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Might as well pack our bags and go home. Not only will I demolish this argument, I’ll triple demolish it All you need to know, the whole story, end with the Celts, and Anglo-Saxons. Stonehenge Man: not just a pretty face Forensic analysis of a prehistoric skull gives the UK’s most iconic monument a human face 5500-year-old skeleton found in the area. The well-preserved skeleton was discovered in an elaborate tomb in the 1860s, providing a rare example of the anatomy of Neolithic people. His face has been brought to life by Swedish sculptor Oscar Nilsson, using information from bone and tooth analyses. The length of the man’s bones, the skeleton’s weight and his age – estimated at between 25 and 40 years old – were used to determine the thickness of the skin on his face and muscle definition.Stonehenge Man seems to have travelled as a child. He was born in an area of old geology, thought to be somewhere in Wales, and moved to an area matching Stonehenge when about 3 years old. If he came from Wales, says Pike, there could be a connection to the movement of bluestones, the oldest stones at Stonehenge. “The two communities may have been connected for centuries,” he says.Unfortunately, the man’s teeth were unusually clean. “If we had been able to analyse his tartar, we could have identified species he was eating by sequencing proteins in trapped fragments, while bacteria could have revealed the health of his gut,” says Pike.The team did not have enough time before the visitor centre opened to do DNA analysis of Stonehenge Man’s colouring, but this would have been difficult anyway because handling over the years has contaminated the skeleton’s DNA. They guessed at hazel eyes and dark brown hair, with a hint of ginger, to reflect probable Celtic origins.If this model of the handsome Stonehenge Man is true to life, then he would not look out of place today. “He could be sitting next to you on the subway,” says Nilsson.Stonehenge Man: not just a pretty face.[This image is so iconic, it looks like something out of a Sci-fi movie, or fantasy.]DNA studies clarify the historical contextSee also: Neolithic Europe and Chalcolithic EuropeResearchers studying DNA extracted from Neolithic human remains across Britain determined that the ancestors of the people who built Stonehenge were farmers who came from the Eastern Mediterranean, traveling west from there. DNA studies indicate that they had a predominantly Aegean ancestry, although their agricultural techniques seem to have come originally from Anatolia. These Aegean farmers then moved to Iberia before heading north, reaching Britain in about 4,000 BC.These Neolithic migrants to Britain also may have introduced the tradition of building monuments using large megaliths, and Stonehenge was part of this tradition.At that time, Britain was inhabited by groups of Western Hunter-Gatherers, similar to the Cheddar Man. When the farmers arrived, DNA studies show that these two groups did not seem to mix much. Instead, there was a substantial population replacement.The Bell Beaker people arrived later, around 2,500 BC, migrating from mainland Europe. The earliest British beakers were similar to those from the Rhine. There was again a large population replacement in Britain. The Bell Beakers also left their impact on Stonehenge construction. They are also associated with the Wessex culture.[citation needed]The latter appears to have had wide-ranging trade links with continental Europe, going as far as the Mycenaean Greece. The wealth from such trade probably permitted the Wessex people to construct the second and third (megalithic) phases of Stonehenge and also indicates a powerful form of social organisation.The Bell Beakers were also associated with the tin trade, which was Britain's only unique export at the time. Tin was important because it was used to turn copper into bronze, and the Beakers derived much wealth from this.These Neolithic migrants to Britain also may have introduced the tradition of building monuments using large megaliths, and Stonehenge was part of this tradition.The Bell Beaker people arrived later, around 2,500 BC, migrating from mainland Europe. The earliest British beakers were similar to those from the Rhine. There was again a large population replacement in Britain. The Bell Beakers also left their impact on Stonehenge construction. They are also associated with the Wessex culture.The latter appears to have had wide-ranging trade links with continental Europe, going as far as the Mycenaean Greece. The wealth from such trade probably permitted the Wessex people to construct the second and third (megalithic) phases of Stonehenge and also indicates a powerful form of social organisation.The Bell Beakers were also associated with the tin trade, which was Britain's only unique export at the time. Tin was important because it was used to turn copper into bronze, and the Beakers derived much wealth from this.Stonehenge - WikipediaHuman remains buried at Stonehenge 5,000 years ago offer a clue to where they came fromAt least some of the people who were buried at Stonehenge died and were cremated far from the site — probably in west Wales about 120 miles away, according to a new study.The finding, published Thursday in Scientific Reports, provides another small clue to understanding who was buried at the prehistoric monument around 3000 BC, and how they came to be there.The cremated remains of more than 50 individuals were first excavated from Stonehenge in the 1920s. They were discovered in a series of 56 pits known as Aubrey Holes in the inner circumference of the monument.The cremated remains of more than 50 individuals were first excavated from Stonehenge in the 1920s. They were discovered in a series of 56 pits known as Aubrey Holes in the inner circumference of the monument.Because the remains of these ancient people had obviously been cremated before they were buried, archaeologists at the time decided to dump them all back into one hole — Aubrey Hole 7.ADVERTISEMENT“Cremated remains did not have much value in the 1920s,” said Christophe Snoeck, a post-doctoral researcher in geochemistry and archaeology at Vrige University of Brussels in Belgium. “Unfortunately, all the remains were simply re-buried.”What these 20th century researchers couldn’t know is that nearly 100 years later Snoeck would discover that these burned bones could still talk.By creating a map of strontium isotope ratios across a geographical area and comparing that with those found in a bone fragment, scientists can determine a human or animal’s place of origin — or at least where they spent the majority of the last 10 years before they died.In this study, the researchers identified bone fragments belonging to 25 distinct individuals that had been buried at Stonehenge. The strontium isotope analysis revealed that the bones of 15 of these people exhibited the same strontium isotope ratio that existed in the area around the monument.The results from the other 10, however, showed that these people did not consume food grown in the local area alone.Snoeck said the results were unexpected.“We expected to see some people that were not local, but so many was a surprise,” he said.The researchers can’t be totally sure where these 10 people came from, but the strontium isotope ratios in their bones are consistent with a region in west Wales that is known to be the source of some of the stones in the monument.Further analysis also suggested that the wood fuel that was used to cremate some of these people did not come from the area around the monument either.Human remains buried at Stonehenge 5,000 years ago offer a clue to where they came from.Most scientists agree on the modern theory that three tribes built Stonehenge at three separate times. In approximately 3000 B.C., it is believe the first people to work on the site were Neolithic agrarians. Archaeologists named them the Windmill Hill people after one of their earthworks on Windmill Hill, which is near Stonehenge. The Windmill Hill peoples built large circular furrows, or hill-top enclosures, dug around a mound and had collective burials in large stone-encased tombs. Most of their burial mounds point east-west. These people were a blend of the local peoples and Neolithic tribe members from Eastern England. They were one of the first semi-nomadic hunting and gathering groups with an agricultural economy and contained a strong reverence for circles and symmetry. They raised cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, grew wheat and mined flint.The Beaker people, or Beaker Folk, came from Europe at the end of the Neolithic Period and invaded Salisbury Plain around 2000 B.C. Their name comes from one of their ancient traditions in which they would bury beakers, or pottery drinking cups, with their dead. Instead of burring their dead in mass graves, they showed more reverence for death by placing them in small round graves marked by mounds called tumuli. It is assumed by archaeologists that the Beaker People were more warlike in nature than most tribes of their time because they buried their dead with more weapons, such as daggers and battle axes. The Beaker Folk were highly organized, industrious, used sophisticated mathematical concepts, and managed their society by using a chieftain system. They began using metal implements and living in a more communal fashion. Scientists believe they were sun worshipers who aligned Stonehenge more exactly with certain important sun events, such as mid summer and winter solstices.Who Built Stonehenge?.The Wessex Peoples are considered the third and final peoples to work on the Stonehenge site. They arrived around 1500 B.C. at the height of the Bronze Age. They were by far one of the most advanced cultures outside the Mediterranean during this period. Since their tribal base were located where ridgeways, or ancient roads, met, they became skillful and well-organized traders, controlling trade routes throughout Southern Britain. These people are thought to have been responsible for the bronze dagger carving found on one of the large sarsen stones within Stonehenge. They were a very smart culture, wealthy, and used greater precision in their calculations and construction. It is felt they used these talents in finalizing Stonehenge into what we see today.Before the monument (from 8000 BC)Archaeologists have found four, or possibly five, large Mesolithic postholes (one may have been a natural tree throw), which date to around 8000 BC, beneath the nearby old tourist car-park in use until 2013. These held pine posts around two feet six inches (0.75 m) in diameter, which were erected and eventually rotted in situ. Three of the posts (and possibly four) were in an east-west alignment which may have had ritual significance. Another Mesolithic astronomical site in Britain is the Warren Field site in Aberdeenshire, which is considered the world's oldest Lunar calendar, corrected yearly by observing the midwinter solstice. Similar but later sites have been found in Scandinavia. A settlement that may have been contemporaneous with the posts has been found at Blick Mead, a reliable year-round spring one mile (1.6 km) from Stonehenge.Salisbury Plain was then still wooded, but 4,000 years later, during the earlier Neolithic, people built a causewayed enclosure at Robin Hood's Ball and long barrow tombs in the surrounding landscape. In approximately 3500 BC, a Stonehenge Cursus was built 2,300 feet (700 m) north of the site as the first farmers began to clear the trees and develop the area. A number of other previously overlooked stone or wooden structures and burial mounds may date as far back as 4000 BC. Charcoal from the ‘Blick Mead’ camp 1.5 miles (2.4 km) from Stonehenge (near the Vespasian's Camp site) has been dated to 4000 BC. The University of Buckingham's Humanities Research Institute believes that the community who built Stonehenge lived here over a period of several millennia, making it potentially "one of the pivotal places in the history of the Stonehenge landscape.”The oldest known depiction of Stonehenge, from the second quarter of the 14th century. A giant helps Merlin build Stonehenge. From a manuscript of the Roman de Brut by Wace in the British Library (Egerton 3028).Stonehenge - WikipediaFile:Stonehenge Archer - Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum.jpgThe Stonehenge Archer. A Bronze Age man whose body was discovered in the outer ditch of Stonehenge. Now on display in the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum.File:Stonehenge Archer - Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum.jpgThe Amesbury Archer is an early Bronze Age man whose grave was discovered during excavations at the site of a new housing development (grid reference SU16324043) in Amesbury near Stonehenge. The grave was uncovered in May 2002, and the man is believed to date from about 2300 BC. He is nicknamed "the Archer" because of the many arrowheads buried with him. The grave contained more artefacts than any other early British Bronze Age burial, including the earliest known gold objects ever found in England.The calibrated radiocarbon dates for his grave and dating of Stonehenge suggest the sarsens and trilithons at Stonehenge may have been raised by the time he was born, although a new bluestone circle may have been raised at the same time as his birth.BurialThe Archer's grave yielded the greatest number of artefacts ever found in a burial from this period (the Early Bronze Age) in Britain. Among those discovered were: five funerary pots of the type associated with the Beaker culture; three tiny copper knives; sixteen barbed flint arrowheads; a kit of flint-knapping and metalworking tools, including cushion stones that functioned as a kind of portable anvil and that suggest he was a coppersmith; and some boar's tusks. On his forearm was a black stone wrist-guard. A similar red wrist-guard was by his knees. With the second wrist-guard was a shale belt ring and a pair of gold hair ornaments, the earliest gold objects ever found in England.Research using oxygen isotope analysis in the Archer's tooth enamel has suggested that he originated from an alpine region of central Europe. An eroded hole in his jaw showed that he had suffered from an abscess, and his missing left kneecap suggests that he had an injury that left him with a painful lingering bone infection.His skeleton is now on display at the Salisbury Museum in Salisbury.