Isaac's Storm

            Well, the Galveston trip was a while ago, but with all of the work from my other classes, it took me quite a while to get through the book Isaac’s Storm.  But that’s nothing against the book itself.  To be honest, I thought it was outstanding.  Normally, I like to be very critical of books and lectures (see my blog on the Constitution Day keynote), but I really don’t have too much bad to say about this book. 

I guess I’ll start with that, so that the finish is the good parts, and, really, those are what I want you to remember.  Now, one thing I will say about the “bad things” that this book did, is that I don’t think that they are bad things.  As previously stated, I loved the book.  I’m just going t say things that other people might not like.  As a book on history, if you are looking for a dry description of the Hurricane of Nineteen Hundred, full of facts, written in a timeline manner which looks at figures and things which are absolutely factual, taken from primary sources, this book is not for you.  It is a very personal look at the people who lived and died in the worst natural disaster in U.S. history. 

So, now on to what I think made this book so great.  It was personal.  A quick Google search will get you all the facts of the storm.  You would learn all the same figures, all the same names, dates, everything.  But it isn’t the same.  Isaac’s Storm is all about putting you in the shoes of the people who experienced this horror.  It reads like a novel.  And the best part is that it does it from a factual standpoint.  It isn’t an historical fiction.  The people aren’t larger than life (other than those who actually were) characters, who throw out perfect quotes about what they go through.  Instead, the book goes through the timeline leading up to, during, and after the storm in a way that reads as a novel, yet, at the same time, being something, somehow, different.

That’s the thing.  I can’t really describe how I felt reading Isaac’s Storm.  I loved it, I really did, but it was different than any other book I’ve ever read.  As the book wound through the stories of people as their homes were inundated or swept away by the storm, it pushed the bounds of what a factual book should do, focusing on the human suffering side, how parents must have felt knowing their children would die, and other such horrors.  To me, that was great, but I recognize that others may not share that view.  But remember, this was not a romantic story pulled from the author’s mind.  It is solidly researched; the dialogue of the book was all actually said. 

So, those are my thoughts on the book.  Is it for everyone? No.  No, it really isn’t.  But if you accept it for what it is, then it can grab you.  In all honesty, I have to admit, this book, literally, by itself, convinced me to vow never to live on the coast.  That’s the impact it had on me.  Do I really need to say anything else?

Done!

So we got the state park project presented and finished.  I have to say, it's a nice feeling to have it done and not have to worry about it.  Now, whether it was a success, well, I don't really know.  I got my project done and put up, and all the other projects looked really good.  everything came together really well, in fact, I expected there to be more problems than there were.  But for the presentation itself, well, I was outside cooking, and so I missed that.  That was the thing that worried me, the burgers took longer than I expected to cook, and the hotdogs didn't really take up the slack, but there were a lot of leftovers, so I guess that everyone got food.  The power went out, which kind of sucked, but, everyone kind of took it in stride, and things went ahead.  The geocacheing (sp?) went much better than I expected.  The groups were running?  I have to admit, I didn't ever expect that level of enthusiasm.  So, yeah.  I guess that I'd have to say that I was happy with the state park project and how it went off.

Dry Run

Well, the assignment for this blog was to discuss a dry run of the state park project presentation.  the only problem is, we didn't have one.  Instead, we discussed the issues which still remained for the presentation.  And, at this point, there's only one thing that really does worry me.  My main worry is the audience.  The students are going to be there, but they, most probably, are not going to really care.  That, however, is my only concern, and, really, there's not much to do about it.  You gotta present to the audience you have.  As for my project, I don't really know, but again it's an audience thing.  I think my project is really interesting, but, I like folk music.  I don't, however, have that much faith in the musical taste of your average freshman (or average anyone, for that matter).  But, that's what how it is.  I mean, I think that the Lomax tour was really cool.  But, it's all about the music and why it was recorded, and, so, if you aren't interested in that, then it isn't going to interest you. 

