Some Mornings are Not EZ.

I awoke this morning thinking that I did not feel well by any measure. 

Physically, I felt fatigued and achy. My digestion wasn't behaving well.

Emotionally, I felt drained, down, and blue.

Intellectually, I felt like I had given up.

Spiritually, I felt empty. I would not have known how to answer if someone asked my why I existed.

But still, nature called. My loyal and loving fluffy white dog, Dak, needed his morning walk. With effort, I slowly dressed and donned my hat and coat. Gathering the clean-up bags, training treats, and his leash along with my strength, I called him. With the leash secured to his harness, at the speed of a snail, we were off.

My canvas slip-ons made a chuff-chuff sound. I saw the cracks in the concrete walkway, rabbit droppings and discarded gum wrappers littered the path as I shuffled along, head down. I did not feel any spring in my step. The chill morning breeze knifed through my light fleece jacket. 

'Why,' I wondered, 'do I even bother with this. Dak could do his business in the back yard without me.'

As I drew a deep sigh, something to my right, a flash of light, caught my attention. I stopped and shifted my view up and to the East. And there it was. A stunning sunrise. Not yet  above the Superstitions, the sun's golden-yellow presence was making itself felt in a halo over the mountains. The powerful light turned the wispy overhead cirrus clouds to magnificent shades from gray to purple to pink to almost white. The night sky was yielding to a graduated blue – lighter on the horizon and darker directly above. The golden glow of the morning sun was reflected about me. The plain, gray concrete walk even glowed with a reddish tint. This was just what I needed.      

In this sunrise, in an instant, God showed me beauty all around that I had temporarily forgotten existed. It lifted me.

  Photo by Steve Baune. Mesa, AZ. December 16, 2023. Used with permission.

Physically, I didn't feel much different, but the body aches and grumbly tummy didn't seem so important any more.

Emotionally, as I looked up, I felt up.

Intellectually, it seemed there was much to do, and enjoy this day.

Spiritually, thankful. Perhaps I had a smile or an encouraging word to share with someone who needed it.

For this, and so much more, I am thankful to my God.

Pronouncing Giclée is not EZ

Today I learned that giclée (pronounced zhēē-clay) is an English word coined to describe high-quality ink-jet printer art. It was derived in the early 1990s and was based on the French word gicleur, a word from the automotive or mechanical trades meaning jet or spray. I've also learned that to type the accented e used as the fifth letter in giclée using a Windows computer, you must hold down the 'alt' key while entering the ASCII code for é, 0233, using the keyboard's number pad. That letter has what is known as the 'acute accent' and it is pronounced more or less like a long a, ā, in English. Only the number pad works for this. The numbered keys across the top of the keyboard won't work and in fact, seem to do nothing whatever when the 'alt' key is held down. This is in keeping with the universal law, as implemented by Microsoft, that nothing is ever as easy as it should be.

The casual reader may note I have wasted a good deal of my day learning these few trivial facts and wonder: Why? I will explain. 

But first I must say I do not find this a waste of my time. I learned something new! What I haven't learned, yet, is this: Why does giclée use an acute accented e while the French word it was derived from, gicleur, does not? Such perverse facts do not increase my understanding of the English-speaking world's interface with the French way of life. 

I began my in-depth research of this arcane topic after reading an article this morning written by native Idahoan, Rick Just, in his daily Idaho history blog, Speaking of Idaho. Rick told of noted 19th-century artist Thomas Moran. Rick tells us that Mr. Moran was one of the few artists of his time well-known for depicting the scenery of the Rocky Mountains in still-life works. His media of choice was often watercolor. One of Mr. Moran's works mentioned by Mr. Just got my attention. The work, painted by Thomas Moran in watercolor in 1900, is titled Shoshone Falls on the Snake River, Idaho. The original is now in a museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the legislature of Idaho having failed to appropriate $10,000 to purchase the work when offered by Mr. Moran's estate after his death, in 1926. That original is valued at many hundreds of thousands of dollars.

