Blue Highways: Somewhere on the Delaware Shore

Unfolding the Map

As William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) eats breakfast under a pair of two silent watchtowers from the World War II era, I will devote this post to the rapidly disappearing living history of World War II.  It's a little late for Veterans Day, but I hope it helps honor this important generation who didn't wish for a worldwide conflict to be thrust upon them, but answered the call with humility and courage all the same.  To see where these relics of the war are located, take aim and target the map.  (Note: I guessed at the site based on the fact that LHM wrote that he was "south" of Rehoboth Beach and there are two towers within site.  However, there is another likely site north of Rehoboth Beach where two towers sit in sand near the water and each other.)

Book Quote

"South of Rehoboth Beach, I stopped to eat breakfast on the shore.  Even though the sky was clear, the windy night still showed in the high surf.  At my back rose two silo-like concrete observation towers, relics from the Second World War.  At the top of each were narrow openings like sinister eyes.  A battering of starlings flew in and out of the slits, the shrill bird cries resonating weirdly in the hollow stacks.  The towers were historical curiosities, monuments to man's worst war, one that never reached this beach; yet nothing identified them.  To the young, they could be only mysteries.  Had they come from the more remote and safer history of the Revolutionary or Civil wars, they would have been commemorated.  Just when is history anyway?"

Blue Highways: Part 9, Chapter 13

One of the World War II observation towers in Dewey Beach, Delaware. Photo by "royal19" and housed at Flickr under a Creative Commons license. Click on photo to go to host page.Somewhere on the Delaware Shore

We are just a few days past Veterans Day as I write this post, and the quote above is quite timely.  Since my father and uncles served in the military (my father was in the Army and stationed at Saipan), I have always found the World War II era to be one of the most interesting to study.  When I was in grammar school, my friends and I always drew "war pictures" complete with planes screaming down on soldiers and buildings, or fighting each other in the sky, and heroic men charging with guns blazing into battle against the Germans or the Japanese.  Given that we were in school at the tail end and just after the Vietnam War, we hardly ever considered that war as a subject for our artwork.  It was always World War II.  We supplemented our knowledge of World War II from the myriads of movies that were on television on lazy weekend Saturdays.  I think that my preteen years were spent mostly watching World War II movies or football games.

Yet as I think about it, LHM is right.  As a country, we have extensively memorialized other great wars, such as the Revolutionary War which freed the United States from Britain, and the Civil War, which reunited a fractured country (and the wounds of which we are still healing).  But the great wars of the last century - World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War - do not get much in the way of physical memorials.  In many towns across America, you might find a pillar memorializing the men from the town or region that fought in World Wars I and II.  Sometimes they have been kept up, and sometimes they are woefully neglected, sitting unobserved in plain sight.  There are monuments to World War II, including an impressive one in Washington DC, and it has been celebrated in cinema and television.  The Vietnam War has a wonderful memorial, but being in Washington DC it is not accessible to most people.  But as we move farther away from World War II, a war which might have saved democracy and civilization itself, and as its veterans pass away into history we are beginning to suffer amnesia.  We forget how a country prone to isolationism shook itself and took up the mantle of defender of democracy and in the process became a superpower.

Why do we forget?  Perhaps it's because the 20th century wars were mostly fought in foreign lands, and therefore the United States does not bear the scars of those wars on its own turf like the great battles of the Civil War and Revolutionary War.  Perhaps it's because we live in our version of a modern world, where history seems to take a back seat to technology and young people are not interested anymore in the exploits of their grandfathers.  Perhaps it's because we've turned Hitler and the Nazi movement into a comic caricature, especially on movies and television, that trivializes the horrific dangers the world faced if he had triumphed.  Perhaps it's because we didn't have any battles on American soil.  Maybe it's because we won the war which ameliorated, somewhat, the pain and anguish faced by those who lost family members and loved ones in the struggle.  And perhaps it's because as a society, we have not done as much as we can to keep this history alive.

Every once in a while, something comes along to jar our collective memories.  Books like Band of Brothers or The Greatest Generation.  Movies like Saving Private Ryan or Schindler's List.  The death of a Navajo code talker or a Bataan Death March survivor.  The discovery of unexploded ordnance in Europe in a river or at a construction site.  Certainly, not everyone was a hero in World War II.  Most of the soldiers fighting that war just did their jobs.  Many died, many more did not.  We celebrate the extraordinary exploits of a few, and honor the sacrifice and the commitment of the many regardless of whether they singlehandedly took out a platoon of Germans or an entrenched gun emplacement on Iwo Jima, or simply cooked (like my father) in a mess tent on a barren rock in the middle of the Pacific.