—he originated from an alpine region of central Europe—Second BurialA male skeleton found interred nearby is believed to be that of a younger man related to the Archer, as they shared a rare hereditary anomaly, calcaneonavicular coalition, fusing of the calcaneus and of the navicular tarsal (foot bones). This younger man, sometimes called the Archer's Companion, appears to have been raised in a more local climate. The Archer was estimated to be about forty at the time of his death, while his companion was in his early twenties. The graves were discovered only a short distance from the Boscombe Bowmen, whose bones were excavated the following year.Importance of the burialsThe Archer was quickly dubbed the King of Stonehenge in the British press due to the proximity of the famous monument and some have even suggested that he could have been involved in its construction. […] Tim Darvill regards the skeleton as possibly that of a pilgrim to Stonehenge to draw on the 'healing properties' of the bluestones.However his grave is of particular importance because of its connections with Continental Europe and early copper smelting technology. He is believed to have been one of the earliest gold metalworkers in Britain and his discovery supports interpreters who claim that the diffusion of Beaker Culture pottery was the result of population movement, rather than just the widespread adoption of an artefact 'package'.Amesbury Archer - WikipediaBoscombe BowmenThe Boscombe Bowmen is the name given by archaeologists to a group of early Bronze Age people found in a shared burial at Boscombe Down in Amesbury (grid reference SU16384105) near Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England.The burialsThe grave contained a total of seven burials: three children, a teenager and three men. Analysis of the skulls suggests that the men and the teenager were related to each other. The eldest man was buried in a crouched position with the bones of the others scattered around him and their skulls resting at his feet. They became known as the Bowmen because several flint arrowheads were placed in the grave. Other grave goods included a boar's tusk, a bone toggle, flint tools, and eight Beaker vessels, an unusually high number.The burials are thought to date from around 2300 BCE, making them broadly contemporary with the Amesbury Archer who was found nearby to the south.AnalysisLead isotope analysis of the men's teeth has indicated that they grew up in the areas either of modern Wales or in the Lake District, but left in childhood. This was thought to be contemporary with the major building work of erecting the Sarsen Circle and the trilithons at Stonehenge but new research indicates that these burials occurred shortly after Stonehenge Phase 3ii.Boscombe Bowmen - WikipediaStonehenge - A MuseumsPartner turnkey traveling exhibitionDISCOVEROver 1.5 million people annually travel to the south of England to experience this mysterious wonder and World Heritage site, dating back 5,000+ years. Now, within this America's premiere exhibition, step back into ancient civilizations and ask the "Who", "How" and "Why" yourself. Consider the evidence. Meet the fascinating people behind the stones. Study their nearly-impossible efforts. Explore how their history reshaped our entire understanding of the ancient world. An unprecedented and unexpected journey into the unknown is just ahead . . .COURTESY HOUSTON MUSEUM OF NATURAL SCIENCEThe Secrets of Stonehenge Come Alive at the Houston Museum of Natural ScienceFully half of the 300 artifacts on display at HMNS have never traveled outside Europe. Interactive maps, scale models, and artists’ renderings of work crews and farming settlements construct a fascinating and convincing portrait of life in prehistoric England, as do the various tools—antler picks, jade axes, bulky stone hammers known as mauls—that have been unearthed from the chalky English soil.Union Station Kansas CityOn the Megalithic Trail - Cultural Routes | Crossing Routes, blogging EuropeIn Borger, Netherlands, you find the only museum dedicated to the megalithic culture – Hunebedcentrum. Hunebed is the Dutch word for megalithic tombs, and the word means “bed of giants”. The museum is dedicated to these monuments which are the oldest structures in the country, and there are still around 54 hunebeds still around today. Many of them were used in making the dikes that protect the Netherlands from the ocean. Most of these tombs are called passage graves, and follow the same pattern. They all consist of a capstone laid across two standing stones, and a lot of them are so big that they consist of several standing stones and capstones put together, making a big chamber.This guy lived some 4,500 years ago, Holland North. This is his facial reconstruction.File:Cees de steentijdman2.jpgThe skeleton of Cees, the Stone Age man, has been excavated in 1990, in the province North-Holland, the Netherlands. He lived in the New Stone Age, the Neolithics and reached the age of 26-35 years. Cees was a farmer who also gathered wild plants and fruits, fished and went hunting. His round grave pit was positioned in the centre of a rectangle place, bordered by posts. His skeleton was incomplete: his right arm and all the bones beneath his thighbones were missing, except for the right shinbone. His body was buried in the prone/left side position with flexed knees. On his right thigh and shin-bone were gnawing marks, made by big dogs or wolves. Archaeologists think that Cees died somewhere out in the fields, where subsequently dogs or wolves gnawed at his bones. His contemporaries brought the remainders of his body to the funeral house to bury him.The skull is scanned in the AMC by M. Poulus and R.J. Jansen. Data is converted by M. van Stralen, ISI, at the UMC Utrecht.Client: province of North Holland.Exhibition: House of Hilde.Cees " skullptingRight outside of the Hunebedcentrum you find the biggest hunebed in the country. What’s left today is only the skeleton of the original tomb. The hunebeds used to be covered with an earth mound, with an entry portal on the long side, making them look quite different than the ones that remain today.In addition to such structures as mentioned above, the megalithic culture also includes alignments and circles of giant stones – mostly on the British Isles and Southern Scandinavia – with the most famous being the mysterious and ever fascinating Stonehenge.Here we have examples from the Netherlands/Hollandthe stone age man of Swifterbant4000 years BCE, the New Stone Age, the Neolithic [BC]The skeleton of this man was found in the Flevopolder and belonged to the Swifterbant culture. The people of this culture were farmers and hunter-gatherers. When he died he was somewhere between 25 and 45 years old. He was buried with a string of amber beads on his forehead.His skull was scanned in the Red Cross Hospital in Beverwijk by dr. A. Kamphuis and dr. K.L. Vincken (ISI) has processed and adapted the digital data.skullptingThe first coastal dwellers3700 – 3400 BCE, New Stone AgeThe first coastal dwellersIn 3700 before Christ the first coastal dwellers moved to the dunes, to the place where the The Hague suburb Ypenburg now lies. They grew grain and kept cows and pigs, but still hunted and fished as well. This is the New Stone Age, people used pottery and flint tools. They buried their dead in burial sites, and one of these sites was uncovered when Ypenburg was being build. From this burial site, four skulls became the basis for facial reconstructions: Ypje, an older woman, a young child and an older man.Ypje, the older man and the young child have also been made as bronze busts.Exhibition: The older woman, the man and the child are on display at the “The first coastal dwellers” at the Museon Museum. (clothing: M. de Mol, bodies: F. Schuller)Bronze Busts: In Park Het Baken in Ypenburg a section has been devoted to archeology.In addition to a ground plan of an archeological farm and a bench made from a 5,000 year-old turfoak, three bronze facial reconstructions are on display. They are the bronze versions of Ypje, the man and the child.3700 – 3400 BCE, New Stone AgeYpjeThe first facial reconstruction was that of a young woman between 25 and 35 years of age.She was named Ypje, after her find spot, Ypenburg. Ypje is also on display as a bronze bust in Park Het Baken in Ypenburg.The movie from the CT-scan data of the skull, is made in the Image Sciences Institute, of the University Medical Center Utrecht with acknowledgements to dr. K.L. Vincken.film: ISI / UMC-UtrechtClient: Ypje was commissioned by Dienst Grondzaken, dept. V & H of Rijswijk.Client: The bronze bust was commissioned by the dept. of Archaeology of The Hague.Elderly woman and childA couple of years later after Ypje, the faces of a slightly older woman (between 35 and 44 years old), and a child between 5 and 6 years old, were reconstructed. What is remarkable about the woman and child is that they were buried in the same grave, albeit that the child was interred some years later. Maybe they were related?Elderly woman and childA couple of years later after Ypje, the faces of a slightly older woman (between 35 and 44 years old), and a child between 5 and 6 years old, were reconstructed. What is remarkable about the woman and child is that they were buried in the same grave, albeit that the child was interred some years later. Maybe they were related?The skull of the child is scanned at the Image Sciences Institute, of the University Medical Center Utrecht, where dr. K.L. Vincken processed and adapted the digital scandata.Exhibition: The facial reconstructions are on display at the Museon with bodies and prehistoric clothings in their everyday environment.Exhibition: The face of the child is also cast in bronze, and can be seen in Park Het Baken in Ypenburg.Client: The older woman, the child and the bronze bust are all commissioned by the dept. of Archaeology of The Hague.The oldest grave of the Netherlands, “Trijntje”Period: 5500 years before Christ, the Middle Stone Age, the Mesolithic[7500 years ago]Trijntje as she was found (foto: PAB).Trijntje was a woman of 40 – 60 years old. She was buried 7500 years ago, making hers the oldest known burial site in the Netherlands. She lived in the Middle Stone Age and belonged to the hunter-gatherers. This facial reconstruction was completed with Trijntje’s body laid out in the same position as it was found during the excavation.Her skull has been scanned in the University Medical Center Utrecht / Image Sciences Institute. Here dr. K.L. Vincken has processed and adapted the digital skull data.Client: Projectgroup Archaeology Betuweroute.Exhibition: the museum De Koperen Knop, at Hardinxveld – Giessendam, the area where she used to live.Links: More about TrijntjeDocumentary: De reconstructie van Trijntje (the reconstruction of Trijntje).Book: De reconstructie van Trijntje (the reconstruction of Trijntje).The oldest grave of the Netherlands, “Trijntje”The raspberry girl - Sweden, 5,000 years agoBackgroundIn 1943, a skeleton was accidentally found in the ground in Västergötland.The skeleton turned out to belong to a young woman who lived during the Peasant Stone Age.The skeleton was about 5,000 years old.The girl was around 20 years old when she died and about 144 cm tall.In the girl's pelvis, where her stomach had once been, small yellow-brown nuclei were found.After examining the kernels more closely, it turned out that they come from raspberries.It was then understood that the girl had eaten many raspberries before she died.That is why the girl, in our time, is called the Raspberry Girl.Hallonflickan – läromedel i historia åk 4,5,6The Raspberry GirlPosted by Marie-Louise Wed, 03/25/2015 - 20:39Visit Falbygden's museum today.There was a writing about the Raspberry Girl who had left 5000 years ago and died a sacrificial death according to the philosophy of the time.The Peasant Stone Age.This is a reconstruction of the raspberry girl that archaeologists and researchers have arrived at today.at the time of her death she was 18, 19 years old.Why the name?it was shown in the picture next to where the skeletal bones can be seen, there is also the stomach with its contents.Raspberry seeds that have been her last food.Incredibly exciting to absorb this story.BritainThe Copper Age Scot, dubbed “Thankerton ManArchaeological facial reconstruction is in high demand among museums and documentary film makers. Most recently the face of “Thankerton Man” was reconstructed for the Biggar and Upper Clydesdale Museum in Scotland. Found in a stone cist in the Scottish village of Thankerton in 1970, the skull was radiocarbon-dated to between 2460 BC and 2140 BC and thought to have been that of a man aged 18 to 25.The face of a young man dating from the Copper Age, whose skeleton was discovered at Boatbridge Quarry in Thankerton, has been recreated by experts at the University of Dundee.The face of Thankerton Man is on show to the public at the newly opened Biggar & Upper Clydesdale Museum.His skeleton was found in a stone cist at Boatbridge Quarry, Thankerton in 1970. He was unusually tall, thought to be aged between 18 and 25, and found lying in a crouched position. The remains were radiocarbon dated to between 2460BC and 2140BC.The cist contained a finely-decorated Beaker which had held food or drink for the deceased’s journey into the Afterlife. The pot and skeleton are curated by National Museums Scotland.Working from detailed analysis of the skull, specialists in the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification (CAHID) at the University of Dundee, one of the world’s leading centres for facial reconstruction, have created a reconstruction of the man’s face.The estimated height of the man was around 1.8 metres (5 feet 11 inches), which is regarded as tall in Copper Age terms.Thankerton Man Face Revealed At Biggar Museum : NewsAva facial reconstructionA facial reconstruction of an Early Bronze Age woman known to archaeologists as Ava. Researchers have gained new insights into the life of a woman who died more than 4,250 years ago. Known as "Ava", her bones were found in a grave cut into solid bedrock at Achavanich in Caithness in 1987. Dec 3, 2018Giving life to a woman found in a 4,250-year-old grave in Caithness.Facial reconstructionThroughout this project Hew has created two equally beautiful, remarkable facial reconstructions. The first, created in 2016, depicted Ava with skin, eye and hair colouring based on the modern day population of Caithness. At this time we had no idea that we would ever be able to get information that would provide a more accurate depiction. However, in 2017, work on Ava’s in ancient DNA by Inigo Olalde from the Reich Laboratory at Harvard Medical School revealed that Ava actually had very different colouring, most likely with black hair, brown eyes and tanned skin (similar to populations living in current Mediterranean, Southern European countries).Ditchling Road man from the Bronze AgeDates from: 2,287-2,125 BC (83% probability).Date found: June 1921 by workmen whilst road widening.Location found: Ditchling Road, about 300m south of Old Boat Corner.Size, height and age: age, 25 – 35; height 1.71m, which was slightly below average – he was not very muscular or robust.How he died: there are no obvious signs as to how he died, but we do know that at various times he suffered serious malnutrition and that he was probably pale and sickly. He may not have had a very strong constitution and was therefore more susceptible to disease.Interesting fact: from the osteological review, we know he suffered from a loss of teeth (both first molars) and tooth decay. In addition, some areas of porosity in his bones point to him being anaemic.Stirling's oldest resident revealed to be 4000-year-old 'Torbrex Tam'Stirling archaeologist Murray Cook explained: “Torbrex Tam died around 2152 to 2021 BC. He is more than 4000 years old.Human bones uncovered in Stirling in the late 19th century have been identified as being more than 4000 years old, making ‘Torbrex Tam’ the city’s oldest resident to date.The remains of the man in his 20s were found within a chambered cairn, on land occupied by a market garden, in 1872. The cairn, the oldest structure in Stirling, is now surrounded by houses in Coney Park.Radiocarbon dating results, released last week, have established that Tam’s bones date from the Bronze Age when Torbrex was a small settlement surrounded by water.During the 1870s, workmen digging for gravel hit a stone-lined box or cist. Inside were the remains of a man who would have been in his 20s when he died.Nicknamed ‘Torbrex Tam’ they were given to the Smith Museum for safekeeping. As well as Tam’s bones being dated, his facial reconstruction has also been carried out.Stirling's oldest resident revealed to be 4000-year-old 'Torbrex Tam'Slonk Hill man from the Iron AgeDates from: 393-206 BC (95% probability).Date found: 1968 during a rescue archaeological dig by Brighton and Hove Archaeological Society in advance of the diversion works to the A27.Location found: immediately north of the Shoreham Bypass and about 1km west of the Holmbush Shopping Centre.Size, height and age: age 24 – 31; height 1.71m, which was slightly above average — he was muscular and robust.How he died: there are no obvious signs as to how he died. Analysis of his dental plaque showed the presence of smoke and charcoal, He was working or living in very smoky conditions; he may have been a metalworker, which might have affected his lungs.Interesting fact: he has very high cheek bones, a cleft chin and although generally good, a few of his teeth were congenitally joined. It would have given him a very distinctive look and smile.SwedenForensic Artist Reconstructs Face of 8,000-Year-Old Skull-on-a-StakeSTONE AGE MAN’S FACE RECONSTRUCTED 8,000 YEARS AFTER HIS HEAD WAS MOUNTED ON A PIKEIn 2012, the remains of at least 11 Stone Age adults and an infant were found in Motala, a municipality in eastern-central Sweden.Only one of the adult human skulls had a jaw, while the jaw bones of wild animals—including bears, boar and deer—were found alongside the humans in the gravesite. Additionally, two of the skulls had been placed on stakes in the water, which archeologists now believe to be part of an ancient ritual or tribute to prominent people. Thus, the jawless man Nilsson reconstructed was likely a village leader with high status.Dark hair and beard, light blue eyes, a light complexion and a scar on his head—this is what the 50-year-old man looked like nearly 8,000 years ago when his head was placed on a wooden stake during an ancient ritual. The man’s remains were found in what was once a prehistoric lake in Sweden, and now—thanks to renowned forensic artist and sculptor Oscar Nilsson—we have a rough idea of what he looked like in life.For the reconstruction, which took approximately 240 hours, Nilsson first had to recreate the man’s jaw based on measurements of his skull. Luckily, researchers were able to obtain DNA data from six skulls, including this man’s, enabling Nilsson to exploit that data for age, eye, skin and hair color. Historical accounts, experience and general forensic reconstruction techniques informed Nilsson as he pieced together the more artistic attributes of the man, such as hairstyle, wrinkles, and the wild boar clothing he is depicted in.Forensic Artist Reconstructs Face of 8,000-Year-Old Skull-on-a-StakeMonday, July 6, 2020Art & Science By O D NilssonOscar Nilsson re-creates lifelike human faces from ...www.nationalgeographic.com › magazine › 2020/08 Jul 7, 2020 — Oscar Nilsson uses high-tech tools—such as 3D printing and DNA analysis—to refine his reconstructions of ancient humans' faces. · He gives the ...