My parents lived less than one mile from Shoshone Falls in 1950 when I was born in Twin Falls, Idaho. As I grew up, we often picnicked and played in the park near the top of the falls in the Snake River Canyon. Rick's article included a link to the work. Clicking that link, I found a picture of a work of art of which I happen to have a framed giclée print displayed on the wall in my home. 

Here's what I am proud of: My framed print of Mr. Moran's work is displayed alongside a print of a photograph of Shoshone Falls that I captured on a Sony digital camera in 1997. The perspective of the image in the photo is nearly identical to that in Mr. Moran's work. In the century since Mr. Moran painted Shoshone Falls, the water flow has been greatly diminished as the Snake River has been dammed upstream and water has been diverted for municipal, industrial, and agricultural uses. Mr. Moran's painting shows the falls in tumult with a very heavy flow. In 1997, I was blessed to be able to capture my image of the falls early in the spring after an unusually wet winter with heavy snowfall in the mountains. So even the cascade of the water looks similar in my photograph. 

Presented here, for your viewing enjoyment, is an image of the famous (and valuable) 1900 work of art by Mr. Thomas Moran (1837-1926) along with an image of the photograph captured in 1997 by the unknown and unappreciated author of this piece. 

Shoshone Falls on the Snake River, Idaho. Watercolor, 1900, Thomas Moran

Shoshone Falls on the Snake River, Idaho. Photograph, 1997, Dan Moyes

This original photograph is now valued at a quarter of one dollar.

Oh, and after more painstaking research, I have now learned the reason the acute accented e is used in giclée and not in the French original: The accented e was added to avoid confusion with the French street slang word giclee which is used to refer to male ejaculate. Now I am sorry I learned this. Such perverse facts do not increase my understanding of my world's interface with that of the artist. Thank you, Microsoft Copilot, for your AI search of this topic to enlighten me. 

And thank you, reader, for your time. 

 

The Mexican Adventure Was Not EZ

Dramatized Non-Fiction

December 1, 2023

1466 Words

Chapter One – Huntsville, Utah Territory, Forty miles NE of Salt Lake City, May, 1892 

The piercing cry of the Spruce Hawk rang out in the humid morning air over the mountain slopes on the east side of the Wasatch Ridge in the Uintah Mountains. James Moyes had already been up and at work for several hours, stripping bark from cut white pine logs using a sharp bill hook. Pulling off his leather hat, he wiped the sweat from his brow with his rough, denim sleeve. He could taste the salt from the sweat on his lips. Jim knew that the local natives revered the Spruce Hawks. The Uintah Indians had taught that these hawks were a messenger from the divine, telling their people to be vigilant, look at all the facts, and use inherited wisdom to figure out what the universe was trying to say. In his Mormon culture, he knew the elders would say to listen to the promptings of the holy spirit. So far, the spirit hadn’t chosen to tell Jim much about the current situation. 

Right now, Jim was just trying to figure out what was going on in the mind of his elder brother, William. 

Jim didn’t know if anything had ever been more confusing or harder to understand than what William had told him just that morning. Jim had lived nearly thirty years. He had traveled from Glasgow to Utah as a mere child. Now married to Elizabeth for more than five years, they had shared the devastating loss to illness of their first two children. He’s seen much that was hard and confusing, but Jim could make some sort of sense of all that. But this? This new idea of Bill’s just didn’t seem to make any sense at all! Bill and Jim shared middle names, Gowans, from their mother’s family name, but it was becoming apparent to Jim that name may be all they shared. That and sore backs and blistered hands from working timber six days a week. 

Across the small, newly cleared space of the forest floor, Bill put down his axe. Pulling off his own, sweaty hat, he crossed the fresh clearing, skirting downed and stripped pine logs. Later, he and Jim would bring the oxen up from their place near Huntsville and drag the huge logs, one at a time, down the mountain to Bill’s water-powered sawmill, on the banks of Wolf Creek. 

After a long drink from their shared canvas water bag, Bill called to Jim, “These are good logs, Jim, but it’s a long way to drag ‘em down to the mill from here. If we were stayin’ in Utah we’d have to move even further up toward Ben Lomond to find decent-sized stands. I’m glad we’re leavin’ for Mexico!” 