I remember thrilling to stories that my father told me about B-29s taking off from Saipan laden with bombs, sinking at the dropoff at the end of the runway toward the ocean.  He described the breathless seconds before the planes climbed back up and lumbered toward Japan, and how occasionally an overloaded one would fail to gain altitude and splash into the bay.  I remember him telling me about a group of Japanese soldiers, after the war ended, getting drunk in a cave where they were holed up. The next day, dirty, hungry and hung over, they marched into the American camp to surrender.  I remember his description of a under a parachute.  My wife's father, who served in the Navy on a minesweeper, has told stories of braving Japanese island guns to clear the waters of mines before invasions, and being in the sites of a Japanese kamikaze.  Both of these men were reluctant to bring up these stories, not wanting to boast and simply, humbly, considering it just something that they had to do.

We hear these stories because we ask about them.  How many stories are still unheard?

Yet a spirit of remembrance is coming alive as that generation dies. In New Orleans, the National World War II Museum was dedicated a few years ago.  It is a magnificent repository of memories and stories and a testament to the history and motivations behind the war.  Compared to that memorial, the unmarked lookout towers along the Delaware shore, an important part of the past effort to hold vigilance against our enemies in World War II, seem unimportant.  Yet they are part of an important collective history.  Thankfully, since LHM ate breakfast in their shadows, a movement has begun to save the Delaware lookout towers.  One of the towers, Tower 3 in Dewey Beach behind the spot where LHM ate his breakfast, is the subject of a campaign for renovation.  The plans call for a visitor center and a museum that will honor veterans of World War II.  As our World War II veterans march off, platoon by platoon, to their rest, perhaps we will realize what we've lost and creatively and respectfully honor them as they deserve.

Musical Interlude

One of the biggest selling songs during World War II, Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition by Kay Kyser and his Orchestra jarred me when I first heard it.  It seems uber-patriotic but, when I think about what the troops needed while deployed on ships, in tanks, in planes, and on the ground during World War II, I think that it probably gave them quite a lift to their spirits and helped them believe that even in the darkest days, they would eventually prevail.

If you want to know more about the Delaware shore

Beach-Net.com: Delaware Beaches
Delaware Tourism: Delaware Beaches
Newsday: The Delaware Shore
Wikipedia: Delaware Beaches

Next up:  Ocean City, Maryland

Blue Highways: Dover, Delaware

Unfolding the Map

When William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) relates the story of the Chief Justice's ghost on the Dover village green, it causes me to ponder a bit on the sometimes thin separation of our world from that of the dead.  Should you want to see where Dover is located, say a little prayer for those who have passed on and see the map.

Book Quote

"On the village green in Dover, citizens successfully buried the ghost of Chief Justice Sam Chew in broad daylight.  Around 1745, the judge's shade developed a nocturnal penchant for meditating on the common and beckoning to passersby.  His honor's whangdoodle began to keep the streets empty after dark and tavernkeepers complained.  So residents dug a symbolic grave on the green, and, in full sunshine, tolled bells as clergymen spoke the restless soul to its peace."

Blue Highways: Part 9, Chapter 13

Downtown Dover, Delaware. Photo by Tim Kiser and hosted at Wikimedia Commons. Click on photo to go to host page.

Dover, Delaware

Recently, here in Albuquerque, we celebrated Dia de los Muertos or Day of the Dead.  A day that we in European traditions have turned into a celebration of spooks and ghouls, of treats and tricks, and of costumes and candy is now mostly celebrated by little kids on parade at dusk while their parents keep a watchful eye on them.  Halloween is a sanitized holiday, the original purpose of which was to highlight the rending of the veil between our world and the spirit world, but  has been lost in commercialization and the bottom line of candy sales. 

The origins of Halloween are therefore obscured.  Perhaps an amalgamation of different Roman and pagan holidays, the day was usually marked as the end of the harvest and also, according to Celtic traditions, when the door to the Otherworld opened and spirits and sprites could join us here in ours.  Later, after Christian influences on the holiday, children went around to ask for cakes and other treats to offer as prayers to lost souls.  Of course, there are only echoes of that left in our Halloween, where it's all about the candy gained and consumed.

