The Lonely Few On Memorial Day

The Clarion County Poor Farm was authorized in 1898, and in 1903 an 800 acre farm near Curllsville became the site of the new County Poorhouse.  Farm and new construction cost $90,000 in bond money.

Back of the Poorhouse, beyond the dairy barn, vegetable garden, and fields is a small cemetery along Huckleberry Road off of Rt. 68.  Of the 72 interments with stones, few have dates, the last date is 1986.  There are, however, rows of unmarked graves evident now by regular indentations.  There are many forgotten graves among the lonely marked ones.

A Civil War veteran and a WWI veteran receive flags for Memorial Day.  Whomever has taken responsibility for this county-owned cemetery is to be commended.  The little cemetery on this Memorial Day 2010 is nicely taken care of.  Charles Marlin

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Our Dickinsonian Garden

John Rexrode and John Hink        

See Adrian Higgins’ Emily Dickinson’s poetry blooms at New York Botanical Garden exhibit”  at www.washingtonpost.com for 05/26/2010 or visit the New York Botanical Garden at www.nybg.org/

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Sol Invictus 21st Century

This is an energy drink book.  It is all the testosterone genres in one.  A comparable experience would be cramming all of Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire into one weekend, except Roger Lowenstein has written a history The End Of Wall Street that is not to be forgotten.

The subject is the 2008 financial collapse of banking and finance but he begins the history with the Reagan era of deregulation and the misidentified ghosts of the Great Depression.  Neither politics nor banking are given a pass.  A rogues’ gallery opens the book.  One of the people to emerge with reputation enhanced is mutual-fund manager Bob Rodriguez, CEO of First Pacific Advisors.  Exhausted by the battle against the stampeding herd, he began a one-year sabbatical in 2010.  Another who rose above the herd was Sheila C. Bair, chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

The two high profile government men still in town are Ben Bernanke, chairman of Federal Reserve, and Timothy Geithner who has moved from president of Federal Reserve Bank of New York to succeed Hank Paulson as Secretary of Treasury.  Should you feel protected?  Only if you think two bungling Boy Scouts can overcome the ignorance and incompetence of their past.  The author spends no time in name calling or vindictiveness.  He has no need.  He describes their learning as they go so well one is tempted to call it internships.

How did things go so wrong when these politicians and bankers were the elite of America?  From vastly different backgrounds they were nevertheless privileged by education and employment.  They were more than well compensated.  It is as though they became converts to an earlier hedonist religion of hubris, greed, and risk.  It was worship, feast, dance, indulge, again and again.

Have enough of us learned that we were duped by these sunshine boys and that we must demand public and private leaders with a better grounding in history and economics?  Have we learned that politicians who appeal to economic and social fears and use Tea Party rants are not qualified to serve?  Have we learned to pay our debts and prepare for times when crop yields are low?

Your answer to those questions is probably no better or worse than mine so I leave them unanswered.  A useful preparatory step to being a responsible citizen and investor would be to read this masterful history.  Charles Marlin

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Meet and Eat Clarion County #7

Clarion River at Canoe Ripple Road Clarion County

 

Carriage Inn—Knox    The lobby and restaurant are freshly spruced up.

Pizza Pub—Clarion   I love their Wedgies.

This is a photographic trip around Clarion County for the places we love to meet friends and enjoy a meal where we do not have the dishes to take care of. These are the best known places in every community and without them our sense of community would be tested.

I began the series by taking a couple of river shots because those views belong collectively to all our communities. If you think I may have missed your favorite Meet And Eat place, send a comment. I picked 16 to show three at a time, but there is nothing special about the number 16. We can add more.  Charles Marlin

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Wild Lily Of The Valley

Watch in May and June for the low ground cover Wild Lily Of The Valley Maianthemum canadense in woods where they don’t have a lot of competition and there is partial shade and good drainage.  The two leaves have heart-shaped bases, and the tiny white flowers have four petals and four stamen.  The berries start out white, become spotted, and finish pale red.  Identify them once, then you will recognize them as an old friend each spring.

Don’t mess with the berries unless you have already made a planned gift or bequest to the Clarion County Community Foundation, you have a recent photo identification on you, and your life insurance policy is in order.  Charles Marlin

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Rare Gifts #3 Chorus Line

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Suite A Knock Twice

We have a new address.  The Clarion County Community Foundation, a wholly Clarion County organization, has for three years used the address of Bridge Builders Community Foundations in Oil City PA because that is the location of our federation business office and our Executive Director Steve Kosak.  Now Tracy J. Becker, Executive Director, of the Clarion Area Chamber of Business & Industry has offered the use of the Chamber’s Clarion address for our brochures and mailings.  Our business administration will remain located in Oil City, but now we can be reached through a Clarion address.

