Saturday, October 09, 2010

Some history on John Lennon’s birthday…

From the Long Island newspaper, Newsday, I used to hear once and awhile about John Lennon, once from his chauffeur in the car with Yoko's mom. They were looking around to buy a place and one was in Bellport where the "Atoms For Peace" US stamp designer once lived. Another time we heard Paul had flown over to Amagansett (?) from Connecticut to have pizza with John. In high school I learned that we were one of the first to have JROTC, on Marshall Drive, Newfield, in Selden, NY named after the lawyer, former judge, who was a “character witness” (judicial no-no) at Susan B. Anthony's trial, when she was tried for posing as a man to vote in Upstate New York. Well, we had the Marines, the Army was in Paul's manager's town in Connecticut and the Navy and Air Force were out on the "Left Coast". Little Richard was at a tent revival as a minister there I just missed. Last heard there were 20,000 JROTCs in mostly poor schools, cost $1 billion a year,  and the “Defense Monitor” in the early 1990s wondered if they were worth it.

There is a old connection to Liverpool. I've worked in urban archaeology, and some of the more patriotic decorated pottery, celebrating the revolution were made there, as were other ceramic tableware. The Quakers, and on both sides of "the pond" here since the 17th century, ran packet-ships with passengers, mail, and wool to there and back in the early 19th century, forever changing the economics of the two cities. "See you in Liverpool" became sailor's goodbye.

Well, when it became “King Cotton” things started changing a lot, and it led up to a civil war. Some warships were ordered in Great Britain, Scorpion class, (Scorpion class ironclad) Another one was the infamous CSS Alabama, a raider with a disappearing propeller, it sank many commercial ships in the Atlantic and was eventually sunk off Cherbourg, France where some are still buried, by the USS Kearsarge. Great Britain had to pay an enormous amount, in a Swiss negotiated treaty trial, over it. (See Wikipedia)

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