Blue Highways: Melvin Village, New Hampshire

Unfolding the Map

The Blue Highways quote below, about an elderly resident of Melvin Village who helps William Least Heat-Moon see, through her long years of perspective, that change is constant and a recurring, cyclical happening, leads me to reflect on the influence of the elderly residents of my hometown on the fabric of its social structure.  To age gracefully in Melvin Village, pass some of your precious time at the map.

Book Quote

"Marion Horner Robie had not been Melvin Village for all her eighty years; the first seven decades she was just another citizen of fewer than five hundred, although when she ran the post office, grocery and dry goods store, telephone switchboard, and the fire dispatch all at the same time, she was (admittedly) 'the big cheese.'....

"....In broad New England vowels, Mrs Robie said: 'I never planned on becoming the big cheese, you see.  It fell about that way as chance does...'"

Blue Highways: Part 8, Chapter 11

Melvin Village, New Hampshire from Lake Winnipesaukee. Photo at the Melvin Village Soy Candles website. Click on photo to go to host site.

Melvin Village, New Hampshire

When I map a book like On the Road or Blue Highways, both geographically or cognitively, I never quite know where the cognitive topography will take me.  In this post, I am going to a place that surprises me.

It shouldn't be so surprising.  After all, LHM meets a woman who, partly because of her advanced years, has become the self-described "big cheese" of Melvin Village, New Hampshire.  To me, age really defines those who actually are the big cheeses from those are "wannabee" big cheeses or who think they are big cheeses.

With that awkward beginning, I now get to my point.  I grew up in a small town, and there one always can find those people who, because of their age, have reached a lofty status among the rest of the people in the town.  These people are the town elders, whose major accomplishments have been to live and experience and to reach a point where they can pass their experience, history, memories and wisdom to the generations behind them.  Every culture that I can think of puts older people into a class reserved entirely for them.  Somewhat removed but always sought out in case of crisis.  A recent viewing of The Seven Samurai by the great director Akira Kurosawa reminded me of this common instinct in our cultures.  In the movie villagers, tired of repeated attacks by bandits, consult the oldest man in the village to ask him what they should do.  His advice, hire seven samurai to defend the village from the next expected attack, is heeded and with the aid of the samurai, the villagers repel the attackers.

Gertrude White never had to give such advice to my hometown residents, though I had no doubt that she would have if needed.  Actually, I have no doubt that she would have led the defense if the village was attacked.  From the day I first remember her, when I was perhaps three or four, to the day that she died, she always seemed old to me.  She owned a stretch of land along Airport Road, an unknown number (to me) of acres that once served as the town airport for which the street was named.  I think I was only in her house once, however we always had some kind of contact with her.  She ran a horse riding club.  My grandmother, who was a good friend but who I believe also looked up to Mrs. White as a mentor often rode horses with her in the local Paul Bunyan Days parades.  My grandmother was perhaps 10-15 years younger than Mrs. White, but I think their shared history of growing up and living in the area brought them together and, as their ages became greater the difference between them grew less and less.

As the matriarch of the horse club, Mrs. White touched the lives of a lot of young children, mostly girls.  Our summer weekends often revolved around her horse shows, in which manes and tails tore around barrels or ripped around the track at breakneck speed with very fragile little girls clinging to them.  But I remember that Mrs. White was also heavily involved in town business and affairs, and can think of a couple of times when I heard of residents of my parents generation approaching her for advice or to learn some history about how the town handled certain situations in the past.  As she got older, her mystique, augmented by her large house, seemed to grow.  When she died, somewhere approaching 100 years old, it was like the passing of an era that we could never get back.

My grandmother, Mary Cox, was very similar.  She was something of what I considered the last of the pioneers of Northern California.  She grew up in the woods where her father and grandfather ran a small lumber mill.  She married a fisherman who turned lumberman in the depression, and then reverted back to fisherman.  She raised four children (one of which was my mother) in logging camps in the woods during the heart of the Great Depression.  After her husband died of cancer when she was in her fifties, she used it as an opportunity to get the education she always wanted but never had, and got her nursing degree.  She worked until she was into her seventies and forced into retirement because of a back and knee injury sustained while trying to hold up an unsteady and heavy patient.

