Serendipity has once again come my way and I’m going to Longbeach, MS early tomorrow morning to finalize a writing project. Wish me luck. I won’t jynx it by talking about it too soon, but it’s GOOD! It’s been a difficult week, with no shortage of work. Next week, I’ll be in Brownsboro, TX at the school district there from Tuesday through Friday. Crazy busy. Here is a photo my daughter took of me last fall in ULM’s Grove at the Chili Cook-off. I was supposed to be Chili Nelson.

I’ve always enjoyed Hank Williams Jr.’s song, “A Country Boy Can Survive.” As a teacher, I believe most of my students couldn’t survive if they were put on their own.  Now, our present economic collapse might not be as bleak as Cormac McCarthy’s The  Road, but it will certainly require us to make many changes and relearn many of the things our ancestors knew that we have neglected.

Here is some food for thought from the NYT magazine. I first found the article on Adrienne Young’s site. Young is a folk singer who is deeply committed to gardens, sustainable farms, and all things natural. Please go to her website when you get a chance. You will enjoy her thoughts and certainly her music.

Farmer in Chief
By MICHAEL POLLAN
Published: October 9, 2008 in the NYT magazine.

Michael Pollan, a contributing writer for the magazine, is the Knight Professor of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author, most recently, of “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.”

It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food. Food policy is not something American presidents have had to give much thought to, at least since the Nixon administration — the last time high food prices presented a serious political peril. Since then, federal policies to promote maximum production of the commodity crops (corn, soybeans, wheat and rice) from which most of our supermarket foods are derived have succeeded impressively in keeping prices low and food more or less off the national political agenda. But with a suddenness that has taken us all by surprise, the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close. What this means is that you, like so many other leaders through history, will find yourself confronting the fact — so easy to overlook these past few years — that the health of a nation’s food system is a critical issue of national security. Food is about to demand your attention.
Complicating matters is the fact that the price and abundance of food are not the only problems we face; if they were, you could simply follow Nixon’s example, appoint a latter-day Earl Butz as your secretary of agriculture and instruct him or her to do whatever it takes to boost production. But there are reasons to think that the old approach won’t work this time around; for one thing, it depends on cheap energy that we can no longer count on. For another, expanding production of industrial agriculture today would require you to sacrifice important values on which you did campaign. Which brings me to the deeper reason you will need not simply to address food prices but to make the reform of the entire food system one of the highest priorities of your administration: unless you do, you will not be able to make significant progress on the health care crisis, energy independence or climate change. Unlike food, these are issues you did campaign on — but as you try to address them you will quickly discover that the way we currently grow, process and eat food in America goes to the heart of all three problems and will have to change if we hope to solve them. Let me explain.
After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy — 19 percent. And while the experts disagree about the exact amount, the way we feed ourselves contributes more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than anything else we do — as much as 37 percent, according to one study. Whenever farmers clear land for crops and till the soil, large quantities of carbon are released into the air. But the 20th-century industrialization of agriculture has increased the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the food system by an order of magnitude; chemical fertilizers (made from natural gas), pesticides (made from petroleum), farm machinery, modern food processing and packaging and transportation have together transformed a system that in 1940 produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil-fuel energy it used into one that now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food. Put another way, when we eat from the industrial-food system, we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases. This state of affairs appears all the more absurd when you recall that every calorie we eat is ultimately the product of photosynthesis — a process based on making food energy from sunshine. There is hope and possibility in that simple fact.
In addition to the problems of climate change and America’s oil addiction, you have spoken at length on the campaign trail of the health care crisis. Spending on health care has risen from 5 percent of national income in 1960 to 16 percent today, putting a significant drag on the economy. The goal of ensuring the health of all Americans depends on getting those costs under control. There are several reasons health care has gotten so expensive, but one of the biggest, and perhaps most tractable, is the cost to the system of preventable chronic diseases. Four of the top 10 killers in America today are chronic diseases linked to diet: heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes and cancer. It is no coincidence that in the years national spending on health care went from 5 percent to 16 percent of national income, spending on food has fallen by a comparable amount — from 18 percent of household income to less than 10 percent. While the surfeit of cheap calories that the U.S. food system has produced since the late 1970s may have taken food prices off the political agenda, this has come at a steep cost to public health. You cannot expect to reform the health care system, much less expand coverage, without confronting the public-health catastrophe that is the modern American diet.
The impact of the American food system on the rest of the world will have implications for your foreign and trade policies as well. In the past several months more than 30 nations have experienced food riots, and so far one government has fallen. Should high grain prices persist and shortages develop, you can expect to see the pendulum shift decisively away from free trade, at least in food. Nations that opened their markets to the global flood of cheap grain (under pressure from previous administrations as well as the World Bank and the I.M.F.) lost so many farmers that they now find their ability to feed their own populations hinges on decisions made in Washington (like your predecessor’s precipitous embrace of biofuels) and on Wall Street. They will now rush to rebuild their own agricultural sectors and then seek to protect them by erecting trade barriers. Expect to hear the phrases “food sovereignty” and “food security” on the lips of every foreign leader you meet. Not only the Doha round, but the whole cause of free trade in agriculture is probably dead, the casualty of a cheap food policy that a scant two years ago seemed like a boon for everyone. It is one of the larger paradoxes of our time that the very same food policies that have contributed to overnutrition in the first world are now contributing to undernutrition in the third. But it turns out that too much food can be nearly as big a problem as too little — a lesson we should keep in mind as we set about designing a new approach to food policy.