There it was. Bill’s hairbrained idea.

“Aw, Bill, listen for once. That’s plum crazy! We can’t just up and move to Mexico, lock, stock, and barrel. Cogitate on this, man! You’ve got a wife and four young ‘uns. You got a 10-year lease with harvest rights on this stand of mountain timber and a fine working sawmill here. Our old man and Uncle Robert run the biggest lumber yard in northern Utah, sellin’ your planks for hard cash as fast as we can rip ‘em from the pine logs and your eight oxen can haul ‘em down the canyon to Ogden. Talk about crazy! Who’s Pa gonna buy his lumber from if not us? I know you’re my elder brother and my boss and all, and I mean no disrespect, but man, if I’ve ever seen crazy, this is it! What do you know about Mexico, anyway? What’s there that’s better than what you got here?” 

“And, Bill, you know us leavin’ will break Ma’s heart!”

“Jim, Jim, Jim. Don’t be tryin’ to talk me out of it. And don’t be gettin’ all emotional. I am pretty well set on this. You remember Brother Charles Holm? He was with us on the train from New York to Wyoming and then in the Mumford Wagon Company from Wyoming to the Salt Lake Valley way back in ’68, one of our messmates. Why, he’s one of the finest men I’ve ever known. Remember? He was a bit older than us, but he pitched in and helped Ma and Pa and us boys, even pushin’ the wagon when we got bogged down in the mud up in Parley’s Canyon.” 

“Yeah, be that as it may, I remember him. I thought he was a LOT older than us—wasn’t he Danish or some such? Never mind that. What’s old Charles got to do with this?” 

“Well, Jim, he just came back from Mexico. I ran into him down at the Tabernacle in Ogden last Sunday. He says there are the most beautiful, green stands of tall, straight pines you’ve ever seen up in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico above Colonia Diaz. All the new Mormon settlers there are strugglin’ to build homes and barns ‘cause they got no way but hand rip-saws to turn logs into lumber. Why, he reckons’ they’ll pay two- or three-times Ogden’s goin’ rate, for good lumber. The Governor of Chihuahua has already said he’d issue a timber harvest license to anyone who could handle the business. We can do it! Why, I tell you, this could be our gold mine!”

“Yeah. You mean YOUR gold mine! That all sounds good, Bill, but we ain’t seen it with our own eyes! You can be so bull-headed! Once you get an idea in that head of yours…” 

“Brother Holm ain’t gonna lie to me, Jim. He’s an honorable man of rectitude.” 

“Even so, Bill, how you gonna get us there with a sawmill and everything we need to live and work?” 

“Jim, I don’t got to tell you, it’s 1892 now. There’s the iron horse and rail lines. We don’t have to depend on mules and wooden-wheel wagons like back in the day with Mumford and Company. Business has been good. I’ve been saving. I’ve got some cash, and I can sell this timber lease for good money. There’s a D&RG/W train line that runs from Ogden down through the Arizona and New Mexico territories, then meets up with the Ferro Carril Mexicano and runs right to Los Trios, and that’s less than 50 miles from Colonia Diaz. Shoot, a train runnin’ full steam can get there in just a few days! We can hire a mule train from there to take the mill up into the mountains.” 

“What? You gonna hire the whole train?” 

“As much as I got to, Jim, to get the mill, our livestock and tools, me and Sarah and the kids, you and Lizzy down there. I figure one flat car and one box car will do—the mill ain’t so big once we take it apart. We can ride in the boxcar with the livestock. We don’t need no first-class passage. Remember steerage on the leaky old Emerald Isle from Liverpool? We survived that, didn’t we? And we were just kids, then. Ma even gave birth to our little sister, Elizabeth, may she rest in peace, in that steerage. We’ve come a long way from Glasgow for a couple Sawneys. This is a short move compared to what we’ve already done. I’ve checked the cost with the rail agent—I can pay. ‘Course, I admit that’s one way. We get there, we got to work hard, ‘cause there won’t be ‘nuff money left to bring us back. It may be a tight scratch. I ain’t worried, though. I hear nothing but good things about life in Colonia Diaz. Some good families have settled there, and we know some of them, like the Taylors and the Romneys. And if we need a little help for a few days, the Saints there will pitch in to sustain us—they need us. They can’t get on with the Lord’s work pretty well if they gotta live in dugouts and can’t build homes. Why, with this fine mill in operation, a state timber harvest license, good, strong oxen to haul the lumber down to the town, and our strong backs, what could be easier? We can hire a couple locals as cheap labor. We’ll be in tall clover!” 