My grandmother was the focal point of our family.  Our lives, especially as she got older, revolved around her.  My sisters and cousins spent afternoons after school and entire summer days over at her house riding her horses.  Family members went to her for advice, and often received blunt words from a woman who had seen almost everything in her life and knew that the solution to life's problems began with the person who was having them.  Sometimes family members, as she got older, tried to keep news from her of certain family members' bad behavior, or problems that arose within the family.  It didn't matter - she always seemed to know anyhow.  I often went to talk to her to hear first-person accounts stories of growing up and living in places and times that otherwise I would only be able to read about.  My grandmother was also, for a time, the only one of our family that had traveled to Europe, and her accounts of visiting her relatives in Austria fascinated me and fueled my own desire to travel to other places.

When my grandmother died in her mid-nineties in 2001, her passing was like the breaking of the cement that held disparate elements of the extended family together.  Her children, my mom and her remaining siblings, still come together for the holidays but the spark that fed them, my grandmother, is missed.

If you view a small town as an extended family, the influence, wisdom, history and common-sense that our elders provide is incalcuable.  It is no accident that it seems that in smaller locales that elders are held in the most esteem, and valued more.  In large cities, it is easy enough to become lost in the teeming masses, and I think that older people are often forgotten in those places where the business of life often takes precedence over the relations and the connections that we need.  Our policies, which make it harder for our older members of society to live and get by, also do not help.

I have learned, however, that there is no substitute for an older, wiser presence in our lives.  We may not agree with everything our elders say and they can be as wrong as anyone else.  I would argue that isn't the point.  When they speak with us, we are almost compelled to listen, and it is in our listening that we give ourselves the space to come to our own wisdom and solutions.  I wish I could thank my grandmother for those times that she made me stop, think, and take stock, whether or not her views were useful to me or not.  Just her presence was sometimes enough.

Musical Interlude

The Who's My Generation was originally about the younger generation telling the older generation where it could go and what it could do to itself.  It's pretty amazing that this group of older people, The Zimmers, have turned that song on its head.  Now they're doing the singing, and telling the rest of us where to go.  Good for them!

I also had to include Neil Young's Old Man, that melancholy air that shows that young people and old people often have the same needs.

If you want to know more about Melvin Village

Sorry, there's not too much on Melvin Village.

Wikipedia: Melvin Village

Next up:  Hunter's Maple Farm, New Hampshire

Blue Highways: Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire

Unfolding the Map

We get to a rural area of Lake Winnipesaukee with William Leat Heat-Moon (LHM) where he remarks on the pickups he sees.  I grew up with pickups and have lots of memories about them and the DIY culture in small towns that makes them necessary.  If you want to know where Lake Winnipesaukee is located, do some DIY at the map.

Book Quote

"I took route 104 up to the motel congestion of the west side of Lake Winnipesaukee - the lake with a hundred thirty different spellings and almost as many translations from the Indian (the best is 'the smile of the Great Spirit') - and then around to the north shore into quieter country.  On this corner of the lake, instead of stationwagons with wet swimtrunks tied to antennas and door handles, there were worn pickups, each hauling at least one rusty something."

Blue Highways: Part 8, Chapter 10

Sunset over Lake Winnipesaukee, by Valerie Laroque. Photo hosted at Travelpod. Click on photo to go to host page.

Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire

The words that catch my eye in the quote above are "worn pickups, each hauling at least one rusty something."

If you have read a few of my posts as we journey with LHM together in Blue Highways, you know that I grew up in a small town in Northern California.  One of the facets of living in a small town is that the number of services and amenities available to people is limited.  Sure, you can probably find every service that is needed, or every item that you want, but there are still restricted choices.  What if, for some reason, you don't trust or like the service?  What if the model and make is no longer available?

By necessity, people who live in small towns are usually DIYers in some way, shape or form.  They do their own landscaping, their own gardening, their own building.  If repairs need to be made on automobiles, many of them do it themselves unless the job is so complicated that it needs to go to a shop.