But the Hispanic cultural tradition has kept a bit of the original intent of the day alive.  In Albuquerque, families take time to come together in feasts.  They gather together to spruce up the gravesites of their families and leave fresh flowers and other mementos.  Ofrendas, or altars, dedicated to the memories of friends and loved ones are constructed in homes and adorned with food and mementos important to the person or persons being commemorated.  The ofrendas are often garlanded with marigolds, which are believed to attract souls to the altar where they may consume the spiritual essence of the food left as offerings and hear their living relatives talk about them.

The symbols of the day are calaveras, or skulls.  These are fashioned out of sugar and decorated in fancy and floral patterns and used to decorate for the holiday.  Catrinas are also brought out.  These carved figures usually depict a skeleton lady who represents someone from a higher class, a reminder that while riches may separate us on this earth, there is no difference between us when it comes to death.  We will all live our lives and die, and be reduced to the bare elements of what we are.  Skin and flesh, then bone, then dust.

My wife and I, after years of attending, had an opportunity to participate in the Marigold Parade, which over the past few years has become an Albuquerque tradition.  The parade features individuals and groups, dressed up with faces painted like calaveras, marching with grim faces (because death is grim) in a macabre procession that is at once somber and at the same time joyous.  The parade not only celebrates the thin veil between life and death, but also the follies of the living.  This year, small makeshift floats lampooning the 1% vs. the 99%, and other national and local politics, were mixed in with floats (usually the decorated beds of pickup trucks) remembering people who have passed on.  Because it is Albuquerque, a center of "lowrider" culture, the end of the parade featured lowriders, some equipped with hydraulics, filled with skeletal drivers and passengers in a strange, motorized death procession.

Like my feelings about unexplained phenomena, which I've written about in this forum in the past, I've always wanted to be able to believe in spirits and ghosts.  As a scientist, I am taught only to believe in what I've been able to observe, and to even question that.  On that score, I have never observed a ghost.  I've tried - I've visited supposed haunted places, including dragging my wife on our anniversary up to a haunted hotel, the St. James, in Cimarron, New Mexico on our anniversary weekend.  The strange smell of cigar smoke in our hotel room that was unaccounted for wasn't enough to convince me (though the always accommodating clerk told me that I was probably smelling the ghostly poker game in the card room around the corner).  Like most people, I wonder what happens when we die, and if our spirits and essences just disappear into the universe, or whether there is something beyond this life that we can look forward to, as many religions promise us.

But on the other hand, the thought of restless spirits roaming around, never finding a place of peace, is also quite disturbing.  If there are ghosts tied, by some unfulfilled longing or unfinished business, to a place or location where their sole purpose is to haunt until the end of time, then their existence seems sad to me.  They can't move on, and they are trapped in a kind of loop.  They are never able to leave that place and therefore, they never find the peace they desperately crave.  Isn't death supposed to be an eternity of peace after a lifetime of toil on this earth?

In a similar train of thought, my wife just reminded me of an interesting concept.  We read a short story once about a waiting room where souls of dead people are trapped as long as their names are spoken on earth.  In this vision, the people who are unknown are able to truly pass on because they are forgotten.  Those that seek fame and fortune, through vanity or other reasons, are those that remain in the waiting room purgatory.  If we are continually tied to this earth by how we are remembered, then maybe we aren't doing the dead a favor at all.  Maybe we, who must comfort ourselves and deal with our grief of those departed, actually are complicit in their inability to achieve rest.  What if they resent us for this?  What if they just wish that we would forget them so that we can move on, and in the process let them go where they need to be?

That's why, out of all the traditions, I like New Orleans' tradition around death the best.  Steeped in Christianity, it still maintains some of the non-Christian elements that make it special.  The deceased are mourned for a period, usually the first part of a jazz funeral.  Once the coffin is blessed however, a huge party breaks out.  The dead are "going home."  We have mourned, now we can be happy for them.  They've left the toils and cares of this world behind.  If anything, the dead should be grieving for us poor souls left on this hard rock to complete our own journeys.  They've finished theirs.

Musical Interlude 

My wife and I do a global music radio show on KUNM, and we did a show based on the Day of the Dead.  What follows is a mix of over 30 songs that are around the theme of life and death.  All you have to do is click on it and play.  Yes, that's me and my wife, Megan Kamerick, in the picture.  Enjoy!

