortest tripwires . Cayucos could be more welcoming if it encouraged the cardboard car alarm activist to form a neighborhood watch, complete with printed welcome greetings, emphasizing the need for quiet after certain hours, and promising--in return--a community patrol. Reasonable people respond to reason, not mindless prohibitions. Up here in Oak Glen, the vast majority of the people love the apples, the tourists, the living history, the battle reenactments, and the unique charm of an agriculture community still thriving in the middle of a vast metropolis, but we still have the cardboard and crayon platoon as well. God save us. |
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| July 18, 2005 8:08 PM | ||||||
|
Confirmation. I've been writing that it's 10 to 15 degrees
cooler here than it is down the mountain, and I checked the car temp when
we were down in Beaumont, frequenting Baker's. It was
holding rock steady at 99 degrees at about 7:00 PM. We drove
back up the hill, a trip of about--what, 12 minutes?--and the temperature
on the farm was 85 degrees. So... moral of the story.... |
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| July 18, 2005 7:08 AM | ||||||
The Wood Family--Jerry, Jill, and Susanna--spent the day with us in the lower green area, by the pond, and
although it was hot, we were able to have a pretty cool, mild Sunday by
staying in the shade of a box elder tree, and
then a black Oak, (as the
sun shifted throughout the afternoon). The kids absorbed
themselves in stomp-rocketing. My scythe arrived this week from www.scythesupply.com. The wheat has me a bit confused. I thought you were supposed to harvest the golden grain sometime in September or October, or at least August, but our first time try at the stuff looks ready to harvest right now. If you want to read something about growing and harvesting wheat the old fashioned way, try Al Durtschi's article at Walton Feed.  Many of you are aware that the latest trendy fad among couples across the
nation is "date night berry picking."
This fad is so hot that, to my knowledge, you won't be able to do it
anyplace but here on Riley's Farm on Thursday and Friday nights.
You might want to purchase your tickets at the link above--before all the
celebrity couples sign up for their picking baskets.
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| July 15, 2005 7:55 AM | ||||||
 Be it ever so humble, it's much better than
the rumble of a family vacation. This year, we went up
to a little town called Cayucos, just above Moro Bay. We saw
the wineries, Hearst Castle, the molting elephant seals, and a
Melodrama-vaudeville show in Oceano. The waves were
mesmerizing, but we happened to hit the beach just as some sort of kelp
fly was hatching out by the millions. The kids were
untroubled by it, and boogied on through in their wet suits, but Jim Riley
is not built for the beach, so Mary and I life-guarded and swatted.
The farm looks good, new grass is coming up, grapes getting fat, berries still in abundance. We can drink the water here without a filter--unlike the beach. (Those are Riley's Farm Oak Glen cabernets there on the upper right, by the way, not central coast grapes.) It's good to be  home.P.S. Here's the little bull calf that was waiting for us when we got home. Mother and baby are doing fine. Corn and pumpkins are looking pretty good too, (see below)
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| July 9, 2005 7:58 AM | ||||||
|
Some farm news: Hobo Jazz and the
Stone Pantry Preserves will be performing at the Packing Shed July 23rd.
Buy your tickets now and save BIG TIME at the
door! The
Berry and Cherry
crops are going strong. You've been in bed all morning!
Get up here and pick! |
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| July 8, 2005 7:03 PM | ||||||
| We sent Tom Topoleski down the hill with berry and cherry press releases today. The irrigation system repair inches towards completion. A blessed heat is bringing out the berries big time. We sat by the pool for a bit this afternoon, and I believe I had the first real night of summer, two nights ago. I know it's supposed to be June 21st, but I think the first night of summer was the evening of July 6th. It was just us and the farm--looking up at Wilshire Peak. Our first heads of wheat were drying out and we were crunching on the kernels. Kathy von Arx was lamenting how difficult it is to build a house in Oak Glen. We swapped kid stories, had a glass of wine, allowed a bit of the summer to wash around us. We don't have as much business right now as I would like--but that's okay. At least we aren't facing hurricane Dennis, like those poor folks in Florida. (...) We have our own little hurricane here, the family feud, but life is really just a fair amount of turmoil and grief, syncopated with moments of something like this--rest, peace, laughter, summer. Here's to yours, and ours. Cheers. | ||||||
| July 6, 2005 7:17 AM | ||||||
|
I did another radio show yesterday, this time
a full half hour show. The hosts were very excited about
our farm and kept calling it a "little known secret."
There's the rub, heah? Riley's Farm is a secret!
