[Northkeep] History lessons

[Marc Carlson]

>From: Kevinkeary at aol.com
>>I would submit that most modern Americans don't really have a clue who
>>Johnny Appleseed or Paul Bunyon were.  They haven't done big screen 
>> >>movies about either of them lately.
>Actually, my bet is that more people believed the -cherry- tree story in my
>father's generation than in mine or my children's,...

True - but they haven't done any movies about that incident either :)

>Paul Bunyan was a figure in Tall Tales with Pecos Bill and John Henry
>(Diarmaid didn't limit the discussion to -good- movies...), and Johnny
>Appleseed WAS a real figure from American History (John Chapman,
>  1775-1847), but like Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone, his legend exceeds
>  his reality.
>Kevin

While you are correct that there was such a person, I (me, personally) tend 
to differentiate between the guy who's feet were so tough a rattlesnake 
couldn't bite him, and the historical person (although in his case, 
admittedly the lines are really hard to trace).  So I suppose yes, his 
legend exceeded his reality :)

I'll be curious to see how the latest "Alamo" handles Crockett, although I 
know a lot of people seem to be a bit unhappy at seeing him portrayed as 
anything less than the legendary superhero [one curious note in modern 
research of the Alamo has to do with whether he was killed fighting, or was 
executed after the battle - as though there was something degrading about 
being captured, when there are plenty of perfectly legitimate reasons for 
being take prisoner that don't involve cowardace  -- sorry, weird rant 
topic].

Marc/Diarmaid

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