Project

So, what have I done for the state park project.  My project, I guess.  When we went the first day, I was ahead, because I was the only person who knew in advance what I was going to be doing for the project.  Now that I've actually started working, I am pretty happy with it.  My project is fairly easy, because it is pretty much all multimedia.  Maybe its just interesting.  I don't know, but it doesn't really seem to be hard work to get this project going.  I've decided to do a board that shows photographs from the other recording tours, and some info on the tour that came through Huntsville, and then of course I downloaded the music that Lomax recorded at the Walls and Goree units, so the project is mostly done. 

State Park

First day at the state Park.  Well, not mine, but the first time for the class.  I've always liked the state park, and I've spent quite a while there.  I will, admit, I'd never been to that lodge building.  It is very nice, especially that patio area with the view of the lake.  I think that the project day should work out well.  One thing that I did think was very funny was that the park ranger didn't know where the geocache was.  Oh well.  It did make the day a lot more entertaining.

Probate records.

In the probate records we looked up James Gillaspie. He wrote his will on the 18th of October 1861, as he was leaving for the Civil War. He survived the war, but died of Yellow fever in 1867. His will was probated on Dec. 31, 1867 (yeah, New Year's Eve. I guess they didn't take many days off back then). He left everything to his "beloved wife, Susan Gillaspie", and made her executor of the will, and everything. He also didn't just leave her ownership, he also gave her the power to sell anything she needed to. An interesting example was her permission to "sell any negro she can not control". That caused some confusion when I first read it, as I had first seen that the will was probated in in 1867. That was when we found that the will was written in 1861. It was quite interesting to look that up. You don't see stuff like that in wills anymore.

Constitution Day

I attended the keynote address for the Constitution Day activities. I really don't know what I think of it. There were some things that the speaker really did well, but there were several times that I almost felt like laughing. See, she was speaking about secret prisons in the War on Terror, and the torture and such that goes on in places like that. And, obviously, I think torture is bad. Like, really bad. It shouldn't be done, if for no other reason than it makes us no better than the people we are supposedly fighting. Its just that parts of her presentation seemed somewhat thrown together, especially the parts where she used her student's work. Now the students were veterans, and veterans would of course have a unique perspective, and using their work was not the problem. It was the way she did it. There was a point where she was clicking through slides, saying. " Here's a slide my student did. Here's another." and so on. Maybe I'm being a little harsh, but, that's not informative. I wanted to hear something she had found through research, and that wasn't. It felt more like she was using it for filler. Also, at the end, during the question period, when she said that she had talked enough, and wanted to hear what we think. I understand the sentiment, but we're uninformed college students. She's the expert. We're there to learn what she thinks. That's the whole idea.

The Thomason Room

So, finally, I went to the Thomason room.  A history major, four years in school, and i had never needed to go until now.  I can't say I was expecting much.  But for the local history project, I can tell already that it's going to be a life-saver.  First off, just the people that work there are a source in themselves.  I went in, needing to find a source for my New Waverly project.  Right away they were able to point me toward sources.  The one that was most useful to me was the history of the St. Joseph Catholic Church.  Founded for the Polish community, the Church has its own history of the area and the town.  As it is, it doesn't really give me too much to use on the project, but it gave me places to start, such as family names, and businesses, things that can be researched in detail by themselves, which will be the information that I do need for the project.  

Library

So the library resource presentation.  Again.  Nothing against the library or its staff, but this is at least the fourth time that I've seen it, and it is always the same.  Oh well.  

Well, I looked up two sources on their databases.  One of them was on American National Biography Online, which, as the name suggests, puts biographies of Americans online.  The biography I found was of an artist named Walter Pach.  The biography wasn't extremely detailed, but neither was it fact-lacking.  It was fairly similar to a standard wikipedia article.  However, that is one thing that was worth mentioning.  Unlike wikipedia, this biography was very well researched, and provided a complete bibliography at the  end.

The other source that I found was the July 2nd, 1902 issue of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (although then it was the Mail-Telegram), on America's Historical Newspapers.  One of the things that I can't ever get over when I'm looking at historical newspapers is how limited the articles are.  The paper I looked at was one page, and more than half of it was ad space.  That doesn't leave much room to tell what's going on in the world.  However, as far as the source went, it was pretty good.  I understand that many online newspapers are hard to read, however, this one was quite legible.  It was fairly good resolution, and overall good quality.