To mail a contribution for any of our funds, use Clarion County Community Foundation, Suite A, 21 North 6th Avenue, Clarion PA 16214.  You may select any of our five funds listed above on the Our Funds page, then put your selection on the memo line of the check.  If you prefer to contribute using PayPal, just click on the Donations page and follow instructions.

If you choose the Unrestricted Grants Fund you may be in time to take advantage of a matching grant offered to CCCF by BBCF.  Up to a total of $10,000, every dollar contributed to the Unrestricted Grants Fund will be matched dollar for dollar.

To contact our Executive Director directly, his phone is (814) 677-5085 and his email is steve_kosak@verizon.net

Everyone involved with CCCF says Thank You to Tracy J. Becker and the Chamber for giving us a mail home in Clarion County.  Charles Marlin

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A Gentle Southern Apologia

After an honored career as a biologist and naturalist, E. O. Wilson has begun a new retirement career, no not as a Walmart greeter but as a Southern Colonel who writes novels.  His debut Anthill begins in twentieth century Alabama and naturally does flashbacks to the founding families and follows them to their honor in the War, then beds itself in the solid rock of natural beauty and historic reverence.  This book is as sweet as a pecan pie and just as tasty.

If you’re going South for vacation or the yearly visit with family this is the book to take with you.  It will revive that part of you that remains Southern because you were born Southern.  If you wish you had a bit of Southern heritage, it is still the book for you.  Plus, after you’ve read it, it will make a thoughtful bread and butter gift to your hostess even if she is your mother.

It comes as a surprise that a scientist would be so comfortable with writing a novel.  He connected everything with no threads dangling.  He took care of all the character, family, natural and historic basis.  He made excellent use of his world-class knowledge of ants.  Every early clue was used again at some point.  The only thing he didn’t do was include a Southern recipe.  How did he miss that one?  Charles Marlin

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Texas Star Dark Tonight

There is little shine on the Texas star tonight if you read Texas Tough: The Rise Of America’s Prison Empire by Robert Perkinson.  While Americans are baffled by the Texas State Board of Education’s rampaging rewrite of evolution and American history, it is evident that Texas in general has a long history of rewriting and denial, none more shocking than how they continue to work racial discrimination and criminal justice to the satisfaction of the dominant white population.

There is no justification or explaining away this awful story.  It began in slavery and subjugation and continues now through incarceration and subjugation.  The pain and degradation and continual killing by the state we don’t like to consider part of our history, but it is.

It is tempting to say that every member of the Texas State Board of Education and all other state appointees, every legislator in Texas, and every political operative looking for clients in Texas should read this book, but that goal would never be achieved.  Instead I say if you are planing to attend school or work or retire to Texas, read the book first.  You may not want to be there.

In 1996 when David Oshinsky wrote “Worse Than Slavery”: Parchman Farm And The Ordeal Of Jim Crow Justice I thought I could not be more blasted by American injustice; however, Perkinson has bested him in placing Texas history into the larger flow of American history.  In this flow we find that none of us have anything to brag about.  Criminal justice has never delivered what it promised.  When it has delivered, it has been paybacks to opportunistic politicians and control fanatics.

If my remarks seem harsh to you, read the book and then tell me what you think.  At best neither you nor I can do more than rail about the problem.  We can not live without criminal justice and we don’t know how to live with it.  It’s hard to civilly share ideas.  If a partial solution was proposed and we uncharacteristically agreed to give it a trial, we probably could not afford it.

We know what Bessie, Ella, and Johnny sang, but what are the lyrics to our “Jail-House Blues”?  Charles Marlin

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Something For A Dark Mood

If you’re in a dark mood and want to wallow in it a bit longer before dealing with the noise and light of life, What Becomes was written for you.  By A. L. Kennedy and published by the Borzoi people, the collection of short stories will not take you long to read.

When your finished reading, brush your teeth, shower, and go out for a haircut.  Afterward, sit down and enjoy a cup of coffee.  Look around, smile, and release the little bastard.  Once fed it will wander off to leech another careless passerby.  Charles Marlin

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