The busy season is upon me. Here is what my calendar looks from now through April:

March 23-27, Brownsboro, TX ISD. I’ll be presenting both the Scots-Irish and Texas History Programs for schools in this district.

Thursday, April 2, Mississippi School of the Arts Presentation, Brookhaven, MS.

James S. Hogg Middle School, Tyler, TX (This Texas governor really did have a daughter named Ima) Tuesday, April 14

April 17-19, Scottish Heritage Festival, Batesville, Arkansas

Thursday, April 23, Caney, OK ISD.

Saturday, April 25, Weatherford, TX Books & All that Jazz

Tuesday, April 28. Hallsville, TX ISD

It was a long weekend and the whole time I’ve been driving in the rain. I must have passed a half dozen accidents. Thursday night I traveled to my parents house along the Red River and spent the night there. Early Friday (I left before 6:00 a.m.) I drove to Prarie Vista Middle School to present my Civil War program (7 programs). From there, I drove to Plano (only 40 miles, but it took two hours because of Dallas traffic) to present storytelling and music and sign Scottish Alphabet books at Legacy Books at their weekly Pajamorama! There were over 30 children and about that many adults and I found them most receptive.  The store took pictures, which they’re going to send me, so I’ll post more and have more to say about Lorna and Kyle the managers and the rest of the staff, but here is one photo I took with my phone of Alia, the store’s resident storyteller. This beautiful lady is an English and Theatre major and quite a hit with the kids!  If you’re ever in the DFW area, you need to visit Legacy Books (3 stories, free Internet, and great coffee) 7300 Dallas Parkway, Plano. Their website is here:

Alia at Legacy Books

I left Plano and arrived in Monroe at 2:00 a.m. I slept late on Saturday, then rose to face the endless work of teaching my online classes.  Today has been spent in the same activity, but I did manage to attend the Celtic Society’s meeting today for a special presentation on St. Patrick. I know I’m behind on my posts for this blog, but I’ll catch up soon–promise. This week, I’m performing on St. Patrick’s Day  (Tuesday) at the War Veterans Home and at Enoch’s Irish Pub in the Evening.

