Stateside With Rosalea: Connecticut

Are we bored yet? Heaven only knows what combination of moon phase, sunspot activity, comet flyby, and planetary alignment possessed me to decide I’d write about each state in the order they ratified the US Constitution, but I’m only up to number five and already I’m gasping for air.

So we’re up to Connecticut, a name I rather like. Hmm. There’s a river. Yale University is in New Haven, CT. What else? Oh, it’s called The Constitution State because, the state’s official website says,

“From the first, Connecticut enjoyed a great measure of political independence, proclaiming in its Fundamental Orders of 1639 a democratic principle of government based on the will of the people. These Fundamental Orders are said to have been the first written Constitution of a democratic government...”

But a quick CT scan on Google and news websites failed to turn up anything much –apart from the story about the chimp that was kept as a pet and forced to behave like a human, and then had to shot because it behaved like a chimp; Miss Connecticut Outstanding Teen had a party at her place while her parents were away and the police raided it and charged 24 teens with alcohol possession, but dozens of other partygoers ran away and escaped the law; and the 9.5 percent of the world’s hedge fund assets that are located in the state are about to get stricter supervision if the Connecticut General Assembly passes proposed legislation to combat the retailization of hedge fund products.

Oh, and Ralph Nader grew up there, in a lovely big old house overlooking a river . I know this because a chappie who sat next to me at Peter Camejo’s memorial service showed me a photo of himself rowing on the river in front of the house. He’d brought the photo along hoping to get the chance to show it to Nader, as they went to school together.

(Soto voce) The chappie sitting next to me was deaf. His friend, who was sitting on the other side of me, was also deaf and they kept up a running conversation throughout the service. In sign language. And occasionally asked me to point out on the program who the person was that was speaking on stage.

(What is it with me and memorial services? When I went to Mark Bingham’s memorial service in 2001—you’ll remember he was one of the people on board Flight 93 on 9/11—a blind man sat next to me and asked if I’d describe to him the images and word graphics that were playing in the tribute video.)

But back to Connecticut and gasping for air. Plus a dream and my mistaken reading of a search result. See, the other morning I woke up with the date December 6, 1776, fixed in my brain like the melody of some inane pop song. So I googled that date and misread:

1776. September 6, 1776. First submarine, Turtle, is used in Battle of New York Harbor. ..... December 6, 1790. Philadelphia becomes nation's capital.,

Which led me to looking up the Turtle and the discovery that it was, according to Wikipedia, “the world's first submarine used in battle. It was invented in Connecticut in 1775 by American Patriot David Bushnell as a means of attaching explosive charges to ships in a harbor.” Another website dashes the idea that Bushnell actually “invented” it, because he was a student at Yale and in the library there at the time was an English magazine that contained a drawing of a similar vessel built in England in the 1740s.

But there’s a twist to this tale. Some time after the Revolutionary War , which he’d spent designing floating mines after the Turtle incident had brought him to the attention of George Washington, Bushnell disappeared. Nobody knew what had happened to him until, down in Georgia in 1824, kindly Dr. Bush—teacher and healer in the town of Warrentown—d ied and among his effects were a submarine prototype and papers showing that he was in fact the Turtle’s creator.

A re-creation of the Turtle was constructed for the US Bicentenary in 1976, and in 2007 some art students in New York also made a replica and managed to get it within 200 feet of the Queen Mary II in New York harbor. But the most exquisite reconstruction of the Turtle was made in the early 2000s using the original drawings and the tools and materials that would have been available in 1776.

But to round out this CT ramble—and very nicely, thank you—I should point out that the submariner in the original Turtle was supposed to attach a bomb to the bottom of a British warship called the Eagle. Now, Turtle and Eagle are both very prominent in Native American legends, and in one story—attributed by some to the Colville Tribes of Washington state—we learn how Turtle beat Eagle in a race, and then changed the prize to suit himself. You can read it here.

Are we there yet?

rosalea.barker@gmail.com

--PEACE—

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