—Forensic Facial Reconstruction of Prehistoric Man Skull that Found on a Stake - Technology Times (Forensic Facial Reconstruction of Prehistoric Man Skull that Found on a Stake - Technology Times)Scientists reconstruct face of 9,000 year-old Greek teenager ...www.reuters.com › article › us-greece-archaeology-dawn Jan 23, 2018 — Scientists reconstruct face of 9,000 year-old Greek teenager ... Discovered in a cave in 1993, the girl was named Avgi - Greek for Dawn ...Germany, 14,000 years agoThe Oberkassel Double Burial - Don's Mapswww.donsmaps.com › oberkassel Mar 4, 2019 — The Double Burial of Oberkassel - In 1914 stone quarry workers in Bonn-Oberkassel discovered two human skeletons, bones from a dog, and ...[See full article, entire presentation, all available information, forensics etc.]Germany, 14,000 years agoIf you are still interested, intrigued, well, review this, from beginning to end, which provides a substantial list, oldest surviving buildings in the world. Many of which, can be found in greater Europe, and older, than Stonehenge. Of course, the greater Middle East, provides substantial evidence, ancient remains, and as far, Turkey.However, in Greece, there is a stone wall at the entrance to a cave, dated some 23,000 years old.List of oldest known surviving buildingsList of oldest known surviving buildings - WikipediaThis article lists the oldest known surviving free-standing buildings constructed in the world, including on each of the continents and within each country. "Building" is defined as any human-made structure used or interface for supporting or sheltering any use or continuous occupancy. In order to qualify for this list a structure must:be a recognisable building;incorporate features of building work from the claimed date to at least 1.5 metres (4.9 ft) in height;be largely complete or include building work to this height for most of its perimeter.contain an enclosed area with at least one entry point.This consciously excludes ruins of limited height and statues. The list also excludes:dolmens, a type of single-chamber megalithic tomb, usually consisting of three or more upright stones supporting a large flat horizontal capstone. Dolmens were typically covered with earth or smaller stones to form a tumulus (which are included in the list). In many instances, that covering has weathered away, leaving only the stone "skeleton" of the burial mound intact. Neolithic dolmens are extremely numerous, with over 1,000 reported from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in Germany alone.[1]cairns, which are simply large piles of loose stones (as opposed to chambered cairns)standing stone rings, such as Stonehenge, also do not count because they are not enclosed and do not have roofs.Dates for many of the oldest structures have been arrived at by radiocarbon dating and should be considered approximate.List of oldest known surviving buildings - WikipediaOne such exampleFront of the Cairn de BarnenezFranceEurope4850 BCPassage graveLocated in northern Finistère and partially restored. According to André Malraux it would have been better named 'The Prehistoric Parthenon'. The structure is 72 m (236 ft) long, 25 m (82 ft) wide and over 8 m (26 ft) high.Engraved symbolsEngraved symbols occur in several of the chambers and passages. They depict bows, axes, wave symbols or snakes and a repeated U-shaped sign. One of the carved slabs is in secondary use was originally part of a different structure, an interesting parallel to the situation in several other such monuments, including Gavrinis. The symbols on the engraved blocks resemble those found in other megalithic monuments in Brittany; in broader terms they belong to the cultural phenomenon described as megalithic art. One of the recurring symbols is sometimes interpreted as an anthropomorphic depiction (the so-called "Dolmen Goddess").The Cairn of BarnenezTheroadislong - Own workDatesRadiocarbon dates indicate that the first phase of the monument was erected between 4850 and 4250 BC, and the second phase between 4450 and 4000 BC.MesolithicArchaeologists believe they have discovered the world's oldest lunar "calendar" in an Aberdeenshire field. Excavations of a field at Crathes Castle found a series of 12 pits which appear to mimic the phases of the moon and track lunar months. Jul 15, 2013'World's oldest calendar' discovered in Scottish field - BBC NewsWarren Field - WikipediaWarren Field is the location of a mesolithic calendar monument built about 8,000 BCE. It includes 12 pits believed to correlate with phases of the Moon and used as a lunar calendar. It is considered to be the oldest lunar calendar yet found. It is near Crathes Castle, in the Aberdeenshire region of Scotland, in the ...Star Carr - WikipediaStar Carr is a Mesolithic archaeological site in North Yorkshire, England. It is around five miles ... Red deer antler head-dress from Star Carr, British Museum; Stone Age remains are Britain's earliest house, University of Manchester; Star Carr ...Location: Scarborough, North Yorkshire, Engla...Periods: MesolithicFounded: Approximately 9300 BC-Archaeologists discover Britain's 'oldest house' - BBC Newswww.bbc.com › news › education-10929343Aug 10, 2010 — Evidence of what would have been a 3.5 metre diameter house has been found at the Star Carr archaeological site, which was occupied by ...-Britain's oldest house found in North Yorkshire | Archaeology ... Aug 10, 2010 — But the scale of development at the Star Carr site near Scarborough, combined with other recent finds at Howick in Northumberland and East .-Star Carr | A Mesolithic site in North Yorkshire | Homewww.starcarr.com Star Carr is a Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) archaeological site, dating to around 9000 BC, just centuries after the end of the last Ice Age. It has become world ...anglo saxon burials - Google Searchanglo saxon skeletons - Google SearchLived around 500 AD.Anglo-Saxon warriorDiscovered in 1985 during building works, Stafford Road Man is among the first wave of Saxons to enter Britain after the collapse of the Roman Empire. Buried with a spear and a knife around 500 A.D., he lived an unusually long and active life and died after the age of 45. Apart from arthritis in his spine, shoulders, and hips, skeletal analysis shows Stafford Road Man suffered from an enormous dental abscess, which would have caused terrible pain and likely killed him after the infection spread to his brain.skeleton excavated in Stafford Road, Brighton.Art & Science By O D NilssonHe looks like Lech Walesa:David CrosbyAmerican singer-songwriterBirth Name: David Van Cortlandt CrosbyEthnicity: English, some Dutch and Northern Irish, distant Welsh, Scottish, and NorwegianDavid Crosby - Ethnicity of Celebs | What Nationality Ancestry RaceAlthough of course, David has much finer features, vastly different person, although, in essence, the similarity is slightly obvious, yet there would have been even better examples, by far.However, this guy, is portraying, ancient Celts of Britain, while he generally appears to look Scottish, may well be Scottish himself.Here he is side by side with the first reconstruction, either published back 2001. Same individual. However, does not mean, the reconstruction is invalid, or less-than.Digitising the Pavilion ReviewThe Reconstruction of a Saxon Man's FaceSeventh-century Saxon skull and the facial reconstruction carried out by Caroline Wilkinson, HA260108.9550 AD to 620 AD.A Pagan Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Norton-on-TeesReproduction/replicareproduction/replicaReproductionsSAX APPEALStunning Anglo-Saxon helmet worn by Brit military general 1,300 years ago goes on display after experts reconstruct it from 4,000 piecesThe helmet fragments were discovered among a £3.3m hoard in Hammerwich, StaffordshireHana Carter23 Nov 2018, 9:54Updated: 23 Nov 2018, 12:18AN ANGLO-SAXON helmet painstakingly reconstructed by experts from 4,000 pieces goes on display for the first time today.Fragments of the golden headpiece, believed to have been worn by a general on the battlefields of Britain 1,300 years ago, were among a 3.3m hoard uncovered by an amateur metal detectorist in Hammerwich, Staffordshire in 2009.The 1,300-year-old general's helmet will go on display in Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent Credit: PA: Press AssociationThe invaluable helmet had been smashed into 4,000 fragments - presumably as the result of a fierce and bloody battle.Now two incredible replicas will go on display to the public after an 18-month project after experts felt it would be impossible to reconstruct it using the original pieces.One replica will go on permanent display at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and the other at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent.The details were crafted by experts using state-of-the-art technology Credit: PA: Press AssociationThe helmet was made from Anglo-Saxon gold discovered by a metal detector enthusiast Credit: PA: Press AssociationWeighing in at three kilograms each, the helmets are made out of steel, leather, gold, and silver plated bronze and copper.An expert from Birmingham Museums Trust said that one of the helmets was "violently torn apart before burial".It took 18 months to recreate Credit: PA: Press AssociationOne of the ear pieces shows the exquisite detail of the recreation Credit: PA:Press AssociationThe Anglo-Saxons came over from Europe Credit: AlamyThe Anglo-Saxons were made up of tribes from Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands.They inhabited England - which they called Angle-land - from around AD410 to 1066, after the Romans soldiers left in 410.As well as being craftsmen and farmers, the Anglo-Saxons were also fierce warriors and would fight to the death to defend their territory.The Anglo-Saxons ruled Britain from 500 years when they were conquered by the Normans, who invaded from Northern France.The helmet was made from gold valued at just over £3 million Credit: Getty - ContributorGold 1,300-year-old Anglo-Saxon helmet rebuilt from 4,000 pieces goes on displayanglo saxon skeletons - Google Searchanglo saxon skeletons - Google Searchanglo saxon burials - Google SearchFace of a Saxon manRadiocarbon dating of the remains showed the man died sometime between A.D. 1035 and 1070, or just before the Norman Conquest.between 36 and 45 years old when he died.A recreation of the face of a Saxon man whose skeleton was found at an old church in Lincoln Castle CREDIT: Photo: University of Dundee/PADUNDEE, SCOTLAND—Forensic experts at the University of Dundee have reconstructed the face of a Saxon man whose skeleton was unearthed at a previously unknown church discovered on the grounds of Lincoln Castle, which was built by William the Conqueror. Radiocarbon dating of the remains showed the man died sometime between A.D. 1035 and 1070, or just before the Norman Conquest. His skeleton, which showed a range of significant degenerative bone diseases suggestive of a strenuous life, was one of eight discovered at the site, and was unusually well preserved. “His grave lay slightly under an important sarcophagus burial, which had resulted in excellent preservation of his skull [that made] it the best candidate among the skeletons for facial reconstruction,” said forensic artist Caroline Erolin in a University of Dundee press release. Osteological examination of the remains shows the man was between 36 and 45 years old when he died, and isotope analysis of his bones and teeth indicate that he was born and bred in eastern England. To read about the excavation of an early Anglo-Saxon site, go to "The Kings of Kent."Scotland.Faces reconstructed from the skeletal remains found in a burial site in Cramond offer tantalising clues about life in Scotland during the sixth and seventh centuriesThese faces staring out across the centuries date from the Dark Ages in Scotland and were created by forensic artist Hayley Fisher. They are based on the skeletons found in a grave beneath a car park in the Edinburgh village suburb of Cramond in 1975, which archaeologists believe contained at least two generations of the same family from the sixth and seventh centuries.The forensic report of one of the males (aged 26 – 35) showed evidence of sharp and blunt force injuries, probably caused by a weapon like the butt of a spear shaft. He also had cut marks above his right eye.Male, aged 18-25 (died 540-600 AD). Isotopic analysis indicates he grew up in or around Cramond and spent his last surviving years in the area. Forensic evidence reveals he suffered from a sharp-force injury and two cuts above his right eye which healed before his time of death, suggesting he may have been a warrior fighter. © Hayley FisherFemale, aged 26-35 (died 430-550 AD). Isotopic analysis reveals she grew up locally and spent her final years in and around Cramond, but there is lack of evidence as to her cause of death. Forensics reveal poor teeth and an iron deficiency. © Hayley FisherMale, aged 26-35 (died 540-610 AD). Isotopic analysis suggests he grew up in Peebleshire or Lanarkshire, or perhaps further afield in Argyll or Loch Lomondside in the British Kingdom of Alt Clut (Strathclyde). He died in the Cramond area. The forensic report provides evidence of sharp and blunt force injuries, probably caused by a blunt weapon like the butt of a spear shaft. He also had cut marks above his right eye. © Hayley FisherFemale, aged 18-25 (died 430-570 AD). Isotopic analysis reveals she grew up locally and spent her final years in Edinburgh. The forensic report points to murder from a blunt-force injury to the right side of the head which would have left brain exposed. Chipping to her right molar may be further evidence of a violent attack. © Hayley FisherFacial reconstructions peer out from the Scottish Dark AgesGLASGOW, SCOTLAND—According to a report in The Daily Record, the face of a Pictish man, whose remains were discovered in a cist burial in Highland Perthshire in the 1980s, has been recreated by forensic artist Hayley Fisher and Bob Will of GUARD Archaeology. The man is thought to have lived between A.D. 340 and 615, and to have died in his 40s.GLASGOW, SCOTLAND—According to a report in The Daily Record, the face of a Pictish man, whose remains were discovered in a cist burial in Highland Perthshire in the 1980s, has been recreated by forensic artist Hayley Fisher and Bob Will of GUARD Archaeology. The man is thought to have lived between A.D. 340 and 615, and to have died in his 40s.Pictish Man’s Face ReconstructedFacial reconstruction of the Pictish woman, dubbed Pictoria, unearthed from the long cist cemetery at Lundin Links, Fife.Face of man brutally murdered 1,400 years ago reconstructedA bone sample sent for radiocarbon dating indicates that he