“Oh, Bill! Why get into a scrape? What does Sarah think of this plan? You just got your place in Huntsville to feel like home, and my cabin’s okay, Lizzy likes it, for aught I know. I’m happy here.” 

Laying his right hand gently on Jim’s left shoulder, Bill says, “Be that as it may. Sarah will do as she’s told. Let’s pray about it, Jim. But I think we both know the answer.” 

And so began the journey of William Gowans Moyes, my grandfather, and his family into the frontier of Mexico.

EZ’s Travelogue - Barcelona Saturday Morning

Saturday, October 14, 2023. Gothic Quarter, Barcelona, Spain.

I am feeling somewhat better today after a more than three-day-bout with raging dyspepsia. Much Immodium has been employed. Nancy, our travel companion, was first afflicted Monday through Wednesday, slowly returning to ‘normal’ by mid-day Friday. She was able to take the Friday evening sunset cruise we had booked earlier. Not me. My worst was Wednesday through Friday, with some grumbles remaining this morning. But, at least this morning, I feel like I have some control, which I have missed for a few days. Glenda has not been ill, but we didn’t feel it fair to Nancy to send her on the cruise without me to help. Nancy did get some nice photos which she has promised to share. We don’t think the stomach illness was food- or water-borne as Glenda has had pretty much the same diet and water and she hasn’t been ill at all, so probably a ‘stomach flu’ we picked up somehow. I’m SO glad we paid to be 5800 miles from home to be ill for a week.

Despite the horrors being unleased in Israel right now, all seems normal and peaceful in Barcelona. The weather has been dry and sunny, with highs near 80F and lows in the mid-60s (18-26C). The forecast is for rain a few days next week, and the locals are pleased about that, as the region has been in the grips of an historic drought.

View from in front of our temporary morada in the Gothic Quarter

Barcelona is a much different place in the early mornings. I walked out around 7:30am to go to a 24-hour Farmacia for a few essentials. It was as dark as midnight. Sunrise is predicted for a few minutes after 8am and there was no glimmer of dawn visible at 7:30. This is such a change for me from the Phoenix area, where sunrise tomorrow will be around 6:30am and the sky turns dawn pink well before 6:00. The carrer and La Rambla of the Gothic Quarter were no longer crowded in the early morning, but were far from deserted. Few places are open: an occasional early morning cafe’, a small number of establishments still catering to the remnants of last night’s party crowd. Taxis are present, but mostly immobile, their drivers leaning against their cars, smoking. Nearly everyone not in motion is lost in their phone screen. A couple of whores on La Rambla are still trying to make their night’s Euro. One, a very tall and leggy blonde calls out, “Hola” to me. Her voice is deeper than mine. A few Goth trannies stroll by. One, dressed in black leather miniskirt and bikini top with red fish-net nylons, has a beautiful, thick, black beard.

The Farmacia has the body wash and wet wipes I came for. It seems, from the displays there, that the main stock in trade at this hour has been lube and condoms. Viagara is prominently featured, at a shocking Euro120/100mg tablet. I stop at a cafe’ for a morning beverage and decide to try a churro. That was a disappointment—soggy with no hint of sugar or cinnamon. Oh, well—most of the food and drink we have had has been excellent, so far. I think, ‘the gelateria I passed on the way here may have something for my taste buds.’ But, by the time I was back to that location, they were closed until morning opening at 11:00am.