As Saint Patrick’s Day approaches, my thoughts are on the Irish.  My mental ramblings took me to thoughts of Captain John Riley and his Batallón de San Patricio in the Mexican War of 1846-48. There’s so much about this story that needs to be told. So much in fact, that I’ve determined to write a children’s book about them. I found this song written by two great musicians–Tim O’Brien and Guy Clark–and purchased it from iTunes.  I thought I’d post the lyrics. This song tells one part of their sad story. I follow that with another song about this unit. This is definitely a story I’m working into my Scots-Irish and Texas History presentation.
“John Riley” (from http://www.timobrien.net/Lyrics2.cfm?ID=56)
From The Crossing
(Tim O’Brien, Guy Clark (Howdy Skies Music/Forerunner Music, Inc./EMI/April, ASCAP))

John Riley ©1998 Tim O’Brien and Guy Clark

John Riley came form Galway town in the years of the Irish hunger
And he sailed away to America when the country was much younger
The place was strange and work was scarce and all he knew was farming
So he followed his other Irish friends to a job in the US Army

Adventure calls and some men run, and this is their sad story
Some get drunk on demon rum and some get drunk on glory

They marched down Texas way to the banks of the Rio Grande
They built a fort on the banks above to taunt old Santa Anna
They were treated bad, paid worse, and then the fighting started
The more they fought the less they thought of the damned old US Army

Adventure calls and some men run, and this is their sad story
Some get drunk on demon rum and some get drunk on glory

When the church bells rang on Sunday morn it set his soul a shiver
He saw the Senoritas washing’ their hair on the far side of the river
John Riley and two hundred more Irish mercenaries
Cast their lot, right or not, south of the Rio Grande

Adventure calls and some men run, and this is their sad story
Some get drunk on demon rum and some get drunk on glory

They fought bravely under the flag of the San Patricios
Till the Yankees soldiers beat them down at the battle of Churubusco
Then fifteen men were whipped like mules
And on the cheeks were hot iron branded
Made to dig the graves of fifty more, who a hanging fate had handed

Adventure calls and some men run, and this is their sad story
Some get drunk on demon rum and some get drunk on glory

John Riley stands and drinks alone at a bar in Vera Cruz
He wonders if it matters much if you win or if you lose
“I’m a man who can’t go home , a wanderer”, says he
“A victim of some wanderlust and divided loyalty

Adventure calls and some men run, and this is their sad story
Some get drunk on demon rum and some get drunk on glory

“The Men that God made Mad” – written by Ron Kavanagh. I found the lyrics here:

(Arr. N. Parsons/G. Dunne)
L’Entrada de L’Angustura – written by Graham Dunne

Far far from Clifden’s rocky shore o’er the broad Atlantic sea
The Battalion of St. Patrick tired of harsh brutality
No more abuse or bigotry, their angry cry wholehearted
Near Matamoras lives were lost that’s when the fighting started

Chorus:
Who were those men, what was the crime
For which their lives were wasted
Did they rob or rape, or was their fate
As the poet once related
Were those great Gaels of Ireland
The men that God made mad
Their wars were never merry
But all their songs were sad

Land of the Free meant liberty to the U.S. Army’s Irish
Till James K. Polk he sent them south to civilize the Spanish
In a war to extend slavery and unjust exploitation
They’d not repeat what Cromwell did to their poor Irish Nation

Chorus:

At L’Angustura, Irish blood drenched the sun-baked clay
And Mexico still honours those brave men who died that day
But the worst was yet to come in the hour that war was ended
When General Scott hung the Irishmen to celebrate with vengeance

Chorus:

Here is the flag of the Saint Patrick Battalion as described by John Riley:

You can read more of this unit’s story here and here: Well, this post is long enough. More on John Riley to come.

From the Country Inn motel, Leesville, Louisiana, Monday night.

After a busy but fantastic weekend at the North Texas Irish festival, I returned home about 11:30 p.m. Sunday night. I worked online till 2:00 a.m., then fell into bed. I rose at 6:00 hurriedly packed, and hit the road by 8:00 a.m. for Vernon Parish. I was interviewed on a local radio newspaper by an entergetic broadcaster on a Leesville station. I performed my first “live on the radio” song, “The Water Is Wide,” and talked about my books and the Library Musical Odyssey V program. It seems I’m their last musician for the year. The libraries website is here: The library’s director, Howard, and Gary, the Musical Odyssey director, are doing a fine job serving the community. We had a very large crowd and they were so into the Irish songs and the stories behind the songs and were delightful to be with. It seems everyone loves the Irish. I’m now in my hotel room, giving thought to the tasks that need to be done tomorrow.