died sometime between 430 and 630 A.D., commonly referred to as the Pictish period in Scotland.Face of man brutally murdered 1,400 years ago reconstructedThe Patcham lady, 250 A.D.The Patcham lady, 250 A.D. - BritainMerseyside’s oldest skeleton gets a faceliftradiocarbon dated to between 1600 and 1900 years old so this man lived in the Roman period. Analysis of the skeleton has revealed some information about 'Leasowe Man'. He was male and around 40 years old when he died. He was around 169cm tall, around 5'6 1/2. His bones show signs of strong muscle attachments, suggesting he was physically active during his life. Analysis of the chemicals in his bones tells us that he didn't eat very much fish, which is a little surprising for someone found so close to the sea! The skeleton of Leasowe Man is part of the collections of the Natural History Museum in London, accession number PA SK 137. A replica of the skull is on display in the History Detectives gallery at the Museum of Liverpool.Merseyside’s oldest skeleton gets a faceliftThis is the original reconstruction.OpheliaThe Berkhamsted and District Archaeological Society started excavations at Cow Roast in 1972. Work continued for four years in an orchard near the Cow Roast Inn and for three years at the Marina. The site is that of a Romano-British settlement which grew up alongside the Roman Road running from St Albans, via Tring, to Cirencester, following part of the A4. In one of fourteen wells in the orchard field of the Cow Roast excavation a female skeleton was discovered. This came as quite a surprise for the archaeologists at the time. There was nothing in the grave to date her, but from the items that were found in the area the archaeologists could tell she may be from Roman times. She was removed from the site because she was in the line of the by pass and was threaten to be destroyed. Since her arrival at the Museum Store, she has been affectionately named Ophelia.So what can we learn?Ophelia was uncovered just over two feet from the surface. During the Roman period her grave would have been a very shallow 18inches deep.She has none of the usual burial goods that you typically find for ‘important’ people.From looking at what finds were discovered at the same site we can tell that the settlement dates from around 20 BC.By looking at the shape of her pelvis and skull we know she was female and from looking at her teeth aged between 25-30 years old.There was evidence of vast accumulations of tartar around the teeth, which suggests that the food consumed by Ophelia was of a soft consistency and chewing was minimal.The upper right first molar must have been removed years prior to death, as the space has almost been completely filled by a mesial-buccal drift of the 2nd and 3rd molars.In May 2011 The Dacorum Heritage Trust was successful in obtaining funds to create a facial reconstruction of Ophelia.The Dacorum Heritage Trust Ltd.A belt made of 2.8 kilograms (6.2 lb) of pure gold, discovered in Guînes, France. 1200-1000 BCAncient Celts. Europe/Britain.13th century [BC]Geographical SpreadMost scholars agree that the Celtic culture first appeared in the Late Bronze Age in the area of the upper Danube sometime around the 13th century BCE. These early Celts were known as the 'Urnfield people' and they probably spoke a proto-Celtic language. Jul 22, 2016Celts.Celts - WikipediaOverview of the Hallstatt and La Tène cultures:The core Hallstatt territory (HaC, 800 BC) is shown in solid yellow,the eventual area of Hallstatt influence (by 500 BC, HaD) in light yellow.The core territory of the La Tène culture (450 BC) is shown in solid green,the eventual area of La Tène influence (by 250 BC) in light green.The territories of some major Celtic tribes of the late La Tène period are labelled.Erection of the Heuneburg (early 6th c. B.C) (detail of a diorama at the Heuneburg Museum, Hundersingen)File:Heuneburg (Diorama - Ausschnitt im Heuneburg-Museum, Hundersingen).JPGFacial reconstruction of a Celtic male from ancient times.Facial reconstruction of a Celtic male from ancient timesCelts.Culturally, it really begins late Bronze Age, and early Iron Age. 800 BC would be the maximum, 600 BC, fully established, then probable Iron Age begins. Celtic influence continued into the Common Era, and early medieval times.Parade helmet.Agris Helmet. Discovered in Agris, Charente, France. 350 BCReproductions/replicas.Bronze cuirass, weighing 2.9 kg, Grenoble, end of 7th century – early 6th century BCE2 muscle cuirasses and double ridge helmet (1. third of 6. century BC. Kröllkogel). Hallstatt culture artefact found in Kleinklein, municipality of Großklein, Styria. The artefact is exposed at the Archaeology Museum in Schloss Eggenberg, GrazFile:Hallstatt culture Kleinklein - muscle cuirasses & double ridge helmet.jpghttps://www.thebernician.net/ancient-physical-descriptions-of-britons-gauls-celts/https://www.thebernician.net/ancient-physical-descriptions-of-britons-gauls-celts/Britain.A pair of trousers from the Thorsberg Bog in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, approx. mid 4th century.File:Thorsberg Trousers.jpgIreland. Common Era/Early Medieval period.

Cultural ShockAs a world and USA traveler what is my worst culture shock? Hmm . . .. Let 'see. When I left my liberal critical thinking Midwestern European 99% white city in 1955 and home ported in the south with the navy I was shocked to see how heavily black the south was and the cruel racial segregation forced upon them by the southern religious and political establishment. I found this Bible Thumping region to be mean, nasty, under educated and racist all hating Yankees and the federal government.Between the Navy and IBM I lived in the south for ten years during the Jim Crow era. Later I traveled there constantly for thirty years during the years it was struggling to redefine itself to a more modern region without racial segregation. And I say they have done a good job and get better every day. In fact I moved to Georgia in 2005 during its continuing high development phase. But it wasn't always \such a nice place. Hee are some stories of past times. The south is segregated and there is a Civil Rights war going on to integrate. Northern whites and blacks are fighting the battles and the KKK is murdering many for their efforts. The Civil Rights struggle basically started with the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas that ushered in a new era in the struggle for civil rights. This landmark decision outlawed racial segregation in public schools while whites around the country condemned the decision. In the South such white supremacist groups as the Ku Klux Klan and the Citizens' Council organized to resist desegregation, sometimes resorting to violence. What Virginia was focused on was school desegregation and to that end they were fiercely adamant - no integration what so ever! Governor Almond was fiercely against racial integration and made many speeches to that effect. I couldn't put a number on it, but lots of white people weren't particularly hatefully or violently racist, but they did believe in race separation which made them feel comfortable and it was part of their southern culture, so they sat on the sidelines when the violent Ku Klux Klan and buddies within the police ran wild and terrorized black people. I learned that most people are not Robin Hoods or fighters for justice, in fact, don't even think about social causes or what's right and what's wrong. That includes both black and white people, if you are eating three squares a day and have a roof over your head, your kids are in school, and there is work to be had, and you have a few bucks in your pocket, you are satisfied and are not going to get in trouble with the police.March on WashingtonI was teaching peripheral course in IBM’s Washington, D.C. education center on August 28, 1963, when over a quarter‑million people—about two‑thirds black and one‑third white—held the greatest civil rights demonstration ever held and Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” oration. And just blocks away, President Kennedy and Congress skirmished over landmark civil rights legislation. I skipped classes to attend the event and since I left early, found a spot on the Washington Mall close to the speakers stand. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators walked down Constitution Avenue during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The March on Washington represented a coalition of several civil rights organizations, all of which generally had different approaches and different agendas. The stated demands of the march were the passage of meaningful civil rights legislation; the elimination of racial segregation in public schools; protection for demonstrators against police brutality; a major public‑works program to provide jobs; the passage of a law prohibiting racial discrimination in public and private hiring; a $2 an hour minimum wage; and self‑government for the District of Columbia. On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, King evoked the name of Lincoln in his "I Have a Dream" speech, which is credited with mobilizing supporters of desegregation and prompted the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The March on Washington was electric, and for anyone who was privileged enough to be there, you just knew: your country would never be the same, and neither would you. For one sympathetic IBM Customer Engineer from Norfolk, Virginia, I'll tell you: it's something I'll never forget. I couldn't hear everything from the reflecting pool grounds that day, but the crowd and the energy told its own story: that thousands of Americans were ready to meet the moment. Not just to dream of a better future for themselves, but to fight for a better future for their children. The next year, King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.Saturday Night at the “JUKE”The shift at the lumber mill is done, the cotton fields are picked clean, it’s payday, gave the wife a piece, and now its time for Saturday night at the Juke across the street from Lavender’s Funeral Home. On the dirt filled and garbage-strewn wrecking yards of a grungy parking lot, old rusty pickup trucks line up and park. The men shed Bib coveralls and boots, put on their Sunday best, white shirts and brown khakis all starched to the nines and wearing spit shined patent leather shoes. They head into the glimmering light, a shanty filled with music ringing from the open windows into the night. The city boy looks silly as he comes in wearing a green suit and flashing gold teeth. Inside the Juke, three songs for a quarter will get you Wilson Pickett, Otis Reading or James Brown, soul music that softly groans across the cracked wooden floor. The easy rhythms get in your blood and standing still is not a choice, as the beat climbs up your backbone and into your shoulders, fingers snap and the body involuntarily starts shaking and moving with the music. The music gets into your inner being and uncontrollably moves your mind and body to dance.Brandishing short skirts and slowly swinging their wholesome hips, the women attract men who dance at the stand still, clicking their fingers and shuffling their feet slowly to the scintillating music. Lips puckered and sucking her tongue, Daisy Mae gets into it, with hands in the air, her rear end swinging slowly and feet scrapping across the floor, she squeals with delight as Wilson puts out a tune that rings true in her head. Bettie Jean sings an R & B soul song, her strong voice sounding a beat that excites the dancers to frenzy. The music is soft, but loud in everyone’s soul, people are happy and the drinks are cheap. They come from Buford’s corn still and Big Mama says, “A little White Lightening ain’t never hurt nobody.” It’s Saturday night and Neegras is into it, all feeling good and being all right with the world. And the beat goes on . . . Can’t stays up too late though, after breakfast of grits, bacon and Grand Ma’s Best wheat flour biscuits with brown gravy, it’s onto Christ Holiness Church where Bishop Kamala will provide all day preaching, while the choir sings gospel music to organ, drums, guitars and three brass tambourines. Later, Lavern Tomas will sing the “Old Rugged Cross.”Across town in the White section at the Golf Country Club, Buick's and Oldsmobile's stack up in paved parking lots. Neegra servants wearing tuxedos, serve glasses of Johnny Walker Black on sliver platters to tanned white people, the men wearing suits, the women evening dresses drink Gin cocktails and Vodka Martinis. Frank Sinatra mellows the crowds with 78 size records on the patio deck surrounding the swimming pool as conversation dwells on the State of the Union Address recently given by President Johnson, his talk about his anti poverty program and needs for civil rights make everyone want to vomit. Complaints of “Them damn Niggers” echoes around the smoking room poker table. The music plays at the pool, but everyone is civilized and well behaved, there is no hint of finger snapping, shuffling feet or shaking bodies, and heaven forbid, any glimmer of sexuality. Some of the teenagers are putting on jitterbug music and the place finally takes on a swinging ambiance, all to the frowns of the grownups. Billy Joe, back from college, brags about stringing up Priscilla’s panties next to the Confederate Flag on the Town Hall flagpole.Bubba had been to the State Liquor store and bought plenty of booze to last the evening. Good Southern whiskey and cigars keep the boys quiet while the women chatter away about children and church. Tomorrow, after breakfast of grits, bacon and Grand Ma’s best wheat flour biscuits with brown gravy, its time for church at Corner Stone Baptist. The preacher is speaking about that communist Martin Luther King, and his latest anti American activities in Birmingham. Them Niggers don’t appreciate our great country just don’t know their place! The choirmaster will conduct to Beethoven’s fifth symphonic in D minor. After that, Bobby Joe will solo with “The Old Rugged Cross.”Carnivals, Circuses and Medicine ShowsThe south gets its entertainment from traveling Medicine shows and Carnivals. I attended these traveling road shows every year in Portsmouth. The event was a carnival, circus or a Medicine show, but it was not a big production three-ring Ringling Brothers or Shriners circus by any stretch. It was a show held in big tents with a walk around sideshow outside. The empty fields on the outskirts of town past the Giant Super Market were a perfect place for the carnivals, circuses, and medicine shows to set up by the railroad tracks with empty fields to the east, north, and west of the tracks. There was a Ballard & Grider General Store, a filling station, and a chicken farm nearby. . A large feed store barn sat on the corner owned by the Griders. There were many railroad tracks about halfway between the tents and the town and there were four or five neighbor houses scattered around. This was segregated Virginia so blacks had there own section of the road shows to go to. That was strange too, as many of the acts were black and they played to white only audiences.Hunting in Dismal SwampI became a southern Red Neck what with my gun collection, hunting in Dismal Swamp, fishing on Chesapeake Bay and becoming a volunteer fireman. I hunted every week in the Great Dismal Swamp for six years with my good ole boy tobacco chewing white lightening drinking friends. The swamp is a different world from civilization, as we know it. Dismal Swamp, historically one of the most inhospitable tracts of land - which straddles the Virginia/North Carolina border - is mean as hell. But the snakes, bears, and the near-inaccessibility made it a refuge for escaped slaves and their descendants. White settlers found the Great Dismal Swamp’s atmosphere depressing and avoided the swamp. To them, it was a miserable morass where nothing can inhabit. Escaped slaves shared their hiding place with other outcasts, including white criminals, freed blacks and Native Americans. In George Washington's time, it was a million acres of trees, dark water, bears, bobcats, snakes and stinging insects. Yet all the reasons Virginia and North Carolina white settlers gave for eschewing the swamp made it the perfect refuge for fugitives from