Saturday, June 15, 2013
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Unruly Dinners with the Colonists
By Harry M. Covert
A
The latest refers to Jamestown. That’s still in Virginia. Apparently some recent assessors have discovered that the colonists there did not exhibit any moral tendencies. They were heathens of the first chop.
When food ran short back in 1609, they apparently became cannibals -- Caucasian diners that is. To survive. No evidence abounds they partook of the Indians, whom they described as Indians, not in the modern words Native Americans. [The Bureau of Indian Affairs had not been created at that point.]
The Story of Virginia, to which I was taught in my grammar school, never mentioned such unruly conduct. Those settlers, as I learned in my classrooms just a few miles south, always showed us sweet boys and girls how kindly the mostly Christian intruders from England treated the Redmen and women.
Some of the names I recall these days are Captain John Smith, Pocahontas, Powhatan and John Rolfe.
These creative and godly forerunners, as many have been taught through their formative years and on to the hallowed halls of the College of William and Mary, led to the establishment of the USA.
It should be noted here that the esteemed college is the second oldest institution of higher learning in what is now the 50 states. Harvard ranks first and probably leads the way in some historical rewriting.
Starving time in Jamestown occurred during the winter of 1609 to1610, according to Colonial Williamsburg which is working on the project with the Smithsonian and Preservation Virginia.
A recent wag wondered if the Jamestown tourist center will have to update its cookbook. Now, that’s crass but it’s true.
My education must improve.
A review of Author Jon Meacham’s recent biography, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, attempted to tear down achievements of the William and Mary graduate and founder of the University of Virginia. The headline was “Monster of Monticello.”
Meacham’s fine work doesn’t judge Jefferson by the standards of the present age.
The third president may have been a slave owner but he was a grand president, an outstanding diplomat and a distinctive writer of his own Bible and other memorable documents.
It was great foresight that he introduced the tomato to the US. Imagine no catsup/ketchup, tomato sandwiches on homemade yeast rolls, tomato soup, Thomas Jefferson schools, high and low, and the two dollar bill.
Mr. Jefferson was considered a Deist but knew the Lord’s Prayer.
Some of his contemporaries were religious and believed in “fervent prayer”. Among them is Mount Vernon’s George Washington, known for his financial derring-do. He was a founder, vestryman and regular worshiper at Christ Church, Alexandria, Va.
It will be surprising to discover in these days of rewriting, that Jamestown’s church was really a garage built by the Indians, that Williamsburg is a myth, that basketball was invented by Mr. Naismith in Jamestown and not in Massachusetts, that documents have been found returning West Virginia to Virginia and that Marylander Francis Scott Key wrote his famous song in Indiana.
And that Thanksgiving never happened because the colonists, even those in Plymouth, weren’t thankful for anything and never learned to hunt or fish and were navel gazers.
The Business of Frederick is More Business
By Harry M. Covert
Few cities or towns remain quaint and cuddly. The 
As was coined some years ago, the business of Frederick is business. Oops. That’s a variation of what a fellow called Silent Cal said some years back. He wasn’t wrong then nor is the saying out of step today.
Driving up and down West Patrick Street is a pleasant experience even as roadway traffic picks up in both directions. How pleasant for residents to find nice buffets of numerous cuisine, shops for manicures and pedicures, automobile businesses and some excellent shopping areas for wants and needs.
Benefits of an active economy bolster everybody from customers to business. Unfortunately, there is a blight at the western end. The city has an energetic plan already under way to redevelop and renew Route 40 West. It should. This business corridor is vital to continued growth.
Already there is a successful department store adjacent to what was the Frederick Towne Mall, also adjacent to a home furnishings giant. The in-between though needs immediate help. Planners are on the job.
Interest from Walmart should have officials jumping up and down with joy. Some visionless citizens pooh-pooh the idea that the world’s largest business would not help. Think again. Bringing businesses and shoppers en masse could be nothing less than a major asset to the delightful downtown area and enhance the mall honoring Maryland’s composer extraordinaire.
If having one Walmart on the eastern end of the city/county where shoppers abound every day of the week, a second store would be exceptional too on the western end. There are lots of citizens in that section of the city. They won’t shop in high-end shops and would walk to their shopping haunts.
Revitalization obviously takes time. But a workforce is available. There’s no time like the present.
If steps aren’t under way, officials should be banging on doors of entrepreneurs, established commercial builders and public relations experts.
Never forget contributions to the city, and county, made by such entities as Fort Detrick, Hood College, Maryland School for the Deaf, Frederick Keys baseball at Harry Grove Stadium, the downtown Weinberg Center for the Arts and many others.