And because hauling needs to be done, people in small towns own pickups.  A typical two-car family will often have a sedan of some type, and a pickup.  I grew up with a succession of pickups that my father owned.  The first I remember was his International Harvester and his last truck before he died was a Ford F150, I think, but I'm not quite sure.

Not only that, but in my town every truck had some things that were standard accoutrements.  Each truck had a gun rack, because almost everyone went hunting at some point or another during the year.  Each truck also usually came equipped with a chain saw, because almost every home was heated by a fireplace or stove.  In the forests around where I lived, downed trees were often available to be cut up for firewood with the appropriate permits.  A chain saw could also be used to clear a downed tree on the road.  Often an industrious group of drivers could clear a road before the official highway maintenance people got there.  Every truck also had something called a "come-along," which was a type of pulley that one used if one got stuck in the mud or in a river somewhere, one could wrap a chain around a tree, attach it to the come-along, and pull themselves out of their predicament.

In a town full of full to partial DIYers, it often meant that one didn't necessarily need to go to the stores to buy things.  Chances are that someone had a needed item if you looked around carefully enough.  My father had a barn, where he kept a lot of stuff.  A wide range of tools, some useful, some not, for various purposes.  Lumber, for that room he was going to redo.  Nuts, bolts, nails and screws that he had saved from various other projects that might come in handy.  Old appliances that just might be able to be fixed some day.  The barn was probably a chemical nightmare, as he kept old cans of paint well past the time that they were useful.  Seeds for gardening that he had saved over the years.  Various bits of metal.  My father was only a partial DIYer, and didn't have a lot of skills in fix-it or repair or metalworking, but yet he kept these things just in case they were needed.

My next door neighbor, Mr. Cleary, was more skilled in a lot of things, and his barn showed it.  He was skilled in auto mechanics, and had all but the most heavy equipment needed to repair his family's cars.  If he ever needed to put the car up in the air, he knew a few people who had the lifts to allow him to do that.

And, like LHM describes about Lake Winnipesaukee, I too often saw people hauling things around in their trucks - old rusty things that didn't seem like they would have a purpose, but they did.  If it was an old metal frame of something, barely recognizable as former office shelving, for instance, it could be put to use for something.  Perhaps it could be reconfigured into a rack to hold stuff in the barn, or a planter for out in the garden.  Old appliances could be scavenged for parts that might fit into newer appliances that with a twist here and a poke there could be made to run for another few years.  Old cars, sitting in yards, could either be repaired with scavenged parts from other vehicles or serve as parts supplies themselves, donating their innards like people donate kidneys, so that other cars might live longer.  If anything was thrown away, it was because it either had no conceived further use or because it had been scavenged for everything that it was worth.

One of the most popular radio shows on our local radio station was the Swap Shop.  People called in to Ellie, the host, and said what they were looking for.  Others would call in and announce what they had.  Sometimes they were selling, sometimes they were willing to trade.  But it was another indication that the store was often the last step in the chain to finding something one needed.

I make it sound like our town, and perhaps other rural areas around the country, were filled with hoarders.  Unlike hoarders, who collect for no discernible purpose other than their obsession, there was a purpose in the collection of things.  They served purposes and, since my parents' generation grew up in the Great Depression, there was perhaps a drive to wring all possible usefulness out of every item they purchased and, if someone else could use what they couldn't, to make sure that it was available to them when needed.  It stands in stark contrast to today, where we are used to things working until they die, and then they are thrown away and another cheap model is bought.  Every town used to have a few shops where appliances were fixed, even small appliances like toasters.  Now, a toaster dies and we just run to Wal Mart and pick up another.

In a month or so, I will go back to my hometown to visit my mom.  I'll hear and see her neighbor, with his garage and shed, working on some piece of equipment that needs repair.  I'll see the pickup trucks with their chain saws and their gun racks and come-alongs, many perhaps more modern looking but with the same accessories as yesteryear.  And, I'll take another stroll through my dad's barn, where many of the things that he left still sit, waiting for their new purpose to be discovered.