slavery. Fleeing to Dismal Swamp, slaves, weirdoes, escaped convicts and outcasts found freedom. Most Americans know about the Underground Railroad, the route that allowed Southern slaves to escape north. Some slaves found freedom by hiding closer to home in Dismal Swamp. They founded little camps that became bigger enclaves of human habitation. Make no mistake about it.These were resistance communities, they weren't going out there because they loved swamps, and they were going out there because they were living in a very brutal and oppressive world of enslavement and colonialism. Survival there was very severe, the ground is very boggy, escaped slaves are up to their waists in mud and water, cutting away roots and baling out mud to set up a freedom camp. They would build a little hut and here among snakes, bears and panthers; they cut down trees and planted corn. The considerable numbers of runaway salves called Maroons used the swamp as a base for attacks on the Confederacy were constant thorns in the side of plantation society, both militarily and ideologically.JT Lafitte' - JT was a good ole boy who threw around the term 'Nigger' profusely. He was a fat big-bellied racist who drank too much who enjoyed his white power over black people who had to keep their heads down and mouths shut to keep the peace in the Jim Crow segregated south. Well, that was outside civilization in cities and towns, even on rural farm country, but in the wet jungle of Dismal Swamp you had to be polite. After all, a body decomposes inside of a week in the swamp what with the gators, wild hogs, snakes, mosquitoes, spiders as big as your hand, and all kinds of critters with big teeth that love to eat flesh in the intense heat. There are dozens of different kinds of people living in the swamp that expect swamp courtesy, be nice, keep your mouth shut on the whereabouts of my still, don't insult my wife, the "N" word don't work here; characters like Indians, blacks, poor whites, Mennonites and escaped convicts, most with very questionable backgrounds, no education or teeth but have plenty of guns, swamp knowledge and who have been known to eat anything when real hungry. Many had a white lightening corn still in the back yard of their shanty and were always on the look out for Revenuers, since Virginia was a dry state and they always wanted to catch some one making or transporting white lightening. There were also a few revenuers that took bribes since their cousins were making the booze. When you are back in the bowls of the swamp, it was kind of exciting. Well, JT disappeared one day and never was found. Everyone suspected he said Nigger once to many times and suffered what most malcontents suffer - a shotgun blast and rapid decomposition.Moses - Many people live in the swamp on farms and with their permission, we could hunt on their land. Moses was a Black man who had a small farm near Suffolk, Virginia, which were several miles back in the swamp and only reachable by a tractor built dirt road using a four-wheel drive truck. His wife would walk the 2-½ miles to the main highway every day and get picked up by a Trailways Bus that took her into town and her house-cleaning job. Moses was 85 years old and in great shape except he limped from a broken leg that didn’t mend well after a tree fell on him when he was clearing land last year. Moses was a typical swamp dweller, he ran a still, had some animals and a few cultivated acres where he planted food to sustain him, but Moses also had five hundred acres of raw swamp and timber land that he allowed us to hunt on and all we had to do was leave him a few deer. Moses lived better than most because his shack had a wooden floor with window glass and a great front porch that looked out over his land right into the setting Sun, otherwise it was a typical tin roofed swamp dwelling with no electric, water, or indoor plumbing. Because he had access to town using his old rusted out Chevy pickup and his wife made daily trips to Suffolk, he purchased civilized things like newspapers, magazines, canned food, tooth brushes and paste, real bandages, kerosene and of course the proverbial Camphor-Phenique. Moses also had a barn where he stored his twenty-year-old John Deere tractor that he used to work his fields and keep his road clear from the creeping swamp underbrush. We would usually stay at Moses for a weekend and after the day’s hunt sit around a camp fire, cook our food, drink white lightening whiskey, which I never developed a taste for but I would sip it anyway through my teeth to strain out small particles, and tell outrageous stories about experiences with women, hunting or war. The white lightening whiskey was more than one hundred proofs so you had to sip it slowly otherwise you could get you roaring drunk in no time, heave your guts out and really hung over the next morning. The guys brought their own musical instruments when we went to Moses places, Doc his harmonica, Bill and Red their guitars and Moses himself played a wicked violin whereupon really good country music and singing rang around the campfire. I learned the words to lots of country songs and loved every minute the campfire singing with these men. Around mid night, when everyone was either played out or drunk, we would get out our sleeping bags and spend the night sleeping on Moses front porch. After an early morning campfire breakfast of country sausage, eggs and biscuits, and then getting the dogs ready, we were off into the deep swamp again.I have to say, however, they treated Moses with the greatest respect as they did all the other Blacks we encountered in the swamp. I think this friendly assimilation was because they had a lot in common, all were strong men who shared survival abilities, ate the same foods, spoke poor English and talked the same southern slang, loved to play and sing country music and drink white lightening whisky - and they all had lots of guns and weren’t afraid to stand up for their rights! Besides, call someone a Nigger and how did you expect to get out of the swamp alive where bodies disintegrate into nothing in less than a week in the hot, humid, critter invested swamp where people go missing all the time. I think my friends held segregationist views because they never knew any Black people really well and didn’t try to understand them, even though the races were remarkable alike in life styles. Slavery and then Jim Crow segregation had been part of Southern life for hundreds of years and it was difficult for many southern people to see life any differently. My friends weren’t great abstract thinkers and preferred the way things were, their views on segregation were not based on hate or feelings of superiority but on being afraid of social change.As for me, I had a great time in the swamp, for six years I hunted every week, I was a dead shot and killed more than a hundred deer. But gutting a deer so you could more easily drag its carcass to base camp for skinning, and doing the honors was not a chore I relished, but I did it so may times. The dogs ate the heads and entrails of the deer while we cut the meat up. I gave my deer away to the residents of the swamp - all kinds of reclusive Indians, blacks, whites, criminals hiding out and religious hermits like the Mennonites. The Great Dismal Swamp, as you can probably guess from its name, is not an easy place to traverse, but I got very comfortable being in the swam. Bears would watch me excavating, I ran into huge water moccasins and rattlesnakes as thick around as my thigh. But nothing worse happened than scrapes, bugs bites and losing equipment in the muck. If you are writing a book, this is one place to get great stories.Life at IBMI am an IBM Main Frame Engineer and travel all around US fixing broke computers. One of my best assignments was to CBS Studio 41 in NYC for the 1964 Presidential election computer system. IBM put me up in the Shorham Hotel on west 55th just off 5th Avenue and every morning I would walk to CBS on 57th at 12th Avenue and spend about 16 hours installing and maintaining the triple deck 7000 systems with all its vast multiplexing, disk storage and data entry stations. I worked with a talented and interesting crew, including Lou Harris the Pollster, Walter Cronkite and Mike Wallace and a crew of IBM system developers who had designed computer system software to extrapolate the vote (meaning forecast precinct winners across the USA) on election night. Eric Severoid was a curmudgeon; he was always cold and wore a sweater. Mike Wallace was the brainyac, Roger Mudd was the good-ole-boy, and Walter Cronkite was a world-class charmer. He sat with us IBM guys a few times in the CBS cafeteria and when he spoke, it was like a wise sage telling us about the world. Every night, we would sit in a conference room next door to CBS at the Holiday Inn with the system developers, Lou Harris and his people with the CBS producers and talk about politics, voting patterns, and what concerns were driving the election. I learned a lot then, how the USA political process works, how different parts of the country think and what issues are important to them. It was the real thing with top in their field experts and better than a PHD Political Science graduate study at NYU. Yes, their professors were there too as consultants and advisors and I could have written a Doctoral Thesis on voting patterns.I worked with Marcello who was a real character, a second generation Italian, spoke the language (plus a few more European languages fluently), while his parents still spoke only Italian and broken English. He was a very good looking dark complexioned man the girls fell in love with and I envied him for the lush, big breasted females that panted after him - and New York was full of them, many looking for a coupling, but Marcello only liked skinny blond, flat chested women who had buck teeth. I saw some of the women he dated and choked, they were ugly! Well, to each there own I always say!As for me, I had to win the girls over with my personality. Every other day, we walked down to the IBM facility that housed the CBS crew and where we had our IBM meetings. It was in an old building on 8th Avenue and the offices were on the top floor. We got into a non-stop express elevator with sliding front steel gates operated by an old hunchbacked man smoking a big Cuban cigar. He had a small wooden stool with a red cushion he sat on, propped up his legs, grinned at us and threw the elevator lever into high speed, and the motors whirred up, the elevator lurched, and off we would go accelerating madly to the 45th floor holding our stomachs in from upchucking. I would bet we were traveling at 60 miles per hour only upwards. We would get to the top floor, and he opened the steel doors, and Walla, what a space. Nothing artistically great but with a beautifully organized office with old oak furniture and big, floor to ceiling windows with views of Manhattan all around. I would work here in a second.New York IBM people were far different from the southern IBM types I worked with in Norfolk at the naval base. First of all, many of the New Yorkers were black, Asian, Latino, something that you wouldn’t see in the south for many years. Second, they were all ethnic, young and crazy, highly educated graduates from Ivy League universities where brains, having big city competitive skills, and where strong and agreeable personalities counted, something you would never see in the south, where being white, seriously religious and politically conservative was the standard mantra. Bless me, Lord I almost forgot, if you had lots of guns, hunted and fished, that counted too.This was the 1960s and they were very turbulent and violent years because of the Civil Rights movement going on in the southern states and there were terrible things southerners were doing to blacks and Civil Rights workers, lots of harassment and murders, so the south had a lousy reputation in the north, especially in New York, the freedom capital of the USA. But I was one of those southerners who fought for social equality for the blacks and had been to the March on Washington last year to hear Martin Luther King’s “ I have a Dream” speech.” The first few weeks, these New Yorkers had fun with me, being the only southerner in the group. Believe it or not, I really was a southerner in many ways too, besides working in high technology, I had more than twenty guns, became part of the southern gun culture, had lots of “Good-ole-boy” friends, and hunted in Dismal Swamp and fished on Chesapeake Bay for years. But indeed, the south was a strange and violent place to me and I did not like many aspects of its culture.One thing that is very different is the societal differences between the girls in the North and the girls in the South as many southern women (and men) are still fighting the war and blaming the north for all their woes. And talking about women, personally, I have noticed that women in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, etc. have big hair, use perfume and heavy makeup while in New York, women tend to look natural, using minimal makeup, with little to no perfume and having small natural hair. I was discovering that women in New York can be really out there, wearing mini skirts and braless halters, but that doesn’t mean at all they are easy. They didn’t dress up like they were in a fashion show, but in more practical terms for a big city, being on subways and walking a lot on their tennis shoes. Northern women, in my experience, were very independent, and professed to prefer "men to be men, and women to be women," which I suppose indicates a preference for traditional gender roles. They also liked well-educated and well-employed men with a sense of humor. After living in the south, I found the many women there dressed well, had that ‘big hair, were dripping with sugar, and were overly self righteously religious.’ They frequently use greetings like ‘hi honey, baby, sugar, sweetie pie thing, even when you have never seen them in your life.’ As other people mentioned, southern women do spend much more time on appearances and they gossip like there's no tomorrow. They are also much more competitive with each other, though they do so in the "nicest" way. Northern women use the time saved not worrying about appearances but to go to college or advancing their careers, so usually, I can sit down and have an intelligent conversation with most northern women. Whereas down south, we talk about other people or our hair. Northern women don't play social games. If they don't like you that are it, they just won't talk to you, but they'll at least wait until you're out of hearing range to start talking about you. You cannot get by on looks alone in the North as you can in the south. Miss Teen South Carolina would not survive one day up north where attractiveness is all about personality and brains.”Hanging OutNew York was nothing like dull dismal Norfolk. New York was a colorful universe, diverse and full of excitement. My first night in the City I took the F train to Greenwich Village and walked around. This was so different from Norfolk’s decrepit downtown streets. I marveled at the exciting street scenes filled with artists selling their paintings, small coffee shops with tables out on the side walk, thousands of interesting looking people walking around, and the hundreds of clubs/bars/restaurants that dotted the area where you could eat, dance, and engage in interesting conversations with intelligent people while drinking espresso in a street cafe. Every night I walked around Times Square, often I would take the F Train to the Village and walk around too. If we had known that the scrawny guy onstage at that Greenwich Village folk club might someday amount to something, I would have talked about it. It was Bob Dylan when Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg held court at house parties in Greenwich Village, or Andy Warhol at his studio, the FactoryWorking with Lou Harris I learned all about voting patterns in the USA. America’s voting patterns are split by region, with the Midwest and Northeast predominantly voting for liberal candidates, and the West (with the exception of the coast) and South voting for more conservative candidates, but also surprisingly found conservative trends in the West and liberal leanings in the Midwest that defy traditional stereotypes about these areas of the country. A number of important demographic factors determine whether cities vote for liberals or conservatives, with race being the most important factor. Cities with predominantly large diverse populations ended up as the most liberal places in America, while the small towns with the largest Caucasian populations wound up as the most conservative. The liberal cities have a wider range of everything, higher educational accreditations, performing arts, high culture, sophistication and highly diversified population demographics.The Democratic Party attracts all kinds, blacks, browns, yellows, reds and whites both poor and rich, highly educated and the far less educated, whereas the Republican Party mostly just attracts whites and the moderately educated. This causes the Democratic Party to have a wider range of IQ a higher average IQ than the Republican Party apparently dominating the average middle of the IQ spectrum. So, the extremely smart, well-educated liberals are truly the intellectual elite of the entire country and are Democrats. More interesting is the fact that those who are more oppressed and disadvantaged have consistently seen that their interests are more in line with intellectually elite Democrats rather than with wealthy elite Republicans.I remember being on an Amtrak train going from Manhattan to Washington, D, and C. many years ago, before covert racial segregation was outlawed in the south. I sat behind a group of women from Dutch Guiana, a South American colony of the Netherlands who was going to Miami, and we got to talk. They all spoke at least five languages, were Hollywood beautiful and all with European university degrees, but they could not get off the train while in the south and be accommodated in a restaurant or bathroom because they were colored. I was so ashamed of this racist behavior in the southern US and felt terrible, but southerners did not, they thought this segregationist behavior was justified, it was in their bones, from slavery and Jim Crow all justified with (their interpretation) Bible verses and continued anti Yankee animosities from the Civil War. They simply saw the world in a different light than I did, one they created called their "Southern Way of Life" and their light was NOT FREEDOM ORIENTED. It was highly restrictive and bound by culture they understood, was comfortable with and revered. It was evident the concept of freedom is considered differently elsewhere in the USA. The politics are far right the religion is socially conservative.For example a current controversy is between Evangelicals and other mainstream groups is homosexuality. Mainstream peoples believe homosexuality occurs naturally; you are born with the trait. Evangelicals believe you choose the lifestyle and therefore is a sinner going to hell. In this case, science is ignored and faith is the rule of law.WoodstockThe Woodstock concert might very well be the most legendary concert of all time. Not just only because who all performed but even more so the stuff and atmosphere surrounding the entire event. It was held at the height of the flower power craze and the entire event became much bigger and longer than eventually anticipated, resulting in some crazy events. It rained most of the tie and the grounds were muddy, littered with hippies and smelled like an uninviting combination of reefer and feces. This was never a concert, but a defining moment in the struggle for the future of the nation. It was never about music, but about politics as religion, about the massive change of defining what it meant to be alive. I had been raised in diverse Milwaukee, spent ten years in the segregated south, we were embroiled in a Vietnam War I didn’t believe in, and was ready for a new direction for the USA.You had to be immersed in the times to get a feel for how true this is. I was a Greenwich Village Rat hanging out with all the Hippies and performing arts types and would fit right in. No one ever thought Woodstock would be as big as it was, it was a spontaneous happening, but it happened for a very clear reason: we were yearning for a new coherent American mythology. But I wasn’t a Hippy, just a guy inspired to do well, make a difference if I could. The festival turned out to be a four-day concert that involved lots of sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll and all in a sea of torrential downpours and mud with no bathrooms or what they did have got quickly plugged up. It was a time of squat or piss in a designated area. It has become an icon of the 1960s hippie counterculture which I was somewhat part of. It took place in an age when the fault lines between "straight" society and the so‑called counterculture were at their deepest, over Vietnam and Civil Rights, all called the revolution in values.More than 30 artists and 200 songs were performed over the three-day weekend. Some were established stars; others were just getting their start. And most of them had breakthrough performances at the festival. Even if their sets weren’t all that great, their association with the granddaddy of all music fests elevated them.Out of control, but the band held it together with a superb mix of expert playing and blues-rock exuberance. ‘Going Up the Country’ pounds home the point.The mythology about Woodstock didn't start until the concert was over. Some of the people who attended actually heard the music.

Cultural ShockAs a world and USA traveler what is my worst culture shock? Hmm . . .. Let 'see. When I left my liberal critical thinking Midwestern European 99% white city in 1955 and home ported in the south with the navy I was shocked to see how black the south was and the cruel racial segregation forced upon them by the southern religious and political establishment. I found this Bible Thumping region to be mean, nasty, under educated and racist all hating Yankees and the federal government. But Let's start with my experiences in the US Navy back in the day.The NavyI spent three years at sea on a Destroyer fighting the Cold War against the Soviets and communism. Destroyers are the Greyhounds of the sea, we constantly sailed the Atlantic Ocean, from the North to the South Atlantic, operated with Carrier battle Groups, provided ASW operations, played War Games, chased Russian Submarines, and trained, trained, trained on being a war time destroyer sailor. As a deep blue water sailor, I have visited more than thirty counties and ports (USA, Caribbean, European, African, Asian, Persian Gulf) crossed the Atlantic about twenty times and operated in the ferocious North Atlantic, Azores, Mediterranean, Caribbean, Red Sea, Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea, crossed the Equator and in the South Atlantic. It has been a friend on those clear-lit nights of open flat seas, and enemies when it kicks up into fierce storms that make you cry for your mother. I don’t think there is anything more frightening or violent than a big storm at sea. The storm turns into a hurricane that traps the men, plays rough with them, and kills them. Typically, after we would enjoy fair winds and weather for a time, there would be a rough weather, with heavy cross winds and followed by fierce storms which would shake the ship and made her hull and upper works very leaky, and we would take terrible lists over in the water, and bounce around like a nut in a steel pail being shaken. That Mother Nature can cough up such turbulence and man can survive it is beyond belief some times, all you have to do is be in one to know what I am talking about. That is where “Sea Stories” come from. Against a tough and unforgiving sea, it’s a terrifying adventure with thrilling images you never forget. You feel the rush of adrenaline that comes when a huge wave washes over the deck, the roll of the deck as she turns over into what - oblivion - to far to come back? You never know? Sailors are a special breed, they struggle to save their ship and own lives and sometimes they fail. When they are neck deep in water in a compartment of the overturned boat, they face death squarely. They talk, briefly, and unsentimentally, about things they will not be able to do, people they will miss. The stark, plainness of the acting achieves a powerful emotional effect.Military CultureIt was the Cold War and there were not supposed to be any combat operations going on, but there were many conflicts unknown to the general public, in Cuba, Lebanon, the Aegean Sea, and with the Soviet navy at many different times when we tested each other for resolve. So we prepared ourselves for war and acted like it was right at hand. I got on the Naval Infantry unit being recommended from those bar fighting stories that came back to the ship from my Shore Patrol escapades and during communist riots when they attacked our sailors and I got a reputation as one who could handle himself. But I was not the toughest guy on the ship, not by a long shot; we had some real roughneck mean street fighters that would scare the pants off anyone just with their looks. As a rule of thumb, don't mess with anyone from Brooklyn or Philadelphia; they were all excellent street fighters that enjoyed tearing out assholes. And you could never tell who was the bravest, able to fire weapons well, just by their physical size or appearance. There were tryouts for these squads and some of the youngest, smallest and most innocent looking guys were also the best weapon handlers with the biggest balls, never being scared when things got tough. The Captain reserved the meanest looking sailors for the motor whaleboat crew that went along side ships as a boarding party. Seeing these tough looking guys motor to your ship ready to board it was usually enough to cause a foreign ship to obey our orders to heave to and identify them when we were doing naval blockade duty.EuropeWhereas we have a few hundred years of western exploration, frontier settlement and cowboy culture, Europeans have thousands of years of Greek, Roman, Muslim and multitudes of other conquerors that funded all their stories. That makes a tremendous difference in the psych of a country. Our terms of reference are totally different, while we think about today and freedom and they think about yesterday, serfdom and pestilence. However, the stereotype of the ugly American, preachy, mercenary, and bombastically chauvinist, was firmly in place in Europe. Bottom line, I think most Europeans thought of Americans, although not perfect, as standing for the right thing, and that we were willing to put our their own lives on the line to help others in the world achieve freedom. That was our mantra, “Freedom for one and all.” All we had to do was convince our own Southern brothers how exquisite that way of life was and our nation’s credo would go way up!All of the places we went to had suffered some damage from World War II, and Naples was the worst, with shelled and bombed out building everywhere. Spain was untouched by the war but was now going thorough confrontations between Franco’s fascist police state and communist subversives who were always a threat to American sailors. Franco’s much feared State Police, the la Guadia Seville, all tall big men, wore what looked like a Bull Fighter uniform with a tri corner hat and carried a 9mm Beretta, and were around to quell any disturbances; they had the right to kill on the spot anyone who didn’t comply with their orders. There were those stories about them that if they caught a thieve and they would execute him on the spot - in the vernacular of that Italian sailor from Brooklyn, “they took no shit from anyone.” You can believe that none of us sailors were ever going to test their resolve.Nightclubs filled young women were common in Europe, especially among port cities we would moor in. These nightclubs were not brothels and they would throw people out for lewd or any inappropriate behavior. To us it was a way of enjoying a different culture, besides the nightclubs were filled with lonely girls looking to marry an American and they could jitterbug with the best of them. After the devastation of the war, men were in short supply.American style bathrooms in European were totally non-existent. In the states we had clean toilets with toilet paper and in Europe they had holes in the floor you squatted over, all dirty and smelly, and often these were used by both male and female at the same time - and with no toilet paper. Sometimes we used a stick with a sponge on it. Ugh! Sex and bodily evacuation duties took on such a common expression in Europe! Urinals were no problem, every alley had one and just off the main streets people were pissing everywhere. The cities smelled of urine and various drying meats that hung from hooks in every street fast food stall. Shis-ka-bob was a favorite meal; they would cut off a slice of lamb and cook it with vegetables on a stick. Hmm, it was good. Deli sandwiches, pizza, hotdogs and hamburgers were unknown in Europe.I stood Shore Patrol in all of the ports and that was the most exciting and death defying aspect of my foreign travel experiences. My job was to keep military personnel out of trouble with the local law and ensure proper military behavior ashore in foreign lands. My biggest problem was fighting. Bar fights in particular, and sometimes communist rioters attacking American sailors. I was in several street fights where communist rioters were trying to murder me and I was desperately fighting to save my life. One thing that surprised me was the Anti American attitude some Europeans had. Here we just bailed them out of Fascism and Communism and they were angry with us. Some Europeans criticized Americans for lacking "taste, grace and civility" and instead having a brazen and arrogant character. You know that, “Cowboy” in us. Well, we did strut around like we owned the place and played hard when anyone messed with us. The Catholic Church who was really running things founded our country on the principal of "rugged individualism" a concept totally unfamiliar to Europeans who had thousands of year's history of organized fiefdoms with kings, queens and serfdom over lorded.The Middle East & AfricaFor a young sailor to enter the 3rd world in Africa and the Middle East is quite an experience. Americans take so much for granted. We live in a Bible-based Judeo-Christian culture. We think the Protestant work ethic is universal. It's not. In the words of our squadron doctor, we entered "a fecalized environment." In plain English: shit is everywhere. People defecate on the open ground, and the feces are blown with the dust – onto you, your clothes, your food, and the water. He warned us the first day of training: do not even touch water. Human feces carry parasites that bore through your skin and cause organ failure. In Djibouti, I saw a beautiful African woman in a grand boubou have her child defecate on the sidewalk next to a Catholic church. The French police officer, ten steps from her, turned his head not to see. I have seen. I am not turning my head and pretending unpleasant things are not true. It quickly became blindingly obvious that the Arabs, Pakistanis, and Africans are not the same as us. Their reality is totally different. You can't understand anything in Africa or the Middle East using American terms. The truths we hold to be self-evident are not at all evident to them. How could they be? The Middle East is a hellhole. Their Islamic culture live in the 15h century, even in the 7th century for some fundamentalist Islamic nations (Saudi Arabia). Our western basic ideas of human relations, equality and fairness, personal freedom, right and wrong, morality is incompatible with Arabs. They don't work and hire Americans and Europeans to do their infrastructure building.In Africa what I did witness every day was that women were worked half to death. Men did no work! Wives raised the food and fed their own children, did the heavy labor of walking miles to gather wood for the fire, drew water from the well or public faucet, pounded grain with heavy hand-held pestles, lived in their own huts, and had conjugal visits from their husbands on a rotating basis with their co-wives. Their husbands lazed in the shade of the trees. I realized that men had the idea that a job means work. The value system was