Days are gone when Frederick was a small town. It will never be that again. Besides, stop growing and demise is inevitable. Political change is coming. It never stops.
With proper planning the Golden Mile could become platinum for citizens, business and the city. There seem to be lots of tight-fisted opinions rampant to deny a resurrection of the Route 40 Corridor with help of a Walmart. Delays are dangerous.
Instead of increasing taxes (and threatening more levies) on homeowners, et al, more business brings more revenue for city coffers and more jobs.
Saturday, April 13, 2013
An Unexpected Star is Shining
How Latest Fads Hurt Public Education and Everybody
By Harry M. Covert
Problems in public schools most of the time come from those who manage them, not the teachers most of whom are stymied by highly-paid administrators engrossed in political correctness.
If there is one bright star on the horizon for future high office, it is Prince Georges County, MD.,, County Executive Rushern Baker.
The county was in turmoil of corruption from the very top when he was elected. Confidently, Mr. Baker took command and grabbed the reins of government in what was previously seen as an ungovernable county.
In a move that should certainly make other Maryland county executives and elected and appointed education officials take serious notice, Mr. Baker added the school system to his already busy portfolio. He did it swiftly as Prince Georges school board was about to hire a new superintendent.
Now, Mr. Baker will decide that the title will be Chief Executive Officer of schools answering directly to him, the county executive in all educational matters.
How he pulled this off is exciting and hopeful. The governor and general assembly acceded promptly. It is another solid reason why school boards should not be elected nor be run as fiefdoms.
Frederick County soon will be moving to a county executive style of government. While that battle will be something, whoever becomes the lord of the manor or lord high elk should immediately move to run the school system and handle the budgets, forthwith and appoint the boards.
How to Hide the Issues
Politicians in the state house use the most recent fads of the time to obfuscate real problems facing cities, towns and counties. Just for starters they rail against the business of disarming the citizenry because of the bad guys and gals, ban the death penalty, follow the crowd on gay marriage. Are all these good for the ordinary taxpayers and non-taxpayers? They’re the actions of people whose only thoughts are getting elected and re-elected.
Management of community colleges should be another major target. State and community governments contribute to the operating budgets but have no say-so in who are fired and hired.
The governor appointed the members of the community college boards, for example the ones in Frederick County. The local college has run amok with dismissing of its president in January after a six-month tenure. No evidence ever appeared of any wrong-doing of the man who was popular with the students and worked in the community.
Somehow, without explanation, the board removed the president. From then to now the trustees have remained silent as to the reason. Even those with “noses for the nasty” find this action hard to believe. The matter may well be simple but the taxpayers should be let in on the secret.
Supposedly neither the governor nor the county’s commissioner president can get involved.
Credit the Fourth Estate with trying to get to the bottom of this lurid effort. The judicial system probably will have the final say. That’s sad because it could have been cleared up at the beginning. It’s the public’s business.
It is surprising that the State’s Attorney General hasn’t sent his investigators to the Frederick Community College campus for a little chat.
Somewhat disconcerting too is that Frederick’s General Assembly members have been so quiet.
Those entrusted with the public good ought to act responsibly and stop hiding out, acting as if they are private domains.
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Monday, April 1, 2013
Grandma Ruth’s Easter Bread Pudding
By Dimples Dinwiddie Prichard
After church my family would get in the car, after packing play clothes for my sister and me. We headed for the fresh air of the country atmosphere and the warmth and wonderfully delightful aromas of Grandma Ruth's kitchen.
We always wore our Easter finery so we could bask in the nod and smile of approval from my grandfather and the dear hugs and genuine compliments of Grandma Ruth, working, of course in the kitchen to make a dinner worthy of praise that surpassed any that had come before this one.
My two uncles, just a bit older than my sister and I, would come running to the house at the sight of the car turning in the driveway. Always wanting to know if we had brought our play clothes, they weren't much for compliments on girls’ clothing but on whether or not we would be ready for play after dinner. We always were.
I was more of the adventurous type than my little sister who was content to just be there, run the trains in the basement and not outside catching baby eels in the apron of the spillway or in warmer months, tadpoles. She liked staying clean more than I did, while I liked keeping up with the boys.
But the powerful aromas from the kitchen would draw me back inside sooner than the boys were ready to go in. I was about ten when I started paying more and more attention to what Grandma was making, especially on those holidays where she always outdid herself.
Easter dessert was always bread pudding, with an apple pie on the side for those that might have that with coffee a few hours after dinner. But bread pudding was always the specialty served after Easter plates were cleared.
