Patti's Blog - Advocate for Elders, People with Disabilities and Their Families

The Monster of Monticello

Excerpt from: The New York Times (click for full article)

 

Thomas Jefferson is in the news again, nearly 200 years after his death — alongside a high-profile biography by the journalist Jon Meacham comes a damning portrait of the third president by the independent scholar Henry Wiencek.

Jefferson was always deeply committed to slavery, and even more deeply hostile to the welfare of blacks, slave or free. His proslavery views were shaped not only by money and status but also by his deeply racist views, which he tried to justify through pseudoscience.

Rather than encouraging his countrymen to liberate their slaves, he opposed both private manumission and public emancipation. Even at his death, Jefferson failed to fulfill the promise of his rhetoric: his will emancipated only five slaves, all relatives of his mistress Sally Hemings, and condemned nearly 200 others to the auction block. Even Hemings remained a slave, though her children by Jefferson went free.

Van Gogh, John Lennon, Washington letters coming to auction

Excerpt from: The Oakland Press (click for full article)

 

An upcoming auction of over 300 historical documents includes rare letters written by Vincent van Gogh, George Washington, John Lennon and other iconic figures.

The property of an anonymous American collector is being offered by Profiles in History in an online and phone auction on Dec. 18.

Among the highlights is a two-page letter from Washington to an Anglican clergyman.

Another top item is a signed van Gogh letter, written in 1890, to Joseph and Marie Ginoux, who were proprietors of the Cafe de la Gare in Arles, France, where the Dutch post-impressionist artist lived for a time.

10 Eerie Places on Earth in Images

Excerpt from: Listverse (click for full article)

 

Disturbing. Eerie places can be found all over the world; most of us probably live near one. In this images list we look at 10 places that are especially spooky either because of how they look or because of their association with the dark side of life. We have tried to pick items that have not featured on Listverse before but in a few cases we had to repeat because they were simply too good to be left off. There is also a bonus item.

 

In Great Britain, 300-year-old manual reveals efforts to help deaf people speak

Excerpt from: Media dis&dat (click for full article)

 

A 300-year-old, leather-bound instruction manual contains some of the earliest examples of attempts to teach the deaf to communicate.

 

The manual belonged to Alexander Popham, a deaf teenager from a noble English family who was taught to speak in the 1660s. The leather-bound notebook was discovered in 2008 at a stately English manor called Littlecote House.

The finding suggests that one of the boy's tutors, John Wallis, was a few hundred years ahead of his time in understanding that deaf people needed their own language to communicate, said linguist David Cram of the University of Oxford.

Amazingly, Popham learned to communicate and speak (although historical records don't reveal how well), became a minor celebrity of the era and was even presented at court, Cram said. He eventually married the daughter of one of the leading intellectual women of the 17th century.