Death and Life from mhessnm on 8tracks Radio.

If you want to know more about Dover

City of Dover
Delaware State University
Dover Post (newspaper)
Downtown Dover
Kent County and Greater Dover Convention and Visitors Bureau
Wikipedia: Dover

Next up: Somewhere on the Delaware Shore

Blue Highways: Leipsic, Delaware

Unfolding the Map

A bit of a wistful post this time, as William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) passes a lonely lighthouse, far from water, on the edge of a cornfield.  What can be more lonely than a lighthouse far from water?  I guess we'll find out.  To find Leipsic, follow the ghost light of the lighthouse to the map.

Book Quote

"Although I couldn't see the bay, I could smell it and see evidence of it in an old steel lighthouse implausibly at the edge of a cornfield near Leipsic."

Blue Highways: Part 9, Chapter 12

View of the Leipsic River near Leipsic, Delaware. Photo by "jgmskm" and hosted at Panoramio. Click on photo to go host site.

Leipsic, Delaware

Though I think I might have written this once before, I once ran across a DeMotivator poster that I thought was extremely funny. The poster showed a lone tree in the midst of a vast whiteness of snow.  The caption read "If you find yourself struggling with loneliness, you aren't alone.  And yet you are alone.  So very alone."  Part of what I found funny, aside from the biting humor, is that at certain points in our lives we sometimes find ourselves alone.  Whether by choice, or by circumstances beyond our control, we may sometimes be in a place where suddenly it's only us.  There are others who are just as alone as we are, and yet we are the center of our universe so it really is only us.

I was reminded again by that feeling in LHM's quote.  By their very nature, lighthouses are lonely places.  They usually sit on the edge of points or headlands, far away from other buildings or dwellings, and their lugubrious lanterns shine in a sweeping arc out into the vast and lonely reaches of the ocean, sea or lake they sit by.  In days past, a lighthouse keeper lived out a lonely life in the lighthouse, tending the lantern in solitude, accompanied only by the sound of the gulls and the waves.

So what could be more lonely than a lighthouse left, by geology or environmental changes, sitting far inland?  And what a perfect metaphor...but for what?  Certainly for loneliness.  Perhaps for the erosion of usefulness.  Maybe the loss of meaningfulness, or the loss of purpose.

There are times when I feel like I could be such a lighthouse.

In another post, awhile back on our Blue Highways journey, I wrote about the difference between being alone and loneliness.  In that post, I spoke about how being alone is a state of being - either we are with other beings or not.  It may be by choice, as when I decide to go for a hike in the mountains to get away as much as possible from other people, or spend some time reading alone in a room in the house.  Or it may be because we just find ourselves where other people aren't, and we can either choose to stay there or go in search of people.

But loneliness is a different matter.  Loneliness is a state of mind.  One can feel lonely in a crowd.  One can feel lonely by themselves.  It's a perception, and not based on the physical reality of place.  Certainly there have been times that I've felt lonely.  It's usually when I'm troubled by something, or I've done something that has placed me in some sort of bind.  In that case, my feeling of being alone is also a symptom of my loneliness.

Of the two, I think that loneliness would be the worst.  One can easily stop being alone by finding others.  One must change a state of mind to stop feeling lonely.  From experience, that can be very hard.  And for some, it becomes chronic and depressive, and can lead to inner turmoil, pain, hurt and sometimes even tragedy.  I try to avoid feelings of loneliness as much as possible.

I think that in his long Blue Highways journey LHM struggled at times with loneliness, especially when thinking about his estranged wife.  In that way, the lighthouse serves as an apt symbol.  A working lighthouse may sit alone on a headline, but its light shines and it is working, occupied with its sole duty of keeping ships off the rocks (I realize I'm anthropomorphizing lighthouses here, but go with me for a minute).  However, a non-working lighthouse, sitting inexplicably inland has lost its purpose.  It is there alone, without a reason for being.  To me, that is the epitomy of loneliness.  As LHM gets into the last stretch of his trip, he might be able to look at that lighthouse and see a bit of his former self in it.  He started his trip in loneliness after his break up, but throughout the trip, his loneliness turned into an exercise of learning to be alone.  He was the lonely lighthouse, and now he is something else.  Perhaps he is alone, but he is not lonely.