Tradition and security went hand in hand at the Dinwiddie house. It was good to know what dessert followed dinner. It was mandatory to have good table manners at grandfather’s table. For those who favor a good bread pudding dish here is her recipe, from her heart to mine and from mine to yours:
Grandma Ruth's Bread Pudding
• Grease baking pan or dish with sweet butter.
• Crumble three or four slices of white bread in small cubes (remove the top crust ).
• Add a lump of butter in a mixing bowl.
This presented a problem since I didn't know how much a lump was, but I learned from her demonstration.
• Cup your hand and fill the bowl that your hand makes up to the first knuckle of your fingers. That's a lump.
• Put it in the bowl along with four eggs, 1 cup of sugar or in these times Splenda, in case you can't or don't want to eat too much sugar.
• Two teaspoons of vanilla, (real, not imitation) two or three cups of milk, whole or 2%, beat with your mixer until nicely blended. Pour over the fresh bread crumbles until nearly covered, sprinkle thoroughly with nutmeg over the entire top.
• Place in a water bath, otherwise known as another larger pan of water. Water should reach about 3/4th of the way up the dish containing the unbaked pudding. Put in a 350 degree preheated oven. Bake for one hour or until a silver knife comes out clean.
• Remove pudding dish first and place it on a rack. It should be just the right temperature for eating after dinner. Take the water bath out carefully to avoid any spills or burns and pour the water in the sink.
Grandma also lent me her secret ingredient that Granddad liked but didn't think was appropriate for children. Rum soaked raisins. 1 cup of raisins, covered with your taste in rum, light or dark. Let sit overnight until rum is absorbed and raisins are plump, pour out excess rum or save it for a white sauce. Let raisins dry somewhat in the air and before adding to pudding mixture, coat with flour to keep them from all going to the bottom.
Make any recipe for dessert white sauce and add rum mixing by hand. Pour over a dish of bread pudding and if needed or wanted add a good-sized dollop of vanilla ice cream. I got my first taste of that after I was married and no longer considered a child. It suited me as much as it did my Granddad! Good with a fresh cup of coffee!
Eat...and be happy! Happy Easter.
Sepi Prichard grew up in Newport News, Va. Her maiden name is Dimples Dinwiddie. She is an outstanding kitchen expert and has maintained family recipes that still mesmerize family and friends. She resides in Charlotte, N.C., with her husband.
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Dr. Ashbury’s Easter ‘Immortality’
By Maurice Dunbar Ashbury
Matt. 22:32 "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living."
Today multitudes all over the world meet together to give thanks and praise God for the victory of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ over death through the Resurrection. It is an occasion for great rejoicing, because the longing of the heart of man finds an answer in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now we know that our lives will not end when we leave these earthly bodies, but that we shall enter upon a far more glorious life than we have known in the flesh.
I. Reason compels us to believe the truth of life beyond. This much at least is certain: Science has discovered no fact of nature that puts any obstacle in the way of believing in the soul's eternal life. The anatomist who dissects a human body may declare that he finds there no evidence of an immortal soul. But he must also admit that he finds there nothing to explain a mother's love, nothing to explain the genius of an artist, nothing to explain the prayers of a saint. He finds only a cast-off instrument of highly perishable material. And how the departed tenant of that cold and decaying form ever made its fingers perform feats of skill, and its eyes flash messages of love, ever made its tongue sing praises to God and its pulses leap with ecstasy in response to thoughts and feelings he cannot determine through physics or chemistry;
Personality is not an attribute of matter. You may smash a musician's violin with a club. Yet you have not destroyed the genius of the artist who played it. He can get another instrument. You may kill my body with a bullet, but you cannot so destroy the soul that for a timer has used this body. That soul will have another instrument for use in another realm.
If nature does not prove the soul's immortality, at least it offers no evidence to the contrary, and by many analogies it suggests the likelihood that the life of man has a higher goal than the dust of the grave.
Can it be that our Maker has no use for the finest product of his creation? Morally we are bound to object to such a conclusion. Within us and all about us we find reason to believe that God is just. Yet in this world we see many inequalities that demands a life beyond this life for their correction. Is 40 there no reward for the saintly martyr? Is there no retribution for the heartless-libertine? If there be a just God there must be a time beyond this time for moral readjustments.
II. The heart of man no less than his reason bears witness to the life beyond. There are many matters concerning which the testimony of the heart is more valid and convincing than the testimony of the mind.
I am persuaded of the beauty of sunsets: of the sweetness of music, of the worth of purity and unselfishness and love, not by the logic of reason, but by the feelings that surge through my heart.