Frontier Life Was Anything But EZ

On a hallway wall in our home hangs a numbered art print, number 66 of 500, originally by Margie Karg, an artist otherwise unknown to me. I don’t know if the piece would be called a drawing, a watercolor, or a Giclee print. The colors are muted. The lines are straight, but not quite photo-realistic. The picture is titled, “Sunday School.” The print displays a solitary, old building, white paint peeling, many broken or boarded windows, and a few missing faded brown shingles on the roof. Only the lava-rock foundation appears to be sound. There is a wire fence held partially aloft by failing poles in front of the building. The ground is depicted as partly snow-covered, partly brown mud, the sky is gray with heavy clouds. A sign over the door of the building reads, “Greenwood Community Sunday School.”

This piece of art, a gift from my sister-in-law, Laurie, is treasured in our home. Allow me to explain why.

Before becoming the “Greenwood Community Sunday School,” this building served as the first and only schoolhouse, known simply as the Greenwood School, for the pioneer farming community of the same name, located just off the north edge of what is now U.S. Interstate Highway 84, five miles east of the small town of Hazelton, Idaho. When it was built, in about 1910, it was by far the largest and served as the keystone structure for the community, supporting much more than school. Weddings and dances were celebrated there. Picnics and family reunions were conducted on the lawn under the towering Poplar trees. It was the polling location for elections and much more.

My family moved to Hazelton when I was twelve. I met Glenda, my wife of 55 years, in Hazelton, and I graduated from Valley High School which served Hazelton and the surrounding area in 1968. By that time, the Greenwood School had long been closed, having held the last classes there the year I started school elsewhere, 1956. After serving as a Sunday School for a few years, the once-proud building sat empty and abandoned, badly battered by the Idaho weather and winds. Most of the trees were gone except for a solitary row of a half-dozen old Poplars that lined the ditch bank dividing the east side of the school property from a gravel county road. This is the Greenwood School I knew and often drove by; the one depicted on my hallway wall. But it still stood. As it does, much unchanged except for continued weathering, today.

Glenda’s grandfather, David Russel Dille owned a farm east of Hazelton where he and Glenda’s grandmother, Leone Ward Dille, raised their family, including Glenda’s mother, Lennie. Their farmhouse sat on a hill just to the northeast of, but very close to, Greenwood School. Entry to the Dille homestead driveway was made through a huge archway made of highly polished pine logs. Farm trucks with alfalfa hay bales stacked 20 feet high could pass through with plenty of clearance. The view from their front yard was of the Greenwood School and its grounds. Glenda’s father, Glenn Baum, also lived with his parents nearby when he was a child. Both Glenn and Lennie started their formal education in the wooden structure that was Greenwood School; Glenn in 1932 and Lennie three years later. In fact, they met there. Lennie, a first-grade child, was playing the part of an angel in the 1935 Christmas pageant when Glenn first noticed her. He later told me, “The first moment I saw her, I thought she really was an angel. I knew then that I would someday marry her.” Although they both in time moved on to different schools, they did marry in January of 1949; Glenda was born a scant 13 months later in February of 1950.

Their elementary school and meeting place, The Greenwood School, was named after one of the pioneer farm women and one of the first schoolteachers of Idaho’s Magic Valley—Annie Amelia Pike Greenwood. Born a doctor’s daughter into a wealthy non-Latter-day Saint, but prominent family in Provo, Utah, in 1879, she and her husband, Charles (married in 1905), were among the first farmers to settle in Greenwood in the second decade of the 20th Century. Charles is my eighth cousin.

Annie was a remarkable woman. She wrote many articles about frontier life that were published in prestigious eastern papers and magazines to supplement their meager farm income and became the first paid schoolteacher in the Greenwood area where she taught for 15 years. In 1934 she published her memoir of breaking the ground, clearing the sagebrush (a notoriously difficult plant with exceedingly strong and deep roots), creating a farm, and raising a family in a book titled, We Sagebrush Folks. That book is available today, as a 2022 reprint, from Rare Treasures Press of Victoria, B.C., Canada, and can be purchased on Amazon for about $20.00. Before this reprint, originals remaining from the original 1934 publication were bringing up to $400.00 on Amazon and eBay. Amazon describes the book as a “Narrative about an attempt to farm on land opened up by the new Minidoka Irrigation Project in the sagebrush desert of southern Idaho. The story of an American farm woman, her husband and family. Describes farm life and farm psychology. This intimate record of an acute mind and sensitive spirit to the joys and sorrows, difficulties and satisfactions, and personalities describes the author's fifteen years as a farm woman on the last American frontier.”