Musical Interlude

In the spirit of what they are now calling the DIY generation, Debbie Harry teamed up with punk rockers Rachelle Garniez and Palmyra Delran on a song called Do It Yourself.  The song aims to encourage kids to learn about doing things on their own.  The song can be found on the album KinderAngst.

And of course, it wouldn't be complete without a song about pickup trucks.  Would you believe that most of the songs about pickup trucks are in the country music genre?  Here is legendary Texas artist Jerry Jeff Walker singing his poignant Pickup Truck Song.

If you want to know more about Lake Winnipesaukee

Lake Winnipesaukee.net
Lake Winnipesaukee Museum
Lake Winnipesaukee Travel Guide
New Hampshire Lakes Region Tourism Association: Lake Winnipesaukee
Wikipedia: Lake Winnipesaukee
Winnipesaukee.com

Next up:  Melvin Village, New Hampshire

Blue Highways: West Canaan, New Hampshire

Unfolding the Map

In West Canaan, William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) remarks on the disappearing water dams and turbines that powered the factories of yesterday.  Of course, I can't let an opportunity go by for talking about an alternative energy idea I had, and more.  To see where you too can eat and get gas, go to the map.

Book Quote

"Near West Canaan, I stopped at Al's Steamed Dogs & Filling Station.  A hand-painted sign: EAT HERE AND GET GAS.  Al's was closed.  The sky darkened, a shower doused the road and cooled things in the White Mountains.  The villages seemed to seep down the slopes to settle in the valleys along streams where people of another time built multiwindowed stone and brick factories and mills.  Most of the old buildings and mill dams had been done in by cheap electric power and centralized industry.  But there was talk of again tapping the unused energy in the New England streams with small, computer-designed turbines."

Blue Highways: Part 8, Chapter 10

EAT HERE & GET GAS! This is the actual sign that William Least Heat-Moon saw in West Canaan, New Hampshire. Photo by "kaszeta" and hosted at Flickr. Click on photo to go to host site.West Canaan, New Hampshire

I thought I had a great idea once.  I believe that I was driving somewhere out in a very rural area; perhaps it was Texas sometime in the 90s when I lived there.  I noticed that there were a lot of telephone and utility poles out there on these vast, windy plains.  That in itself didn't catch me, until I also noticed all the farms and homesteads that had windmills on their property.

Some of the windmills were really, really old.  You've probably seen them.  They are the wooden or galvanized many-rotored windmills that were used primarily for pumping water.  Many of them came from a kit, ordered at one time from a Sears catalogue.  The really old ones were made from wood, but a number of them that I saw were often Aermotor metal windmills.  In doing some background for this post, I began to understand that there was fierce competition in the windmill industry until eventually, Aermotor became the only producer of windmills in America with a design that so combined efficiency and effectiveness with price that it has basically remained unchanged since its first unveiling in 1888.

Basically, I saw all these windmills on properties throughout rural areas.  I saw the vast windy plains.  I saw telephone poles along roadsides, train tracks and other places perhaps serving their function of holding wires but nothing else.  My mind then thought about all the advances made in technology, on one hand, and the continual problem we were having in breaking ourselves of fossil fuel consumption.  While it is imperative that we develop alternative energies, fossil fuels (and their pollution and climate changing effects) are just too cheap.  But, why couldn't someone do something that might be cheap on a small scale?  I thought of the idea of parallel computing, in which each computer in an array gets a piece of a task rather than giving the whole task to one computer.  Why couldn't we do that with energy, I wondered?

So, my brilliant and innovative idea was this - take all the utility poles in vast, windswept and unpopulated areas, and put a small windmill on each.  These windmills would generate a little power, not much, but with the millions of telephone and utility poles out there, I speculated, each little bit of power fed into the grid, magnified by millions, might create a significant source of energy.  Wind is variable, but even when some areas are not windy, other areas would be, thus creating a continual source of energy.  All it would take is a small windmill on each pole and a way of feeding it into the grid.  At that I got stuck, because I'm not an electrical engineer.