But I ask you to think about the lonely lighthouses you have encountered in your life.  How many times have you found yourself without a purpose, vision, or ability to break out of the lonely straights you've found yourself in.  Have you ever known someone in that position?  Perhaps a loved one, or an older person at the end of their life who has lost most of the people they've known and loved?  Perhaps a friend who is going through a difficult time, and feels as if there is nobody there for them?

I think that, unfortunately, there are many lonely lighthouses in our society and world.  We may not be able to control the changes that sometimes make us temporarily alone in the world, and sometimes we simply want to be alone.  But loneliness is another matter, and when we lonely it often seems like we sit like an abandoned lighthouse, dark and lifeless, far away from the object of our purpose with no hope of ever reviving it.  When that is our state of mind, perhaps we need another lighthouse to guide us - a purpose or a person - who can pull us out of the loneliness.

Musical Interlude

The most well-known song about lighthouses is probably James Taylor's Lighthouse.  It is a very melancholy and nice song that captures a little of the loneliness of the lighthouse.

Here's another nice song, Lighthouse by The Waifs.

If you want to know more about Leipsic

Delawaretoday.com: Leipsic
Wikipedia: Leipsic

Next up: Dover, Delaware

Littourati News: Help Victims of Hurricane Sandy

As we do our virtual tour through New York, New Jersey and Delaware with William Least Heat-Moon's Blue Highways, I want to urge you to remember the people in those states who are being victimized by Hurricane Sandy even as I write this post.  This "superstorm" is causing, in the words of some, incalcuable damage up and down the Northeastern coast.

If you wish to help those in need, please consider making a donation.  The Red Cross is taking donations.  This is from their website:

"Donations help the Red Cross provide shelter, food, emotional support and other assistance to those affected by disasters like Hurricane Sandy. To donate, people can visit www.redcross.org, call 1-800-RED-CROSS, or text the word REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation. Contributions may also be sent to someone’s local Red Cross chapter or to the American Red Cross, P.O. Box 37243, Washington, DC 20013."

You can also help by donating blood to the Red Cross for relief services.

Thank you for reading Littourati, and for helping those in need!

Michael Hess

Blue Highways: Othello, New Jersey

Unfolding the Map

William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) does a little searching for a mystery:  Why is Othello named as such. The answer causes me to think about my own, newly discovered mixed ethnicity and what it means for me.  It also shows how complex and interesting the United States and its people can be.  If you wish to know where Othello is located as you "with greedy ear devour up my discourse," (Othello, Act I, Scene III) then "you best know the place." (Othello, Act I, Scene II)

Book Quote

"'In Cumberland County we have a settlement of people called 'tri-bloods,' people that trace their history - or legend - back to a Moorish - Algerian, specifically - princess who came ashore after a shipwreck in the first years of the nation.  The Indians took her in, and from the subsequent mixing of blood - later with a small infusion from the Negro - there developed a group composed of three races.  The 'Delaware Moors,' they're called...'

"'In the thirties and forties, governmental bureaucrats - especially in Delaware - they had a time trying to classify tri-bloods because the people considered themselves neither white, red, nor black.  Usually they ended up in their own category, one so small as to be forgotten.  To this hour, the people remain what you might describe as aloof, and they maintain themselves as independently as they can.  Clannish, even secretive.  But they always have been landowners and farmers.  Never slaves.  Still, they are - to use the phrase - 'men of color' and consequently suspect, especially in border states, despite their features usually being more Indian than Negroid.  Aquiline nose, straight hair, high cheekbones.'"

Blue Highways: Part 9, Chapter 10

Othello, New Jersey

The story above, from a man who is giving LHM a history of a portion of the town of Greenwich, New Jersey, also known as Head of Greenwich, is interesting in that it answers LHM's query about why that particular section of town is also named Othello.  Othello, as you may know, is the title of a Shakespeare play, and therefore the mixed-ethnicity between Arabic and African peoples in the town is part of the reason for the town name.  It is also an elaborate joke because, as the man goes on to relate, the play is about a black man having a romantic relationship with a white woman and therefore a commentary on the intermixing of ethnicities within the town.  The story, however, resonates with me because of what I've learned recently about my own heritage.

Up until about three years ago, I thought my ancestry was Irish, English, German and French Canadian.  That's always what I've been told.  The wrinkle in that story was that I'm adopted, and nobody knew anything about my real roots.

It turns out that the French Canadian was correct, and I've learned something of the rich history from my newfound relatives on my biological father's side.  But there was so much more to me than I could have imagined.