Annie and her book are the topic of a recent 30-minute documentary of the same name available on Idaho Public Television (IPTV) as part of their Idaho Experience series. About 15 minutes into the documentary, the Dille homestead can be seen in an aerial shot of the Greenwood School and its immediate surroundings. The Dille home has since been demolished.

In discussing Annie’s book, the filmmaker states that she wrote about topics that just weren’t discussed in 1934—the hardships of being a woman on the frontier in a man’s world. Sex, birth, abuse, insanity, and heartache, are among the topics Annie wrote of. While receiving a good initial reception and glowing reviews in Eastern papers, her book did not sell well. The maker of the IPTV documentary says that’s likely because of the ‘hardness’ of her message—people didn’t care to know so much. Annie, herself, wrote, “I have written only the truth. Everything in this book happened either to me, myself, or to someone else living in that country of the last frontier in the United States.“ The IPTV documentary includes, from her writing, that the irrigation canals, vital to the life and existence of the farms, were also every mother’s nightmare. Their worries were not ungrounded. Ms. Greenwood says in her writings, “Not a month passed that the canals didn’t claim another drowning victim—most often a beloved child.” Mothers, she says, would tether their children with rope to ensure they didn’t wander off and fall victim—a precaution that was not always 100% effective.

In the late 1940s, before I was born, my parents were raising their family in a home on the bank of a similar irrigation canal near Weiser, Oregon. That canal claimed the life of my brother, Dennis. If I ever get to meet Dennis, it will be in the afterlife.

Glenda was raised in a farmhouse immediately on the bank of one of those canals. When we began dating, I learned that she was deathly afraid of water and would not swim. She wouldn’t even enter a tame pool that was more than knee-deep. I was a water baby; swimming was my absolute favorite activity and I did not understand her behavior around water. I later learned that her fear had been instilled into her by her mother in an attempt to prevent a canal drowning. Glenda, as a young girl, would often walk a hundred yards from her home to the home of her father’s parents, Earl and Livora Baum, as she loved her grandmother. Grandmother always had sweet treats for her. Glenda had to cross a bridge over the canal to make that trip. She and her three sisters were all taught to avoid the canal for fear of severe punishment.

Even before Annie’s family was striving to grub sagebrush and eke a living from 160 acres of dry land, my mother’s family was suffering through the same challenges only a few miles east of Greenwood, in the Springdale community of the Minidoka Irrigation Project, where my grandfather, Niels Peter Rasmussen, working with the help of his older sons, built a one-room log cabin with loft for his family of fifteen. The Rasmussens were in Idaho earlier than the Greenwoods. They had moved there from Utah in the very early years of the 20th Century, having been promised water would flow from the Snake River into the Mindoka canals from the newly-completed (1902) Milner Dam in 1903. There was no water in the canals until 1908. In the meantime, for over four years, the family hand-filled wooden stave barrels and hauled water by horse-drawn wagon more than a mile to sustain their animals, water their few crops and quench their thirst. My mother was born there in 1909. The Greenwoods arrived in Idaho around 1913 with water available in the canals.

Life was hard and farming was unpredictable on the frontier of Idaho. Weather could destroy a crop in moments. Vermin such as deer and jack rabbits could eat an entire crop in a day. Wolves and coyotes killed sheep, goats, and cattle as they pleased. My grandfather’s family made a go of it. Annie and Charles did not. They lost their farm to bankruptcy in 1928, relocating to Twin Falls, Idaho, the city of my birth. The IPTV documentary says that when they lost the farm, they also lost their marriage, divorcing in the 1930s. Before moving to Twin Falls in 1949, my parents lost their farm in Ontario to bankruptcy. Their marriage survived.