After checking The Google, I have discovered that I'm not the only person to have such an idea.  There are a lot of people who have speculated that use could be made of the existing utility poles and telephone poles to create wind power.  Here's one discussion, and another, and still a third.  And there seems to be just as many people out there that are not optimistic about the idea.  There are questions about mechanical feasibility, questions about windmill size and height needed, questions about who owns the utility poles and if those owners would allow these motors to be installed.  But, I still think my idea could be done.  The term for them, evidently, is micro-windmills.  If one day you see them, remember the idea was mine first!

Why am I tilting at windmills, in a manner of speaking?  I'm following up on LHM's statement about cheap energy and industrialization leading to the decline of use of factory mill dams.  In the days before widespread power and cheap access to sources of combustible fuels, the engines of industry were all natural and, for the most part, clean.  Dams and water spilling over and through them provided the power needed to turn equipment.  Water wheels, pushed around and around by constant stream current, converted water energy into mechanical energy.

It wasn't until coal came into widespread use as a fuel whose combustion turned water into steam that could power new and more efficient machinery for production did the water wheel become quaint in its obsolescence.  And in some ways, we have been paying for our industry ever since.  From the environmental in the form of air and water pollution and climate change, to the social in the form of increased expectation of productivity and work polluting our calendars, we've turned our industry into expectations, and those expectations will make it difficult to go back to a simpler time when the power supply was either ourselves, or the simple things that wind and water could give us.

Yet, I'm afraid that is what we might have to do.  Fossil fuels are finite, and are damaging the earth as currently used.  At some point, the supply of fossil fuels will begin to decrease.  The potential for active solar energy is clearly abundant, but we've yet to harness it in an manner effective for running industry.  We've dammed pretty much every formerly wild river with hydroelectric potential to wring as much power out of them as possible.  Some speculate that tidal action or ocean currents will be able to supply a significant source of hydroelectricity, but those innovations are still dreams.  Wind energy is being utilized efficiently in places, but so far involves a significant investment in large wind turbines and land in wind corridors.  There are other even more radical ideas out there, such as clean fusion energy, but they are still unreachable.

So why can't we just put a few million micro-windmills on telephone and utility poles to help solve our energy and pollution problems?  I've yet to see a definitive answer that we absolutely cannot.  It seems to me that it requires a will, not a fallback on the old excuse that petroleum is cheap and wind too expensive.  As I write this, scientists around the world are trumpeting the seeming discovery of the Higgs boson, the particle which will allow us to explain all matter in the universe.  A huge amount of effort and energy, as well as many billions of dollars, was put into discovering the Higgs boson.  Why can't we put the same amount of, excuse the term, energy into exploring a radical, but possibly beneficial, way of powering our future?

But, I guess I'm just a dreamer.  Now if we could only convert the gas we get from eating bad road food to useful energy, we'd be getting somewhere.

Musical Interlude

A couple of windmills songs.  First up - Toad the Wet Sprocket with their song Windmills.

Second, Sting sings Windmills of Your Mind.  I almost put the Dusty Springfield version on this post, but decided I liked how Sting does it better.

If you want to know more about West Canaan or Canaan

Old newspaper article about a train wreck in West Canaan
Town of Canaan
Wikipedia: Canaan

Next up:  Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire

Blue Highways: Hanover, New Hampshire

Unfolding the Map

As we wander aimlessly around the Dartmouth College campus in Hanover with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM), we find ourselves embroiled in a mascot controversy.  Actually, thirty years ago, the sports team mascot controversy was just getting started.  Now, a number of teams have taken action to redress concerns, but the controversy is still present.  I'll give my own perspective, such as it is.  To find out where Hanover lies, try not to create any waves when you look at the map.

Book Quote

"....then over the Connecticut River and into Hanover, New Hampshire....