It has been one busy week. Thursday, I was with the McComb Public Library. And in a schedule arranged by them, I presented to a middle school there in town, a luncheon for a group of readers who meet in the library, a short presentation to a day-care center, and another middle school in Pike County. It was a wonderful day. In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, each table at the luncheon had an Irish potato center-piece. Here is a photo of one of them.

Last Friday, I taught my classes at Delta Community College, and then hit the road for the North Texas Irish Festival. Riding with me were my friends from the Celtic Society, Tom and Michael. We headed out to a pub I’d never been to–Tipperary Inn and had a grand time.

I’ll probably have more posts about the NTIF festival as emails and photos filter in. I signed books at the NELA Celtic Society’s booth the whole weekend. I performed three times and my work seemed well received. Our booth was next to an organization devoted to saving Irish Wolf Hounds, the biggest dogs in the world! You should do a study on these beautiful, gentle with people dogs. Absolutely fascinating. Here is a photo of a tapestry they had of Finn McCool (legendary Irish hero) and his two hounds, Bran and Sgeolan.

In my Irish set, I perform the song, “Rose of Tralee.”  I was delighted and honored to meet Roisin Mulligan who was the 2008 Texas Rose of Tralee. She was born in Dublin Ireland and moved to texas at the age of five. She teaches kindergarden in Burleson, Texas. A beautiful, wonderful lady.

Here is a photo of Rhonda Loeliger, one of the key people for the Austin Celtic Festival which will be held Nov. 7-8 2009.  This beautiful and sharp lady works for the largest Celtic gathering in Central Texas.  They consistently have some of the best of internationally known Celtic performers on their program. You can find their website here: www. AustinCelticFestival.com.

Here are photos of Shelia Hoh, who is with the Scottish Society in Minden, Louisiana. With folks like this beautiful and talented woman working for and leading them, I predict great success for their society.

Tomorrow, I’m at the Vernon Parish Library. I also have a radio interview to do around noon. Next post will likely be Tuesday night.

As I prepared for the North Texas Irish Festival coming this weekend and for my program at McComb MS Public Library on Thursday, I was reading The Irish Brigade by Russ A Pritchard, Jr. and came upon a list of Irish units during the Confederacy and decided to publish it. If you know of any others, please send them my way and I’ll add them to this post.  I’m going to follow up this post with a listing of Federal Irish units.

Irish Battalion (1st Virginia Infantry Battalion, Provisional Army)

Irish Brigade, Company A (Company I, 6th Louisiana Infantry, the “Fighting Tigers”!)

Irish Brigade, Company B (Company F, 6th Louisiana Infantry)

Irish Jasper Greens (Company A, 1st Georgia Volunteers)

Irish Volunteer Guards (a company of the 8th Georgia Infantry)

Irish Volunteers, Company A (Company D, 1st Georgia Volunteers)

Irish Volunteers, Company B (Company E. 1st Georgia Volunteers)

Irish Volunteers (Company F 7th Louisiana Infantry)

Irish Volunteers (Company A, 1st Virginia Infantry Battalion, Provisional Army)

Irish Volunteers (Company C, 1st South Carolina Infantry Battalion)

Irish Volunteers (Company C, 19 Battalion Virginia Artillery)

Sons of Erin, 10th Tennessee Infantry

This is an incomplete listing, for I know the Confederate Army had a high percentage of Scots, Irish, and Scots-Irish in its rank.  These men are the stuff that legends and songs are made of.

Today, as most days are when I’ve just returned from a trip, has been spent trying to catch up. A friend of mine, Carol Murdoch, a writer with an award winning blog, sent me a book, Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. It arrived today and I can’t wait to get to reading it! I had a grand time last Saturday in Lake Jackson, Texas at the Historic Museum there and will post some good photos when they arrive of that event. I found a new route from Monroe to Houston that is not much further than going to the west side of Fort Worth, so I’ll likely be planning more trips there. Of personal interest were the statues I passed this trip: the small memorial to Jim Reeves on Highway 79, the HUGE statues of Sam Houston (77 ft. high, including base at I-45 Huntsville) and Stephen Austin (Highway 288, 76 ft. high). I also booked a coffee shop for a musical program at a mall in Sherman, Texas and a couple of bookstores and libraries.

