Dac Crossley's Western Blog

Knoxville, Tennessee – the Old West?

I was surprised when the Western Writers of America chose Knoxville, Tennessee as the location for their annual meeting. Most western stories and movies are set someplace west of the 98th meridian, a long way from the green hills of Tennessee.

But Knoxville was, at one time, part of the Old West. In 1763, King George III ruled that the crest of the Appalachians was the western border of the colonies. At that time the American colonies were but a long, thread-like strip along the Atlantic seaboard. Settlement had halted at the foot of the mountains. Any place beyond the Appalachian summit was the western frontier.

As so often in our history, hunters couldn’t stay away from the green valleys, the hunting grounds of the Cherokees. Soon they took their families along, across the invisible boundary of the Proclamation Line. They built an illegal settlement in Indian country, Watauga Old Fields, near modern Elizabethtown, TN, on land that the Cherokees had cleared.

In 1772, the settlers formed their own government, the Watauga Association, with five magistrates who meted out punishment – whipping for horse stealing, hanging for murder. The settlers leased the Old Fields area from the Cherokees. The articles of the Watauga Association were the first constitution west of the Appalachians, a historic event.

War with the Cherokees was inevitable. A sad, familiar story.

This early history is well told in Brenda Calloway’s book, America’s First Western Frontier: East Tennessee (The Overmountain Press, Johnson City, TN, 1989. (See my Shelfari page).

And I wonder how my friends in Knoxville will take to a bunch of overdressed cowboys when WWA meets there next month.

Dac
5/20/2010

"Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other." - Benjamin Franklin

The Erosion of Civilizations.

Maybe it's not what you think. Mary F. gave me this book, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, by David R. Montgomery, a Professor at the University of Washington. (He also wrote King of Fish: The Thousand-Year Run of Salmon. I’ll bet that’s how Mary ran across him…).

Montgomery’s study of soil loss through erosion goes back to the classical civilizations and moves forward. He makes the case that stupid farming practices have led to environmental disasters almost from the beginning. And documents those mistakes thoroughly. The book is readable and compelling. (see my Shelfari page).

It made me think of growing up in south Texas, in Kingsville, at the end of a dirt road, with neighbors who farmed using animal power and their own labor. They didn’t use modern conservation methods, but their results were excellent. Montgomery makes the point that a small farm today is about 100 times more efficient than a large factory farm. (I do recall that my neighbors had a cotton field. A cash crop but very destructive to soils. Thank the Lord for the boll weevil).

Am I right? Historically, those south Texas coastal plains supported vast grasslands? On today’s thin soils, mesquite has replaced the grasses.

When Larry C. and I went to Lubbock in 1948, “sand storms” were still a regular feature in the evenings. Of course it wasn’t really sand, it was windblown loess. And we saw farmers plowing away, their tractors followed by a long plume of valuable dirt, just blowing it away.

In previous blogs I’ve mentioned the two fluids – water and oil – that limit our opportunities. I’d better add dirt – a vanishing resource worldwide.

Dac Crossley
5/10/2010

“Easy reading is damn hard writing.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Cinco de Mayo

It’s the Fifth of May, and every Mexican restaurant in the contiguous 48 States breaks out a banner announcing Cinco de Mayo and opens for business. The frozen margarita machines run throughout the afternoon and evening. Many toasts are raised to Mexico.

Perhaps some will recall to celebrate the battle of Puebla, where General Ignacio Seguin Zaragoza won a victory over a much larger French force, the reason for the fifth of May festivities. Most will simply salute our southern neighbors.

General Zaragoza, the victor, was a Texan. His parents were wed in the Old San Antonio cathedral, and he was born in Goliad in 1829. He and Juan N. Seguin, hero of the Battle of San Jacinto, were cousins.

And yes, I’ll join in and salute Mexico with a glass of frozen slush and dilute tequila. Later, I’ll add my own salute to Mexico from a bottle of Reposada at home.

As in former times, our southern neighbors face insurmountable problems, and those spill over into our own country. I pray for them, and for us. I see no simple solution to Mexico’s problems, and indeed those problems have become ours as well. Some of us propose extreme solutions.

Perhaps another General Zaragoza will emerge and lead his country out of its morass. We could use him, too.

And I’m not even talking about our southern neighbor, Florida!

Dac Crossley
5/5/2010

“I can affirm with pride that the Mexican army did not once turn its back on the enemy during the long struggle that it had to sustain.” Zaragoza; May 9, 1862

Big Science

I’ve been advised to avoid politics and religion in my Western Blog. It exists to promote my stories. I’ve pretty much left it at that.

It’s unfortunate that politics has intruded into ecology and environmental science, but it has, so I’ve stayed away from them even though they were my profession for decades.

Now comes a new book I can happily recommend to all: “Big Science,” by Dave Coleman (see my Shelfari page). Dave traces the history of large-scale ecological projects, where we tried so hard to tackle the central questions of ecology: how does it all fit together, and what does it mean for humans?

Dave’s book explains the interplay between nations and world-views, and the different approaches by varied teams of scientists. Our fumbling attempts to use mathematics to describe nature. And especially, how strong personalities often guided the ultimate outcomes.

In today’s politico-scientific milieu, as we wrestle with water shortages, green energy development, organic food distribution, low-impact agriculture and forestry, and the ever-problematic questions of world-wide climate change – It behooves us to look over our shoulders at – not just the history – but at the hard-earned successes of some of our more brilliant scientists.

If you’re wondering where we go from here – Allow Dave Coleman to point the way down the road.

Dac Crossley
5/1/2010

“The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.” – Bertrand Russell.