"I killed off most the day by wandering around the Dartmouth campus.  The Reverend Eleazar Wheelock founded the college with his own library and a log hut in the woods and a goal of providing 'for the education and instruction of Youth of the Indian Tribes in this Land in reading, writing, and all parts of Learning which shall appear necessary and expedient for civilizing and christianizing Children of Pagans.'  The Dartmouth motto reflects its origin: Vox clamantis in deserto.  But now the voice crying in the (semi)wilderness was that of the tribal Americans who comprised one percent of the enrollment and who were decrying the unofficial nickname of the athletic teams - the Indians - as well as the 'Scalp 'em' cheers, the faculty dining room murals depicting Indians in various states of carousal and a popular rally song....As best I could tell, the students, faculty, and administration would gladly put the Indian rah-rah to rest by using the other nickname, 'The Green.'  But alums - there was the problem.  They might tolerate women graduates, but to give up their official Wah-hoo-wah!, that was too much.  And so the murals got carefully boarded over but not taken down."

Blue Highways:  Part 8, Chapter 10

Dartmouth College main hall. Photo by Dylan (kane5187) and hosted at Wikimedia Commons. Click on photo to go to host page.Hanover, New Hampshire

When I was young, I didn't think much about sports team names. I grew up north of San Francisco, and I think I was seven when I first remember having any interest in sports. It was the holidays, and we were over at my aunt and uncle's place for Christmas dinner. Before dinner, my father and uncles were watching a football game, and as I sat with them, I asked questions about the game and the teams. The game was between the Baltimore Colts and the Miami Dolphins. I asked everyone who would win, and everyone unanimously agreed that the Colts would win. So I decided to cheer on the Dolphins. Dolphins were much more exciting than colts, at least to my young mind. Despite everyone's predictions, my Dolphins won the game. I think one of my uncles bet me a dollar, which of course I wouldn't have been able to pay, so it's a good thing I won! For a brief time in my young life, the Dolphins became my favorite team.

My real passion became Los Angeles teams, which was odd for a kid who grew up nearer San Francisco, but I guess I had to be different. The San Francisco teams in the seventies were never very good, anyway. I suppose I might have been a fan of the Oakland teams, but they never appealed to me either. No, it was the Rams, Lakers and Dodgers that provided excitement. But by far, I always looked forward to football season. I idolized the Rams, and each year it seemed they were picked to win it all, and each year my hopes would be dashed by the hated Minnesota Vikings or the even
more hated Dallas Cowboys. 

Here's how the scenario would play out. Always an early December playoff game, and always with the Rams in the lead in the fourth quarter. It always seemed like the Vikings or the Cowboys would be pinned back deep on third down. The Rams defensive line would swarm, and Fran Tarkenton or Roger Staubach would somehow manage to avoid the pressure - Tarkenton by scrambling or Staubach by stepping up in the pocket and ducking a sure tackle - and then Tarkenton/Staubach would throw a perfect bomb down the sideline to a streaking receiver who had managed to just slip behind the defender. The receiver would catch the ball in stride, and the game was over, just like that. Minnesota would go on to lose the Super Bowl, and even more infuriatingly, Dallas might actually win it, and I was always left with next year. I didn't see my Rams even make it to the Super Bowl until 1980, where they lost an uncharacteristically thrilling game (for a Super Bowl) to the Pittsburgh Steelers, for whom NFL championships were a matter of course, like eating or brushing teeth. Later, the Rams moved to St. Louis, and my love affair with them ended.

I later learned how the Rams and Lakers got their names.  I learned that the Rams originally came from Cleveland, though I never knew until doing some background for this post that they were named in honor of Fordham University's football team.  The Lakers originally came from Minneapolis, and were named after the "10,000 lakes" of Minnesota.  Of course the Dodgers came originally from Brooklyn, and was named because Brooklyn residents were adept at dodging trolley cars.

