I think that's what they're going for. The first permanent English
settlement, the beginnings of our system of government, etc. It's the
continuity as well as the age that is important. They well realize it
wasn't "the" first white settlement in the New World. But neither was
Plimouth, arrgghh. They've even realized and changed Virginia Dare,
the formerly "first white child born in the New World" [on Roanoke
Is., now in NC] to the first English child born in the New World.
Turns out a Viking boy was born much earlier, in what is now
Newfoundland.
Nancy
-------
I was never lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.
--Daniel Boone
On Feb 1, 2007, at 2:53 PM, Melinda Skinner wrote:
> My sister, who has lived in Albuquerque for decades, is now amused
> at the Virginian/Anglo versions of U.S. history that she learned
> growing up here.
> In New Mexico she learned (and teaches) about the many other
> invaders here before the English.
> If the Jamestown 2007 folks highlight the celebration as a
> commemoration of the birth of the nation's system of government,
> they have a case.
> --
> Melinda C. P. Skinner
> Writer and Wonderer
>
> -------------- Original message ----------------------
> From: Debra Jackson/Harold Forsythe <[log in to unmask]>
>> No angry response from this New Yorker. I lost my (Western)
>> manners within
>> six months of moving to the East Coast. As a Westerner, I was
>> tolerably
>> polite in the South but as an Eastern I was pretty clunky. We
>> call in
>> "sincerity" or "straight talk" but it seems pretty rude to the
>> rest of the
>> USA. I apologize for my adopted section.
>>
>> Granting that, New York City is an immense place with more people
>> than live
>> in all of Virginia in an incredibly constricted space. Yes, it is
>> provincial. Manhattan below 96th Street is downtown for an
>> expansive area
>> which includes neighborhoods in northern Manhattan, the Bronx (the
>> only
>> mainland area of the City) and on Long Island and Staten Island.
>> People
>> live within these neighborhoods, generally knowing only their
>> neighborhood
>> and the region where their job is located. Spike Lee once noted
>> that if you
>> lived in Brooklyn you never needed to go to the Bronx. I asked a
>> lot of
>> Brooklyn folks I know whether this was true and they all said yes.
>>
>> This is like a Richmonder saying they would never ever go to
>> Ashland or
>> Petersburg.
>>
>> Finally, New Yorkers do not resent mourners from out of town going
>> to Ground
>> Zero.
>> That is the nation and the world sharing our grief. Besides,
>> generally we
>> never go near Ground Zero unless we have to. It is like the
>> crossroads in
>> southern mythology; little good comes from trespassing on that
>> territory.
>> New Yorkers generally do resent tourists because they clog up
>> Midtown and
>> make it difficult for us to get to our destinations efficiently.
>> Our motto
>> is "come to NY, spend your money rapidly, and leave."
>>
>> New Yorkers are remarkably self centered. I am not surprised that
>> someone
>> would claim the primacy of New York over Jamestown even though it is
>> nonsense. The fact is that St. Petersburg, FL, Cuidad Mexico, Santo
>> Domingo, DR, and Santa Fe, NM all pre-date Jamestown and New
>> Amsterdam. New
>> Yorkers couldn't care less, unless those cities brought some
>> exotic cuisine
>> for New Yorkers to eat.
>>
>> Harold S. Forsythe
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Sunshine49" <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>> Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2007 9:53 AM
>> Subject: Re: Jamestown vs Plymouth Rock
>>
>>
>>> Having been to NYC myself several times on business, I have a few
>>> thoughts of my own about the place. The idea that "all New
>>> Yorkers are
>>> rude", well, to me they're not, NYC is an awfully big place with
>>> only so
>>> many pieces of the pie to go around, so in order to make a go of
>>> it, my
>>> suspicion is that New Yorkers have to bend rules, break rules
>>> and push
>>> and dig harder than most people elsewhere, just to get their little
>>> piece. And it comes across as being rude, pushy, etc. They're
>>> not bad
>>> people, tho, most of them are just doing what they have to do.