the exact opposite to ours. You were supposed to steal everything you can to give to your own relatives. Africans are more civilized than Arabs; there are some Westernized Africans who try to rebelThe SouthBetween the Navy and IBM I lived in the south for ten years during the Jim Crow era. Later I traveled there constantly for thirty years during the years it was struggling to redefine itself to a more modern region without racial segregation. And I say they have done a good job and get better every day. In fact I moved to Georgia in 2005 during its continuing high development phase. But it wasn't always \such a nice place. Hee are some stories of past times. The south is segregated and there is a Civil Rights war going on to integrate. Northern whites and blacks are fighting the battles and the KKK is murdering many for their efforts. The Civil Rights struggle basically started with the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas that ushered in a new era in the struggle for civil rights. This landmark decision outlawed racial segregation in public schools while whites around the country condemned the decision. In the South such white supremacist groups as the Ku Klux Klan and the Citizens' Council organized to resist desegregation, sometimes resorting to violence. What Virginia was focused on was school desegregation and to that end they were fiercely adamant - no integration what so ever! Governor Almond was fiercely against racial integration and made many speeches to that effect. I couldn't put a number on it, but lots of white people weren't particularly hatefully or violently racist, but they did believe in race separation which made them feel comfortable and it was part of their southern culture, so they sat on the sidelines when the violent Ku Klux Klan and buddies within the police ran wild and terrorized black people. I learned that most people are not Robin Hoods or fighters for justice, in fact, don't even think about social causes or what's right and what's wrong. That includes both black and white people, if you are eating three squares a day and have a roof over your head, your kids are in school, and there is work to be had, and you have a few bucks in your pocket, you are satisfied and are not going to get in trouble with the police.March on WashingtonI was teaching peripheral course in IBM’s Washington, D.C. education center on August 28, 1963, when over a quarter‑million people—about two‑thirds black and one‑third white—held the greatest civil rights demonstration ever held and Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” oration. And just blocks away, President Kennedy and Congress skirmished over landmark civil rights legislation. I skipped classes to attend the event and since I left early, found a spot on the Washington Mall close to the speakers stand. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators walked down Constitution Avenue during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The March on Washington represented a coalition of several civil rights organizations, all of which generally had different approaches and different agendas. The stated demands of the march were the passage of meaningful civil rights legislation; the elimination of racial segregation in public schools; protection for demonstrators against police brutality; a major public‑works program to provide jobs; the passage of a law prohibiting racial discrimination in public and private hiring; a $2 an hour minimum wage; and self‑government for the District of Columbia. On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, King evoked the name of Lincoln in his "I Have a Dream" speech, which is credited with mobilizing supporters of desegregation and prompted the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The March on Washington was electric, and for anyone who was privileged enough to be there, you just knew: your country would never be the same, and neither would you. For one sympathetic IBM Customer Engineer from Norfolk, Virginia, I'll tell you: it's something I'll never forget. I couldn't hear everything from the reflecting pool grounds that day, but the crowd and the energy told its own story: that thousands of Americans were ready to meet the moment. Not just to dream of a better future for themselves, but to fight for a better future for their children. The next year, King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.Saturday Night at the “JUKE”The shift at the lumber mill is done, the cotton fields are picked clean, it’s payday, gave the wife a piece, and now its time for Saturday night at the Juke across the street from Lavender’s Funeral Home. On the dirt filled and garbage-strewn wrecking yards of a grungy parking lot, old rusty pickup trucks line up and park. The men shed Bib coveralls and boots, put on their Sunday best, white shirts and brown khakis all starched to the nines and wearing spit shined patent leather shoes. They head into the glimmering light, a shanty filled with music ringing from the open windows into the night. The city boy looks silly as he comes in wearing a green suit and flashing gold teeth. Inside the Juke, three songs for a quarter will get you Wilson Pickett, Otis Reading or James Brown, soul music that softly groans across the cracked wooden floor. The easy rhythms get in your blood and standing still is not a choice, as the beat climbs up your backbone and into your shoulders, fingers snap and the body involuntarily starts shaking and moving with the music. The music gets into your inner being and uncontrollably moves your mind and body to dance.Brandishing short skirts and slowly swinging their wholesome hips, the women attract men who dance at the stand still, clicking their fingers and shuffling their feet slowly to the scintillating music. Lips puckered and sucking her tongue, Daisy Mae gets into it, with hands in the air, her rear end swinging slowly and feet scrapping across the floor, she squeals with delight as Wilson puts out a tune that rings true in her head. Bettie Jean sings an R & B soul song, her strong voice sounding a beat that excites the dancers to frenzy. The music is soft, but loud in everyone’s soul, people are happy and the drinks are cheap. They come from Buford’s corn still and Big Mama says, “A little White Lightening ain’t never hurt nobody.” It’s Saturday night and Neegras is into it, all feeling good and being all right with the world. And the beat goes on . . . Can’t stays up too late though, after breakfast of grits, bacon and Grand Ma’s Best wheat flour biscuits with brown gravy, it’s onto Christ Holiness Church where Bishop Kamala will provide all day preaching, while the choir sings gospel music to organ, drums, guitars and three brass tambourines. Later, Lavern Tomas will sing the “Old Rugged Cross.”Across town in the White section at the Golf Country Club, Buick's and Oldsmobile's stack up in paved parking lots. Neegra servants wearing tuxedos, serve glasses of Johnny Walker Black on sliver platters to tanned white people, the men wearing suits, the women evening dresses drink Gin cocktails and Vodka Martinis. Frank Sinatra mellows the crowds with 78 size records on the patio deck surrounding the swimming pool as conversation dwells on the State of the Union Address recently given by President Johnson, his talk about his anti poverty program and needs for civil rights make everyone want to vomit. Complaints of “Them damn Niggers” echoes around the smoking room poker table. The music plays at the pool, but everyone is civilized and well behaved, there is no hint of finger snapping, shuffling feet or shaking bodies, and heaven forbid, any glimmer of sexuality. Some of the teenagers are putting on jitterbug music and the place finally takes on a swinging ambiance, all to the frowns of the grownups. Billy Joe, back from college, brags about stringing up Priscilla’s panties next to the Confederate Flag on the Town Hall flagpole.Bubba had been to the State Liquor store and bought plenty of booze to last the evening. Good Southern whiskey and cigars keep the boys quiet while the women chatter away about children and church. Tomorrow, after breakfast of grits, bacon and Grand Ma’s best wheat flour biscuits with brown gravy, its time for church at Corner Stone Baptist. The preacher is speaking about that communist Martin Luther King, and his latest anti American activities in Birmingham. Them Niggers don’t appreciate our great country just don’t know their place! The choirmaster will conduct to Beethoven’s fifth symphonic in D minor. After that, Bobby Joe will solo with “The Old Rugged Cross.”Carnivals, Circuses and Medicine ShowsThe south gets its entertainment from traveling Medicine shows and Carnivals. I attended these traveling road shows every year in Portsmouth. The event was a carnival, circus or a Medicine show, but it was not a big production three-ring Ringling Brothers or Shriners circus by any stretch. It was a show held in big tents with a walk around sideshow outside. The empty fields on the outskirts of town past the Giant Super Market were a perfect place for the carnivals, circuses, and medicine shows to set up by the railroad tracks with empty fields to the east, north, and west of the tracks. There was a Ballard & Grider General Store, a filling station, and a chicken farm nearby. . A large feed store barn sat on the corner owned by the Griders. There were many railroad tracks about halfway between the tents and the town and there were four or five neighbor houses scattered around. This was segregated Virginia so blacks had there own section of the road shows to go to. That was strange too, as many of the acts were black and they played to white only audiences.Hunting in Dismal SwampI became a southern Red Neck what with my gun collection, hunting in Dismal Swamp, fishing on Chesapeake Bay and becoming a volunteer fireman. I hunted every week in the Great Dismal Swamp for six years with my good ole boy tobacco chewing white lightening drinking friends. The swamp is a different world from civilization, as we know it. Dismal Swamp, historically one of the most inhospitable tracts of land - which straddles the Virginia/North Carolina border - is mean as hell. But the snakes, bears, and the near-inaccessibility made it a refuge for escaped slaves and their descendants. White settlers found the Great Dismal Swamp’s atmosphere depressing and avoided the swamp. To them, it was a miserable morass where nothing can inhabit. Escaped slaves shared their hiding place with other outcasts, including white criminals, freed blacks and Native Americans. In George Washington's time, it was a million acres of trees, dark water, bears, bobcats, snakes and stinging insects. Yet all the reasons Virginia and North Carolina white settlers gave for eschewing the swamp made it the perfect refuge for fugitives from slavery. Fleeing to Dismal Swamp, slaves, weirdoes, escaped convicts and outcasts found freedom. Most Americans know about the Underground Railroad, the route that allowed Southern slaves to escape north. Some slaves found freedom by hiding closer to home in Dismal Swamp. They founded little camps that became bigger enclaves of human habitation. Make no mistake about it.These were resistance communities, they weren't going out there because they loved swamps, and they were going out there because they were living in a very brutal and oppressive world of enslavement and colonialism. Survival there was very severe, the ground is very boggy, escaped slaves are up to their waists in mud and water, cutting away roots and baling out mud to set up a freedom camp. They would build a little hut and here among snakes, bears and panthers; they cut down trees and planted corn. The considerable numbers of runaway salves called Maroons used the swamp as a base for attacks on the Confederacy were constant thorns in the side of plantation society, both militarily and ideologically.JT Lafitte' - JT was a good ole boy who threw around the term 'Nigger' profusely. He was a fat big-bellied racist who drank too much who enjoyed his white power over black people who had to keep their heads down and mouths shut to keep the peace in the Jim Crow segregated south. Well, that was outside civilization in cities and towns, even on rural farm country, but in the wet jungle of Dismal Swamp you had to be polite. After all, a body decomposes inside of a week in the swamp what with the gators, wild hogs, snakes, mosquitoes, spiders as big as your hand, and all kinds of critters with big teeth that love to eat flesh in the intense heat. There are dozens of different kinds of people living in the swamp that expect swamp courtesy, be nice, keep your mouth shut on the whereabouts of my still, don't insult my wife, the "N" word don't work here; characters like Indians, blacks, poor whites, Mennonites and escaped convicts, most with very questionable backgrounds, no education or teeth but have plenty of guns, swamp knowledge and who have been known to eat anything when real hungry. Many had a white lightening corn still in the back yard of their shanty and were always on the look out for Revenuers, since Virginia was a dry state and they always wanted to catch some one making or transporting white lightening. There were also a few revenuers that took bribes since their cousins were making the booze. When you are back in the bowls of the swamp, it was kind of exciting. Well, JT disappeared one day and never was found. Everyone suspected he said Nigger once to many times and suffered what most malcontents suffer - a shotgun blast and rapid decomposition.Moses - Many people live in the swamp on farms and with their permission, we could hunt on their land. Moses was a Black man who had a small farm near Suffolk, Virginia, which were several miles back in the swamp and only reachable by a tractor built dirt road using a four-wheel drive truck. His wife would walk the 2-½ miles to the main highway every day and get picked up by a Trailways Bus that took her into town and her house-cleaning job. Moses was 85 years old and in great shape except he limped from a broken leg that didn’t mend well after a tree fell on him when he was clearing land last year. Moses was a typical swamp dweller, he ran a still, had some animals and a few cultivated acres where he planted food to sustain him, but Moses also had five hundred acres of raw swamp and timber land that he allowed us to hunt on and all we had to do was leave him a few deer. Moses lived better than most because his shack had a wooden floor with window glass and a great front porch that looked out over his land right into the setting Sun, otherwise it was a typical tin roofed swamp dwelling with no electric, water, or indoor plumbing. Because he had access to town using his old rusted out Chevy pickup and his wife made daily trips to Suffolk, he purchased civilized things like newspapers, magazines, canned food, tooth brushes and paste, real bandages, kerosene and of course the proverbial Camphor-Phenique. Moses also had a barn where he stored his twenty-year-old John Deere tractor that he used to work his fields and keep his road clear from the creeping swamp underbrush. We would usually stay at Moses for a weekend and after the day’s hunt sit around a camp fire, cook our food, drink white lightening whiskey, which I never developed a taste for but I would sip it anyway through my teeth to strain out small particles, and tell outrageous stories about experiences with women, hunting or war. The white lightening whiskey was more than one hundred proofs so you had to sip it slowly otherwise you could get you roaring drunk in no time, heave your guts out and really hung over the next morning. The guys brought their own musical instruments when we went to Moses places, Doc his harmonica, Bill and Red their guitars and Moses himself played a wicked violin whereupon really good country music and singing rang around the campfire. I learned the words to lots of country songs and loved every minute the campfire singing with these men. Around mid night, when everyone was either played out or drunk, we would get out our sleeping bags and spend the night sleeping on Moses front porch. After an early morning campfire breakfast of country sausage, eggs and biscuits, and then getting the dogs ready, we were