Since I hated the Cowboys (whose team name is self-explanatory) so much, I constantly rooted for teams that played against them, especially their hated rivals the Washington Redskins.  Originally called the Boston Braves, the team became the Boston Redskins after they began playing at Fenway Park and they kept the name upon moving to Washington. I grew up in a small, working class and fairly unsophisticated town, and  I didn't really think of the name or the logo as being an issue. Occasionally, if I listened to the radio and the Oakland A's (Athletics) were playing, I might catch a game where the opponent was the Cleveland Indians.  I've learned that the Indians got their name partly because an early incarnation of the team, the Cleveland Spiders, had a Native American player and were often informally called the "Indians" during his playing time there, and partly because it was a play on the name of the baseball Boston Braves.  The symbolism and what it might mean to others simply never crossed my mind. It wasn't until I was older and working in social justice initiatives that I learned of the intense anger that many Native Americans had for this appropriation and perceived disrespect toward their cultures and peoples. To be honest, I didn't originally think it a valid issue. After all, with the poverty, alcoholism, drug use, and other social problems plaguing Native societies, I reasoned, weren't there better things to focus on?

As I'm older, with a little more experience and education behind me, I have come to understand the importance of symbolism. I'm sure that those who named the Redskins were simply looking for a name that would inspire fans and indicate the strength and ferocity necessary for a good football team. However, I have trouble explaining the caricature of the Cleveland Indians, Chief Wahoo, which regardless of the intent is problematic. Also, regardless of the intent, such names, emblems and logos play into stereotypes that are often inaccurate and demeaning.  Perhaps Irish people do not object to names like the Boston Celtics or the Notre Dame Fighting Irish (which also uses an emblem of a leprechaun in a fighting pose), but should it be right to use stereotypes? I wonder if a team decided to call itself the Africans, with a "Sambo" character as a logo, if that would be seen as more offensive than Chief Wahoo. Somehow, I think it would, even though for practical purposes, the demeaning nature of the names and logos would be roughly the same.

In response to the Native American mascot controversy, an intramural team of Native Americans, Latinos and some whites at the University of Northern Colorado adopted the name of the Fightin' Whites (with the slogan "Everything is Going to be All White!). Though the name failed to achieve the recognition they wanted and instead became a sought-after t-shirt slogan, I wonder if it's the wave of the future.  If whites become a minority someday, will we see team names like the Caucasians, Palefaces, or Wacicu - or stereotype-based names like Fat Couch Potatoes or Corporate CEOs?

In the meantime, while there are many schools with indigenous nicknames, some colleges and universities, to the dismay of some of their alumni, are giving up their logos and nicknames for other, less controversial ones. My wife's alma mater, Marquette University, changed its mascot from the Warriors, with a Indian logo, to the Golden Eagles. The alumni eventually got over it, because ultimately the sports team, and identification with the university, meant more than the nickname.  Other schools, from the kindergarten level up through the university level, have changed their names either at the request of tribes or, in the case of universities, through pressure from the NCAA. But we still see, in some big level college sports and at the professional sports level, sights such as mascots in native dress or and fans in face paint doing a war cry and tomahawk chop, as well as logos that depict Native Americans in stereotypical fashion, even if it is meant respectfully.  All this will guarantee that this controversy will remain.  To some, such names, mascots and logos will remain a  tremendous insult on indigenous peoples and cultures. 

At Dartmouth, as referenced in LHM's quote, the official team name remains the Big Green, and the school has held firm despite continuing calls from some alumni, students and the conservative student newspaper to return the name to the Indians.  And, despite the low historical enrollment of Native Americans at Dartmouth, it has graduated more Native Americans than the other Ivy League schools combined, some 700 since 1970.

Musical Interlude

Every first Saturday of the month, the programmers of the Voces Feministas show on KUNM, our local public radio show, play this song, No No Keshagesh by Buffy Ste. Marie, as their opening song.  When I saw Ms. St. Marie perform, she explained that "Keshagesh" is a Cree term for a puppy that wants more than its own share.  I think that describes how Native Americans have felt that their lands, their symbols and even their identities have been appropriated for centuries by multiple waves of invaders.

And here's only my second repeated song of the Blue Highways series, but it fits really well.  Jim Thorpe's Blues, by Terri Hendrix, references Jim Thorpe, an amazing Native American Olympian and athlete in multiple sports.

If you want to know more about Hanover

TheDartmouth (college newspaper)
Dartmouth College
Hanover Area Chamber of Commerce
Town of Hanover
Wikipedia: Hanover

Next up: West Canaan, New Hampshire