After calling in payroll, I headed back down the hill to my doctor at Loma Linda. He's a fastidiously neat, well-groomed Berkeley graduate of Korean descent, and he's one of the best doctors I've ever had; he explains exactly what he's trying to accomplish with his approach to my particular problem--which is common to all the Rileys--high blood pressure. I'm happy to report that mine keeps inching down, so that now I'm only mildly elevated, and soon I have hopes of being a normal person once again--at least with respect to blood pressure. He specializes in both internal medicine and pediatrics, so that when I visit his waiting room, the place is full of children pressing their noses against the aquarium, or running after Nerf soccer balls, or tripping headlong over my big, middle aged feet. I told someone once about my doctor, and they responded, "Isn't he a pediatrician?" That was the first time it even occurred to me that there did seem to be a lot of kids in the office. I actually wondered if I'd made a mistake. I took a mental inventory: had the doctor ever patted me on the head and told me how tall I was getting? Didn't that one nurse nearly hand me a Barney dinosaur to play with? Did they think my 19th century clothing was some sort of cowboy costume? It didn't help that I couldn't remember the term "internal medicine" either. "No," I said, "he sees big, tall, fat people like me." "I think." |
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| July 4, 2005 11:43 AM | ||||||
 We have none other than John Adams, our
second president, to thank for a definitive, and prophetic, quote on the
proper way to celebrate Independence Day:The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of the continent to the other, from this time forward, forevermore. The observant will note, of course, that he uses July 2nd, and not July 4th as the celebratory date, and this discrepancy, we are told, is due to the fact that the resolution was introduced on the 2nd, but approved on the 4th. Reviewing the previous link (a product of the U.S. State department) reminded me of a problem many of us have with history: we leave out what isn't convenient, or what might seem offensive, or what we can't bother to explore. Here's the way the State Department chose to quote Adams: "I believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival... it ought to be celebrated by pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other..." It's such a great quote for party planners: you have parades, sports, games, and even bonfires. The problem is you can't introduce the subject (Independence Day) without that troubling sentence about "devotion," "deliverance," and "God Almighty." It's right there between the "great anniversary festival" and the "shows, games, sports" section. Apparently, this is where the ellipsis comes in, the omnipresent dot dot dot... I got to thinking: how often is this
quote mentioned on the internet? How many times is
it used in its entirety and what percentage of web writers saw fit to edit
God out of Adam's version of the celebration? You can confirm
this on your own, but I used one search engine to see how many times the
exact phrase "it will be celebrated" along with "Adams" appeared.
It's a very popular quote. It came up about 852 times.
Of those sites, I then refined the search to see how many times it came up
without God, ("-God"). I counted 212 sites
that chose to mention the quote without Adam's reference to God, or about
24.8%. When I broke those sites down
by type, I found that 21% of ".org" sites, chose to strike out the
Almighty, 25% of ".com" sites chose to remove God, 27% of ".mil" sites
struck out God, and 33% of academic sites (".edu") removed Him.
God, however, did the worst on government (".gov") sites, where Adams'
quote was gutted nearly 36% of the time.
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| July 3, 2005 6:30 AM | ||||||
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We had an incredibly supportive group of families yesterday and last night for the Revolutionary War Adventure and Evening in the Colonies with Patrick Henry . The willingness of the audience to have fun and engage in learning makes all the difference, and I only wish I could have had an extended conversation with more of the guests who were there last night. That's not just blog jargon either. When I walk around the room, playing Patrick Henry, I am struck by by the smiles and the goodwill of the people who crowd themselves into the tavern. I guess it's because we're all looking back to a shared history together, and the affection for that history brings us together for an hour or two. It feels very much like family. One couple celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary last night. Another professor and his extended kin returned for the second time. I got to spend much of dinner with a charming Sierra Madre family, and my old high school and college buddy, Nancy Turner, showed up with her husband and two children. Yet another family picked berries with us, and we had a great talk about Williamsburg and classical education out there in the sunshine. We had an Irish fiddler sit in with Kathy and Freeman; the room was full of ripping good music. A nice night. A great night!
I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do
Too much? |
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| July 1, 2005 11:30 AM | ||||||
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We're re-seeding the lawns, so the place has
that happy ringing smell of steer manure right now, and the first
Revolutionary War Adventure
of the summer is proceeding downstairs. Our
red cow, Lucy, is pregnant--we think. We purchased her
"in milk," and according to the egg rancher who sold her to us, (yes, egg
rancher), Lucy had a visitor the week before she left the ranch--a young
bull who broke down two fences to say goodbye. If
the Family Cow book is right, the little calf should be arriving any day
now. We also think Betty is pregnant, but we can't
tell either. Even Mario, our cow veteran, can't tell.
We have about a dozen more spots for this Saturday Night's Evening in the Colonies with Patrick Henry. Sign up! |
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it preserves family farms; it gives
tourists quality, cultural destinations to visit; it keeps land
under cultivation; it allows surrounding residences to look out upon
vineyards, orchards, and equestrian trails; and it allows family
farms to prosper without developing on a large scale. 
Mary Pote finished
five complete redcoat regimentals this week! She also
announced her engagement to a former redcoat, Dan Johns!
Congratulations!
What
you can do on the farm this week