off into the deep swamp again.I have to say, however, they treated Moses with the greatest respect as they did all the other Blacks we encountered in the swamp. I think this friendly assimilation was because they had a lot in common, all were strong men who shared survival abilities, ate the same foods, spoke poor English and talked the same southern slang, loved to play and sing country music and drink white lightening whisky - and they all had lots of guns and weren’t afraid to stand up for their rights! Besides, call someone a Nigger and how did you expect to get out of the swamp alive where bodies disintegrate into nothing in less than a week in the hot, humid, critter invested swamp where people go missing all the time. I think my friends held segregationist views because they never knew any Black people really well and didn’t try to understand them, even though the races were remarkable alike in life styles. Slavery and then Jim Crow segregation had been part of Southern life for hundreds of years and it was difficult for many southern people to see life any differently. My friends weren’t great abstract thinkers and preferred the way things were, their views on segregation were not based on hate or feelings of superiority but on being afraid of social change.As for me, I had a great time in the swamp, for six years I hunted every week, I was a dead shot and killed more than a hundred deer. But gutting a deer so you could more easily drag its carcass to base camp for skinning, and doing the honors was not a chore I relished, but I did it so may times. The dogs ate the heads and entrails of the deer while we cut the meat up. I gave my deer away to the residents of the swamp - all kinds of reclusive Indians, blacks, whites, criminals hiding out and religious hermits like the Mennonites. The Great Dismal Swamp, as you can probably guess from its name, is not an easy place to traverse, but I got very comfortable being in the swam. Bears would watch me excavating, I ran into huge water moccasins and rattlesnakes as thick around as my thigh. But nothing worse happened than scrapes, bugs bites and losing equipment in the muck. If you are writing a book, this is one place to get great stories.Life at IBMI am an IBM Main Frame Engineer and travel all around US fixing broke computers. One of my best assignments was to CBS Studio 41 in NYC for the 1964 Presidential election computer system. IBM put me up in the Shorham Hotel on west 55th just off 5th Avenue and every morning I would walk to CBS on 57th at 12th Avenue and spend about 16 hours installing and maintaining the triple deck 7000 systems with all its vast multiplexing, disk storage and data entry stations. I worked with a talented and interesting crew, including Lou Harris the Pollster, Walter Cronkite and Mike Wallace and a crew of IBM system developers who had designed computer system software to extrapolate the vote (meaning forecast precinct winners across the USA) on election night. Eric Severoid was a curmudgeon; he was always cold and wore a sweater. Mike Wallace was the brainyac, Roger Mudd was the good-ole-boy, and Walter Cronkite was a world-class charmer. He sat with us IBM guys a few times in the CBS cafeteria and when he spoke, it was like a wise sage telling us about the world. Every night, we would sit in a conference room next door to CBS at the Holiday Inn with the system developers, Lou Harris and his people with the CBS producers and talk about politics, voting patterns, and what concerns were driving the election. I learned a lot then, how the USA political process works, how different parts of the country think and what issues are important to them. It was the real thing with top in their field experts and better than a PHD Political Science graduate study at NYU. Yes, their professors were there too as consultants and advisors and I could have written a Doctoral Thesis on voting patterns.I worked with Marcello who was a real character, a second generation Italian, spoke the language (plus a few more European languages fluently), while his parents still spoke only Italian and broken English. He was a very good looking dark complexioned man the girls fell in love with and I envied him for the lush, big breasted females that panted after him - and New York was full of them, many looking for a coupling, but Marcello only liked skinny blond, flat chested women who had buck teeth. I saw some of the women he dated and choked, they were ugly! Well, to each there own I always say!As for me, I had to win the girls over with my personality. Every other day, we walked down to the IBM facility that housed the CBS crew and where we had our IBM meetings. It was in an old building on 8th Avenue and the offices were on the top floor. We got into a non-stop express elevator with sliding front steel gates operated by an old hunchbacked man smoking a big Cuban cigar. He had a small wooden stool with a red cushion he sat on, propped up his legs, grinned at us and threw the elevator lever into high speed, and the motors whirred up, the elevator lurched, and off we would go accelerating madly to the 45th floor holding our stomachs in from upchucking. I would bet we were traveling at 60 miles per hour only upwards. We would get to the top floor, and he opened the steel doors, and Walla, what a space. Nothing artistically great but with a beautifully organized office with old oak furniture and big, floor to ceiling windows with views of Manhattan all around. I would work here in a second.New York IBM people were far different from the southern IBM types I worked with in Norfolk at the naval base. First of all, many of the New Yorkers were black, Asian, Latino, something that you wouldn’t see in the south for many years. Second, they were all ethnic, young and crazy, highly educated graduates from Ivy League universities where brains, having big city competitive skills, and where strong and agreeable personalities counted, something you would never see in the south, where being white, seriously religious and politically conservative was the standard mantra. Bless me, Lord I almost forgot, if you had lots of guns, hunted and fished, that counted too.This was the 1960s and they were very turbulent and violent years because of the Civil Rights movement going on in the southern states and there were terrible things southerners were doing to blacks and Civil Rights workers, lots of harassment and murders, so the south had a lousy reputation in the north, especially in New York, the freedom capital of the USA. But I was one of those southerners who fought for social equality for the blacks and had been to the March on Washington last year to hear Martin Luther King’s “ I have a Dream” speech.” The first few weeks, these New Yorkers had fun with me, being the only southerner in the group. Believe it or not, I really was a southerner in many ways too, besides working in high technology, I had more than twenty guns, became part of the southern gun culture, had lots of “Good-ole-boy” friends, and hunted in Dismal Swamp and fished on Chesapeake Bay for years. But indeed, the south was a strange and violent place to me and I did not like many aspects of its culture.One thing that is very different is the societal differences between the girls in the North and the girls in the South as many southern women (and men) are still fighting the war and blaming the north for all their woes. And talking about women, personally, I have noticed that women in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, etc. have big hair, use perfume and heavy makeup while in New York, women tend to look natural, using minimal makeup, with little to no perfume and having small natural hair. I was discovering that women in New York can be really out there, wearing mini skirts and braless halters, but that doesn’t mean at all they are easy. They didn’t dress up like they were in a fashion show, but in more practical terms for a big city, being on subways and walking a lot on their tennis shoes. Northern women, in my experience, were very independent, and professed to prefer "men to be men, and women to be women," which I suppose indicates a preference for traditional gender roles. They also liked well-educated and well-employed men with a sense of humor. After living in the south, I found the many women there dressed well, had that ‘big hair, were dripping with sugar, and were overly self righteously religious.’ They frequently use greetings like ‘hi honey, baby, sugar, sweetie pie thing, even when you have never seen them in your life.’ As other people mentioned, southern women do spend much more time on appearances and they gossip like there's no tomorrow. They are also much more competitive with each other, though they do so in the "nicest" way. Northern women use the time saved not worrying about appearances but to go to college or advancing their careers, so usually, I can sit down and have an intelligent conversation with most northern women. Whereas down south, we talk about other people or our hair. Northern women don't play social games. If they don't like you that are it, they just won't talk to you, but they'll at least wait until you're out of hearing range to start talking about you. You cannot get by on looks alone in the North as you can in the south. Miss Teen South Carolina would not survive one day up north where attractiveness is all about personality and brains.”Hanging OutNew York was nothing like dull dismal Norfolk. New York was a colorful universe, diverse and full of excitement. My first night in the City I took the F train to Greenwich Village and walked around. This was so different from Norfolk’s decrepit downtown streets. I marveled at the exciting street scenes filled with artists selling their paintings, small coffee shops with tables out on the side walk, thousands of interesting looking people walking around, and the hundreds of clubs/bars/restaurants that dotted the area where you could eat, dance, and engage in interesting conversations with intelligent people while drinking espresso in a street cafe. Every night I walked around Times Square, often I would take the F Train to the Village and walk around too. If we had known that the scrawny guy onstage at that Greenwich Village folk club might someday amount to something, I would have talked about it. It was Bob Dylan when Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg held court at house parties in Greenwich Village, or Andy Warhol at his studio, the FactoryWorking with Lou Harris I learned all about voting patterns in the USA. America’s voting patterns are split by region, with the Midwest and Northeast predominantly voting for liberal candidates, and the West (with the exception of the coast) and South voting for more conservative candidates, but also surprisingly found conservative trends in the West and liberal leanings in the Midwest that defy traditional stereotypes about these areas of the country. A number of important demographic factors determine whether cities vote for liberals or conservatives, with race being the most important factor. Cities with predominantly large diverse populations ended up as the most liberal places in America, while the small towns with the largest Caucasian populations wound up as the most conservative. The liberal cities have a wider range of everything, higher educational accreditations, performing arts, high culture, sophistication and highly diversified population demographics.The Democratic Party attracts all kinds, blacks, browns, yellows, reds and whites both poor and rich, highly educated and the far less educated, whereas the Republican Party mostly just attracts whites and the moderately educated. This causes the Democratic Party to have a wider range of IQ a higher average IQ than the Republican Party apparently dominating the average middle of the IQ spectrum. So, the extremely smart, well-educated liberals are truly the intellectual elite of the entire country and are Democrats. More interesting is the fact that those who are more oppressed and disadvantaged have consistently seen that their interests are more in line with intellectually elite Democrats rather than with wealthy elite Republicans.I remember being on an Amtrak train going from Manhattan to Washington, D, and C. many years ago, before covert racial segregation was outlawed in the south. I sat behind a group of women from Dutch Guiana, a South American colony of the Netherlands who was going to Miami, and we got to talk. They all spoke at least five languages, were Hollywood beautiful and all with European university degrees, but they could not get off the train while in the south and be accommodated in a restaurant or bathroom because they were colored. I was so ashamed of this racist behavior in the southern US and felt terrible, but southerners did not, they thought this segregationist behavior was justified, it was in their bones, from slavery and Jim Crow all justified with (their interpretation) Bible verses and continued anti Yankee animosities from the Civil War. They simply saw the world in a different light than I did, one they created called their "Southern Way of Life" and their light was NOT FREEDOM ORIENTED. It was highly restrictive and bound by culture they understood, was comfortable with and revered. It was evident the concept of freedom is considered differently elsewhere in the USA. The politics are far right the religion is socially conservative.For example a current controversy is between Evangelicals and other mainstream groups is homosexuality. Mainstream peoples believe homosexuality occurs naturally; you are born with the trait. Evangelicals believe you choose the lifestyle and therefore is a sinner going to hell. In this case, science is ignored and faith is the rule of law.WoodstockThe Woodstock concert might very well be the most legendary concert of all time. Not just only because who all performed but even more so the stuff and atmosphere surrounding the entire event. It was held at the height of the flower power craze and the entire event became much bigger and longer than eventually anticipated, resulting in some crazy events. It rained most of the tie and the grounds were muddy, littered with hippies and smelled like an uninviting combination of reefer and feces. This was never a concert, but a defining moment in the struggle for the future of the nation. It was never about music, but about politics as religion, about the massive change of defining what it meant to be alive. I had been raised in diverse Milwaukee, spent ten years in the segregated south, we were embroiled in a Vietnam War I didn’t believe in, and was ready for a new direction for the USA.You had to be immersed in the times to get a feel for how true this is. I was a Greenwich Village Rat hanging out with all the Hippies and performing arts types and would fit right in. No one ever thought Woodstock would be as big as it was, it was a spontaneous happening, but it happened for a very clear reason: we were yearning for a new coherent American mythology. But I wasn’t a Hippy, just a guy inspired to do well, make a difference if I could. The festival turned out to be a four-day concert that involved lots of sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll and all in a sea of torrential downpours and mud with no bathrooms or what they did have got quickly plugged up. It was a time of squat or piss in a designated area. It has become an icon of the 1960s hippie counterculture which I was somewhat part of. It took place in an age when the fault lines between "straight" society and the so‑called counterculture were at their deepest, over Vietnam and Civil Rights, all called the revolution in values.More than 30 artists and 200 songs were performed over the three-day weekend. Some were established stars; others were just getting their start. And most of them had breakthrough performances at the festival. Even if their sets weren’t all that great, their association with the granddaddy of all music fests elevated them.Out of control, but the band held it together with a superb mix of expert playing and blues-rock exuberance. ‘Going Up the Country’ pounds home the point.The mythology about Woodstock didn't start until the concert was over. Some of the people who attended actually heard the music.