Life in the Magic Valley was easy for me in the 1950s and 1960s, in comparison. We had paved roads, automobiles, electricity, telephones, and television. Ample water was easily drawn from the flowing canals or deep wells. The print hanging on my hallway wall reminds me of the deep debt we owe to the pioneers who settled the Intermountain West. Annie’s book and my own family’s history are tokens of the hardships they suffered. My own mother was also a remarkable woman: A writer and a light to many that had lived through much of the hardship that Annie wrote about.

Addendum:

I have learned since this was published, that Glenda's grandmother, Leone Dille, owned the Greenwood School and surrounding properties for a number of years prior to her passing. The property is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Footnotes:

Annie is record number LZVK-LB7 in Family Search online. She died in Sacramento, California in 1956 and is buried in Provo, Utah.

Charles Oliver Greenwood, B 1881 D 1955, is record number 9VPC-FMW in Family Search online.

Amazon link to We Sagebrush Folks: We Sagebrush Folks, Greenwood, Annie Pike - Amazon.com

https://www.amazon.com/Sagebrush-Folks-Annie-Pike-Greenwood-ebook/dp/B09LG3P52J/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1NN32XHTGCBGE&keywords=we+sagebrush+folks+by+annie+pike+greenwood&qid=1694646647&sprefix=We+Sagebrush+fol%2Caps%2C202&sr=8-1&asin=B09LG3P52J&revisionId=500325ff&format=1&depth=1

The documentary: Idaho Experience | We Sagebrush Folks: Annie Pike Greenwood's Idaho | Season 2 | Episode 1 | IdahoPTV

https://video.idahoptv.org/video/we-sagebrush-folks-annie-pike-greenwoods-idaho-85z6rt/

Why can't life be EZ?

Because it is not. Today I learned that a great man that I worked with in the Air Force (Colonel Ed Maher) is in the hospital for surgery for a brain tumor. This is a rather sudden diagnosis. His daughter, who we only knew as a newborn, posted the news to FB, tagging her father so his FB friends would see. He has a Glioma Tumor. I pray for him, for strength, for comfort, and for healing. Ed was wonderful to work with and for. He is smart and wise and very human. He is educated about as far as a person can be today, with at least one PhD, and yet he was never arrogant. He is universally respected. He has a loving wife and family and many friends. Ed, be strong.

Is it EZ to condemn your neighbor?

History is Often Not Pretty.

Evelyn’s words left me speechless. I was flabbergasted by what she said.

“My green thumb and love of natural remedies come to me quite naturally. You should be a healer, too. After all, we are both descended from a witch. My daughter even identifies as a ‘Green Witch’.”

I don’t know if I drooled, but my mouth certainly hung open for some time as my eyes bulged. My cousin, Evelyn, was someone who I thought of as generally trustworthy. I’ve known her since we were children, and that’s been a long, long time. But could such a wild tale be true? And in my direct bloodline, as well? Our steak dinners were ignored on the table at the Sizzler in Flagstaff as my cousin continued to surprise me.

The story Evelyn was telling me was that of ‘Goody’ Martin, more formally known as Susannah North Martin. If my cousin’s words could be trusted, Susannah was one of fourteen women executed by hanging as a witch long ago in Salem, Massachusetts. The twist, to me, was that Susannah is my sixth great-grandmother in my father’s matrilineal line. A tincture of strangeness was added by the fact that Evelyn spoke proudly of her and mentioned that she aspired to learn more of the herbal and healing arts that Susannah probably practiced—all this seeming so foreign to the normally pious, but kind and loving, Christian cousin I’ve known.

“Is this poppycock?” I asked. “Are you pulling my leg?”

I knew Susannah’s name. I had seen it in family group sheets and online at Ancestry.com many times. I knew she was amongst the earliest settlers of the colonies in my bloodline, having been born in Buckinghamshire, England in 1621. A little later than the Mayflower, Susannah’s Puritan family moved to Massachusetts around 1639. My other ancestral lines didn’t migrate to the United States until much later, after the Civil War. Except for Susannah’s line, I am only a second-generation citizen of the U.S.

“No! It is true!” Evelyn remarked. “Look it up. It’s all well documented and most of that is available online. Her story is documented in the Salem Witch Museum.”