Through an interesting series of events about five years ago, I met a woman online who helped me discover my birth history and changed forever the way I view myself.  Not only did my heritage become richer, but I suddenly felt more interesting than just being another white guy of European descent in America.

I discovered the history of my biological mother's side of the family, which was more complex than I'd ever thought possible.  My bio-mother's last name was Mayle, and she was from West Virginia in a coal mining, mountainous area.  It was hard work, and the Mayle's were one of the coal mining families.  There were around six other families spread out over this area and the Mayles and these other families were collectively and derogatively known as "Guineas."  In other parts of the US, the term guinea was often used to refer to people of Italian descent, but in this part of West Virginia it was used to informally classify families that had mixed race descent.  Because of their long history in that area of West Virginia, there had been some intermixing with blacks and the Delaware Indian (Lenape) peoples who lived there.  The intermixing was apparent in the variation of skin color and features, even within families.  I was given a picture of a great great great uncle who, even in the black and white photo, appeared African-American but obviously had blue eyes, like mine.  When my wife saw it, she also noted similarities in his facial features to mine.

Guineas were the target of discrimination.  Like the story in the quote above of the Delaware Moors, census workers would come and count people in families, and mark them down as being black or white depending on their color and features.  Thus, people in the same family unit might be marked as different races, condemning one brother or sister, for example, to further discrimination while enhancing the other's prospects if only barely.  Guineas had their own schools because they wouldn't attend the schools created for blacks, and couldn't go to the schools that only served white children.  They were in some kind of in-between limbo between black and white.  I heard stories that some private motels in the area would refuse service to people whose last name was Mayle or that of one of the other families known as Guineas, even as late as the 1970s.  Even so, these families provided the workers who mined a lot of coal in the area.

When I began talking with my biological family, I learned that this was a touchy subject.  The older generation was not willing to talk about their mixed race.  They saw themselves as whites with some Indian blood, but weren't willing to acknowledge their African-American ancestry at all.  They were offended and even angry if it got mentioned.  The people in my generation were curious, exploring a little about their mixed heritage and at least accepting it.

But at a family reunion in Ohio, I saw evidence of how the world changes.  In the youngest generation, I saw a couple of the family members bring their black wives and girlfriends.  While this was uncomfortable to the older generation, it was the reality and I was happy to see it.

These revelations changed me.  I became much more interesting to myself, if that makes any sense.  Suddenly, even though I would never be part of the African-American or Delaware Indian communities and would not try to use my heritage to claim that I could be, I now feel a wider and deeper connection with the world.  My sister in my adopted family has had a great time calling me "my brother from another mother" with emphasis on the "brother."  She pronounces it "brutha" when she really gets into it.

But what my newfound heritage really confirms is what I always knew I am.  I'm an open, interested, curious, and accepting person.  I love the fact that my heritage just isn't white, but something much more inclusive and with a richer history behind it than I ever dreamed.  I now have a whole new ancestral history that I feel is completely mine.  I want to visit West Virginia to see where my biological mother's roots are located, and I want to visit the places in Canada where my biological father's roots grew.

Above, all, I know that if people look at me, they may see just another white guy, but I'm so much more than that.

There are other stories and communities of multi-ethnic and somewhat isolated communities in America.  Add these groups to the Delaware Moors in New Jersey and Delaware and the Guineas in West Virginia:  the Melungeons of Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky; the Lumbee Indians of North Carolina; the Carmel Indians of Ohio; and the Redbones of South Carolina and Louisiana.  I feel a part of a more complex history and genealogical makeup than is generally known.  And I am really damn proud of it.

Musical Interlude

By searching for songs on being of mixed race, I found this song.  Every Day, by Tricky, is on his album Mixed Race (he is of Jamaican, Ghanaian and English heritage).  The song's lyrics sort of describe my new feeling about myself, and Tricky's music embraces all sorts of different styles, genres and countries, just like I think I do.  I might seem "every day" to most people, but I'm really not.  Just scratch under the surface.  I encourage you to do so!

If you want to know more about Othello

There is very little about the town of Othello, also known as Head of Greenwich, on the internet.  However, there's a bit of information on the Delaware Moors.

Cumberland County Towns
Great Grandmother's Blog (blog entry about a person's Delaware Moor great-grandmother)
Mitsawokett: The "Moors" of Delaware
Moors in America: Othello's Children in a New World

Next up: Greenwich, New Jersey