JEFF TALMADGE

If Jeff Talmadge isn’t a poet, then I truly don’t know what one is. His songs are constructed with lyrics that can scald or soothe the heart and reflect the voice of experience and wonderfully deep insights into human nature. Here is a song of his about “choices,” entitled, “Wrong Train.”

Wrong Train by Jeff Talmadge

On a train between two cities
I knew that I’d gone wrong
I was headed east
When I should be going west.

And I must have muttered something
‘cause the man beside me smiled
He looked me in the eye
And then he said

CHORUS:
It’s not the wrong train that you’re on
It’s just another way to go.
It’s not the wrong train that you’re on
And you found another way back home.

Well I’ll change at the next station
I said to my new friend
I’m losing time and it’s getting kind of late.

It isn’t lost, he said,
It’s only spent another way
And time is like this train
And it won’t wait.

CHORUS:
And this train don’t care if it’s wrong or if it’s right
But you’re where you ought to be tonight.

Well I finally made it home that night
Not quite the way I planned
Isn’t that the way
It always goes

And now when I get lost
I say I’m just exploring
‘cause life’s a whole lot
like that train I know.

CHORUS:

You found another way back home

I have to thank Harry Sargent of Lake Jackson Texas for this information. I met him at the museum where I did my program this weekend. As my Confederate ancestor was assigned to the Mining and Nitre department that made gunpowder, I was very interested.

The Art of Making Saltpetre

During the American Civil War,  the Confederates, to provide nitrate for making gunpowder, had to resort to all sorts of devices.  This included digging out and leaching the earth from old smokehouses, barns, and caves and making artificial beds of all sorts of nitrogenous matter.  They designated agents for the purpose in every town and city.

The officer at Selma, Ala, was particularly energetic and enthusiastic in his work and put the following advertisement in the Selma newspaper on October 1, 1863.

“The ladies of Selma are respectfully requested to preserve the chamber lye to be collected for the purpose of making nitre.  A barrel will be sent around daily to collect it.  John Haralson, Agent, Nitre and Mining Bureau, C.S.A.”

This attracted the attention of army poets and the first of the following two effusions resulted.  It was copied and privately circulated over the Confederacy.  Finally it crossed the line, and an unknown Federal poet added the “Yankee’s View of It.”

CONFERATE VIEW OF IT

John Haralson, John Haralson—you are a wretched creature;
You’ve added to this bloody war a new and useful feature.
You’d have us think, while every man is bound to be a fighter,
The Ladies, bless the pretty dears, should save their pee for nitre.

John Haralson, John Haralson, where did you get the notion,
To send the barrel ‘round to gather up the lotion?
We thought the girls had work enough to making shirts and kissing,
But you have put the pretty dears to Patriotic Pissing.

John Haralson, John Haralson, pray do invent a neater,
And somewhat less immodest way of making your saltpetre.
For ‘tis an awful idea, John, gunpowdery and cranky
That when a lady lifts her skirts, she’s killing off and Yankee.

YANKEE VIEW OF IT

John Haralson, John Haralson, we’ve read in song and story,
How women’s tears, through all the years, have moistened fields of glory.
But never was it told before, how ‘mid such scene of slaughter
Your Southern beauties dried their tears and went to making water.

No wonder that your boys were brave; who couldn’t be a fighter,
If every time he fired his gun, he used his sweetheart’s nitre.
And vice versa, what could make a Yankee soldier sadder,
Than dodging bullets fired by a pretty woman’s bladder?
They say there was a subtle smell which lingered in the powder
And as the smoke grew thicker and din of battle louder,
That there was found in this compound one serious objection—
No soldier boy could sniff it without having an erection!!

Thanks to Elinor Owens, Editor of the ACS Philadelphis Section’s Catalyst, for digging this up and publishing it first.