Song for St Tammany’s Day

Honoring early America’s patron saint:

Of Andrew, of Patrick, of David, and George,
What mighty achievements we hear!
While no one relates great Tammany’s feats,
Although more heroic by far, my brave boys,
Although more heroic by far.

These heroes fought only as fancy inspired,
As by their own stories we find;
Whilst Tammany, he fought only to free
From cruel oppression mankind, my brave boys,
From cruel oppression mankind.

When our country was young and our numbers were few
To our fathers his friendship was shown,
(For he e’er would oppose whom he took for his foes,)
And he made our misfortunes his own, my brave boys,
And he made our misfortunes his own.

At length, growing old and quite worn out with years,
As history doth truly proclaim,
His wigwam was fired, he nobly expired,
And flew to the skies in a flame, my brave boys,
And flew to the skies in a flame.

Take walrus tusk in hand and raise a toast with a Tammany Cocktail:

1 jigger Mount Gay Rum
1 jigger Dark Rum (e.g., Black Seal)
1 T Fresh Lemon Juice
1 T Fresh Lime Juice
Dash of sweet vermouth

Fill cocktail shaker with ice
Add ingredients.
Shake vigorously and pour into a chilled cocktail glass.
Stir with a walrus tusk.

Variation: Top with Ginger Beer
(Via Old Dominion Tory)

(Image: Milwaukee Art Museum)

Happy St Tammany’s Day

Penn’s treaty with Chief Tamanend, as captured by Edward Hicks

Walrus tusks aweigh!

The Tammany Cocktail (via Old Dominion Tory)
1 jigger Mount Gay Rum
1 jigger Dark Rum (e.g., Black Seal)
1 T Fresh Lemon Juice
1 T Fresh Lime Juice
Dash of sweet vermouth
1. Fill cocktail shaker with ice
2. Add ingredients.
Shake vigorously and pour into a chilled cocktail glass.
Stir with a walrus tusk.

Athletics in polo helmets

To mark the arrival of spring, a photo of “Indian Bob” Johnson innovating in the pre-batting-helmet era, circa 1937.

(A tip of the polo helmet to John Eichacker.)

‘Grey is the forelock now of the Irishman’

Grey is the forelock now of the Irishman,
stick-handler of my roaring Twenties birthright,
F. Scott Fitzgerald of the sporting world,
(and, between games, father to me).

My beautiful brain-washed Canadian sons
are bringing in the whole neighbourhood
to see the old pro alive,
the all-round right-wing Maple Leaf god,
Adonis of an arena now crumbled
and fallen into the cannibal maw of mobs.

The boys, crowding in at the door,
surround him with a fiery ring of worship,
envying his eyebrows,
thick with scars inflicted by the high sticking
of old idols, Clancy, Morenz, Horner –

(and, my god, one of them is standing at attention!)

When I was their age, unholily dreamful,
full of the same power of innocence,
I saw crowds pick him up and carry him away,
policemen trampled down,
hysterical women following their infatuation
to the barricaded hotel-room doors,
crying in the corridors
their need for illusion;

and I remember the millionaires who courted him
whose money had not bought them youth
and the golden skates of fame;
one of them especially used to invite him
into his suite at the Royal York for an oyster feed,
then ordered up by phone,
crustaceans, wine, stove, pans, chef and all;
another used to send him every Christmas
suitably engraved silver dishes
which my mother never used;

I remember my father, too, in the headlines,
on the gum cards, in the rotogravure,
and how, in the pasture, there was nothing
to charge but shadows and, in the dark beyond night,
bright enourmous butterflies crossing the moon\
of his disenchanted vision; I heard him cry out to them
in another room but they stayed in his eyes
until we were all well-marked by the days
of his going down into ruin.

Wrinkled now is the brow of my all-star father
standing in the doorway
of his grandchildren generation
who yet must learn,
in smaller forums and with less limelight,
how heroes are really made.

~ Joan Finnigan

Merry Christmas!

Source

Sam Huff vs the Giants

In praise of the feather helmet

Fullback Johnny Olszewski scores against Giants (Sam Huff at right) in 1960.

Via fromtheeditr

Massasoit weathervane

This copper full-body weathervane of a Massasoit Indian with feather headdress and drawn bow, discovered in a barn in New York State, brought $29,900 at a 2011 auction.

This notorious proclamation placed a bounty on Indians. So let’s ban the word “Indian.”

And for that matter, let’s ban the word “Penobscot.”

Ridiculous, you say?

No more so than using an 1863 bounty notice from the Dakota Wars in Minnesota as a rationale for banning the word “redskin.” Indeed, “redskin” is used in this bounty notice to describe the poor souls being hunted — but so, too, is “Indian.” You see, “redskin” was a synonym for “Indian,” a descriptive term for Native Americans. If “redskins” is to be banned because it was used in this notice, then by the same logic, “Indian” should be, too.

Meantime, the notorious Phips Proclamation of 1755, pictured above, which placed a bounty on Penobscot Indians, doesn’t mention “redskins” at all. “Indians” are the ones targeted. So to use the logic of the anti-Redskin people, the word “Indian,” infamously used in the Phips Proclamation, should be banned. And “Penobscot,” too.

Yet for some reason, Indian Country Today, one of the loudest voices for banning “redskins,” uses “Indian” in its title. Logic clearly doesn’t enter into their campaign.

“Redskin”: What the Indians called themselves — not a slur!

George Catlin
American, 1796–1872
The White Cloud, Head Chief of the Iowas, 1844/1845
oil on canvas, 71 x 58 cm (27 15/16 x 22 13/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Paul Mellon Collection