Just why God made us we may not know, but we know that he has taught us to love Him and to love one another, and love requires more time than earth's brief day for its fulfillment. What sort of a God would he be who would endow his creatures with tender hearts, and bind them to one another and to himself with strong and sacred ties, only to send grim death to snap these precious bonds and tear heartstrings to shreds with no promise of comfort or reunion?
III . But the crowning and all sufficient evidence of life beyond the veil is not in these intimations, but in the witness of the Lord Jesus Christ, who not only taught but demonstrated in the most dramatic and conclusive way the fact that physical death cannot destroy the human soul.
Jesus was put to death in the presence of a host of witnesses. His friends were there, and His enemies. With the white light of such publicity turned full upon him, the Man of Nazareth, whose fame filled all the land, was nailed to a Cross. When death had ended his physical anguish, his body was removed to a tomb by the order of a Roman governor. The details of his death and burial are recorded in the noblest and most reliable narratives that have come down from antiquity. Three days later his tomb was found empty, and during a period of forty days he appeared repeatedly to his disciples, who with detailed accounts of what He did and said reported the fact of their Lord's resurrection to all the world.
"Because I live,” he said to his disciples, "ye too shall live." And in the very hour that his enemies were plotting his death, he said to those who loved him: "Let not your heart be troubled. Ye believe in God; believe also in me; In My Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And. if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also."
With faith in Him, we journey on with singing hearts and a passion to do his will: And yonder, at the end of the lane, we see no grim portals of death, but a veil of light, and beyond the veil, and sharing his glory, we see the smiling faces of our loved ones gone ahead, in whose restored companionship we shall someday find another glorious proof of our Redeemer's love:
"For God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." Amen.
John W. Ashbury, Editor/Founder of The Tentacle, is a distinguished former newspaperman. He is cataloguing the sermons of his late father, the Rev. Maurice Dunbar Ashbury, a native of Portsmouth, Va., and a 1930 graduate and professor at Virginia Theological Seminary, Alexandria, Va.
Dr. Ashbury came to Frederick, Md., as rector of All Saints Church where he ministered for some 40 years and was a beloved church and community leader.
This Easter Sermon was first preached at St. John’s, Petersburg, Va., and Old Sapony, McKenney, Va., on April 12, 1942. The message was last preached at All Saints Church, Frederick, Md., on April 13, 1952.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
What’s Humane in Execution?
The Bid for Justice or Mercy
By Harry M. Covert
Except in special cases seldom does the death penalty bring about much conversation pro and con on all sides of the political spectrum. It’s not a cut and dried matter and must not be taken lightly.
Sometimes invitations have been made available to view the “needle-in-the arm” practices. Most of the people I know who have the opportunity don’t accept and there are good reasons.
Of late, Maryland’s legislators have voted to end the death penalty. The governor says he’ll sign the bill. At the same time, those on the State’s condemned list will be commuted to life sentences.
Virginia’s legislative agenda shows no sign of repeal.
It’s disturbing that men and women can sit on death row for years and years and then be executed. The question is not an easy one neither is it pleasant for all involved.
Many citizens feel judges and others in the judicial system are without feelings imposing capital punishment. But they do have sensitivities as they “do their job” as well as the families of the perpetrators and victims.
Texas and Virginia seem to be the leaders in the execution business. The latest was in the electric chair, chosen by the man of the hour who cavalierly said he was going on a ride with Jesus.
Reports following the Maryland decision were that only 46 states will not exercise such activity this year 2013. Virginia has eight candidates on death row. All told 19 people in four states await their payment for heinous crimes.
The rightness and wrongness of the practice, established legal by the nation’s Supreme Court, seldom comes back for high-powered debate until a doomed individual is found innocent.
There is always an effort for wit and levity when a high profile murderer meets the end. It’s a horrifying thing to watch the hangings or shootings of the vilest like Saddam Hussein, Osama bin laden or John Allen Muhammad, the Beltway sniper who killed 10. His penalty was carried out on Nov. 10, 2009.
There are many more who are probably worthy of the judiciary’s most severe judgment. Inequities abound in the penalty that causes great concern. In a sensational Delaware case the former state attorney general from a leading family was sentenced to death for killing
his girlfriend. Sentenced to death it was later commuted to life.
It’s easy to say “life is not fair”. It certainly isn’t. Take the matter of a major big time Mafiosi who controlled gambling, bootlegging, prostitution and murders of opponents s headed to federal court.
Reporters surrounded him and asked if he wanted justice, “No, mercy.”
That’s what he got, mercy in the form of a few months in federal prison.
The death penalty debate shouldn’t be a liberal or conservative matter. The question? What’s fair in all 50 states, red and blue?
Is there such a thing as a humane hanging, a humane electrocution, a humane firing squad or a humane lethal injection?
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