>>> But that
>>> said, I also see NYC as a very provincial place, in the sense
>>> that they
>>> know [or care to know] so little other than their own little
>>> corner of
>>> the world. Is that any different that the good people of East
>>> Podunk, who
>>> only know or care to know about East Podunk? NYC is the best, the
>>> biggest, the toughest, the most resilient, New Yorkers can pull
>>> through
>>> anything, as if the people of New Orleans or Peoria or Portland
>>> couldn't?
>>> Oh, please. As I recall, that NY Times article made it sound as if
>>> Jamestown was nothing more than the hovel we saw in the movie
>>> "The New
>>> World" [and one of their sneers was that the replica of Hudson's
>>> ship was
>>> used in the filming as one of the Jamestown ships, tsk tsk], and
>>> not that
>>> it existed for 90 years, had brick buildings [at one point the
>>> largest
>>> brick official public building in any of the colonies] and
>>> became the
>>> basis for a productive colony that laid the groundwork for our
>>> present
>>> system of government. As I recall, the Dutch colony didn't
>>> actually come
>>> till some years after Henry Hudson's explorations, he didn't
>>> actually
>>> "found" anything... for much of his voyage up the Hudson he
>>> seems to have
>>> been running his ship aground, pulling it out, running it
>>> aground, didn't
>>> he take depth readings or anything? He didn't seem to have been an
>>> outstanding mariner to me.
>>>
>>> I think a NYC schizophrenia came out after the events of 9/11.
>>> The whole
>>> world wanted to sympathize with this horrifying tragedy that had
>>> befallen
>>> the city that promotes itself as the financial and cultural and
>>> publishing [etc] center of America, if not the world. The people
>>> who died
>>> there that day had roots all over the globe. And yet NYC
>>> suddenly wanted
>>> the whole world to go away and let the city grieve alone, all the
>>> "outsiders" then became obnoxious nuisances they resented, not
>>> genuinely
>>> caring citizens who shared in the grief of the city that has
>>> imposed
>>> itself on our collective conscience. When you promote yourself
>>> [continuously] as Number One, you can't then flip and shove
>>> people away
>>> when you feel the need.
>>>
>>> Now I'm sure we'll hear from some irate New Yorkers...
>>>
>>> Nancy
>>>
>>> -------
>>> I was never lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.
>>>
>>> --Daniel Boone
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Feb 1, 2007, at 6:53 AM, David Kiracofe wrote:
>>>
>>>> I remember that article: in my recollection it was more about
>>>> holding up
>>>> a romanticized view of New Amsterdam/New York as a bustling,
>>>> tolerant
>>>> multi-cultural center than about Jamestown per se (although they
>>>> did
>>>> ride down the Virginians pretty hard). They were claiming
>>>> that in
>>>> light of what America became later, New Amsterdam/New York was
>>>> more like
>>>> that than Jamestown. The problem with that view of New York's
>>>> origins
>>>> is that it ignores all the bad parts of the Dutch colonial
>>>> experiment:
>>>> treatment of Indians, slavery, etc. The Dutch were rapacious
>>>> capitalists after all, exploitative and harsh in their pursuit
>>>> of profit
>>>> (which also fits in with modern New Yorkers like Trump).
>>>>
>>>> David Kiracofe
>>>>
>>>> David Kiracofe
>>>> History
>>>> Tidewater Community College
>>>> Chesapeake Campus
>>>> 1428 Cedar Road
>>>> Chesapeake, Virginia 23322
>>>> 757-822-5136
>>>>>>> Sunshine49 <[log in to unmask]> 01/31/07 10:32 PM >>>
>>>> Late last year there was an article on the NY Times website, maybe
>>>> you all discussed it here. Talk about hooey- a few NY "historians"
>>>> claiming Jamestown had no hold on the national development at
>>>> all, it
>>>> was a bunch of wood and mud hovels that soon fell into the mud, the
>>>> real beginning that should get the credit was... Henry Hudson!
>>>> Boy I
>>>> wrote them a pointed letter, and my guess is I was not the only
>>>> one.
>>>> By the time the day was half gone, they had pulled the prominently
>>>> placed article from the website. The arguments by those
>>>> "historians"
>>>> were the most biased, ignorance-based loads of baloney I have
>>>> ever read.
>>>>
>>>> Nancy
>>>>
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