Finally finishing our small steaks, we hugged and bid adieu with me promising to spend time researching the life of our ancestor after my drive home the next day.

Evelyn was correct. There is a treasure trove of information about Susannah available online, starting with her very own fully referenced and footnoted Wikipedia page. How could I have not known of this? There, we learn that her mother, Joan North, died when Susannah was a child. Her father remarried a woman named Ursula while still in England. It appears that Ursula may have treated Susannah as the stepchild she was. After moving to the colonies, she married George Martin in 1646. They were the first permanent settlers of the township of Amesbury. With George, she had eight children.

Susannah was first formally charged with witchcraft in 1669. She was found guilty, but the sentence was overturned by a higher court. Her husband sued her accuser for slander but did not prevail. By 1671, Susannah and her family were involved in additional court proceedings over the estate of her stepmother, Ursula. It must have been quite a large estate, as the family sued for a share many times over the years but was never successful in court.

The final accusation came in 1692, after the death of Susannah’s husband, George. The transcript of the trial for the crime of ‘Witchcraft and sorcery’ is quite lurid. One of the prosecutors was none other than the Reverend Cotton Mather, who insisted that a witch must not be allowed to live, as quoted from his ‘gospel of peace and love.’ Didn’t we learn in middle school American History that he was a noble and upstanding Puritan pastor and writer? I’m feeling a bit differently about him with my newfound knowledge.

I will quote here from Wikipedia, as I don’t think I can word it better:

“Susannah Martin was twice forced to submit to physical examination in order to find evidence of a ‘witch's tit or physical protuberance which might give milk to a familiar.’ No such deformity was found on Susannah Martin, but it was noted that ‘in the morning her nipples were found to be full as if the milk would come,’ but by late afternoon, ‘her breasts were slack, as if milk had already been given to someone or something.’ This was an indication that she had been visited by a witch's familiar and was clear evidence of guilt.”

Susannah was a 70+ year-old woman then.

Throughout, Susannah maintained her innocence, laughing at the charges and quoting from the Bible. At this point, she had no husband to help in her defense. Wikipedia notes that she was “impoverished.” It is unclear where her eight children, now grown, were in her defense. She was declared guilty by the magistrate on June 30, 1692. The reader may wish to note that it was on June 30, 2023, that Evelyn related Susannah’s story to me, 331 years to the day after Susannah’s sentencing. She was hanged on July 19, 1692.

Over the years, Susannah’s story has gained a lot of popular attention. The convicted Salem witches were exonerated by the Massachusetts legislature in 1957, only 265 years too late, but Susannah’s name was left off the list enacted by the legislature. On Halloween 2001, she was finally fully exonerated by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Today, there is an Interstate Highway (I-495) in Massachusetts named for her and indicated with appropriate signage. A memorial plaque has been placed in Amesbury close to where the Martin homestead had been. A poem, The Witches Daughter, by 19th-century poet John Greenleaf Whittier, was written about her, and includes this stanza:

Let Goody Martin rest in peace, I never knew her harm a fly, And witch or not – God knows – not I? I know who swore her life away; And as God lives, I’d not condemn An Indian dog on word of them.

The song, Susannah Martin, has been recorded by numerous folk artists. One very nice performance by Jan Pouska can be found at: https://youtu.be/vMzJ477PA_s

The story of the Salem Witch Trials and the actions of the citizens of Salem then are horrible and abhorrent. Susannah is only one of 25 women and men who were killed (or died in jail) after ‘trials’ as witches. Some were hanged, as was Susannah. Contrary to myth, there is no documentation of any Salem ‘witches’ being burned at the stake, as had been the fate of William Tyndale in England for his crime of translating the Bible into English. Some were thrown into frigid water, fully dressed in heavy, woolen clothing. If they floated, they were guilty of witchcraft and would be executed. If they sank, they would be innocent, but dead. Some were similarly crushed under slabs of limestone. If they lived, they were guilty.

I end this story with a quote that I find especially poignant after I studied Susannah’s life and death:

“I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.” Agatha Christie

That ‘grand thing’ was cruelly and wrongfully stolen from my ancestor by superstitious, prejudiced, hateful people.